Born In Water

by Sarah Hegger

  “There are tunnels from the caverns to the church?” Sinead straightened her shoulders. “How come I’ve never seen those?”

  Maeve shrugged and looked at Roderick. “I really cannot say.”

  “Blessed! I have already spoken. Wait there.” Roderick held his hand up to her, and Maeve snapped her mouth shut.

  “Big bossy person.” Sinead squared her shoulders. “If you speak to her like that again, you and I are going to have an issue.”

  “And you are?” His pale blue gaze stuck on Sinead with disconcerting intensity.

  Sinead didn’t flinch. “I’m Sinead, and that’s my sister Alannah.”

  Alannah nodded and held the teapot aloft. “Tea. I was just making a pot.”

  The man switched his gaze to Bronwyn. It made her feel stripped to her bra and thong.

  “Bronwyn.” She pushed to her feet, not liking how much sitting put her at a disadvantage. “Bronwyn Beaty, and I know how I got here, but you still haven’t answered my question as to how you got here.”

  “I am Roderick of Baile,” he said.

  Baile rumbled beneath their feet and Roderick smiled. In all the excitement, she hadn’t noticed until he smiled how good looking Roderick was. Tall as well, with a pair of shoulders that looked like he could take the world’s problems and tote them around for a bit.

  He wore breeches and a cream shirt that fastened at the neck with a leather tie. Long, full sleeves did nothing to disguise the muscle beneath. If Roderick suddenly turned nasty, he could do some damage.

  “The only Roderick I know of is the one who built Baile,” Bronwyn said. “The original owner.”

  “Nobody owns Baile.” Roderick chuckled. “But she did allow me to put stone and mortar together to create her.”

  Bronwyn sat down again. The blood drained to her feet, and she had to breathe deep. “I’m afraid that’s impossible.”

  “Blessed.” He smiled at her like she was a cute kid who made him laugh. “Nothing is impossible when magic is involved.”

  “Magic?” Niamh breathed the word on a sigh. “Is that how you’re here?”

  “Roderick.” Maeve jammed a hand on her hips. “I can see there is nothing dangerous about these women. They are cré-sisters.”

  Roderick hovered by her side as Maeve stepped into the kitchen. “I am beginning to think we have been gone for a long, long time.” Her gaze lingered on the dishwasher and the fridge. She skimmed Alannah and stared at her sleep pants. “A very long time.”

  “Perhaps.” Roderick looked at Bronwyn. “What is the year, Blessed?”

  She didn’t get the blessed business but at last a question she could answer. “Twenty twenty.”

  “What?” Roderick stilled.

  Maeve paled and leaned into him.

  His arm went around her immediately. “Did you say twenty twenty?”

  “Yes.” Maybe she could have broken that a bit gentler. “Two thousand and twenty.”

  Roderick gaped at her.

  Maeve stared at her and whispered, “I think I need a cup of tea.”

  “Tea!” Alannah beamed at Maeve. “That I can do.”

  Sinead nodded. “With lemon cake.”

  Bronwyn had to keep reminding herself not to stare. But there really wasn’t a behavioral precedent for having tea and some excellent lemon cake at a hair shy of dawn with a man and a woman who had been a statue for nearly four hundred years.

  Even thinking about all the impossibilities of the situation made her glad she was sitting down.

  “This is wonderful.” Maeve ate Alannah’s cake in three enormous bites. For a small woman, girlfriend could eat. “Cook makes, I mean used to—” Her face creased into an expression part pain and part confusion.

  “It may even be the same recipe.” Alannah smiled at her reassuringly. “There is an old recipe book that’s been in the kitchen since before my grandmother’s time.”

  Roderick side-eyed the cup of tea Alannah put in front of him. “Let us begin with who is king.”

  “No king. Not really a queen either.” Sinead was clearly a rip the Band-Aid off type of girl. “I mean the queen and the rest of the royals are still around, but they don’t rule or anything.”

  “Except for Meghan and Harry,” Alannah said. “And they’re not dead or anything, but they’re not really still around.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Roderick glared at her. “What else do they do but rule?”

