I laughed quietly and gave her a hug. “You’re too tired to hear another, and I need a proper bath. I’m sure I’ve smelled better.”
To my surprise, no further argument was given. They burrowed under the furs, and after a few minutes of tossing and turning, they were quiet, and asleep.
After kissing each of their cheeks good night, I turned to my wide wooden tub in front of the fire.
Many viewed bathing as a luxury necessary only every cycle of the moon, but I had a different opinion on the matter, especially after a battle—I might no longer have been covered in blood and sweat, but I still felt unclean.
My handmaiden had painstakingly prepared a bath for me earlier in the evening—when I should have arrived home. I didn’t dare rouse her from her warm bed now to bring the bath back to a comfortable temperature. The scent of lavender and mint still perfumed the air invitingly, despite the cold.
The water in my tub was too cold to soak in, so I bathed quickly, scrubbing my skin until it was pink from abuse. Finished, I stood, and as my hands grasped both sides of the tub, I suddenly went blind. My heart pounded in my chest like the thundering hooves of a herd of horses. The water dripped from my body; I could hear it falling back into the tub with a drip, drip, drip. A cry for help clawed its way up my throat, but my lips would not part to release it. I could not move.
I sensed rather than saw the mist rise up around me, colder even than my bath had been. It snaked up my legs and blanketed my body until gooseflesh covered my skin. My breaths came in a panicked pant, and I willed my legs, my arms, to move, but not even my strength could force them to. As suddenly as it had disappeared, my vision returned, but I was still paralyzed. Then came a flash of blinding light, and in the midst of it, a crow appeared. Its eyes held mine, worlds of knowledge contained within.
Ciara, it said, and the blood in my veins seemed to turn to ice. It was the same voice I had always heard. Now that I heard it clearly, it was a hoarse, dangerous sort of voice. Do you know who I am?
Still in the hold of the same paralysis, I could only stare.
I am one of the Tuatha Dé Danann, the first men of éirinn who were once worshipped as gods. The Morrigan, Phantom Queen, and goddess of war and death. It tilted its head, and the feathers shifted, oily and black. In rapid succession, images poured into my mind, until I was sure I was in the grip of madness: a misty wood, the fog slowly taking shape until I could almost make out the figure of a woman; but then she turned, and her face was that of a crow’s, her hair made of feathers. But then, you have always known me.
The crow’s harsh caw-caw-caw blasted through the room. It flew so close to my face I feared it would tear out my eyes with its talons, but it only buffeted my cheeks with its greasy black feathers. In its eye, I saw my memories, all the times I had seen the crow before: the day I received my first blood as a woman; the day I had taken control of one of my fellow clansmen during training; on the battlefield at Fir Tulach, when Northman raiders had sailed all the way down the river to lay siege to the village there; and then earlier today, before the Northman prisoner had landed on our shore.
The crow’s eye seemed to shimmer and grow, until it soon blotted out everything else. I was trapped; the Morrigan’s voice was all I could hear.
For hundreds of years, the Tuatha Dé Danann have allowed the raiders from the north to rape and pillage our lands.
In my vision I saw Northman longships, with prows of gaping dragon heads, make landfall on the coast of éirinn. Cold nausea gripped me as I watched them slaughter every monk they encountered at the monasteries along the coast, their axes making quick work of men who had virtually no defenses. From there they moved on to the villages. Houses with thatched roofs went up in infernos, children ran screaming, men were cut down as women were taken as slaves. The raiders took everything of value, packing captured slaves and treasures until their longships hung low in the water from the sheer weight of it all.
And then: the night they attacked my father’s castle for the first time. I tried to block out the vision, one I had long since kept at bay, but I was helpless to stop it.
No, I said when I found myself back in the front pew of the church.
No, I said again when Father Teagan, now long dead, lifted his hands in prayer.
The horn rang out across the bailey, loud and urgent.
Run, you fools! I tried to shout to all the people in the church, who glanced at one another in confusion.
My father stood and hauled my mother to her feet. “Take the hidden passageway,” he said, and pushed her along as my sisters and I clutched at her skirts. “Go!” he said when she hesitated.
Finally, she obeyed. Máthair carried Deirdre, then a mere baby, in her arms, while she kept a firm hold on six-year-old Bran’s hand. Both were crying, their eyes wide with terror.
“Keep hold of your sister,” Máthair said to me urgently, and I did. I held Alana’s hand until the moment she was dragged from me.
Why show me this? I tried to shout at the Morrigan, but it was like shouting into the wind. I shook with the effort to keep the images at bay, for I knew what came next.
Máthair raced across the bailey, keeping Bran’s face pressed against her skirts as best she could. But I saw everything: men taller than my father, axes cutting into my clansmen, women screaming, while still others were caught and bound. Blood everywhere. It tinted my world red as though my own eyes were bleeding.
Alana was so quiet, her face twisted in terror and disbelief, but she didn’t utter a sound. The steps to the keep were only a yard away. But then she tugged me to a stop. “Moira!” she screamed. She was looking at her friend who lay dead, blood pooling around her while her mother clutched her broken body to her breast. I remember thinking: But she’s a child. Children don’t die in battle.
Our mother reached the steps of the keep. She whirled around when she realized we were no longer behind her.
“Alana,” I said with another tug, but my sister was frozen in horror.
When I turned back toward our mother, a Northman loomed above us, cutting off our escape. He was as big as a bull, his straw-colored hair long and braided. The axe in his hand was stained red, and a fresh wound—a deep cut from his eyebrow down to his cheek—dripped blood. His blue eyes shifted to my mother. Somewhere across the bailey, I heard my father shout.
áthair is coming, I told myself. He’ll save us.
Alana finally turned away from the sight of her fallen friend, only to scream as she saw the massive man before us.
He grabbed her, yanking her from my grasp. “These must be your children,” he said, his voice loud enough to carry across the bailey. He spoke our language—he wanted my father to hear him. “This one will make a fine slave.”
“No!” my father shouted, running toward us, but he was cut off by another Northman.
“No?” the enemy before us repeated. He glanced down at my struggling sister. “You’d rather she be dead, then? You cut down my nephew who was barely older than a child himself.” His upper lip curled, his expression turning feral. His gaze was fixed on the body of an adolescent boy, one of the fallen Northmen. “Blood for blood,” he said, and slit my sister’s throat.
My father barreled into him then, knocking him to the ground as my mother screamed and ran to Alana. I couldn’t look away from the blood bubbling from her throat.
More men came to the Northman’s aid, but not before my father ducked beneath the man’s axe and drove the blade of his sword into the enemy’s leg. The remaining ranks of our clansmen joined the battle, and eventually, the Northmen retreated—taking my sister’s murderer with them.
I could only hope he had later died of his injuries.