Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 92996 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 465(@200wpm)___ 372(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92996 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 465(@200wpm)___ 372(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)
I understood, though for me, seeing something noncorporeal outside was just as likely as seeing a deer or fox. Many spirits crossed my land, Corvus, on their way to another destination, dimension, and everything in between. I never worried about that. What caused concern were the magical beings that occasionally showed up. Thankfully, after the last time my lord Arawn, the god who’d branded me, had communed with my land, I discovered he had granted Corvus the gift of tueor, or awakening. Literally translating to watchtower.
In the past, Corvus and its sacred geometry—working through wards, ley lines, and the sacrifices of blood and bone by my ancestors—had been vigilant, but it did not have the ability to understand the difference between what could cause both me, its guardian, and it, the earth, either strife or blessing.
Once anyone or anything stepped foot on Corvus, a judgment was made. But what the land could not account for was intent. What was in another creature’s heart. My charge, as sentinel, had been to warn the land of danger and keep both it and myself safe. During my lord’s last visit, in order to aid me and my line in our continuing stewardship of the rift, the land was effectively transformed into a watchtower—it now actively identified and repelled evil. In the beginning, when my ancestors first awakened the land with their power, it could not be made to perceive good and evil. Over the centuries, it protected the guardian only once they were harmed. If someone magical crossed onto Corvus, if they were neutral or malevolent, the land would allow the ingress because it didn’t perceive them until they attacked. Now, the land made its own choice, and if that creature was anything but benign, the land itself would repel them. It was an awakening that only a god, both ancient and powerful, could bestow. I would be forever grateful.
“How do you know it can do that now?” Lorne had asked at the time.
“I feel it,” I’d told him simply, and it was true. I knew Corvus had changed, understood it from our daily communion, and had described the blessing in my journal so the guardians who came after me would know when and how the change had occurred.
Last autumn, fae wolves and a sorceress had been at my door. That couldn’t happen anymore. Corvus would now ward evil without my needing to be hurt or having to inform the land of an imminent threat. My cottage, my home, had always done so, but now the protection ran to every corner of the property, and that was a gift. That wasn’t to say that regular people with murderous intentions couldn’t pop up and attack me. Corvus didn’t read humans; it was magic sensing the preternatural, and that was the extent. When I’d told Lorne, he was fine with that. He could, he said, take care of any human menace on his own. I had no doubt.
I did wonder about those in thrall to a being who wanted to harm me. Like, what if the servant was doing their master’s bidding because they believed in them and what they were doing? If the thought process was that I was the evil, then hurting me would be, in their minds, for all the right reasons. What would happen then? I suspected I’d have to wait and see, which I wasn’t crazy about.
“Xander?” Father Dennis prodded me.
“Sorry,” I rushed out, realizing I’d checked out of our conversation. “Call them moors if you want.”
He grinned. “As if I need your permission.”
I couldn’t help smiling back. “You know, you would think that Mrs. Colman would be used to it by now.”
“The ghost sightings, you mean?”
“Yeah. C’mon, she’s the one who moved from the middle of town to the outskirts.”
“I agree,” he replied. “Everyone who’s lived here for more than a minute is well aware that the moors around Osprey are haunted.”
I shrugged.
“No?”
“To be fair, not everyone believes.”
“Yes, but Mrs. Colman has always purported to see ghosts.”
“Purported?” Lord how I hated that word. Lorne had used it on me when we first met. Somehow, no matter what, it got under my skin.
“You know what I meant. I think she might have heard echoes of spirits in the past, seen things she perhaps wasn’t sure of, but that’s a far cry from where she is now.”
“Oh, I see what you’re getting at. Before, in town, certain things could be explained away. But out there on the moor,” I said, enunciating the word for his benefit, “there’s no mistaking what she’s looking at.”
“Precisely.”
“But there’s nothing bad out there in the dark, merely souls looking to move on.”
“And drawn to the energy of the living,” he added.
It was nice to have a priest who believed in ghosts. That had not always been the case before Father Dennis came to town. There had been many intolerant, bigoted church leaders at one time or another in Osprey. I was thankful that he, along with the rabbi and the abbot, had never made any of their flocks feel anything but welcome, and they were all very open about their beliefs in the spirit world and unseen things.