Chapter One

—IRISH PROVERB

Vi Kilbride considered herself a skilled collector of many things: stones and seashells, homely dogs and fine looking men. It seemed, though, that she had nothing on her grandmother. Except potentially in the man department, as Nan had been dead these past ten years, which could prove a handicap, indeed.

Vi looked about Nan's tumbledown cottage, shaking her head at the sheer volume of Nan-things left stacked in great piles. She didn't recall seeing so much a decade ago, when she'd last journeyed to this western edge of County Kilkenny.

"Well, then, time for a bit of wishcraft," Vi said, though there was no one inside but Roger, her stumpy and well-loved terrier, to hear her. At least, no one living.

She settled her palm atop a box on which she recognized Nan's plain writing. It was madness, what Vi was about to do. But she rather enjoyed madness.

"Come on, Nan, send it back," Vi said. Then she closed her eyes and tried to will into being the second sight that Nan had urged her to treasure and hone. The second sight that had always been a frustratingly imperfect gift and lately had gone bat-bloody-blind. After months of hoping and reading and meditation, she was down to this… using this clean-up-and-sell visit to see if her sight had flitted back home to where Nan once was.

All Vi knew was that deep inside, a jagged, ash gray landscape had settled where once ancient voices had whispered and lush secrets had flowered and let her create her art and dream her dreams. This awful silence was slowly diminishing her, and she was growing terrified of disappearing altogether. Nan would tell her that there was a purpose to the silence, a lesson to be learned. But Vi was so very tired and often sad, and had no desire left to learn.

Tightening her muscles, she concentrated until she literally ached. If she were a goose, she'd have laid a twenty-four-karat-filled nest by now.

Please, she thought. I've already had damn well enough taken from me, haven't I?

Suddenly her skin tingled and toes curled as a wave of anticipation rolled from the soles of her feet to the top of her soul.

Yes! Come to me…

And coming it was, on a nearly palpable wave of excitement. An instant later, Vi's eyes flew open at a rattling of boxes and the scrabbling of claws on the cottage floor. Roger burst into the front room, something clenched between his teeth. And that something possessed a twitching and suspiciously rodent-like tail.

She'd lost her vision to a miserable mouse! Or worse, perhaps it had been Roger's excitement that she'd been sensing all along…. She narrowed her gaze at Rog's captive. At moments such as this, it was taxing to be a vegetarian.

"Drop!" Vi shouted.

Roger froze.

"Now!"

She watched as a fierce battle between instinct and the demands of civility took place behind her hound's chocolaty brown eyes. If the mouse's life weren't in the balance, she'd empathize, for she felt the same pull herself, daily.

"Don't make me take that from you," she threatened.

Roger curled back his lips, opened his lower jaw, and dropped one stunned and wet mouse to the floor.

Copyright © 2005 by Dorien Kelly