Naamah's Blessing

face.
    Oengus clapped a hand on Bao’s shoulder. “Come back to us as one of our own, eh, lad?” he said in a rough voice. “Like to get to know you better.”
    Bao took a deep breath. “I pray it is so.”
    My uncle Mabon said nothing, only raising his pipe to his lips, then lowering it in silence.
    No one knew what would happen.
    Without a further word spoken, Bao lowered himself from the ledge, dropping to the slope below. Turning back, he held out his hand to me, helping me down. Loose pebbles skidded under our bare feet. Bao unslung his staff, bracing himself on it and lending me his arm as we made the long, precarious descent, both of us dizzy from Nemed’s brew, gauging depths and distances with difficulty as we placed our feet with care.
    At last we gained the bottom. As I had before, I turned back once to see six figures silhouetted in the opening.
    As before, my mother raised her hand.
    I raised mine in reply.
    Soft blue twilight seemed to rise from the bowl of the glade, only a few streaks of gold lingering in the sky overhead. Bao and I walked toward the stone doorway, looking neither to the left nor the right. The doorway seemed to grow taller and taller as we neared it. We passed beneath its shadow and stood before it. Beyond it, the lake awaited us, shimmering in the dusk, lovely, but ordinary.
    “So this is it,” Bao said without looking at me.
    “Aye.”
    He reached out his hand, and I took it. Together, we passed through the stone doorway, and the world changed.
    Dusk turned to night, all at once pitch-black and brighter than day. Stars burst like pinwheels in the sky overhead. Every blade of grass was visible, every needle on every pine-tree, everything near and far at once. Everything was filled with splendid and terrible purpose, and ah, gods!
    Knowing what to expect made no difference, no difference at all. It was so beautiful, so unspeakably beautiful.
    “Oh, gods!” Bao whispered, tears in his voice. “Oh, Moirin!”
    “I know,” I said. “I know.”
    Dazed and stumbling, hand in hand, we made our way to the shores of the lake, silvery and shining, stars reflected in its depths.
    There, we waited.
    We sat cross-legged opposite one another, Master Lo’s last pupils, and breathed. It seemed a fitting tribute in that place. We breathed the Breath of Earth’s Pulse, grounding ourselves and listening to the heartbeat of the world. We breathed the Breath of Trees Growing, sensing the deep network of roots lacing the soil around us. We breathed the Breath of Ocean’s Rolling Waves, aware of distant seas ringing the island, waves breaking on its shores. We breathed the Breath of Wind’s Sigh, sensing the infinite vault of sky rising above us, and the Breath of Embers Glowing, fiery stars whirling before our eyes, heat pulsing in our veins.
    There was no telling how long we waited. Time moved differently on the far side of the stone doorway.
    A long time.
    Long enough for hunger pangs to come and go. Long enough for weariness to settle into our bones, long enough for our heads to begin to nod, so that we must wake ourselves with a jerk, time and time again.
    Long enough for fear, and the first inklings of despair.
    I rubbed the faint scar on my right hand—not the scar of sisterhood on my palm that Cusi’s knife had inflicted, but the one on the web of my thumb I didn’t remember acquiring. Seven years ago, I had asked Old Nemed to demonstrate her gift, and she had taken that memory from me.
    If we failed, she would take this memory away. All of it. The hollow hill and the glade, the world of beauty beyond the stone doorway. My
diadh-anam
would gutter and die within me, and I would no longer be myself.
    And Bao would no longer
be
.
    It came to seem that was what would come to pass.
    In the blazing darkness, unshed tears glittered in his eyes. “I’m sorry, Moirin.” His voice was hoarse from long disuse. “I didn’t want to leave you.”
    “Don’t say it!” My voice shook. I clambered to my feet, my legs unsteady. “Please!” I cried into the darkness. “Oh,
please
! I did all that I thought You wished! I know I made mistakes, but I tried, I tried so hard! We both did! Over and over again, we tried our best!” Sorrow stabbed me like a knife, but in its wake came anger. A futile mix of fury and despair seared my veins. “I beg You, do not do this to us!” I shouted in a ringing voice. “Does love mean nothing to You?”
    Bao drew a short, shocked breath.
    For a