Crescent Prophecy

by Nicole R. Taylor

  Lucy smiled and began straightening the stand of wind chimes. “Good for you.”

  Rounding the counter, I searched for my tarot cards. Yeah, it was good for me. Boone and I were back to a good place, he’d voiced his fears, and I had mine, and now we could work through them. All while protecting the village from the threat of craglorn attacks. Then there was the prophecy to worry about.

  I rolled my eyes and began shuffling the cards.

  “Hey, Lucy?” I asked. “Do you believe in prophecies?” If anyone knew about the truth of these things, maybe it was her. She was the Irish version of Lara Croft, Tomb Raider with her archaeology and mythological studies skills.

  “Prophecies?” She raised her eyebrows, then scrunched up her face in thought. “I don’t think I do. They’re kind of like your tarot cards, I suppose.”

  “Like a suggestion?” I considered that idea and shook my head. “Have any ever come true? I mean, in history?”

  “They feature in myths and legends in lots of cultures,” she went on. “But none have been proven. Not for certain, anyway. The problem is, words can be twisted to the point people see and hear what they want to believe. There was a story in the news a while ago about a blind old woman in Romania who supposedly predicted nine eleven in America and other disasters, though it was after the fact when it came out in the mainstream media. All her predictions since haven’t born any fruit, or so the sayin’ goes. Honestly, it’s hard to say. There has to be an element of belief.”

  “So you have to believe in a prophecy to give it any merit?”

  “Who knows.” She laughed and shrugged. “What brought this on?”

  “Oh, nothing,” I said, turning back to the tarot cards. “Just a little early morning existential crisis.”

  Shuffling the deck, I pulled a card from the middle and set it down on the counter. Please, not the Three of Swords, please, not the Three of Swords…

  Turning the card over, I swore.

  Chapter 11

  “Are you ready?”

  “Do we have to?” I glanced at Boone and screwed up my nose.

  “Aye, we’ll have to show our faces eventually.” He nodded at Molly McCreedy’s, which we were standing outside of. “Once they see us together again, the battle lines will be erased, and things will go back to the way they were.”

  “I’m not sure that’s any better.” I looked at Fergus’s donkey, which was hitched to a post with her nose in a feed bag. “What do you think?”

  Boone placed his palm on her rump and smirked. “She thinks her oats are really good.”

  I snorted and rolled my eyes. “A true Irish donkey.”

  He grasped my hand and tugged me forward. Opening the door, he had to practically drag me inside. I knew how things worked around here. First in first out and all of that. Right after Aileen’s funeral, Boone had told me I’d always be welcome here. I was part of the McKinney clan—McKinney was Aileen’s maiden name—and apparently, it was like some kind of birthright. I doubted it meant much around here after Boone and my public fight over Alex even if I was magically linked to the land.

  I squirmed as I felt a dozen or more pairs of eyes focus on us. Waiting for the various opinions to begin hurling through the air, I tensed, ready to deflect the word bullets.

  “Did she cast a spell on you?” Sean called out across the bar.

  “Shut it, Sean,” I exclaimed.

  “Leave him to me,” Boone said, dropping my hand and going to sit by the farmer.

  I watched as he patted Sean on the shoulder and began talking earnestly to him. Glancing around the pub, I scurried toward the bar, looking for Maggie.

  She was behind the taps, pulling a pint of beer, and she raised an eyebrow as I slid onto a stool.

  “You and Boone are back on?” she asked, nodding toward the men at the other end of the mahogany slab.

  “Yeah. It was a big misunderstanding.”

  “What happened to that Australian twat?” She gave me the evil eye.

  “He twatted back to where he came from,” I said irritably. “Don’t be angry with me. He was the one who caused the trouble. Boone knows it, I know it. We’re good. Are you and I? Because it wasn’t really anyone’s business other than ours.”

  “I told you, Skye, Derrydun looks out for its own.”

  “And what am I? Haven’t I earned enough stripes or whatever yet?”

