The Maiden of Ireland

“Odd little imp.” Caitlin plopped down on a rock and stared out at the gathering mists of evening. “Pluck a bloody rose indeed.”

She drew her knees to her chest and sighed. Once, this garden had been a necklace of color and grace. The fallen rocks had been terraces dripping with roses. Her mother, the lovely Siobhan MacBride, had tended her flowers as if they were children, nourishing them on rich, lime-white soil and keeping back the weeds like a warrior staving off an invasion.

But the garden and everything else had changed when the English had claimed the coast in a choke hold on Ireland. The garden seemed to be eaten up by the pestilence of disorder and conquest. Weeds overran the delicate plants, trampling them just as Cromwell’s legions trampled the Irish.

I will rebuild my home, she vowed. Alonso will come. He promised...

Tall grasses, ugly and dry from winter, rattled in the wind. The sea crashed against rocks and slapped at the shore.

The wind shifted and its voice changed, a sigh that seemed almost human. A shiver scuttled like a spider up Caitlin’s back.

Deep inside her lived a dark, Celtic soul that heard ancient voices and believed fiercely in portents. As a haze surrounded the lowering sun, the secret Celt came awake, surging forth through the mists of time. On this night, the gates stood open to the fey world. Unseen folk whispered promises on the wind.

A curlew cried out, calling Caitlin back from her reverie. She blinked, then smiled wistfully. The world was too real to her; she knew too many troubles to escape, as her father did, to realms where bellies were full, grain yields bountiful, and cattle counts unimportant.

Still, the charged air hovered around her, heavy as the clouds before a storm, and she remembered Tom Gandy’s words: Pluck a rose the moment the sun dies, and wish for him.

Foolish words. Fanciful beliefs. There wasn’t a rose within miles of this barren, windswept place.

You’ll find what you need in your heart, Caitlin MacBride.

The sun sat low, a golden seam between earth and sky. A single ray, powerful and narrow, aimed like a spear of light at Caitlin’s chest. She felt it burning, the heat of it pulsing. She stood and stepped back so that the sunbeam dropped to her feet.

And there, straining through the thick briars and reeds, grew a perfect rose.

Caitlin dropped to her knees. She would have sworn on St. Brigid’s well that no rose could grow in this unkempt bower, nor bloom so early in spring. Yet here it was, white as baby’s skin. Secreted within the petals were all the hues of the dying sun, from flame pink to the palest shade of a ripe peach. Painted by the hand of magic, too perfect for a mortal to touch.

The breeze carried the scent of the rose, a smell so sublime that a sharp agony pierced her. All the years of waiting, of struggle, seemed to wrap around her heart and squeeze, killing her hopes with exquisite slowness.

The sun had sunk to a burning sliver on the undulating chest of the dark sea. Day was dying. A few seconds more, and—

Pluck a rose the moment the sun dies, and wish for him.

Without forethought, Caitlin grasped the stem of the flawless rose and squeezed her eyes shut.

A thorn pierced her finger but she didn’t flinch. She gave a tug and the plea flew from her lips. “Send me my true love!”

She spoke in the tongue of the ancients, the tongue of the secret enchantress buried in her heart.

Caitlin clasped the rose to her chest and repeated the plea. She touched the petals to her lips, anointed it with her tears, and spoke three times, and her voice joined the voice of the wind. The incantation flew on wings of magic to the corners of the earth, from her heart to the heart of her true love.

The sudden chill of twilight penetrated the spell in which, for the briefest of moments, she had been beguiled, helpless, wrapped in an enchantment against which she had no defenses.

She opened her eyes.

The sun had died in flames of glory, yielding to the thick hazy softness of twilight. The last purpling rays reached for the first stars of night. The mist had rolled in, carried on the breath of the wind, shrouding the rocks and sand and creeping toward the forgotten garden. Long-billed curlews wheeled black against the sky. Caitlin stood rooted, certain beyond all good sense that the spell had worked. She searched the desolate garden, the cloud-wrapped cliffs, the hazy shore.

But she stood alone. Utterly, desolately, achingly alone.

The wind dried the tears on her cheeks. The hopeful sorceress inside her retreated like a beaten horse.

Blowing out a sigh and an oath, Caitlin glanced down at the rose. It was an ordinary plant, she saw now, as common as gorse, pale and lusterless in the twilight.

There was no more magic in Ireland. The conquering Roundheads had stolen that as well.

She opened her hand and drew the thorn from her finger. A bead of blood rose up and spilled over. Furious, she flung the flower away. The wind tumbled it toward the sea.

Abandoning whimsy, she turned for home.

A movement on the shore stopped her. A shadow flickered near a large rock, then resolved into a large human form.

A man.

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Caitlin stood rooted, unable to move, to think, to breathe. Thick fog swirled around the man, tiny particles of moisture catching the brilliance of the new stars and bathing him in the hero-light of legend. Huge and unconquerable, aglow with an unearthly radiance, he strolled toward her.

Wild and primal urges pulsed through Caitlin, reawakening the slumbering believer deep inside her.

The stranger seemed more myth than human, the Warrior of the Spring from Tom Gandy’s ancient tales, a champion with the aspect of a pagan god.

Still he came on, walking slowly, and still she watched, suspended in a spellbound state woven of whimsy and desire.

She thought him beautiful; even his shadowy reflection in the dark tidal pool that separated them was beautiful. He was strong-limbed and cleanly made, his body pale, his hair aflame with the colors of the sunset, his face shapely and his eyes the hue of moss in shadow. Caitlin felt no fear, only the awe and enchantment that flowed like a river of light through her.

Above tall black knee boots, he wore loose breeches cinched at his narrow waist by a broad, highly ornamented belt. A blousy white shirt draped his massive shoulders, the thin fabric wafting with the subtle undulations of the well-conditioned muscle beneath. His clothing and his astonishing mane of hair appeared slightly damp as if kissed by the dew.

With his deep, shadow-colored eyes fixed on her, he skirted the tidal pool and came to stand before her.

He gave her a smile that she felt all the way to her toes.

Caitlin gasped. “Heaven be praised, you were sent by the fey folk!”

“No.” The smile broadened. His unearthly gaze shimmered over her, and she felt herself vibrate like a plucked harp string. “But I’d swear you were. God, but you catch a man’s soul with your loveliness.”

He spoke softly, his vowels and Rs as light as the mist, his stunning compliment a breath of spring wind on her face. He was so strange, so different...And then realization struck her. He was foreign. English!

The spell shattered like exploding crystal. Caitlin reached for her stag-handled hip knife. Her hand groped at an empty sheath.

Crossing her fingers to ward off evil, she stepped back and looked around wildly. The weapon lay on the ground a few feet away. Had she, in her trancelike state, set it down? Or had he, by some evil witchery, disarmed her by will alone?

Catching her look, he bent and retrieved the knife, holding it out to her, handle first. “Yours?”

She grasped the knife. He was a seonin, an English invader. In one swift movement she could plunge the weapon to the haft in his chest. She should.

But the tender sorcery of his smile stopped her.

She slipped the knife into its sheath, leaving the leather thong untied. “And who the devil would you be, I’m wondering?”