Rituals (Cainsville 5)

"Sluagh," he whispered.

"What?" I said.

"I--" He stopped and rubbed a hand over his face. "I don't know." Gabriel looked around. "Why are we--?"

"We need to close the shutters," I said.

He didn't argue. When we finished closing the shutters, I turned to him. "You said it was sluagh. What's that?"

"I don't know."

"You do. It's like me with omens. Hereditary memories. Trust them."

"Very good," the

girl said as she began to fade. "You understand. Finally."

"Sluagh," Gabriel said uncertainly. "They're sidhe. The darkness. The unforgiven. That's all I remember. Just that we need to close the shutters and turn up the lights and--"

The roar of wind drowned him out. A wind that set the shutters clattering and the very cottage shaking. A driving, beating wind that tickled at my own memory.

I turned to the lone glass window. Dark clouds whipped past it, and I could make out forms in those clouds, shapes that my brain couldn't latch onto before they disappeared in the maelstrom.

Gabriel's fingers closed around my arm. "Stay back from--"

Something hit the window. Struck it with a shriek that sent me backing into Gabriel, his arms going around me.

Another thump. Another shriek. Then a dark red bird appeared, the size of a sparrow, with empty white eyes and wormlike white legs. It beat its wings against the glass and shrieked, beak opening to reveal rows of pin-sharp teeth.

The bird hammered wings and claws and beak against the glass. Then another joined it, and another, swarming the window like locusts, until all I could see was a blur of dark red feathers and white eyes and white legs and claws and teeth, battering the window and scraping the glass.

I looked up at the ceiling, hearing that wind whipping around the cottage.

Not wind. Wings. The thunder of a thousand beating wings.

"Sluagh," I whispered.

Somewhere in the distance, a howl sounded--a cwn's howl--the noise swallowed by the roar of wings. The birds continued to beat at the window. A tiny crack formed in one corner, and two birds rammed into one another to get to that spot. Then they both began pecking feverishly, their wings beating like hummingbirds, too fast to see more than a blur.

"Go away," I whispered. "Ewch i ffwrdd."

The birds stopped their mad pecking long enough for those white eyes to find me. Tiny beaks opened, jagged teeth glistening. They let out a hiss and then resumed their pecking.

"Ewch i ffwrdd," I said, moving toward the window.

Gabriel's hand tightened on mine, as if to pull me back, but he only followed, his feet dragging, slowing my pace as I crossed to the window.

I pressed my hand against the glass. It was like hitting Pause. Every single bird stopped its frantic beating and hovered there. Then they went back at it, slamming their wings and beaks against the glass.

Gabriel reached out, tentatively. His figure flickered in the glow of the oil lamps, and an older man appeared, one with graying blond hair and tired blue eyes. It was Gwynn as I'd seen him before--the aging Gwynn, the weary Gwynn, the broken Gwynn.

"Ewch i ffwrdd," Gwynn said, his voice firm, his body straightening, the exhaustion evaporating into resolve. "Fynd nawr!"

His form flickered, Gabriel reappearing and then Gwynn and then Gabriel again, fingers splayed as he pressed them to the glass.

"Fynd nawr!"

Again the birds stopped, for longer now, and then, as a body, they began to hiss and shriek as they hovered. Then they swooped away as one, disappearing into the blur of darkness beyond the cottage.