Changeling

14. Father

Brother Colin, you would hardly recognize me. I have lost almost three stone since last autumn. I can neither eat nor sleep. I had given up on myself; I am lost. God has chosen that I should pay for my sins on earth as well as in the burning fire to come.

—Brother Sinestus Tor, to Colin, February 1771.

On Tuesday morning when I got in Das Boot to go to school, I found a book on the front seat. I was sure I had locked the night before. I'm the only person with a key. With a sense of foreboding, I climbed into the driver's seat and picked up the book. It was large and bound in tattered, weather beaten black leather. On its cover, stamped in gold that was now almost completely flaked off, was the title: An Historical View of Wodebayne Life.

I turned the book this way and that and flipped through crumbling pages the color of sand. There was no note, nothing to say where this had come from or why. I closed my eyes for a moment and spread my right hand out flat on the cover. A thousand impressions came to me: people who had held the book, sold it, stolen it, hidden it, treasured it, left it on their shelf. The most distinct impression, no more that a fluttery butterfly-soft trembling, came from Ciaran. I opened my eyes. He had left this book for me. Why? Would having this book spell me somehow? Was it a no-strings gift or a devious trap? I had no clue.

At school I joined Kithic on the basement steps. Alisa was there, which was unusual, so I made a point to say hi. I didn't mention the book, which I had just barely squeezed into my backpack, but sat down as Raven informed us all that she and Sky had broken up.

"It just wasn't working, you know?" she said, popping her gum in an ungothlike manner. "She couldn't accept me for who I am. She wanted me to be as dull and serious as she is."

"I'm sorry, Raven," I said, and I was. Raven had seemed a little softer, a little bit more happy, when she and Sky had first gotten together. Now she seemed so much more like her old self: cold, calculating, uncaring. I wondered if my bringing Killian to town had been the thing to finish off their relationship or whether it would have crumbled on its own, I couldn't decide.

"Yeah, well, don't be," she said shrugging. "I'm glad to be out of it." She almost sounded sincere. But when I cast out my witch senses, I felt a surprising level of pain, sadness, confusion.

I waited for someone to mention Killian or to ask Raven pointed questions about him, but to my relief, no one did. I was pretty sure Killian had a lot to do with this breakup, whether or not he realized it or cared.

When the bell rang, I lugged my backpack to homeroom, feeling the book calling to me to read it. In English class I had a chance to and opened it up under my desk. It was written in old-fashioned language and had no copyright date or publishing info. The type was hard to read, which made it slow going. But after the first page I was hooked. It was fascinating. As far as I could tell, it was a nonfiction account of a monk's life, back in the 1770s. He had been sent to a far-off village to bring God to the pagans. I could barely take my eyes away from the pages and wondered why Ciaran had wanted me to read it.

I managed to escape detection through the whole class, and then the bell rang, I sneaked it back into my backpack and went up to Mr. Alban.

"Morgan," he said. "I'm seem to be missing your composition. Did you forget to turn it in?"

"No," I admitted, embarrassed. "I'm sorry, Mr. Alban—I spaced it. But wanted to ask if I could do a makeup paper—maybe six pages long instead of four? I could turn it in next Monday."

He looked at me thoughtfully. "Ordinarily I would say no," he said. "You had plenty of time to turn in this paper, and every other student managed to turn it in on time. But this is unusual for you—you've always been a good student. I tell you what—turn in six pages, double spaced, on Monday, and we'll see."

"Oh, thanks, Mr. Alban," I said, relieved, "I absolutely will turn it in. I promise."

"Okay, see that you do."

I trotted off to calculus, already planning my outline.

Morgan. The power sink.

I looked up, though I knew I wouldn't see Ciaran.

"Morgan," asked Bree, "What is it? You where in the middle of telling me about Mr. Alban."

"Oh, nothing." I shook my head. "Yeah, so he's letting me do a makeup paper. It's going to be cool, and this time I won't forget."

I sent a message back. Tea shop?

Fine, Ciaran responded.

"I said, do you want to go to the mall tonight?" Bree repeated patiently. "We could grab something to eat, shop, get home early."

"That sounds good," I said. "But I can't. Homework."

"Okay. Some other time." Bree walked toward her car, her fine dark hair being whipped by the wind.

