Page 4 of A Kiss from the Fae (Mistress of Magic #2)
Excerpt from Grainne Morgan’s diary
Gwyn Beatha, Faerie King of Murias, made an appearance this morning at sunrise.
Ethel, Marian and I made sure to mark the appearance of the sun over the beach at the break of day, and he arrived on a chariot pulled by water kelpies as the sun rose.
We were the only ones ready to be up at such an hour; the village enjoys the festivities later in the day, but as ever, are mostly interested in drinking and revelry.
Gwyn took offerings from us all in the usual way; it was Marian’s first time and she was a maiden, but she seemed to rally and enjoy submitting to the faerie king.
I had already instructed her, as I have Ethel, in the herbs needed after his ministrations to ensure that we are not caught with child.
He would see us all as baby-making machines, but as ever, we keep the balance; we give the offerings, but we do not give anything of ourselves that would put us in thrall to the fae, never mind a baby.
We are forever minded of the legend, and abide by it.
If the women and children are taken, it will be a villager, and not a witch.
There are disappearances, and the villagers are placid as a whole, as long as there are not too many.
People know of the fae, and know how easy it is to be consumed by them.
At Midwinter, one of the faerie kingdoms of Murias, Falias, Gorias or Finias take a child, and at Midsummer, a willing woman.
The child must be under a year old so that it can be raised in the Crystal Castle with no memory of its mortal parents, and the woman must be fair and willing to join the faerie dance forever more.
In thanks, the faerie king and faerie queen will bless the land and grant boons to the villagers of Abercolme for their generous offerings.
‘Cut!’
A woman in black dungarees with plaited red hair pinned to her head walked out from behind one of the tall TV cameras which were pointed at the set.
From where Faye was standing, the set looked shabby and obviously artificial.
It was supposed to be a witch’s shop, but it was nothing like hers.
Her shop was the converted downstairs of her family home; its white walls were uneven and bumpy in the way that old Scottish stone houses were.
It sat in an old terrace on what was now Abercolme’s high street; a bakery and a small supermarket were among the few independent businesses left in the small coastal village.
Her mother had opened the shop in the psychedelic seventies when the world was experiencing a wave of interest in the unseen and unusual.
Mistress of Magic was glass fronted and cheery; Faye often garlanded the window with seasonal flowers and plants, celebrating the year as it passed by.
Inside, the old hearth was still there, and customers liked to settle themselves in one of the two flowery easy chairs beside it to have a cup of tea with Faye and have their tarot cards read.
Faye made and sold her own loose incense and magical tea blends and sold tarot cards and crystal wands, books, home-made candles and other witchy supplies to locals and tourists.
The set for the TV show that her best friend Annie had left Abercolme for – the one she’d begged Faye to come and visit – was nothing like that.
The walls were painted black and reversed silver pentagrams shone dully from nails.
From behind the camera, where an assistant had told her to sit until they’d finished the day’s filming, Faye could see that the pentagrams were light and blew around in the breeze; she thought they were probably made from plastic tubing, painted dull silver.
The set featured a shop counter, rather more baroque than her own, atop which sat various human and animal skulls.
Faye wondered if they were real or fake.
Animal skulls were easy enough to find if you knew where to look, especially in the countryside, though London was far too noisy and overpopulated for the quiet ways of the land.
Faye had a goat skull in the shop, on top of the mantelpiece over the hearth, which had been there since her grandmother’s day and perhaps before.
The Morgans – she, her mother Moddie and her grandmother – had called it an Gobhar , sea goat.
It had the long horns of the goats that ranged freely on the rocky shores of Arran, and all of the Morgans had rubbed it on the nose for good luck at some point in their lives.
When Faye was a child, she’d asked Moddie, Why do we have a goat’s skull on the mantelpiece ?
None of my friends at school have one . And Moddie had said, more fool them.
There were shelves of books on the set, but their spines were painted with bright white and gold symbols in the way that no real books were – no doubt, to make them look like ancient grimoires and recognisable as ‘black magic’ to the TV audience.
