“I like to fish.”
“I don’t.” Brannaugh brooded as the little boat plied the river. “You sit and sit and wait and wait. I’d rather hunt. Then you have the woods, and we could have rabbit for dinner.”
“Tomorrow’s as good as today for that. We’ll look for fish tonight if your brother has luck and skill. And perhaps a potato pie.”
Bored, Brannaugh handed her line to her sister, and gazed out over the water to the castle with its great stone walls.
“Did you not want to live there, Ma? I heard the women talking. They said we were all welcome.”
“We have our home, and though it was just a hut once, it’s stood longer than those walls. It stood when the O’Connors ruled, before the House of Burke. Kings and princes come and go, m’inion, but home is always.”
“I like the look of it, so grand and tall, but I like our woods better.” She leaned her head on her mother’s arm a moment. “Could the Burkes have taken our home?”
“They could have tried, but they were wise to respect magick. We have no fight with them, nor they with us.”
“If they did, Da would fight them. And so would I.” She slid her gaze toward her mother. “Dervla from the castle told me Cabhan was banished.”
“That you knew already.”
“Aye, but she said he comes back, and he lies with women. He whispers in their ear and they think he’s their lawful husband. But in the morning, they know. They weep. She said you gave the women charms to keep him away, but . . . he lured one of the kitchen maids away, into the bog. No one can find her.”
She knew of it, just as she knew the kitchen maid would never be found. “He toys with them, and preys on the weak to feed himself. His power is black and cold. The light and the fire will always defeat him.”
“But he comes back. He scratches at the windows and doors.”
“He can’t enter.” But she felt a chill through her blood.
Just then Eamon let out a shout, and when he yanked up his line, a fish flashed silver in the sunlight.
“Luck and skill,” Sorcha said with a laugh as she grabbed the net.
“I want to catch one.” Teagan leaned eagerly over the water as if searching for a likely fish.
“We’ll hope you do, as we’ll need more than one, even such a fine one. It’s good work, Eamon.”
They caught three more, and if she helped her baby a bit, the magick was for love.
She rowed them back with the sun sparkling, the breeze dancing, and the air full of her children’s voices.
A good, fine day, she thought, and spring so close she could almost taste it.
“Run on home then, Eamon, and clean those fish. You can get the potatoes started, Brannaugh, and I’ll see to the boat.”
“I’ll stay with you.” Teagan snuck her hand into her mother’s. “I can help.”
“That you can, as we’ll need to fetch some water from the stream.”
“Do fish like us to catch and eat them?”
“I can’t say they do, but it’s their purpose.”
“Why?”
And why, Sorcha thought as she secured the boat, had been Teagan’s first word. “Didn’t the powers put the fish in the wat
er, and give us the wit to make the nets and lines?”
“But they must like swimming more than the fire.”