Awakenings

Thordin went rigid, his hands falling away from Sif’s shoulders like ashes drifting on the wind.  “What?”

“The child had quickened by the time that trap was sprung,” she said, her voice still barely audible.  “I had no choice.  He would have been killed for who his father was and I knew you wouldn’t want that, even as stubborn as you are.  You wouldn’t have wanted your child condemned for being his father’s son.”

“Christus,” Thordin breathed.  “For all you knew, he had a hand in my betrayal.”

“He didn’t,” Sif said, stepping toward him even as Thordin fell back a step, back into arms’ reach of Thom and Marin.  “I know that he didn’t.  For all of his faults, your brother loved you.  He said that he wished he knew who’d done the dead so he could feed them their own entrails.”

Thordin shook his head hard, turning away.  “I know my brother.  For all that we came from—”

“He loved you.”

“You keep saying it in the past tense,” Marin said softly.  “Did something happen?”

“He’s probably dead,” Sif said simply.  “He walked off into the night one dark evening and no one has ever seen him again.”  She drew herself straighter, tearing her gaze from the back of Thordin’s neck and turning her eyes to Marin and Thom again.  ”Enough of this.  I’ll have your answer.”

“They’re spoken for, Sif.  Have a closer look at them.”

Thom flinched at the sound of Phelan’s voice, twisting toward his limping figure.  Phelan just grinned.

“Your brother’s got  good head on his shoulders, leánnan.  He took one look at what was brewing and came to find me.”

“Jacqueline’s going to kill you,” Marin said.

“Maybe,” Phelan agreed.  “Then again, maybe not.”

Thordin put his hand lightly on Phelan’s shoulder.  “She’s right, you don’t have to be out here.”

“Of course I do.”  Phelan looked right past the three of them to Sif.  “The sisters three are gunning for me and mine, Sif, and they’re not the only ones.”

“You and yours.  You can’t possibly—”  She stopped, staring at Marin and Thom for a long moment, then blinked and looked at Phelan again.  “Aes Dana.”

“If we dared, most of them would trace their descent straight back.”  Phelan patted Thom’s shoulder and then stepped between him and Marin.  Thom stepped up with him, ready to steady him if the need arose.

Sif swore quietly and shook her head hard.  “He won’t like this.”

“He doesn’t have to,” Phelan said in a quiet voice.  “Nor does he have to believe that ragnarok has actually come, because it hasn’t.  I would know.  They would know.”

“The world already ended,” Marin said quietly.  “We’re what’s left.”

Understanding dawned in Sf’s eyes.  “The war began before we ever realized it.”

“Come sit by our fire,” Marin said.  “Rest a while and tell us your story.  I think we’d all like to hear it.”  She cast a meaningful look at Thordin.

He just walked away.

“We don’t speak for everyone,” Marin said, ignoring the byplay going on between Thordin and Thom.  “We suggest, but the community on the whole makes the decision.  We can’t just declare that we’ll help you—or that we won’t help you.”

“Besides that, there’s an open question regarding what, exactly, would be the benefit for us?”  Thom crossed his arms.  “In case you didn’t notice, the world already ended and we’re already fighting a war.  How is what you’re asking us to step into different from what we’re already doing?”

Why the hell are you pounding on our gate and asking us for help if we’re already in the fight?

“You had mentioned your own war, yes.  This would pale.”

“Unless it’s the same war,” Thordin growled.

“I told you to be silent.”

“You also don’t speak to the dead,” Thordin countered.  “Does that mean I must still be breathing?”

She swore and spun away, boots crackling against the ice-crusted snow.  “Damn your eyes, Odinson!  Can’t you see what I’m trying to do for you?”

“Clearly not,” he said quietly, “because I keep poking a hornet’s nest to see what it might get me.”

She twisted, glaring at him.  “If I admit that you yet breathe, that you are the one I know in my heart you are, then I am honor and duty-bound to bring you back to face Ragnarok with the rest of us—to condemn you to your final doom if the stories be true.  I can’t bear that.”

“So you betray me instead?  Forget that I’m here, ignore my very existence?”  Thordin stepped away from Thom and Marin and approached their visitor, took her by the shoulders and gave her a firm shake.  “How long was it before you fell into his arms, Sif?”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“Wasn’t it?”

“Who told you that it was?”

“Someone I trust,” Thordin spat.  “How long was it?  How long was it before you slept with my brother?”

“You say it as if I had a choice,” the woman whispered, just barely loud enough for Thom and Marin to hear her.  “If I hadn’t, they would have killed your son.”

