The Hawthorn Crown

by Helen Falconer

  Heavy feet coming up the stairs, followed again by lighter human footsteps.

  Oh God.

  If there was some sort of weapon in this box …

  She lifted the lid.

  Inside, laid on a bed of rough linen, was a plait of hair. It was red, but much darker than her own red hair: no hint of gold, but more like the coat of an adult fox, and coarse to the touch. Possibly the hair of a man? When she handled it, an oily perfume drifted up – the same sweetness that had risen from her mother’s pillows: the heathery fragrance of an ancient world.

  Shay’s mother’s voice came into in Aoife’s mind: Your father was a handsome boy of seventeen when he chanced on your mother. And when she slipped feet first into the pool, he threw aside his cloak and sword and followed her.

  Was there a slight chance that out of all human men, her mother had retained a sentimental keepsake of one single lover – Aoife’s own father? And now she thought of it, there was more depth to this scent than the sweet wildness of the bog; beneath the heather she could also smell horse and leather and bronze and sun …

  From above came the scream of another dying boy.

  With sudden determination, Aoife tucked the plait of hair inside her close-fitting sleeve. Hardly a weapon, but if she was going to die, it was something to bring into eternity with her – the only thing she would ever know of that long-dead father: a plait of his hair; the rich rough perfume of a heroic age. Closing the box, she pushed it back under the bed; then got to her feet and went to the amber door.

  The bronze lock clicked open under her fingers.

  One quick, sharp shove …

  The nearest dullahan seized her before she’d gone more than a step; carried her back in a storm of flies; threw her on the bed as carelessly as before, then turned away.

  Then turned back, and with one heavy leather-gloved hand slapped her into oblivion.

  Blackness.

  ‘Aoife? Aoife?’

  She was safe in bed, and Killian was calling to her from below her bedroom window.

  ‘Aoife! Wake up!’

  He sounded so young. He was only a stupid teenage boy. She had to stop him taking the fairy road. If she allowed him to go, it would be her fault – everything would be her fault. ‘Don’t go, stay.’ Her mouth, still paralysed, was having difficulty framing simple words. She reached out her hand, and as if by a miracle he was there, in her bedroom with her; he must have climbed in her window via the ash tree. Thank God he hadn’t left for the fairy world already. Thank God she hadn’t let him go. She sought and gripped his hand. ‘Stay with me, Killian, don’t go.’ Her voice was getting stronger now, and the rest of her mind was surfacing to consciousness.

  A sound of drumming was making her head ache …

  Killian was on the bed beside her, gripping the hand she had offered him, his other hand on her shoulder. He was wearing white robes, thrown on over his shirt and tight-fitting jeans; there was white-berried mistletoe in his white-blond hair. When Aoife realized where she was – lying in her mother’s bed – she groaned aloud.

  So she had let Killian take the fairy road, and it was all her fault. Stupid, stupid.

  Oh, that drumming.

  Where was it coming from? She tried to move, but her arms and legs were being weighed down. So weak … Female druids were clustered around the bed, holding broken branches of hawthorn in front of their faces through which they stared secretively at Aoife – the blossoms acting like veils. More druids were kneeling on the floor, tending to burning piles of hawthorn blossom – what sacrilege, in her mother’s bedroom. Around the walls, eighty to ninety grogoch sat cross-legged, beating on skin drums: a dark, rhythmic music like the pulse of a heart. Behind them, the light pouring in through the crystal walls was now violently red, turning the whole room a deep, dark crimson. Was this the sunset of another day?

  Killian was saying something to her, leaning over her, whispering. Eyes shining; muscular body trembling. ‘You don’t want to be tortured, do you? Or eaten by the beasts, or hung up over the city?’ He was wet with blood: beneath the robes, his ordinary clothes – white T-shirt, tight jeans – were soaked in it.

  Disgusted, she turned her head away from him.

  He whispered in her ear, his breath hot against her skin: ‘So it’s better, because otherwise you’ll be tortured. This way, it won’t hurt, not if you keep absolutely still. It’ll be so quick, it will be like a candle being blown out. Trust me. After the thirteenth boy, I was a master— Oh, get away from me.’

  Startled, she looked back at him. A bluish-grey butterfly was fluttering in his eyes; he caught it roughly in his hand. She cried out, ‘Please be careful!’

  But already he had crushed the butterfly in his fist; its body a husk and its wings become dust. Smiling at her as she sobbed for Donal, he said, ‘Don’t cry. Of course I’ll be careful. I swear on my life. Do you want to say a prayer before I kill you? I don’t mind. You can choose any god you want. Even the human god, if it makes you feel better.’

  ‘No human gods here, my prince! Unclean, unclean!’ The ancient little druid Morfesa bobbed up beside the bed, swinging a copper bowl suspended on thin chains, scented smoke rising from it, carrying the aroma of dying hawthorn blossom. He stood on tiptoes to swing the sacrilegious incense directly in Aoife’s face, his snake-like grin and glittering blue eyes coming and going through the bright haze of purple. He intoned slowly as if chanting at a ceremony: ‘Prince, kill your slave. Long live death! The stone knife pierced her heart, but her heart was stone. Long live death! Your father orders you strike her down with iron, as he did her mother. Long live death!’

  The burning hawthorn blossom, rich and sickly, filled Aoife’s nose and mouth and throat – she felt weak and dizzy.

  Hawthorns … dying hawthorn blossoms.

  Their rich and rotten scent.

  (And Killian had kissed her by the hawthorn pool.

  I love you.)

  He was holding her hand; he was whispering again, ‘Don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you. I can kill so quick, it won’t hurt if you stay still.’

