The Fits o' the Season Page 3

Somewhere, Sometime

  He wakes, lying spread-eagled on his back, on the floor of a room. What room, he does not know.

  The smell is familiar, yet strange. Not the peat smoke and moist air to which he has become accustomed. Something sharper, dryer. Something from another life.

  Cedar and sage. Sweetgrass. Old and faint. They burned a long time ago.

  His fingers explore the ground at his sides. A rug of some sort. Braided. Not packed earth. Not stone.

  He’s in the room, the room set aside for magic and Journeys. The room above the shop. In Her house, Caitlin’s house. In Boulder. In the World-That-Is.

  He rolls onto his side, feeling as if he’s about to be violently ill. But he isn’t, and soon he sits, shoving his drum out of the way. The drum he hasn’t handled in…

  He has no idea how long.

  A long time, in Scáthach’s place, in the Otherworld, where she took him in his body. Years. It had to be years, for him to learn what he needed to learn. It cannot have been so long, in the World-That-Is. She promised him that. She promised him a chance to remedy things. To do what needed to be done.

  It cannot have been years.

  He’s cold.

  He’s wearing the same clothes as when he left: jeans, boots, t-shirt. He remembers other clothes. Leather armor. Coarse-woven cloth. Once, ring mail. It was heavy.

  The sword, where’s the sword?

  There, beside the place he lay, near at hand. His fingers close on it, and he sighs.

  It’s not necessary that he have this particular sword. His skills are learned, part of his body now, part of his flesh. Any sword would serve.

  Still, he’s glad he hasn’t lost this one somewhere between the worlds. It’s his.