Page 5 of The Faerie Morgana

Two years passed after the drawing of the sword before anything changed on the Isle.

The work went on. The acolytes studied. The supplicants arrived to make their requests in the anteroom.

The priestesses did their best to fulfill them.

Then, in Morgana’s eighteenth year, Nola, not the eldest of the Nine, but the most frail, went to sleep one summer night and didn’t wake again.

The remaining eight priestesses gathered in the inner chamber of the priestesses’ residence to choose her replacement.

The Blackbird hastened up from the garden and through the sanctuary to join them.

As he hurried through the courtyard, Morgana fell into step beside him. “They have already convened?”

“They are just beginning.”

“The choice is obvious, sir, is it not?”

He didn’t slow his pace, but there was no need. He never walked quickly. “We will consult the omens, Morgana, as we always do.”

“The new moon is tonight. The perfect time for me to begin my priestesshood.”

He cast her a sidelong glance but kept walking in his stiff way. “The phase of the moon is not the only criterion. You know that.”

“I am already more powerful than any of the surviving eight, sir.”

At that, the Blackbird stopped and turned, pushing his hat back so he could look into her face. “I will not argue that with you, Morgana, although I have warned you about excessive pride. But there is a proper way to do these things.”

“Why waste time on a decision that is already clear?” Morgana’s shoulders twitched with impatience. “We have a list of supplicants who need our help. They come to the Isle every day, begging for remedies.”

“And you fulfill their requests, do you not?”

“I do, or I help the acolytes to do it. Which means I should be one of the Nine.”

The Blackbird’s gray beard twitched. “Like every other candidate, child, you must wait to be invited.”

“I’m no longer a child.”

“That is a matter of perspective, Morgana. Why not enjoy your girlhood while you can? Keep your heart light, your steps free. You will have a very long time to be an adult.”

“My heart has not been light since the day you took me from my lady mother. That was the end of my childhood, as I think you know.”

He paused for a long moment, twiddling his beard with his free hand and gazing thoughtfully at her with eyes that were heavy with something she couldn’t name. “That couldn’t be helped, Morgana,” he said slowly, as if the words pained him. “There were reasons.”

“What reasons?” she demanded.

The moment felt huge to her, as if he were on the edge of saying something important, something real, something she should hear. When he spoke no more but pressed his lips shut, she nearly stamped her foot in frustration. Instead, she lifted her chin, forcing him to look up to see her eyes.

“Nothing I can tell you now,” he said, although without much conviction.

“Sir, I have already proved myself an adept. You saw.” She spoke with confidence, although the customary quiver of doubt shuddered through her belly.

She did not, in truth, know why she had been able to help her half brother pull the sword from the stone.

She did not know why she was able to do many of the things she did.

She hid her confusion behind a mask of pride, though she knew others perceived it as arrogance.

Only in the small hours of the night did she allow herself to question who and what she was to possess such powers.

Indeed, to deserve such powers. Had the Blackbird conferred them on her somehow? Was that what he had not yet told her?

Whatever the explanation, about this, the question of the priestess’s chair, she was confident. She said, her voice vibrant with conviction, “These two years since that day, I have been waiting.”

“Has it been two years? My, my.” His beard twitched. “Tell me. Why does becoming one of the Nine matter so much to you?”

“I spend my days stirring tinctures and making salves and teaching little girls, when I could be watching the future. Safeguarding the kingdom. I have no friends here except Braithe. I have never made friends, except perhaps with yourself, sir. I am different, and everyone knows it. It sets me apart. That doesn’t matter so much, but doing the work I am meant to do matters a very great deal.

Being one of the Nine, having the authority that comes with it, means I can serve my king, the true king, with any gifts I possess. ”

The Blackbird nodded, letting his gaze wander to the summer sheen that lay on the blue waters of Ilyn. “Arthur is not yet king.”

“He should be.”

“His time has not yet come.”

“If I were a priestess, I could scry properly. I might know when the time is right.”

“You can scry now. I believe you often do.”

“But who listens to the visions of a mere acolyte?”

“What does your deep sight tell you?”

“It tells me this is my time.”

He sighed, and his slumping shoulders bowed further, giving her a twinge of sympathy.

He was, indeed, a very old man. An impossibly old man.

