by Kate Ristau
Áine caught her arm. “Yes, you can. Help them.” Áine pointed toward Minka and Saroo, then pulled Rashkeen closer. “I need you to take care of them. I need you to get them out of here.”
“Áine—” Rashkeen started, but the horn sounded again.
“Please,” Áine said. “You are the strongest.”
Rashkeen sighed, letting go of the cabinet door. “Where?”
“Take them to the Caerning,” Eri said, staring out the window. “Even the Dullahan won’t cross Lir.”
“To the Caerning,” Áine said.
“How?”
Áine sighed. “Tiddy?”
He appeared in front of her. “Now?”
“Yes,” Áine said slowly. “Take Keva, take the kids, and go. Go to the river. Keep them safe.”
Tiddy spun away, wrapping Keva in his mists.
Áine leaned in close to Rashkeen. “Don’t trust him. Just get away. When you get to the Caerning, head into the deeps. Ondine will help you.”
Rashkeen whipped up her head but held her tongue. Áine knew she was wondering how she could trust Ondine. After all the years spent in the shallows, she couldn’t.
“Trust me,” Áine said.
“Fine,” Rashkeen said, then pointed back toward the cabinet door. “But you owe me. Like, a lot. Now, get the goblets,”
“What?” Áine asked.
“Snap out of it,” Rashkeen said. “Stop thinking so much and start acting. You need to hold the Dullahan off. You need gold.”
Áine kissed her cheek and ruffled her hair. “You’re smarter than you should be.” Her hand stilled on Rashkeen’s cheek. “And braver than you know.”
Rashkeen smiled, and Tiddy wrapped her up in his mists. She squeezed her sister’s hand as Tiddy pulled her into the air.
Áine turned toward Minka and Saroo, but already they were gone, and the back door was slamming shut.
When the mists settled, the room was silent, except for the gentle click of Eri’s rocking chair and the pop of the fire in the hearth. Áine wished Keva had stayed, but she was happy she was safe. Or away.
Áine took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Before she could open the cabinet door, the horn sounded again. So close.
She grabbed the goblets from the cabinet and dashed toward Eri. She stopped the chair from rocking, grabbed Eri’s apron string, and tied the goblet on tightly. It smacked the chair as Eri started rocking again. Áine pushed a goblet into her own pocket, which was barely big enough to fit the base. Why were Hennessy’s pockets so small?
Áine felt for another pocket, then shook her head. She grabbed Ciaran’s heavysack from the hook and shoved the goblet into the pack. That was all the gold they had.
She put the pack on and jumped up and closed the drapes. There had to be something else they could do.
Water. The bucket was filled to the brim. Áine splashed water on her clothes and carried the bucket to the door. The barrel was in the garden. She would fill the bucket again once it was empty.
“Okay,” she said. “Okay. We need more sound. Noise.” She looked around the room, and her eyes caught the fire. “We can block out her voice.” She ran back to the hearth. “Grab more logs for the fire. The pine ones.”
Eri stared at her blankly, then shook her head, and shadows slipped out of her mouth and dissolved into the light. “No,” she said. “We fight. She will call one name. She will call mine. But I’ll run her through before she takes my soul.”
Áine ignored her. “No. Not the fire. We need wax. We’ll plug our ears.” She grabbed the beeswax candles and held them over the fire to soften them. They melted quickly and she pulled them from the flames and broke them apart, rolling tiny balls.
Two trumpets broke the air. She heard the death knell first—the Dullahan. Low and rumbling, the horn was like an earthquake through the Barrows.
But then came another, like the sound of a thousand victories and a thousand broken hearts.
The queene had arrived.
“Come out, little darlings,” she said, her voice like honey dripping from the hive. “We know you’re in there.”
Áine shoved two little balls of wax into Eri’s hands. “Put them in your ears. You won’t hear the Dullahan’s voice!”
“Come out, come out! Before she calls your name and you have no choice.”
“No!” Áine yelled, rolling the balls in her hands quickly. “We’re staying here.”
