C.E. Murphy - Raven Calls

Surprise held me motionless for a fateful half second. The Morrígan’s fist closed and Sheila wailed as power dragged her across the garden. Her cries grew sharper and louder, less human and more deadly, as the Morrígan buried her fingers in her hair, then hauled her, kicking and screaming, out of my garden fair.

I came awake on the mountaintop. Raven was nowhere to be seen, but that was probably okay. He’d want to scold me for having left the Dead Zone without his guidance, and in retrospect, that had probably been a stupid thing to do. Caitríona was snapping a hand in front of Méabh’s eyes, saying, “Hello? Hello? Are ye in there so?” She yelped when Méabh suddenly came to life again and batted her hand out of the way.

My great-grandmother turned on me in a barely controlled fury. “Have ye found what we needed to know? Is she held by my mother’s master? Do ye know where to take the fight to them? Are we—”

I started out saying “No” quietly and graduated to a full-fledged bellow halfway through her last question. Her mouth snapped shut and I muttered, “No,” one more time. “We were just…bonding. Well, and she sa—”

“Bonding. Bonding? It’s your own self who won’t sacrifice the woman, Joanne. What are we to do if you cannot find it in you to learn what we must know to win this battle? This is no time for bonding. ”

I looked up, more neutral than I expected to be. “I know it’s not, but this is really our last chance. This has to be over by sunset one way or another.” I’d chosen sunset because midnight was too arbitrary, too much a function of human time-keeping devices. Sunset was the end of day for older cultures, and I’d rather get it all done early than find myself holding the ball after the game ended. “Sorry I blew it. Sort of.”

I didn’t even quite know how Sheila and I had gone from sniping to bonding, but I did know I’d have regretted not having those couple minutes far more than I would ever bring myself to regret what might happen because we had. “Caitríona, do you get along with your mom?”

She startled. “What? Yes, of course I do. What kind of question is that?”

I shrugged my eyebrows. “Just hoping somebody here did, that’s all. She was glad to hear you were here, was Sheila. She says you’ll be an incredible power for good.”

Caitríona puffed up like a cardinal. “Did she, now?”

Okay, maybe I was extrapolating from what Mother had said, but the sentiment was close enough. “She’s proud of you, Cat. You’re gonna be amazing. And she says magery is about spells and preparation, so you were mostly right, Méabh. Initial explosions of power or no, Cat’s got a lot of studying to do.”

“Who’ll teach me?”

I looked off the mountain like the answer would come to me. It didn’t, so after a moment I shrugged my shoulders as well as my eyebrows. “I don’t know. Me, maybe, at least for a little while. I’ll have to find you somebody versed in magery, but I can teach you about the safeties and shielding, anyway.” Coyote would find that very ironic. Hell, I found it ironic. I also rubbed my forearm, the bite a dull itching throb. There’d been no more impulse to change since we got to the top of Croagh Patrick, but I was a little afraid of what would happen when we left. And staying there wasn’t an option. “She said we have to defeat the banshee queen.”

Méabh rounded on me again, this time in angry astonishment. “Why did ye not say so?”

“You were too busy yelling at me.”

She fell abruptly silent, which I thought was a pleasant change. “Cat, any idea where we find a banshee queen?”

My cousin eyed the silent warrior queen, then nervously said, “It’s Evil you’d want so.”

I sighed. “I’m pretty sure it’s evil we’re trying to defeat, yes. If you don’t know, that’s fine. We’ll…” I didn’t know what we’d do. I frowned, trying to clear my thoughts.

“No. Aibhill, Joanne. A-i-b-h-i-l-l. Aibhill,” she said one more time. It still sounded like evil to me, or maybe just slightly like “Ae-vil,” but I got the point even before she said, “The O’Brien banshee. Queen of the banshees, they say. It’s her we’d need to fight.”

“We?”

“Sure and I’m not leaving you now, just when it’s getting good.”

I smiled despite myself. “You sound like my friend Gary. I’ll introduce you. I hope.” I bit my lip, then bit it harder. “Okay. How do we find Aibhill?” I wasn’t sure I liked all the changes I’d gone through, particularly since I was now calmly contemplating hunting somebody down and killing her. Of course, the somebody in question was presumably a monster, but even so.

“The O’Briens were in Munster,” Caitríona said cautiously.

I squinted. “What’s wrong with Munster?” My sum total knowledge of Munster was that, like Connacht, it was one of the ancient Irish provinces. There was an Ulster and a something else, too. “So?”

“Nothing, save it’s as far away as we can get on this island. We’ll never make it before sunset.” Caitríona sagged. “Not get to the O’Brien lands, call up Aibhill and fight her, however it is we’d do that anyway. Auntie Sheila’s doomed.”

“Good attitude, good attitude.” I looked across the mountaintop at the remains of my mother’s bones. They still smoldered, a faint light coming from within. Maybe Wings was in there. I couldn’t leave him behind. Still thinking, I made my way toward the mess, aware that Méabh and Caitríona trailed behind me. “We’re going to have to try. I mean, I’ve got nothing else. Méabh, do you know anything about the magic of Munster?”

“It’s where I built an Mhór Chuaird, ” she said after a moment.

Caitríona made an astonished sound of recognition as I sagged. She said, “The Ring of Kerry? But there’s no…” She trailed off, obviously suddenly wondering if what she knew was true. “No standing stones defining the ring. You couldn’t have built that, it’s just a tourist circle and it’s the size of the county itself.”

Méabh’s eyebrows quirked upward. “Large it was, but not so large as that. But at the heart of Kerry a circle once stood. If the stones are gone, then time has taken them. I couldn’t risk Tara, you see, and had to go as far from it as I could. All that old power there, even when I was young. What if it had gone wrong? What if my mother’s master had wrested control from me? Twisted the magic so the wolves were many instead of few? No.” Méabh shook her head. “It had to be a new circle, its power untried. So yes, I built the Ring of Kerry, and it’s pleased I am to hear its name still lingers.”

“That’s grand, we can go there then—” Caitríona stopped, remembering her own original protest.

It was only around eleven in the morning. We might have been able to make it into Munster, but the Ring of Kerry was, in fact, about as far away as a person could get and stay on the island. If Irish roads were broader and less twisty, it might not be an issue, but even I, who had cut my teeth on equally twisty Appalachian mountains, was dubious about my ability to get us into the Ring before sundown. And that didn’t even count the difficulty of finding its center in time to be of any use. “It can’t be Kerry,” I said, mostly to myself. “Brigid said it began and ended at Tara. We’re going to have to risk contaminating it. Maybe we can use it as a gauntlet, throw it down to challenge the banshee queen…” I got to Sheila’s immolated bones and trailed off.

It was not Wings lighting them up. It was a soft glow from a pit lying beneath the bones in a physically impossible manner. It looked like it went straight to China, or to whatever was opposite Ireland on the globe, and the ashy remains were resting quietly on the air above it, as if it didn’t really quite exist. I nudged a stone toward its edge.