Beyond the Door

by Maureen Doyle McQuerry

  The ermine squirmed. She tightened her grip, and a hot pain seared her thumb. Sarah had bitten Jessica right in the fleshy part of her thumb! The pain almost made Jessica drop the frantic animal. Hoping she hadn’t cried out loudly enough for anyone to hear, she dodged between the cages, away from the crowd, toward the outskirts of the Market.

  By using the key provided here, you can decipher the Ogham script that appears in this chapter. Zoom in or increase font size to see code more clearly.

  CAUGHT

  N SARAH’S SLEEP, something warm and firm wrapped around her body. But then the warm thing squeezed her. Adrenaline coursed through her. She sank her teeth into soft flesh—yet still the thing held her steadily in its grip. She struggled but couldn’t get free. She was held in a dark place. The scent of human and of fear bloomed around her. They were moving, with a great lumbering gait. Gradually, her need to struggle subsided as the grip that held her relaxed.

  When the movement stopped, bright light dazzled her eyes. She was pulled from the warm place and lifted with two hands into the light. A human face peered down at her. A great, ugly human face with two large eyes. Two things warred within her. The strongest was the need to escape, but there was also the feeling of something safe, something reassuring about this human. The human was making a soft, soothing noise, repeating it over and over. Slowly, her bunched muscles eased under the hands that stroked her body.

  Sitting on the ground with her back against a tree, Jessica talked to Sarah, calling her by name, repeating it over and over. She didn’t know if Sarah could understand, but she talked anyway, telling her about Peter and how he had tried to save her; about Timothy going home to help their mother; about her own confusion and fears. The ermine had finally stopped struggling and looked at her with curious, bright eyes. Sarah’s nose twitched as if she smelled something, and her warm body curled into Jessica’s lap.

  Now what do I do, Jessica wondered, winding her throbbing and bleeding thumb in the fabric of her skirt. How does one turn an ermine back into a girl?

  Peter didn’t mind so much about being caught. He worried instead that Jessica might not think quickly enough to take advantage of the situation. If only he could send her a message with his thoughts! He concentrated so fiercely that he missed much of what was said to him by Tristan and the Animal Tamer. And maybe that was just as well.

  He stood silent and defiant while his mind ran elsewhere. But that didn’t suit the crowd or Tristan; they were ready for a fight. Tristan shoved Peter to the ground, and his knee slammed against a sharp rock. The Animal Tamer bent over him, his smoothly sculpted face just inches from Peter’s own.

  “Now, why would a boy like you want to kill me after he knew what I do to people who cross me? What do people say about your mother’s neck?” And he gave a nasty laugh that made Peter think he had never hated someone so much in his life. “If I wanted to, I could turn you into an ermine, just like your friend. But that wouldn’t do, would it? You’re not so pretty. I think you’d be better as a ferret.” He laughed again. “Quite a feisty, fighting ferret, too, I think. Good for sport? How would you like a turn down a pair of pants?”

  Peter knew he was being baited, so he bit back his first response. At least this way he might buy time for Jessica. ”You believe everything the Master of the Market tells you, don’t you?” he said instead.

  Balor narrowed his blue eyes.

  Peter continued. “He says you’re only his pawn. That he can make you do whatever he wants, make you believe whatever he wants.”

  “Oh, you’re good, very good,” Balor said after a moment’s hesitation. “Just what I need in an assistant. But I want to know more.” He jerked Peter to his feet. “Why are you sniffing around here? And where’s the boy Timothy?” Then he reached inside his coat and drew out something small, a delicately fashioned crown. Gold vines were woven together, and, in the center, a single gold leaf glowed. “Perhaps you’re looking for this?”

  Peter’s eyes widened. He remembered a crown like this from stories his mam and gram had told him. For years it had been worn by the true Master of the Market, passed from one generation to the next, but during the Dark Times it had been lost. Now, seeing it shining in the Animal Tamer’s hand, all the old stories came rushing back. Peter was filled with a longing he couldn’t explain.

