The Arrow (Children of Brigid Trilogy Book 1) (31 page)

William’s voice intoned over the crackling of the fire. People moved in to hear. His voice was weakened with age and Fynn knew that though people were as silent as a church congregation most of them wouldn’t be able to hear him. When Fynn was a kid, his voice had the strength to carry over many, many heads.

He’d said he needed an apprentice to train in Story. But who? It couldn’t be either of his daughters. They were needed for other things.

Maybe William meant that the new Story Keeper would be Fynn’s baby, but her daughter wasn’t yet born yet. It would be many years before she would be ready to take on the role of Story Keeper. William needed someone to share the burden now.

A movement in the tall redwood towering over the wall on the other side caught Fynn’s eye. He was almost entirely hidden from view by the thick branches. Fynn pretended to be rolling her head to get a kink out of her neck so as not to alert her sister that he was there. If Lia saw him she would get upset and order him down. Fynn could not even mention Eli’s name to her sister yet. He was okay as a brute bodyguard kept at a distance. But the one time Fynn suggested Eli could be a surrogate father to the newest link in the chain of Three, storms blew and windows broke. Jana had forbidden them from discussing him.

Eli remained in the tree while William chanted. Fynn felt him staring. Staring at her. Her skin warmed with more than the heat of the flames. She wished more than anything that he could join them in the Keep. Liadan would have to get over it then.

I’m thinking of training a new storyteller.

Fynn pressed her face into her father’s shoulder. She knew the apprentice William meant.

William finished his prayer. They stood in shared silence. Fynn remembered her mother’s warm green eyes. She remembered her gentle hands, the way she smelled of sage and fire. She remembered her mother’s embrace, while Nine poisoning had stolen her own power. Mother Brigid’s touch was like the warmth of a sunbeam after a chilling rain.

After William’s song, silence.

Fynn looked around at the faces of the community, lost in the memories of Mother Brigid who loved them. Brigid had loved them as a true mother loves her children. A part of their hearts would be lost now that she was gone. It was up to them to fill the space she left behind with love. They needed to love like she did, with no fear, no walls around their hearts. Fynn hoped that they could do it. Without their mother’s kind of courage, they were not going to survive.

After a time the people turned from the dying fire. A group of children started chasing games in the meadow. Lia gave Fynn a quick hug and then let go to find Jana. They’d appointed Jana as lead of security and there was work to be done over fortifying the outer walls during construction.

Fynn made sure that her father had company for the evening. A couple of the older Keep residents lingered at his side and assured her that he would be all right. Fynn was grateful to them. She would mourn her mother every day for the rest of her life, but she would need to do so while working. The Hydravirus was passing along barely detected now, in the form of the spare Nine tablets that escaped Fynn’s interception at the Vine and the explosions at Cain Pharmaceuticals. The virus was a rager. It would not take long for it to flare into something no one could control, not even Mother Brigid’s medical centers and health foundations. Hydravirus would be the apocalypse that the Story Keeper foretold. It was the reason Brigid built the Keep.

Fynn strode past the laughing children towards the main building. She wanted so badly to walk the other way, through the gate to the arms of Eli who waited for her on the other side of the wall. She longed for his lips and hands and body that would make her forget her grief. She steeled herself to go into the main house. Later in the night Eli would be waiting for her in his own cabin outside the walls. Knowing he was there gave her strength to face anything.

They had to prepare for the people who would be coming. Because they would be coming once the storm broke and the hell that Cate had wrought broke loose. The people would be coming and they would need her to give them a safe world. They would need her to fulfill her destiny.

They would need her to be the Arrow.

The sky was the steel gray of the earliest hours of the morning when the sun is barely a rumor and the waves rise in white-capped swells beyond the line of breakers. The water had already washed the smoke from Fynn’s hair and the fatigue from her eyes. She sat on her board before the vast ocean beyond St. Cocha Alley. This was the last place she could feel insignificant and small. Sea birds circled high above her head. They had begun as only a few gulls and terns at first, keeping her company after the busy post-funeral meetings at the Keep. In the hour they had gathered in numbers to form an eerie, silent-winged cyclone reminding her even here of what she was.

Eli paddled to her side. He sat up on his board and they bobbed together on the waves as the sky lightened and the water grew rougher. He reached for her hand and even that light touch electrified her.

“Let’s take one last wave,” she said. He tugged her arm. She leaned in for a kiss that was clean and salty. He licked her bottom lip. She laughed and paddled to meet the approaching bruiser. She rode the curl into the rocks as Eli whooped behind her. He stayed the perfect distance from her ride, joining her side again only as she glided toward the cliffs.

She hefted her board under her arm. “Home?” he asked, a catch of desire in his throat. The birds dispersed as she drew him close for another long kiss.

“Home,” she agreed. To Eli’s cabin hidden in the thickest part of the forest, far from the rest of the world to whom she belonged. There she knew he would have waiting a hot bath, a fire, and fresh bread. There would be clean white sheets on the enormous bed and for the space of the morning at least, she would belong only to him.