I was eighteen when we reached a place of staying. A place where fruit the size of fists hung from trees and a line of deep blue stretched across the horizon as far as we could see.
It had been a long journey. A terrible greatness had rolled across the land that none of us could have imagined. The wilderness howled with the desolation, carrying the cries of the dead.
Sometimes food was as scarce as courage. There were days I kept them alive on grass, bark, and false hope. I lied to keep them moving forward one more step. I told the children stories to distract them from their fears. Whether there was one god or four, I didn’t know, but I called upon any who would listen. They whispered back to me. On the winds, in a glint of light, colors playing behind my eyelids, words tickling at my neck and nesting in my gut. Kee
p going. My ways were quiet, soft, a trusting and a listening that was sometimes not fast enough to stay Fergus’s hand. If it wasn’t my face that suffered the cost, it was Jafir’s or that of anyone within swinging distance.
I mourned for the gentleness of my tribe, and at times thought I couldn’t go on, but Ama was right. It was in the sorrows, in the fear, in the need, that the knowing gained flight, and I had much of all these. I remembered that eight-year-old girl I had once been, the one who had cowered between boulders waiting to die. In my years spent with the tribe, I’d thought I understood fear. I’d thought I knew loss.
I hadn’t.
Not in the way I knew now.
Desperation grew teeth. Claws. It became an animal inside me that knew no bounds, unspeakable, just as Jafir had tried to explain to me so long ago. It tore open my darkest thoughts, letting them unfurl like black wings.
When the end of the journey was in sight, Fergus said what I knew he would all along. I was to be Steffan’s wife. Jafir was to pay in flesh for his betrayal. For Fergus to give me what I had bargained for was the same as giving away power, and power was all that mattered to him, especially now that I had given him a new world and a fresh, limitless beginning was in his grasp.
There was no question in my mind what I would do. I had planned it for months. I killed Steffan first. He had possessively jerked me away when Fergus announced his decision, but in a quick, practiced turn, I buried my knife deep in his throat, and he gasped futilely for air. When Steffan fell dead at my feet, Fergus leapt at me, but Jafir was ready and brought his father down with a swift thrust into his heart. None mourned the loss of Fergus and Steffan, and Piers declared Jafir head of the clan.
“There,” Jafir had said when at last he saw the green hills and vines of fruit. “It is all yours, Morrighan. You led us here.” He reached out and plucked a handful of the wide blue sky and placed it in my palm.
“Ours, Jafir,” I answered.
I dropped to my knees and wept for all the days, the weeks, the months—and for the lost—those who didn’t finish the journey with us. Laurida, Tory, and the baby Jules. I wept for those I would never see again. Ama and my tribe. I wept for the cruelties.
Jafir knelt beside me, and we gave thanks, praying that this was truly the end, praying it was the new beginning we had sought.
We stood and watched as the clan ran ahead of us into the valley that would become our home. Jafir pressed his hand to the small mound growing in my belly and smiled.
Our hope.
“We have been blessed by the gods,” he said. “The cruelties of the world are behind us now. Our child will never know them.”
I closed my eyes, wanting to believe him. Wanting to forget the blood that had been spilled by our hands, wanting to believe we could start fresh, just as my tribe had in that small vale so long ago, wanting to believe that this time our peace would last.
And then I heard a familiar voice on the wind, one I had heard so many times, calling out to me.
From the loins of Morrighan,
Hope will be born.
On its heels came a whispered name that was always just beyond my reach, not yet mine to hear, but I knew that one day my children’s children or the ones who came after would hear it.
One day hope would have a name.