“And leaving the little children to us?” the queene asked.
Áine’s heart caught in her throat.
“Tiddy Mun brought them right to me, of course. Rashkeen is getting so big. I haven’t seen her in ages. She has some spunk, that one. But don’t worry. Kian took them back to the castle.”
“No,” Áine said. “No.”
The wax fell from her fingers.
She had played right into their hands—done exactly what the queene had expected. Tiddy had been with the queene all along, and Áine had handed her sister and the Barrows children right back to her in a swirl of disgusting mist.
Rashkeen had wanted to fight, but she had held her off, tried to send her away.
Water dripped down Áine’s face.
She remembered what Rashkeen had said. Get out of your head. Start acting. Stop thinking.
She stared at the drops of water on the dirt floor. This wasn’t over.
“No,” she said again.” She wasn’t a child anymore. She could fight.
She reached down and picked up the wax.
The water flowed up toward her hands as she tucked the wax into her ears. The world went quiet, like on Midsummer’s Night. The water splashed into her hand and dripped down into a rope around her feet. She snapped it like a whip and nodded. It would have to do.
She straightened her shoulders and turned toward the door, just in time to see Eri storm out of it.
Twenty-Five
The gate was raised. Hennessy pushed her hair out of her face, took a deep breath, and walked inside.
She hummed under her breath. “Bum bum da dum, dum ba dum, ba dum, ba dum dum.” The tune died against the stone walls. No one sang here.
She walked further in, patting her pockets, searching for her mobile—then she would at least have something to protect herself. She laughed. A phone without a battery. How was that going to help?
“At least it’s not a gross, sticky spear,” she said, shaking the spear in the air. The sound dissolved into the black. She tucked her phone back into her pocket and held the spear out in front of her instead. It was as tall as her, but it felt so small. “Stupid spear. Stupid creatures. Stupid claw monsters. They don’t even make any sense.” She tapped the spear on the ground and kicked the stones as she walked. Her ankle didn’t hurt anymore. At least there was that. She twisted her arm around her back under the heavysack and patted it gently, then firmly. It was no longer tender. In fact, she felt great. Absolutely great. Amazing. As if she had just had an unbelievable massage. That had lasted for five hours.
Then ended in a creepy castle.
On the plus side, she still had the heavysack and a journal full of dark magic. If she ever found a second to sit down and think, she could probably figure out a way to make the world explode.
She wasn’t going to sit in the courtyard of a creepy castle, though. She headed straight for the other end of the courtyard, where a huge, black door stretched to the sky. A black metal shape was nailed to the door—a beast. Another one. Inside its rows and rows of sharp metal teeth, there was a large door knocker. Ugh. She reached up for a moment, then shook her head and used the spear to push the door open. “Hello?” she said as she crossed the threshold.
She heard the creak of the door, then a silence so big it filled her ears with emptiness.
The place looked totally abandoned, which, when she thought about it, actually made a lot of sense. What had she thought she would find? No one could live in the emptiness. There was no food. No water. There was no one in the castle.
She star
ed down into the dark hallway at the torches creating tiny pools of light.
It looked abandoned, but someone had to light the fires.
And the shadows knew something. It wasn’t all tree people and hungry monsters. The shadows brought her to the castle for a reason—to meet someone—which apparently meant she had to walk down a long, creepy corridor and see what was on the other side.
“Balor.” She said his name, then said it again, “Balor.”
She took a step, and then another. Once she got into the rhythm, it didn’t seem so hard. She swung the spear in the air and tapped it down. Step, step, tap. Step, step, tap. She could do this. She really could.
Step, step, tap.
It looked as if the creatures had done the decorating. The corridor was lined with dark paintings, and the blazing torches reflected back inhuman eyes, terrible teeth, and razor-sharp claws. “Bad teeth,” she said. “Probably British.”
She laughed and walked on, sure no one would understand the joke.