  “They do charitable works, raise awareness of issues.” Alannah had the mixing bowl out and was working more baking magic. “They’re a great tourist attraction.”

  Roderick sat back in his chair and gaped at her. “And who rules the country?”

  “The people.” Bronwyn leaped into the gap. “For the people, by the people.”

  “Eh?” Roderick blinked at her. “Everybody dispenses law on everybody else? Has the world gone mad?”

  “Obviously not.” Sinead rolled her eyes. “The police dispense law.”

  “The civil administration dispenses the law? Now you are speaking foolishness.” Roderick snorted. “Woman, I think you do not understand how matters work.”

  “Are you being serious?” Sinead scowled at him. “And I know how things work a fuckuva lot better than you, mate.”

  Maeve gasped and choked on her tea.

  Roderick looked thunderous. “Watch your mouth, Blessed.”

  “You watch yours, fossil.” Sinead got to her feet, jammed her hands on her hips and stuck her chin out.

  “I see manners have been lost along with womanly decorum.” Roderick frowned at Sinead.

  “We also lost the sexist bullshit along the way.” Sinead snorted and stared him down. “You have a lot to learn, big guy. I’m gonna love teaching you every bit of it.”

  Maeve put a hand on Roderick’s arm. “Perhaps we should let them explain?”

  Breaking his glare-off with Sinead, Roderick grunted and nodded.

  Sinead glowered for a few more seconds and took her seat. She jabbed her fore and middle fingers at her eyes and then at Roderick. “Got my eye on you, big man.”

  Roderick raised a brow at her, and turned to the table. “You may begin.”

  Bronwyn settled in for a long conversation. And one that blossomed with every new piece of information revealed. It took an entire lemon cake to get to the spread of democracy. By which stage Maeve was looking shell-shocked.

  “I think that’s probably enough new information for now,” Bronwyn said. “The rest might be easier to cover on a need to know basis.”

  “Hmm.” Roderick hadn’t spoken since they’d broken it to him that women now voted. His hotness factor seriously dimmed with every sexist statement out his mouth. Bronwyn tried to cut him some slack, but Sinead looked like she had made it a personal mission to bring him into this century.

  Maeve folded her hands carefully on the table in front of her. Thus far, her biggest revelation had been the dishwasher and the fridge. She was beyond fascinated, and Bronwyn looked forward to introducing her to the washer and dryer and the vacuum. “May I ask you a question?”

  “Go ahead.” Alannah put a plate of chocolate muffins on the table.

  “The magic.” Maeve looked confused. “I cannot sense any magic.”

  Roderick looked at her. “Nothing?”

  “Very little.” She chewed on her lip, picking at the edge of the table with her fingernail. “There is always magic at Baile.”

  Bronwyn leaned closer to Maeve, along with the Cray cousins. It suddenly occurred to her that Maeve would have even more answers for them. “There are only a few of us left.”

  “Only you?” Sadness filled Maeve’s eyes. “Are there no more witches?”

  Roderick covered her hand on the table with his. Sexist and arrogant he might be, but his tenderness with Maeve went a long way to diluting that.

  “There’s Roz.” Niamh pulled a face. “But that’s it.”

  Bronwyn had almost forgotten about Roz. In a morning packed wi
th weird, Roz and the sofa perching would have to take a number. “The women in my family never lived very long.”

  Alexander’s revelations were still too painful for her to approach. He’d loaded their final interaction with so much information she needed time to sift through it.

  “Our mothers were sisters,” Mags said. “There were four of them, including Roz.”

  Sensing the same sadness that dogged her, Bronwyn asked, “What happened?”

  “They died in a car crash,” Niamh said. “Fifteen years ago.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Alannah touched her shoulder. “Our grandmother raised us, but she passed five years ago.”

  “What’s a car?” Roderick’s frown grew deeper and deeper.

  They’d get to that, but Bronwyn wanted to know how Roderick and Maeve had ended up as a statue. “Were you here when the village attacked the castle?”

