I must act early, then, before my grandmother saw, and knew, how easy it might be for her to win. The child of the prophecy was a prisoner; how simple for me to end his life and their hopes in one swift, spectacular act of magic. How simple to take the easier way, and let Northwoods do the job for me. For she had been quite right; all centered on Johnny. I had better work the charm now, in the dark, here in this small depression in the rocks with the sea frothing in and out far below. I had better move in closer to the cliff face, just in case. There would be time, surely; time to recover myself and make my way out to the center of things by dawn. I moved cautiously along the narrow ledge on my little bird-feet, seeking the place where the crevices were deepest and afforded best shelter. I took one step, two steps, and a hand came out of the darkness to close around me. My heart hammered with fright, and I let out a strangled chirrup.
“Ah, now, no need for that.” The voice was soft; this was the tone that had so often soothed frightened creatures. “Hush, now. See, I’ll let you go, if that’s what you want. I didn’t mean to scare you. Found the same hiding place, didn’t we? Fine spot this, good for time on your own, or with a friend. Quite like Kerry, with the sea and the sky, this is.” Darragh withdrew his hand slowly and settled back, cross-legged on the rock shelf. It was not so surprising, perhaps, that each of us had sought out this corner of the land which was so vivid a reminder of the carefree summers we had spent as children. In just such a refuge we had once whispered our deepest secrets.
I knew I should go and seek some other place for my purpose. The last thing I wanted was for the lady Oonagh’s attention to be drawn to Darragh. Why else had I tried so hard to send him away, time after time? But I could not make myself move. Here in the dark, perched high up above the treacherous sea, with him by me, at last I felt safe.
“Curly?” Darragh said quietly. I could not answer, but I settled on the rocks near where he sat. “I want to tell you something,” he went on, and I could see, in the darkness, that he was twisting his hands together, and frowning. “I saw some terrible things out there. I suppose you saw them too. Things I couldn’t have imagined in my worst nightmare. And I did some things I’m not proud of. Proved I could be a fighter maybe; but it doesn’t feel right to shed a fellow’s blood, just because he’s a different kind.” He looked down at his hands. “I always thought we’d go home, you know, go back to Kerry, when this was all over. I thought I just had to wait, and stay by you, and hold on. But—but this is different, it’s not what I expected at all. In the morning there’ll be more killing, and I’ll go out and join in because that’s what I’m here for. And I have a feeling that this time there might be no tomorrow, Curly. I don’t like to ask you this, but I’m going to ask it anyway, because it seems to me there’s nothing more to lose. If I have to die, if that’s the way of it, I’d—I’d dearly love to see you one last time. I mean, see you as yourself, as a girl. Say goodbye properly. There’s things I’d like to tell you; things I can only say if—but I shouldn’t ask. It wouldn’t be safe for you, I can see that. I don’t want you risking yourself.”
This had always been my weakness, and my folly. I had tried to fight it, but now I could no more resist the gentle, hesitant coaxing of his voice than could the wild white pony he had brought down from the hills. There was a longing in me to feel his touch, to comfort him with mine, to be by him once more in silent companionship, as so many years ago. I ruffled my feathers, and in my mind I spoke the charm of transformation, and changed.
I heard Darragh’s exclamation of shock, and felt his hands come out toward me as he rose quickly to his feet. I gasped, “Don’t tell anyone—don’t tell them where I am—promise—” and then his face swam before me, and the stars above us began to spin in crazy circles. I buckled at the knees and fell into a dead faint.
It was an unconsciousness deeper than an abyss; a darkness devoid of dreams. I did not come to myself until dawn was already touching the sky with its first trace of gold. I opened my eyes to that; I felt the bone-deep weariness that filled my whole body, as if I myself had fought a long battle, and I knew without looking that I lay there with my head pillowed on Darragh’s lap, and his hand stroking my hair. For a long moment I did not move, and then I forced myself to sit up, and then to stand, reaching out to clutch at the strands of creeper as my vision blurred and my head reeled with dizziness. Darragh was on his feet in an instant, his two hands firm on my arms, steadying me. The goddess aid me, I could hardly keep upright, I could barely summon a sensible thought, let alone be ready to perform some great feat of magic. At this rate I would be no use to anyone. And it was already day.
