Una’s skirt was made of their tribe’s tartan, in the muted colors of the forest, the thin line the heather green that matched her bodice. Many women of the Éan dressed in leather skirts instead of the tartan, or dresses of the same because the leather wore longer. Some wore kilts only slightly longer than the men’s. Those were the warrior women, but Una was far from being one.
She wore no shoes, as most among the Éan were wont to do, but she’d taken care to scrub her feet clean and trim both her finger– and toenails.
Una had spent more time than usual brushing her long hair until it shone in soft brown waves around her shoulders and down her back. Being an eagle, it was several shades lighter than that of a raven, whose hair usually shone black. It was even lighter than either of her parents’, but Una didn’t mind.
She’d pulled it back from her face and fastened the sides of her hair together at the back of her head with a leather thong.
She looked neat and as civilized as most Éan managed to do. They did not live as the humans among the clans, but clung to their Chrechte roots.
There had been a time when she’d wanted to emulate the humans, but that time was past. She desired now to be fully Éan, but she could not even manage that very well, could she?
Una could be in the sky with her sharp eagle vision, watching for intruders, but none had ever suggested she do so.
Because she had been deemed untrustworthy. Her shameful curiosity was no secret, not after the cost to her family and tribe to rescue her from her own folly.
“You look lovely, daughter.” Una’s mother’s voice thankfully broke into her daughter’s morose thoughts.
Una spun and rushed to embrace the other woman. “It’s been so long since you have been home.”
“My home is with your father in the village now,” her mother gently chided. “This place is the same as the day we left it for the village.”
Her mother said the same thing each of the few times she’d come into the trees to visit. The two-room dwelling was just as Una’s parents had left it. They had taken their prize bed with them and the little furniture they’d accumulated.
Being a home that had been passed down through the generations in their family, it was not sparse. Even with her parents’ things gone, the dwelling felt lived-in. Cupboards held dishes enough for two, though Una only used one. There was no cooking fire of course, all cooking had to be done at ground level, but dry foods could be and were stored on the few shelves and in the crannies.
Una had moved the furs she’d used to sleep on the floor of the main room since she was a child into the small bedroom, along with her clothing and personal things. The main room had the natural seats created by the branches of the tree integrated into their home and a small table her great-grandfather had made.
“Would you like water?” Una asked her mother with hospitality that was rarely exercised.
“Yes, dear, but I’ll get it myself.” Her mother moved to the swollen skin, filled from the water-catchers the Éan had placed high in the trees. “You must make this dwelling your own. One day you will share it with a mate.”
Una was only nineteen, but she’d long given up hope of finding a mate. Though she never said so to her mother. The thought of trusting another to sleep beside her filled her with a dread she’d never give voice to.
“Is Father already at the royal abode?”
Mòrag grimaced. “He is, giving Prince Eirik an earful about the wolves, if I have my guess.”
“What have they done now?”
“Naught, but to hear your father tell it, each one of them is responsible for every bad turn in our village, from the birth of a deformed kid by the neighbor’s goat to the deluge of rain we suffered through this past spring.”
“They have only been here a month.” And summer was well on its way to the solstice.
Mòrag shrugged and then smiled tolerantly. “You know your father.”
“Are the wolf soldiers . . . are they . . .”
“Kind?” her mother prompted.
Una could not imagine it, despite the way Bryant behaved when she’d met him in the spirit realm. After all, Una acted with far more boldness there than was her usual wont.
“Violent?” she asked instead.
“Not at all. Oh, they’re good hunters and strong warriors, but they are kind and rather more polite than our own soldiers.”
“They live among the civilized humans.” She never said civilized the way her father did, with a sneer in his voice.
But Una’s mother acknowledged Fionn’s attitude with a frown they both understood. “They do, though it has not made them any less fierce. The one they call Bryant smiles more than I’ve ever seen a warrior smile though. He seems to want to make friends particularly with your father. I cannot imagine why; Fionn has been rude to him at every turn.”
Una’s breath caught at the mention of the man she’d only met while sleeping.
“The wolves who took me smiled, too.” With sneers and cold evil in their compassionless eyes that she would never forget.
“Not all wolves are like the men who took you.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Of course, I do not put them all in the same school of fish just because they share a wolf nature.” As much as she might shy from Bryant were she to meet him in the flesh, she would not think him capable of the cruelty she’d suffered at the hands of his fellow wolves.
Mòrag looked very sad. “Sweeting, I very much fear that you do.”
“That would make me like them, Mother, hating an entire race.”
“You are nothing like those men, but neither are these clansmen.” Mòrag smoothed Una’s already shining hair. “You look so lovely this eve.”
Una ignored the compliment, choosing to focus instead on her mother’s other words. “Father doesn’t like them.”
“Your father hates all wolves for what those horrible Faol who took you did to you.”
“And him.” Una turned away, lest her mother see the pain filling hazel eyes just like her own. “They left him too crippled to fly.”
“Aye, but these men our prince has given leave to live among us? They were no part of that.”
“But they could have been.”
“Could they?”
Una was certain of it. All wolves had that viciousness in their nature. Not that all would give in to it. She sincerely hoped Bryant had never done so.
Mòrag sighed, the sound filled with the same old pain that plagued Una. “Daughter, you have suffered greatly, but not at the hands of these men. They will not hurt you.”
Trust her mother to see the terror Una worked so hard to hide. “I just don’t understand why Prince Eirik had to let them enter our homeland.”
“Because change must come.”
“But why?” Even as Una asked, part of her longed for change. If not among her people, then in her own heart. So she would not live in such fear any longer.
“It has been foretold.”
“And that makes it so?” she demanded.
Though, now more than ever, she had reason to trust the visions of the celi di.
“You know it does,” her mother said in a tone that showed her shock at Una’s words. “Our seers have led us since time immemorial. We cannot begin to doubt their guidance now, not if we want your children to have a hope at life as it is meant to be lived.”
“As slaves to the Faol?” Una asked, her worst worries coming to the fore.
“In secret,” Mòrag emphasized. “Hiding from the peoples who live in this land with us. It is time for the Éan to come out into the sun.”