  “None of it was Skye’s fault,” Boone said, sidling up next to me.

  “You believe her?” Sean grumbled.

  Boone glanced at me. “She said no, and he kept pressurin’ her. I kept showin’ up at the wrong moments. He was a crafty mac soith.”

  “I hope you gave him another thrashin’,” Maggie quipped.

  “What’s the score on the scoreboard,” I declared. “Do I register yet?”

  “Calm down, Skye,” Maggie said. “You’re a Derrydun-erian.”

  “Good.” I pouted.

  The noise in the pub began to creep back up, and the ears of the rumor mill turned to other juicy topics.

  “See?” Boone said. “I told you it would be all right.”

  “I still think she’s a witch,” Sean declared, earning him a sharp clip around the ear from Maggie. “Ow!”

  “What’s your problem, Sean McKinnon!” she screeched.

  “Should I worry about that?” I asked Boone.

  “Nay. He’s just stirrin’ the pot because he knows you bite.”

  “Good, I was worried I might have to turn him into a toad to teach him a lesson.”

  He laughed and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “I see Mark Ashlyn over there. I just want to have a word, and then I’ll be back. Think you can hold onto your magic until then?”

  “It’ll be a struggle, but I think I’ll manage.” I made a face and waved him off.

  The moment I was free, I sensed someone creeping up in my blind spot. Turning, I saw it was Roy.

  “Skye,” he said, sitting beside me. “Mary wants to know if you like lavender.”

  “Lavender?” I made a face. Why was Roy asking me about smelly flowers?

  “They flower in summer she says. Her reasonin’ is you and Boone will have a bit more time together to solidify your relationship. Spring is too soon. Her words, not mine.”

  My mouth fell open. They were still planning our supposed wedding!

  “So?” he asked. “Do you like lavender?”

  After the standoff in Molly McCreedy’s, things seemed to get back to normal. At least, as normal as things usually were in Derrydun.

  Autumn was in full swing. Leaves were changing color, rain was falling more often than not, the fog was rolling in most mornings, and among all of it, Boone had practically moved into the cottage. He kept me warm in bed and cooked me breakfast every morning.

  Lucy was doing well at Irish Moon, but I wasn’t ready to give her the reins solo yet. She wasn’t Mairead, but she was fun to hang around, which made the workday go a hell of a lot faster. Speaking of the Goth girl, I hadn’t heard from her since she went off to Trinity College. I took it as a good sign and hoped the talisman I’d given her had protected her delicate parts from STDs.

  We’d also been on the lookout for any wayward craglorns and other assorted magical tricksters that might’ve sensed the magical flare I’d sent up when I’d attacked Fae-Alex, but nothing had stirred. It seemed we’d gotten lucky, but it was a notion I wasn’t too keen to rely on.

  I considered Derrydun to be at DEFCON three. Ready for decisive action at the slightest provocation.

  We were at Molly McCreedy’s enjoying the latest addition to the menu, a side of colcannon with our lamb chops.

  “Have you had it before?” Boone asked, watching me poke my fork at it.

  “No.”

  “It’s just potato, cabbage, and kale.”

  “Cabbage?” I pinched my nose. “You can’t stay over tonight unless your farts smell like roses.”

  He laughed and shoveled some into his mouth like a pig. />
  “I’m serious, you know.”

  “People used to leave out bowls of colcannon for the fairies and goblins,” he said once he’d swallowed.

  “If you’d told me that me a couple of months ago, I would’ve laughed at you,” I said. “But now, I totally believe it.”

  “They used to put trinkets inside for people to find, too.”

  “Like what?”

  “Coins, mostly. Sometimes rings and other things, but that was a long time ago.” He waved his fork. “Whatever you found would be like a lucky charm for the year to come. A coin for wealth, a ring for marriage, and so on.”

  “Oh, like a plum pudding at Christmas,” I exclaimed. “When I was little, and my grandma was still with us, she used to bake five-cent pieces in them. Well, until Dad almost choked on one. And now that I think of it, that sounds kind of gross. Can you get poisoned from cooking coins into pudding?”

