Naamah's Kiss - Jacqueline Carey [7]
It made me feel ungracious. "I will try."
"Good lass." He rose and moved away.
The revel wore on into the small hours of the night. There was music and dancing and an abundance of food—even roasted venison, which we seldom had. There were stone jugs of uisghe, a strong spirit begged or bartered from elsewhere, or stolen from tribute-gifts left by other folk. I found a jug with a scant inch left in the bottom and sampled it when no one was looking. It tasted unpleasant, but it blazed a trail into my belly where it simmered nicely, smoothing away the prickly edges of my temper.
I decided I liked it.
The children I'd been too sullen to attempt to befriend began to yawn and crumple, curling up in the grass to sleep beneath the stars. Men and women smiled at one another and went into the darkness together. When Oengus held his hand out to my mother, she gave me an inquiring glance from across the glade.
I shrugged.
She took his hand and went with him.
I should have been weary, but my heart and mind were too full for sleep. I found another jug that sloshed a bit when I shook it and wandered into the night. The charm of concealment had darkened to the deepest purple twilight. Here and there couples were sighing. I found a place on the outskirts of the glade with long grass and sank into it. In the tree above me, an owl hooted softly.
I summoned my own twilight and spotted it. "Hello."
The owl hooted again. It sounded disapproving. The glade was its nightly hunting ground and we were disturbing it.
"I'm sorry." I let my twilight go and sensed a rush of powerful wings as the owl launched itself. "Good hunting."
There was only a little uisghe in the jug, but it was late and I was growing tired after all. After I drank it, my head spun. I curled on my side in the tall grass and thought about all the coupling in the glade, all the Midsummer coupling in the tame fields beyond the woods. I knew what men and women did together. I'd seen frogs mating. There was that queer fluttering feeling in my belly again. Combined with the uisghe, it made me feel excited and sick.
Not yet, the bright lady whispered in my memory.
I closed my eyes and listened to the grass crackling beneath my ear. I thought about the other one, the one I'd seen in my mind's eye earlier. The man. Bright, though not so bright as the lady. His gentle smile. The seedling cupped in his palm. I opened my eyes and gazed at the grass. There was a tiny, half-opened buttercup nestled amid the long stems, colorless in the fading twilight. I breathed in the remembered scent of sunlight warming the ripe fields, taking it deep into me where it mingled with the warmth of the uisghe. There was no sick feeling left, only calm and goodness.
I cupped my hand around the blossom and blew out softly.
The buttercup opened.
Well, well, I thought. Mayhap I wasn't a great shapeshifting magician like those from the days of old, but mayhap I had some small magic that was all my own.
Or was it?
Was it a gift of the Maghuin Dhonn? Or the mysterious, unknown gods of Terre d'Ange?
I wasn't sure I wanted to know.
I murmured a prayer to my diadh-anam and sought refuge in sleep, comforted by the rustling grasses.
* * *
CHAPTER THREE
It was a blessed relief to return to the solitude of our cave. I spoke less than was my wont on our long journey home and my mother did not press me. She spoke only of inconsequential things. She taught me to use the short bow that my uncle Mabon had given me, praising my fledgling skills. As we travelled, I got to be quite good with it.
She did not speak of my father and I did not ask.
I did not speak of the buttercup.
Nor did I seek to repeat the attempt, not during our journey. But I paid greater attention to the world around me than I had paid before. Raised from childhood in the wilderness, I had always been attuned to it. Now it seemed that awareness had deepened, as though a sense I'd always possessed had awakened more