by Debora Geary
Lauren hadn’t known either.
“We Irish find it a wee bit easier to believe in things unseen.” Moira’s smile included the whole room. “Or perhaps it’s something those of us standing with one foot inside the grave see a little more clearly.”
Jamie almost managed a grin. “Pretend I’ve used some of those bad words that would earn me a seat in front of your cauldron with a scrub brush.”
That tugged smiles from his wife and his niece, too. But it had unlocked something more powerful in Nat Sullivan.
Once again, the room waited.
Nat breathed. Then she turned to their small, ferocious healer, tears running down her cheeks. And when she finally spoke again, it wasn’t to a child. “Will it be safe for Kenna?”
Lauren felt Sophie and Moira’s brains stutter. And finally realized what it was about this whole crazy thing that was making her nuts. Nat had found the question on which everything else hung—and nobody knew the answer.
She could feel the horrible uncertainty in Sophie and Moira’s minds. And their terrible, unified choice to allow an eleven-year-old girl to do what she had to do to find the truth.
Lauren’s heart nearly caved. She reached out to Moira, trying to keep herself under control. Is this really necessary?
We don’t know. The old witch’s words were steady—and grim. But she carries more talent than anyone we’ve ever trained. She will be asked to make countless difficult choices in her life. The only person who can answer this question is Ginia. And the only way she’ll manage it is if she’s looking at Nat when she does it.
Training the heart and mind of a healer, not just her hands. And it was killing them to do it.
Nat lifted Ginia’s hands, infinitely gentle. “I want you to look again. Really carefully. And if you can’t figure out the answer, I want you to tell me that, too.”
Young blue eyes met older ones. And took a deep breath. “Okay.”
-o0o-
Oh, they had such chutzpah. Such entirely human nerve, throwing their magic at the fates.
The orb could hear the forces rumbling. Highly displeased.
It knew the odds. It knew how much a ripple in one corner of the universe could mess with the entire fabric of being. The healer child and the mother who knew how to breathe had their hands on a little frayed end of a tiny, insignificant string.
And the idea that they might tug on it was giving the forces indigestion.
It distressed the orb. Humans were so deeply fragile—their bodies, and the souls inside them. Motes of dust, taking aim at a hurricane.
It knew how those things ended. And still, the orb felt the strangest of sensations.
It wanted to cheer their courage.
Or at the very least, to stand witness.
-o0o-
She was no use.
Moira watched Sophie’s steady hands reaching for Ginia’s, leading their young student into trance the way they’d done so many times.
And felt utterly futile.
They looked for an angle on a miracle now. A way to undo a single and very final act of magic built from love and Nat’s immense connection with her own energy and her daughter’s power.
A way that would hold safe a small girl suddenly cut off from her mother’s life force.
And protect the small and mighty healer seeking to do the work.
Moira had never wished more for unfathomable power. And opted, instead, for what she did have.
Love. Great, vast oceans of it.
Slowly, with the intention and discipline and implacability of seventy years of practice, she lined them up in her heart. Kenna’s winsome, imperious smile. Nat’s bright serenity. Ginia’s dancing, fierce bravery and Jamie’s vulnerable, stoic soul. Tightly, she wrapped them in an old witch’s heart.
And then, as Ginia’s hands started to move, she turned them all toward a small, laughing boy and his ball of snow.
And knit.
One red stitch at a time.
-o0o-
When Ginia came out of trance this time, it jarred them all. Lauren shuddered as minds all over the room protested. Too fast. Too easy.
She’s conserving energy. Nell’s eyes never left her daughter.
The shuddering in the room was palpable. The stakes were so very high. If Nat chose no, there would be no more babies—the healers’ terrible certainty left no room for doubt.
And the person manning the drawbridge was eleven years old.
Ginia laid a gentle hand on Nat’s flat belly. “I know how to do it.”
Two hands settled over her niece’s smaller ones. The aunt who loved her, holding them together. Anchoring them both in her heart and her love and her breath, even now.
The young healer’s eyes were totally steady. “You can ask me the other part now.”
God. Lauren had thought her heart didn’t have any pieces left to tear. She’d been wrong.
Nat nodded, slow and quiet and gentle. And asked her terrible, awful, all-important question again. “Do you think it will be safe for Kenna?”
One mind witch felt her insides congeal in terror. That was no question for a child. No question for anyone to have to bear. It was so much more real, said out loud in the universe like that.
Which was why Ginia, insanely wise and insanely brave, had asked for the words to be said again.
And only that, and the fact that it was Nat who had asked the terrible words, kept Lauren from throwing herself bodily in front of her gorgeous niece’s last vestiges of innocence.
That’s all that’s stopping any of us, sent Nell grimly.
But it wasn’t, and Lauren knew it. What stopped them all was love for a small boy who lived in their hearts, only a glimmer away from real.
Ginia wasn’t steady now. She sat, still as a statue, hands in Nat’s. And then her little body started to shake. Tremors, running up her arms. Breath moving in and out in jerky, strangled hitches. Tears rolling down stark white cheeks.
A hand stopped Lauren as she sprang into action.
