Devil's Daughter

Chapter 1

Orla

        The full moon rendered my white sheath translucent. I pulled the door to my mother’s cottage closed and clicked its new lock in place. Since only my family and the Griffins still resided on the Mountain, I usually left it open. But tonight was Beltane, the Mountain overrun with its diaspora and those recent converts to the old religion. Two days ago a group of tattooed lads had banged on my door looking for “readings” and were quite put out when I refused their offers of silver. As if I was a carnival charlatan and not the strongest Devlin witch in over a hundred fifty years. As if I would I share my gifts with outsiders. I’d done that once, and had learned my lesson.

      Last week I’d found empty lager bottles in the garden so my husband Declan installed the new lock yesterday.       Better safe than sorry.

     My nose twitched from the Beltane bonfires burning all over the Mountain, the shouts of the raucous men carried by the late evening breeze. I reached out my arms to sense if rain was coming. The hairs on my arms rose. A storm would arrive in two days’ time. Though sorely tempted to call the storm to me now and quench the men’s fires, I resisted. I couldn’t use my powers simply to clear the Mountain of a temporary annoyance. If nothing else, a decade of witchcraft had taught me restraint. They’d be gone in two days. I’d bide my time.

      As I passed the circle of men in the back field, aware my thin sheath left little to the imagination, I pulled my ceremonial red cloak closer to protect me from their probing eyes. But I needn’t have worried. The men, caught up in accessing their own thin sliver of magic, didn’t notice me. I walked on.

      Beltane. In the past few years the Mountain’s lost children periodically returned to the Mountain to celebrate the old festivals, as if returning to Mecca. For all the other festivals, Lughnasadh, Imbolg, only women participated and I would join them in their gentle prayer circles. But Beltane. For some reason, aside from the few harlots willing to serve as the festival’s May Queen and her attendants, mostly men celebrated Beltane. Beltane was a celebration ofspring, its fires burning the old to make way for the new. Why that made me uneasy, I didn’t know. Even before I’d made my way back to the Mountain, when I lived in Dublin and later New York and didn’t celebrate the old holidays, early spring always made me nervous.

      Declan had suggested I skip tonight’s “meeting,” as he called it. As if I were off to a book club. After all this time he knew it was pointless to argue with me. Much as I would’ve preferred staying in with my family, it was full moon. To protect my family and all the Mountain families, I had to adhere to the ritual, regardless of who else wandered the Mountain tonight. I continued my trek to the west side of the Mountain. The high pitched laugh of a woman, a young girl, rose over the deep chants of the men as I came upon yet another fire. Really, this was too much. Perhaps I should call the rain to me.

      This fire was beside the path. I wore only light slippers so dared not wander far from the dirt trail. But the crowd didn’t notice me. The two dozen men, ranging in age from twenty to sixty, and three girls were lost in their revelry. One girl was dressed in a long white sheath, not unlike mine, white flowers strewn in her wild red hair. Their May Queen. Her right breast escaped the low neckline of her sheath. The men devoured her with their hungry eyes. One brave lad, tall, broad with red-gold hair, took her hand and spun her around the fire. Faster and faster they ran, a red streak against the dark night.

     My head spun and nausea overtook me, yet I could not look away. Another girl ripped her sheath in two and danced naked around the fire. Two men grabbed fistfuls of mud and anointed her legs, ass, breasts and face with the sacred Mountain soil. The girl kissed the taller man, pushing the mud into his waiting mouth.