The changeling girl protested, ‘But the druids said the new edition was a dirty lying English forgery and they threw it into the fire?’
‘Your queen is confused because she’s tired after her battle against the humans!’ snapped Killian, pushing the horse faster through the gaps in the thinning crowd. ‘Leave us alone. She wants to rest.’
‘No, sir, I mean, no, Prince of Donn, wait a moment! I just need a moment to speak to the queen!’ Caitlin chased after them, holding up her hand. ‘Please, Queen Aoibheal, wait – it’s Donal! And don’t worry, he isn’t a demon any more – he’s something quite nice!’
‘Donal?’ With warmth in her heart – the soft pleasure of knowing that something good still existed among all this horror – Aoife craned to look back. ‘Killian, do slow down – just for a moment – please.’
‘Oh, for—’ But his voice softened – clearly delighted she was grovelling to him – and he reined the horse back to a walk. ‘Fine, grand. Just for you. Don’t say anything more about the war.’
‘I won’t, I promise.’
‘Say nothing.’
‘I promise.’
He said sternly, ‘Because if you do, I’m calling the dullahans – do you understand?’
She said, with fake meekness, ‘I understand.’
He pulled back on the reins.
The last time she’d seen Donal, he had been in the form of a young sluagh. But when Caitlin came panting up to the horse, it was a small caterpillar that she dropped into Aoife’s outstretched hand – furry reddish-brown, with tiny green eyes. ‘Say hello to Donal!’
‘Caitlin, what happened?’
‘Nothing too bad! He had a bit of death-fight with the leader of the sluagh, and although he landed a few good blows, in the end I had only a couple of bones of him left to bury.’
‘Oh, good God …’
‘But you know the way it is with Donal – the next thing, he was daisies and I’m pretty sure that’s him now, because he keeps on following me around. You can keep him if you like because I think he’s too young to send into battle, especially as a caterpillar. Maybe let him live safely in the tower, let him enjoy a bit of luxury for once in his life. Here!’ Caitlin dug a lettuce leaf out of her pocket and handed it up. ‘Make sure he’s properly fed. I don’t think roast chicken and sugar plums will suit him.’
Aoife said, between tears and smiles, as the caterpillar curled itself lovingly around her smallest finger, ‘I will, I promise.’
‘And before you go’ – Caitlin still had a tight grip on Aoife’s pyjama leg – ‘may I say, as your best friend, I’m so happy to see Your Majesties are together, because I was never that comfortable with you being around the Shay Foley boy because even though he was gorgeous – obviously he was, being the son of a lenanshee! – he was definitely too dangerous for you.’
‘Not too dangerous, too ordinary,’ stated Killian unpleasantly, pushing the horse on again.
Caught off guard, anger flashed through Aoife. Without thinking, she snapped, ‘There’s nothing ordinary about Shay Foley.’
He mocked her, resting his chin on her shoulder – digging it into her; his warm breath on her ear. ‘Then why didn’t you stay in Kilduff with him? Why did you run after me to this world and leave Bogger Boy behind on his farm?’
She hissed, ‘I didn’t want to leave him. I just wanted to see, just once …’ Ugh. Again, the tears flooded up her throat.
I run to her –
I am the fairy’s daughter …
‘Aoife?’ Caitlin had lost her grip on Aoife’s pyjamas but was still trotting after the horse, saying anxiously: ‘The prince rescued you from the humans and he saved you from the lenanshee kiss and we’re all together now, aren’t we? The living and the dead. The creatures of the dark and the creatures of the light. And everyone is happy, aren’t they? I mean, you are happy about all this, aren’t you?’
Conscious of Killian prodding her in the back, Aoife tried to nod. But she couldn’t stop the tears rising up her throat. Her fairy mother was dead, and the Deargdue was in the tower, and all these stupid children were going to be sent to war, and there was nothing she could do. And Shay. Shay. Left alone in Kilduff, while she ran after Killian to the fairy world in a fit of mindless stupidity …
‘Aoife? Queen Aoibheal?’
‘Tell this girl that you’re happy!’ demanded Killian, whirling the horse in a circle, its hooves slipping and sliding on the cobbles. ‘And tell her to stop following us!’
