A Mother's Legacy in Knives
Rohan knocked his knuckles against his adopted daughter's half-open door as he folded the keepsake box underneath his arm. He waited patiently for her to answer before he opened the door - he and his wife, his precious Máire now gone these near two years, had always believed that their children deserved what privacy they could get. Especially when the four of them had been living in the same room for most of their lives and sharing the confines of Dún Másc with not only their family but other members of the sect.
Cahir was wed now, so he and his new wife had their own home nearby in Port Laoighisi and were excitedly expecting their first child. Elinor and Ayne were still living at Dún Másc, of course, but his eldest daughter was more often than not out courting with what he hoped would be her future husband. And Elinor, his little star, was only ten and off playing with the other children her age, likely getting up to some of the same nonsense that Niamh and Cahir had when they were her age.
Niamh, for the past three years, had been keeping to herself more and more. For several months she had refused to sleep in the same room as her sisters until suddenly returning there one night, to the delight of Elinor who practically worshipped the ground her adopted sister walked on. Even past that, his daughter held herself aloof from the other members of the sect who had known her since she was merely a swaddled babe.
Her cursed blood waking three years before had done no favors to his already prickly tempered second child and Máire had frequently reminded him to not get too annoyed at her.
"She is testing you as all of our children do," his wife had wisely told him one evening when Niamh was fifteen and raging over some slight from Ayne that set the girl's at odds. "Have patience with her."
Gods, but he missed her. She had been the better half of him and he struggled every day since the sudden illness had stolen her from him. Rohan inhaled a deep breath as he pushed his dead wife from his mind as he heard a soft, "Enter," before pushing the door open.
Niamh was seated next to her bed at the small writing desk Rohan had built for her with his own hands, her back towards the door as she wrote something out on one of the parchment scraps that he took from Tirlagh's discards for her. He knew that, thanks to her enhanced senses, she would already know that it was him. As she had informed all of them, they all had a scent that was unique to them and she had all of them memorized.
He apparently smelled like smoldering embers and freshly cut birch. Cahir was fresh herbs and fire. Ayne was like the crisp burn of a lightning strike and cold stone. Elinor was wood smoke, bitter greens, and iron tang like hot metal on a forge. And his lovely Máire - who hadn't been a witch but took to the mindset of one like she had been born to it - had been sea salt and smoke, which he blamed on her being originally from Gaillimh.
"Hello, little one," he greeted as he entered the room. Both Ayne and Elinor's beds on the other side of the room were obviously empty; Ayne's carefully made up and neat and Elinor's a mess with half of the quilts left hanging off the bed with her wooden doll resting atop the pillow. In contrast, Niamh's was somewhere between the two as it was mostly neat except for a quilt haphazardly hanging off the footboard.
"Hello, Father," she greeted warmly, still not yet looking up. Rohan waited for her to finish what she was writing and then she turned in her chair to smile at him. He caught a brief peek of the point of one of her fangs before her mouth quirked to hide it but said nothing. She was still fresh to being what she was and he was not going to guilt his daughter for hiding parts of herself she wasn't comfortable with. "Did you need something? I didn't forget that we're supposed to have dinner tonight with Cahir and Sláine."
Chuckling, Rohan held up a hand and said, "Rest assured, I was already confident that you remembered. If I am concerned for any of you forgetting, it is Ayne. Since she has begun being courted by Niall, she's been skipping lessons."
Niamh's nose wrinkled in disgust and she groaned, "Yes, I've been warning her but she just talks disgustingly long about how perfect he is in order to ignore me and Elinor. At this point I've given up, she's got boys consuming her mind more than magic."
He smiled at that but it felt sad. As the second eldest of his children, Niamh should have been out with her siblings looking for a potential partner to spend the rest of her life with. Instead, she had always shrunk away from relationships outside of the family once she had learned the future held for her. He wished it was different for her but the he had never had the power to change it. By the time her mother had gotten to him, it had been far too late for magic to do anything for mother or daughter.
"I'll talk to her," he said with a sigh. Then Rohan brightened and said, "But, no, this isn't about dinner. I have something for you. Something that...I believe it is time that you have."
