His father ruffled Ban’s hair. “No, boy, no. It’s with your father, and brother. It’s with the king and his men. You’ve been here with the flowers too long, and need to be able to see the starry skies.”
Ban drew away, finally looking at Errigal. “I want to stay in the forest. I want to stay with my mama.”
“Ban.” Brona knelt before him. One hand gripped the blanket tight around her shoulders, and one stretched out, but hesitating to touch his dear face. “You must go with your father.”
Hurt pinched Ban’s brow, and his small mouth puckered. “You don’t want me to stay.”
“Oh no, oh roots and worms, darling, no.” She threw her arms around him, heedless of her nudity, only desperate to hold him tight and prove his fears wrong. “No, Ban. I would have you stay. But this is your fate, to be in both worlds. You must go away from me now because your father loves you, and would have you share his world.”
Ban did not believe her; that much was clear. He stood still in her embrace, not returning it. The hook in her heart cut even deeper.
Errigal pulled the blanket around Brona again, crouching beside her as if to support her, as if they were united in will.
“Come on, Ban,” the earl said. “Do as you’re told.”
The boy broke free of his mother’s embrace. He turned his back to them, going for the trunk of their clothes, where Ban’s only coat splayed across the top, flung there yesterday in childish abandon. The boy, older today, put on the coat, scrubbed the dirt from his face, and shuffled around for his boots.
Errigal began to speak, but Brona touched his hand. There was nothing to say.
Before they left, Ban let his mother kiss him; it broke the seal he’d put over his heart, and so her kiss made his tears fall. He cried quietly, hugging himself, wretched and unmoving, until Errigal clapped him on the back and told him to stop, that a new home was nothing to grieve.
When the sounds of their footsteps had faded and she was alone, Brona walked out of Hartfare and into the White Forest, naked and heartbroken and covered in the last of Errigal’s love. She washed herself of everything in a cold, haunted stream, in the shade of an ash tree.
To the ash, she whispered,
Don’t let Ban forget the wind and roots. Don’t let him forget me.
THE FOX
BAN HAD NEVERdone magic quite like this.
The air was still and quiet over the rocky moorland, here where the hill pushed out of the White Forest like a cresting whale. Silver clouds stretched over the dark sky, brightened by the soon-coming sun and by the moon that hung still in the west, off-center and almost full. Regan Connley, clad in a thin linen shift, sat along an arrow of exposed granite as sleek as she and exactly her size. Her back to the east, she cupped a shallow bowl in her lap and bowed her head over it. She whispered in the language of trees, the words blowing tiny ripples against the surface of pooled blood.
Ban snapped his fingers and called fire to hand, setting the flame down fast against the patch of pine, thistle, rose, and thick paper tinder here at the south end of the granite. The fire caught and crackled, flaring white-orange before settling in to curl the long stems and petals. Moving eastward himself, Ban sang a low song to the wind and trees, hissing a word or two for the fire. He trailed a line of mixed sand and oak charcoal behind him as he went to the north and then the west. When he reached the southern point again, Ban paused to call fire again, drawing it along the entire circle.
“Now,” he said quietly. Connley heard him and stepped inside the circle.
Only the three of them attended this predawn witchery, and Connley solely because he’d insisted:I am as involved as you, and I am your other heart. Without me not all of your spirit will be there.
Ban found it unbearably sentimental, until he saw the mutual intensity in the eyes of husband and wife, and realized they both believed, completely.
What would such a partnership be like,he wondered, and then caught a fleeting memory—Elia’s hands holding his own, tiny moonlights dancing between and around their fingers.
Glancing up at the fading stars, the wizard knew it was time. Ban stripped himself of clothes and shoes before stepping into the circle. Wafts of thistle smoke and rose teased his shoulders as he crouched at a pan of orange mud from the iron marsh and drew words onto his chest and stomach, and his power rune at his forehead, heart, and genitals. He coated his forearms with the mud, and when he saidShield me,the mud dried in a quick snap, to near ceramic hardness and hot against his skin.
At a tearing sound, Ban looked up to see Regan reclined against the granite, and her husband kneeling beside her, using a small dagger to cut into the front of her shift. He sliced it open from the center of her breasts to the low mound at her groin. Parting the pale linen, Connley kissed his wife’s soft belly, then left his hand there as he kissed her between the breasts and again on her mouth.
Ban joined them at Regan’s feet while Connley moved to her head, and he handed the lady the bowl of her womb blood. She set it on her belly, fingers curled around the rim. Her chest rose and fell slowly and evenly.
The duke met Ban’s gaze, asking silently again his earlier question.Will this hurt her?
Two hours ago, when they left the Keep, Ban had answered, “I don’t know. It is not designed to cause harm, but there is wildness in the roots of Innis Lear, and the spirits we call will not be concerned with safety.”
“If it hurts Regan, I will hurt you,” Connley had promised, simple and calm.
Ban then replied, “If it hurts her, I will already be hurt.”
That had seemed to console the duke, though he watched Regan now with a hovering possessiveness.