She knew so little about him, except that the Lady had appointed him to oversee her Temple and her priestesses.

Morgana wondered just how old he was, but she knew it was pointless to ask.

He said tiredly, “I will carry your message to the priestesses, Morgana. I don’t know if it will make a difference. It may have the opposite effect.”

Forced to be satisfied with that, she stepped back, allowing him to go on his way unimpeded. She watched him hobble into the residence. The door opened at his approach, and after he passed through, someone, probably the oddly silent Dafne, closed it behind him.

Morgana stood in the sun-filled courtyard, gazing after him, struggling for patience.

The Blackbird had the answers to her questions, and she had thought, just for a moment, that he was going to reveal them.

She passed a hand over her forehead and reminded herself she had years in which to learn all there was to know.

What she had not told the Blackbird, what she kept even from Braithe, was that she had already scried Arthur’s future. In the mist that swirled over the lake, and again in the smooth water in her washbasin, she had seen glorious things, but she couldn’t say when they would come to pass.

Braithe and the other acolytes, fair Ethne, dark Olwen, and all the rest, murmured anxiously to each other in the crowded workroom.

Everyone knew that Nola no longer breathed the air of the mundane world.

No one grieved her, because she had been reclusive, all but invisible, for some time.

What made them whisper and speculate was the convocation of the remaining priestesses in their inner chamber.

The decision to be made would affect them all for years to come.

Braithe had seen Morgana waylay the Blackbird on his way to the residence, and although she couldn’t hear what was said, she recognized Morgana’s impatience and frustration, and she worried.

“You think your favorite is going to be the next priestess, don’t you, Braithe?”

Braithe laid down the ladle she was using and turned to face Freda.

They were roughly the same age, Freda and herself, but Freda was rangy and redheaded, while Braithe was petite and plump, with her fair curls, her freckles, her round blue eyes above deep dimples.

They had been acolytes together since Braithe arrived at the Isle, but no friendship blossomed between them.

Braithe felt the attention of the other girls turn to her, and it was as if the hot summer sun had suddenly scorched the workroom, bringing perspiration to her temples and neck.

She sniffed and braced her hands on her hips to hide her anxiety. “If there is sense in the Temple, she will be. Who else can compare?”

“Darra, for one. She’s older than Morgana.”

“But not nearly as powerful.”

“Not all of the priestesses are adepts,” Freda said. “That doesn’t mean they aren’t wise in the ways of the Lady.”

Several of the other acolytes murmured assent, echoing the assurances they had heard from their teachers.

“Are you thinking you will be one of the Nine one day, Freda?” Braithe said, in a tone sharper than she had meant to use.

She felt the tension of this moment in her belly.

She was afraid that if Morgana didn’t get what she wanted, she would leave the Isle, and Braithe didn’t think she could bear to be left behind. “You, a priestess?”

Freda tossed her long red braid behind her back. “I could be,” she snapped. “Why not?” And then, nastily, she said, “My salves are smooth and my tinctures are clear, unlike your own!”

“Ah,” Braithe said, taking care to sweeten her voice. “I was unaware that a priestess is chosen for the smoothness of her salves. How interesting.”

“Certainly you’ll never be a priestess, Braithe!”

Braithe picked up her ladle again. “Your recognition of the obvious impresses me, Freda. We’ve all known that for a long time. There are other ways to serve, as our teachers are always telling us. Perhaps you should be considering them yourself.”

“Perhaps your Morgana should!”

At that, Braithe spun around, and the hot liquid on her ladle splashed over Freda’s robe. “Use your head!” she snapped. She tossed a cloth at Freda to sponge the witch hazel reduction from her skirt. “Morgana’s gifts are too rare to be wasted! Even you, jealous as you are, can understand that.”

“Gifts?” Freda said, scrubbing at the spots on her robe. “Or curses?”

“What do you mean, curses?”

Freda tossed the cloth back to Braithe, and her thin lips curled in a sneer. “What human woman does the things she does? Moving things with her mind. Seeing things in the fog. Lighting a candle with her fingertips.”

Braithe felt the constriction in her throat that too often led to tears. She tried to swallow it away, to speak lightly. To hide her worry. “Of course Morgana is a human woman! What else would she be?”