Flame of Sevenwaters by Juliet Marillier Page A

easy habit to break, even when one hardly believed in any god. He was still first. Father had been right when he said guilt was hard to get rid of. Perhaps I would still be mourning Bounder’s loss when I was an old woman. People would think me crazy, with good reason. That vision came to me again, my figure on the stairs of the keep, and visitors muttering my story in voices hushed with pity. I did not much care for the image.
    A pox on it, now I had to relieve myself. Why hadn’t I waited for Rhian?
    “I’m sorry,” I murmured. “Could you wait a bit? I need to…”
    The very poised Luachan surprised me by blushing. Finbar sat down on a fallen tree. He eyed me. I could see him wondering whether to offer help and deciding not to.
    “I won’t be long.”
    The business was a little awkward, what with the need to hold my gown out of the way, deal with my stockings, and make sure I returned before anyone came looking. I had ways of performing certain essential tasks, ways I’d had to develop. I was crouched there, clawing up a stocking, when something moved in the undergrowth not far away. I froze. If anything was going to spring out and surprise me, I surely didn’t want it to happen when I was at such a disadvantage.
    Nothing. Whatever it was, it had become still when I had, for there was not the least movement now amid that profusion of ferns and bushes. The light was dim here; I was well off the track. Luachan and Finbar were out of sight behind the bole of a massive oak. I bent to finish my work with the stocking. There was a furtive rustling, a sound made by something a great deal larger than a bird or squirrel or hedgehog. And now, as I straightened, I saw it for a moment, dark, solid, padding swiftly away under the trees. A dog. A big black dog.
    No need to wait until you’re old , I told myself, hauling too hard on the second stocking. My fingers tore a hole; Rhian would not be pleased with me. You’re crazy already. My mind was so much on Bounder that I was seeing him everywhere. If there was a dog running wild in the Sevenwaters forest, it wasn’t likely to be a perfect copy of my long-dead friend. It had probably been a pig. Or my mind conjuring up what I wanted to see. I rose to my feet.
    Another black form slunk across my vision, a little smaller than the first but shaped much the same. Head down, tail down, shoulders hunched, ribs stark under the pelt…It was gone. Two dogs. Two Bounders. This was ridiculous. I would fix my mind on something completely different, such as how to coax a smile out of my little old man of a brother. I checked my gown to make sure it was not caught up anywhere, and walked back to my companions. “I’m ready to go on.” I was tempted to tell them what I had seen, but held back. I could just imagine what questions Finbar could get out of that.
    At a certain point the forest thinned out, and we walked into a broad clearing ringed by tall trees. In the center stood a great circleof mossy stones. The grass around them had been scythed short; it was clearly a place of ritual. I glimpsed various low buildings set back under the trees, but nobody seemed to be about.
    “We’ll walk down to the place I mentioned,” Luachan said, “and eat our provisions there. The track goes through that way.” He pointed ahead toward a stand of birches. “You can take a look, Maeve, and see if you think your charge might be happy in our fields.”
    “The decision’s not up to me,” I said, following him along the path he’d indicated. “This is quite a distance from the keep. It’s possible Father might think it’s too far.”
    “After what you did at the stables earlier,” said the druid, “Lord Sean will at the very least listen to your opinion. It was remarkable. Your audience was deeply impressed.”
    “It’s a useful skill.” His praise made me feel awkward. “It counts little against the things I can’t do.”
    Luachan raised his brows at me. “You keep some kind of