Page 87 of Dragon Cursed
It was the same and it wasdifferent.
The carvings on the walls were the carvings she remembered — the woman, the forest, the wound at the heart of the world — but they were not asleep this time.
They wereaware.
The figure of the Lady on the largest wall seemed to lean forward in the curving lines the carver had used to suggest her.The defaced figures — the man and the dragon Alsander had taken a chisel to in his grief — were still gone.The empty space where they had beenhummed.
"Oh," Poppy said softly.The same soft sound."Hello again."
Alsander's hand tightened on hers.
She walked to the altar.
It was a low slab of dark stone in the middle of the chamber.Worn smooth by centuries of hands.A shallow oval depression carved into its center the size of a fist.
The depression had been waiting.
She understood, the moment she saw it, that the depression had beencarvedexactly for the shape of the thing she carried at her throat.That her foremother's foremother had walked this same path with the same warm stone in her palm and had placed it in this same hollow.That the line of women between Caoimhe and Poppy had each in their turn dreamed of doing it and had each in their turn never been the daughter who was meant to do it.
Now Poppy was here.
Now the daughter the line had been making had walked into the chamber with the pendant in her hand.
She stopped at the altar.
She let go of Alsander's hand.
She lifted the chain over her head.
The pendant hung at the end of its chain — small and warm and golden in the green dim light.Her grandmother had given it to her on her thirteenth birthday with a kiss on the forehead and a quietWear it always, my child.Wear it always.Poppy had worn it.Through girlhood and through grief and through every lonely year.She had thought it was only her own warmth she felt reflected back.
She had been wrong about that her whole life.
She laid the pendant in the hollow of the altar.
It fit.
The way a hand fits a glove.The way a key fits a lock.The way a small lost thing fits the hollow that has been waiting for it for ten generations.The chain pooled around it.The stone seemed to settle.
She felt — in the place behind her sternum where the pull had lived — a small soft answering settle.
She stepped back to where Alsander stood at the threshold of the chamber.She turned to him and put both her hands flat on his bare chest and looked up into his face for what might be the last time.
"Do it," she said.
"Poppy."
"Do it now, my love.Before we lose our nerve."
"You are crying."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"I am happy."She kissed him.Quick.Certain.Full."I am content.Do it."
He looked at her one beat longer.Searched her face.Didn’t, quite, find what he was looking for.She had buried it too deep.Niamh's singing came thin and small from beyond the falls.He didn’t have time to dig deeper.
