The Sidhe Princess
Page 5
As she jerked her head away, the Maid tossed the half-dozen hairs into the glowing water. Moira watched them writhe and twist like tortured worms before they disappeared.
When the surface of the mirror grew calm, the Maid blew her own breath gently across the surface. The bright mirror instantly turned inky dark and foreboding. Pulse pounding loud in her ears, Moira waited for the water to clear and show her the scene she wanted so desperately to see.
An eternity seemed to pass before the pulsating light in the center of the bowl began to banish the cloudy gloom. Moira felt as if her lungs might burst when she realized she’d stopped breathing. As she sucked in a draught of air, the scene materialized.
The dark-haired child sat in the green clearing, playing with white chicken feathers. The Maid stood close to her, but the child paid her no heed. Next, Moira saw an older version of herself rush onto the scene. Her gaze darted from the child to the Maid and back again.
“There you are, luv.” Older Moira’s voice held a hint of trepidation and her eyes strayed back to the figure of the Maid, who appeared unchanged. “Come back into the yard. This place isn’t safe.”
Older Moira held her palm out, but before the little girl took it, the figure of the Maid spoke. “She can’t see or hear me, Tall Moira. My mirror didn’t lie.”
Moira watched the child grasp her older self’s hand. “Why not Mummy? There’s nothing here.”
“The fens are dangerous, luv.” Her older self spoke to the child, sounding eerily like Mum. But she looked directly at the watery figure in white as she added, “Whether you can see it or not.”
As the mother and child walked away, the Maid in the vision bent to pick up the forgotten feathers, and the scene dissolved into blackness.
Moira’s legs went rubbery with relief. She backed up until she felt the stones around the well behind her and she sank down.
“Are you satisfied now?” the living Maid demanded.
Numb with the enormity of her success, Moira managed a nod. The wand fell from her nerveless fingers and the Maid snatched it up in a flurry of swirling skirts and jangling beads.
“My little beauty,” she murmured, rubbing the smooth wood against her cheek, the light from the tip casting garish shadows across her face.
With her free hand, she pulled out the leather pouch and tossed it into Moira’s lap. “’Twill be a long while by your reckoning before you’ll need this. Don’t come crying to me if you lose it betwixt now and then.”
With trembling fingers, Moira shoved the pouch into her coat pocket, not letting go. “I’ll not lose it.”
Shakily, she rose to her feet. Her head throbbed and her body ached as if lead weights were attached, but her heart and mind rejoiced. Her child would never carry her terrible burden. She would never be taken by the sidhe princess.
The Maid stopped caressing her wand long enough to say, “I trust you can find your own way back.”
“I can.” The conviction in her tone seemed to strengthen Moira’s limbs. She strode across the clearing and ducked between the willow trees without looking back.
A small slice of moon shed minimal light and she had to pick her way carefully along the overgrown and uneven path. But each step brought her closer to home, and the air grew a wee bit sweeter. She had succeeded beyond her wildest hopes, and by the time she reached the edge of the fens, she felt giddy with triumph.
The only remaining pall was Mum.
Both the Maid and the druid said nothing could be done, but perhaps they were wrong. They didn’t have doctors in their realm, after all.
Rather than admitting defeat, Moira hurried as quickly as she dared through the darkness, her thoughts racing faster than her feet. Once she got inside the cottage, if Da was still awake -- and she felt certain he would be -- she’d convince him to take Mum to the village doctor the very next day. And if Dr. Leary couldn’t find anything wrong with her, she’d insist they take her to Queen’s Hospital in Belfast.
Somehow she would persuade them. She wouldn’t give up! She’d bested the sidhe princess once, and she could do it again.
Chapter 5
Oonagh O’Dwyyer, the Maid of Ulster and princess of the sidhe stroked her wand and watched the great lumbering girl lurch out of the clearing.
Humans were such fools, scarcely better than mindless beasts. The stench of the girl’s sweaty palm still clung to her beautiful wand, and the odor made Oonagh’s lip curl with disgust. But she kissed the smooth wood anyway in her happiness at once again holding her prized possession.
“You may think you have won, Tall Moira,” she muttered. “But you have not.”
To prove that no mere human could claim victory over a sidhe princess, she touched the still glowing tip of the wand to the surface of the mirror’s dark water. When the glare of light subsided, Oonagh blew a gentle sigh across the dish and the same scene reappeared. She hovered close in order to scrutinize the figures, taking in every small detail of the images of the child, the mother, herself.
The child was ordinary, she thought. Too much like the mother to be a beauty, and certainly not as valuable as the magical device she had poured so much time and effort into creating.
A movement by the woman caught the Maid’s attention. Her nose almost skimmed the water as her golden eyes narrowed to be sure of what they’d seen. Striding away from the sidhe princess in the vision, Tall Moira clutched her daughter’s dirty fingers with one hand, but her other briefly fluttered across her abdomen, fingers splayed over a slight bulge.
Oonagh threw back her head and laughed.
The leaves on the hawthorn stirred with the force of her laughter.
She laughed so hard that not only did the mirror wink out, but the dish jostled and water spattered onto her slippers.
Even then, she could scarcely control her mirth, clutching her sides as she danced around the cairn to drier ground.
“You stupid foolish girl!” she exclaimed, extinguishing her wand in what remained of the water. “You may have saved your daughter, but your son -- Ah! Your son shall be mine.”
THE END
Loucinda McGary (aka Aunty Cindy) has been a storyteller and writer all her life. In 2003 she left her day job to pursue her twin passions of travel and writing. She likes to set her stories in some of the fascinating places she has visited.
To date she has visited forty-seven states and thirty-two foreign countries.
She has published three romantic suspense novels with paranormal elements:
The Wild Sight (2008)
The Treasures of Venice (2009)
The Wild Irish Sea (2010)
All from Sourcebooks Casablanca.
The Sidhe Princess (2011) is her first novelette and non-romance.
To learn more about Loucinda and her books, please visit her website: www.LoucindaMcgary.com
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