Daughter Of The Forest Read Online Free PDF Page A

verse about the deer, and the eagle?” Conor nodded, his small features very serious. “Tell me then,” she whispered.
    “ My feet will tread soft as a deer in the forest ,” said Conor, frowning with concentration. “ My mind will be clear as water from the sacred well. My heart will be strong as a great oak. My spirit will spread an eagle’s wings, and fly forth. This is the way of truth .”
    “Good,” she said. “Remember, and teach it to your sister, when she is older. Can you do that?”
    Another solemn nod.
    “It’s not fair!” Cormack burst out, angry tears overwhelming him. He put his arms around her neck and held on tight. “You can’t die! I don’t want you to die!”
    She stroked his hair, and soothed him with gentle words, and Conor moved around to take his twin’s hand in his own, and Cormack grew quiet. Then Diarmid held Padriac up so Mother’s arm could encircle the two of them for a moment. Finbar, standing next to her pillow, was so still you could have missed him entirely, watching silently as she let her sons go, one by one. She turned to him last of us boys, and she didn’t say anything this time, but motioned to him to take the carved piece of stone she wore around her neck, and to put it on his own. He wasn’t much more than an infant—the cord came down below his waist. He closed a small fist around the amulet. With him she had no need for words.
    “My daughter,” she whispered at last. “Where’s my Sorcha?” I went out and asked, and Fat Janis came in and put the newborn baby in our mother’s arms, by now almost too weak to curl around the little bundle of woollen wrappings. Finbar moved closer, his small hands helping to support the fragile burden. “My daughter will be strong,” Mother said. “The magic is powerful in her, and so in all of you. Be true to yourselves, and to each other, my children.” She lay back then, eyes closed, and we went softly out, and so we did not witness the moment of her passing. We put the seed in the ground and the tree took form within it and began to grow. She is gone, but the tree lives, and through this she gives us her strength, which is the strength of all living things.

    My father had allies as well as enemies. The whole of the northern land was patchworked with tuaths like his, some larger, most a great deal smaller, each held by its lord in an uneasy truce with a few neighbors. Far south at Tara dwelt the High King and his consort, but in the isolation of Sevenwaters we were not touched by their authority, nor they, it seemed, by our local feuds. Alliances were made at the council table, reinforced by marriages, broken frequently by disputes over cattle or borders. There were forays and campaigns enough, but not against our neighbors, who held my father in considerable respect. So there was a loose agreement between them to unite against Briton, Pict, and Norseman alike, since all threatened our shores with their strange tongues and barbarian ways. But especially against the Britons, who had done the unthinkable and got away with it.
    I could hardly be unaware that prisoners were sometimes taken, but they were closely housed and guarded with grim efficiency, and none of my brothers would talk about it. Not even Finbar. This was odd, for mostly he kept his mind open to me, and my own thoughts were never shut away from him. I knew his fears and his joys; I felt with him the sunlit spaces and the dark mystic depths of our forest, the heartbeat of the goddess in its dappled paths and spring freshness. But there was, even then, one part of himself that he kept hidden. Perhaps, even so early, he was trying to protect me. So, the prisoners were a mystery to me. Ours was a household of tall armored figures, curt exchanges, hasty arrivals and departures. Even when my father was away, as for the best part of the year he was, he left a strong garrison behind, with his master-at-arms, Donal, in iron-fisted control.
    That was one side of the