Born in Fire by Nora Roberts

Author:Nora Roberts [Roberts, Nora]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi

Chapter Eleven

IT was the cow that woke her. The big, liquid eyes studied the sleeping form curled in the pasture. There was little thought in a cow's head other than "food and the need to be milked. So she sniffed once, twice, at Maggie's cheek, snorted, then began to crop grass.

"Oh God have mercy, what's the noise?" Her head throbbing like a large drum being beaten, Maggie rolled over, bumped solidly into the cow's foreleg and opened bleary, bloodshot eyes.

"Sweet Jesus Christ!" Maggie's squeal reverberated in her head like a gong, causing her to catch hold of her ears as if they were about to explode as she scrambled away. The cow, as startled as she, mooed and rolled her eyes. "What are you doing here?"

Keeping a firm hold on her head, Maggie made it to her knees. "What am I doing here?" When she dropped back on her haunches, she and the cow each other doubtfully. "I must've fallen asleep. Oh!" In pitiful defense against a raging hangover, she shifted her hands from her ears to her eyes. "Oh, the penance paid for one drink over the limit. just sit right here for a minute, if you don't mind, until I have the strength to stand."

The cow, after one last roll of her eyes, began to graze again. The morning was bright and warm, and full of sound. The drone of a tractor, the bark of a dog, the cheerful birdsong rolled in Maggie's sick head. Her mouth tasted as if she'd spent the night dining on a peat bog, and her clothes were coated with morning dew.

"Well, it's a fine thing to pass out in a field like a drunken hobo."

She made it to her feet, swayed once and moaned. The cow swished its tail in what might have been sympathy. Cautious, Maggie stretched. When her bones didn't shatter, she worked out the rest of the kinks and let her gritty eyes scan the field. More cows, uninterested in their human visitor, grazed. In the next field, she could see the circle of standing stones, ancient as the air, that the locals called Druid's Mark. She remembered now kissing Murphy good night and, with his fading song playing in her head, wandering under the moon. And the dream she'd had, sleeping under its silver light, came back to her so vividly, so breathlessly, that she forgot the throbbing in her head and the stiffness in her joints. The moon, glowing with light, pulsing like a heartbeat. Flooding the sky, and the earth beneath it with cold white light. Then it had burned, hot as a torch until it ran with color, bled blues and reds and golds so lovely that even in sleep she had wept. She had reached up, and up, and up, until she had touched it. Smooth it had been, and solid and cool as she cupped it in her hands. In that sphere she had seen herself, and deep, somewhere deep within those swimming colors, had been her heart.

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