Prickle Moon by Juliet Marillier

Author:Juliet Marillier
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: urban fantasy, fantasy, fantasy stories, juliet marillier
Publisher: Ticonderoga Publications

Fifteen years. Lóch and I were seventeen when the geis was set on me; its term was almost our whole lives again. My imagination, trapped inside my bird form, ran riot with what could happen in such a time. I was a bard; I conjured up tragedies of a grand and entertaining nature. Well, I have said already that my tale was a sad one, and that much was true. Grand and entertaining, no. Just full of helpless, useless tears.

From this point on, it is short enough to tell. The early years passed. Lóch’s grandmother died within two winters of my transformation, carried off by an old people’s sickness, a cough, a loss of appetite, a quick fading. They had given up the search for their kinsfolk when the horse could not manage the distance, and had instead established themselves in a tumbledown hut abandoned by earlier tenants who perhaps feared the encroaching forest with its shadowy strangeness, its mysterious night time noises. Lóch eked out a living. She turned her hand to whatever tasks the season demanded, helping local farmers with haymaking or pear-picking or minding children. I could not leave her; it would have been like cutting out half my soul. I lived in the woods near her little house, making sure I saw but was not seen. I learned the habits of a wild creature. Sometimes it seemed to me I was losing myself, becoming more raven than man, until I saw Lóch coming home, a slight, purposeful figure, thinner now, the gentle curve of her cheek turned to a sharper line, her gaze watchful. On her own, living so far from other dwellings, she had an eye out for the perils one might expect in such a situation, and once or twice I saw her drive off a foolish fellow with her pitchfork. She was waiting for me. Four years on, five years on, she was still waiting.

I never saw my mother. I tried not to think of her, but bitterness grew in me with every passing season. I wondered if she had found Ciarán, or whether my silence, maintained at so great a cost, had won my little brother freedom and a place in the heart of his family. I felt some pangs of jealousy. Under the circumstances, that was not unreasonable. I began to understand how resentment and fury could drive a person mad. I did not want any insights into my mother’s mind, but they came to me anyway. If I had possessed the means to destroy her I would have done it without a second thought. The wide-eyed bard who had fallen in love with a girl between firelight and water was no more. The raven was a different creature. With every passing year, some of my mother’s darkness crept into my spirit.

You could imagine, I suppose, various endings to the tale of Lóch and Conri. I have said already that it did not follow the path of happy ever after. I watched her; she waited for me.

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