The House Of Gaian

would call too much attention to us, make the guards in the villages we had to pass look too closely at where we were coming from. Make them look too closely at us .”
     
    “But she didn’t do anything,” Breanna said. “Perhaps, with Nuala keeping an eye on her ...”
    Fiona shook her head. “I told you, the elders only saw what Jean wanted them to see—and that’s the face she shows to Nuala, too. Pretty, sometimes pouty in a teasing way, fluttery feminine Jean. She was fearful enough of the people the Inquisitors have turned against our kind to behave on the journey here, but the only reason she didn’t do anything more damaging back home was because...”
    “Because?” Breanna prodded.
    Fiona looked uncomfortable. Finally, she said, “She was afraid of Jennyfer. And she hasn’t stirred up much trouble here because she’s afraid of you.”
    “Me? Whatever for?”
    “You and Jenny ... you’re .. . different... from the rest of us. I don’t mean that in a bad way, but... there’s a strength in both of you that runs so deep. A strength that comes from here.” Fiona shifted the quiver to her bow hand in order to press a fist against her heart. “I remember the last time you came to visit the family and stayed for the summer. Do you remember?”
    “I remember,” Breanna said quietly.
    “There was a brutal storm one night—wind fierce enough to uproot trees and rain that beat down hard enough to bruise skin. The rest of us huddled inside the house, but you and Jenny ... I heard you sneak out of the room the three of us were sharing that summer. When I crept to the window and looked out, the two of you were outside in your nightgowns, dancing in that storm, celebrating it and ... changing it.
    Air and water. You embraced that storm, took it into yourselves, made it part of your dance, gave it back as something gentler. You tamed a storm , Breanna. You and Jenny.” Fiona smiled. “The look on your face right now. As if I’ve suddenly started speaking some strange, incomprehensible language.”
    “You are.” Breanna shook her head. She remembered that night. Remembered extending her hand at the same moment Jenny extended hers so that they stepped out into that storm with their hands linked, feeling the Great Mother’s power swirling around them, rushing into them while they danced. Yes, they had celebrated that storm, had acknowledged its strength, had connected to it in a way that had been so natural it had required no words, no thought. What was so strange about that?
    They are deeply rooted in the Mother’s Hills.
    She remembered overhearing one of the elders say that the morning after the storm. Since she had kin in the hills, she hadn’t thought it odd. But she also remembered that, while Fiona, Rory, and some of her other cousins had come here a few times to visit after that summer, she had never been invited back for a visit to their family homes. Except Jenny’s.
    Confused and self-conscious—and irritated with herself and Fiona for feeling those things—she shrugged dismissively. “Let’s get some target practice.” I’m in the right mood to shoot something .
    Breanna had taken only a couple of steps toward the kitchen gardens when a hawk flew overhead, screaming a warning as it passed by her. At the same moment, a boy from one of the farm families who had escaped with Breanna’s kin burst from the woods, running toward them as fast as he could.
    “There’s a man in the woods!” the boy shouted. “A man wearing a black coat! Coming this way.”
    “What were you doing in the woods?” Breanna snapped as soon as the boy stumbled to a halt in front of her. None of the children were supposed to go into the woods on their own. There were still some of those nighthunter creatures out there somewhere.

    “Jean wanted to look for some plants,” the boy said, panting. “She told me I had to come with her since we weren’t supposed to go into the woods by ourselves and—” He glanced nervously at Breanna, then at Fiona. “And she didn’t want to ask one of the other witches to go with her.”
    There wasn’t time to consider what kinds of plants Jean was looking for that made her not want the company of another witch—or what she intended to do with the plants if she found them.
    “Go—” Breanna looked toward the stables. The men, warned by the hawk’s cries, were already in motion, saddling some horses, stabling others, gathering weapons that were always close at