Reckoning

Prologue

October 15, 1888

Two days have passed since Mother died. The neighbors do not come by to pay their respects. I watch them hurry past our house and shiver, as if the misery here were like a cold hand pressing then away from our front gate.

My thoughts remain entirely on that fatal night. It sticks in my mind like a nightmare too horrible for any detail to be forgotten.

The house was quiet. It was so still and peaceful that I could feel the gentle pulsing of the waves on the shoreline almost a quarter of a mile away. The cats were sleeping by the fire. Then Mother came rushing in. She was naked, and her hair was wild.

"Máirin," she cried, her eyes glistening, "It is done."

I had experienced far too many strange night since Mother had been ill to be completely shocked. Calmly, so as not to frighten her away, I crossed the room to cover her. When I got close, however, I saw that her hands were covered in blood. She had pricked both of her thumbs, and there were smears of blood all over her body. To be skyclad and to show signs of letting one's own blood—these are signs of the darkest magick. This was not something I had encountered before.

"What have you done?" I gasped.

She reached up and began gently stroking my face in reply. As I tried to put the blanket over her shoulders, she ran away from me, up the stairs. She moved with unnatural power and speed. As she ran, I heard her yelling out. She was spelling, that I knew, but her voice was crazed and unintelligible.

I had not time to take a lamp to guide me, and I stumbled up the dark steps after her. I found her on the widow's walk, on her knees, calling out to the moon in words I could not recognize. She went limp as I approached and seemed to lose interest in whatever it was she was doing, and I had a terrible feeling that she had just had time to complete whatever it was. Again I begged her to tell me what she had done.

"Soon," she said, "soon you'll know."

She allowed me to lead her back downstairs, where I washed away the blood and dressed her in a nightgown. She kept calling her own name over and over again, "Oona…Oona…," dragging the words along in a pitiful moan until the act of repetition exhausted her.

When I came back to the parlor, I passed by the glass and saw myself. On my face, sketched out in blood, were hexing signs—that's what she had been doing when she touched me. Horrified, I ran to the basin of seawater that I kept in the kitchen for scrying and washed them away as quickly, as I could.. I stayed up half the night, trying to dispel whatever it was that she had done. I burned rosemary and uttered every purification and deflection spell I'd ever learned.

The next morning her bed was empty.

A fisherman found her yesterday. She was about half a mile from the house, washed up on the shore. She had gone out during the night and walked into the water. She still wore her nightgown.

Now the house shudders. This morning the windows broke for no reason. The mirror in the parlor cracked from side to side.

Mighty Goddess, guide her spirit and have mercy on me, her daughter. May I break my voice, lose it forever from my lamentations and weeping. My mother, Oona Doyle, of Ròiseal, is gone, and something dark has come in her stead.

— Màirin