Spirit of the Mist (8 page)

“Soon these four young women, once so lively and strong, had no magic at all. They spent the mornings and the evenings of their days bent beneath the weight of endless wooden buckets of water, and the nights suffering at the hands of their husbands.”
 

Brendan closed his eyes, and for a moment he turned away. “And they lived out their lives in this way? It is a very sad story.”
 

“There is a bit of hope. The youngest daughter, remembering her mother’s words and seeing what had happened to her sisters, did wait until she could be the wife of a king. Her powers remained, as did her beauty and liveliness, and it has been so ever since among the women of my family.
 

“Only those who marry kings retain their youth and spirit and powers of magic. The others—those who marry ordinary men, or worse—become as my ancestors became, as my sisters have become.”
 

There was a silence between them for a time. Then Brendan stood up and walked around to her, and took hold of one of her hands. Gently touching the side of her face, he said, “Such a fate will never be yours, Lady Muriel. That I can promise you.”
 

“I have already promised it to myself,” she said, looking steadily into his blue and brown eyes.
 

The wind blew cool and damp as they returned together to the dun, just as the rain began to fall.
 

Chapter Five
 

When the sun began to set, Muriel walked alone to the edge of the sea and peered up at the sky. It was as clear as an evening was likely to be in Eire, with just a few high clouds drifting off to the north and none to be seen on the western horizon.
 

She felt great relief at the simple knowledge that the sky was clear and the nearly full moon would soon be rising, for there was nothing she wanted more right now than to use her water mirror to learn a very important truth.
 

There would be no better time than tonight. Muriel dipped her leather bag into the edge of the sea, allowed the rush of the surf to fill it with cold water, and then made her way back over the sand and the rocks until she reached the dun.
 

She went into her house and shut the door.
 

Alvy snored softly in her warm nest in the rushes, but Muriel had not even tried to sleep. She sat on a bench beside the stone border of the central hearth, working by the glow of the fire and a flat seashell lamp with a little rush light burning in it, trying to pass the time by spinning a basket of fine wool, trying to occupy her mind by thinking that perhaps she would attempt to dye this lot in the purple-blue that was her favorite—the same color as the spring gentian that grew among the rocks—but it was difficult to keep her thoughts on such ordinary things as spinning thread and making pretty gowns.
 

The flame in her lamp flickered and went out. It had burned its tallow-soaked reed all the way down to the bed of sand in the shell. Muriel got another reed and used the coals of the fire to light the lamp again.
 

She glanced over her shoulder at the window but saw only black sky and stars. Never had the moon traveled so slowly. It dawdled in the east, shining down only on the land, forcing Muriel to wait and wait as it made its slow journey across the clear night toward the sea.
 

Never, it seemed, had she spun such a great amount of thread as she had on this night.
 

When her lamp burned out again, she lit another—and when it went dark a third time, she got up and walked to the table beneath the window.
 

The high white moon was just beginning to show itself. The black sky around it was sprinkled with bright stars. Muriel reached below the table into the heap of rushes, pulled out her water mirror and her damp leather bag, and poured the seawater into the polished bronze basin.
 

Before the water had even settled, she held both hands over it and lowered her fingertips to touch its cool surface. As she did, the moonlight filtered down so that it shone directly through the window, casting a faint blue white glow over the water in the basin.
 

She let the water become still around her fingers.
Brendan
, she thought, closing her eyes for a moment.
Brendan.
 

Muriel gazed down at the mirror and slowly lifted her hands. The water quivered and then became still, shining in the moon’s glow…and then the images began to form.
 

She saw a misty gray cloak in the darkness, moving softly as a tall man made his slow and aimless way around the inner wall of the dun. Apparently she was not the only one who could not sleep this night.
 

Muriel waited until she saw him walk out of the shadows and move across an open grassy space, a space that was lit by the radiant moon.
Brendan
, she thought to him again.
 

This time he slowed then stopped.
 

She placed her hands beneath the basin, feeling the cold of the seawater through its etched bronze sides.
Show me who you are,
she said in her mind, and stayed perfectly still as the moon shone down on both him and the water in her mirror.
 

In the bowl, a new image formed: Brendan’s face in the summer sunlight, framed by golden brown hair that was well past his shoulders, his one blue eye and one brown eye shining as he laughed. As he swung up onto a big gray horse, Muriel realized that he wore a heavy gold torque at his throat and golden armbands and rings at his wrists and fingers, all gleaming bright in the light of the sun.
 

Now his cloak was brilliant blue; now his tunic was blue and green and yellow and cream; now he wore a fine iron sword at his hip. He galloped away on that powerful horse, followed by twenty men who were equally well dressed and armed.
 

Now he looked like a prince…if not a king.
 

The image faded as the men rode off into the mists. But then she saw Brendan’s face again.
 

This time he was pale and exhausted, chilled and soaking wet, his hair cut short and dripping with water. He looked as he had when she had found him on the storm-racked sea, dressed in rags like a slave.
 

A slave.
 

Her fingers shifted slightly on the cold sides of her bronze basin.
Show me who you are. Show me what you are!
 