“Just because no one laughs doesn’t mean it isn’t funny.” Step, step, tap. She made a face at another painting as she passed. It looked like another walking taco.
She wished she had her paints. “This place could use a splash of color. The palette is super boring.”
She stopped at the next portrait, which looked like an octopus kitten. Only not cute. And possibly on fire.
“Who painted these anyway?” she asked the octopus kitten. She waited for its response, but its vacant mouth didn’t move. Which was probably good.
Step, step, tap. The hallway went on and on. Step, step, tap. She hated transitions. All the time in between. All the space for creepy portraits and flaming torches. All the time to be in her head.
She hated being in her head. And the Hetherlands were pretty much like eighty years of being in your head. Like Áine’s sister, only less fire and a lot more darkness.
At least Huon and the tree people talked. They didn’t try to just eat her like the football players and dog-men and walking tacos.
She stared down toward the end of the hallway. A large, black door grew out of the wall, like a portal to hell. Only she was pretty much in hell. So, where did that door go? Could it get any worse?
“Of course it can.” Step, step, tap. At least the hallway was almost finished. Step, step, step, tap.
Step, step, step, step—
She paused, her spear inches from the ground.
Her feet were still, but she heard it anyway. Another step.
She spun around and there it was—a giant creature, half the size of the hallway, like one of Cuchulain’s hounds, ferried straight from the grave. Black dripped from its lips, and long, broken teeth like saws emerged from its mouth. Its hot breath fell on her, and she screamed, long and loud, pointing her spear straight at its face.
Its eyes locked on the spear, and it licked its drooping lips, covering its mouth in inky ooze.
Hennessy cocked her head, then waved the spear back and forth, her heart pounding against her chest.
The creature followed the spear with its eyes, bowing at the knees, preparing to attack. Hennessy pulled the spear back over her shoulder, and the creature inched forward, just outside the circle of torchlight. “Huh,” Hennessy said, and then she threw the spear as hard as she could down the hallway.
For one moment, she felt a flash of regret. That spear was all she had.
But then the creature whipped its head around and looked at the spear—almost longingly.
“Go get it!” Hennessy yelled.
The creature bounded down the hall, and Hennessy broke into a run. She just had to make it to the door. Get to the other side and shut the creature out. She just had to—
The creature slammed back into her, knocking her to the ground. She fell on her stomach, then rolled over onto her back. The creature loomed over her, spear in its mouth, dripping drool and something else disgusting and terrible. It dropped the spear, which landed hard on her chest in a splash of sticky sludge.
“Eww,” Hennessy said. “It’s on my face. Like, the side of my face. What is that? Get off me. Stop being so gross.”
The creature immediately backed away, sitting down on its haunches and staring over at her, eyes rolling.
Big eyes. Black. But with a spark of something else. Something different. Familiar.
“Rego?” Hennessy asked.
Twenty-Six
“Eri!” Áine screamed. Her voice was muffled in her ears, muted and low. But even as she yelled louder, Eri didn’t stop, and Áine charged outside after her.
Sparkling and white, the queene stepped out of her carriage underneath the willow tree, and the Eta came along with her, filling the sky with light. They climbed up the branches of the willow and spread across the ground at Titania’s feet. They shimmered in her hair, spilling down her white dress and coiling around her feet. She was brighter than the sun.
Eri bolted straight toward her.
Áine dashed toward them, water spilling from her hand, sprinting blindly into the light, but something dark caught her eye and she stumbled.
The Dullahan.
She stood at the end of the lane beside her own carriage, holding her bloody head, grotesquely smiling. Pounding and scraping the ground, six black horses chomped at the bit beside her, ready to seize a soul, waiting for the name that would be called into the forever night.
The ground rumbled. Áine felt it, but couldn’t hear it, as the Dullahan raise her head to the sky, her gaping mouth forming one single word.
It was done, then. The Dullahan had called her name. One more soul taken beyond their sight.
But Áine hadn’t heard the name, and she didn’t care. Eri was her life, and the Dullahan wouldn’t take her. She looked over at Eri—her fight had already begun. The queene had raised vines around her feet, and Eri was tearing them away.