No. We will cry with her later. Sophie’s voice was clipped, her eyes glued to her young student. Right now, I need to know if she’s going to get to the right choice.
Lauren froze, fury lashing. What the hell is the “right” choice?
Sophie let the blow lash her heart. The one where she’s being entirely honest with herself. You need to look. Please.
No mind witches getting off the hook today either. Lauren pulled together what little jelly she had left for a spine and sank deeper into Ginia’s brave, traumatized head. A child hurting wildly, an emotional volcano just a hairsbreadth from exploding. Love for Auntie Nat, a desperate need to use her power for good, and a heart that loved a cousin she’d never met.
And slowly, one fingernail at a time, a disciplined young witch pulling that child back from the brink.
It was a thing of terrible beauty. One that spoke of years of training and a lifetime nested in the beating heart of a family who did love, failure, and responsibility to the highest possible standards.
A healer who had found her answer.
Ginia lifted her head, face chalk white, and looked Nat straight in the eye. “We can do it. But I can’t promise we can keep Kenna safe.” She looked down at her hands. “I think I can. But I don’t know for sure.”
It was honest. And heartbreaking.
And Lauren would never forget the pride shining in the eyes of the two healers and the fierce warrior mama sitting behind her.
One eleven-year-old girl had done her job.
Now it was time for the two who held the dream most tightly to do theirs.
It only took a moment. Nat turned to look at Jamie, one long, deeply intimate moment in which nothing was said—and everything was. And then she reached for the cheeks of the child who had given so very much, her voice the barest whisper. “Thank you for telling me that my school bus is too small.”
Lauren had no idea what that meant. She knew only that it was deeply impor
tant to the two hugging each other in the middle of the living room floor.
The two who were both about to break.
Chapter 19
Moira wrapped her thick wool cloak tightly around her shoulders, knowing that the winter winds would grow icy as the sun dipped down out of sight.
And went to collect the small, forlorn being sitting outside on her garden bench. Weeping, if the shaking shoulders were any indication.
Poor Ginia had no idea how very many hearts were breaking along with hers.
Moira walked slowly, giving the child time to hear her. “Hello, sweet girl. I’ve brought you a blanket.”
The face that tipped up toward hers was utterly distraught. “She couldn’t trust me. I wasn’t sure enough. Maybe I didn’t look carefully enough, or see all the possibilities. Or maybe—”
“Stop.” A good healer knew when to move swiftly. Moira nestled the blanket around sagging shoulders and reached for the ugly weed right at the roots. “You asked, Ginia Walker, to be treated as a healer, not as a child.”
Her girl’s whole body shook as the words hit. “Nat wanted this more than she wants anything. I killed her dream.”
Moira firmed her words even more. “That’s utter foolishness. You know better than that.” Oh, such harsh medicine for a little one. And so very necessary. Grief was healthy and healing, but guilt for this day would not come to rest in an eleven-year-old girl. Not while there was still breath in an old witch’s body. “What is the first rule of healing—the very first thing I taught you?”
The oft-repeated words came automatically. “To do all that we can, and to rejoice when it is enough.”
Moira gathered the young girl’s hands in her own and offered up all the gentleness she had. “Aye. You did your very best today, sweetling. We all did. And on this day, it wasn’t enough.”
Ginia’s face shattered. And buried in soft blonde curls, an old witch’s did too.
-o0o-
She was so still.
Jamie looked down at his wife, still held in the grip of a sleep spell she’d asked for, and wished, with everything he was, that he could change the world by the time she woke up.
Sophie smiled wanly from the corner of the room and offered a glass full of something pretty and pale orange. “Here, drink this. You’ll need it.”
Jamie took it, pretty sure there was nothing in a glass that could touch what had fractured inside him.
“You’ll be drinking all that or I’ll find green things to add to it,” said Moira, sweeping into the room with brisk words and eyes full of terrible kindness.
She had gone after Ginia. He roused himself from the ooze of self-pity long enough to ask after his niece. “How is she?”
“Battered, as we all are.” Moira’s mask of competence slid for a moment. “She second-guesses her skills and her choices. I did what I could.”
“It was our choice.” The words flew out of his mouth with absolute certainty, driven by a need to protect. To honor.
“Yes.” Green eyes met his. “But it was hers to say that she might not be able to keep Kenna safe.”
He set the glass down before he dropped it, shuddering at the part he’d played in putting his niece through that kind of hell. “She’ll need—” Never mind. There were many, far wiser than him, who would keep Ginia under careful watch. “If she needs me.”
“She will.” Sophie watched the sleeping woman on the bed. She picked up the glass and held it out again. “But she won’t be the first.”
He recoiled, afraid it would bring him back from the parallel world where things were gray and muted and the air fed some other kind of life forms. The planet where things didn’t hurt quite so much.
Warm hands settled on his forehead and the back of his neck. “Breathe,” said Sophie quietly. “And drink what’s in that glass. Now. She’ll need you soon.”
He drank. For Nat, he would do anything. “I hope I never lose a child. Losing an imaginary one is killing me.”