Niamh sat up at that, suddenly alert. Perhaps hearing something in his voice that he didn't even know he was giving away. She likely heard his heart pick up in pace as he nervously moved to the table that sat in the center of the room for when the children took meals there.
As he sat the box under his arm down on the table, he heard her stand behind him and how she deliberately walked over. He knew all too well that she could be silent if she wanted to, not making a bit of sound or a whisper of breath, and appreciated her conscious effort to be heard by those she cared about. Though he laughed every time that she used the skill on his cousin Tirlagh to absolutely terrorize the head of the sect in the halls. Tirlagh had something of a bit of humor about it at this point, at least.
"What's that?" she asked as she came to stand next to him.
Smiling, Rohan rested one hand on the box and then the other on one of her narrow shoulders. His thumb brushed the latch as he replied, "This is the one thing that I could keep of your mother's."
Even though for all of her life his Máire had been her mother, Niamh's sharp inhale indicated that she knew he wasn't talking about his wife. When he was speaking of her birth mother, there was always something in his tone that indicated it.
"When she came here," Rohan continued, "carrying you still in her belly, freshly freed by Cael Ward, she had nothing on her that could be kept. All of the clothing was burned and she had nothing else on her that day. But...the day that she came asking Tirlagh for his oath, she left something behind."
Flicking open the latch, he lifted the lid of the box and Niamh gasped, hands flying up to cover her mouth with trembling fingers. Inside of the box lay Marie Smith's long knife, the magic of its enchantments still as strong as they had been the day that she had thrown it on the table in the hall downstairs. The blade was still honed and sharp despite having not seen a whetstone in more than twenty years, an extra magic that the witch that had enchanted the blade must have chosen to put on it on a whim as most required maintenance.
And Rohan knew, by the sharp inhale from beside him, that some small hint of her remained. Despite him cleaning the knife and his hands until his skin bled, some part of it still bore the scent of Marie Smith's blood.
"That's her knife," Niamh whispered. "Hers. I can...I can smell her. Like...oak and fire. And...cornflowers."
Her narrow shoulder trembled underneath his hand and she didn't drag her gaze from the knife as she said softly, "You...you took her life with that knife. After I was born."
"I did."
"Because she asked you to," Niamh continued, her eyes welling with tears.
Nodding, Rohan said, "She was dying from the moment that he let her go, little one. It was only sheer stubbornness and her love for you that kept her hanging on long enough for you to be delivered into this world alive. Even during the birth, she was losing control of herself."
Like all of the children in the sect, Niamh knew the nature of vampires. They might not hunt them like the clans but they certainly had their own dealings with them. And they had their allegiance to the Smith clan, as well as any other clan that came to their door for aid, that might require that knowledge if they were needed. She knew that those who survived being fed vampire blood and didn't turn either died quickly or lived long enough to turn into a feral thing.
"It was mercy," he said gently. "And her wish that she die on her own blade while she was still herself."
"I...why are you showing me this?"
Rohan squeezed his adopted daughter's shoulder and replied, "Because I will not always be here to protect you, nor will Cahir or Ayne or Elinor. Because...because vampires do not show care for those like you, little one." He paused and then sighed heavily. "Because I want you to be safe from witch, hunter, or vampire."
Dropping to one knee with a grunt - gods, he was sixty as of this winter, he had no right doing this to his body - Rohan slowly turned his daughter to face him. At the sight of the tears pooling at the corners of her dark blue eyes, he cupped her face between his hands and gently shushed her. "Shhh," he soothed. "My little girl, there's no need for tears."
Her hands - so fragile and delicate looking but capable of breaking and tearing if she so wanted - rose to grasp his wrists and she sniffled before crying, "You're talking about you not being here."
"Oh, little one," he sighed, thumbs stroking her damp cheeks. "We always knew this day would come. It cannot be avoided forever and I want you to have all the tools you need to survive." Rohan smiled and continued, "I made your mother a promise, Niamh, and I intend to keep it."
Niamh, sobbing collapsed into him, her arms sliding around his neck as she buried her face there, body trembling. Rohan wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close, shutting his eyes as he pressed a kiss to her temple.
"You are the daughter of my heart," he breathed, "and I would see you safe."