Áine gathered the water back into her fingers.
As if the world would bend toward her, the Dullahan tucked her head underneath her arm and waited.
Áine swallowed, and the water roared within her.
The Dullahan wouldn’t take Aunt Eri—not while she could still fight beside her. Áine ripped the wax out of her ears and glanced at Eri, whose hands were shining as she tore the queene’s vines from her legs. Áine had to stop them. With one deep breath and every bit of her power, she raised her hand and did the unthinkable.
She slammed it toward the Dullahan. The water cracked like a whip, slicing through the queene’s Eta and smashing into the Dullahan.
The Dullahan dove to the side with unnatural speed, but the water still exploded into her. She crashed into her carriage, and the horses reared. They burst forward into Titania’s carriage, and the queene’s horses took off, knocking her to the ground as they ran from the crack of sound and the battle.
“Stop!” Titania commanded, but they didn’t listen. They trampled through the heather and cantered up the path.
For a fraction of a second, the Eta fell away from the queene’s face, and Áine saw anger roll over her like a shadow. But then Titania shot to her feet, the Eta climbing back up her cheeks, and she threw a hand toward the meadow. The grass burst up, slowing her horses, and then the grasses wove a fence in strips of lightning, penning the horses in with a fury of light.
She spun back and glared at the Dullahan’s horses. They reared, so she tossed up a hand, glittering with Eta. They stamped their hooves, but settled back to the ground, eyes shining.
The Dullahan roared to her feet, but Titania held out a hand, gesturing softly. The Dullahan snarled. Even though the queene was inches from the Dullahan’s face, she didn’t look at her. Instead, she pasted on her smile and turned toward Eri, who was back on her feet. The queene spun her hand through the air and then down into the rosemary. The rosemary burst into bloom, reaching for the sky in a green-and-purple tangle.
Eri stopped, her feet inches from the writhing mass that tore through her garden, widening and growing, pushing
up toward the sun and the sky. Eri was stuck on one side, and Áine was on the other with the queene.
The world went quiet again, with only the sound of the Eta swirling around their queene.
Titania stood, holding out her hand as the Eta spun around it, clearing off flecks of rosemary and dirt. “Eri, I love what you’ve done with the place,” she said, her voice ringing like a bell. “It’s so charming. But you really should have let me visit sooner.”
Áine raised her eyes to the queene and forced herself not to squint. The light from her Eta were as bright as the sun, flowing like rivulets down her face and hair. Her eyes were shining balls of light, shimmering in the meadow. She was beautiful and terrible.
They didn’t stand a chance. Even if Eri could still call the Eta, the very air bent to Titania’s will. She held up the sky and could call to the trees, the plants, the grass. The Eta flocked to her. She had driven Áine’s mother insane, imprisoned her inside herself and encouraged the Shadows to burn her alive. The queene was too strong. She wasn’t afraid of anything.
There was only one way to stop the war before it even began.
“Take me,” Áine said, stepping away from the queene and toward the Dullahan.
“No!” Eri yelled from the other side of the rosemary. Áine ignored her.
“You can only take one of us,” Áine said. “I know the rules. And I’ll pay my way. Take me instead.” She wiped the shine from her eyes and pulled the goblet from her pocket, then tossed it toward the Dullahan’s feet.
“No!” Eri yelled. “Take mine instead!” Her goblet hurtled over the impossible growth and landed in the mud. “I am yours.”
The ground shook, and Áine fell to her knees. The Dullahan’s grotesque smile had faded. She reached down to pick up Áine’s goblet.
The ground shook again, and the queene laughed. “You think you know the rules. But you’re forgetting how to play the game.”
Áine looked into the light again. Titania’s cheekbones were spotted with light, and her lips curled into an enchanting smile. Her eyes shone brilliant and white.
“The Dullahan has made her choice,” the queene said, holding up her shimmering hand toward Eri.