Aoife said hoarsely, ‘Caitlin …’
Caitlin stared up hopefully. ‘Yes?’
The caterpillar curled itself around Aoife’s little finger, a furry rusty ring. A ten-year-old changeling boy had lost his life for her over and over. Once with the cat-sidhe; then three times in a row battling against the sluagh – the last fight being against their actual leader. And so he’d even helped save Kilduff. Which is more than she had ever done.
The tears spilled out and down her face. She bit her lip, not to sob – not to give herself away to Killian, sitting astride behind her.
He said impatiently, ‘Stop messing. Tell her you’re happy, and we’re together, and everything is OK.’
The crowd had still been following at a distance and a little girl in a confirmation dress – Katie was her name, wasn’t it? Aoife had seen her before in the smugglers’ private bar – came running forward, crying brightly, ‘Are you happy, Queen Aoibheal? Don’t cry! We don’t want you to be sad!’
‘Oh, Katie …’
If she had the courage to fight, like Donal, she knew she wouldn’t be alone. These were her people and they would die for her. She could put a stop to this foolish talk of war by telling them the truth, right now. Together they could take on the dark forces and maybe drive them back to the Land of the Dead.
But the dullahans were drawing in on either side, the flies buzzing furiously around their hooded necks, whips in hand. And so many of these changelings were too young to have come into their powers. There were iron bracelets around her wrists, and she was powerless to protect anyone – instead, she would have to rely on children like Katie to lay down their lives for her …
Wee Peter’s contemptuous words sprang to her mind – back from when the giant of a republican had accused her of being a queen with no thought for the ‘little people’.
Don’t you think, the old smuggler had said angrily, his marmalade beard twitching, if you fall foul of Dorocha and his dullahans, there won’t be young changelings in their hundreds who choose to throw themselves away on your behalf?
Around the horse, a pale sea of hopeful faces …
In the end, despite his distaste for royalty, it was Wee Peter who had thrown himself away on her behalf – eaten alive by cooshees.
Aoife made her decision. She didn’t want any of these others to suffer for her. Wiping away her tears with powerless hands, she cried loudly, ‘I’m happy! I’m happy!’
Behind her, Killian sat up straighter, holding her tighter, shouting, ‘You see? The queen is crying tears of happiness! Go back to what you were doing!’
‘Are you sure, Queen Aoibheal? Are you sure?’ The little girl was still anxious, coming towards her.
Aoife smiled until her cheeks ached: ‘I’m happy! I’m happy! Go away! I’m happy!’
The crowd dispersed, but the dullahans didn’t retreat; the tall demons closed in on each side of the horse, leather-gloved hands resting on the saddle, grasping the bridle and stirrups, touching her legs.
Very carefully, Killian turned the horse in their midst, and rode slowly up the steepest, widest street towards the temple quarter. And the dullahans marched on either side, more and more of them pouring down the narrow stairways that linked the layers of the city, to join Aoife’s black-robed escort – all carrying heads stinking of rancid meat under their arms, their black hoods pushed back to reveal the balloon-shaped clouds of flies buzzing around the raw decapitated stumps of their necks – the flies sometimes breaking loose from their circ
ling packs and drifting on the night air, and landing and crawling over Aoife’s legs and arms, and making the monstrous horse snort and prance. In the doorways of the houses where the changelings once lived and played, banshees screamed and wept, clutching their human babies in their arms. And rising ahead, towards the centre of the city, the vast temple shook with the vibrations of the bell, and – small in the distance – white-robed druids thronged the crystal steps, crying faintly, ‘Long live death!’
For a moment, at the sound of that cry, Aoife felt childishly weak with terror – once again, with every nerve, she could sense that awful agony of the druid’s knife driving down, pressing through the flesh of her back, sinking between her ribs, splitting the skin of her heart …
Back then, she had called on Shay to help her. But Shay had been trapped in the Land of the Dead. This time she said hoarsely – hating herself for showing weakness: ‘Killian, I don’t want to go near the temple.’
He said, ‘Don’t worry.’
Only a few metres on, he turned the horse aside, forcing it up a winding series of steps. The silent dullahans mounted after them. And so they climbed level after level of the rose-quartz city until, far above, at the very summit of the pyramid, Aoife could see again the queen’s tower: an elegant minaret of translucent crystal, gleaming in the light of a vast round moon; crowned with living hawthorn from within which the queen’s pool spilled its tainted water down the crystal city’s walls.