On the way to the Clover Teapot, I tried to concentrate on my mission. Four days remained. It was still possible. I needed to get some information out of Ciaran. I needed to plant the watch sigil on him. I'll do it, I promised myself. Today is the day. I will accomplish my mission.

When I got there, Ciaran was already sitting at one of the smaller tables. I ordered and sat down, once again looking at him closely, seeing myself in him, seeing the possibilities of who or what I could have been, or might still be. If I had grown up with him as my teacher, my father, would I now be evil? Would I care? Would I have almost unlimited powers? Would it matter?

I felt him look at me as I took a sip of Red Zinger tea, holding the paper cup to warm my fingers. I needed a good opening. "Is it true that kids in Killian's village don't have to go to school?

"Not to a government school," he said. "The village parents get home-schooling certificates. As long as the children can pass the standard tests…" He shrugged. "They can read and write and do sums. It's just that all the indoctrination, the government oppression, the skewed view of history—they don't get that."

"How much did you teach Killian, and Kyle, and Iona?"

Killian had told me the names of his siblings. My other half brother, my half sister.

A troubled look clouded Ciaran's face, and he looked out the window into the thin, pale winter sunlight. "Is there somewhere else we could talk? More private? I had mentioned the power sink…"

"I have an idea," I said. I stood up and gathered my cup of tea and a scone in a napkin. "I could show you our park." I acted like his agreement was given. I couldn't go to the power sink, knowing that any magick he worked there would be dangerously enhanced. But if I were driving, if I chose the place—though really, there were only superficial reassurances. Ciaran was so strong that there wasn't much I could do to protect myself from him except work the ward-evil spells Eoife had taught me and hope for the best. But I was almost glad to be spending some time with him. When we were apart, I was both scared and intensely curious about him. When I was actually with him, my fears danced around the periphery of my consciousness, and mostly I just soaked in his presence.

"Lead on," he said, and fifteen minutes alter I parked Das Boot next to a Ford Explorer at the entrance of our state park.

We sat and drank our tea and ate our scones in silence. It wasn't an uncomfortable silence. But I had noticed that most witches were more peaceful to be around than most regular people. It was as if witches recognized the value of silence—they didn't see a lack of noise as a vacuum that needed to be filled.

"So how much did you teach Killian, Kyle and Iona?" I repeated.

"Not very much, I'm afraid," was his quiet reply. "I wasn't a good father, Morgan, not to them, not by a stretch of imagination."

"Why?"

He grimaced. "I didn't love their mother. I was tricked into marrying her because my mother, Eloise, and Grania's mother, Greer Murtagh, wanted to unite our covens. I was just eighteen, and Grania got pregnant, and they promised me leadership over the new, very powerful coven. I would inherit all their knowledge, my mothers and Grania's."

I knew he was lying about being tricked into marrying Grania, but I played along. "Why would you inherit and not Grania? I thought the lines were supposed to be matriarchal."

"They usually are. But by the time Grania was eighteen and had been initiated and all the rest, it was clear she lacked the ambition, the focus, to lead a coven. She wasn't really interested." His words were tight with derision, and I felt sorry for Grania. "But I was amazingly powerful. I could make the coven something new and stronger and better."

"So you married her. But she was pregnant. She didn't get pregnant by herself," I pointed out primly.

Ciaran's body tightened with surprise, and he looked at me as if trying to look through my eyes to something farther in. Then he threw back his head and laughed, an open, rolling laugh that filled my car and seemed to make the darkening twilight brighter.

I waited with raised eyebrows.

"Maeve said the exact same thing," he said. Saying her name, he grew more solemn. "She said the same thing, and she was right. As you are. My only excuse is that I was an eighteen-year-old-fool. Which is not much of an excuse and not one that I've ever accepted from Killian. So I have a double standard."

His frankness was disarming, and I tried to picture him as a teenager. A very powerful Woodbane teenager. I had to lead him back to my question about Imbolic.

"Then I met Maeve," he went on, and his voice took on a richer timbre, as if even remembering his love made his throat ache with sadness. "I knew almost instantly that she was the one I should be with. And she knew it about me. Her eyes, the wave of her hair, her laugh, the shape of her hands—everything about her was designed to delight me. We were drawn to each other like—magnets." He looked at his own hands, fair skinned, strong, and capable. The hands that had set my mother on fire.