  Maeve recoiled and gasped.

  Putting his arm around her, Roderick nodded. “Rhiannon had turned half the coven to her side. We did not see it coming.”

  “Rhiannon.” Niamh glanced at her. “That name keeps cropping up.”

  “Alexander said we need to do our research about her when he brought me here,” Bronwyn said.

  Roderick growled, a sound so menacing Bronwyn wanted to put more distance between them. “There is a reckoning to be had between that whoreson and me.”

  “What do you have against Alexander?” Mags chuckled. “He’s a good friend.”

  “Friend!” Roderick pounded the table with one huge fist. Cups rattled in saucers and a glass of water nearly went over. “You are a cré-witch. Alexander is not your friend.”

  “No.” Maeve shook her head vehemently. “No. Alexander is…evil.”

  Bronwyn was glad she hadn’t brought the prophecy thing up. The Alexander she had experienced had been confusing, enthralling, and thrilling, but not evil. She couldn’t think of him as evil, but Roderick looked adamant.

  “Evil?” Niamh gaped at them. “Maybe we’re not talking about the same person?”

  “Tall, handsome, dark hair, dark eyes?” Maeve looked hopeful.

  Mags sighed. “We’re definitely talking about the same person. He’s always been very nice to us.”

  “Indeed.” Roderick looked angrier than Bronwyn had ever seen another being look. He leaned his fists on the table and got in Mags’s face. “Like he was nice to the ninety women he murdered. Witches like yourselves. And the thirty good men who were my brothers in arms who died trying to protect those women.”

  Alexander had never said anything to her like that.

  Heavy silence blanketed the kitchen.

  “Okay.” Bronwyn cleared her throat. Her head spun, and her chest ached. She didn’t want what Roderick said to be true. It made no sense for her to have reacted to Alexander the way she did if what Roderick said was true. At the same time, there were enough commonalities between what Alexander and Roderick said for her to need to know more. She needed to put her heart aside and let her head take the lead. “I think there’s a lot we don’t know.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Maeve stood in her old bedchamber and felt like an interloper. There were things she remembered that hadn’t changed, but the connected room—bathroom the other witches had called it—was new.

  Her head throbbed with all the new she’d heard today, and she knew there was so much more to come. Outside her casement, the sea looked the same, but the village was easily three times larger than in her time.

  There were noises that broke the peace, and they made no sense to her. Growls and purrs of big silver things that flashed through the sky and sped along the roadways. She couldn’t remember the words they’d given her to put names to those noises.

  The other witches, the new ones, had all gone about their business and even though she was tired, Maeve avoided the large bed in the center of her chamber.

  Even knowing it was silly, she didn’t want to close her eyes because she was afraid she wouldn’t wake again. Or worse, wake four hundred years later in a world that made no sense.

  Through the bond, she could sense Roderick prowling Baile. Even the castle felt different, as if it were covered in woolen batting that stifled it.

  Roderick’s presence came closer and then a soft knock sounded on her door.

  “Come in.” She leaned against the casement and stared at the sea.

  Roderick stood behind her and studied the view with her. “At least that much is the same.”

  “Yes.” It was comforting having him near. “They thought Alexander a friend and knew almost nothing about Rhiannon.”

  “It worries me.” Roderick leaned his shoulder on the window embrasure. Mellow sunlight played across his coimhdeacht markings on his arm, the patterns and swirls etched on his skin telling the story of his service. She was now marked on his skin beside the other witches he had served before her. “It also makes no sense Alexander woke us and helped us into the tunnels.”

  That didn’t make sense to her either. “He doesn’t smell anymore.”

  “Smell?” Roderick frowned down at her.

  “The blood-magic stink,” she said. “He used to have it, and he doesn’t anymore.”

  Roderick sighed. “I know not what him not reeking of blood magic means. Along with a number of other things that make no sense to me.”

  “You are not alone in that.” Maeve dared reach behind her for his hand. Their bond had been so new that she had not yet accustomed herself to having a coimhdeacht, let alone being comfortable with him before that hideous day, the one her mind veered away from.

