Spinning Tales

by Brey Willows

  Finally, she slowed and focused on the horizon once again. She was surprised to find that it was dark and the area around them was lit by lanterns. She let her hand fall to her lap and slumped, suddenly drained.

  “Look.” Mal stood beside her, staring at the canvas.

  Maggie leaned forward, fascinated. She’d never painted blindly before, but if this was what she could do, she’d never look at a canvas while she painted again. The creatures she’d seen were dotted around a landscape as lush and living as the one she’d been introduced to. At the top corner was her cottage, the door open and the silhouette of someone in the doorway. It had a menacing feel that made her shudder. The painting as a whole was like a timeline of her journey here, and at the bottom it grew darker, blurry in patches. She and Kody were standing over a creature who knelt before them, and Maggie held the hag stone in one hand and a small stick between her fingers of the other hand. Kody stood with a sword raised, and there was no question where it was about to fall.

  Maggie pushed away from the canvas. “I don’t understand.”

  Mal didn’t turn from the painting. “Not yet. But you will.” She gestured toward the house. “Bedding is arranged. You should sleep. We’ll talk this over tomorrow.”

  Maggie stumbled toward the cottage and nearly wept with relief when the door opened and Kody’s arms wrapped around her. She felt empty, completely devoid of emotion and energy, and when Kody lifted her into her arms like she weighed nothing at all, she didn’t protest. Kody laid her on a bed, took off her shoes, and pulled a blanket over her. Blech jumped onto the bed and curled up against her leg, his paw resting on her knee.

  “Brenda?”

  “On a last-minute date with one of the local mound folk.” Kody brushed Maggie’s hair away from her eyes. “Get some sleep.”

  Maggie clutched at Kody’s hand. “Please don’t leave. I don’t want to be alone.”

  Kody seemed to hesitate and then pulled the covers back. “Scoot over.” She took off her boots and jacket and lay down beside Maggie after Blech grumbled and moved aside too. She raised her arm and Maggie moved closer, resting her head on Kody’s chest. When Kody’s arm came around her she closed her eyes and breathed in the peace and security. She was safe and Kody and Blech were with her. For now, that was enough.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Do you know what one of the hardest parts of being a witch is?”

  Maggie sipped her grass tea, which was growing on her in the absence of anything better, and considered the question. She’d woken alone but refreshed, and in the silence of the morning she’d taken time to simply be. She tried not to think about what was ahead but rather how she felt in that moment. Safe, understood, cared for, and determined were what she came up with, and once that was settled, she felt like she could face the rest of what the day might offer.

  When she came outside, Mal was sitting on the stool in front of the painting, so Maggie had sat on the grass beside her. “Being alone?”

  Mal scoffed. “Lordy, I wish. Folk have plenty to come a bangin’ on the door for. Their bairn’s toothache, their lovers’ quarrel, their crops goin’ sour. I’d have more peace if I were the village crier.” Her hands moved over the painting, about an inch away. “The hardest part is when you’re older than the standing stones but you still don’t have all the answers. It’s also the most exciting thing to happen to me since Dermaid McDonnel’s pectoral muscles.”

  Maggie didn’t want to think about anyone’s pectoral muscles at the moment, and certainly not in regard to someone with no eyes and older than ancient stones. And the fact that Mal said there was something she didn’t know wasn’t reassuring. This was the person they were supposed to turn to.

  “Stop frettin’. I didn’t say I couldn’t help, just that I didn’t know. There’s a difference.” Her hand hovered over the bottom of the painting. “And all will be well, Maggie McShay.”

  “Can you teach me about my powers? If I really have any.” As she’d fallen asleep last night, she’d had the horrible feeling that it wasn’t about her at all. It was about the tools at her disposal, like the hag stone and the paint mixed in a witch’s cottage made from special flowers. Sure, she came from a line of people who had powers and performed a specific job, but she hadn’t been raised here, among those people. What made her so special? Could be nothing. The thought made her ache.

