'My son,'

Boots caked with mud, Steve reached a squat stone wall—hand built and beautiful in its crudeness—and appraised the cottage beyond. Morning fog still frothed in the foothills. An old man at Boar and Saddle, a pub fifteen miles from the heart of this moor, had directed him to this very spot.

Spot, not address.

Larger than a hovel, but in no way a suburban sales pitch, the house sat on an incline, covered by a well thatched roof. The larger hill behind it, like a giant trying a poor hand at hide and seek, commanded acknowledgment and somehow simultaneously declared how it favored and protected this humble human place. Glimpses of sunlight through the thick tarp of clouds above splashed light on the yard framed by the wall. It lay overgrown with twisting vines and robust hedges Steve couldn't begin to name.

'I will never know whether you read this or not. I cannot take it, nor any of the truth, where I go now. It is strange to think that as I write this, you grow in my womb.'

After leaving the Avengers, the disbandment of SHIELD's special forces, and the court ordered revoking of his US citizenship, nothing tethered him to America or to the West at all. Steve had decided to take his trade elsewhere. And if the United States, his beloved birth country of nearly a century, wouldn't welcome him, then he would set foot on the only other land lush with his lifeblood.

'Where you come from is so important to me. Should you ever come to possess my letter, and Goddess willing you shall, then it is my joy beyond the telling to give you a hurried tale of our history. Your history.'

Ireland.

For reasons beyond the reach of logic, profound curiosity had roosted in the lattice of his bones where it restlessly reminded him how little he knew about his origins two years ago. He had to find out.

Why had they left?

What was so… so damn promising about America that drove his parents to uproot?

Why had they come to a country that had killed them?

Did he still have family here?

'My birth name is Shaela O'Rinn. I am told it will be changed when we reach America. I was born outside of Belfast in the early autumn of 1902 and raised in this cottage by my mother and her three sisters. When I met Joseph, a shepherd's son, we were sixteen. He worked too far from town to hear the gossip.'

After he filled his chest with a breath for bravery, Steve took a step forward, put his hand on the rickety wooded gate, and pushed. Despite its ancient appearance, any troublesome vines released their grip and the gate swung open soundlessly. A force, as if Steve had taken a punch directly to the gut, vibrated through him.

'You see, my mother and my aunts were Pagan.'

When Steve recovered from the strange barrage of unknown sensation he chalked up to emotions he had never dealt with, he started up the pathway to the door. Rounded at the crown, the door seemed to guard something—seemed to symbolize the tangible rampart separating him from a veritable trove of memory.

'They had a range of professions from medicinal remedies to seamstress work, among other less life giving trades. As a girl, I had a challenging time understanding why strange young women came to call so late at night and left so quickly.'

Steve placed his hand on the door. Jarring power rocketed through his palm and into his core. But as quickly as it came, it dissipated. He opened the door with a weary, rusted creak.

'I could garden before I could count. I could sing before I could read.'

A scent he knew but could not identify struck him. Steve struggled to swallow. The dwelling stood two stories from a cursory glance. Chimes, trinkets, and bobbles—tin and copper pipes that clinked musically against delicate bird bones, sea shells and salt crystals, intricate string webs sewn in circles of wood, coins of every color, woven figures, and feathers strewn with beads—hung from the rafters of the upstairs level. Dangling gemstones caught fleeting rays of sun that darted in through the window panes.

He brushed his fingertips against a hutch near the entrance.

Dustless.

New.

Silent.

Waiting.

'By the time I met Joseph, I was deeply entrenched in their ways. Those ways became mine, as beloved and cherished to me as breath itself. They were loving women. I remember such happiness in this place.'

The frosted windows distorted the outside garden, making him swear to seeing shifting shapes—wolfish and prowling as they peered into the cottage—beyond the glass, their legs nearly as long as Steve's.

'Several nights a year, they would leave our cottage and disappear for the evening. There were times I would not see them until the sun saw me. Only when I went to market for the first time and noticed the disgust and naked horror on the faces we passed did I realize we were different. In Christian places, they called us "witches". The word sounded awful. I can only imagine how bad it tasted.'

Bottles and what he could only assume was a human skull sat on the mantelpiece. A hutch beside the hearth housed smaller bottles of various shapes and shades. Some of their contents bubbled. Others shimmered like liquid starlight. Several bottles held an assortment of sands and sediment.

'Our worship of the Earth as an entity and its many stewards was not well received. We were not treated kindly in polite society. We were openly mocked and threatened in the cities. Meanwhile, Joseph and I continued to see one another in private when he would herd his grandfather's flock across the moor.'

On the wall above the hearth, an enormous ram's skull had been mounted to the stone, its empty eye sockets keeping vigil over the hut.

'I attended my first sabbat at seventeen. By twenty-three, I had been named High Priestess, and a vessel for the Goddess. Have you questions about these customs, this house holds every answer. You need only look.'

Books piled high in the corners framed shelves packed with more.