  THE PIPES

  FLOCK OF SPARROWS flew in from the east, filling the branches of the vine maple just behind the log where Timothy sat lost in thought. Overhead, in the limbs of the hawthorn, crows chattered and jeered. Higher still, in the top of the chestnut, two eagles landed.

  Timothy puzzled out his thoughts. If there really were parallel universes, and if what happened in one affected what happened in another, then perhaps whatever he did here might have some impact on what happened to Sarah there. He wished for the comfort of Gwydon or for the Greenman, who would surely know what to do. Sarah would approach the situation like Sherlock Holmes, but, then, Holmes didn’t believe in anything other than what he could prove. Still, Timothy wondered what Holmes might say about this situation. Holmes would smoke his pipe or play his violin while he thought the case through. Timothy pictured him in his study on Baker Street, gazing out over foggy London. The word muse popped into his mind, only six points.

  Absentmindedly, Timothy gazed at the instrument Mr. Twig had left behind, the set of Uilleann pipes. They didn’t look that complicated—a bellows, a bag, a flutelike pipe. He placed the bellows end under his right arm, as he had seen Mr. Twig do, then studied the flutelike body. It reminded him of a tin whistle. He tried some random fingering while pumping his right arm at the same time, but it was more difficult to coordinate than he had guessed, and all that came out was a squeak of air. He tried again and again until he was able to produce a few random squeaks in a row.

  Andor stretched his neck. The sounds from below were like the squealing of vermin when he had them in his talons, and the noise made him hungry. He sent a picture of a small rabbit to Arkell, but the older eagle ignored this message.

  Arkell was intent instead on the boy with the pipes. He would have to do better than this, the bird thought, and it might take a very long time.

  There was another watcher in the trees. Electra saw Timothy work the pipes. She listened to the random squeaks. And she noticed his two eagle guardians.

  Timothy tried to remember the fingering for a simple melody he had once played on his father’s tin whistle. He and Sarah had bought the tin whistle as a Christmas gift for their father several years ago and left it in his Christmas stocking. For about a month, both Timothy and his father had a contest to see who could learn the most tunes. Neither of them had been very good, and eventually the tin whistle had disappeared somewhere in the house. Timothy still remembered a little of the fingering, and gradually something like a melody emerged. It wasn’t much of a tune, but it was better than the first few squeaks.

  Timothy pumped his arm harder, continuing to play and not really knowing why; perhaps because it took all his concentration, and he couldn’t worry about Sarah or Jessica or what was happening at the Market.

  At the edge of the Market, a cloaked figure began to play, and at first the music was lost in the jumble of voices. But the figure played on. His instrument was old, and it had been many years since it had been heard in the Market, but the voice of the Uilleann pipes was unmistakable, and when the simple melody finally found its way through the crowd, the oldest merchants stopped at their tasks to listen. They remembered a time when the pipes were part of the Market, a time when the Market was a joyful place, a place of free trade, and of free talk.

  Jessica, sitting with the white ermine nestled in the lap of her skirt, heard the music, too. It wasn’t an instrument she recognized. But whatever it was, the music slipped through the cloud of despair that hovered over her in the same way that the sun’s rays sift through fog, and for a moment she forgot everything else as she listened.

  Fiona was working a batch of dough when she h
eard the pipes. The music floated around her like the yeasty smell of bread dough rising in a warm oven. She wiped her floured hands on her apron and straightened up. She began to hum, forgetting the latest batch of pies in the oven until an acrid smell brought her hurrying to salvage what was left of them.

  Julian breathed a sigh of relief as he walked through the Market. The Storyteller’s preparations had not been in vain. A battle was coming to the Market soon. They would need supplies and weapons to survive. And the Light required one last thing: the hope that a new Filidh would bring. Julian had known, absolutely, that he could count on Timothy. Still, he had been holding his breath all morning. Now he returned to his caravan with the few items he needed, Gwydon staying close by his side. As the music of the pipes grew louder, Gwydon pricked up his ears and whined. With a low growl, he bounded off into the Market.

