Naamah's Kiss - Jacqueline Carey [2]
I cradled it in my palms. It was warm from the sun, brown and faintly freckled. The shell was smooth. I touched the tip of my tongue to it. It tasted chalky and a little acrid. "From Lord Tiernan?"
"I daresay." She smiled. "He's a good man. He keeps to the old ways. We taught the Dalriada to survive in this land and they have never forgotten it. He remembers we are kin, too."
She set the arrowhead root to soak overnight and made a savory pie of eggs and greens that night. When I begged for the story of Lord Tiernan's coronation, she obliged me, tirelessly describing the splendid affair. It wasn't until I was falling asleep that I remembered last night's visitor and my strange vision. I resolved to ask my mother about it in the morning.
But when the morning dawned bright and fair, and my mother promised to teach me to catch trout with my bare hands, I forgot again and did not remember for a long time.
As I grew older, she taught me many things.
Most were simple skills. I grew adept at summoning the twilight— breathing it into me, blowing it softly around me. Thus concealed, I would lie motionless beneath the tendrils of the big willow along the stream, dangling one arm in the water and waiting for a speckled trout to swim into range. I could close my hand around it so gently it didn't even thrash, and lift it into the waiting creel.
I learned to gather greens like purslane, watercress, and dandelion, and roots like arrowhead, burdock, and cattail. I learned which mushrooms were poisonous and which were good to eat. I learned to boil acorns until the bitterness was gone and grind them into meal.
I learned to read weather signs and to track small game. My mother was skilled with a bow. When I was little, she hunted without me, but as I grew bigger and more adept in the ways of stealth and concealment, she took me with her. The first time I saw her kill, it was a hare.
It was a big hare, fat and lazy, crouching in a sunny glade. It began to startle as we emerged from the woods. My mother called the twilight around her, and I did the same. The bright sunlight faded around us, the world turning soft and silvery dim.
"Hold." she breathed.
The hare froze. I imagined I could feel its heart beating, a fast, inhuman flicker. Its round, dark eyes gleamed. It saw us, and it saw its death in us.
My mother loosed her bow.
The twang of it startled me out of the twilight. The sunlit world came crashing back. The shot hare leaped, ran a few paces, and fell over onto its side. I swallowed hard. It seemed a much graver thing than catching fish—and somewhat unfair, too.
"Did it… obey you?" I asked my mother.
She didn't answer right away, beckoning me to accompany her as she went to gather the hare. She laid my hand on its warm fur. I felt a faint movement as the last trace of life went out of it, then a loose stillness.
"In the twilight, we are closer to the world of spirit than flesh," she said soberly. "When we speak, their spirits hear. If their death is upon them, they obey."
"Oh," I whispered.
My mother's eyes were dark and somber. "It is a grave gift and one never to be used lightly. Only to sustain life. We give thanks to stone and sea and all that it encompasses for it, and to the Great Bear Herself. Do you ever use it for sport or any idle cause, it will be stripped from you. Do you understand?"
"I do."
The folk of the Maghuin Dhonn knew the cost of using gifts unwisely. My mother taught me things beyond woodcraft, cookery, and survival.
She told me stories.
Stories of days gone by, stories of heroes and villains, of great exploits and betrayals. There were stories from the oldest, oldest days when the world was covered with ice and our people left a distant land, following their diadh-anam, the guiding spirit of the Great Bear, to Alba. I listened and shivered with awe.
"Have you ever seen Her?" I asked.
She nodded. "Once."
"Where? When?"
She shook her head. "It is a mystery and I cannot speak of it until it is your time. But She is unlike any mortal bear."
There