"Have you been to the grave?" Niamh asked.

"No, not yet." Sara didn't want to tell her that she spent 2 hours parked in the vicinity of the grave. That probably didn't count.

"Would you care to go with me? If you don't mind driving?" Sara said yes, under the pretext of doing Niamh a favor. Truth was having someone else with her made it seem more bearable.

So Sara and Niamh drove to the cemetery where Sara parked in the same spot as she had that morning. Niamh led the way to the grave.

Niamh knelt at the grave and straightened out the funerary decorations that still remained. Sara wished she had brought a rose. She felt close to this other woman who loved John. She wasn't quite so alone.

In a short time Sara and Niamh returned to the house from the cemetery. As they walked in the front door, Danny appeared and said "Sara, I need to talk to you." Sara gave him an ugly look. "Now?"

Hearing Sara's voice John's mother turned and looked at her. Great! Should she explain Danny? Or pretend he wasn't there? Which she was leaning towards.

"Sara, you don't have to talk to me, just listen. John Patrick wants to talk to his mother, through you. She can't see into this realm like you can."

Sara felt like she had been punched in the stomach. She sat down. John's mother was still watching her. "How?"

"Just relax and sit back in the chair. It'll only take a minute."

Sara was thinking "It's all right if everyone thinks I'm crazy. It should get me some respect on buses; people will give up their seats just to get away from me."

To John's mother she said "Uh, John wants to talk to you." Niamh looked at her strangely; she didn't believe her ears. Sara said "I'm sorry. It sounds bizarre but someone, that only I can see, is telling me to let John talk to you. I know it sounds crazy but this is for real. Just wait a minute."

Sara sat back and closed her eyes. She tried the meditation technique that they taught in the NYPD stress reduction class. After a couple of minutes of breathing and visualizing a field of flowers, which she personally had never seen, she gave up and opened her eyes.

"I'm sorry, I guess I don't know how to . . ." She looked around. Niamh was gone. The clock said 3:45 - wasn't it 3:00 when they came back?

Niamh came back in the room. She had been crying. She handed a small metal box to Sara, smaller than a cigarette case.

"He asked me to give you this. He didn't say what it is. Only that you should have it. He said he has tried to give it to you each lifetime before but something always prevented it."

Sara was hurt. Why hadn't he talked to her? But, then, why hadn't she asked Danny let her talk to John Patrick? Of course it was because she couldn't bear to talk to him when she couldn't be with him.

All of the sudden Sara needed to be alone. She said good-bye to Niamh, promising that she would see her again before she left Ireland. Then she drove back to the hotel and went to her room, without thinking about Ian; he was probably right behind her. In the room she took a shower and ordered dinner from room service. After the food was delivered she opened the small metal box.

In the box was a sliver of glistening obsidian with a pattern of white and black swirls in the volcanic glass. It was a hand flaked blade, about 2 inches long and half an inch wide at the broadest part. From her Intro to Anthropology class at NYU, Sara recognized it as a blade intended for a small knife or an arrow for hunting large game. She tried the edge with her thumb and it cut her.

________

Sara was in the dark. A darkness so profound that she thought her eyes were gone. She turned and there was nothing. She felt dirt under her feet. She reached out and touched rock. A cave?

Then she saw a spark. A second spark. The third spark briefly illuminated a small bunch of sticks. Then the next spark caught and light bloomed in the form of a very small fire. Sara could see that she was in a cave, and she wasn't alone. A man and a woman knelt on either side of the fire. Both were naked except for a bit of leather loincloth. Both had their hair tied back and bound tightly.

The woman rested her left hand, palm up, on a rock in front of her. The man set a little kit in front of him, from which he took the obsidian blade that Sara had gotten from John Patrick's mother, and a stick of charcoal. Chanting, he took the blade and passed it through the smoke of the fire 3 times. Then he used the blade to tattoo a design on the inside of the woman's wrist.

When he cleaned away the blood and charcoal Sara could see the design. Three concentric circles with a jagged line through them.

He held out the obsidian blade. "This is the First Blade. It is older then Llan An Cailleach. Now they complement each other. What one is the other is not. The tattoo makes a place for the First Blade. The circles represent the inner, the outer, and that which binds them together. The line is your path. The Witchblade passes from wielder to wielder for a purpose." Looking up Sara noticed that the same design was painted on the wall of the cave.

Next the man used the blade to cut through the woman's skin, tracing the jagged line. Pulling the skin apart, he cut a pocket under the design. Finally he laid the obsidian blade in the pocket so it rested flat under the skin.

Sara thought the woman would pass out. She thought she would pass out. But the man brought out a poultice of spider silk and pressed it to the wounded wrist and tied it on with some kind of fibrous grass. It seemed to soothe the woman - young woman.

Sara looked closer and realized she was looking at a young Cathain.

______________

"Oh, shit!" Sara sat up in bed with a start and grabbed her left wrist. It was unmarked. She still could feel the pain of the tattoo. "This is getting ridiculous! Now what am I in for?"

She lay back and tried to forget the pain. Of course that didn't work so she got up to wash up and dress. It occurred to her to check the time. Only 6:30.