Blood Witch_ Book Three - Cate Tiernan [52]
“Do you want me to do it?” he asked.
I shook my head quickly. “No—no. I’ll do it.”
I picked up the box. It was about twenty inches long by sixteen inches wide and about four inches tall. Outside, the metal was flaking off. Two metal clasps held the box shut. They were rusted almost solid. Robbie jumped up and rummaged around in his desk for a screwdriver, then handed it to me. Holding my breath, I wedged it under the lid and pried the clasps free. The lid opened with a pop, and I dug my fingers underneath it and flung it open.
“Wow!” Robbie and I exclaimed at the exact same time.
Though the outside of the box was worn and rusted, the inside of the box was untouched by age or the elements. The interior was shiny and silver. The first thing I saw was an athame. I picked it up. It was heavy in my hand, ancient-looking, with an age-worn silver blade and an intricately carved ivory handle. Celtic knots encircled the handle, finely carved but with the unmistakable look of handwork. This hadn’t been made in a factory. Turning it over, I saw that the blade itself had been stamped with rows of initials, eighteen pairs of them. The very last ones were M. R. The ones above those were M. R.
“Maeve Riordan,” I said, touching the initials. “And Mackenna Riordan, her mother. My grandmother. And me.” I felt a rush of happiness. “This came to me from my family.” A deep sense of belonging and continuity made me beam with satisfaction. I set the athame carefully on Robbie’s bed.
Next I took out a package of deep green silk. When I held it up, it fell into the folds of a robe.
“Cool,” said Robbie, touching it gently.
I nodded in agreement, awed. The robe was in the shape of a large rectangle, with an opening for the head and knots of silk that held the shoulders together.
“It looks like a toga,” I said, holding it up to my chest. I blinked, seeing Robbie’s questioning face. I smiled at him, knowing that I would try on the robe—but at home, behind locked doors.
The embroidery was astounding: full of Celtic knots, dragons, pentacles, runes, stars, and stylized plants worked in gold and silver thread. It was a work of art, and I could imagine how proud Maeve would have been to inherit it from her mother, to wear it the first time she presided over a circle. As far as I knew, Mackenna had still been high priestess of Belwicket when it was destroyed.
“This is incredible,” said Robbie.
“I know,” I echoed. “I know.”
Folding the robe gently, I laid it aside. Next I found four small silver bowls, embossed again with Celtic symbols. I recognized the runes for air, fire, water, and earth and knew that my birth mother had used these in her circles.
I took out a wand, made of black wood. Thin gold and silver lines had been pounded into the shaft, and the tip was set with a large crystal sphere. Four small red stones circled the wand beneath the crystal, and I wondered if they were real rubies.
Beneath everything, jumbled on the bottom, were several other large chunks of crystal as well as other stones, a feather, and a silver chain with a claddagh charm on it: two hands holding a heart topped with a crown. It was funny: Mom—my adoptive mom—had a claddagh ring that Dad had given her on their twenty-fifth anniversary, last year. The chain felt warm and heavy in my hand.
My gaze swept over all the tools. So much treasure, so much bounty. It was mine: my true inheritance, filled with magick and mystery and power. I felt full of joy but in a way that I could never explain to Robbie . . . in a way I couldn’t explain even to myself.
“Two weeks ago I had nothing of my birth mother’s,” I found myself saying. “Now I have her Book of Shadows and all this besides. I mean, these are things she touched and used. They’re full of her magick. And I have them! This is amazing.”
Robbie shook his head, his eyes wide. “What’s really amazing is that you found out about them by scrying,” he murmured.
“I know, I know.” Excitement coursed through my veins. “It was like Maeve actually chose to visit me, to give me a message.”
“Pretty weird,” Robbie acknowledged.