  Tristan couldn’t bear the sound assaulting his ears. What was this horrible noise in his Market? He must put a stop to it immediately, but it was all he could do to focus on the Animal Tamer and Peter, the sneaking son of a wretched mother. Whatever the Animal Tamer was going to do with the boy, he wanted him to do it quickly so that he could track down the source of this cacophony.

  Peter’s only thought was for the crown. It no longer mattered to him that the Animal Tamer might be about to turn him into a ferret or that Tristan probably had some other torture in mind for him. The crown didn’t belong in the malevolent hands of the Animal Tamer! Peter didn’t know how it had ended up there, but it must have been stolen. He knew that the crown belonged to the true Master of the Market and that he must return it.

  The wail of the pipes sliced through Balor’s head like a furious sword, blinding him with pain. He froze, the crown in his outstretched hand. He never saw the golden wolf until it jumped at him, teeth bared, and snatched the crown from his hand. In an instant, both the wolf and the crown were gone, lost in the surrounding woods!

  Balor’s face went pale. His lips contracted, and his hands shook with rage. He had been too patient. He should have killed the wolf long ago. He needed the crown to lure the boy, and he needed the boy—the Filidh—to lead him to the stone. But once the stone was found, he would not restrain himself any longer. The boy and the two girls would understand that they had no real choice. They would serve Balor or die. “You fool!” he cried, cuffing Peter hard on the side of the head. “Don’t you know who you’re dealing with?”

  Peter reeled back. Before he could open his mouth to protest, the Animal Tamer had drawn the flask from his pocket with a trembling hand and poured a few drops of liquid over Peter’s head.

  The boy’s body tensed and shook. Fire burned in his veins. In a moment, the boy Peter was gone, replaced by a sinewy, shivering brown-eyed ferret.

  A high-pitched squeal of laughter exploded from Tristan’s lips. He snatched up the animal in his gloved hands, squeezing harder than was necessary.

  The Animal Tamer gazed down at Tristan as if he, too, were no more than a specimen in one of his cages.

  “You are an even bigger fool than he is, self-proclaimed Master of the Market! You’re useless—allowing that wolf to roam freely!” Balor hissed. “Perhaps it’s time I dispensed with you as well.”

  “H-h-how could I know what that cursed wolf would do?” Tristan sputtered.

  But Balor wasn’t listening. His eyes had widened into red-rimmed pits. He grabbed the ferret from Tristan’s hands and stuffed it into the nearest empty cage.

  The crowd, meanwhile, had drawn back in fear, their boisterous chatter muted, and many began to hurry off. The Animal Tamer frowned, and his furious eyes roamed the cages, finally coming to rest on the empty one where the ermine had been. The wire door still hung open.

  He cursed loudly, and, for a moment, Balor’s handsome face was transformed into a one-eyed visage so hideous that even Tristan dared not look at it.

  Peter was overwhelmed by his sense of smell. It overrode all his other senses. He was drowning in the scent of humans and animals, and something more—a complicated scent that blew on the wind and carried with it a smell of danger and the nagging sense that there were things that needed defending. He could put no names to the things that needed him, for he no longer had a word for Sarah or for the crown, but the sense of them made him bare his small, sharp teeth.

  THE CROWN

  IMOTHY WASN’T SURE how long he had been playing, or at least trying to play, the pipes. All he knew was that his arm was tired and his fingers were sore. He rose reluctantly to his feet, laying aside the pipes so he could stretch. Mostly, he was frustrated that he was stuck here while Sarah and Jessica were still at the Market, well beyond his help. Perhaps the best thing to do, he thought, would be to go home and check on his mother. He didn’t know what to tell his parents if Sarah wasn’t home by evening.

  But first he would return the pipes to Mr. Twig. Cradling the instrument carefully in one arm, he lifted his mountain bike out of the thicket. A crash in the bushes nearby caused him to stop. The berry bushes trembled, and Timothy caught a glimpse of golden fur. Before he could decide whether to make a run for it, an entire head emerged from the thicket with something glittering between its great white teeth.

  “Gwydon!” Dropping his bike, Timothy hurled himself at the wolf. But Gwydon stopped a foot short of Timothy and dropped a crown at his feet.