  “I can teach you what to do. How you do it is all down to your own ken.” Mal’s hands dropped away from the painting. “Your journey is your own, spinner. No one can tell you exactly how to do it, just as no two witches do things the same way. We give each other guidance when we can, but you have to do your own growing.”

  That was the same sentiment Lacona had used in the park the day she’d sent him home. She was beginning to understand it more now, though the aspect of having to make her own way through things was daunting. “I don’t really understand everything that’s going on. I don’t understand what I’m supposed to do once I do know.” She felt the tears well in her eyes but didn’t bother to stop them. She was safe here. “And I have to admit that I’m afraid of what it means to have people depending on me this way.”

  Mal turned toward her and leaned forward with her hand out. She rested it on Maggie’s head like it was a benediction. “Fear is like being stubborn. It has its place, and it’s okay to acknowledge it as long as you don’t let it take over and keep you from moving forward. You’ve been afraid before and you’ve overcome. You’ll be afraid again, and you’ll do the same.” She stood. “Now, I want you to gather the items you’ve brought with you, the ones you don’t know what to do with, and meet me at the cliff edge.” She turned away and headed down the dirt path toward the cliff.

  Maggie went inside, rinsed out her cup, and went to her bag. She pulled out the handful of items and put on a sweatshirt. The wind coming off the water was chilly, even in the bright sunshine. What was it like in New York right now? Had everything finished blooming? Had summer arrived? It was an absurd thought, given that they’d hardly been away yet. But it felt like they’d been gone ages. Time could be a strange thing. What was she missing at home? Home. Shamus had said this was her home, and if she was going to stay here and battle villains and follow in the family business, then he was right. And although she loved the creatures, and the colors, and the strange drinks, it definitely didn’t feel like home just yet. But then, nowhere ever really had. Maybe she wasn’t destined to have one. After all, her kind were nomads, right? Didn’t that mean the desire to keep moving, to be rootless, was in her blood? Why did part of her still yearn for a place to call her own?

  She sighed and gathered the little mound of objects. These were thoughts for long walks along forest paths, not for a spare moment before meeting a witch on a cliff.

  Mal stood on the cliff’s edge, her back to Maggie. When Maggie stopped beside her, Mal held out her hand.

  “The hag stone.”

  Maggie placed it in her wrinkled hand, noting the way it felt wrong to let it go, but also knowing it was safe to do so. Mal closed her hand around it, turned it, stroked it, and ran her finger around the hole in the middle and over the little cross at the top of the hole. “Do you know what the cross means?”

  “No. I couldn’t understand why it would be marked with a religious symbol.”

  Mal shook her head and continued caressing the stone. “That’s because it’s not religious. It’s a side cross, the most ancient of crosses. It represents North, West, East, and South. On a hag stone, it helps focus whatever the viewer is looking at and can show you where they’ve gone once they’re no longer in sight.”

  Maggie groaned. “You mean we could have followed that dream maker thing after I lost him?”

  Mal handed the stone back. “You could have, but you would have been a fool to without knowing what you were doing.”

  Brenda walked up and flopped onto the ground beside Maggie. “Sorry I’m late. Don’t go giving me a tongin’, Mal. What a night. You wouldn
a’ believe what fun you can have with a tribe of Fir Bolg. My head aches a wee bit, though. We were steamin’ the whole night.”

  Maggie stared down at her, trying to make sense of what she was saying. In context, she thought she had a fair idea. She turned to Mal when she sighed loudly, glad that Brenda’s monologue had been interrupted. She had enough to think about without having to learn a new language, too.

  “Quit yer yammerin’, ya wee nuisance. You’re here in time to do what I need you to do.” Mal lifted Maggie’s hand with the hag stone in it. “Look at Brenda through the stone.”

  Maggie did as she was told, even though it felt a little intrusive. What she saw would have made her drop the rock, if she hadn’t already seen things even more unusual. Brenda was even smaller than she appeared in real life, and her skin had a pale green sheen. Her eyes were red, and her hands and feet were more claw-like than human. Maggie moved the hag stone away, and Brenda was herself again. Or, rather, not herself. “Why don’t you look like you really look, since we’re here? Why the pretense?”