The woman pushed back her hood and planted the butt of her bow into the snow at her feet, ice-blue eyes narrowing as she watched their approach.

“Leave,” she barked at Thordin.  “I asked for the Seers and the Seers alone.”

“And you know that I’m not one of them?”  Thordin fired back as Thom and Marin scrambled to catch up with him.

“You know how I know.  Go.”  Her voice dropped slightly.  “I don’t speak to the dead.  I speak to those still living, those who may fight.”

“You will speak to me,” Thordin said.  Thom reached for his arm.

“Thordin—”

He shoved Thom away.  “She’ll speak to me,” he snapped, glaring over his shoulder.  “There is much to say.”

“I don’t speak to the dead,” the woman repeated, turning her attention to Thom and Marin.  “I come on the behalf of my brethren.  The end of all things has come and the last battle looms.  I come to learn who will stand and fight with us against the coming tide.”  She straightened and began a slow circuit around Thom and Marin, studying them like a predator circling a potential kill.  “I heard tales of you, even where I was, so far from here.  I had to come to see what the Wanderer had found, learn whether or not you would be of assistance to us.”

“We have our own war,” Thom said quietly.  “What would aiding you do for us?”

Marin’s elbow dug hard into his side.  He struggled to keep his expression impassive, watching the woman as she prowled around them.

“We’ve already made many enemies,” Thom continued.  “I don’t know that we can afford to borrow more.”

“A valid and wise question,” the woman said, stopping in front of them.  “But the fact of the matter is, either you are with us or you are against us.  There is no in between.”

“This isn’t the days of old, Sif,” Thordin said.  “There are a thousand shades of gray to our existence now.”

“Be silent, Odinson!  I do not speak to you.  You are dead.  I do not speak to the dead.  My offer is not for the dead.  My question is for the living only, now hold your peace lest I forget what happened so many centuries ago and put you to the question as well.”

Thom just stared at her as Thordin went rigid.  “Thordin,” he said softly, “who is she?”

“A woman I loved,” Thordin whispered.  “A very, very long time ago.”

“It was stupid to try to leave me in bed,” Marin murmured to him as they headed for the wall, for the gate.  “Why did you do it?”

“You were tired,” Thom said, his voice quiet as he leaned his head toward hers, trying to keep their conversation as private as possible.  “And with the nightmares—”

“I wasn’t having nightmares.”

He just stared at her for a long moment.  She stared right back and he swallowed hard.

“Fine.  With the nasty visions you were having last night, I thought that since you’d finally settled in I’d let you get some of the sleep you’ve been needing.”

She sighed softly and leaned her head against his shoulder for a brief moment, fingers weaving through his and squeezing.  “What I need goes out the window in the face of what everybody needs.  I know that you worry about me more than you worry about everyone else, but that needs to take a backseat when there are dozens of other lives depending on us to make the right choice.”

Thom fought against the tightness in his throat as he swallowed again.  “Right.  Of course.”

“You don’t have to like it.”

“Good, because I don’t.”

Matt eased past them to arrive at the gate first.  Thom gave Marin’s hand a quick squeeze before he stepped away from her, toward the gate.  Matt shook his head, holding up a hand.  “Stay there,” he said.  “I’ll open the gates and you two head out there to meet her.  Thordin and I can cover you from here.”

“She said come alone, didn’t she?”  Marin smiled wryly and shook her head.  “She could get pissed that you two are here.”

“That’s why we’ll be staying by the gate,” Matt said.  He gave his sister a weary, worried smile and turned back toward the gate, gloved hands making quick of lifting the latch.  Thordin helped him lift the bar away and set it aside.  Together, then men threw open the gates to the snowy expanse of field beyond the walls, dark in the pre-dawn.

“We should have brought a lantern along,” Thom muttered, shaking his head at his own lack of foresight.  Marin laughed softly.

“We’ll have more than enough light soon enough.”  She looked beyond the gates to the snowy field, her eyes tracking the slender, shadow-cloaked form that emerged from the brush.  The sound of boots on snow echoed eerily in the silence of the early morning.  “There she is,” she said softly.  “The Lady of the Rowan.”

Thordin tore his eyes from the specter and looked at Marin.  “What?”

“That’s how she identified herself to Matt and Paul.  Lady of the Rowan.  Paul told me.”

His gaze drifted back to the figure and he swore.  Thom rocked back against his heels.

“Something wrong?”

