writing_shadows

A fairly early piece. This is Mage, and Shine before she knew what the hell was happening.

The host is riding twixt night and day

And where is there hope or deed as fair?

There had been a brief moment, when she turned around and smelled blood, when she thought she was wrong, that she had misremembered, and it wasn’t Reilly after all. But the smell had faded like a dream, and it was Reilly standing there, and very far from forgetting her, he said he had spent months looking for her after Katrina. In fact, he knew details he couldn’t have known. She was worried for a brief moment—his behaviour in Rio, or at least his conversation, had certainly indicated he could have obsessive qualities--and, taken utterly by surprise, she showed it.

Then he said he missed her. And seemed to mean it. They had seen each other for two days several years ago, and he missed her? None of this made any sense.

She made the ferry in Holyhead thanks to Vee, and had spent a day in Dublin’s fair city, which she had mostly spent at the tables in Fitzwilliam Card Club, playing for once in a country that didn’t already know about her. She slept in the ferry on the way back, worked Tuesday, spent Wednesday at Hampton Court in the company of a pleasant gentleman who had rescued her when she got lost in the maze, and slept the sleep of the very deeply tired on the longest day of the year.

She dreamt. She saw a large mound, fronted by great chalk walls, with intricately carved stones in the entrance and around the base. Reilly was there, dancing, dressed in furs and antlers and not much else, and he seemed the centre of the party. Her dancecard was in her hand, and there was one slot left.

She went up to him and asked “Did you ever tell your grandmamma you believed her?” Then the hill opened and a great band of shining people moved out and surrounded him, bringing him into the hill with them. She was left outside, the great door of oak, ash, and thorn barring her way. She noticed her dancecard didn’t have her name on it, but there was nothing to write with. Slowly the other names faded away until the card was empty. Then the card turned into a tapestry, with gaily painted figures upon it, menaced by the skeleton figure of death. The tapestry unwove and the threads reached for her again, only this time there wasn’t anywhere to jump. It wound ‘round her middle tight, tight, tight, and it was hard to breathe. . .

She woke in her bed just in the time between day and night. Instinctively she knew what she had never known, that Midsummer was in four days’ time. The coin had fallen off the bedside table into her hand. Reflexively she started flipping it over her knuckles, over and over and over.

“Well,” she thought, “I’m just damned if I know what any of that means at all.”