Hooked [Complete]

74. Divine Counsel

Author's Note: Cernunnos and Cerridwen give a little advice....this is a tough chapter. Sean and Dru have a tremendous love, but they don't have the playfulness in their relationship that Cernunnos and Cerridwen have always had, and this chapter speaks to a lot of the reasons.

Song for this Chapter: Bees by the Ballroom Thieves

"Huh, so that's how you knead bread," Dru said with interest.

"You never did this? As Druantia, I mean? I guess there were some advantages to being a Queen that even a Goddess did not rate," Cerridwen teased, as she punched down the bread and folded it, quickly finishing the knead and shaping it. She pulled the hot stone from the brick oven in the camp yard, transferred the bread to it, shoved it back in, and eyed the coals, giving them barely more than a gentle rake.

Dru did not rise to Cerridwen's teasing. Something about this place made it easier to think about the past without pain, and that made it easier not to lash out. She had a faraway look in her eyes as she said, "I remember my mother—Druantia's, I mean—baking bread, when I was very little."

"Was your mother a witch?" Carrie asked lightly.

Druantia shrugged. "If she was, she hid it well. I did not. I made...mistakes, showing magic. I scared people in my village."

Cerridwen studied Dru for a long time. Then she snapped her fingers and a jug and two cups appeared in her hands. She poured the mead and offered Dru a cup. "Cernunnos thinks magicked mead is not worth drinking, but for this conversation...I think we need something stronger than water," she murmured.

Dru took the cup gratefully. They sat at the camp table beside the oven, though there was no need of the warmth in this place.

"It was the same for me," Cerridwen acknowledged. "My village put me out, left me to die."

Dru grimaced. "I was not so lucky, to be left to live or die by my own devices.The leaders in my village sold me to some men...mauraders passing through, who were not afraid of witches. They knew how to drug me. Not like Druid drugs—not drugs that heighten magic, but the itchy, edgy kinds of drugs that kept my magic sequestered. They took me far away from my village, with other girls they had bought along the way. It was a cold place, and I was never allowed to leave the hovel they kept us in." Dru looked into the coals below the bread. "There was nothing there so good there, as bread with yeast. Only moldy stone- ground cakes, rancid meat, burning liquor, the drugs. And the men."

Cerridwen's face was tight. Her lips barely moved. "The men who bought you—"

"Did what men like that do." Dru shrugged, but her eyes were not her own. They were Druantia's, with a fiercely guarded danger in them.

"How old were you?"

"Younger than Ceryn."

"How long?"

Dru shrugged. "Two, three years?"

Cerridwen sucked in a harsh breath, but said nothing. Dru continued. "I was maybe a little older than Ceryn,when one of the other girls got sick. Then more got sicker. I begged to be allowed to try to heal them, but the men would not give me access to herbs, or stop the drugs that kept my magic suppressed. They were not idiots—by then I was as savage as they. I would have poisoned the men or tried to kill them with my magic well before I tried to save the girls. The girls began to die. After the second girl died, the men locked us in and left us. Then I got sick, too. They all died. I couldn't help them. I was all but dead myself, but as you know, witches are not so easy to kill with plague. The Druids came to burn the bodies, for the sickness was spreading across the countryside, and all feared death but the Druids. The priests found me alive among the bodies, and knew me for what I was."