Part 13 (1/2)
”I'll remember that,” Brenna said. ”Masera, it's dark. I need to eat something. So does Druid. And I have to get ready for work in the morning.”
”I know. I'm sorry,” he said, sounding it, and spent a moment looking for words, his mouth twitching as he discarded this one and that. She finally sat cross-legged in the gra.s.s before the porch, which delighted Druid. He draped himself over her ankles and commenced a whisker inspection of her calves. Masera gave a little grin; it seemed to get him started. ”The Basque provinces haven't been exposed to Christianity or even G.o.d for as long as most of Europe. You could say that we're a little closer to our roots than the rest of you. And some of us have a family history that puts us closer than others. It gives me a different perspective on things.”
”Have you even been to Basque?”
”To Euskal Herria? Don't let my English fool you. I spent my childhood therea”all except the first four years. Those, I spent here. And I came back when I was able. My brothera””
”Eztebe,” Brenna said, and then smiled sweetly. The smile everyone expected from this face. The one that wiser souls knew not to take at face value. ”Or Steven, but he prefers Eztebe.”
He shook his heada”not disagreeing, but perhaps in lieu of throwing up his hands. ”Yes. He was born in Alsasua. And he wasn't old enough to really understand the way things were beforea”” He stopped short, as if he'd stumbled somewhere he didn't want to go. It gave Brenna the chance to let her own thoughts stray, to wonder why she was sitting out here in the dark. Listening. And wanting to hear more.
Maybe because she, as much as hea”more than hea”wondered what was going on in her life.
”My mother,” he said finally, ”is euskotar. Ethnic Basque. My father is Spanish, and he didn't truly understand her ties to her land. He brought her here; she was miserable. Nothing here spoke to her like it did in her homeland. She was Catholic, and she tried very hard to be a good one. But she was also sorgin.”
”Of course she was,” Brenna said, in no way interested in making this easy for hima”and at the same time fascinated. On the one hand, he was as he'd always been to hera”with something else going on beneath the surface, something he didn't share with anyone, but that seemed to drive hima”and drive him right over anyone who got in the way.
She wondered if he knew that some people would politely step out of his way if they had the chance.
She wondered if it made him as lonely as it sometimes made her. To be so uncompromising of self.
”Sorgin,” he said, and when he looked up, enough light caught his face so she could see that his eyebrows had gone to trying to pinch the bridge of his nose. ”I don't want to use the word witch, although that's the literal translation . . . it's more than that, and not the things people think of when they think of a witch.”
”That's why you asked if I were pagan,” she said, smoothing Druid's ears flat to his skull as he fell asleepa”and then stilling as she felt a bloom of anger. She lifted her eyes to glare at him. ”You said you weren't. But you are, aren't you? Is it so easy for you to lie to me? You're probably sorgin yourself!”
”No,” he said quietly. In the darkness, she thought she saw him wince. Good. ”No, it's not so easy to lie to you. I didn't say I wasn't pagan. I said I was lapsed Catholica”and that's true.”
”You deceived me,” she said steadily, not backing off. Druid woke to give her an uneasy look. ”It comes to the same thing.”
”I didn'ta”” he hesitated, shook his head in frustration. ”All right, I did. I didn't want to get into it then. It's a complicated issuea”there are as many different kinds of paganism as there are Christianity, and none of them are really what people a.s.sume they are.” He met her gaze in the darkness and repeated, ”I didn't want to get into it. I didn't think it would come up again.”
”You were wrong on both counts then, weren't you?” Brenna said, surprising herself with the faint tremor in her voice. It shouldn't matter. ”Why should I bother to talk to you at all, if I never know when to believe you?”
He rubbed his forehead, as if it pained him. ”That's up to you, I guess. My a.s.surances that I've never lied to you probably won't mean much. And just because you ask a question doesn't mean I'm going to answer it.”
