Cate Tiernan - Origins

When I reached the cottage, I found Síle sitting at the table, staring off at nothingness.

“Are you all right, Ma?”

She looked up at me, startled, as though she were seeing a ghost. Slowly she shook her head, pointing a finger at me. “My fury and disappointment know no bounds. Have you any idea what you have unleashed?”

“ ’Twas a spell,” I said simply. “A spell against my persecutors—those who would have taken the life of my baby!”

“No evil action deserves the black magick you conjured. I have never seen anything like it—never! You have caused a split in our coven, some arguing that you created the spell in your own defense. But they are wrong.” My ma tried to sniff back tears. “You have created a horrible evil, Rose. Your spell ushers in the advent of a very dark time. A terrible reign of darkness! I have seen it!” Her voice broke in a sob, and she rested her head in her hands, shaking.

I folded my arms, unable to comfort her. “You make it sound as if I were a selfish child. I did not create the spell just for myself. I was acting for all Wodebaynes. This is the type of vengeance our clan needs.”

Ma shook her head. “No, Rose. There is nothing anyone could have done to warrant this horrible violence. You didn’t only hurt Siobhan—you destroyed her entire family! Her entire coven! And all of the villagers of Lillipool—Vykrothes, Leapvaughns, and Christians alike. You burned little children and women expecting bairns, like yourself.”

“I didn’t. I didn’t mean for that to happen, but—”

“Oh, dear Goddess!” Síle wailed. “How could my daughter, my own flesh and blood, be capable of such evil?”

I sat down on my bed in disbelief. She didn’t understand, and I didn’t have the strength to enlighten her. I did not enjoy seeing her in pain like this, though I truly thought she was being overly dramatic.

“It must be Gowan’s blood,” she muttered. “Your actions make it clear. The evil must have started with him, dabbling in dark magick like a foolish child who knows no better. The man always did want to take the easy road. He must have planted the seed of evil, and now you’ve nurtured it.” She took a deep breath and collapsed into sobs once again.

“ ’Tis not so,” I said, touching her shoulder. “In time you will understand—”

“I will not!” Ma winced, pulling away from me. “Time will not heal this wound, Rose, and you may not remain under this roof for even a single night.” She steeled herself, fixing me with a scowl. “You are not my daughter anymore. I do not care where you go, but I never want to see you again.”

Beneath my overriding numbness, I felt the last vestige of hope crushed within me. My mother was abandoning me. My baby and I would have no one in the world, no safe harbor. Only each another.

My mouth felt dry as I moved about the cottage, gathering up my meager belongings. How would it feel never to return here? To have no one to watch over me, to console me over night visions? No one to see that I got enough to eat or had a place to sleep? No one to teach me new spells? No one to help me care for the coming child? Fear tightened my chest at the prospect of walking out the door. fear and dread. My mother was the last vestige of my old life, and I longed to cling to her.

But I had no choice. Ma would not have me. She watched me pack like a hawk waiting to pounce.

When I had everything in a satchel, I turned to her. “I’ll say good-bye,” I told her, “but surely we will meet again?”

She turned her head away and staved me off with one hand. “I cannot bear to lay eyes upon you,” she said. “Just begone!”

Swallowing the lump that had formed in my throat, I stepped out the door and ventured into the woods. I had nowhere to go but my sacred circle, and even that seemed tainted by the hands of Diarmuid. Still, I swept the circle and raised my hands to the Goddess.

“I have a need that must be met,” I said. “I beg You, Goddess, that I obtain a home, a place to live for me and my babe to come.” I stood there under the hazy sky, wondering where I would go. “Goddess, I know You do not intend for me and my child to starve.”

I thought of my mother, cursing her weakness. “She has never understood my powers, Goddess.” I had always believed that someday I would inherit Ma’s stature as high priestess of our coven. but now it was not to be. “Perhaps it is envy,” I said aloud.

But there was no one to answer. Letting my hands drop to my sides, I realized that this circle had truly lost its magic for me. I packed my tools in my satchel, then set fire to my broom. I swept the wide circle with the flaming broom, wiping it all away. The Goddess would no longer visit this part of the woods. The magick was now gone from the stone altar, the green moss, and the tree that had once served as a Beltane maypole.

Once the circle was broken, I took my satchel and walked down the road. I decided to walk to Lillipool to witness the harvest of my spell. I walked as if in a daze until I reached a section of the woods that was now charred black and nearly empty, as if the trees and cottage there had simply melted into the earth.

I paused, pinching my nose against the smoking ash. What had stood here? I could not remember. I pressed closer, realizing that the striated rows of ash were charred skeletons. Three skeletons pressed against a door. Had they been unable to escape in time? I pressed my hands to my mouth, horrified at the thought. To imagine a sudden fire, the choking smoke, the need to get out before the flames swept over you.

Closing my eyes, I swallowed hard, trying to ignore the sting in my throat. ’Twas destruction at the hands of the Goddess, I told myself, and she smites evil. These villagers may have been nothing to me, but surely they were evil?

I didn’t feel ready to see more, yet I felt compelled to walk on, past yet another and another scene of the fire, now merely a blackened square upon the earth. When I reached the river, I had a vague sense that the mill had once stood here, with cottages all around. But now I stood amid a smoky landscape of embers, an endless horizon of ash and blackened earth.

“So mote it be,” I said aloud to ward off any doubts I had over the devastation surrounding me.

Down the lane of ashes I saw the charred skeletons of three children lined up, as if prepared for burial rites. I thought of the children I’d seen playing in the dusty square when I’d come to Lillipool to see Diarmuid. A pang of regret tightened in my breast, but again I told myself ’twas the Goddess’s will. Were not these children being groomed in the bigoted ways of their clans?

I moved toward the center of what was once Lillipool. The charred skin of a man’s hand reached out from a fallen window ledge, though there was no body to be seen. Stepping around it, I shuddered and rubbed my belly. “ ’Tis a gruesome sight,” I said aloud. “But surely he was an evildoer.”

Even the dusty village square had been transformed to thick, dark ash. Ashes of bones and buildings, embers of my enemies’ dreams and hatred.

So much hatred.

Yet I could feel neither jubilation over the success of my spell nor sorrow for the lives lost upon this doomed patch of the Highlands. The Goddess had pushed me beyond feeling, beyond tears.

Walk. Breathe. Rest. My strength was focused on the simplest matters right now, the need to survive and care for my baby. See here the fruits of your spell, the Goddess was telling me. Witness and learn, for the destruction wrought here is the result of your summons.

Near the river sat a row of buildings that had not completely burned, but only collapsed into ash. Mayhap the people in them had used the water of the river to fend off the fire? I stepped near one sagging doorway and peered inside. The bodies here were not completely charred, and perhaps they were worse for their rotting stench, their distinguishable features. Was that the tinker? And the children.