  Boone laughed and shrugged. “You’re still alive, so I guess not.”

  “Does Derrydun have a big Christmas?” I asked, thinking about the holiday. It was the first week of September, which meant it was about three months until the big day.

  “Last year, there was a dinner here at the pub,” Boone replied. “Aileen cooked up a storm.”

  “Did she?”

  Thinking about my mother, I frowned. I’d recently come to terms with her leaving me as a child, after all the Crescent Witch calling nonsense, but never knowing her really bothered me sometimes. Then there was Boone and the relationship he’d had with her. He’d lived at the cottage for something like three years before I came along. Now he lived somewhere outside of the village in some shack or tent or something.

  “Boone?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Why haven’t I seen your place yet?”

  He set down his plate that I was certain he was about to lick and shrugged.

  “If you want to come over, then you can come over,” he said nonchalantly. “It’s not as nice as your cottage, though.”

  “I’d still like to see it.”

  “Then, let’s go see it.” He smiled.

  Relieved there was no big secret, I waited while he returned our dirty plates to the kitchen. Donning my coat, I went outside and patted Fergus’s donkey, scratching her ears until Boone appeared.

  We walked through the night hand in hand, our silence easy as we approached Boone’s little cottage. It was a one-story whitewashed number with a modern tiled roof with an awkward television aerial stuck on top. There were a few pots out the front where he was growing some herbs and a couple of flowers, though the rest of the garden was grass. The whole scene was bordered by a stone drywall just like the one that surrounded the fields up on the hill.

  Boone unlocked the door and let me inside, turning on the lights as I went. Immediately, I was hit with a smell that was strange yet oddly alluring. In a completely weird and sick way because it stunk.

  “What’s that smell?” I asked, curling up my nose.

  “What smell?”

  “You’ve got a super animal nose, and you can’t smell that?”

  “I assume you’re talkin’ about me natural musk,” he said with a chuckle. “I can’t smell me own smell.”

  “Is that what you call it?” I made a face and stepped further inside. “Natural musk?”

  “Boone Number Five?” he quipped, making a joke.

  “More like Ode de Boy Stink.”

  The cottage was definitely a man cave. His love for black and red check shirts had translated to his decor choice. A brown leather couch sat in front of an open fireplace, a small flat-screen television was jammed up against the wall to the side, a matching coffee table was littered with old books, papers, and several dirty coffee cups. On the other side of the hall, I caught sight of the kitchen, which was fairly clean and sparse considering he was such a great cook. I wondered if Aileen had taught him or if it was one of those ingrained skills that had followed him from his past.

  There were two more rooms I could see at the back of the little cottage, which I assumed were his bedroom and a bathroom. It was tiny, and there wasn’t much to see, but it seemed to suit Boone perfectly.

  He led me into the little living room, and I sat on the couch, shucking off my leather jacket. I watched as he lit the fire, throwing on some kindling and blowing on the little flame until it caught. Then he added some logs, arranging them in a carefully considered pile. I couldn’t light a fire to save myself, so I would never be an arsonist, though I wondered if I could get around my lack of skill with magic.

  At the thought of magic, my train of thought lost their brakes and went on a joyride across the network.

  “Are you worried about somethin’?” Boone asked, sitting beside me on the couch. “You’ve got that look on your face.”

  “A lot of things worry me,” I said. “Hang on. What look?”

  “You screw up your nose, and you get that furrow between your brows.” He placed his finger between my eyes.

  “Do not.”

  He smiled. “Tell me about it.”

  Where did I begin?

  “Can I light a fire with my magic?” I began, spitting out whatever came to mind. “Where are the other witches? We’re so alone out here with no way to connect to the outside world. I’m meant to save people I’ve never met. The enemy is all around, and we can’t see them until they show up on the front porch. They can sure as hell see us, so why can’t we go and find them? We should be able to go on the offensive, too. I’m not good at waiting. I don’t like it.”