I desperately wanted to hear more, more about her, about them, about what had gone so terribly wrong. But I struggled to keep my focus on Starlocket. I had to put other needs before my own.

"Imbolic is coming up," I said. "Are you going to celebrate with Amyranht? Is Amyranth the coven you inherited from Greer?"

Inside my car it became very still. We kept our gazes on each other, each of us measuring, waiting, judging.

Then Ciaran said, "Amyranth is part of the coven I inherited from Greer. Not entirely—not everyone from Liathach wanted to join. And Woodbanes from other covens have joined us. But for the most part, those are people I grew up with, who I'm related to, who I can trust with more than my life." His words were soft, his voice like warmed honey. "We share blood going back thousands of years," he went on. "We're intensely loyal to each other."

"Like the mafia?" I said.

Again he laughed.

Still, I found his description oddly compelling. The idea of being among people who were completely accepting and supportive, who only wanted to help you grow and increase your powers, who, you could trust implicitly, no matter what—it would be amazing. That picture of a Woodbane clan was to painful to think about—I could almost taste my own longing for it, and it terrified me to know that I was thinking about Amyranth. The coven that had tried to kill me. The coven that right at this moment was planning to destroy Starlocket. From the inside, I realized, it might not feel evil at all.

No one in my life had ever accepted me exactly the way I was. I didn't fit in as a Rowlands. Within my coven I stood out as a strong blood witch, and it had become clear to me that not even Robbie and Bree, my closest friends, could feel entirely comfortable around me anymore. Hunter and Sky and Eoife all seemed to want different things of me, for me to be different somehow, to make different choices.

My glance flicked back to Ciaran. How far could I push this? Was this the time to ask about the dark wave? Surely he suspected I was up to something.

"You're nervous," Ciaran said softly. "Tell me why."

It was dark now, and somehow there in the car I felt safe.

"I'm incredibly drawn to that picture of Woodbanes," I told him honestly. "But I hated Selene Belltower and everything she stood for. She tried to kill me, and I know she had murdered others. I don't want to be like that."

He waved his hand in dismissal. "Selene was an overambitious, overconfident climber—in no way did she represent what my coven is about."

"What is your coven about?" I asked clearly. "I saw what you were doing in New York. What was that? Is there some larger plan?"

Ciaran sat back against the passenger door. His eyes on me were bright in the darkness, his powerful hands still on the wool of his coat. Slowly, slowly, his lips parted in a smile, and I saw his white teeth and his eyes crinkling.

"You are very interesting, Morgan," he said quietly. "You are a wild, untamed thing with the power of a river about to overflow its banks. Are you afraid of me?"

I looked at him, this man who had helped create me, and answered truthfully, "Yes and no."

"Yes and no," he repeated, watching me. "I think more no than yes. Yet you have every reason to be terribly afraid of me. I almost took your life."

"You almost took my magick—my soul—which is much worse than taking my life," I retorted. "But you didn't because you are my father."

"Morgan, Morgan," he said. "I find you very—gratifying. My other children are afraid of me. They don't ask me hard questions, they don't stand up to me. But you…are something different. It's the difference between a child born of Grania and a child born of Maeve."

Frankly, I was feeling kind of sorry for all of us, his children.

"You alone I see as being able to appreciate my coven," he went on. "You alone I feel would understand. There is something being planned—"

I caught my breath silently, willing him to continue. He stopped and looked out then window, as if he hadn't intended to say so much. "I really should be getting back," he said absently.

I squelched my disappointment and frustration. It would be too east for him to pick up on them. Without a word I started my car and backed out of the parking space. We drove back through the night, toward town. I tried not to even think about what he'd almost said, what we'd talked about. There would be enough time for that later.

I drove Ciaran back to where he said Killian was staying. The house was nowhere near the deserted road where Killian had had me drop him off. He must have been out—the house was dark.

"Good-bye for now," he said. "But not for long, I hope. Please call me soon."

I nodded and leaned closer. In a low voice I said, "Father, I want to do what you do. I want to work how you work. I want you to show me."

He shut the door, his face flushed with emotion at the word father. I drove off without looking back and cried the whole way home. I had called him father. I hated myself.