“I’m coming out there with you,” Thordin said, tone brooking no argument.

“She said that only Thom and Marin—”

Thordin cut off Matt’s protest with a wave of his hand.  “She’ll deal.  Let’s go.”

He was already crossing the snow pack before anyone could stop him.

“God help us all,” Thom muttered before he took off after him, dragging Marin in his wake.

One of these days, it’s going to be him, not Phelan, that gets us all killed.

“She said both of you.”

Thom shook his head, downing a mouthful of coffee.  “Let her sleep.  She was a mess yesterday when I finally got her into bed.  Just leave her be.”

Matt frowned, glancing back over his shoulder, away from the fire as he zipped up his parka.  “I’m not sure it’s a good idea, Thom, whether Mar needs the sleep or not.”

“She’ll settle for me and Thordin,” Thom said, glancing toward the other man, who was lacing up his boots as he reclined near the fire.  “Ready?”

“Will be in a second.”

“You can’t possibly be ready,” Marin’s voice said from somewhere behind Thom.

He winced.  Dammit.  She was dead asleep when I got up.

“Paul woke me,” she said in answer to the question he hadn’t asked.  She buttoned her coat and crossed her arms, giving her husband a long, measuring look.  “Did you really think it was a brilliant idea to go and treat with someone who specifically asked for both of us alone?”

“It would have been fine.  It still could be fine.”  He reached out and brushed his thumb across her cheek as he cupped her jaw in one bare hand.  “Go back to bed, Mar.”

“Not until we’re done dealing with the woman who could have killed my brother last night if she’d wanted to.”  She jerked her chin toward the outdoors, away from the fire.

Thom swallowed a sigh.  Stubborn.  “Fine.  Let’s go.  Coming, Thordin?”

“Wouldn’t miss it.”  The big man rolled to his feet.  “Someone’s got to cover the two of you.  Matt can’t do it alone.”

“I could,” Matt said as he smothered a yawn, “but I wouldn’t want me to do it alone.”

“There you go,” Thordin said.

“We need to get moving,” Thom said as he swallowed the last of his coffee.  “It’s nearly dawn.”

He had no doubt that despite his cavalier attitude toward the whole affair, this mysterious lady of the Rowan wasn’t the type to keep waiting.

Flat on his back in the snow, Matt wheezed, struggling to catch his breath.  His shoulder ached, his lungs burned.  All the wind had been knocked out of him when he’d landed in the snow behind the wall.

He could hear Paul frantically calling his name over the sound of his heart roaring in his ears.  Matt tried to croak a response, trying to push himself up onto his elbows and finding it hard—breathing was hard.

What the hell hit me?  An arrow lay in the snow behind his head, one without a tip.  There was no blood on his shoulder.

Matt heard the first peal of the alarm bell and managed to recover his voice.

“Paul!  I’m all right.  Stop ringing it.”  He climbed to his feet and scooped up the arrow.  The flight was black with a silver stripe, the tip blunted.  Breathing was getting easier.

Paul’s boots made a racket as he jogged through the snow toward him.  “Shit,” he panted as he drew up alongside Matt.  “I saw you go flying and I figured we must ne under attack.  What the h—” His eyes widened in the moonlight.  “That’s an arrow.  We are under attack.”

“It’s blunted,” Matt said, handing the arrow to him.  “It’s a warning.”  He went back to the wall, clambering up to the top again.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Having another look.”  Matt hoisted himself up onto the top of the wall, gaze scything across the open snow pack.

He froze.

A broad-shouldered woman stood in the middle of the field of white, blonde hair limmed in silver moonlight, tumbling down over cloak-shrouded shoulders.  She held a bow in both hands, pointed at the ground between her booted feet.  Her chin lifted as Matt topped the wall and their eyes met across the distance.

He shivered, not quite flinching under that gaze.

“The arrow was a warning,” she called, her voice firm, commanding.  “Come dawn, you will produce the Seers who lead your community.  I will treat with them and no others.  They are to meet me before your gates to speak on what the future holds.

“I mean no harm to you so long as long as my request is met.  I only wish to talk, not to cause harm, but I will if I must.

“You have until dawn.”

Matt found his voice again as the woman turned to go.  “Who are you?”

She looked back over her shoulder at him.  “The Lady of the Rowan.   Until tomorrow.”

She turned and walked away, vanishing into the brush.

“Matt?”

“Wake Thom and Marin,” Matt said, feeling like his soul had just been flayed open and left bare on the snow.  “Tell them we have a problem.”

