with the White Boys. Ye need to make other friends, Ravenna."
She shook her head. "There aren't any more White Boys, Grania. And I can't make other friends. No decent person in Lir will acknowledge me. 'Tis not worth the trouble to try."
"They've forgiven Brilliana by now. Ye'll see."
"No. I don't believe it. And they think you're a witch, and you've done nothing to disprove it. I hear you're still mixing brews and potions and selling them to the townfolk. All the fine English schooling in the world won't make them see me as anything but the witch's bastard granddaughter, a girl born too low to be their equal, and now one cursed by an education that makes her all too aware of such things."
"Ye'll fit in one day. I've seen it."
"How?" Ravenna asked, wishing fervently Grania would tell her, because she could never see such a possibility for herself without leaving for Dublin.
"Just ye wait, me girl. Just ye wait. Now here's Father Nolan a-knockin' at the door. Why, ye best be answerin' it quick before he thinks less of our hospitality."
Chapter 8
A princess had to be very careful in choosing a knight. There were tall knights, fair knights, and handsome knights, but the tallest, fairest, and handsomest were not always worthy of a princess who had grown weary of worldly, physical things. A noble soul in the body of a gnome was preferable to a fair swain who possessed emptiness in his heart and perjury in his mind. The Royal Princess Skya would have to choose carefully her husband.
Ravenna looked up from her scribblings and breathed in the wild salt air of Lir. She had been home less than a week and already the old ways were taking hold of her. Her feet were bare and dusty. She had hung boiled bed linens to dry in the sun and then unceremoniously plopped down in the fragrant grass and begun to write. A breeze wafted from the sea, lifting her tangled black curls from her nape and blowing them gently from her face as she reread her scrawl. There was a smudge of soot down her nose where she had rubbed it after tending the laundry fire. The trappings of her English education were as abandoned as the puddle of soapy water left to drain down the hill toward the thin blue line of the sea.
She was happy. So happy in fact that only Aidan, her faerie tale prince in shining armor, come to take her to his castle, could have made her happier. The Weymouth-Hampstead School was in the past, Grania's knees were feeling better with the mist gone from the glen, and Ravenna had come home. Bother having friends, she thought, holding her arms out wide to embrace the sight of Lir's four emerald fields. The standing stone was like an old familiar, and her feet were finally free of those stiff, terrible boots. Friends were something she had always longed for, and perhaps always would, but in the meantime, she was home. She had her tales of Aidan and Skya for company, and she told herself with utter conviction that there was nothing more in the world she wanted.
"Why don't ye go for a walk in the glen? Meself, I think I'll sit here in the sun and listen to the wind whip the laundry," Grania said, cackling with delight over a batch of new kittens a neighbor had brought them after having found them abandoned in a roadside ditch. Three kittens clung to Grania's apron and one, a black one they named Malcolm, was nestled on the old woman's shoulder, purring so loudly Ravenna could hear it over the wind.
"Do the deer still bound through the clearing where the violets grow?" Ravenna asked, her English-schoolgirl manners fighting the urge to run free through her old haunts.
"Yes, me child. Go see them. 'Tis been a long time."
"It's a glorious day for a walk." Ravenna paused, wondering what Headmistress Leighton would think of a ramble through the forest unchaperoned. It did seem reckless. She was a young woman now, not a child, but the ache to go was almost a physical pain.
"Perhaps I will go." She tied her hair with a glossy purple-satin
She shook her head. "There aren't any more White Boys, Grania. And I can't make other friends. No decent person in Lir will acknowledge me. 'Tis not worth the trouble to try."
"They've forgiven Brilliana by now. Ye'll see."
"No. I don't believe it. And they think you're a witch, and you've done nothing to disprove it. I hear you're still mixing brews and potions and selling them to the townfolk. All the fine English schooling in the world won't make them see me as anything but the witch's bastard granddaughter, a girl born too low to be their equal, and now one cursed by an education that makes her all too aware of such things."
"Ye'll fit in one day. I've seen it."
"How?" Ravenna asked, wishing fervently Grania would tell her, because she could never see such a possibility for herself without leaving for Dublin.
"Just ye wait, me girl. Just ye wait. Now here's Father Nolan a-knockin' at the door. Why, ye best be answerin' it quick before he thinks less of our hospitality."
Chapter 8
A princess had to be very careful in choosing a knight. There were tall knights, fair knights, and handsome knights, but the tallest, fairest, and handsomest were not always worthy of a princess who had grown weary of worldly, physical things. A noble soul in the body of a gnome was preferable to a fair swain who possessed emptiness in his heart and perjury in his mind. The Royal Princess Skya would have to choose carefully her husband.
Ravenna looked up from her scribblings and breathed in the wild salt air of Lir. She had been home less than a week and already the old ways were taking hold of her. Her feet were bare and dusty. She had hung boiled bed linens to dry in the sun and then unceremoniously plopped down in the fragrant grass and begun to write. A breeze wafted from the sea, lifting her tangled black curls from her nape and blowing them gently from her face as she reread her scrawl. There was a smudge of soot down her nose where she had rubbed it after tending the laundry fire. The trappings of her English education were as abandoned as the puddle of soapy water left to drain down the hill toward the thin blue line of the sea.
She was happy. So happy in fact that only Aidan, her faerie tale prince in shining armor, come to take her to his castle, could have made her happier. The Weymouth-Hampstead School was in the past, Grania's knees were feeling better with the mist gone from the glen, and Ravenna had come home. Bother having friends, she thought, holding her arms out wide to embrace the sight of Lir's four emerald fields. The standing stone was like an old familiar, and her feet were finally free of those stiff, terrible boots. Friends were something she had always longed for, and perhaps always would, but in the meantime, she was home. She had her tales of Aidan and Skya for company, and she told herself with utter conviction that there was nothing more in the world she wanted.
"Why don't ye go for a walk in the glen? Meself, I think I'll sit here in the sun and listen to the wind whip the laundry," Grania said, cackling with delight over a batch of new kittens a neighbor had brought them after having found them abandoned in a roadside ditch. Three kittens clung to Grania's apron and one, a black one they named Malcolm, was nestled on the old woman's shoulder, purring so loudly Ravenna could hear it over the wind.
"Do the deer still bound through the clearing where the violets grow?" Ravenna asked, her English-schoolgirl manners fighting the urge to run free through her old haunts.
"Yes, me child. Go see them. 'Tis been a long time."
"It's a glorious day for a walk." Ravenna paused, wondering what Headmistress Leighton would think of a ramble through the forest unchaperoned. It did seem reckless. She was a young woman now, not a child, but the ache to go was almost a physical pain.
"Perhaps I will go." She tied her hair with a glossy purple-satin
Similar Books
