Twice Upon A Time (The Celtic Legends Series) (8 page)

She gathered
Conor’s discarded cloak and brooch as he tucked the saplings one under each arm and headed to the height of the hill, raking the earth behind him with their crowns. He tossed the wood across an open plain, and snapped the branches off as if they were nothing but kindling. She settled in the shade, watching him. The wolfhound pup trotted over to curl in her lap.

His eyes flashed a dangerous, stormy gray as he bound one clutch of sticks. “You should
have found me another task, Brigid.”

“A man as bold and brawny as you should have no trouble with a bit of tree.”

“It’s not the woodcutting I object to.” He tossed the bound branches aside. “For you, I’d do it. But I’ve no mind to do work for the likes of the people of Morna.”

“I’m the last of the Druid blood, as thin as it is.” She shrugged and scratched the wolfhound behind its ears. “It’s my duty
.”

“You owe nothing to them.” He tugged the yew into the sunlight, his back running dark with sweat. “They’ve exiled you and scorned you and called you
cailleach
. Yet you still light these bonfires, so the cowards can sneak to the hill like thrice-wed men sneaking off to seek their bondswomen’s beds.”

He set to the other trees’ branches. Slivers of wood flew as he snapped off bough after bough
. Her ears rang with his words. It felt good to hear another say what she dared not even think, but she was ashamed of that feeling. Morna-born she was, and cast out or not, she could not deny her own blood.

She tilted her chin
. This Ulsterman knew neither his mother nor his father. If he could not understand the blood bonds of kin, then she’d argue another way. “If I don’t do this thing, Conor, then no one will. The ancient rituals will die.”

“They won’t die.” 
A branch snapped in his hand. “Even in the shadows of Patrick’s church, in Armagh, I’ve seen highborn warriors make sacrifices in ancient pools.”

“That
is worse,” she argued, “for that church lies on an old sacred place, stolen from us.”

“I’m no Druid,” he growled, “and I’ve no tongue for such things.” He hefted the axe in his wide-palmed hand. “This I know: The priests are
foreigners. They come here now but their ways will die.”

Brigid ran her hand over the pup’s soft coat and held her tongue.
Conor was a warrior and held close a warrior’s code. The weak would die and the strong would survive, the good and the right would always emerge champion. But she lived amid the gray mists, and knew the uncertainties of the world. Strength did not always lie within the thickness of a man’s arm.

Conor
finished chopping the wood, and then wrestled the piles into two bristling pyres. Silently, she handed him the flagon of mead. Grasping it by the neck, he tipped the flagon and swilled his fill while rivulets of it ran down his neck. She smelled the faint, salty perfume of his sweat. A pulse throbbed in his throat. She imagined she could hear his heart beating strong and sure in his chest.

“I’ve paid the price.” He thrust the dripping flagon into her hands. “Now, lass, we’ll sit to another game.”

She met his clear gray gaze. He had not taken a blade to his face this morn. A sprinkling of dark bristle shadowed his jaw. Sweat glistened on his brow and flecks of bark and tiny slivers of wood speckled his skin. She yearned to run her fingertips over his cheek . . . just once, just to feel this man’s skin.

“Another game, then.”
She pulled away from the blinking blindness of him and headed toward her yellow cloak, spread on the grass in the shade. “I’ve plenty of tasks awaiting a man’s hand.”

Brigid dropped the flagon of
mead, vaguely thinking that the skin was still heavy though Conor had surely drank the most of it. She pulled the
fidchell
board out of her basket and laid it on the cloak between them. Above, the ash tree stretched its boughs to guard them from the mid-morning sun. Burrowed in the leaves, two blackbirds lilted their full lay. When she pushed aside the woven basket to make room for her legs, two ripe red apples suddenly rolled out from behind it.

She bit into one of the crispy apples, savoring the
sweetness of the fruit. She held it out to Conor as he made the first move on the
fidchell
board.

He examined the apple, but did not take it. “There’s not an apple tree in all of Ireland that has dropped its fruit yet.”

She lifted a brow. “Isn’t there?”

“Aye.
And I’m in no mind to be caught in your web of enchantment again.” He nudged the board with his hand. “I’m planning on winning this game.”

“I can’t have you
playing on an empty stomach.” She took another bite with relish. “But if you insist, I’ll keep the apples to myself.”

He glanced at the other apple, ly
ing in a saffron bed of folds. “I suppose it won’t help to scorn a gift from the gods.”

A
light breeze swept over the hill as they played, bringing with it the faintest perfume of heath. The holly rimming the slope quivered and rustled, but every time she turned, there’d be nothing there but the sway of a bough or a tremor of a bush. It was too bright now for the
Sídh
to be dancing in the shadows, even on Lughnasa day, but she sensed their presence around her. She wondered what made them so bold.

Then, in the distance, above the chattering of the birds, the sweet sound of lyres drifted high on the air. She glanced at
Conor, but all his concentration focused on the
fidchell
board. She strained her ears, listening to the hollow echoes of revelry in the Otherworld, as the fairy music surged and ebbed. The sound grew so loud she could hear voices raised in shouts and laughter; she could hear the stamping of dancing feet and the slosh of liquid as the
Sídh
sipped honeysuckle nectar from cups made of foxglove blossoms.

“It seems your magic
has worked against you,
bean sí
.”

The music stopped
. The chattering of blackbirds above deafened her. She blinked blankly at Conor. He was grinning and a light gleamed in his gray eyes.

She leaned over the board. “My turn, is it?”

“Nay.” He lifted the apple, which was still whole, though she knew he had taken several bites. “It’s my turn now.”

Color ebbed from her cheeks. Her pegs were scattered all over, many lying upon the saffron
cloak. She did not remember making a single move.

Her eyes flew to his face. “You’ve won.”