Reaching the next level, their dark procession turned into a long avenue of thick columns; she recognized the bronze gates at the end of the portico, which were slowly opening. The entrance to the tower.
There were more wooden cages here, between the columns – new since the last time Aoife had been here. Each cage contained not animals but six or seven teenage boys. As the procession passed between them, the boys gazed on in silence – kneeling, arms stretched out, as if they longed to be brought along, up into the tower where the Deargdue sat. All of them were a similar age to Killian, and all of them were nearly as beautiful as he. With a rush of sadness, Aoife recognized the cold dead boys from the Land of the Dead – boys selected for their beauty by the Deargdue, and lured from parties and dances to their deaths. The demon girl had drained so many young hearts of blood, over the last two thousand years. Murdering her childhood sweetheart in their image, over and over again.
Aoife had tried to rescue these boys once, bringing them back to a sort of life with a drop of hawthorn juice and a lenanshee kiss. But their infatuation with the murderous demon girl still blinded them, and had brought them to the demon’s feet instead of to freedom.
Candyfloss brains, as Carla would say.
CHAPTER TWELVE
‘Why does this … this nothing follow us around, Beloved? Why do you let her get away with it, without ripping her limb from limb and cutting out her heart and hurling her body into the bottomless pit of stars beneath the worlds? You are the Beloved, you are the King of Death, and this girl … this monster— Don’t!’
The Deargdue spun on her heel, elbow out, knocking aside Dorocha’s attempted embrace – holding up her delicate hand to silence him.
‘Don’t touch me!’ she spat. ‘I don’t want any more of your excuses! I’m sick of your reasons for letting this scum escape you! First you make me a present of this slave, swearing she will serve me for all eternity. Then you claim the lenanshees will betray her for the promise of human men. Then you pretend the sluagh have destroyed her, in the human world!’
Words not enough to express her fury, the demon girl snatched up a small casket of bronze and hurled it at Dorocha, who with a grimace ducked aside – the casket crashed into the fragile crystal wall of the tower, covering it in fine cracks as diamonds scattered like marbles across the floor.
‘And when she survived the sluagh,’ raged the demon, stamping her delicate foot, ‘you said the fairy road would tempt her home and the banshee would drown her! And then it was that the zookeeper would starve her and the wild beasts eat her! And then after that had failed, thanks to our own son’ – she jabbed a furious finger at Killian, who was hiding behind Aoife – ‘you assure me that that’s only because the Prince of Donn plans to drag her pathetic body into this city as his slave, and her people will mock her and spit on her because she is powerless and weak and even descend on her and kill her for a traitor …’
Gasping for breath, the demon whirled around the cracked, crystal treasure chamber – her eyes molten silver and her hair, the colour of barley fields by moonlight, swirling around her like a silken cloak.
‘And yet here she is,’ she spluttered out, ‘in my own treasure chamber! Escorted like a queen – like a queen! – to my tower by our noble dullahans, who fail to lay a hand on her, and our own prodigal son so seduced by this … this … monster that he dresses her in my clothes and crowns her with my pearls! Beloved, I want this monster dead, even if you do not!’
And the Deargdue threw herself down on a pile of creamy wolf furs and bared her beautiful pointed teeth at Dorocha, like she was a wolf herself.
A teenage boy with long black curls and large blue eyes was sitting with his back to the pile of furs. He reached up a dead, white hand to touch her silken hair – it was a bloodless hand, because he was one of her cold, dead boys. A special pet, brought up to her from his cage. She slapped his fingers away, snarling: ‘Don’t touch me!’
Aoife could feel Killian cringing behind her, gripping her wrists behind her back to keep her from running away. (And maybe to keep himself from running away as well.) It was very painful – not just because he was holding her too tight but because the pressure was causing the iron to spark against her skin. Yet she stayed as still as she could, waiting and watching – alert to every opening. Trying not to fight the iron. She had no magic power, but she could probably still run at fairy speed, if she had the chance.
The diamonds were still rolling around the floor, catching the light of the violet torches blazing in brackets along the walls.
