Circe's Gifts

Chapter 3

Circe held tight to Kalliope so that she did not drop to her knees. Her head ached, and her vision swam. This form she had chosen so long ago was needful for dealing with the humans -- even ones she would rather never have met -- but a disadvantage at times like this.

Kalliope's nose pressed against her leg and she brushed a shaking hand to the wolf's head. Kalliope whimpered and pushed harder, nearly knocking Circe down.

"I'm all right, love," she whispered. The words weren't entirely accurate, but she felt the wolf's anger growing and feared Kalliope might charge out after the humans. With a slight surge of power, she stopped the bleeding at her forehead and cleaned away most of the sign of the injury. "Calm, my friends. They are gone."

Circe stood and took a few steps back into the shadows of the cottage. The sound of the enraged animals outside had moved away from the glade, and the humans would soon be out of her realm.

As she sat on the bench by the table, Circe's head began clearing and even the sting of the blow faded. The humans were lucky they had run so quickly. Now that the surprise began to fade, Circe's anger began to grow.

The sun sank lower, casting the cottage in dark shadows. Circe thought about the candles along the shelf above her bed, but instead, she called up a bit of magic to light the room -- far easier, just now.

Tiernan fluttered up from the floor and settled unceremoniously on the table before her. He blinked several times as his head moved from side to side, still unsettled by his new shape. She reached out slowly, brushing her fingers lightly against his wounded shoulder and found it bleeding again.

"Poor boy," she said. He calmed beneath her magic touch. That last, small exertion nearly made her ill, though. She could do little more than ease the pain again. "You saved me. I won't forget your bravery, but for the moment you must forgive me. I'm too unsteady to do more magic. Can you stand this shape a while longer?"

The falcon had nodded with perfect understanding before he took a faltering step backward, showing that he didn't mean to press her.

Circe leaned her head down on the table and rested. She needed to clear her mind of worldly matters and to think about this entire situation in more than personal terms. Now that she thought beyond her own anger, she caught a feel of fate and larger issues at stake. This trouble reached beyond her little stand of trees. Circe began to suspect it might be wider than even this land. She needed help. She needed to understand, so Circe turned her attention to ... another place.

"I didn't think you could touch the universal stream any longer, my daughter."

The whisper of words should have startled her. However, having discovered this problem stretched wider than what transpired in her woods, Circe wasn't at all surprised to find Mother involved. She noted how Tiernan lifted his feathered head and looked around with a start. Ah, now there was something strange indeed. The child had Old Blood somewhere in his ancestry or else he couldn't hear the True Mother. That might well explain why so much of fate suddenly hovered around him. Local lords and High Gods rarely took an interest in the affairs of common humans, no matter how illustrious their birth. But one with Old Blood....

"You aren't listening to me, Daughter."

Circe turned away from the boy-falcon and looked fully into the other place. Mother did not deign to take on a mortal guise, which she despised at any rate. In fact, she didn't even condescend to appear at all, but Circe could feel her everywhere in the rainbow colors of the place she had once called home. Despite her headache, Circe had to seek Mother out in the nether planes.