Faye allowed herself a smile. Her grandmother’s grimoire was a green leather-bound notebook, foxed and aged, full of the faded, spidery writing of generations of Morgan women.
No upside down pentagrams there; indeed, as well as old spells and records of the success or otherwise of spellwork, there were jam recipes and snippets of village gossip.
And, most importantly, the grimoire held the knowledge of working with the duplicitous, tempting, beautiful worlds of faerie that the Morgan women had amassed over their years of being the mediators between the human world and the faerie realms.
Faye had brought the grimoire with her to London. There was no way she would go anywhere without it now; there was still so much to learn in it as she continued to expand her faerie powers.
Annie had called the week before and asked her to visit her on the set of Coven of Love . It would have been difficult if Faye had still been living in Abercolme, but she’d made the decision to close up the shop and move down to London with Rav for a while.
To get away. To make a fresh start.
Life in Abercolme had been very quiet since the night of the concert where eighty people had disappeared in mysterious circumstances – Faye’s friend and employee Aisha among them.
Faye had reopened the shop for a while after she and Rav had recovered from the whole experience, but without Annie for support, and having lost Aisha, it wasn’t easy; some days it was hard to summon up the will to get out of bed at all.
Rav was selling the house in Abercolme he’d so recently bought, and one day, in her herb garden at the back of the house, he’d suggested moving away. For a while. Just a while, to get some perspective. To live a normal life together.
She had said yes. She missed Annie, and being in Abercolme, after what had happened…it was heartbreaking. She also felt horribly responsible for the people who had disappeared.
The Morgan women – who had always been witches – had been the ones responsible for keeping the balance between the human world and the faerie realms. This had been done by maintaining regular offerings to faeries, performing certain rituals at the seasonal festivals and caring for the land and the sacred sites that were special to faeries.
But, though Faye’s grandmother seemed to have kept the old ways, Faye and her mother had not really done as much.
Perhaps, as more modern witches, they hadn’t realised how important it was to keep the faeries happy, how important the old ways were.
And then, when Faye had summoned Finn Beatha, Faerie King of Murias, it seemed that she had opened a Pandora’s box of chaos that had ended in Rav getting very hurt and her friend Aisha being kidnapped.
Waving at Annie, Faye’s fingers played with the ring Rav had given her.
She’d never told Rav about the rose gold and opal ring that Finn Beatha had used to transport her to and from the world of faerie.
He knew that Finn and Faye had been lovers.
That’s over now , he’d said that day in the garden as he’d helped her. Now, we can move on with our lives.
Faye had smiled in acquiescence and pushed her doubts away.
Yes , she’d said to Rav. Let’s try normal. She’d meant it. And they had laughed, because nothing between them had been normal until then.
She was half faerie; she had spent her whole life wondering why she felt different, but she had rationalised that it was because she had grown up in a family of witches.
She had been the child who knew how to draw protection sigils and brew mugwort tea; who knew the plants to heal a burn and which berries were poisonous and which weren’t.
She could see auras, feel the weather coming; she had precognitive dreams, could heal people by laying her hands on them.
How much of that came from the Morgans, and how much came from her faerie lineage, she didn’t know.
To be taught the faerie magic, Faye had made a bargain with Levantiana, Faerie Queen of Murias. The rules of faerie specifically said that humans should never make bargains with the fae because being in their debt was dangerous.
Yet, in desperation, Faye had agreed to give the faerie queen Levantiana her as yet unconceived baby in a second bargain – if Levantiana would help her and Rav escape death or torture in Murias at the hands of Finn Beatha, who was mad with jealousy.
But now, she was learning what it meant to be sidhe-leth : half fae. It had always been with her, but since she had begun learning the secret magic of Murias from the faerie queen Levantiana, she had changed.
She had become more demanding, imperious, sexier; she had begun to learn how to command the element of water, and she had received gifts from her ancestors.
Some of those gifts were good: increased psychic ability, greater knowledge of herbs and Latin, bravery, insight.
Some of the gifts were not so good: loss, pain and hopelessness.