S Farrell - Holder of Lightning

But she wondered about what Chamis had said. There were times when she imagined herself going to Bacathair and looking for him, and in those fantasies, sometimes, she found him. But when she did, invariably, she woke up before she could talk with him.

The man you thought you saw, after you jell… He had red hair, and his eyes, they might have been blue. . Jenna tried to shake the thought away, but she couldn’t. She saw his face again and found herself smiling.

"I’m glad to see you’re so pleased with yourself," her mam said as she came into the tiny house. "Here’s your breakfast. Give me the milk and the flour, and sit yourself down." Maeve slid the wooden plate in front of Jenna, along with one of the four worn and bent forks they owned: eggs sizzling brown with bacon grease, a slab of brown bread with a pat of butter, a mug of tea and milk. "This afternoon I have to give Rafea two of the hens for the bolt of cloth she gave me last week."

"Give her the brown one and the white neck," Jenna said. "They’re both fat enough, and neither one lays well." Jenna slid her fork under a piece of bacon. "Mam, I think I’ll take the flock back up to Knobtop this afternoon."

Maeve’s back was to her as she cut a slice of bread for herself. "Up to Knobtop?" she asked. Her voice sounded strained. "After last night?"

"It’s a nice day, the grass was good up there yesterday, and this time I’ll be sure I’m back earlier. Besides, Mam, in all the old stories, the mage-lights only come at night never during the day."

Her mam hadn't moved. The knife was still in her hand, the bread half cut "I thought you might help me with the hens." When Jenna didn't answer, she heard Maeve sigh. "All right. I suppose I shouldn't be sur-prised. Aldwoman Pearce'll be talking about it, though."

"Why should Aldwoman Pearce care if I go to Knobtop? Because I was there last night?"

"Aye," Maeve said. She set the knife down and turned, brushing at the front of her skirt. "Because of that, and. ." She stopped. "Ah, it doesn't matter. Go on with you. Take Kesh, and keep Old Stubborn out of trouble this time. I'll expect you back before sundown. Do you understand?"

"I understand, Mam." Jenna hastily finished her breakfast, gave Kesh the plate on the floor while she put her coat and gloves back on, and took the half loaf of brown bread her mother gave her, stuffing it into a pocket of the coat. "Come on, Kesh. Let's get the sheep…" With a kiss for her mam, she was gone.

By the time they reached the green-brown flanks of Knobtop, the sun had warmed Jenna and her coat was open. The sky was deep blue over-head and dotted with clouds, sailing in a stately fleet across the zenith. The sheep moved along with Kesh circling and nipping at their heels, their black-faced heads lowering to nibble at the heather. As they rose higher, Jenna could look back north and west and see the thatched roofs of Ballintubber in its clearing beyond the trees lining the path of the Mill Creek, and looking eastward, glimpse the bright thread of the River Duan winding its way through the rolling landscape toward Lough Lar. By noon, they were in the field where Jenna had seen the lights.

She didn't know what she had expected to see, but she found herself disappointed. There was no sign that anything unusual had happened here at all. Kesh herded the sheep into the largest grassy slope, and the flock set themselves to grazing-they paid no more attention to the area than they did to the pastures down in the valley.

Jenna found a large, mossy boulder and sat down to rest from the climb. "Kesh! Keep them here, and don't let Old Stubborn get away this time." She pulled her mam's brown bread from her pocket; as she did so, the pebble she'd picked up the previous

night fell out onto the ground. She leaned down to pick it up.

The touch of it on her fingers was so cold that she dropped the stone in surprise, then picked it up carefully, as if she were holding a chunk of ice. In the sunlight, there was the echo of the emerald brilliance the rock had seemed to possess when she’d first found it. She’d never seen a rock this color before: a lush, saturated green, crenellated with veins of pure, searing white that made her pupils contract when the sun dazzled from them.

The stone looked as if it had been polished and buffed with jewel-er’s rouge.

And so cold. . Jenna closed her right hand around the stone, thinking it would warm as she held it, but the cold grew so intense that it felt as if she’d taken hold of a burning ember. As it had last night, another vision settled over her eyes like a mist, as if she were seeing two worlds at once. The red-haired man was there again, still stooped over as he paced the slope of Knobtop, and again he turned to look at her. "I lost it. ." he said, and then he faded. Other, stronger voices came to her: a dozen of them, two dozen, more; all of them shouting at her at once, the din clam-oring in her ears though she could make out none of the words in the chaos.

Jenna cried out (Kesh barking in alarm at her voice) and tried to release the stone, but her fingers wouldn’t open. They remained stubbornly clamped around the pebble, and the icy burning was climbing quickly from her hand to her wrist, onto her forearm, past the elbow. . "No!" This time the words were a scream, as Jenna scrabbled frantically at her fisted hand, trying to pry the fingers open with her other hand as the cold filled her chest, pounding like a foaming, crashing sea wave up toward her head, crashing down into her abdomen. The voices screamed. The cold fire filled her, and Jenna screamed again in panic. She could feel a surging power pressing against her, each fiber of her body taut and hum-ming with wild energy. She lifted her hand, concentrating her will, imag-ining her fingers opening around the stone. Her fingers trembled as if she had a palsy, then sprang open. Coruscating light, brighter than the sun, flared outward, arcing in a jagged lightning bolt that struck ground a dozen strides away.

The stone fell from her hand. A peal of thunder dinned in her ears and echoed from the hills around

Knobtop. Breathless, Jenna sank to her knees in the grass.

Whimpering, Kesh came up and licked her face while she tried to catch her breath, as the world settled into normalcy around her. Old Stubborn baaed nearby. Jenna blinked hard. Everything was normal, except. .

Where the lightning bolt had struck, there was a blackened hole in the turf, an arm deep and a stride across. The dirt there steamed in the air.

Jenna's intake of breath shuddered in amazement. "By the Mother, Kesh, did 1…?"

The stone lay a hand's breadth from her knee. Cradled in winter-browned heather, it seemed pretty and harmless. She reached out with a trembling forefinger and prodded it once. The surface seemed like any other stone and she felt nothing. She touched it again, longer this time: it was still chilled, but not horribly so. She picked it up, careful not to close her hand around it again. "What do you think, Kesh?"

The dog whimpered again, and barked once at her.

Gingerly, she placed the stone back in her pocket.

"Is everything all right?" Maeve asked as Jenna brought the flock back to Ballintubber. "Thomas said he saw a bright flash up on Knobtop, and we all heard thunder even though the sky was clear." The worry made her mam's face look old and drawn. "Jenna, I was worried. After last night. ."

All the way down from the high pasture, Jenna had debated with her-self over what she'd tell her mam. She'd thought at first that she'd tell her everything, how she'd found the stone after the lights, how it had seemed to glow, how the cold fury had consumed her until released. She wanted to describe the man she'd seen in the misty vision, and ask her: Could it be Da? But looking at Maeve now, seeing the anxiety and concern that filled her eyes, Jenna found that the carefully rehearsed words dissolved inside her. The fright she'd felt had faded and she seemed unhurt by the experience-why bother Mam with that now? Besides, she wasn't sure she could explain it: Mam might think she was making up tales, or wonder if Jenna had gone insane like Matron Kelly's son Sean, whose brain had been burned up by a high fever when he was a baby.