“Whoa—steady—take it slowly,” Darragh said, supporting me with a strong grip. He was scowling; his dark eyes were deadly serious as he scrutinized my face. “I’m a fool,” he said flatly. “I shouldn’t have promised. You’re sick, Fainne, you need help. Let me fetch someone—let me tell them—”
“No!” I summoned enough strength to snap back, terror giving a sharp edge to my voice. “No, you mustn’t! I must be left alone to do this—” my words trailed off as a wave of nausea swept through me, followed by a strong desire to weep. This would not do, it would not do at all. Control. Strength. I was a sorcerer’s daughter, with a mission.
“Fainne—” Darragh began.
“No,” I said, summoning a coldness into my tone with great effort. “Don’t say it. Don’t say anything. Just go, and leave me. I’ll be fine. I can look after myself. Go on now, Darragh. I hear men abroad. There’s a battle to be fought.”
Darragh stared at me. “That’s what you want, is it? For me to be out there running fellows through with a sword, and leaving you on your own, up on a cliff, hardly able to stand up by yourself, miles from home with nobody to look after you? Is that it? That’s not what you said before.”
But he had taken his hands away. I held myself upright by clutching at the creepers with my two fists, and leaning back against the rocks. Where were the Fomhóire when I needed them?
“Please go,” I said in a tight little voice. “There isn’t much time. Please do this for me.” Oh, let him go, let him go quickly, before this became just too hard.
There was another small silence.
“Right,” he said. “Right. I’ll say goodbye then.” But he did not step away. Instead he put his arms around me, with never a by-your-leave, and held me close, and I felt his fingers in my hair and his warmth against me, and in an instant everything changed; for there was a longing in me, a yearning for him that was in every part of my body. I could not help it, I clung to him, and he kissed me, and for a long moment I forgot Grandmother, I forgot everything in the sweetness of it.
“Ah, Curly,” muttered Darragh, his hand stroking the back of my neck, beneath the heavy fall of my hair. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” I breathed. “What have you to be sorry for?”
“I wanted so much to keep you safe. I did my best. I’m sorry things didn’t come out different for the two of us. I wish I could have been good enough for you.”
For a moment his arms tightened around me, and I felt his heart hammering against my breast. I opened my mouth to tell him he had got it all wrong; that it was I who was not good enough, and never could be. But before I could say a word he stepped away from me, and I saw what he held in his hand.
At first I could not believe it. The realization was like a cold knife in the heart. I stared and blinked. I put my fingers up to the back of my neck, and as my skin began to crawl with fear, I fumbled inside my gown and knew I had been betrayed by my dearest of friends.
“Give it back!” I hissed, and saw his face go white, and his jaw clench. “Darragh! Give it to me!”
Darragh said nothing, but he took a little step away, still clutching in his long brown fingers the bronze amulet and the strong, unbreakable cord that had held it.
“Give it to me! How could you! How could you touch me like that, and say those things, when all the time it was j
ust so that you could—Darragh, you must give it back! You don’t know what you’re doing!”
I moved closer and tried to snatch it from him, but he was too quick; and besides, he was far stronger than I. He always had been.
“It’s for the best,” he said.
“How can you say that? You know nothing! How could you understand? Oh, quickly, quickly, give it back! You will bring a curse on all of us!”
But Darragh stood there stubbornly with his hands behind his back, looking at me with eyes that seemed full of sorrow.
