Mage of Clouds (The Cloudmages #2) Read Online Free PDF Page B

Head. I go out there sometimes just to see them. I think they’re fascinating and . . . beautiful.”
    Meriel could feel Jenna’s gaze on her, and when she turned her head, she found her mam staring at her appraisingly. “You just . . . watch them?” she asked, and Meriel frowned.
    “Of course, Mam. I tried to go up to them a few times, but they’d just go in the water and honk and wail at me, like they were trying to talk to me.”
    Jenna nodded, slowly, and her attention went back to the seals in the water. “I love them myself. Especially the blues. But I never knew you liked them also.”
    “There’s lots you don’t know about me,” Meriel answered, too sharply.
    Meriel thought her mam would react angrily. She saw Jenna’s fingers grip the railing tightly in the last of the sunlight, but Jenna only took a long breath. “I know,” she said. “That’s my fault, Meriel, and I admit it. But there’s nothing I can do about it now. I can’t change the past. All I can do is try to be more of a mam to you from now on.”
    Then don’t banish me to Inishfeirm, Meriel wanted to retort, but she bit her lips, watching the seals. They were falling behind the ship now, turning back to the shore. They watched them depart as the sky darkened and turned red on the horizon ahead of them. “My own mam . . .” Jenna started, then paused. “Your great-mam Maeve . . . I’ve learned that she died. I’m sorry you never had the chance to meet her, Meriel. She was a good person and she would have loved you.”
    “Then why didn’t you ever bring me to see her or have her come to us?”
    Meriel saw her mam’s lips tighten. Her eyes shimmered in the sunset. “It’s a long and complicated story, and—” She sighed. “I’ll tell you someday. I want to tell you. Maybe when we get to Inishfeirm and can sit down for a long chat. But the short version is that we both, Mam and I, made the choice to stay apart because . . .” Her voice became softer than the hush of the water against the hull.
    “Because you killed Padraic Mac Ard.”
    Meriel saw her mam’s eyes close with remembered pain. “Aye. Because of Padraic Mac Ard. I wrote to her, oh, once a year or so. I told her about you. I told her lots of things, but she never responded. After a while I stopped writing. We’re both—well, we’re both too proud for our own good. I know that was a mistake, now—and I hope the Mother-Creator will forgive me for it.” Jenna turned her head to look at Meriel. “It’s a mistake I don’t want to make with my own daughter.”
    She couldn’t hold back the retort this time. “Then tell the captain to turn the ship around. Don’t send me to Inishfeirm.”
    Jenna was already shaking her head before she finished. “I can’t, Meriel.”
    “Why not? This isn’t what I want, Mam. How does it help us to get closer if I’m there while you’re in Dún Kiil? Tell me why you’re doing this to me.”
    Jenna had turned away from the ocean. The seals had vanished, and only the edge of the sun was still visible. In the dusk, Meriel could see her mam’s eyes glistening. “There are things you shouldn’t know, Meriel. Not yet. This is one of them.”
    “Fine,” Meriel said, snapping her mouth shut with the word. She slapped the railing with her hand, the sound loud. “You treat me like I’m still a child, Mam, but I’m not. I suppose that’s something else you didn’t notice.”
    With that, Meriel pushed away from the railing and left. She heard her mam call her name behind her but she paid no attention. She went to her cabin and shut the door, causing Nainsi, still in her bunk, to glance up startled.
    Meriel expected any moment to hear a knock and her mam’s angry shout.
    She heard nothing at all.

    The next day, a small island lifted from the sea ahead of them.
    Inishfeirm was a fog-wrapped, steep-walled mountain thrusting out from the waves five miles from Inish Thuaidh. As they approached, Meriel could see houses and