“In any case, these grannie panties’ll fit a bit looser on you, but they’re brand-new—straight out of a package I grabbed on my last shopping trip in The Above. I just wish I’d known about your imminent arrival or I would’ve picked up something more for you.”
Somehow, I found myself reassuring the sister of one of my kidnappers. “It’s okay. I’m very grateful you came with any garments on such short notice. I’m sure everything will be fine.”
“Ah, we’ll see about that.” Brigid turned back to the pile of clothes. “I tried to find something conservative in my closet, but the only plain blue things I own are denims—and I’m a firm believer in letting my chest back up all household arguments. Hopefully, this will do you until we can get your dress laundered.”
I’d sworn to stop gaping less than an hour ago, when Brigid caught me staring at her. But my mouth fell open all over again when she held up a vibrant pink dress covered in strawberries with a scoop neck.
“My outsider husband got this for me as a bit of a joke back when we were in uni together. Because I’m a strawberry blonde, as they sometimes call us. He’s a blondie, so he didn’t know that bright pinks are a hard one for us pale girls to pull off. But I figured the color would look great on you, with all that lovely dark skin.”
She suddenly lowered the dress with a disappointed look. “Oh, ye hate it, don’t ye. I’ve got options, though—maybe?—”
“No, I want this one!” I all but snatched the dress out of her hands. Then my cheeks heated at her surprised look. “I’m not... I’m not that conservative. I only grew up in a conservative community. I’ve actually dreamed of wearing something other than plain blue—which actually looks awful on Black people with dark skin.”
A relieved grin split Brigid’s face. “In that case, we’ll have to see if I’m right about the color.”
A few minutes later, I found myself standing in front of the mirror Brigid referred to as a vanity—which was appropriate, considering I couldn’t keep myself from the prideful behavior of turning back and forth in the strawberry-print dress that hugged my chest before flaring out just below my waist into a swingy skirt.
“Aren’t ye gorgeous?” Brigid crowed. “I love when I’m proven right.”
I’d meant to ask Naomi to rebraid them for me the morning before the wedding, but I’d been so excited to tell her about my Alban sighting that I totally forgot.
Usually, I trusted my bonnet and prayer covering to hide their frizzy state. But it felt wrong, verging on insulting to pair this pretty of a dress with a clunky black bonnet.
“Would you be okay with wearing it down?” Brigid asked as if reading my mind. “Otherwise, I’ve got some French braiding skills that might work on your hair in a pinch.”
“I can braid too, but I never learned to do neat ones on my own hair. Maybe we can make wearing it down work, though.” I eagerly sat down in the chair in front of the vanity and beganunraveling the first of eight braids. “How long do I have before I’m expected to meet Tadhg?”
“However long we make him wait,” Brigid answered with a snort. “But here, I’ll help you.”
With no tools but our fingers, it took the two of us much longer than it would’ve taken my mother or Naomi to undo eight cornrows. I figured this was a good time to get in a few questions from my list.
Brigid answered them the best she could. Apparently, I’d guessed right—I was in a secret kingdom located beneath the western cliffs of Ireland. This was where the Irish Bear community had always lived.
But Brigid had no idea how it had been built.
“The rumor goes that the gods constructed it for us before they left, donkey eons ago. Before bears supposedly went extinct in Ireland, even. Most of our lives, the knowledge of how to use the god tech has been passed down from generation to generation. But the Shadow King’s the first of our kind to try to figure out how to employ it in The Above—and possibly replicate it.”
“The Shadow King lives in the black castle, right?”
“Right,” she confirmed. “And I live with Tadhg, our father, and my husbands in that scary mountain fortress you probably saw on your way in.”
I wanted to ask more about the fortress, but something else she said snagged my attention.
I was pretty sure she’d saidhusbands, plural.
Nothusband.
“So the Irish males really do take one wife in pairs?” I asked her, hoping the question wasn’t too rude.
“Sometimes in threes, even. It was said the tradition was started by the trio of serpent gods that created us. And by the time Christianity came to our shores, we were just too set in our ways.”
“So you believe your kind—bears—were created by a set of three gods?”
“Our kind and the Irish Wolves, too. What does your lot of bears believe over there in Canada?”
“Well, I don’t exactly know....” I told her the long—but actually pretty short—story of how I’d thought I was a she-wolf until this morning. A she-wolf who’d grown up in a community that taught us our monthly shifts were God’s punishment for the sins of greed and avarice that we were required to spend a lifetime in humble service to our community to make up for.
“Wow, Sades. Gotta admit, your puritan community does not sound like a craic time at all.” Brigid shook her head as she started on another braid, three rows up from my left ear. “I think I’ll stick with our creation myth.”