'Joseph asked for my hand in marriage that spring, having no knowledge of my identity with the coven. I did not feel I could share it with him. He was Protestant. My Pagan heart, though it beat wholly for him, lacked the courage.'

Beside the shelf were rows of hooks where bundles of dried plants, flowers, and herbs hung.

'Joseph and I wed in the late winter. Most confused when I asked for a hand fast a month after his traditional marriage ceremony to compliment my beliefs, Joseph realized what I was. It mortified him. Everything I had feared came to fruition. He distanced himself from me. Crass as it may appear, I continued to practice with my coven. As their High Priestess, leaving was unthinkable.

They were all I had. This brings me to a most difficult confession.'

A green tapestry draped the wall closest to the kitchen table, embroidered with gold designs. In the heart of it was a Celtic knot of some sort.

Triquetra.

Steve balked and whirled around, searching his surroundings only to find himself as alone as before.

How had he known that word?

'There is a sabbat in October called Samhain in which we celebrate the legacy of the dead, a fruitful harvest, and the coming of winter. It is not uncommon that during such celebrations, certain things are required of me, tasks and rituals I deeply revere. My relationship with Joseph was fast on the mend until I was abruptly with child. We had not lain together in a period fitting for the pregnancy. I pray you are old enough now to infer my meaning. I hope you will never think less of Joseph. He agreed to take you as his own son. And I truly believe he loves you, if not that he will come to.'

On the table sat a candle and a single piece of parchment held in place by a Great Scallop shell.

'Thus, we are leaving Ireland. I have ceded my duties to the coven. I fear I have broken Joseph entirely. The bottle has become his dearest companion. He is running from my mistakes and the shame of what he considers my sin. I see you as my serenity and a little, growing sentinel of our world.

Joseph will hear nothing of it, but the Goddess has gifted me a vision of my future. I will perish in America before you come of age.

I have warded this place from entry using spells, blood magic, of my own crafting, spells designed to allow you and you alone to access this cottage. When my feet find America, I will endeavor to be a healer in a way Protestants will admire and understand until the Goddess takes me.'

Step by step, Steve approached the table, listening to the comforting creaks of the floorboards beneath his feet.

'One thing more. Until three years ago, a woman would come to visit us annually. We called her Ársa. While I knew her as blood relation, I did not ask which. She kept her hair shaved and her smile gentle. As hard as I try to recall, I cannot remember her ever having aged. Perhaps she cannot. Celebrating Yule with her was what we looked forward to most. After leaving our home to me, my mother and Aunts went East in search of her. I have no way of reaching them.

The instances of persecution of Pagan in our community is escalating. And Joseph will not wait.'

Carefully sliding the paper out from beneath the shell, Steve picked up the piece of paper.

'If you find Ársa, then perhaps you will find more of our family. And in a way, I will be reunited with you, too.'

He began to read.

'You may wonder how I could know your sex when you are yet to be born. Visions, or clairvoyance, is a talent the Goddess has sanctified me with. I have seen you as a child and I have seen you in boyhood. Your frailty frightens me.

Every evening, I whisper blessings over you that though your body may be fragile, your heart will beat with the strength of a hundred men. That you will fight against those who seek to desecrate this world. I have consumed every elixir accessible to keep you safe on the long voyage ahead.

I leave everything to you, including the decision to burn my home to the ground if you deem that necessary. This knowledge is my gift to you. Accepting it is your choice.

Before you decide, please indulge me with one thing. Look in the waxing mold at the center of the table. Inside, you will find the charm, a Pagan sigil, I yearned so desperately to give you myself. By the Goddess, I pray this symbol will always follow you, in one form or another.'

Steve felt reality grow fuzzy. When he finished the letter, Steve reached into the mold, something he realized had been used to make candles, not as a candle itself.

'I love you, my little Stiofán. No matter what path you choose to take.

Eternally,

Mother'

Slowly, Steve pulled a silver chain from inside the hollow mold, at the bottom of which dangled a small, delicate, silver… star. The skeleton of the star had been encircled with a matching ring. Pentacle: another word he had never learned, but somehow named.

As if knocked in the sternum with a sledgehammer, Steve's breath left him. Stupefied, he stared at the pentagram in disbelief, the truth too eerie—too echoing—to be coincidence. A thousand images of his former uniform thundered through his memory. Drowning in bewilderment, he swayed on his feet.

The serum hadn't changed him.

The serum had only catalyzed the magic already instilled in his veins.

He wasn't a lab experiment.

He wasn't grown in a bottle.

He wasn't a weapon used by a government and then tossed aside as scrap when he outlived his utility. He had been baptized by a legacy he didn't understand, had been driven to fulfill a purpose higher than a single country. He had a family. He had a history, a living history, thriving in his blood.

He wasn't homeless. He wasn't empty. He wasn't stripped of his power.

But what was he to do now? How would he find this mystery woman? Who... who was his real father?

The paper in his trembling hand swam in and out of focus.

Mother...