‘You saw everything,’ Nanny Bet says.
I nod. ‘How could you pretend your own daughter didn’t exist?’ The night air chills the tears on my cheek that I didn’t even know were there.
Nanny Bet’s head sinks forward and she lets out a groan. ‘My girl, my baby girl.’ Her shoulders sag as she sobs. ‘You… you took everything from me. My daughter, my husband and now my son. You take everything.’
Meg sweeps forward in a single movement and takes Nanny Bet’s throat in her hands again, gripping tightly. ‘You failed in your duty.’
Nanny Bet spits in her face. Meg’s hand jerks back like strings pulled by a puppeteer and slaps her.
The sound ignites a flame in my chest. ‘Meg, you’re hurting her.’
She flicks a finger and we’re released from our bonds. I scramble over to stand between my nan and Meg: my friend and the goddess within her. ‘So you showed me the truth. What do you want now?’
Meg smiles like we’re talking about what paint to buy for an art project. ‘She wants you to do your duty.’
Nanny Bet’s stands. ‘Fuck ourduty.The things you made me see. The murders, wars, people screaming in pain, broken bodies, torn and bloated. Generation after generation. Ghosts haunted my every waking moment. But I did my duty because that’s what my family has always done.’
She wipes away a tear. ‘My mother told me to remember the dead. To remember the sacrifices that people made, those that fought for what they believed in to protect this land. To create art that would move people.’
‘And then you broke your blood oath,’ says the goddess.
‘You took my daughter,’ Nanny Bet growls.
As Meg raises her hand again, the black spots pucker, like something is trying to push through. Bones crack as the talons of a bird rip through her nail beds, blood dripping on the grass. Meg screams, but then the Morrigan’s voice grates out like metal. ‘She was a warrior. A poet and a fighter. A soldier with goddess-given powers. A martyr. She died protecting this land.’
‘She was a child!’ screams Nanny Bet. ‘A child you filled with poison and hatred. She didn’t know what she was doing.’
‘You should be proud of her. She was fighting the army—’
‘You know nothing of this place,’ shouts Nanny Bet. ‘This is not the Ireland of the old stories and myths. What the people here went through was unlike anything else before. Yes, great wrongs were done to this community, but it was not one of your old wars. My Brigid was a frightened, angry child picking up a weapon.
‘And now you’ve manipulated another child who’s read books and done stupid little spells in her room, rosemaryinfused love potions and fantasies of war. Neither of you knows what it’s like to lose someone.’
Fury settles into Meg’s hardened features, and when she speaks I hear three voices, coarse, hot and raging. ‘We are war and death. It is not your place to question us. You are there to tell our stories.’
‘You murdered my child and expected me to watch it play out time and time again. You drove my son to madness and my husband to…’ Her voice cracks again. ‘I blamed him for what happened, but it was you.’
‘He was a fighter too.’
The tricolour on the coffin. I clear my throat. ‘Was Granda Frank in the IRA?’
Nanny Bet nods.
‘Was Dad?’
‘No, he was too young to really know what was going on, but Brigid idolised Frank. She loved her visions too. She actively sought out glimpses of war, replayed every murder that happened during the Troubles. She’d talk to your granda late into the night…’ She glares at Meg. ‘She was blinded by rage and…’
I wipe at my eyes. ‘What happened?’
Nanny Bet’s breathing is ragged but she takes a steadying breath. ‘She was at a demonstration and a soldier fired a rubber bullet and…’ She breaks down and her words are lost until she takes a calming breath and speaks shakily. ‘Your granda and daddy saw it all.’
I feel like I’m going to be sick.
‘She died fighting for what she believed in.’
There is a kindness in her tone and I hate it. ‘My dad was never the same again after what he saw.’
Nanny Bet breathes in sharply and Meg’s eyes flicker over her.
