Mairwen smiled. “Good.” Then, her pleased expression faded. “Their mother will nay be so easily defeated.”
Shona held out a ruby vial stoppered with a diamond. “The gemstones protect the tincture’s potency. Place three drops on yer lady’s tongue before her next sip of dragon’s tears.” After placing the vial in his hand, she bowed her head and stepped back to stand behind Mairwen once again.
“We will return to yer Grandsire’s lair up in the cliff and stand watch,” Mairwen told him. “Ye will not face this battle alone.” Her startling blue eyes hardened, turning an icier shade. “Ye are not the only soul with matters to settle with that witch.”
“Where is the hag now? Have ye seen her in yer divinations?”
“Close.” Mairwen’s mouth tightened into a flat, worried line. “We will hold her off with the glamour for as long as possible.”
“My son, Giddrie, can assist ye,” Noirgarth offered. “Ye will find him above, inside the keep with his brother Kannis.”
Mairwen accepted with a graceful nod. “We will seek him out. Giddrie’s talents with the energies are legendary. The sorcerer Larofess mentioned him several times in his journals.”
Noirgarth snorted a smoky sigh of resignation. “Aye, Giddrie was just as fascinated with Larofess.”
Mairwen turned back to Mathison. “Help yer mate heal. Help her learn how to shift. She must connect with her inner wolf more powerfully than before. The energies will much more readily hearken to her call if she has fully embraced her heritage and tapped into all of which she is capable.” Then, all the Weavers bowed as one and backed out of the lair.
“We will await yer call,” Mairwen called out as the shield sealed off the opening once again.
Help Calia learn to shift. Mathison scrubbed his face with both hands and groaned. Allowing one’s inner wolf to take control of the form wasn’t something that could be explained in easy steps to follow. Shifting just…was. It was a thoughtless action, as natural as breathing.
“As long as she believes,” Noirgarth said, “she will be able to do whatever she wills. Ye must convince her of such.” The dragon gave a sad shake of his head. “From her ramblings when her fever raged, it sounds as though her world believed in nothing but what they could see and touch. What a sad place it must be.”
“It is different there.” Mathison shuddered at the memory of the strangeness of Calia’s reality. He stared down at the ruby vial in his hand. “We must get her well first before she attempts any shifting. She’s currently too weak and also needs to regain her sight. Litress’s first time controlling the form does not need to be hampered by blindness.”
“Then we’d best return to the nursery and administer the tincture.”
“Aye,” Mathison agreed. “The sooner the better.”
Barely able to sit upright without being propped and supported by the trio of dragons’ eggs, Calia couldn’t imagine trying to manage something as complicated as changing into a wolf—especially since she had no idea how to do it. But Mathison had insisted they try, since the danger of Carman discovering them became greater with each passing day.
“You took all your clothes off the first time you shifted in front of me,” she asked him. “Why aren’t you doing it now whenever you shift? You’re just you one minute, and the next, Dubh is here. What’s happening to your clothes? Where are they going?”
“While Dubh is here, I think them into a nearby dimension where I can fetch them when next I need them.”
She blinked hard several times, her vision still a little blurry but a hundred percent better than before. “You are serious?”
“Aye.”
She held the wolfstone hanging at her throat, rubbing it with her thumb like she used to do with the worry rock her partner had once given her as a white elephant Christmas gift. “So, I have to learn that part too? The thinking of my clothes into another dimension.”
“It would benefit ye more often than not,” Mathison said. “Things can be fetched from wherever ye think them much quicker than backtracking to where ye left yer clothing.”
“You can do this,” Litress said. “Remember how you started the fire down in the pit?”
As Calia recalled, she had to get pretty irritated before the pile of bones finally exploded into flames.
“You must believe, remember?”
Mathison stood there, not so patiently watching her. Dubh had probably told him that Litress was doing her best to bolster what little confidence Calia had.
Surrounded by the eggs, she shifted to a kneeling position that forced her to be accountable for her own balance. Holding onto the side of the nest, she pulled in several deep, cleansing breaths and blew them out. “Uhm…how exactly do I know where I’m putting my clothes, since I’ve never done this before?”
“Ye must think them into the same place both when ye put them there, and when ye fetch them.” Mathison resettled his stance and folded his arms across his chest, obviously struggling to give her the time she needed to learn this. “Ye can do this, mo chridhe. Just believe.”
Just believe. That was the same thing Legion had told her. She wished she could explain to everyone concerned that convincing herself to believe in the unbelievable was no simple task. They couldn’t possibly understand because they’d always lived in a world filled with wonder and impossibly unexplainable things. In contrast, her world had always been one of facts and reality—what she could see, touch, and prove beyond any doubt. Miracles were the stuff of fairy tales. At least in her life, they were.
She rubbed her sweaty palms up and down her thighs, trying to scrub them dry on her jeans. “I’m going to think them into a black box on a shelf somewhere. Will that work?”
