Seaggis was a place of green. Of people. Of bustling and goodwill. It was the place Grieda had known for the whole of her life. The place she grew from. It held all her memories. All her secrets and sorrows. It held the bodies of her ancestors. Of her parents. Of her husband. Of her son. It was the sandy beach, pebble paths, and grassy land that she hoped would embrace her own body one day after her life had been lived, and all her purpose spent.

Standing before the remains of her butchery, her home, after four weeks away, she wanted to scream. Nothing was as it should have been.

Ingrith was gone. Taken, possibly dead. Taelon, the young man she’d grown to love as dearly as her own son was back where he began, in the house of the family that had stripped pieces from his soul, with an infant daughter in his arms, and an impossible hope to find and bring back the woman he loved.

More than half the village people were gone. Dead or taken. Everything that was once beautiful was ruined. Grieda’s brother was missing. His wife was gone. Her nieces hadn’t been seen since the fire. Her animals had been taken.

And she was alive. She, out of all those who had been captured, and killed, she was alive. That wasn’t right. Grieda did not live for her life. She lived for others' lives. She was a widow. Barren as a desert. A witch. Her story was long since over, and now she existed in the stories of others. She was supposed to be a shadow. Someone to watch and smile at the treeline as those she grew to love lived hallowed as the leads of their own stories. She lived to deliver Rhaoette, and all of Taelon and Ingrith’s future children safely into the world. To build herself a rocking chair and sit, quiet and content in the sunset every evening and watch as they grew. To watch as those two, precious people she loved as her children, lived a life of happiness and love. To trudge up to the cliff house every other day with fresh meat and eggs and sit by the fireside and tell her stories to the little hands that grabbed at her skirts, and kiss the sweet, sticky faces that beamed and called her Heaomnà. Grandmother. And then, at last, to die peacefully, surrounded by those who cared, and to watch over them for their whole lives long and keep them safe from the heavens.

She was meant to live a simple life. A quiet life. A life of watching, helping, and loving.

She was not meant to be here, alive, well, but alone, with everything and everyone she loved scattered to the four corners of the earth.

Her hand reached out on its own to push aside the door that stood in her way, and it crumbled away from its hinges, sending a cloud of ash into the air, and staining her fingertips black.

Some of the houses had been mended. Those which skeletons could be salvaged. Grieda’s butchery was not one of them. She stared at it, remembering the first time she’d entered the doorway. Newly married. Foolish and in love, hand in hand with the man who’d made her whole, and unknowingly pregnant with the little boy who would never take his first breath. She’d hesitated on the step, as she did now, stomach fluttering with nerves as she stood on the threshold of her new life.

Lifting her sleeve to her mouth, so as not to breathe in the disturbed ashes, she entered the house, her feet crunching on charred wood, straw, and stone, leaving behind dusty footprints as she wandered through each room.

Everything was ruined, but the bedroom most of all. The roof stripped to the crossbeams. The wall open and gaping. Cobwebs settled over the broken, blackened windows and bed. Everything was coated in grime and looked like it had been abandoned for years.

She trailed her hand over the wooden frame of the bed. The mottled leaves and curling vines her husband had slaved over for the months leading up to their wedding.

“I hope you cannot see this, Dell,” she whispered. “I hope that when you left, you left, and you cannot see what terrible things have happened. To me. To our home. To our memories. I hope you and our son walk together in the clouds, happy, and never think to look down on this. On the wretched old woman I am become. I hope you’re never given cause for a broken heart again.”

Surrounded by the silence of desolation, she heard the creak immediately and spun around, hands rising, bunching into fists, only to lower them and gape at the woman standing in the room with her.

“Bronagh?” she gasped. “You live?”

Bronagh’s eyes glimmered with tears, and she caressed the head of the child in her arms, swathed in a patchwork blanket.

“Our home is deep enough in the forest that the fire did not spread. But Tadgh—The village—” She bit down on her lip. “I’ve come here every day, hoping you would return. I have not forgotten what you asked for.”

Grieda hurried toward the grieving woman and gripped her wrist.

“You have it? The umbilical cord? Is it—Was I right?”

She took the baby and held him to her breast, freeing the mother’s arms so she could dip her fingers into the pocket of her apron and draw out a bag.

They traded again, and Grieda tore open the drawstring, emptying the dried coil of flesh onto her palm.

“So, 'tis true,” she breathed.

“There’s far more to it than you suspected, Grieda,” Bronagh said. “Look at it. Those strands of blue. See how they pulse and throb in the light. It happened the moment I dipped it in the honey jar. This is not magic, Grieda. This is—”

“I know what it is. I just cannot fathom it.”

“Do you believe Ingrith knew?” Bronagh asked. Her son began to cry, and she shushed him, bouncing him in her arms.

“No. No. She couldn’t have known.”

Grieda slid the umbilical cord back into the bag and knotted the drawstring tight. “You can tell no one of this,” she whispered harshly. “No one can know.”

“I wouldn’t tell a soul.” Bronagh stared at the floor, eyes misted and saddened. “I feel as though I should have known. I knew there was something. I felt it, the moment I saw her. And that day—The day she walked me home when the Lulodun came out from the trees, I thought it was me. But I know it wasn’t me. It was her. Wasn’t it? But I never said a thing.”

“Your father’s blood is both a blessing and a curse, Bronagh.” Grieda gentled. “I myself had many chances to take me senses seriously. But I didn’t. None of us could have been expected to suppose. The legend gives us very little detail.”

“But there is no doubt?”

“It has been seventeen thousand years since Sunah slept. The Radkkans have raged a war on the rest of the land. Their Lord has sent his people to take all the young women and children from us. The Luloduns have awakened. The continent is full of unrest, and there is a heartbeat in the ground. There is little doubt that the earth is preparing for an event years in the making.”

Bronagh shook her head and scuffed her foot over the ash-smeared floorboards. “I should feel glad, knowing our savior is here. Knowing she’ll bring an end to this war. But I am afeared.”

“She’ll need to survive first.” Grieda ignored a floating cobweb and gripped the bag holding the umbilical cord in tight, thin hands. When she spoke again, her voice was determined, as was her heart.

“I will do everything in my power to make sure she does. To make sure they both do.”

Bronagh’s eyes hardened, and she straightened the sorrowful bend in her spine.

“I will help you. Let me help.”

“Tis a grim task.”

“Ingrith was—Ingrith is my friend. Above everything else, she is my friend.” Bronagh rested her cheek against her child’s head, eyes fluttering closed for a moment. “I will not allow the gift of faeri blood in my veins to go to waste. I do this for her. For them. And for everyone will receive their lives back from the resurrected Godchild’s prevail over the tyrant who wishes to destroy us.”

In the dark remnants of a butchery, standing amongst the ashes of things once held dear, the two women cut two small slices from the flesh coil and swallowed them. Underneath the grey sky of spring, they clenched hands and harbored hope, because inside their stomachs, a heartbeat pulsed: Strong. Alive.

The godchild lived.

TO BE CONTINUED . . .