by C. E. Murphy
Tony, grinning now, said, "You've gotten more Irish in the half day we've been here. All right, O'Malley. How do we find us a witch?"
"You're the detective," Grace said with a sniff. "Detect." As Tony pulled a face, she looked back toward the island she'd once called home, indistinct in the afternoon gloom. "I know she's not there, and perhaps we've only half an island to search, as the canal has intersected this country for two hundred years. She may be caught on one side or the other."
"Does a canal count as running water?" Tony wondered.
Grace elbowed him. "I'd hope so, save I've no way to know which half of the island she might be caught on, which leaves us the whole of it to search anyway. I ought to have left you in America, love. I'll be half a lifetime searching every inch of this place, and you've only a month's holiday."
"I've already used up half a lifetime," Tony said. "I can't waste the rest of it waiting for you to come back with a Serpent's Tear. We're going to have to do better than that."
Grace muttered, "You're only thirty-two," but spread her hands in invitation. Tony muttered, "Arguing over semantics is a lawyer trick," back, and more clearly, said, "Can you find your way back to the hill you met Máire on? If Fúamnach can be summoned, that would be a good place to do it from."
"I'm not half sure it was in this world at all," Grace replied, but nodded anyway. "I'd know it well enough. North of here, two days' walk."
Faint alarm splashed across the detective's face. Grace snorted. "No, I'll not be making you walk it, you great lump. I'll make you hike up a mountain, though, to be sure. Get in the car, Tony. It's only an hour or two up the road."
#
She stomped, she swore, she shouted; she even cut open a vein and dripped blood on the earth, bellowing for Fúamnach to answer her call. She called her by Máire's name, and by the names of the Tuatha de Danaan who were said to be Fúamnach's parents, and after a while Tony sat down to watch instead of keeping an eagle eye out over low hills slowly disappearing into rising fog. "Are you sure you've got the right place?"
"As sure as I can be after four and a half centuries," Grace snapped. "I should have done this on the shores of Clew Bay. She would have expected me there, at least."
"You banished her from the bay."
"Only for so long as I lived."
"You haven't died yet."
Grace shut her teeth on the rising objection, scowling down at the seated detective. After a moment, her ire fleeing, she said, "I did, though, you know. I was after dying at Rockford, for all that I live now. Had I lived my years as the unaging O'Malley, my own people would have turned against me as a witch."
Amusement creased Tony's brown eyes. "'After dying.' I don't even know what that means, you increasingly Irish weirdo."
"It means the thing's done and over with," Grace replied irritably. "You're lucky I speak your bloody, colonizing language at all. I didn't, when I died."
Tony's eyebrows rose. "Didn't you? I thought you talked with Queen Elizabeth."
"In Latin." Grace turned away from the detective, frowning at the foggy hills, though the frown faded. "It was like this, the day I met Máire. Foggier yet, even, but it had that otherworldly feeling."
"What was she like?" Tony fumbled audibly. "Elizabeth, I mean, not Máire."
"A conniver and a bitch with fetid breath. But she held the room." Grace's voice softened. "By God, she held the room. It wasn't that orange hair, either, or the jewels or the paint she hid her age beneath. It was the woman herself, all power and unafraid to use it. She was only three years my junior, and in another world we might have been friends. What a world that might have been, with a free Ireland at Bess's side, rather than beneath her heel. There," she said even more softly. "There, do you see it, mo chroí? The path in the fog?"
Tony rose. "No." But he took Grace's hand, and let her lead him down the hills. "What do you see?"
"A shining path. Light in the fog." It glowed ahead of them, twisting across the land, but the closer they came to it, the more quickly it faded. "Ask me something else."
"What was it like to be a pirate?"
The question came so quickly that Grace laughed. "Been sitting on that one a while, have you, love? I wouldn't have called myself a pirate, though I'll take any title that names me a queen. It's true we took tithe and taxes from any ship in our waters, and true again that the English, feeling those waters should be theirs, hated me the fiercest for it. But they were my lands and my waters, and I protected them as any leader might. It was brilliant," she added with a sudden grin. "Dangerous, cold, wet, often hungry, but brilliant. It's a path through the past," she said, confident now as the fog trail brightened. "Linking who I am now to who I was then. To the O'Malley Fúamnach knew and treated with. Ask your questions, love. I'm never more likely to answer them than now."