She sniffled into his throat and murmured, "I love you, Roo." That name from her childhood again, before she had been able to speak his full name. Before the full realization that the little girl that he was raising - that he knew would suffer and live far beyond his own meager mortal years - was his daughter and he her father.
"I love you too, my little girl."
Rohan let her slump against him for a while until she seemed to have her bearing again. Only then did he wrap an arm around her waist and lift both of them to their feet with a pained grunt, eyes squinting in pain as his knee briefly refused to cooperate with what he wanted it to do. When it finally did, he gently turned Niamh back to the table and reached out to touch the box as he leaned down to rest his head against hers.
"This knife is not what took your mother's life," he murmured, "no matter what blood it has tasted. Cael Ward did that when he decided to threaten your brothers and accepted the offer she made in their stead."
His fingertips brushed the hilt of the knife and he felt the magic in it respond, prickling and warming against his fingers as it recognized magic similar to that which had crafted it. "This," Rohan continued, "is all that is left of her legacy besides the three of you."
Niamh sniffled and nodded. He hadn't bothered to hide it from her when her eldest brother had become the beast Bloody Ó Conaill or when one of those that he had watching the Ó Conaill farm had confirmed that Daman Ó Conaill had been turned just the year before.
"Neither of your brothers know of the legacy that your mother left behind," he pointed out. "And I'm not certain that Daman would believe me if I attempted to tell him." He didn't even bother to mention attempting to approach Darragh. It was without question that that would be a lost cause that would end up with the messenger dead.
"She would have been proud, I think, to see this go to you."
Her trembling hand reaches out to rest on top of the box and, with his fingers still touching it, Rohan feels the knife greet his adopted daughter. The magic blooms under her touch like a sigh and he sees her feel it, witnesses the spark of awareness that comes when a hunter first grasps a witch blessed blade. It is a beautiful piece of power in the crafting, something unique in this particular knife, and Rohan wonders if Marie's father was specific in picking this blade for her. It was older and had obviously had its hilt redone at least once before.
There was almost a sentience to the blade, something extra that sparked along the fingers and skin when it was grasped.
Niamh gasped and breathed out a small, "Oh." She then laughed tremulously, her entire body shaking, and lifted her free hand to clench and unclench it in front of her face. Then she looked at him as she reached out to close the box, waiting until he moved his fingers, and shut the latch. "One day," she said with a firm nod. "But not today. Not now."
Rohan squeezed her shoulder as he straightened up, saying, "You can pick it up in your own time. I just wanted to be certain that you had it. That it went to you."
Nodding, she turned and smiled up at him despite the tears still wet at the corner of her eyes. Pulling him down, Niamh pressed a kiss to the unruly beard on his cheek and breathed, "I love you, Father."
"And I you, my little girl," he replied, hugging her tightly to him and pressing a kiss to the crown of her head.
Timeframe: 1673
Location: County Laois, Ireland
Event: Rohan Hancóc, knowing that he is getting older, makes a decision. He has held onto Marie Smith's knife since she threw it onto the table when making her deal with the sect. His was the hand that drove it into her heart. But a hunter's knife should belong to a hunter, or at least someone who bears the blood of one. So he gifts the knife to his adopted daughter, the only thing of her mother that he has to give her besides her name.
Consquences: Niamh Ó Conaill inherits her mother's long knife, the hunter's blade that she was given when she became a full hunter. Until the day she leaves Dún Másc, it stays beneath her bed within the box that it was gifted in. After, she carries it every day, a constant reminder of what she once had and lost.
As the only other person present when Marie Smith came begging for Tirlagh Hancóc's aid, he was the first person she came to. Covered in blood and slowly dying, she begged him to save her daughter even if she was blood cursed. That her baby girl deserved to live. With a young son of his own, he swore that he could protect the girl with his life...and he also was the one who burned Marie Smith's body to ash at her request as she lay dying with her own knife in her heart.
The younger sister of Darragh and Daman Ó Conaill was hidden from the world for a long time, adopted by Rohan Hancóc after her mother came covered in blood to his door. Despite being blood cursed, Rohan raised her as his daughter and his children by birth also saw her as such, a trend which has continued to present day - though only some of Cahir Hancóc's descendants still acknowledge her. While she does think of the Hancock sect as her family, one day she hopes to still be able to reunite with her brothers.
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