Page 8 of Broken Veil
“Did her brother have anything to say?” Carys dug into the plate of food in front of her. “Are things different there?”
“Not so far,” Cadell said. “Or not that he’s noticed. But the gates in California were never the same as the gates here.”
After Carys’s first journey to the Shadowlands, she’d returned home and been startled to find that not only did her best friend know all about the parallel world, she was a shadow person—a pauwau inwe of the Yurok people—whomoved between the Shadowlands and Brightlands of Northern California.
“So do you think that’s what’s happening here?” Carys asked. “The gates in Baywood are more porous than in London. We see more wisps. Shifters can move between them in animal form.”
“Yes, and Bigfoot occasionally slips across and scares a few hikers,” Duncan said. “But can you imagine a dragon accidentally shifting in Central London? Can you imagine a unicorn trotting across Hampstead Heath?”
Cadell sat down across from her. “I think the idea of letting the gates thin in Briton is a very different prospect than the thinner gates in America, Nêrys. The magical creatures of Briton are wild, numerous, and frankly, often violent. Allowing the Morrígan to break the barrier between the worlds would cause chaos on an unimaginable level.”
She looked at Duncan, and she could see by the set of his mouth that he agreed with the dragon.
“Okay.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Then I have to fix this. Somehow I have to figure out how to stop a goddess, get her back across the fae gate, and keep her from crossing over ever again.”
And she had just over a month before her fall classes started.
No problem, right?
Laura rubbedher eyes as Cadell handed her a cup of coffee. “I don’t know. Are we absolutely sure that it’s such a bad thing to let the gates here thin? I mean, Carys and I have lived in aplace with thinner gates, and yeah, it can be kind of spooky for humans sometimes, but it’s not that bad.”
Naida asked, “What kind of magical creatures do you have in your home?”
The fae woman was pale, but she did look stronger than she had the night before, and the abundant green salad that Godrik had gathered from the garden outside seemed to be helping.
“Most of our mythology revolves around animal spirits,” Laura said. “There are the giants, of course, but they protect humans from things like the wechuge, which are very rare, and they live farther north. Wechuge prefer the cold and ice.”
“There are thunderbirds,” Carys added. “Those are probably the most powerful.”
“But I’ve never seen a thunderbird who could cross a gate,” Cadell said. “They almost never shift to their human form.”
“So mostly animal shifters,” Laura said. “And things that appear human but have other powers.”
“You’ve been to my world now,” Naida said. “What do you think it would be like if our magical creatures got lost in the human world?”
“Forget getting lost,” Godrik said gruffly. “Trolls would cross the gates to scavenge almost anything from the Brightlands to sell in their markets. Shadowkin might cross just because they’re curious. Shifters. Fae maybe. Magical creatures could pour into London if the gates are broken.”
Carys said, “And if they don’t lose their powers…”
“Chaos,” Duncan said.
“Is that why she wanted to come here?” Laura asked. “Is that why she wanted to cross over? I don’t know a ton about Celtic mythology, but in the fantasy books that I’ve read, the Morrígan is like a war god, right?”
“The Morríganisa war goddess,” Carys said. “But that’s only one aspect of her nature. She’s also about land. Sovereignty.Protecting territory. There is a guardian aspect in the myths about her.”
Naida nodded slowly. “Territory. Land. Like creating more land in Briton like Orla and Cian were trying to do?”
Duncan said, “It’s completely possible she was involved in that. She definitely knew it was happening.”
“She’s not venerated as she was in the past,” Godrik said. “There is no cult among the shifters for her, and the cult that once worshipped her in Éire was suppressed by the high fae lords.”
Naida sighed. “Because they are idiots.”
Carys looked at Cadell. “So the Morrígan has been confined to the Shadowlands for centuries, watching as her power diminishes bit by bit.”
“Stuck on a small island in a big world,” the dragon said quietly.
Duncan spoke. “On a purely practical level, if the Morrígan tears down the gates between the Brightlands and the Shadowlands, she will effectively double her territory.”