  “That’s a lot of things to worry about.”

  I shrugged.

  “Boone?”

  “Hmm?”

  “We haven’t really talked about what you told me…”

  “About?”

  “Your past…”

  “Ah.” He pulled me into his lap.

  Nestling against his chest, I ran my fingertips along his jaw, delighting in the scratch of his stubble.

  “I try not to dwell on it too much,” he went on. “Whoever took me memories must have done a very good job. I try to avoid the headaches.”

  “The wolf that attacked me, you thought he was there for you?”

  “Aye,” he whispered. “It was wolves who were chasin’ me. It’s been years since that night… I thought they may have been becomin’ impatient.”

  “You never crossed the boundary in all that time?”

  “Only twice,” he said, furrowing his brow.

  I knew one of the times had been with me when we went to Croagh Patrick to charge the athame. The other had been when Aileen died protecting him from Hannah, the spriggan. At the thought of my mother, my heart felt heavy.

  “Was there a reason you were worried?” I murmured. “I mean, to be with me?”

  “I…” He swallowed hard, and I watched his Adam’s apple bob up and down. “I worry sometimes. About who I was before.”

  “Me too,” I admitted.

  “You have?”

  “And I told you it doesn’t matter. Not to me.” I placed my hand on his chest and felt his heartbeat, using a tiny trickle of magic to sense the thrum out. “You want to know what I think?”

  “Desperately.”

  I smiled and continued, “They say people never change, at least, not at their core. So whoever you were before, if you were good or bad, you both shared the same heart. You must’ve been loyal, fierce, strong, and a total smart cookie.”

  “Trust you to make this about food.”

  “I do like cookies.” I laughed and nuzzled closer, jamming my forehead against his neck.

  “Skye… There’s somethin’ I never told you about that night.”

  “What night?”

  “The night Hannah lured me outside the boundary.”

  I tensed and pulled away slightly. “There’s something worse than being lured by the higher fae that killed Aileen?”

  He lowered his gaze, and his teeth tugged on his bottom lip.

  �
��Boone.”

  “She told me somethin’…”

  “About?” I was starting to lose my temper. Trying to get Boone to admit to something was like trying to get blood out of a stone.

  “Hannah…” He almost clammed up again but went on. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about that night. When she revealed her true self to me, I recognized her form, though I hadn’t seen anythin’ like her before that night. She seemed to know me. Then…”

  “Then?”

  “She said Carman wanted me.”

  I froze, a million and one scenarios exploding in my mind, none of which I wanted to acknowledge.

  “Skye… What if I was one of them?”

  He’d told me Hannah wanted to give him to Carman before, so it wasn’t news, but to think she wanted him because he was in league with her? I couldn’t believe it.

  “It could mean anything,” I argued. “It doesn’t mean you were…” I couldn’t even say it. “You could’ve attacked her, or you could’ve been a spy, or—”

  “Skye,” he said, interrupting me. “It’s nice of you to think so, but there’s no way to know.”

  “What if we found a way to unlock your memories? Then you would.”

  “Aileen already tried,” he said somberly.

  “And what did she say?”

  “That me mind had been locked by a powerful spell, and the only way it could be undone was by the person who had the key.” He glanced at me, the worry clear in his eyes. He thought Carman was the witch who took his memory.

  “Are you happy?” I asked. “With who you are now? Are you happy?”

  He frowned. “I have to be.”

  “You don’t have to do anything,” I countered. “If it bothers you that much, we can go find whoever messed with your past.”

  “Skye…”

  “If it’s her, then two birds with one stone.” I shrugged, knowing what I was proposing was foolish, but if it helped Boone, then I would do it.

  “Nay, I’m happy,” he said. “It bothers me sometimes, but I’m safe here in Derrydun, and I have you. If unlockin’ me memories means forcin’ you to face your destiny before you’re ready, then I don’t want to know.”