“Don’t make me repeat myself.” An old witch stepped away from the wall, eyes fierce. “He matters, Jamie Sullivan, just as you and I do. Grieve his going. And rage a little, too.” Moira reached for his hands, fury and pain all over her face. “I intend to.”
He hugged her sturdy, endlessly compassionate shoulders. “Do a little raging for me, too.”
He couldn’t do that just yet. He had a wife to hold first.
-o0o-
It couldn’t be the end. And old woman hurled her fury into the night sky, as angry as she’d ever been at the fates and the universe and its strings.
She knew well how cruel magic could be. Had spent her life protecting and mending the hearts of those who wielded it, a human shield against forces more powerful than most could ever imagine. Magic had taken a five-year-old boy she loved and left his twin brother shattered and half dead. It had stolen her sister’s sanity, leaving only a shell and none of Birgit’s quiet joy in its wake. And it had sent a young woman away from everything she knew, off to a faraway land where history got scarce respect and witches even less.
But this—everything inside her had believed this time wasn’t one of magic’s cruelties.
And because she’d been wrong, two of the best people she knew were curled up in agony this night, trying to let go of a child written deep into the story of who they were.
Moira often stood under the night sky to remember humility. Tonight, she stood to face the truth. It was time to say farewell to the small boy with the exuberant smile. To let him go in her heart so she could help others take those terrible steps.
And she would not leave him with tears.
Breathing deeply of the bitter cold, she reached her hands up into the inky darkness, watching the North Star blinking far over her head. And took strength from a tradition not all that far from her own.
The story of a baby—sent to remind humankind to love.
The universe, most potent at its most vulnerable.
Moira drew strength from that shining star. And reached one tender Irish granny hug into the heavens.
May there always be sunshine on your face, sweet boy. We love you so.
-o0o-
She needed him now. Desperately.
Rising out of spell-induced sleep fast and hard, Nat flailed around for her husband and found him on the chair beside her bed, head tipped awkwardly on a pillow. Staring at absolutely nothing.
She froze, wanting to hold off the moment of breaking. For just a moment. Long enough to find a breath.
Jamie’s radar didn’t give her that long. He looked up from his gaze to nowhere, the bleakness in his eyes instantly replaced by concern. And then by something that might almost be fear.
It was gone by the time he reached her side, whatever he was feeling pushed down long enough to try to read her. For once, she kept her mind closed to his, not entirely sure he could bear it.
Don’t. We have to do this together. His hands were so very gentle in her hair. Soothing, just as he did when Kenna faced one of the small hurts of childhood.
This wasn’t small.
She broke away from his arms, needing space. Distance, and enough oxygen to find her balance. Her ribs hurt—there might never be enough oxygen again.
He sat down on the bed beside her, all the weight of the horrible truth shining in his eyes. There would be no little boy.
She wrapped her arms around her ribs. There would be no more children at all. No more awed joy when they discovered they’d made a life together. No more quickening of a soul in her belly. No more needy newborns, and never again would she hear her baby’s first laugh.
Her body curled in on itself, rocking in the anguished rhythm of bereaved mothers everywhere. She felt Jamie’s arms only dimly.
No sweet, gorgeous little boy to build a snowman with his sister. Nat’s heart found somewhere new to bleed. She’d grown up an only child, and it had been pure, lonely misery.
Stop. Jamie’s mind crashed into her litany of grief. Th
ere is—his entire body hitched. There’s a lot to be sad about. But Kenna will never be lonely unless she chooses it. Not ever.
He enveloped her in his arms now, the two of them trembling like bereft leaves. There’s a reason she’s still confused about the difference between a sister and a cousin.
In the Sullivan family, they were more or less the same thing. Nat’s eyes squeezed tighter shut.
Be sad for us, he sent, wrapping around her grief with everything he had. But don’t weep for our girl.
She felt that tiny candle cast its wavering light into her darkness. And with it, she was finally able to let her tears go. She sank into Jamie, one ball of hot, wild anguish.
And felt him meet her there.
She had no idea how long it took for them to stop. She only knew that when they finally did, she was still wrapped in her husband’s arms. Her heart still beat.
And they had one thing left to do.
Jamie’s eyes met hers, as sad as she’d ever seen them. He knew.
She needed to be the one to say the words. “It’s time to let him go. To say good-bye.” Something awful grabbed Nat’s throat. She wasn’t ready.
Her husband’s face wrenched. We’re never going to be ready.
Not ever. But they had chosen to embrace the world they had. The family they had. And to truly do that, they needed to let go of what they expected the future to be. She touched Jamie’s face. “Let me see him one more time. Please.”
His eyes glued to hers, just like they had the very first time. And then he took a breath, laced with enough courage for ten lifetimes, and pulled up the short movie reel engraved on both their hearts.
A small boy, with a smile that said there was nowhere better on earth than right where he was, arms wrapped around a snowball as big as himself. She pushed through her tears—she would not let this parting come only from sadness. He felt loved. He knew happiness. He touched joy.
She would remember that. She would remember him.
Jamie quietly tugged on his magic and bathed their boy in light. So much tenderness. Nat linked mental hands with her husband.