  Brenda got to her feet and brushed grass from her leaf skirt. “I’ve come to like the way I look in your world. It feels like an exotic skin I can parade around in. Sexy. But when I went to the Fir Bolg last night, I looked the way you see me through the stone. I think I’d be too much to handle if they saw me like this.” She moved her hands over her chest and winked.

  A smack to the back of her head helped dissipate the rising panic attack Maggie had felt coming on. “Ow. Again.”

  “Focus. It’s nothing to get flummoxed over.” She pointed her finger at Brenda. “She’s going to walk away, and I want you to focus on her through the hag stone, while thinking of all four of those markers on the cross. Picture them as four connected points, with the wee one in the middle of them. Then bring those four points together like a net around her and tie them off. That’s how you contain the person you’re looking at.”

  Brenda strolled away, stopping here and there to pluck a flower as Maggie concentrated on her. She took it slowly, picturing the four points on a compass in a kind of three-dimensional way, then closed them around Brenda the way Mal had told her to. When Brenda held up a claw and cut through one of the lines, the others blew into smoke and she grinned.

  “Again. You have to believe in your magic, not just create it. Believe that it will work, and it will. Doubt, and you’ll fail.”

  It felt like an eternity before Maggie got the lines to hold no matter what Brenda did, and eventually she was able to pull them tight enough that Brenda’s arms were kept to her sides. It was then that she felt something else; Brenda’s emotions flew up the golden strands and into Maggie’s chest. Though she could feel that Brenda was proud of her, she could also taste Brenda’s fear like a bitter pill on her tongue and she quickly let go of the strands, setting Brenda free.

  “Good. Faster than I thought you’d be. Now, Brenda, you’re free to go back to your Fir Bolg. Tell Tantia I said hello and to come over for some yak stew soon.”

  Brenda’s relief was palpable. “I will.” She ran over and hugged Maggie’s thighs, her face uncomfortably close to Maggie’s crotch. “Well done. I’m going to get drunk now and try to forget what it feels like to get caught in a spinner’s net.” She let go and ran off into the forest.

  “Now, hold up the stone and think of her. Think of the way her emotions felt, and draw the four points together again. Ask for a direction.”

  That was far easier, and when one of the golden strands turned green, showing the way Brenda had gone into the forest, she nearly shouted in excitement. “Does that mean I have to keep this up to my eye the whole time I’m following someone?”

  “Aye. And a good reason to keep them in the net rather than looking the fool walking around peeping through a stone.” Mal stabbed her walking stick into the earth and turned toward the cottage. “Time to eat.”

  Maggie saw that food had been laid out on a blanket and she was suddenly ravenous. Kody grinned up at her from the blanket and handed her a sandwich, which she began eating before she even settled onto the blanket next to her. Mal lowered herself onto a stool and picked up a bowl of something.

  “I seem to remember that it’s hungry work. Jess used to eat like a snagtruffle when we were working.” Kody was eating something that looked like a green carrot.

  For some reason, being reminded of Kody’s old partner made Maggie uncomfortable, but she pushed the thought away and ate until she didn’t feel like she could take another bite. Mal was eating some kind of soup, and Maggie was grateful she’d had something more substantial. Especially if it was yak stew, which didn’t sound at all appetizing.

  “Show me the other things you brought out.” Mal continued eating but stopped to point at the pile with her spoon.

  Maggie wondered how she could possibly know where everything was when she couldn’t see, but she obliged. She held up the key. “My parents, or someone, left this in a drawer at their house.”

  Mal took it with one hand and ran her fingers over it before handing it back. “What else?”

  Maggie held up the jar of marbles she and Kody had found in the dream seller’s office. “We have no idea what these are. They look like ordinary marbles, but I don’t think that’s what they are.”

  Mal held out her bowl and Maggie took it from her. She unscrewed the top of the jar and stuck her hand in, pushing it deep into the marbles before taking it out again and wiping it on her skirt like she was trying to wipe off dirt. “Dark magic. Old magic.” She screwed the lid back on and set it beside her stool. Maggie handed her the bowl back but Mal held it in her lap, apparently no longer hungry.

