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Category:
Fantasy
Publisher: Dragon Muse Press
ISBN-10: 0994467109
Type: Fiction
Pages: 226
Copyright: 2016
ISBN-13: 9780994467102
Price: $3.04 (eBook)
The child of prophecy for the Ancient Scottish Horsemen and the immortal Samurai.
The Ancient Scots await the prophecised one - the girl child born with the Sight of the mighty Friesian horses.
The Immortal Samurai await the next Daughter of the Sword.
A bargain is struck and history will change forever.
Excerpt
Nimerlin Fey Horse Stud, Australia―Present Day
“Fuck!”
Angus’s head whipped around when the expletive rang out of the house. Nimble fingers undid the buckle on the halter and slid the straps free of the three-year-old Friesian mare’s head. Running his palm down her long, thick neck, he stroked her soft black hair. She leaned into his hand. Suddenly, eleven-year-old Cameron burst out of the front door.
“Da! Da! Come now!” His eyes were wide as saucers, “Mam is in the kitchen and there’s water and stuff leakin’ out of her everywhere!”
The horse nuzzled Angus’s hand, “Well, lass, it seems we are to have a birthin’.” Irritated, she swished her tail and snorted when he walked away from her and eased his six foot, five inch frame through the rails of the yard fence and walked toward the house. He found Marie leaning over the kitchen table, sweating and groaning as she gripped her enormous belly. The puddle on the polished floor confirmed the labour was moving quickly.
“Come, lass,” he crooned in his horse-quieting way, “’tis time we made our way to the hospital, the bairn will be here soon.”
Pain etched across her beautiful face. “Angus, ’tis different this time, the pains are comin’ verra fast. Oh, I wish ole Granny McLaughlin were here. A woman needs a midwife with her to birth a bairn.”
He kissed her forehead as he gently tried to propel her toward the front door.
“Angus, Christ mon,” she grabbed a handful of his shirt,” I’ll no’ be goin’ anywhere! This bairn is comin’ now!”
Feet planted, she refused to budge when she again gripped her belly and buckled at the knees, overwhelmed by the intensity of the pain. He caught her an instant before she hit the floor. Screaming in time to the rhythm of her womb, she clung to him, then stiffened and bore down.
As he scooped her up into his arms, he looked over to his son who stood just inside the front door, pale and shaking. Angus walked passed him, headed for the stairs, leaving a trail of fluid in his wake. As his boot met the first step, he stopped and turned around. “Cameron, have a care for the bairn and say a prayer for yer mam.” He winced, seeing the mask of fear that was his son’s face. “All will be well, lad, ’tis the way of birthin’.”
Turning his back on the little boy, he mounted the first step on the staircase and carried his wife up to their marriage bed.
Undressing her between contractions, he watched as she surrendered herself to surreality and introspection; that private place understood only by women, where the rhythm of the pain and the desire to birth became absolute. Christ she is beautiful. After two bairns, she was still slender and well formed. Her breasts, normally big, round, and heavy, were engorged, lined with the blue veins of a woman who soon would suckle a babe.
Sitting quietly, he rubbed her gravid belly while whispering gentle words in lilting Gaelic. A smile tugged at his lips, when the memory of Cameron’s birth flashed into his mind. Like today, he had been out in the yard with a young Friesian colt when Marie’s scream cut through the early morning cold and fog. He dropped the halter and sprinted through the log rails of the holding pen and across the yard to the front door. When he threw the door wide, McLaughlin, a woman barely five feet tall, dressed in a drab homespun dress with a fist jammed on each hip, glared up at him. The sleeves of her cotton blouse lay in tight folds up past her elbows. Loose tendrils of thin grey hair flew about her old and craggy face.
“Ye be gettin’ yerself outside, Angus MacDonald! The like of it! Comin’ into the hoose when yer wife is birthin’. Whatever can ye be thinkin’? Now, ye find yerself summat useful to do and leave us womenfolk to the work of the Blessed Mother.” She grabbed him by the arm, turned him about-face, and gave him a solid shove. “Now oot! And doona come back until I send word the bairn has come!”
When he had turned to protest, the wooden door slammed shut in his face.
Pain sizzled up his arm, jerking him back to reality. The death grip Marie had on his hand threatened to dislocate his thumb. Tears tracked down her cheeks as she screamed again. A knot of fear clenched in his stomach. He hauled her up the bed and propped her forward on pillows just as she sucked in an enormous breath, spread her legs wide and pushed again. Sweat mingled with her tears, her face was red with effort.
A scrap of wet hair was suddenly visible, protruding past her womanly folds. “One more push, lass, and I think ye’ll be done.”
She glared at him, with eyes like slits, as she drew her lips back over her teeth. “I doona want to do this any fucking more, do ye hear me, Angus MacDonald, it bloody hurts and it is all yer fault. I am not going to do this anymore!”
Trying to keep a straight face for his very proper, very Catholic wife, who only said fuck when she was about to birth a baby, he snatched his fingers back—way, way, back. “Aye, lass, it does hurt. Now push and let’s have our bairn.”
Groaning, she pushed again. The baby crowned and the head delivered with a wet pop. “Angus! Hurry! Check there’s no cord aroond the neck.”
Deftly but gently, he held his breath as he ran his index finger along the nape of his babe. “Nay, lass, all is well.”
She gave him a relieved, tired smile and gave a final push.
Staring down at the baby, he sucked in a breath. “Oh, sweet Jesus.”
“What? Angus? Is summat wrong?” “Tell me!” She grabbed his arms and dragged herself up from the ruined mattress, then stared down at the child that lay between her bloodstained thighs. “Angus! Sweet Jesus, Mary and Bride! It’s a lass!”
She fell back onto the pillows as the last contraction forced the afterbirth from her body. Looking up at him, her face was the epitome of peace and contentment, her tears greeting his.
“Aye, my beauty, a lass it is, and she is named for her great-grandsire, Connor.”
When the cord had stopped beating to the cadence of his wife’s heart, he tied and double-knotted two lengths of clean string, the first an inch away from his daughter’s belly and another spaced about one and half inches down the length of the cord. Reaching over to the bedside table, he picked up Marie’s gold embroidery scissors and with a clean snip freed the connection of the child to her mother.
The little girl filled her lungs and roared, then mouthed her hands frantically, in the primal response of all animals that suck from their mothers.
Marie looked tenderly at her babe, lifting the child to her already dripping nipple while cuddling the slippery, naked flesh close against her own.
Later, Angus cradled the daughter sleeping in his arms who shared his blood and the blood of his Highland ancestors. The coursing of her veins thrummed and sang to him. When thunder boomed outside, he recognized it for what it was. The one the clan had awaited had come.
In the far distant sky, a low grumbling sound stretched across the horizon, as the blood of the ancient Scottish Horsemen stirred and woke from their three-century slumber. The girl child of their blood, in her first cry, Summonsed them, awakened them, and they smiled.
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