Dorocha was stalking the chamber – burning with fury and humiliation. Kicking over caskets of gold. He shouted at Killian, as soon as the Deargdue had fallen quiet, ‘I said you could have this girl as a living slave, not as some pampered pet! Those pearls are your own mother’s! That dress is your mother’s! All the dresses and jewels in this tower are gifts from me to her!’
‘Undress her now! Get my pearls out of her hair!’ shrieked the Deargdue.
Killian dropped Aoife’s wrists and started trying to untangle the coronet, jerking at it with shaking hands. Pulling at her feathery bodice and skirt. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean. I just didn’t want her to shame us by looking a mess, and she insisted no other clothes would fit …’
Only half an hour before, it was actually Killian who had insisted on bringing Aoife into her mother’s dressing room two floors below.
The vast, blue-curtained chamber had been lit, just as before, with fat wax candles set in brackets. The moonlight filtered in through the crystal. And there were still a thousand, thousand dresses, despite the huge quantity that Caitlin had ‘borrowed’ and stashed away in her own mansion.
‘Wear this,’ said Killian, holding out a heavy dress of iridescent creaminess. Aoife had seen this dress before, the last time she was here in this chamber: the lace bodice and skirt ribbed with fine seal-bones and thickly stitched in wild pearls. Also, with it, a circlet of the same wild, pale, iridescent pearls to pin back her hair.
She said coldly, ‘I don’t want to be dressed up like a doll.’
He sighed, as if she was being childish. ‘Not a doll – a queen. And it’s a present, Aoife. I don’t want anything in return.’
‘Hardly a present, when it’s mine already. My mother’s, I should say – who was murdered by your father in this very tower.’
He went slightly red then, but still brandished the heavy dress at her, even trying to push it into her arms. ‘Whatever. He was driven mad by love of her, and she betrayed him
.’
‘She didn’t love him.’
‘Look, Aoife – all that’s history and I’m not going to argue with you. Just put on some clothes, for God’s sake. Any clothes. You can’t keep walking around in a pair of girly pyjamas and a torn vest. You look like a scarecrow – look at yourself in that mirror, if you don’t believe me.’
She couldn’t help glancing where his finger pointed, at the huge sheet of polished copper. Muddy, and bleeding from cuts. A mess, all right. Ugh. Fine. While she was here … Still seething, she stalked across to the basin that stood on the marble block, where she’d washed herself once before; she leaned down to splash her face with the warm scented water, washing off the blood that the grogoch had drawn from her lip. Then thought: Might as well finish the job. Wetting the linen cloth, she washed the mud and blood from her arms – the wounds fading as she did so, as if her mother’s cloth and the always warm, delicious water had something of the power of a lenanshee’s kiss. Her mother’s kiss. She dipped the wooden comb in the bowl and dragged it through her tangled curls, leaving a network of golden threads sparkling through her deep-red hair.
‘Much better.’ Killian’s reflection smiled at her in the mirror; he was standing at her shoulder, holding up the dress of pearls again – as if he imagined, by the simple act of washing her face and combing her hair, that she’d given in to some instinct of prettification.
She said sharply, ‘I’m not wearing it, Killian.’
It wasn’t just because he was infuriating her by trying to order her around – it was because of the dress itself. It was beautiful but very heavy and constricting. Wearing it would be like being trussed up like a chicken for roasting – as if the iron bracelets weren’t bad enough.
(And yet the thought of meeting the beautiful Deargdue again, while still wearing teddy-bear pyjamas and a sleeveless vest …)
Keeping her shoulder turned to him, she surveyed the circular chamber. Dresses spilled from copper-bound wooden chests; others were folded in piles; more were hung on bronze hooks from silver poles. Most were woven of flowers, soft and living: yellow roses and crimson poppies; bluebells the rich purple of the early evening sky. Others were stitched of feathers – the deep rainbow-black sheen of starlings; the dawn-pink and sky-blue of the chaffinch; the autumn-leafy brown of the lark. All of them light to wear, unlike the dress of pearls: some of them only knee-length. On a solid diamond hook nearby was one that reminded her of the sea – a smooth wave of grey gull feathers, woven with those purple flowers that always grew on Mayo dunes: was it called thrift? She’d never paid any attention.
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