“You’re wrong, Curly. They all say so. Lord Sean. Lady Liadan. Johnny, and the Chief. This thing’s evil. It’s making you crazy; it’s making you lose your way. That’s why—”
“That’s why what?” I spat, distraught that some misguided conspiracy had snatched away my chance to save them all. “You’re a pack of fools, and time’s running out. Don’t you understand, as soon as I take it off she knows, and she comes to find me, and I don’t have my strength back yet—oh, please—”
Above us, cloud was starting to roll in, strange, coiling swathes of it, slate-gray, thick as a woollen cloak, and with it a chill wind. Above us, gulls screamed a warning. I thought I could hear a voice, familiar though still distant, a voice that turned my heart to ice. Fainne. Fainne, where are you?
She was coming. She was coming already, and driving wind and cloud before her. She was coming, and she would kill and maim until she forced me to do her will. I summoned up the words of a charm to force Darragh to let go; to make his hand yield up its treasure. I muttered the words and fought to find the will. But there was nothing. My mind was empty, drained; my spirit hopelessly depleted by the transformation. There was not the smallest scrap of craft left in me.
Darragh was backing away along the ledge; he was obeying my orders, and leaving. Not far off, I could hear men’s voices, and the clash of metal.
“Please, Darragh,” I whispered, using the one weapon left to me, and I stepped toward him and put my hand up to touch his cheek.
“Don’t,” he said tightly. “Save those tricks for your fine chieftains. Don’t try them on me. If you can’t touch me honestly, and say what’s in your heart, then best do nothing at all.” His tone was fierce, almost angry; now I felt his tears falling onto my fingers where they lay against his face. I was frozen; I could not move, though I heard the voice of the sorceress, somewhere out over the ocean. Do you dare disobey me, girl? Do you dare flout me now, at the last?
I opened my mouth to say something, anything, and then I looked into his eyes and my words halted. In that moment, I saw how he had changed; how the carefree lad with the crooked grin and the whole world of opportunities in front of him had become pale and weary, with eyes shadowed and somber as if he bore a weight of anxious cares on his thin shoulders. I saw what I had done to him.
“Curly?” he said very softly.
I stared at him, hoping beyond hope that he would see sense, and give back the amulet, now, quickly; give it back and save himself.
“Maybe I did this because they bid me,” he said. “But that was only part of it. I did it for you. It’s what I’m bound to do.”
“Bound?” I whispered, as the wind rose and streamed across the sea, and the air came alive with salt spray and the shaken cries of birds. “How, bound?”
He looked into my eyes, and shook his head slowly, as if in disbelief. “Bound to keep you safe. Safe from those who would harm you, and safe from yourself. Bound by love, Curly.”
And before I could move, before I could stop him, he raised his arm and threw the amulet, threw it high into the wild air, and I saw the glint of it in the low sunlight as it spun up and out above the cliff face, as it fell away down, far, far down to the hungry ocean rolling in below. My heart stood still with terror. A voice was saying, “No, oh no, oh no,” over and over. I buried my face in my hands and registered, dimly, that the voice was my own.
“Curly?” Darragh’s voice was gentler now, the anger gone. I could not find it in me to respond. If this was love, then I had been right all along; love was only confusion and pain.
“I have to go now,” he said. “You’re right, there’s a battle to be fought. I can’t stand by and not help them; not while I wear Johnny’s colors.”
“Don’t—” I began, my hands stretching out before me like a blind woman’s.
“Ssh,” Darragh said, and he reached out to touch my hair, to tuck back a stray curl. “No more.” Then he bent to give me a kiss, a little kiss on the cheek such as a boy might give a girl when the two of them are too young and too shy to put what they feel into words. I closed my eyes, but I could not shut out the sound of my grandmother’s voice.
“Goodbye, Curly,” said Darragh. “Keep out of trouble, now.”
I waited for the next part, but the silence drew out, and when I opened my eyes again, he was gone.
As if I were a child playing a game, I made myself count up to one hundred, slowly. I waited until he would be well out of sight before I made my stumbling, uneven way along the ledge and up over the rocks to open ground. Out in the field of battle, he could take his chance with the others. There, he might be one of the lucky ones and escape with his life. With me by his side he was surely doomed.