His breath steamed in the cold, the fog illuminated by the moon, the stars above.  He’d almost come to enjoy these night watches, twice a week on the graveyard shift with Paul in the tower and him on foot along the perimeter.  Matt shoved his hands deeper into his pockets and stared off into the darkness along the walls. No shadows moved against the snow.  No one here, just like every other night.

He glanced at the sky, half expecting to see some kind of shadow cross the moon. Nothing.

Nothing, just like every other night out here.

Don’t get used to it, he told himself.  Sometime, someday, it’s going to happen and you’ll have to be ready for it.

His newly-crafted war axe hung from a harness across his shoulders, the flat of its deadly double blade nestled against the small of his back.  Thordin was pleased with his progress with the weapon—pleased enough that he’d declared the newly minted blacksmith capable enough to carry the weapon on these patrols.  He wouldn’t have done that if he hadn’t thought him ready.

Phelan had frowned but said nothing.  Thom had just laughed and Marin shook her head.

It is what it is.  That’s what she said.  The expression on his sister’s face had been somewhere between troubled and sad, a strange expression he’d never seen on her face before.

“I wonder what she knows,” he murmured into the night as his boots crunched on the ice-crusted snow.  Sunny afternoons had caused enough melt to coat the snow in a thin layer of ice that crackled and broke underfoot, not sturdy enough to hold even Angie.  All Matt could hope was that it was the harbinger of spring to come.  Now that February was here, it couldn’t be long.

He’d made the mistake of saying that to Greg, who’d just grimaced and shook his head in a way that told Matt that the professor didn’t think that was the case but didn’t want to dash anyone’s hope by saying so.

Paul’s lantern flashed in his peripheral vision and he glanced up toward the tower and the man minding it.  Paul was pointing out beyond the wall a dozen yards from where Matt stood.

“Have a look!” Paul called, his voice pitched just loud enough to carry to him and no further.

Matt tossed him a salute and headed for the wall, clambering up to the perch near the gate.  He peered across the snowpack  that glowed with moonlight.  “I don’t—”

He stopped as he saw something move, perhaps fifty yards or more from the wall, a shadow amidst snow-laden rubble and brush.  He leaned forward slightly, squinting, trying to get a better look.

Nothing.  He scarcely dared to breathe, focusing on the area where he’d seen the shadow.

“Can’t be my imagination,” he muttered.  “Can it?”

Something slammed into his shoulder and toppled him off the wall into the snow.

A long silence stretched between us as we watched the shadows lengthen, as if neither one of us were quite sure what to say.  It was awkward, almost painful.

I took a deep breath.  “They named him Seamus,” I said.  Anything to break the silence.  It was my own small peace offering.  He’d asked what I’d Seen.  I hoped saying that would be enough.

Phelan stared at me in confusion for a moment, blinking and frowning.  “What?”

“Teague and Kira.  They named their son Seamus.  The son that you knew they were having when they left Chicago to go wherever the hell they were going to be safe from the end of the world.”

His eyes narrowed slightly.  “How did—no.  I don’t want to ask that question, do I?”

I shook my head.  “Probably not.  But they named him Seamus, for your cousin.”  I fell quiet again for a moment before I asked, “Do you think he’s alive?  Your cousin?”

“Teague and Neve’s brother?”  Phelan sighed, raking his hands through his hair.  “I don’t know,” he said, his voice quiet.  “Part of me wants to believe that he is.  Then there’s the logical part of me that says that it can’t be true, that we’re living in some kind of dreamworld if we believe for even a heartbeat that he might be alive.”  He shook his head, sounding wistful for a moment.  “But it’s a nice thought.  In a lot of ways, he was the best of us.”

“You miss him a lot,” I said softly.

“He’s the reason I’m the Taliesin,” Phelan said simply, staring at the snow.  “He’s the reason I’m here—maybe even the reason I am the way I am, but I have to claim some of the credit for that myself.”  He sighed again and shook his head.  “I miss him, leánnan. We all miss him.”

“He’s your cousin,” I said.  “Of course you miss him.”

Phelan shook his head slightly.  “A lot of things changed once he was gone, leánnan,” he said softly.  “Maybe things that shouldn’t have changed.  Things that led to our current path.”

I leaned against him for a moment, sliding my arm around his shoulders.  “Then it can’t be all bad.  Occasional nasty circumstances aside, I think we’re all pretty happy.”

Phelan snorted softly and I poked him.