"Did you really have a baby on a ship and fight off marauders the next day?"
Grace laughed again. "You've done your reading on Grace, haven't you, love? I did. Wee Tibbot, and I held him in my arm as I came swinging down from the mast to fall upon the thieves, a knife in my teeth, as neat and far more dangerous than any film star you ever did see. And in betwixt that husband and the first, I found a lover in the sea, who stirred me more than any other man for four hundred years. But he was slain and I married again less from fondness than for a need for an army that I might take my revenge on the bastards who took him from me. But you won't want to hear about that; men get jealous too easily."
"I'm secure enough to not get jealous over somebody who's been dead since long before my country was a country," Tony said dryly. "Would you do anything differently?"
"Knowing then what I do now? I might not give up that Tear." They stepped across hills grown small in the fog, and rivers only the width of a trickle, as if they wore seven-league boots while walking the shining path. Grace watched carefully, knowing Tony trusted her to lead him through. "But for Ireland? I don't know. I tried to ally with the Spaniards to crush Bess and keep Ireland free, but the storm took their armada and left me with nothing to show for my troubles. I might use the knowledge of that to send their ships another way, but even then it might have been too late. Áth Cliath belonged to the English already and had long since."
"Áth Cliath?"
Grace glanced toward Tony, then returned her attention to the glimmer through the fog. "Dublin. No, to keep Ireland free of English hands I'd need not only what I know today, but to cast myself back in time a full thousand years from now, not the mere five hundred I've got to my name." She fell silent a moment, urging them forward over land that shifted with every step, then added, "I might act to preserve much of what was lost. Histories. The language. Write them down and hide it away." A thin smile pulled her lips. "Ask Janx to hoard it, to keep it safe for my eventual retrieval, perhaps, in exchange for some future favor. And for my own satisfaction I might see Cromwell dead before he came to power, but to change it all? I'm not sure one person could do that, love. Not even Grace O'Malley. Ah!" She stopped as the path ended in water, Tony catching himself from a stumble at her side.
A river lazed by them, eddies on the grey surface twirling and promising that greater speed ran in its depths. Every swirl caught a bit of fog and whipped it away, until a stretch of water reflected blue from the clearing sky. An island no wider than Grace stood tall emerged, and beyond it the fog remained dense and cool, unaffected by the brightening day.
"Where are we?"
"You can see this?" Grace chuckled at herself. "We've come to the River Shannon, love, a hundred miles or more from where we started."
Tony turned sharply, as if he could follow their path with his gaze. "We've only been walking a few minutes."
"Sure and you can't expect witches to follow the laws of physics, now, can you? But we've not reached the end of the path yet, love. It doesn't end until there." Grace nodded at the streak of blue water leading to the island.
"Gosh, and I forgot my boat. It's a six foot island with two tr
ees on it, Grace. Nobody's out there. Even if there was, it wouldn't be a witch. How could she get out there?"
"Now there's a fine question." Grace prodded the water with a leather-booted toe. It gave and chilled and, when she pulled her foot back, dripped like any other river water would. "The water's real enough. Do you swim, love?"
"Not in rivers!"
"Then perhaps you'd best stay on shore, and be a beacon to guide me home." Grace unlaced her boots and pulled them off to set aside while Tony looked at her with a mix of horror and dismay. "I've come this far. You wouldn't have me go back now, would you?"
"No, but—" He gestured at the river, as if it said everything he needed to.
"It's hard to drown a dead woman, Tony, and I swim well besides."
"You didn't take your boots off to go swim with the Serpent."
"I trusted him to cast me back out. I wouldn't trust a witch as far as I could throw her." Grace stripped her coat and leather pants off too, leaving her in a pale pink t-shirt that fell past her hips, wrinkled at the bottom from where it had been tucked into her pants. She slid her bra off, too, discarding it through a sleeve. "It isn't the leather. It's the metal in the steel toes and zippers and even underwires. Magic is neutralized with iron, so they help anchor me."
