I changed the subject. “Is that why you must tend the flocks of others? Your father has given you no allotment of land?” For in sooth, he was far heartier than the shepherd we’d had previously, with a bad leg and a dog who did most of the work.
“You speak quite plain, lass.” He did not seem offended, thank the Great Mother Mab, more amused.
I did not know how to speak otherwise. My tongue could permit no lie, and I had yet to learn the art of speaking around the truth. “Eamon tells me that all the time.”
The shepherd cocked his head. “You call your father by his Christian name?”
I nodded, wishing he would drop the subject. I could hardly call Eamon otherwise. A true father to me he had never been, not by spirit or by blood.
The shepherd turned away from me and shrugged. “Shepherding suits me.” His expression was like a door closing upon me, defying me to push my way through.
“It is not a bad life, then? To be a shepherd?”
He glanced back over his shoulder, lips curling on one side. “Are you looking for work, lass? Beyond helping your family, and the winnowing at harvest time?”
I had not considered it before. There had never been any question of me leaving Mairi’s bedside. “I do not know what’s to become of me, now Mairi is gone. Eamon may not need my aid any longer. There are none who want to wed me, and I have no skill.”
The shepherd snorted. “No skill? You tended to your ailing mother for the past five years. No matter how much she denied you, you stayed by her side. And before then, did you serve as her helper and aid? Is that worth nothing?”
He had noticed so much. It made my cheeks grow warm despite the chilly air.
Yet the only one who could testify to my skills was now gone. What’s more, Eamon and the priest had made it clear they disapproved of Mairi’s occupation, and I was not to follow in her footsteps, though it was the closest to a trade I knew.
Not well enough. Not enough to save Mairi’s life. “I could not help her. I tried every philter I had ever seen her make, every herb I had ever seen her pluck, but could find no answers.”
And if aught of Faery could have helped her, I had long since proven far too weak.
The shepherd stared at me for some time. “Sometimes there are no answers to find.”
“Tell the priest.” My brows beetled and I twisted my hand in my skirt. “He bends Eamon’s ear and says Mairi was prideful. That she sought to interfere in the will of the Lord. She got what she deserved.”
The shepherd cocked his head. “And what do you say?”
“She was a good woman and I loved her.” I fought back a sob. For long moments neither of us spoke.
My mother’s coffin was lowered into a hole in the ground. I did not hold with kirkyards any more than I did with bells and crosses. Yet returning her to the earth seemed the right thing to do. Again, an image took hold of me. This time it was blood, splashing around my ankles, up to my knees. I knew a profound satisfaction in feeding the land, for life should feed life, and the payment was death.
Such thoughts troubled me, for I had no idea whence they came.
“Who do you become,” I asked the shepherd, “when everyone who told you what you were is gone?”
He pressed his lips together for a moment, brows knitted in thought before he answered, “Anyone you want.”
For myself, I did not ken who that was.
Only half-fae. Repelled by cross and iron, but with no gifts of my own.Did I belong in Faery or among the mortals? Who could say?
I touched the side of my throat, where Bess’s birthmark bloomed like a rose. Her birthmark, not mine. Her throat. She who owned this visage tarried in Faery still, while I remained in her place.
Something stirred beneath the mark, warm and alive. The mark was shrinking, my skin grew thin, close to cracking, to free the true self hidden inside.
If you shuck off Bess’s skin, what will you become?
“Bess?” The shepherd’s eyes grew wide.
What did he see?
The world around me went still. The lamentations of the mourners went silent, their false tears freezing like icicles halfway down their faces. Did I let my gaze fly to the heavens, I would have seen the birds grown motionless in their flight.
