“Tell me exactly the spell you used,” I said. “Leave nothing out.”
She began to reel off the enchantment. It was in a very old dialect of Brittonic, old to her anyway. It wasn’t quite a spell of healing, more a compulsion. There was a crux in the words that I thought she might have misheard, that would change the effect to suck in life from others rather than encourage the body to heal itself. I replayed the dim memories again. She must have pulled at my own power rather than hers, through the channel I had opened to free her sister’s soul.
“Ah,” I said when she finished. “Well, you’re very lucky. That spell would have drained the life out of you to heal her. If I hadn’t interceded you’d have healed her and died yourself.”
She froze, stealing a look at her sister. I thought I detected a flash of guilt in her expression.
Probably some sort of survivor’s remorse. I’d seen it before among humans.
“Unfortunately for me,” I continued, “I appear to have lost my own power in her curing.”
“You seem very calm,” she ventured, taking a step closer to me. I backed away from her, turning so she could not see my face. If I had no power I was no longer me, no longer a goddess. I thought about my foot, my blurred vision. The answer loomed into my mind as inescapable as death itself. I was human.
Anger flooded through my body, red-hot and resentful.
“I am not calm,” I said, turning back to face her. “I am trying to restrain myself from murdering you. You have absolutely no idea what you’ve done, the souls that will suffer without me to guide them. It’s bad enough that this damned rebellion has distracted me from my regular work. I am already behind on my rounds, having been forced to spend my time on your battlefields. Now this.”
She recoiled a bit from my glare but not as much as I felt appropriate. Clod-brained mortal. I waved a hand in dismissal.
“Go, you have caused enough damage. Tend to your sister and leave me in peace. I must figure out how to undo your mess.”
My words would have banished any other human, ringing in their ears ’til their dying day, but this woman didn’t so much as flinch. My heart constricted as I heard how small and weak my voice sounded.
I sat back down on the stony ground and rested my head in my hands. There must be a way out of this. I needed to go to Annwn and consult with the lord of the afterworld. He might be able to restore me. How to get there, though? It was an hour’s run from here in my old body but somehow I doubted this mortal form could cover three hundred miles that fast. I could call on a friend. I had many old allies among the fae who would be willing to help. None of them lived in this particular part of the island, though, and without my power I could not call them here.
I noticed that the freckled woman was bent over her sister, trying to shake her awake.
“Cati, Cati, wake up!” she called, her strong hands gripping her sister’s shoulders. She shook her again, more forcefully this time, then tried to prise her eyelids open.
“Cati, please, you’re all healed now, wake up! You have to wake up. We have to go, we can’t stay here. The Romans will be coming for us.”
“Can you be quiet, mortal? I am trying to make a plan,” I snapped at her. She looked over at me and I could see tears starting to bud in her eyes.
“Cati won’t wake up. I don’t understand. You said she was healed.” Her voice cracked in pain.
I wasn’t going to be able to concentrate if she started blubbering and making a fuss. I sighed heavily and went over on still wobbly legs to see what the problem was. The girl, Cati presumably, looked in perfect health. I opened her mouth to see if there was a blockage. Nothing. There was a very faint heartbeat, slow and weak as a kitten’s. I took her hand and raised it above her face then dropped it, my lips thinning at the effort it took to lift it. Her arm flopped down without even a trace of resistance.
I glanced at the freckled woman. She looked back at me, hope battling despair. I peeled back the lids from Cati’s eyes. She had the same grey-green irises as her sister, the shade of pine needles after the first frost. Of more interest to me was the shape of her pupils. They were wide, blown-out black circles and did not contract at the daylight. That was not a good sign.
“Bad news, I am afraid.” I closed her eyes again and sat up. “Her body is healed but her soul has already gone. I must have dislodged it when I was trying to untangle her. She’s not going to wake up. Best thing to do is smother her. Her soul will be stuck at the gates of Annwn until her body dies.”
“What?” The freckled woman dragged her sister closer. “Don’t touch her, she looks fine.”
I shrugged and stood. “Suit yourself. You can sit here and watch her waste away if you like, but it will take months. Seems a little cruel to me but my work here is done.”
She dropped Cati and rose faster than I expected, seizing me by the front of my tunic. “You sent her soul to Annwn. Call it back, you made a mistake, call it back,” she hissed.
“Unhand me, wench. Do you know who you are assaulting?”
“Yes, yes, I know, and I do not care. Bring her back right now.”
I blinked at her, surprised at the strength with which she had grabbed me. Dormath growled and stood up.
“Now be reasonable,” I said. “Your sister, Cati, is it? She was going to die anyway. You may have slowed it a little with your spell but sooner or later it was going to start draining your life and you would have had to stop or die yourself. This has all been very upsetting, I’m sure, but you’re not the only one in the world who’s lost someone today. The Firebrand’s whole rebellious force is lying scattered on the field just east of these woods. I spent most of last night helping thousands who will be just as mourned. So let me go!”
“How do I get her soul back?” she asked, ignoring my words. “You said it wouldn’t have gone into Annwn yet. There must be a way to call it back before it does.”
I gave the matter some thought. A soul that had passed through the gates of Annwn could never return to their mortal body, but one who merely lingered there? It was possible, I supposed, though I had never heard of such a thing.
