The wind streamed by, cool and damp, while clouds winked over the moon and away again. The air filled with the scent of spice and earth, of things going bold before they settled down to rest.
They flew, riding the air above that earth, into the deep, and straight through the vines to Sorcha’s cabin.
“Quickly now,” Connor told her.
He had to leave her to move to Branna and Iona, to cast the circle, a hundred candles, the bowls, the cauldron.
Branna opened the silver box, removed the dream potion.
“Spirits ride upon this night. We come to join them with our light. In this place and in this hour, we call upon bright things of power. We are the three, and are three more. Together we walk through the door and into the dreaming there to find the meaning of our destiny. So we drink one by three and one by three.”
She poured the potion into a silver cup, lifted it up. Lowered it, sipped.
“Body, blood, mind, and heart, into the dreaming we depart.”
She passed the cup to Fin. He sipped, repeated the words, and then to Iona, and around the circle.
It tasted of stars, Connor thought as he took his turn, one by three.
He joined hands, his sister’s, Meara’s, and with her circle said the words.
“With right, with might, with light we seek the night. A dreamwalk back in time, Cabhan’s evil to unwind. To the time of the return of Sorcha’s three. As we will, so mote it be.”
There wasn’t a floating as he’d experienced before, but a kind of swimming through mists and colors with voices murmuring behind, before, and images just on the edges of his vision.
When the mists cleared, he stood as he had been, with his circle, and his hand clasped with Meara’s, his other with Branna’s.
“Did we go back?”
“Look there,” Connor said to Meara.
Vines covered the cabin, but it stood. And bluebells bloomed on the ground beneath the gravestone.
The horses stood with the hawks on branches above them. Kathel sat calm as a king beside Branna, while Bugs quivered a little between Fin’s boots.
“We’re all here, as we should be. You’ll call him now, Meara.”
“Now?”
“Start,” Branna confirmed, and took out the vial filled with red. “Draw him in.”
Inside the vial brilliance pulsed and swirled. Liquid light, magick fire.
“In the center of the circle.” Connor took her by the shoulders, kissed her. “And sing, whatever happens.”
She had to steady herself, calm her heart, then open it.
She’d chosen a ballad, sang in Irish though he doubted she knew the meaning of all the words. Heartbreaking they were, and as beautiful as the voice that lifted over the clearing, into the night, and across all the dreaming time.
He’d ask her to sing it for him, he decided, when they were done with dark things, when they were alone. She would sing it again, for him.
“He hears,” Fin whispered.
“It’s a night that calls to black and white, to dark and light. He’ll come.”
Branna stepped out of the circle, then Connor, then Iona.
“Whatever happens,” Connor said again. “Sing. He’s coming.”