Shadows and Light

smiled.

    “Ashk?” Morag said. “Would you like me to ride back to the Clan house with you?”
    Ashk shook her head, her eyes still focused on the stag. “You have your own journey to make now. I’ll stay with him and keep watch. But I’d consider it a kindness if you would stop by the Clan house and let them now I’m here—and also ask if someone will go to Ari’s cottage. If she’s willing, and feels strong enough, I’d like her to turn the earth for him. I’d like him to return to the Great Mother in the spot where he chose to fall.”
    Morag looped the quiver’s strap over the horn of Ashk’s saddle. She mounted her dark horse, waited until Kernos’s ghost floated up behind her. Then she rode away from the meadow, following a wide forest trail that she was certain led to the Clan house. She hadn’t gone far when she met up with several Fae males, who were scouting that trail for signs of nighthunters, and delivered her messages.
    She rode on until she found another small clearing, bright with daylight. She could open the road that led to the Shadowed Veil from anywhere she was, but she didn’t want to come back down that road and touch the world again among the shadows of the woods.
    Once she opened it, the dark horse cantered up the road to the Shadowed Veil. When they reached the Veil, she released Owen’s spirit, saw his ghost form a few feet in front of her. He bowed to her—or, perhaps, it was to the ghost who rode behind her—then turned and walked through the Shadowed Veil to follow the path to the Summerland.
    Kernos floated down to stand beside the dark horse. “Gatherer, is it permissible for you to give a message from the dead to the living?”
    “It’s permissible.”
    “Then tell her I am proud of her courage. I am proud of her heart.”
    Morag swallowed the lump in her throat. “I’ll tell her.”
    Kernos studied her for a moment. “You’re of a kind, you and Ashk. It’s glad I am to know she has such a friend in this season of her life. Blessings of the day to you, Gatherer.”
    “Blessings of the day to you, Kernos.”
    He walked up to the Shadowed Veil, and through it, without looking back.
    Morag stared at the Veil for a long time before she turned the dark horse and went back down the road to the living world.
    It was late that evening before Morag tapped on Ashk’s door. She didn’t wait for an answer before going in, wasn’t sure she would get one.
    After returning from the Shadowed Veil, she’d come back to the Clan house to wait for Ashk and Ari.
    When they’d finished giving Kernos’s body back to the Great Mother, Ari had stayed at the Clan house long enough to have a bite to eat, then had gone home, her pony cart surrounded by armed Fae.
    Ashk had said little, had eaten little. She had simply sat at the big outdoor table, her silent grief a wall none of the Fae could breach.

    Now that everyone had retired for the night, except those who were standing guard, it was time to see if she could reach the woman behind that wall of grief.
    Ashk sat on the bed. She’d put on a nightgown and had taken her hair down so that it flowed in waves down her back. But her eyes still stared at nothing—or at something only she could see.
    Morag sat on the bed, close but not touching.
    “The meadow was our favorite place,” Ashk said softly. “He’d take me there to play, to learn, to talk.
    He taught me everything I know about the woods, taught me how to use the knife and the bow, taught me about the shadows and the light. And he ... accepted me when the rest of my family couldn’t. Even in the west, many of the Fae are not... easy ... about being around a Fae whose other form is a shadow hound.”
    “It’s a rare form to have,” Morag said, keeping her voice as soft and low as Ashk’s. And a dangerous one.
    “I loved him.” Ashk’s voice broke. The first tear slipped down her cheek. “He had a laugh that— When you heard it, you knew it was the Green Lord, laughing with joy and delight. And after I’d met Padrick...
    after the night of the Summer Moon when I realized I was carrying Padrick’s child and he wanted me to wed him in the human way ... We sat in the meadow, and when I told Grandfather I carried a child, he laughed that laugh. He said my womb had ripened for a fine man, and I should take the man as well as the seed. He said it was the green season of my life and I should honor it, that the other seasons would come soon enough. So I married