Cate Tiernan - Origins

The dark wave.

The coveners had proven to be apt students of the grave spell. Already they had collected hair and fingernails from Burnhydes for use in the magick.

My baby shifted inside me, and I smiled. Aye, little one, you will learn the spell, too. I will pass it on to you. It is your legacy.

When the drama before me ended, I arose and held my hands up to the Goddess. “I fell into deep darkness,” I said. “I greeted death. I tore the velvet darkness of everlasting light. Ablaze with glory, I was reborn. Now the old year ends.”

“The new year begins!” the coveners responded. “Plunge the blade! Stoke the fires!”

I went to the center of the circle, saying: “Their evil shall burn their own funeral pyres!”

The coveners danced around me, chanting: “Plunge the blade! Stoke the fires!”

I felt the power of the Goddess swirl around us. Aye, we were nearly ready to send the dark wave, so mote it be. “Welcome, new year, farewell, strife. From fiery embers arises life.”

“Plunge the blade! Stoke the fires...”

Hunter and I still sat silently on the couch. Plunge the blade! Stoke the fires! The words kept running through my head, like a mantra. This girl, this young, seventeen-year-old girl. I tried to imagine going through what she went through. Would I have reacted the same way?

“Morgan?”

I realized that Hunter was looking at me with concern. His hand lay on my arm. He seemed to be waiting for me to respond. Had he asked me a question? I shook my head, trying to clear it, and then reached for my cold chamomile tea. “Yes,” I said quietly. When I raised the cup to my lips, I realized that my face was wet with tears.

“Morgan, are you all right?”

I looked down at the closed book. Rose MacEwan, I thought, my ancestor. The creator of the dark wave. How was it possible? But I knew, I realized almost immediately, with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I remembered the few times I had practiced dark magick—shape-shifting with Ciaran. Weather magick with my half brother Killian. It had felt so right, pure, and natural. Hunter realized it, too, I thought—when strange things had started happening at our circles, he had believed it was me. Rose could have been me, I thought with sickening clarity. We were so alike: blood relatives. I could have been Rose.

Hunter had knelt on the floor before me, and he sat now with his hands on my knees, begging me to speak.

“No,” I said softly, shaking my head. “I don’t know what I am.”

Hunter looked up at me, his eyes warm with concern. I could see pain there, pain at seeing me cry. Oh, Goddess, he loved me, without tricks or reservations. What he had done with Justine seemed so trivial now.

He sat back on the couch, reached out, and folded me into his arms. I didn’t resist. “She didn’t know, love. She didn’t know what she was doing.”

“But she still did it.” I shivered involuntarily, thinking of Rose and Diarmuid—she had been so sure of their love, as sure as I had been— was— of Hunter’s. And look where it had led. The same place my birth parents’ love had led—to death, destruction, and misery.

I looked up at Hunter’s face—the face that I dreamed of, the face that I believed to be there for me. Only me. I reached up and touched Hunter’s cheek—my mùirn beatha dàn. Even his parents’ love had led to hurt—abandoning their children, Hunter’s father hurting himself in an attempt to recreate what they had had after his love’s death.

“I know you, love. You’re not like Rose. You’ve chosen good.” Hunter whispered, stroking my hair.

I nodded, wanting to believe him. But as a daughter of such dark origins, I could only hope that he was right.