Нора Робертс - The Becoming

“He’s a whiz on it.”

“And with the cooking and the music as well.”

“Multitalented, our Marco.”

“I love him, and wish for a life with him.”

She lowered her coffee, let out a long breath. “That’s really fast.”

“I know it, but it’s as real as anything I’ve known. This isn’t just a moment for me. Not just a day or a week. It’s always.”

She’d seen it, she admitted, in both of them. Maybe she had a dozen questions about where it would go, where it could go with two people from two worlds. But what mattered, what really mattered, was love.

“You make him happy, so you make me happy. His family—not his sister, but the rest of his family …”

“He’s told me. I’m sorry for them.”

She turned to him now, felt a strong and definite click of connection.

“So am I. That’s exactly how I feel. Sorry for them because they can’t see how amazing he is. How good and kind and bright and beautiful he is. They only look through one prism, so they can’t see him.”

“But you’re his family, you and Sally and Derrick. He has you, and now he has me. He’ll have my family, who’ll love him as I do. And when Talamh and all is safe, we’ll make a life together.”

With that said, they watched the wet dog roll blissfully in grass damp with dew.

“You wonder how we’ll make that life,” Brian added. “We’ll find a way. Love finds it, and you’ve only to follow. Now I must go, as I have duties. You have duties to your stories, or you’d call for Lonrach. I know what it’s like those first days as a rider. You could ride forever.”

He handed her his empty mug. “Bright blessings on you, Breen Siobhan.”

“And on you, Brian.”

She watched him walk into the woods, wings spreading as he did. After he’d flown into the trees, she let out a little sigh.

“Okay, pal, let’s go inside. It’s time for us to report for duty.”

It felt good, she decided, really good to slide back into routine. Get her blood moving with a workout, get her head back into the story with the writing.

By the time she took a break—time for a Coke!—Marco sat at the table working on his laptop.

“You check your email?”

She winced. “Not yet. I was—”

“Good thing your publisher copies me. Anyway, they’re thinking of doing a little drawing of Bollocks at the chapter headings. Maybe just one repeated, maybe a variety.”

“Well, that would be great.”

“What I said. So I’m going to take him out in a bit, get some pictures to send them. They have the ones you’ve posted on the blog, or I’ve posted on other social media, but I figured more can’t hurt. Did you eat anything?”

“Yes, Daddy. Brian made me toast.”

He lit right up. “You saw him? He didn’t wake me up before he left.”

“I was already up.”

“How did I get to be crazy about two people who think it’s normal to get up at dawn?”

“Just lucky, I guess.”

“You’d be right. He left this on the bed for me.”

Marco picked up a small sketch of himself, sleeping with a smile curving his lips.

“Marco, this is you! I mean, it’s got you. He’s really good.”

“He has a little cottage right in the village. More of a studio, really, because besides a bed, it’s mostly—well, other than weapons— art stuff. And his paintings and drawings, Breen, they’re really, really good. I was hoping they’d be pretty good, so I could say so, but we’re talking serious-artist good.”

“I can see that by this sketch. You need to frame it.” She set it back on the table. “I’m so happy for you.”

“I’m pretty damn happy for me, too.” And blissful with it, he trailed a finger over the sketch. “Going back to work?”

“Oh yeah. I worked on Bollocks this morning—that’s the one they’re paying for. But I’m going to shift over to the fantasy for a few hours. I know it’s a shot in the dark still, but—”

“Stop.” From his seat, he drilled a finger into her belly. “You’re a writer, girl. Writers write. You go do that, and I’ll finish this. Then Bollocks and I are going to have ourselves a photo shoot.”

“He needs to go out.” She walked to the door, opened it, and the dog streaked by.

“I’ll let him in if I’m not finished before he is.”

She left them to it and went back to her desk to dive into the world of danger and magicks.

Here with the words, with the imagery, she had control. Maybe she didn’t see the end clearly, not yet, but she saw stages of the journey.

But when she passed through into Talamh, it wasn’t just words, just imagery. And a great deal of the journey lay out of her control.

So it soothed and excited her to write, even when she found herself crafting echoes of what she’d seen or heard or experienced.

And when she pushed away from her desk, she hugged herself with the satisfaction of real progress.

She took time to check her email—Marco would ask again—and as always wondered if she’d find one from her mother.

No. Not yet, and, she admitted, maybe never.

She walked away from it, and found Marco in the living room with his keyboard, his headphones, and staff paper.

“You’re writing music!” She did a little dance when he jolted, pulled off the headphones. “You haven’t been working on your music since we got here. Let me hear it!”

“Not ready yet.”

“You don’t need to go through the headphones when you’re working it. I like to hear you work out a song. It’s like back in the apartment. If you’re still into it, we can wait to go over.”

“No, I’m good. I need to let it simmer—like my pot roast.”

“That’s the amazing smell!”

“Got it simmering, and it’ll do that for about four more hours. So I need you to, like, woo-woo it.”

“Do what?”

“Woo-woo it, so it coasts along, and if we can’t get back, it turns off. Can you?”

She held up a finger. “This may be the key to my deeply buried cooking skills. I can do that.”

“Great. Handy. You do that, and I’ll get us some jackets.”

She considered it like setting a timer—a magickal one. With a good day’s work under her belt, and the prospect of Marco’s pot roast for dinner, she set off with him and Bollocks.

“You’re going to ride that dragon again, aren’t you?”

“Oh, you bet your well-toned ass I am.”

“I’m not.”

“I’ll talk you into it one day.”

“You got a lot of words, Breen, but you don’t have near enough for that. Me, I’m going to hang out with Colm.”

“Who’s that?”

“Dude has a cottage right near Finola’s. He makes beer and ale. He’s going to show me how it’s done. Maybe one of these days, I’ll start making Olsen Ale.”

“It has a ring.”

They parted ways on the road in Talamh. To give herself a moment, she sat on the wall across from the farm. She saw Harken leading a horse from the stable to pasture. And recognized the mare as the one who’d mated with Keegan’s stallion in the summer.

Curious, she opened herself, and felt the life inside the mare. Would it kick, she wondered, as Aisling’s baby did?

She saw the boys just outside Aisling’s cottage, Mab on nanny duty. The Capital, she thought, with its crowds and movements, seemed very far away.

Once again, she opened herself, and tried, for the first time, to call her dragon.

The air held a chill, but not an unpleasant one. A man galloped by on a bay and gave her a tip of his cap. The black-faced sheep grazed behind her.

And Lonrach streamed, ruby red, out of the sky.

Her heart just overflowed. “He’s coming, Bollocks.” She stood with the dog beside her. “Do you want to fly?”