Free If Crows Know Best (Mage of Merced Book 1) by Aimee Gross Page A

Why they would be on our mountain, I cannot guess.”
    “And observed by the Keltanes while they plot the ley lines in our land? Would the Keltane sovereign bring them here?” Annora wondered.
    “I have more questions than we can number. I’ll get water. No fire tonight, not until we can be sure smoke won’t be noted.” As I turned to go, the crow took wing, also. I nodded, glad of the extra eyes even though the walk was short to the spring.
    Once Morie had fallen asleep on Annora’s lap, for her earlier comfort with sleeping on her own little ledge abandoned her in this cave, I raised the question of my mother working magic.
    “How is it,” I asked, “that neither Da nor Wils have ever said anything about Mum being able to call animals or heal them? I only remember her doing what all the farmwives do to care for the land and creatures.”
    “You remember your da seemed to know what I could do with the wagon team, when we had only just met,” Annora said, drawing Morie’s cloak closer about her narrow shoulders and smoothing her curls.
    “Your uncle came up and talked to him about your skills. And Wils couldn’t still his tongue about you, either,” I argued.
    “Yes, and Wils told me about your mum. She had many gifts.”
    Virda laughed quietly. “Fenn thought the world and all of your mum, Judian. She helped me with some of my births after she came to the mountain, and I helped her when all of you were born. She had the way, and I knew some of her children would, too. The gift comes of need, sometimes. You favor her the most, to my eyes.”
    I could remember what she looked like, in a faded kind of vision. Morie was only just walking when Mum died. She had been helping a sick family in the village, a year with bad lung-fever. She took the fever and died down in the village, would not come back home to be nursed for fear of carrying the illness to us. All the family she was helping died, too, and the home had to be burned. I missed her so much, I thought I would go mad from it. I couldn’t remember much what Wils and Da were like, but Morie cried for her often in those days. Virda came to live with us for some months after, to care for her while we all did field work, since Morie was too little to spend all day outside. I just remembered working and feeling hollow inside day after day.
    “If I have this gift, how do I learn to wield it to keep you all safe? Who teaches someone so gifted how to use it?” I said finally.
    “My gran taught me. I had not shown it yet, when my mum and da died,” Annora said. “I can show you things I know, but the crow came to you, Judian, however you called it.”
    And how had I called it? For I could think of not one thought or desire that had been in my mind to bring it. “So, did Wieser come to you, or to me?” I said at last.
    “To you, I must think, looking back. She seems always to center on you. You’ll learn what skills you have as time goes by,” Annora said.
    “I need to know now. I hope I can learn faster because my need is pressing.” I looked at Wieser dozing by Virda’s feet, and the crow perched above us on its rock, staring into the dark distance with its feathers fluffed. “And you’d all better hope I prove to be a quick study, too.”
     

 
     
     
     

     
    CHAPTER 10
     
    Annora taught me how to call a fish for supper as the days passed. It mostly involved lying on the stream bank with my hand aching in the cold water and “seeing” the fish swim into my grasp. An essential bit was thanking the fish for making itself our meal, similar to the way Da thanked a stag for being brought down for our table at the conclusion of a successful hunt.
    Sometimes the magic worked, and sometimes it didn’t. Wieser watched impassively. The crow seemed amused by my efforts, if that is what one could reckon by a great black bird cackling and clicking its beak while it stepped to and fro.
    I would have preferred to depend on a sharp spear. Not just for the