Cate Tiernan - Night's Child

"Katrina… what did you do?" Morgan asked in a voice that was nearly a whisper yet chilled Moira to the bone.

Gran sighed. "Susan and I created a spell that would heal you, bring you back from the brink of despair. To keep you alive, to keep your daughter safe and alive… to protect you both," she finished, looking at Moira. "The spell… I took your pain onto myself in order to help you. It was only intended to bring you some peace, Morgan."

There was silence in the room as her words sank in. Moira started to shake her head, slowly. She reached out to hold the edge of the table, feeling dizzy. No, no, this isn't happening.

Gran continued. "We were waiting to tell you about the baby until you were healthier. But then… Colm came to me one afternoon, when you were beginning to recover, and told me that he had asked you to marry him-and that you had said yes. He knew about the baby, and he accepted it and wanted to be with you anyway. When he shared his news, I felt I understood. You wanted to die, Morgan, but knew that taking your own life was a direct violation of all Wiccan laws. And since you had to go on living anyway, you would make the best of it, with someone you cared for. My son."

"I loved Colm." Mum's voice sounded as if it were coming from far away.

"My dear." Gran reached out and took her hand. "I know you did. I'm not saying that. Believe me, if I hadn't thought that from the very beginning, we wouldn't all be sitting here today. I knew you. You never would have agreed to marry him if you hadn't had every intention of being a good and loving wife. And you were. You were the best thing that ever happened to him. I knew that, and he knew that."

Morgan looked stricken, deep in shock. Moira was beyond shock-beyond any identifiable emotion. It was all just too much.

"The spell was working, and you continued to heal. But there was a side effect we hadn't realized-that the spell would blur your memories and cause your senses to be off for a time. Yes, you moved on. You married. But you believed the baby was Colm's. And we-we never told you otherwise. I don't know what to say, except that it just seemed right at the time for all of you. We believed the Goddess was having her way, that you were meant to have your daughter with Colm."

Morgan covered her mouth with her hand, gasping, and tears started flowing down her face. Sky's face was like stone, alabaster, unreadable.

Blinking, Moira tried to think-the room was going in and out of focus. She gripped her chair seat, wondering dimly if she were going to fall over.

"Gran," she said faintly, "Da wasn't really my father?"

"Your Da was Colm Byrne," Gran said, her voice shaky. "And no father ever loved a daughter more. He was your real father in every way that counted, your whole life. He took joy in you, he joined his heart with yours. You belonged to him and he to you."

"Oh my God, Katrina," Mum finally said hoarsely, her hand to her mouth. "Oh, Goddess." Her eyes widened. "You said you took my pain. Your arthritis… that's how it began, isn't it?"

Gran stared down at the table, not answering.

"It's why you never wanted me to heal you," Morgan breathed. "Because it wouldn't have worked, not when your pain had been taken from me to begin with…"

"Because it's my burden to bear. I only wanted to help you live your life," Gran said. "And raise your daughter."

"I don't understand," Moira said helplessly. "Da knew, all this time? And Aunt Susan? Everyone knew?" "Just me, Pawel, Susan, and Colm," Gran said. "It never made a difference to any of us."

"It makes a difference to me!" Moira cried, the knowledge overwhelming her, stripping her of reason. She jumped up so quickly that her chair tipped over onto the floor with a crash. Finnegan leaped up and barked. "Don't you get it? You've traded in my whole life! How could you do that? Who gave you permission? Now you're not even my grandmother!"

Gran looked as if she had been slapped, but Moira was too upset to care. Instead, she grabbed her jacket off its hook and rushed out the front door. Finnegan leaped after her, bounding across the yard and just managing to squeak through the garden gate before it slammed against him. Moira didn't care where she ran-she just ran, even after her breaths were searing in her lungs, after her leg muscles felt numb. Still her feet pounded against the rain-soaked headland lining the coast of the sea, the cliffs to one side of her dropping thirty feet downward to the rocks below.

Oh, Goddess, oh, Goddess, she had no father. Colm was dead, but he wasn't her father, had never been her father. Yet she had loved him so much! He had been warm and loving and funny. He'd helped her build things, helped her learn to ride a bike, to skate, to ride a horse. It had always been him and Mum, him and Mum, at school things, at circles, at sabbats. She needed him so much to have been her father! He was her dad! Her dad! Oh, Goddess, it all just hurt too much! Her whole life her dad had been living a lie, pretending. He hadn't been able to tell her the truth-or to tell Mum. How could he have not told Mum? How could Gran have done this? It felt so wrong! At last Moira lost her footing, sliding and tumbling against the wet grass. Fresh dirt smeared her hands and face, but she lay where she had fallen, gasping in cold, painful breaths. Her hair soon felt wet. Overhead, the sky was darkening, the clouds blotting out any sunset there might have been. In this one afternoon her whole life, her whole past, had been ripped away, to be left just a blank.

Finnegan flopped next to her, whining, pressing his soft brown, white, and black side against her, licking her face. Moira burst into sobs, putting her arms around him, holding him to her. He licked her face and lay next to her, and she cried and cried against him, the way she had when she was a little girl. She wished she were dead. She couldn't bear the fact that her dad had known all along she wasn't really his, yet he'd loved her so much anyway. That seemed so sad and pathetic and unselfish that she simply couldn't stand it.

"Oh, Finn, Finn," she sobbed against him. "It hurts too much."

Her school clothes were sodden and muddied, her hair was wet, her face was tearstained and mud-streaked. But she lay against Finnegan and sobbed, trying to let out the emotional pain that threatened to dislodge her soul from her body.

She didn't know how long she lay there, but gradually exhaustion overcame her and her sobs slowed, then quieted. She felt completely spent, utterly drained of emotion. Blinking, she realized vaguely that it was quite dark outside. Finnegan was resting by her side, taking the occasional gentle lick of her face, as if promising to stay as long as she needed him. Her chest hurt, and the ground was hard, and she was cold, freezing, and soaked through. But she couldn't get up, couldn't move, had no idea where she was. She would just lie here forever, she decided, almost dreamily. She would never move again.

"There you are," said a gentle voice, and Moira jerked in surprise. Finnegan hadn't growled, but he sat up alertly, his eyes locked on… Ian.

Moira felt frozen, stiff. Ian dropped lightly to sit next to her, seeming to neither notice nor care that he was going to ruin his clothes. Moira's first insane thought was that she probably looked like the Bride of Frankenstein. Then she thought fiercely, So what? My whole life just got ripped away from me-I don't care what I look like!

Slowly Ian put out his hand and stroked the light hair away from her chilled, wet face. "I felt you get upset this afternoon while I was being tutored," he said. "It was strange, like you were sending waves of upsetness. Then later I was putting up shelves in my mom's pantry-it's a disaster in there-and I pictured you running over the grass, with the sea in the background. It's taken me a while to find you."