The sky was alive with angry cloud, and the air with salt spray whipped high. The few low shrubs which clung to the windswept landscape now bent in surrender; a storm was coming, a storm whose ferocity was born of a sorceress’s fury. There was no time, no time for anything. What could I do? She was coming, and I had no weapons for the battle, none save my own weary body and wretched, confused mind; none save my flawed spirit and my treacherous heart which felt, now, as if it were being ripped apart. I stood teetering on the cliff’s edge as the wind whipped my hair forward like a banner. Think, Fainne. Focus. The red banner of victory. I carried my own. I did not wear the emblem of Sevenwaters, but I bore my own colors, in a shawl as dazzling and lovely, as full of life and wonderment as the bounty of the earth itself. Perhaps my own spirit was damaged, my heart cracked in pieces, so that I could never be fine and good; so that I could never say what I felt, however much I wanted to. But Darragh’s spirit shone bright; his heart was the truest and best in all of Erin. While I wore his gift, a gift of love, I could move forward. And I had Riona, still tucked in my belt, her pink skirts crumpled, her dark eyes reflective. Riona was family; she reminded me of whose daughter I really was. Right, then. Forget the aching limbs, the fuzzy head, the eyes full of unshed tears. Forget the limp and the weariness, and just get on with it. I began to walk, following the sound of voices from over the small rise ahead of me. There was no point in trying to find cover. The landscape was almost bare of features. As soon as I reached the top of that hill, they would see me.
“Not that way, stupid.”
There was a flutter of wings, and a slight disturbance in the fabric of things. There was a cracking of the earth, and a brief rumbling sound. In front of me, now, there was a medium-sized boulder which had not been there before, and by it an owl-like creature with snub nose and bright red boots.
“Don’t just walk out there,” the owl-creature admonished. “Raw courage is all very well, but you need to be canny with it.”
“What else can I do?” I asked weakly, irritation warring with profound relief that help had come at last. “The sorceress is on her way; I can feel it. I must act now. And there are no hiding places here. What can I do but walk out, and tell them—tell them—”
The rock-being gave a gravelly sort of cough, and was silent. The owl-creature raised its bushy brows.
“Tell them what? That you think they should pack up and go home? Come on now, use your head. Use your training. We can help you. We can provide cover; we’ve a talent for that, for merging, so to speak. But the solution’s in your hands, fire child, not ours. The last little piece of the puzzle, that’s what you have to work out for yourself, and then it’s yours. Didn’t your father teach you to find answers? This one’s righ
t in your grasp; but you must discover it before the lady Oonagh does, or we’re all gone.”
I scowled in exasperation. “It’s not some kind of stupid game! Doesn’t everything depend on this? The future of the Islands, the future of Fair Folk and Fomhóire and human folk alike? How can it all hinge on some—some riddle? Why don’t you just tell me the answer, curse you?”
There was a little silence.
“A prophecy’s a prophecy,” observed the rock-being eventually. “That’s just the thing. Unfortunately, it does all depend on you. We’ll help you all we can. But we can’t tell you. This one’s for human folk to settle. That’s why the Fair Folk are standing back, even now. Itching to step in and do something, all of them. But they can’t. As I said, a prophecy’s a prophecy.”
It seemed to me there was a crying, a screaming in the air around us, and it was not the voices of gulls, but a terrible sound of rage, a searching, eldritch sound that set my teeth on edge. Where are you? Do not think to thwart me. Act against my will, and I will destroy you. Last time it had taken from morning to evening, before she came. Today it would be quicker; she could not see me without the amulet, but she knew the end was close. It would not be long.
I began to walk on, and as I neared the top of the rise I observed a little row of feathery bushes which had not been there a moment ago; a round boulder which seemed to have grown in an instant from the plain grassy sweep of the hillside.
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