Raven Calls

naked. Meeting her eyes seemed like it would be too much. “She died, she died right away. I wasn’t a healer yet. I’d stolen my own magic away and I couldn’t do anything to help. But that was after.” I made my voice harsh so I could keep talking. “The twins were the aftermath. That wasn’t what went wrong. My life is so screwed up, Mom. Do you reach through time? Because I’ve been doing it all my life. Right from when you were pregnant with me and we fought the Blade.”

Her silence this time was brief but full of the things I didn’t want her to say. I was about a hair’s breadth from crying on my mommy’s shoulder, and that was so far outside my comfort zone I couldn’t even begin to express it. I thought she knew it, too, because when she did speak, she said, “No, alanna. I suppose that would be from your father’s side of the family,” rather than offer any kind of sympathy or condolence.

That was okay, because it brought my brain to a full stop. Choked off Emo Jo and made me spin around on a heel to gape at her. “My father’s side of the family?”

Sheila MacNamarra got a sly little smile that made her look about nineteen. “Sure and you didn’t think I flew all the way to New York just for a pretty face, lovey, though oh my Lord, he was pretty. I could feel his pull from Ireland, Siobhán. The power, the passion for the earth, the…”

I could not have been more astonished if she’d pulled up her skirts and started doing an authentic Can-Can. She trailed off, then said, “You don’t know any of this, do you, my girl?”

“Dad…has magic?”

“A shaman’s magic, to be sure. Not like my own, oh no. Magery is spells and incantations, Siobhán. I could do most anything with it, but with preparation and study. Your father, though.” Mother’s eyes were shining. I’d thought she and Dad hardly knew each other, but it suddenly struck me that didn’t mean they hadn’t been in love. That she wasn’t still in love with him, a year after she’d been buried. No wonder I didn’t have any siblings. “Your father could just will it to be, and it was. He said it could be such a dangerous magic, such an easy path to the dark, but he shone like nothing I’d ever seen. Everywhere he went, the very earth responded to him like a lover, eager for his touch.”

Our endless road trips abruptly made more sense. I’d thought Dad just hated being in one place, since the only time he’d settled down for any length of time, an Irish woman had come back from across the ocean and handed him a baby before disappearing forever. I’d just found out a few days earlier that the only other time he’d come close to settling down, his mother had been killed in a horrific car wreck that had sent him away from Qualla Boundary for good.

But maybe we’d been on the road constantly because he was responding to the needs of a weary earth. My vivid memory of visiting Montana and the Battle of Little Bighorn site abruptly seemed a lot like the afternoon’s antics on Croagh Patrick. Dad had been disgusted with the white men who’d fought there, which even my eight- year-old self had understood. There were still bullets buried in the tops of the small, sharply rolling hills: it was not a site for modern warfare to take place. But Dad’s disgust could have gone much deeper than that…and so could have the time we’d spent there, crawling up and down hills, our hands in the dirt. I’d just been playing, but if Dad had power, too, then that wasn’t a place he’d be playing at.

An awful, awful lot of the places we’d visited came clear when seen in that light. We’d followed the Trail of Tears. Visited nuclear test sites in Nevada, and I remembered Dad talking with Shoshone tribal elders before we went out into the desert. The Hopewell mound cities in Ohio. Mount Rushmore, which I recalled had almost literally made Dad’s head steam. I’d been about twelve then, and wondered now if I’d been Seeing some of his anger at the desecration of ancient Native holy places.

I sat, face hidden in my hands. After a moment I spread my fingers to stare between them at Sheila, who looked discomfited. “You’d no idea, had you.”

“Not a clue. Not a single…” I closed my fingers again and sat there a long damned time. Finally, and more to myself than Sheila, I said, “I’d like a do-over. I mean, in the end I’m doing okay with my life, I think. I got the guy, I got the best friend, I got the magic. I’m doing okay. But I want a do-over. I want to go back through my life and knock the giant-ass chip off my shoulder. I want to hear what Dad might’ve been trying to say to me. I want to have the nerve to ask about my mother. I want…” It didn’t really matter what I wanted. I pushed my tongue around inside my lower lip, contorting my face before finishing, “I want to know what my life would’ve been like if I hadn’t been such a jackass through most of it. It’s too damned late to be sorry, but I am anyway, Mom. You probably deserved a much better kid than me. I’m sure Dad did. So I’m sorry.”