Again came the image of Brendan as he was right now, all in gray and black, standing as still as stone, held in thrall by moonlight and magic. Then the vision wavered and dissolved into the form of a crying infant no more than a few months old, lying on a heap of straw in the corner of a rough shelter, dressed only in a tattered square of undyed wool tied around him with an old rough cord.
 

In a moment the infant was lifted up by a woman who was clearly a slave of the lowest class, for she wore only the poorest and roughest dark wool and had rusted iron bands around each wrist. The child rested its head on her shoulder and quieted, then opened its eyes and looked up—and Muriel saw one brown eye and one blue eye.
 

She jerked her hands away from her serving basin. The water inside wavered and darkened, and the images vanished.
 

The moon settled toward the western horizon and the sky in the east began to lighten with the first touches of dawn.
 

Muriel was still standing at her mirror when she heard the thunder of hooves outside. As if waking from a deep sleep, she closed the wooden shutters of her window and hurried to throw open the door of her house.
 

She was just in time to see five riders gallop out through the open gates, out into the morning light and onto the path that would take them to Dun Bochna. It would be at least a fortnight until they returned—fourteen nights of wondering whether Brendan was the prince he claimed to be, or if what Muriel’s mirror had shown her could possibly be true.
 

The days were at once the longest that Muriel had ever known and, at the same time, were not nearly long enough.
 

Brendan was quartered in a house with three other men. All of them were craftsmen, workers in iron and bronze and wood. As such, they were neither servants nor nobles; they were men who lived just as King Murrough had ordered that Brendan should live until they knew for certain what he was.
 

The craftsmen’s day began early. Brendan served as a mere helper to them, hauling loads of wood for their fires and carrying buckets of seawater for quenching hot metal. But he must have found time to slip out each day before the work began, for every morning when Muriel stepped out of her house she found a small bouquet of fresh wildflowers on the stepping stone just in front of her door.
 

Always the flowers were newly gathered from the hills above the dun, always still damp with dew. Some days there would be bright yellow primrose and gorse; others might bring the pinks of foxglove and violets; still others would deliver pretty combinations of blue and purple violets and gentian, or white blackberry canes with white violets set off by deep green clover.
 

In the afternoons Brendan would often come to sit with her as she worked at her spinning and sewing. They might stay in the hall with the other women if rain threatened but would walk out to sit on the grassy hilltops if the weather was fair, there to enjoy the warm summer sun and cooling sea breeze.
 

She would sew, and he would talk, and so many times she would find herself laughing more than working. His stories were varied and wonderful, but consisted mostly of Brendan’s heroics and Brendan’s bravery and Brendan’s great victory in stealing half of King Odhran’s cattle. Brendan would walk around her, gesturing and talking and acting out each part; and she would watch, smile, and laugh.
 

Muriel knew the chance she took whenever she spent time with him, for on each successive day he became more a part of her life and it became more difficult to hold him at arm’s length. Yet again and again she allowed him to stay at her side. Again and again she told herself that it was only for a short time, that soon he would be gone and she could safely forget she had ever known him, just as he would no doubt forget about her.
 

On the evening of the fourteenth day, as the shadows began to lengthen, Brendan finished yet another tale and came over to sit down close beside her. “Tell me, now,” he said, a little breathless, as she worked at stitching together a fine white linen gown. “You have watched me and listened to me for all these many days. Do you still believe I am only a slave?”
 

She set her mass of white linen down on the grass. Brendan sat near enough to touch, his golden brown hair and gray cloak blowing in the wind, his blue and brown eyes shining down at her.
 

For the first time, she reached out her hand to him. He stayed very still as she brushed a strand of sunlit hair from his eyes. Her hand lingered near his brow, and she drew her finger lightly down the edges of his hair and onto the smooth, warm skin near his left eye, the eye that was blue. She paused for a moment, stroking the skin again, marveling at how very soft it was.
 

“Have you never touched a man’s face, Lady Muriel?” he asked, peering up at her, his eyes bright with laughter.
 

She froze. “I have not,” she whispered and started to take her hand away. But he caught hold of it lightly, gently, and brought it close.
 

“I am glad to know this,” he said and bowed his head to touch his lips to the backs of her fingers.
 

The world around her seemed to grow misty and disappear. She saw only his closed eyes and gentle face, felt only the heat and surprising softness of his mouth as he caressed her fingers.
 

In the distance, far below near the gates of the dun, came the faint sound of galloping hoof beats. It seemed of no consequence to Muriel, who found she was no longer capable of moving; her entire body had gone warm and soft. But Brendan opened his eyes and looked up past her shoulder.
 

He sat back. Muriel blinked, for the light of day intruded on her once again. But as she watched him stand up and take a step toward the fast-approaching hoof beats, she knew without having to look that King Murrough’s riders had returned from Dun Bochna.
 

Brendan raced down the path, finally having to let go of Muriel’s hand, for she could not bring herself to move any faster than a walk. She found herself terribly sad. He ran for the open gates and dashed across the lawn, in and around the houses, and quickly disappeared from Muriel’s sight.
 

She hurried a little to catch up to him—and found him standing with his hand against the wall of one of the houses, staring at the closed doors of the King’s Hall. Seven horses were being led away as Muriel walked up to stand beside him.
 

“They’re already in the hall, waiting for the king,”
 

Brendan said, still watching the doors. “I didn’t get a chance to talk to them.”