“Aye.”

The sunlight dimmed
as if a high, thin cloud passed across the sky. She sank back on one hip and narrowed her eyes. “There’s mischief afoot here.”

“
You won’t be trying to go back on your word now, lass.”

“
I keep my word.”

She had no choice
. The time had come to pay the smith for the magic he had forged into the blade. She felt the darkening of the wind around them. She smelled the first wispy, salt-sweet breath of the Otherworld. If they tempted fate on Lughnasa day, the gods themselves would rush through the thinning veils and put a halt to it. And she wanted Conor’s company, if only for one more day, just one more day of light and laughter.

She
looked him straight in the eye and tried to veer him away from the inevitable. “Well, Conor. You’ll want to know about your parentage, then.”

“My parentage?”

“Surely that is why you’ve been coming here all this time, doing a slave’s work and wagering at fidchell.”  She chose her words carefully, for all she had were suspicions—nothing revealed to her through her visions—but if she were clever, she could draw his interest away from slaking his desire and bringing upon them the fury of the gods. “You’ll want to know about your father.” 

His body tightened. A bluis
h pall fell over the hilltop. A furtive, shifting breeze fluttered the hem of his tunic. Abruptly, he rose to his feet. He whirled his back to her, his bronze sword sheath banging against the metal bosses of his girdle.

“A full moon ago, such a thing I wanted more than anything.” His eyes snapped to hers. “Now, you remind me of that which I’d completely forgotten—something I’ve searched all of Erin to
know.”

Her
lashes swept down in shame. “It’s too great a thing for a man such as you to forget—”

“Aye, but I have. Your eyes
. . ..” His hands curled into fists. “They plunder a man’s senses.”

“My eyes have been faulted for worst things, but I’ll take no blame for your own forgetfulness.” Her
back stiffened. “It’s enough that you remember now, when the time has come to have your questions answered. If that be your price—”

He swept away the
fidchell
board with a swipe of his hand. The pup leapt from a sound sleep as the wooden pieces scattered over him.

“Look at me, woman.”
Conor pitched down before her. He seized her by the chin and probed her eyes. “Lies don’t sit well on your tongue. You know nothing—nothing but suspicions—and I’ve had a bellyful of those.” His grip tightened. “You cannot delay the inevitable, not anymore.”

Air gelled in her lungs. A trembling began in her belly and spread through her body, rippling out to her tingling fingertips. The time had come, and though her body rushed with sensation, a strange peace settled upon her mind. Her fight was over. She had tried to save him. Whatever powers manipulated them like the pieces on a
fidchell
board had brought them to this. No one in
Tír na nÓg
nor on this Earth could change the course of her path.

Yet he hesitated, devouring her with his gaze, lingering on the play of shadows in her hair, the curve of her cheek, the gape of her
tunic . . . then returning anew to pierce her gaze with his own.

“Speak.” No tremble warbled her voice. “Tell me the price I must pay.”

He traced her jaw and hesitated as the pad of his finger pressed the vulnerable flesh of her lower lip. “The price is a kiss.”

His body stilled like a hunter crouched in the tall grass. She saw the surprise in his eyes, as if he, too, could not believe he had made such a simple request. But Brigid knew
what would happen once they kissed. Even a single embrace could unleash powerful forces.

A strange, shimmering shadow fell over the land. It was like the blurring of her sight before a vision, yet
Conor stood clear and vivid before her. She did not stop to question the fading of the light—it was Lughnasa day—it was their taunting and teasing that brought down the magic like a shroud.

She leaned
forward, the long, weighted plaits of her hair slipping over her shoulders to brush his thighs. “A kiss, Conor, I can give you.”

And all the voices of the forest hushed around them. The wind faltered unt
il it no longer scattered leaves over the bare rocks that jutted out here and there from the carpet of grass, like the bare bones of the earth. The
Sídh
stilled their rustling behind the bushes and trees. The blackbirds paused mid-note, their songs ringing in the air.

Conor
plunged his hand into her hair, weaving his fingers deep, digging his fingertips into the nape of her neck, and drawing her face toward his. Brigid braced her hands against his solid chest. Hunger flared in his eyes like a bright silver flame just as his lips descended to meet hers.

“Nay,
Conor.”

Her fingers came between them, stopping his lips only a wish from hers. His breath fanned her cheek, and the hot fury of his wanting tightened every muscle in his body. She saw, for the first time, the sparks of gold scattered like dust in his gray eyes, lights that glowed sharp with desire.

“I am to give you a kiss,” she whispered, tracing the firm texture of his mouth, “not the other way around.”

And so she trailed her fingers down the short scar on his chin, felt the stubble that roughened his jaw, traced the jut of his high, wide cheekbones, discovered with a sense of wonder the sun-kissed color of his skin, and the auburn tips of his dark
brown lashes. His hair was as soft and thick as fox fur against her hand. He made a strange, grunting sound deep in his chest, and the vibrations reverberated through his body, so his muscles quivered like the plucked strings of lyres. Something quivered in response deep inside her, vibrating to the same pitch. Touching this man was like teasing a wolf, for she sensed the wildness in him. She drew closer to him, to escape the sudden coolness of the wind, until the warmth of their bodies gathered between them. She slipped her other hand around his neck. She pressed her nose beside his, let her eyes flutter shut. She resisted, still, the same way one would resist tasting a newly baked loaf of bread or the very first haunch of fresh lamb after the autumn slaughter. Nothing, she knew, would ever be as glorious as the very first kiss.

She smelled the warm, salty man-scent of him, felt the stubble of his beard raze her lips as she gently, oh, so gently, pressed her mouth against his upper lip, tasting his skin where the sweet juice of the apple lingered, then slipping down to press upon the corner of his lips, and then, and then . . .