Free The Arrow (Children of Brigid Trilogy Book 1) by Maureen O'Leary Page B

you,” he said. He pressed his finger against the red tablet and lifted it to Fynn’s lips. She darted out her tongue and let it dissolve in her mouth. He chased it with a real kiss, tasting of wine and smoke. She let go into a freefall under the gentle pressure of Komo’s mouth. She fell backward, caught in the arms of the beautiful laughing girls wearing bracelets and rings and gauzy dresses with the smell of incense on their skin.
    She let herself be lost. Lost in the depths of Komo’s voice and the laughing of girls and wine spilling down her throat and the feeling that she was deeply and truly wanted by someone who would never ever hurt her again.
    ***
    Fynn ran through a forest on four graceful legs and hooves painted in gold. Komo hunted her from behind the trees and she was going to let him catch her, after a chase.
    She shifted shape and time. Fynn and Komo lay together in the meadow within the walls of the Keep. They were children again, holding hands and lying on their backs watching clouds drift by in an impossibly blue sky. His father had brought him there for a visit once when Komo was little and left without him. He’d promised to return, but he never did and Mother Brigid explained to Komo that he was going to be her child now. The Keep would be his family forever. Fynn was happy, as though she had just woken from a long, deep sleep. She turned to stare into his eyes and saw in them pure youth. Then they shifted and reflected age that reached deep into the far reaches of human memory.
    “How long have we been here?”
she asked.
    “I have been here as long as there have been people on earth. You have been here as long as there has been earth.”
    They watched as blossoms shook free from the cherry trees in early spring bloom and drifted over their faces.
    ***
    Fynn danced while Komo played guitar and sang. The drummer from Ritual Madness sat by the fire with a bongo drum between his legs. He shut his eyes in trance, a smoldering cigarette balanced on his lower lip. She and the other girls followed Komo around the room in time with the music, driven by the beat pounding out of the drummer’s hands. Komo was the guitar player, but he was the drummer, too; he was the dancers. He was inside the drummer and inside himself. Fynn led the line of dancers winding through the house like a snake.
    ***
    Fynn
was
a snake, nosing through grasses growing out of rich peat soil. Dancers circled a bonfire so high, it licked the lower branches of the trees as grand as cathedral walls. She slithered through the dancers’ feet without fear and when they saw her, they were not afraid. A priestess lifted the snake above her crown of fiery braids.
    She was there as a symbol of all good things, of the power of creation. She was there to bring them prosperity, fertility, and love. They passed her around in their gentle hands and danced with her. She loved them and she loved all creation. The people worshipped her. They conjured her. She was their reason for dancing. Her scales flashed as she moved in their hands, her tongue flickering, tasting the smoke.
    ***
    “Fynn. My daughter. Where are you?”
Her mother’s voice shattered the illusions of the Nine tablet dissolving in her bloodstream. Fynn pushed the voice away. Her mother had put her in danger. A pebble of anger grew to a stone lodged in her throat. She tried to cough it up, but the more she fought against it, the larger it grew.
    ***
    Fynn was back at the Keep, awake in an old photo of herself as a baby resting on her father’s shoulders. People from the commune tugged at the hem of her dress and she smiled down at them. She wore a wreath of purple windflowers around her head, like a crown. Her mother walked beside them. Her sister on the other side. They were friends with everybody. Her father held her ankles fast. She was safe and secure. She could never imagine falling.
    Then she blinked and she was fifteen. She rested her hands on a filthy woman’s back. The