Tony cocked his head, a question in the stance, and Grace brushed her fingers over his cheek. Through, really: the touch didn't land, though it raised goosebumps on his skin. He lifted his hand to close it over hers, and she barely felt the pressure. From his expression, it was clear he didn't feel much of anything, either. "I forget," he said after a moment, his voice low.
"I prefer that you do. I work at staying here for you, love. I walk and I climb and I lift, because it's what mortals do. But it is work, for solidity hasn't been my natural state for four hundred years and more. So I can take myself to that island without ever getting wet, and if there's nothing there, then Grace will be back again safe and sound in a heartbeat."
"And if there is something there?"
Grace smiled and kissed Tony, a whisper of air against his lips. "Then we bargain."
#
Resistance met her at the island's edge, a warning of danger. It would sink, it would shake loose and float downstream, it would catch an unwary traveler by the ankles and drag them down. It wasn't enough to make her panic, nothing so strong that it would awaken greater curiosity in an explorer, but touching the little hump of earth in the river's heart made Grace ill at ease. Had she been only mortal, she would have heeded that twinge of discomfort, perhaps without even knowing it, and pushed away to find some other shore. Instead she drifted downward and stuck her toes into the mucky earth, grounding herself.
There wasn't a thing to be seen save the two trees, both tall and slim and, to Grace's mind, with an air of pride at having claimed this spot of isolated land as their own. Grace chuckled and put her hand on one of them, digging her toes into the dirt more deeply. "Well done," she said to it. "But you're not what called me here, are you. You're no more my destination than the bottom of the sea was, the day the Serpent gave me that Tear."
Fury given physical form exploded around her, the earth torn up and a whirlwind of rage smashing into the unseen walls that barricaded the little island. It spun and whirled and slammed itself around, disturbing Grace not at all: she let it breeze through her, no more impacted by it than she might be by a summer breeze. Finally it slowed, as if spent, or dis-gusted with her lack of response.
"Is it yourself, then, witch? I might have thought you a djinn, with all that storming, save a djinn is stopped by salt water, not a running river. Come, Fúamnach." Grace's voice softened without gentling. "Show yourself."
Fúamnach did not, as Grace half expected, coalesce as a djinn might, but instead expended a final wave of rage and burst from the earth, filthy but familiar. Her nails had grown too long, and her hair was matted and dank, but the beauty that had once been hers still lived on, with large eyes and a jaw that would please even a queen. Her hands curled in on themselves, nails bending every which way, and she stood hunched, like an animal ready to lunge. Only the knowledge burning in her eyes prevented her from bothering: she knew already she couldn't harm Grace, and hated the knowing.
"What happened?" Oh, there were better places to start, bargains to be made, but simple curiosity got to Grace, because Tony was right. The middle of a river wasn't a place to find a witch, and yet here a witch resided.
"Trickery," Fúamnach spat. "Wretched, miserable trickery, and you its mother."
Surprise lifted Grace's eyebrows. "Me? I swear to you, daughter of the barrows, I had nothing to do with this. How long?"
"Five thousand moons."
"Five thou—" Grace did the sums in her head swiftly, and her eyebrows rose farther. "That's most of the time I've been as I am. What happened, Fúamnach?"
"What should the O'Malley care, and why should I answer her questions?"
"Ah, now. The one doesn't matter, and the other…I might strike you a bargain, witch."
Fúamnach's lip curled. "You have nothing I want."
Grace smiled. "I can get you off this island."
Sudden feral interest lit the witch's face. She crept closer, still hunched, her hands clawed against her chest now. "How?"
"I've done less likely things. But surely you know what I want in return, Fúamnach."
Rage flickered in Fúamnach's eyes again, contorting her mouth. "The Tear."
"You're a wise one, you are. It's not yours to begin with, is it. You've never made a wish, for I'd guess you'd be well away from this island if you could have. So I might take it, for all that it was squarely traded between us, but then, the girl died, and the bargain was broken. But I'll bargain again: your freedom for the Tear."