“It may be you deserved a better mother, alanna. Shall we forgive one another while we still can?”

“Oh, sure. I’m sure I deserved a better mother than the one who chose not to hand the Master a major defeat because it might’ve risked my unborn self, or the one who gave me up to my father so the Master couldn’t keep the bead he’d had on me, or the one who gave me a magic silver necklace to protect my soul from evil, or the one who came back from the dead to lay a smackdown on the Master and kick a banshee’s ass because I was too new and feeble in my powers to do it myself. I’m sure I deserved—”

“A mother,” Sheila interrupted, and to my horror tears flooded my eyes. “Shall we forgive?” she asked again, even more quietly. I nodded, miserable with embarrassment, and she sighed before a note of playfulness came into her voice. “Now, I know we’ve little time and much to talk about, Siobhán, but there’s two things you’ve said that have my attention, so they do.”

I looked up, snuffling, to see her smile and lift a finger to touch its tip. “One—you got the guy?”

I laughed through snorting snot, which made for a very wet burbly disgusting laugh, but it was heartfelt. “My boss. My former boss. Captain Morrison? Did I mention—”

“The one who can’t tell a Corvette from a Mustang,” Sheila said, eyes solemn. Then she leaned forward confidentially and admitted, “I’m Irish, lass. I wouldn’t know the one from the other if my life depended on it.”

“Yes, but you’re Irish. He’s a red-blooded American male, it just shouldn’t be possible for him not to know.” I snuffled again and wiped my hand under my nose. Six-year-olds had more dignity than I did. “But anyway, yeah. We sort of…yeah. It’s not like you and Dad.” A thought which bent my brain. “Morrison’s not magical at all. But I don’t need any more magic in my life. He grounds me. He’s…” God. My stupid eyes filled up with tears again, for a whole different reason this time. I was turning into a regular Waterworks Wendy.

“That’s grand so,” my mother said in delight. “Congratulations, Joanne. Be happy, alanna. Be happy.”

“I hope so.” I cleared my throat. “What was the other thing?”

“Oh!” Her eyes lit up. “A magic necklace?”

“Yeah, my—your—silver choker? It’s magic. Didn’t you know that? Nuada made it for the Morrígan when he married her and it bound her to this whole fight we’re in. Hobbled her, like.” I was falling into the Irish idiom of adding “like” or “so” to the end of sentences for no apparent reason. If I stayed here more than a week I’d forget how to speak American English. “I don’t know if it’s got any other power, but reining in goddesses is a pretty good one-shot to have. And, oh, it’s, um, sort of bound to our family line. I was kind of there when it was forged and put some of my blood into the forging. The Morrígan had to bear a child to have it removed, and that child was Méabh, who made a choice to fight against her mother and our whole family has been doing it ever since. I’ve got Caitríona O’Reilly with me now. She’s taking up your mantle, she’ll be the new Irish mage, since I’m not cut out for it.”

Mother hesitated. “Caitríona? Truly?”

“Oh, yeah. She found us at the graveyard about to burn your bones and made us come up to Croagh Patrick, where Áine triggered her magic. Méabh’s having a fit because that’s not how it’s done in her estimation, but it sure looks like that’s what’s happened anyway.”

I was as unaccustomed to seeing pride on Sheila’s face as I was smiles, but there was unmistakable pride now. “Caitríona will be grand so. Oh, but she’s got so much study ahead of her, Joanne. The mage’s path isn’t an easy one. She’s a fine lass, though, strong and quick. She’ll do well. Tell her I said so, won’t you?”

“Yeah.” I cleared my throat. “Yeah, of course I will. It’ll torque Méabh’s jaws, but that’ll be fun, too.”

It was Sheila’s turn to clear her throat, after which she said, “Méabh,” cautiously. “We’re the daughters of Méabh? Of the Méabh? Queen Méabh of Connacht?”

“Yep, that one.” Ah, how my life had shifted, that I could say that so casually. “She’s kind of hanging around