“It’s true,” I sad.  “I think we’re all better off now than we were a few months ago, before the end of everything.”

“Maybe,” he said, eyes staring at something long ago and far away.  “Maybe.”

“Why did you send her to get me instead of sending her to get J.T. right away?”

Phelan flinched at the sound of my voice, half twisting toward me.  The sun was slipping beyond the trees, shadows stretching long and blue against the snow as he perched on what I’d started calling Thom’s rock, since I so often saw my husband sitting there despite the cold.

“Tala and the babies are settled, then?”

“Kurt’s asleep and she’s nursing Gwen.”  I shoved my hands deep into my pockets.  “Are you going to answer my question?”

“Jacqueline could have delivered those babies without J.T.’s help,” Phelan said.  “But Tala wouldn’t have weathered it very well if you hadn’t been there.”

“All I did was hold her hand,” I said.  “That’s not much.”

“Sometimes, that’s all you need.” He watched me for a long moment, then asked quietly, “What did you see while it was happening?”

I shivered, knowing better than to ask how he knew.  I squeezed onto the rock next to him and shook my head.  “Better left unsaid.”

“Are you sure?”

“I don’t want to discuss it, Phelan.”  I drew a knee up to my chest and rested my chin on it.  “And you still should have sent Carolyn to get J.T., not me.”

“Everything turned out all right,” he said.  “So settle down.”

“Sooner or later, you’re going to lose the right to just say that and expect me to do it,” I told him.  I looked at him sidelong and sighed quietly.

“But that’s not happening today, is it?”

“No,” I admitted.  “No, not today.”

He settled his arm around my shoulders and squeezed me in a brief, warm hug.  “Everything’s starting,” he said quietly.  “You can feel it the same as I can.”

I nodded slightly, staring at the snow sparkling in the dying light of day.  “But I don’t have all the stories and tales and legends that you have to know what it all means, how it all fits together.”

“You’re happier not knowing,” he said softly.

Somehow, I knew he was telling the truth.

            My whole world hurt, a screaming, almost blinding pain.  It was pain unlike anything I’d ever experienced—save once before.

            A hand squeezed my shoulder and Jacqueline’s encouraging voice faded from my ears as I looked up, expecting to see Thom standing beside me.

            The trim, dark-haired figure wasn’t my husband, though—it was our son, a boy who’d become a young man without our being here to watch.

            “Don’t worry, Mom,” he said, fingers squeezing again.  “He’s coming.”

            “He shouldn’t be,” I croaked.  “He should stay where he is.”

            “He didn’t miss it for me, did he?”

            “He very nearly did,” I said, gritting my teeth as another contraction hit.  “He should have stayed in bed that time, too, but he wouldn’t listen.  J.T. brought him.  I was too tired to be angry.”  Too happy to be angry, too much in awe of what we’d created.  I reached up and squeezed my son’s arm.  “You don’t have to stay.”

            “I want to.  You waited almost eighteen years to give me a little brother or sister.  I don’t want to miss a second that I don’t have to.”

            I squeezed my eyes shut, dimly aware that Jacqueline was telling me to push.  Bizarrely, I found myself missing Ériu, who had gone to her rest some years before.  J.T. had told me about it—he’d actually shed a few tears when she’d said good-bye, leaving him with a promise that they’d see each other again someday.

            “Almost there, Mar.  One or two big pushes.”

            I sucked in a breath and steeled myself for the last and worst of it.  My son took my hand and squeezed.

            “It’s okay, Mom,” he whispered.  “It’s going to be okay.”

I gasped softly in pain as Tala’s hand spasmed around mine.  I jerked back to myself, blinking back stinging tears that had come from nowhere.

“One or two more, Tala.  You can do it.”

I shivered at Jacqueline’s words, so like what she’d said to me in the vision.

“Kurt and Gwen,” Tala whispered to me through gritted teeth.  “I’m naming them Kurt and Gwen.”

“Your mom’s name was Gwen,” I said quietly.

She nodded as I mopped sweat from her brow again.  “Feels right.  Don’t you think so?”

“Push now, Tala.  Hard, hard!”

“Yeah,” I said, not sure if she’d hear me.  “Yeah, I do.”

Phelan’s eyes met mine over Tala’s head.  He gave me a slight nod that almost made me shiver again.  Sometimes, even knowing all I knew, being aware of all I was aware of, the sense of knowing still terrified me.

I wondered if that would ever change.

Then, my fear stopped mattering at the first sound of a baby’s cry.