As she rocked, she worked snow-white wool with knitting needles and tapped one booted foot to some internal rhythm.
The sign over her head read OF THE WISE.
She paused her knitting only to crook a finger at Breen.
As Breen stepped closer, she saw the red dragon flying over the field of white wool.
“It’s beautiful.”
“It’s for my great-grandchild who’ll come into the world by Yule. My twelfth she’ll be, and for each I make such a blanket so wherever they go through their life they know the dragon flies over Talamh.”
“A wonderful gift.”
“I know you,” she added, and set the knitting in the basket beside her chair. “You’ve the look of those who came before you. I, carrying in me my last child of seven, stood on the road right there when first Mairghread rode to the Capital as taoiseach. And so I stood when your father made that ride.”
She rose. “Come inside, Breen Siobhan. You and your friend and your fine dog there are welcome.”
“I don’t have anything to trade today,” Breen began as they followed the woman inside. Then she stopped, simply looked.
“You like what you see?”
“It’s wonderful. It’s a wonderful shop.” Though smaller by far, it made Breen think of the Troll cave.
“Wow.” Marco turned a circle. “It smells amazing in here.”
As he spoke, a black cat—who’d sat so still on a table Breen had taken it for a statue—leaped down. Instead of giving chase, Bollocks sat while the cat circled him.
“My Sira won’t harm your boy there. She’s only showing him who’s in charge.” With a laugh in her voice, the woman spoke to the cat in the old tongue.
The cat made one more circle before jumping back on the table. And sitting, began to wash.
“Here now.” The woman went to a shelf holding a variety of crystals in wedges and squares and rounds. She lifted down a perfect square of deep purple amethyst.
“It’s beautiful,” Breen began when the woman held it out to her. “But I … Oh, for a candle.” Intrigued, she took it, studied the round hole in the center.
And heard the voice of the stone.
“For peace and calm of mind in these turbulent times. You’re after taking a gift back to your nan, aren’t you now?”
“Yes, and this is perfect. But I didn’t bring anything to trade.”
“No, no, you’ve come to Talamh, and in trade for that, I give you this to give to Mairghread. My man, the father of my seven, he fell at the Battle of the Black Castle.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“He stood for the light. For you, for me, our children, and all who come after. A good man, he was a good man, and I see him in our children, and theirs, and theirs. As I see your father, his mother in you. So, as they stood for the light, you will stand, and the child I’ll wrap in the blanket I made will know peace.
“Will you tell her Ninia Colconnan from the Capital sends blessings? She may remember me.”
“I will. And I’ll remember you, Mother.”
When Breen offered her hand, Ninia took it, then gripped it. Her eyes went from soft blue to deep. “Have a care, child. Look behind and beneath. Someone wishes you harm.”
“Odran and his followers.”
“Him and them, always, but on this side, and close. Have a care, for you’re precious to us. Have a care,” she said a third time. “This will fail, this time, this way, but it won’t be the end of it.”
She closed her other hand over Breen’s. “I can’t see more, but I hear the hard thoughts sent toward you, and thoughts so hard and sharp can cut as true as a blade.”
“I’ll be careful.”
With a nod, she stepped back. “You wear protection, I see,” she said to Marco. “So take this.” She walked over, chose a small white candle. “The scent comes from the blossom of the jasmine flower that blooms at night. As the pleasures of love often do. You love and are loved, and when you take those pleasures, this scent and light will … enhance. And you, do you think I’d be forgetting you?”
She gave Bollocks a pat as the cat looked on from her superior height. She chose a trio of tiny stones from little jars, then placed them on Bollocks’s collar.
“This true heart this charm protect, as this is my wish and my intent. Shield him on land and air and sea. As I will, so mote it be.”
With a faint shimmer of light, the stones fixed into the collar.