  He took her hand. “You did not want to sleep?”

  “No. I’m afraid.” His markings flared brighter umber at her touch.

  He nodded, and he knew because of the bond, but also because he had been frozen with her all these years. “Want to go for a walk?”

  “Where to?”

  He shrugged. “Let us explore our new now together.”

  Still holding her hand, Roderick led her back into the hallway outside her chamber. “Baile is…there.” He grimaced. “But not as she used to be. I can sense her, but she does not thrum in my blood.”

  “Why?” The carpets beneath their feet hadn’t aged. Drawings, paintings and samplers made by witches who had made Baile home decorated the walls. She stopped at a beautiful charcoal sketch of a horse in motion. Sadness gripped her like a fist in her chest.

  Roderick tightened his clasp on her hand as he reassured her through the bond. There were often times when having another human feel every emotion you had, able to peer inside your mind and heart and see what you kept concealed, was intrusive and uncomfortable. In moments like this, however, Roderick’s bond to her was a blessing. She would never feel lonely again. She would never have to explain how she felt or what she thought.

  Pressing her head to his shoulder, she stared at the sketch. She remembered the day they had hung it. To her, that day seemed three weeks ago. Even though it was unnecessary, she said, “Colleen, she drew that.”

  “She had a keen eye.” Roderick’s light blue eyes filled with shared emotion. “I have been thinking perhaps Baile is so quiet because all the coimhdeacht are gone.”

  His sadness throbbed between them, grief for the men who had fought by his side and were now dead. “All of them?”

  “Aye.” His sadness coiled around her heart, and she wanted to shed the tears he never would.

  She wrapped both her arms around him and kept her head pressed to his shoulder. “Not all the coimhdeacht are gone.”

  “No, not all. But I am the only one left.”

  “For the new ones, this picture is painted by a witch dead for hundreds of years.” Maeve touched the corner of the picture frame, seeking that tangible connection to Colleen. “We only saw her yesterday.”

  “We should do something,” he said. “We could go to Birgit’s mound and release their spirits to the Far Isle.”

  Tears threatened,
and Maeve blinked them back. “I would like that.”

  “Let us to the caverns.” He tucked her arm in the crook of his elbow and gently tugged her away. “I cannot feel Goddess either.”

  As the marks on Roderick’s arms, which had been worn by all the coimhdeacht, told the story of his life and his bonds, so the thousands of sigils in the caverns below Baile marked the lives of witches past.

  Maeve was spirit walker, the only one a coven could have, and it was her job not only to place the sigils on the cavern walls, using shells, fossils and crystals, the sigils that held the key to a witch’s spirit, but she could walk amongst them after their death.

  Roderick was right. She couldn’t sense Goddess, either. Even the vague notion that Goddess might be no more was too much to contemplate, so she kept it tucked in a tight mind box even Roderick couldn’t penetrate.

  The sun slid behind a cloud, but the air was warm enough not to require a cloak. Not that Maeve would know where to start searching for one.

  Sand crunched beneath their feet as they crossed the bailey. Images flashed through her mind. Hester being dragged by her hair. Blood covering the stones they walked across.

  “Don’t.” Roderick glanced at her, his jaw taut. “It does no good. Remember them as they were before that day.”

  Before he had become coimhdeacht, Roderick had been a knight and a good one. He had seen battle and death countless times before being granted this land. “Is that what you do?”

  “When I can.” His chuckle lacked humor. “It does not always stop the specters from haunting me though.”

  “It will help if I can meet their spirits.” Maeve waited for Roderick to open the door in the bailey wall that guarded the stairs to the caverns. “If I can see them whole again and in a better place, perhaps I can forget how they got there.”

  He nodded. “That would be good for both of us.”

  Maeve thrust her sadness aside. When she walked with the dead, she would see her sisters again soon.

  As they descended stone stairs to the cavern entrance, wind tugged at her skirts and hair. Women of this time wore very different clothing. Breeches even, and she planned to adopt their way of dressing as soon as she could.