“‘You have chosen again and again to disrespect the other spirits, and so I have no other choice but to discipline you, Orenna. From hence onward, you will only grow in dry, heartsick ground where the water may deny you, the fire may destroy you, and the wind can make you bend to its might. In order to bloom, you will have to give your life source; you will have to cut your finger on a thorn, and let your golden ichor flow like sap, down to the ground. And last of all, the mortal kind of the isle will learn your secrets by consuming your petals. This is your punishment, which may last as short as a day should you truly repent, or an eternity should your heart turn hard and cold.’
“Orenna was furious at the Earie Stone’s justice. She thought herself strong enough to resist his verdict, but she soon discovered that her flowers could no longer bloom where she willed. Even the lush grass, who had always welcomed her, couldn’t give her space to blossom, and she had to search the entirety of the isle to find a small patch of dry, heartsick ground in a graveyard. Even then, she couldn’t bloom, not until she pricked her finger on a thorn and her blood ran, slow, thick, and golden, down to the earth.
“She bloomed, but she was much smaller than before. She was vulnerable, she realized, and the other spirits denied her company. Sad and lonely, she called to a mortal girl who was picking wildflowers one day. The girl was delighted, but soon ate the flowers and learned all of Orenna’s secrets, just as the Earie Stone had foretold.
“Defiant, Orenna never repented but carved a life for herself in the ground she was given. She’s still there to this day, if you are fortunate or misfortunate enough to find her.”
Sidra fell quiet, reaching the end. Maisie had fallen asleep, and Sidra carefully slipped from the bed, tucking the blankets around her daughter. She carried Graeme’s book and a rushlight into the kitchen and stood at the table. She had left all of her herbs and supplies out. Jars, salts, honey, vinegar, and an array of dried herbs. The two red flowers Torin had brought her were still where she had left them. They hadn’t wilted, which foretold their magical essence, just like a moon thistle, and Sidra studied them in the firelight, occasionally glancing back over the legend.
She had encountered plenty of graveyards before, although she had never seen small, crimson flowers blooming amid the headstones. And if the Orenna flower couldn’t bloom freely in the grass, then these two blossoms must have been dropped in the place where Catriona had vanished. Something or someone had been carrying them, perhaps to ingest the petals.
She would have to tell Torin about it at first light.
But she wondered … what would happen if she swallowed one?
Sidra wasn’t sure, and she returned to bed with a shiver.
CHAPTER 8
Adaira was waiting for Jack on the shore. The air was cold, but the moonlight was generous, guiding him down the rocky path to meet her on the coast, his harp tucked beneath his arm. She was pacing on the sand—the only indication that she was anxious—and she had braided her hair, to keep the wind from toying with it. He couldn’t discern her expression until he was almost upon her.
“Are you ready?” she asked.
He nodded despite the worry that nagged him. He drew his harp from its skin and settled on a damp rock. A small crab scuttled between his boots, and a few dead jellyfish lay scattered like purple blossoms. He positioned his harp on his lap, propping it against his left shoulder, just above his swift-beating heart. From the corner of his eye, he could see Adaira standing tall and rigid. The starlight illuminated her.
She doesn’t seem real, but neither does this moment, Jack thought, with a tremor in his hands. He was about to play Lorna’s ballad and draw forth the spirits of the sea. And it almost felt as if the ground beneath him quaked, just slightly, and as if the tide grew softer as its foam reached for his boots. As if the wind caressed his face, and even the reflection of the moon gleamed a little brighter in the rock pools. All of it—air and water and earth and fire—seemed expectant and waiting for him to worship them.
Jack played a scale on his harp, his fingers stiff at first. A memory rose, unbidden, a memory made on the mainland. He had been sitting in an alcove of the Bardic University with Gwyn, his first love, at his side watching his every move, her hair tickling his arm and smelling of roses. She had been scolding him for creating such sad songs, and he didn’t tell her that he felt the most alive when he played for sorrow. Now it was strange how that moment felt old and bleached by the sun, as if it had happened in the life of another man, not Jack Tamerlaine’s.
Knowing he couldn’t play this strange music with such reservations and distractions, he strove to find a calming place within himself. To remember and fall back into a time when he was a boy and Cadence was all he had known. When he had loved the sea and the hills and the mountains, the caves and the heather and the rivers. A time when he had yearned to behold a spirit, face-to-face.
His fingers grew nimble, and Lorna’s notes began to trickle into the air, metallic beneath his nails. He could hardly contain the splendor of them anymore, and he played and felt as if he were not flesh and blood and bone but made by the sea foam, as if he had emerged one night from the ocean, from all the haunted deep places where man had never roamed but where spirits glided and drank and moved like breath.
He sang up the spirits of the sea, the timeless beings that belonged to the cold depths. He sang them up to the surface, to the moonlight, with Lorna’s ballad. He watched the tide cease, just as it had done the night when he returned to Cadence. He watched eyes gleam from beneath the water like golden coins; he watched webbed fingers and toes drift beneath the shallow ripples. The spirits manifested into their physical forms; they came with barbed fins and tentacles, with hair like spilled ink, with gills and iridescent scales and endless rows of teeth. They rose from the water and gathered close about him, as if he had called them home.
Jack saw Adaira take a step closer to him, her fear like a net. He almost missed a note; she was dividing his attention, even though she was a glimmer at the corner of his eye. She took another step closer, as if she thought he would be swept away, and he turned his head slightly to keep her in his sight. Because she was his only reminder that he was mortal and man, no matter what this music made him feel, that he wasn’t a creature of the waters … as he suddenly yearned to be.
Adaira, he wanted to say to her, interjecting her name between the notes her mother had woven and spun. Adaira …
The spirits felt his attention shift from them to her. The woman with hair like moonlight, the woman made of sharp beauty.
Now that they beheld her, they seemed unable to forget her. Not even Jack’s music could draw their attention away, and his heart began to falter.
“It is her,” one of the spirits said in a waterlogged voice. “It is, it is her.”
They must think Adaira is Lorna, Jack thought. He was nearly to the last stanza, his hands were trembling, and his voice had turned ragged on the edges. How long had he been playing? The moon was lower, and the spirits refused to remove their scrutiny from Adaira.
Look at me, his fingers played between the notes he plucked. Give your attention to me.
Instantly, all the glimmering eyes returned to him. Ah, yes, they seemed to say. The mortal man still plays for us. They listened and softened once more as Jack crooned at them. All of the spirits in their manifest forms adored him.