  “I need time to think and I need to talk to the spirits. You and your shepherd should go down to the beach. It’s beautiful this time of day.” She got up and hobbled away, muttering things under her breath that Maggie couldn’t make out.

  Kody was watching Mal leave, and her expression was serious. “I haven’t seen Mal out of sorts since…well, maybe ever.” She stood and gave Maggie a helping hand up. “But all we can do is wait and see what she says. Witches really shouldn’t be rushed. So, let’s head down to the beach.”

  Maggie nodded but didn’t say anything. She needed to process everything she’d learned today, and she wanted to understand how she felt about it all. To do that, she needed quiet time to think. Being by the water would be perfect for that, if Kody didn’t mind her being a crap conversationalist. They started to walk and she was struck by a thought.

  “How, exactly, do we get down there?” The cliff side had looked like a sheer drop.

  “Don’t you know your fairy tales yet?” Kody grinned. “There’s always a secret path.”

  * * *

  Beneath a lackluster gray sky, the waves crashed onto the shore of the protected cove. Birds of various hues and sizes played over the water, rising and falling, skimming and soaring. What Maggie wouldn’t give to be one of them. Free and dependent only on her wings. She’d been thinking for a long while, and though Kody sometimes sat beside her, and sometimes got up and walked the waterline, she left Maggie to her thoughts.

  When the sun was going down and the air was growing heavy with the promise of rain, Kody flopped down into the sand beside her.

  “Ready to talk? It’s okay if you’re not, but we should head inside before the rain comes. The path will grow slick.”

  “How is it that you seem to know when I need time to think without me saying so?” Maggie’s thoughts had drifted to Kody more than once as she pondered her situation, and when Kody was skimming rocks into the surf she’d most definitely noticed the strength and power of her. Sleeping in Kody’s arms last night had felt so wonderfully right, and she couldn’t remember ever sleeping so well, especially next to another woman. Thinking of Kody’s body pressed against her had, in turn, made her force her thoughts back to more pressing things than her libido.

  “I don’t know. I just feel you. That’s the way it’s always been between a sheph
erd and their spinner. There’s a connection. When you’re ready, you’ll feel it too.”

  Would she ever be ready? She put that information away for later. “Well, thank you. I’ve always needed time to process things before I talk about them.” She cupped a palm full of sand and let it slide back out. “I think I understand what I’ve seen. And seeing Brenda through the hag stone was interesting. Learning how to use it was exciting, and I was wondering if my parents might have used the same one, since they sent it to me.”

  Kody nodded. “Most likely. Those types of things tend to get passed down, unless a family is lucky enough to have several spinners working at the same time.”

  It was the answer Maggie wanted to hear. She had a little piece of her parents’ magic with her, and that felt special. Like they were with her, helping her, even if they weren’t around physically. “Do you know what other powers they had? Like the painting I did—did either of my parents do that?”

  “Not that I’m aware of. Your mum was creative, though. She liked to paint and craft things when they had some down time. Your dad liked to build things, and he was good with his hands. He built your crib.” Kody’s expression was far away, her smile sad. “But their powers I can’t tell you about. A spinner tends to keep pretty quiet about their particular power so anyone they might have to use it on isn’t prepared for it. I wasn’t your parents’ shepherd, so although I knew them, I didn’t work with them.”

  Maggie took that in. “Thank you for telling me. Can I ask why you didn’t say anything earlier? Like, at their house?”

  Kody was silent for a long moment before she looked up at the sky and answered. “The longer you’re part of this land, the more in tune with it you become. Shepherds are known for being particularly empathic. We feel other people’s emotions deeply. It’s a gift and a curse. It means that when we have to dish out justice we have to feel the other person’s emotions in that instant, and we have to be damn sure what we’re doing is right.” She took a deep breath and released it, almost meditatively. “You and I are connected, and I trust my intuition about what to tell you and when. You might not always like it, and we’ll probably clash heads over it now and then, but I think with time you’ll learn to trust it too.” She finally looked away from the sky and at Maggie. “I knew this was the right time to tell you.”