And she still had too many unknowns...o...b..ting around her. Too many to spurn anythinga”anyonea”that could help her fill them in.
She'd have to pay closer attention to the questions he didn't quite answer.
Like the one she'd asked him moments ago. ”Are you?” she said. ”Sorgin?”
He laughed, a quiet sound. ”No. I'm nosy, and I'm a harda.s.s, but I'm not sorgin. I just know what I see and what I feel. Better than most, I suppose.”
”Then just what was it that you saw and felt, and that put you on my porch without so much as a phone call?”
”I did call,” he said. ”You didn't answer. I left a messagea”go check it.”
”In a moment. Let's have an answer to this one first.” She leaned back on the heels of her hands and looked up at him, careful not to pull her own hair as it puddled on the ground around her.
He hesitated for so long she thought he was just going to get up and leavea”there was a moment she thought he was on his way. Touch and go. Then he sighed, and said, ”Power. And presence. More than one. The kind of thing that doesn't show up unless it's called. Or at least spoken to, and from the right place. The oak, the spring, the creek . . .”
”More than one what?” Brenna demanded, not about to be the first person to say a G.o.d. She'd see where he went with this on his own.
But Masera shook his head, the slightest of movements, not taking his eyes from her. ”If I had all the facts, I wouldn't be here. You're the one who's got them. And that worries me, because part of what I felt was a dark power. The kind of power you don't want anything to do with.”
”As if you know me so well,” she said, bitingly sarcastic. From fear, maybe . . . and maybe because she didn't really want to think about what he was saying. What it meant. How it fit into the events of her life.
He let his breath hiss out through his teeth, a thoughtful sound rather than impatient. ”I know you're unexpected,” he said, as if it were some profound thing. And maybe, from the look he was giving her, it was.
”And we're having this conversation so I can rea.s.sure you that I'm not sacrificing small animals to a dark power?”
”Among other things.”
”I'll leave that to Rob Parker.” She stabbed the words at him with the anger she felt at Roba”anger she was only coming into, having so recently realized that he was the one who had wreaked such destruction at her private place. ”He seems to have the knack.”
He stiffened at that. ”Akelarre,” he said, to himself as much as to her, and then shook his head at her, rubbing that spot between his eyes with a finger. ”I don't have a translation. Please. Tell me about the spring. All about it. You know d.a.m.ned well what I mean.”
From a sincere request to a demand within words. He was trying, she realized. Trying to keep the edge out of his voice, trying to be less of a . . . well, a harda.s.s. That he failed so miserably gave her the feeling that she wasn't the only one having troublea”that he wasn't as in control as he liked to think.
Not in a conversation about witches and unnamed powers in her pasture.
”When I was nine,” she said, carefully choosing her words, ”I read about an ancient G.o.d named Mars Nodens.”
”One of the jainko,” he said.
”You know of him, then?”
”Not specifically. I know the nature of those G.o.ds. Their names . . . they each had so many names. I doubt anyone today knows them all.”
”Well, I read that he was a G.o.d of healing, and one with a special liking for dogs. Ever heard of the Lydney Hound?”
Wordlessly, he shook his head. Not daring to use words, now, in case the interruption made her change her mind about this conversation.
”Doesn't matter. I wanted something, and I went to ask Mars Nodens for it. Like you saida”the oak, the spring; they were in this article I read. I didn't know that they were sacred pagan things in generala”I didn't know anything about it. I asked for what I wanted, and I left something important to me in return.”
”Your hair,” he murmured.
She looked at him askance, glad the night was bright enough so he'd see it. ”Do you forget anything you hear?”
”Not the important things. Did you get what you wanted?”
”I suppose I did. And more. That's when the strays started showing up on our doorstep. It seems like back then, I always knew what to do for them. How to talk to them. That sucks something rotten, you know? When I was a girl, I would have known what to do for Druid.”
”You did know what to do for him,” Masera said. ”You just needed someone to tell you so.”
Maybe so.