Fúamnach's shoulders rose, neck disapp-earing until she had a turtle's guise, angry eyes gazing out from shadows. "Its power…"
"Does you no good, trapped here. You've siphoned off it for four centuries. Surely that will leave you something to gnaw on, as you once chewed your daughter's bones. And I will have my body back again." Grace thrust her hand out, passing through the witch's chin until she found her hidden throat, then lent herself enough solidity to squeeze. Fúamnach squealed like a pig and scuttled backward as a lash of pain made Grace release her grip. "Don't imagine I can't take more than that," Grace whispered. "Knowing the secret might be all that can kill a witch, but then again, who knows? How many people have gotten close enough to try a knife across the jugular? You knew," she said more forcefully. "You knew what the Tear was, and let me bargain without understanding what it was I bargained with."
"Your ignorance was no concern of mine. Besides." Fúamnach's eyes narrowed and a nasty smile pulled her lips. "You'd have made the bargain anyway, for the life of the child."
"I'd have bargained," Grace agreed, shrug-ging one shoulder. "Perhaps I wouldn't have bargained that. Do we have a deal, witch, or do I leave you to rot in the current of the River Shannon?"
Hatred spasmed across the witch's face again. "We have a deal."
Grace smiled and turned her palm downward, miming slicing it open. "Your blood on it, witch."
"You have my blood already. Burn it, and the binding's made." Madness crept into Fúamnach's gaze again. "Or have you lost it, Gráinne Ní Mháille, as you have lost your land and your people and your very name?"
"I have it still," Grace replied. "Not with me."
"Neither is the Tear with me. Burn the blood and the Tear will return to you, our bargain sealed. But take me from this island, first, or I cannot call the Tear back again."
"You wouldn't be lying to Grace now, would you?"
A snarl creased the witch's mouth. "I told you once the Tuatha cannot lie."
"And I told you the fair folk were well known for twisting words, even if I'm fool enough to believe you're of their ilk. But lie to me, witch, and I'll bring you back to this island the same way I'll free you from it, and you'll rest here forevermore."
"
Nothing," Fúamnach snarled, "is forever."
"Close enough." Grace stepped forward, nostrils pinching at the witch's scent: astringent and sour, not rotted but not healthy, either. "Close your eyes, Fúamnach, and hold tight. This will not be pleasant."
The witch eyed her warily. "Are you sure of yourself, that you can do this?"
"Sure enough, at least, and if I'm wrong you're no worse off than you were before, save that I'll know you don't have the Tear and can't stop me from liberating it on my own." A surge of cheer ran through Grace at Fúamnach's filthy look, and she beckoned the witch closer again. "Come on, then. Hold on, and close your eyes."
#
In four hundred years and some change, she had only rarely extended her intangibility onto another. More often she spent her hours concentrating on being solid, so the kids she helped and the adults she interacted with weren't spooked away by a woman who flickered and faded like a ghost. The last—and hardest—time she'd put herself to such a task was to free a gargoyle from his iron chains. That had burned: the pain had stayed with her for days, settling in the creases of hands that shone with heat scars. It had left a chill in her chest, too, one that hadn't been driven away until she grew close to Tony Pulcella, as if only ordinary human warmth could heal the trauma of trucking, uninvited, with the Old Races.
Carrying Fúamnach, Grace thought, was not quite as bad as that had been.
It wasn't good: the witch writhed and screamed like an angry cat, though Grace didn't think she meant to. Every scream seemed torn from Fúamnach's throat, pain resonating from the sound, and every twitch felt dragged, protesting, from the witch's bones. And that was with Grace drifting as high as she could: down was easier. She could step from the top of New York's tallest buildings and sail unconcerned to the ground below, but floating upward required more effort. She'd long since learned a superhero's jump to start, driving herself farther into the air—much farther—than any mortal could achieve, but even that only took her a few stories up. In New York she could bounce from building to building, using fire escapes or window ledges to gain height, but there were no such edifices to be used along the shore of the River Shannon. She could only leap as high as magic and insubstantial muscle combined would let her, and Fúamnach was fortunate that once aloft, Grace didn't sink down again until she wanted to. She could float along at any given height, guided more by will than wind, but not often at any great speed, either. She could—she did, at times—wink from place to place, skipping the intervening distances, but that took its own kind of toll, rendering her ghostly for longer periods after she'd done it.