Róisín encouraged me so much over the years that she naturally earned herself a place in my Dragonhost Saga as an incarnation of Baba Yaga, Second Guardian of Gevarna. I thought I would share those scenes in the first three books in which she appears (excluding first-person POV moments from Book 1). Here's the first, from Earthfire.
A keen-eyed falcon perched upon a high branch and looked down upon a village that was empty of life.
The buildings were undamaged, but doors and shutters stood open.
An expanse of woodland perhaps thirty paces across had vanished and the brown soil was now ashes the colour of bleached bone, save in the centre, where a single tree and a section of stone wall stood in a circle of grass.
At the base of the tree, a limp figure sprawled.
The devastation was a perfect circle, and its edges were as sharp as a knife slash. There were trees that were half living wood, half white ash, and rocks scorched black on one side but unmarked on the other.
The falcon leaped from the branch, wings spreading, and dropped to the ground near the edge of the devastated soil to vanish in a flash of vivid green.
A woman stood up and looked around.
She was small, buxom, and fair-skinned, wearing a plain brown blouse and skirt under a green cloak edged with falcon feathers. Her flowing hair was rust-red, confined by a plain leather headband, and her eyes were large and bright blue, with faint patches of grey. Her broad, pleasant features had the unblemished fairness of youth.
She bent down and dipped her left hand into the ashes, which looked as fine as sand, and her fingers met almost no resistance. It was almost as if she had plunged her arm into water until she struck earth just over a foot down.
When she drew her hand out, the ashes flowed off her arm and through her fingers without a single fragment remaining, and her face briefly twisted in revulsion.
She went around the boundary of the devastation, pausing on the way where nine sets of prints entered, and a place where dozens, scores of people had left in a body, their tracks of all sizes, as if a whole community had fled… and where a single set of tracks, made by someone struggling to walk, led towards the mountains.
Then she turned to face the forest, summoning her energies, and sharpening her senses, the wolf, the cat, the eagle, as new arrivals came into view.
Two dozen wolves were drawing near, and at the head of the pack were two grey vol’volkiy; a mated pair. She watched them close in, and then the pack halted just yards away.
* Red Mother, we greet you.
* What happened here?
Beast-speech did not always give clear communication. Animals, even the brightest, did not use words as Humans did; the Talent could render their thoughts, mostly images of sight, sound, and scent, in a way that could be understood, but not always clearly; and words were never easy to transform into sensations in return.
But the reply was clear, if in many voices.
* A Human did that. He burned other Humans. All the others here ran away into the night.
* We were hunting one who slew Our kin, and followed him there. The Human who destroyed him and the others used a terrible fire. Then he tried to run away. He was very badly hurt and very scared. With him was a wolf child.
* He was heading for the high rocks. We knew that the Old One was dead. We were angry at the fire the Human had used. But he stopped, when he saw Us. He was too hurt to go on. We would have killed him if We had not seen the Old One's spirit with him. He tried to Speak with Us, but he was in too much pain.
*Then the wolf child pleaded for his life and said that he was good and kind. We looked, and saw his spirit, and it is good. We healed his worst wound and let him go on.
She stood for a moment, eyes softening in memory.
* You acted well. The Pact still holds. Those who slew your kin do not live in these forests.
The wolf-pack turned as one and hastened into the forest, disappearing among the trees.
The woman carefully waded through the ashes to the huddled body on the grass and crouched over it. Her head slumped down, and she sobbed.
After some moments she wiped her eyes, took a deep breath, and looked at the dead man’s hands. Her expression changed to surprise.
Releasing the hands, she turned away and looked down at the grass. Carefully tugging some free, she shook off the soil and caught the grass in a freshly plucked leaf that she folded delicately and placed in a pouch on her belt.
She passed through the ash and walked over to one of the houses to look inside before calling out, - Dotchka? Dotchka? -
There was no reply.
She moved on to four other homes, looked inside and called out to each of them, to be met with the same silence.
Finally she turned away and vanished in a bright green flash.
The falcon took wing, heading into the deep forests to the east.