  Timothy reached out tentatively and picked up the crown. It winked and glinted in his hand. It was his crown! The one he had traded to Balor for a drink of water so long ago in his workshop! The crown given to him by Cerridwyn. The crown he thought he might never see again. “Gwydon, where—how—did you get this?”

  But Gwydon only nudged it with his snout. Timothy knew what the wolf wanted. He gently placed the crown on his own head.

  “You need to return to the Market, Timothy.” The deep voice came from the forest around him, a voice he had been longing to hear. Timothy turned in every direction, but he saw no one.

  “But Fiona told me that if I took the salve for my mother, I could never come back.”

  “Never come back ‘as you are now.’ And you won’t. You are no longer just Timothy James Maxwell. This time you will return with part of your inheritance, the crown. Didn’t you listen to the Storyteller’s tales? For many years, the Market has been without a true Master, without a Filidh to speak to remind people of the true stories.”

  “Greenman, where are you?”

  “I am near.”

  At Timothy’s side, Gwydon dropped to his haunches and rested there, nose on paws, his eyes on Timothy. “Am I the Filidh?” Timothy asked.

  If wolves could smile, Gwydon would have to be said to be smiling at the short, scruffy boy with smeared glasses and hair standing out in every direction, now wearing a crown.

  The rumbling voice continued. “Gifts are not given lightly, or by mistake. Your mother’s maiden name was O’Daly. The rank of Filidh is an inherited one. The crown is only one part of what you need to claim that inheritance.”

  Timothy could hardly breathe. The word Filidh shimmered in his mind. He wished that he had listened more closely to all that Julian had said. Filidhs were keepers of the Truth, Filidhs were poets … There was a stone hidden that would cry out when he placed his foot on it. Still clutching the Uilleann pipes with one hand, he slowly touched the crown on his head with the other. He had no idea how being a Filidh was supposed to feel, but what he felt was more than a little foolish.

  “Even now, forces are preparing for battle. It is time to return.”

  “But what about Sarah? Is she still … an ermine?”

  “Yes, and you must hurry now. Climb on Gwydon’s back.”

  Gwydon came closer and lowered the front of his broad body. Timothy remembered his last ride on the wolf, when they had been chased through the sky by Herne and his hounds. He threw one jean-clad leg over Gwydon’s back and then set the pipes on the ground so he could hang on to Gwydon’s neck with both hands. But Gwydon nudged the pipes as well. Timothy p
icked them up.

  And quite suddenly, Gwydon was standing and Timothy was sliding across his back, grabbing the thick fur with one hand to keep from falling while clutching the pipes in the other, the crown balanced precariously on his head. In a great bound, they were skyward.

  Hanging on to a flying wolf is much more difficult, Timothy soon realized, if you can use only one hand. Luckily, there was no storm this time, no hounds snapping at their heels, no wind and rain trying to pry him from Gwydon’s back. The sky was a cold, cloudless blue.

  Timothy gripped as hard as he could with his thighs and looked down. As the familiar trees of his town receded behind him, there on the horizon appeared one small puff of cloud. As they approached, the cloud grew larger and larger. The chill air stung Timothy’s face, and his hand clutching the pipes was cold and numb. White mist was rising like phantoms on all sides. Timothy could see nothing beyond the cloud. He was adrift in a world of white.

  Chilled to the bone, he curled himself into the smallest possible ball on Gwydon’s back to keep all the warmth from being sucked from his body. Then it seemed that he could hear voices in the great mist. The words swirled just beyond the edge of hearing, but their tone was plaintive, filled with longing, and the sound sent a further chill through his bones. Was this the same cloud that had been a portway to Balor’s workshop? He shuddered at the thought. He was so cold now, he could no longer feel the pipes in his hand. Then, just as the voices reached a crescendo, the vapors began to stream away in tendrils, and light pierced the thick white. The voices faded, and below, Timothy saw a field dotted with trees. Between the trees, bright banners whipped in a late-afternoon breeze. They had returned to the Market!