“Madam?” Moira tilted her head and quirked one eyebrow in an expression soIrianthat it unhinged something inside me. I fought the urge to laugh. Or cry. “Pray, what does it mean?”
“My… friend… does not hail from these parts.” Irian shot me a glance that bubbled with mirth and seared with heat. I flushed a little. “But where Fia comes from, I believe it is an honorific.”
“Well.” Moira wiped her hands on her apron and gestured for us to follow her into the cottage. “No honorifics necessary.Moirawill do. I was about to make lunch. Will you join me for a meal?”
“We would love to,” I managed. “Can I bring anything in from the garden?”
I recognized some of the roots and vegetables in Moira’s kitchen garden. There were spring onions and stripy little radishes and something blue I was happy to name asparagus. Beyond that, I was at sea. Translucent berries clustered thin prickled vines; flame-colored tubers peered from the rich dirt.
“Not those,” Moira said, sharp, when I tried to dig them up. “They won’t be ready until Midsummer. And then may only be gathered before the dawn.”
I jerked my hands away, afraid to ask what would happen otherwise.
We loaded a bounty into her basket and carried it into the cottage. It was a spare, neat little house. Irian had called it drafty—I thought it cozy. A fire crackled in the hearth; blankets heaped over chairs; whimsical tapestries warmed the walls with bright colors and inviting shapes. As my eyes adjusted, I realized they must be Moira’s creations—a generous loom set against one wall featured a weaving in progress. I wafted closer to it as Moira bustled around the kitchen and Irian set a kettle to boil over the fire. I ran my fingers over the warp and weft, not quite touching. There were a thousand threads in blue and silver and inky black, tugging at theedges of my imagination. I stared at the half-woven tapestry but couldn’t tell what the picture was meant to be.
“These are beautiful.” A swift glance at the walls showed me a hundred splendid stories, picked out in painstaking detail using thread and imagination. Wind-racked seas with sunset-hued salmon dancing above the waves. Lovers racing across bloody moors as they were pursued by enemies. A wild hunt streaming across a stormy sky. “Are you a weaver by trade?”
“My—Moira is a seer.” Irian poured hot water into a teapot and set out a few cups with a pot of honey. I stared a little. I’d never seen him so domestic. “As she weaves, she glimpses the future and spies the past.”
“It’s useless magic,” Moira said, matter-of-factly, as she sliced bread and stirred stew. “The past is gone and cannot be changed. The future is malleable but not fully formed. And I never see anyone I know or care to seek out.”
“I daresay living on a cliff at the edge of nowhere with no one but the gulls for company lends itself to a small social circle,” Irian chided, gently.
Moirahrmphed. “I have no great love for Folk, nor they for me. I cannot bide idle chatter.”
I smothered a laugh. Like mother, like son.
Lunch was delicious. Crusty brown bread warmed over the fire, a vegetable stew that was both light and hearty, tea that tasted like a dream of summer to come. Despite Moira’s protestations, we chatted about idle things. Irian inquired after Moira’s herd of whimsy rams, which I gathered were sheep magically bred to produce colored wool so it did not have to be dyed before spinning. In response, she made an irritated noise deep in her throat.
“The whole herd jumped off a nearby cliff one cold autumn morning and flew away south.” She dunked her bread in her stew. “No one told me the damned things migrated for the winter. So I’m back to dyeing my yarn with yarrow and beetroot as the living gods intended.”
Eventually, I relaxed enough to ask about her garden and all the wondrous things growing in it, and she was happy to share her secrets for keeping slugs at bay and fending off weeds. She rattled off the names of plants I’d never heard of, and I listened intently, filing them away.
As if I was ever going to get the chance to plant my own kitchen garden. In Tír na nÓg… or anywhere else.
When the food was gone and the plates all cleared away, the mood shifted, subtly but perceptibly. I did not have to touch Irian—or even look at him—to understand how difficult this was for him. He must relish this rare closeness to the woman who had borne him, raised him. He must also dread the inevitable goodbye, made all the more grievous for the fact that she did not remember him.
Could never love him.
We put it off as long as we could, until the sun began to slant sideways through the rheumy panes. Moira fidgeted in her chair, her fingers moving in unconscious patterns as if she was eager to light her candles and begin her weaving. At last, Irian stood, and I with him.
A shaft of dust-shimmering sunlight landed on a tapestry on the far wall, distracting me. Not one tapestry—many, hung one atop another, all different shapes and sizes but layered in a thick stack. I frowned, glancing around to confirm that all the other tapestries were hung singularly. Curiosity got the best of me, and I crossed to inspect it.
The weaving showed an image of a man, tall and dark-haired, wielding a naked black sword as he faced down a massive yellow-eyed, dark-mawed ollphéist amid skeins of dense fog.
Realization shivered through me. It was Irian.
I jerked the hanging to look at the one beneath. Irian, a little less tall, standing beside a mahogany-haired boy on a white cliff above a blue sea. Gnarled golden trees crowned a hill far above them.
Irian, hollow-eyed and hungry-cheeked, pursued by faceless enemies across flowering fields.
Irian, hair grown out and eyes haunted, as he carried a limp female figure through a metal-streaked canyon. Above, specks of red circled against an azure sky.
Irian. They were all Irian.
Wonder and worry shoved my gaze to his. His eyes were fixed on the many-layered tapestries, as if he’d never seen them before. Emotions gusted across his face—hope and longing and rock-hard resignation.
How many times had he been forced to confront this awful pain? And how many times had he returned for more?