  Morfesa, hovering with the incense, urged impatiently, ‘Do it now, my prince. Long live death! Time is running short. Long live death! The war has begun! Every minute here is a hundred minutes wasted in the human world. We must make our way to the queen’s pool. The festival awaits. Kill the girl, and then we can go.’

  ‘I will do it.’ Killian had the iron knife in his hand – his eyes were shining like a thousand stars, and his beautiful mouth was twisted in an eager smile. ‘I can do it.’

  ‘You are the prince of death,’ agreed Morfesa cheerfully, wafting more hot smoke into Aoife’s face. The scent of hawthorn blossom, filling her. Scorching her lips; burning her lungs.

  Hawthorns.

  That warm and sickly perfume.

  (I love you, he had said.

  His mouth on hers.

  He had stolen a kiss – and she had flown.)

  ‘I am the prince of death!’ cried Killian, raising the knife with sudden determination; his body shaking more violently than ever. ‘Are you ready, Aoife? Are you ready for me?’

  ‘I am ready. But first …’ Arching her back, half closing her eyes, Aoife pushed up her mouth towards him. ‘Kiss me again, Killian.’ Her voice was husky from the hot smoke. ‘Kiss me.’

  He laughed in surprise, drawing back, the knife trembling in his hand. ‘Kiss you before I kill you?’

  ‘Kiss me …’

  The druid said hastily, ‘She’s a slave. Unclean. Ignore her. Long live death!’

  ‘Kiss me, Killian,’ whispered Aoife. ‘I want you to kiss me again. I want it to be the last memory I have of my life. I’ve always longed for you to kiss me.’

  He narrowed his eyes: ‘Then why were you angry with me when I did kiss you?’

  ‘Because of Carla, that’s all. But you’re finished with Carla now.’

  He shrugged, pouting; he was still wounded by her past rejection. ‘Well, maybe
it’s too late now. Maybe now I can have you, I don’t want you.’ He liked this power she was giving him – using it to get back at her. Yet at the same time he was blushing to his pale hairline.

  ‘Don’t touch the slave,’ agreed Morfesa. ‘Kill her now.’

  ‘Kiss me properly,’ whispered Aoife.

  ‘Kill her now!’

  ‘Oh, for— This is all wrong.’ With a sigh, Killian laid the knife on the black pillow beside her head, and lowered his mouth to hers.

  She closed her eyes.

  Think.

  Remember.

  I’m a lenanshee. I feed on men’s desire. And Killian has always been crazy about me – I know that because Sinead told me. And Sinead knows because she saw him with the pooka.

  On Killian’s lips, now pressed longingly against her own, Aoife could taste his power like black, bitter smoke.

  I am my mother’s daughter. I can drain away his life force into my own veins. I flew when he kissed me.

  ‘Kill her!’ howled Morfesa, trying to force the knife back into Killian’s hand.

  Killian pushed it blindly away. And kissed her again.

  I am a lenanshee.

  She kissed him back, tasting his beautiful darkness; drawing his bitter breath into her lungs; sucking his dark, dangerous, murderous power into her blood. His strength was draining out of him. His body sinking down on hers. She could feel him grow lighter. Weaker.

  And she could hear Morfesa’s angry shouting; she could feel his withered hands trying to pluck Killian’s failing body from her own. Yet Killian clung to her with his demented love, even as the life poured out of him into her; his strength filling her veins; her hollow, bird-like bones. Beneath her skin, the darker creature stirred, uncurled, awakened at last to its full power by that dark kiss. Once iron could tie that ancient creature down, but iron was nothing to it now – not while it gorged itself on Killian’s murderous heart. The Prince of Donn. The Prince of the Dead. Like Dorocha, impervious to iron.

  I run with him across the blood-red water …

  He loves

  He loves the pooka’s daughter …

  He loves

  ‘Kill the slave!’ raged the druid.

  The bonds that held her wrists were no better than blades of grass. She could throw Killian away from her right now, and then kill Morfesa. She had all the power she needed to fight, run, fly.

  ‘Kill her!’ screamed Morfesa. ‘Or I’ll do it myself!’

  Yet the creature within Aoife forced its wings along her arms, and raised her hands, and ran her long fingers through Killian’s hair, pressing his lips harder to hers. There was another taste on his mouth now: like the last dregs of a milkshake – sweeter. It was the taste of his childhood – a simpler Killian Doherty, raised by humans – dreaming in his last moments of being at home. Dreaming of his bedroom in Kilduff, with the childish Manchester United duvet cover; dreaming of computer games; dreaming, as he slipped away into a deeper, warmer darkness, of Carla …

  With a gasp, Aoife pushed him from her. He rolled and fell unconscious to the floor, just as Morfesa lunged at her with the iron knife. She blasted the druid, sending him crashing across the chamber, exploding out through the fragile wall in a shower of fragments. Then leaped for the door.

  The dullahans were waiting for her, raising their whips of human vertebrae …

  Too many to fight. There was a quicker way.

  Morfesa’s way.

  Aoife spun full circle and threw herself over the heads of the startled druids and drumming grogoch, out through the hole smashed in the crystal by Morfesa’s body, out into the empty sky, soaring high then hovering over the city – arms and legs spread wide. And the creature that had slept all its life beneath her skin spread its wings contentedly through her arms.

  Because of the red light streaming through the chamber’s walls, she’d thought it would be sunset over the city. Instead, she was floating in a soft grey dawn – the new sun rising in the east, and the light in the sky as pure as rippling water; the marble cliffs beyond, a faint lemony colour.

  In hideous contrast, the whole of Falias gleamed bloodily beneath her – every turret and street and courtyard flowing with red; roofs and gutters; fruit trees and statues – all painted crimson. And more dark red liquid was pumping from the summit of her mother’s tower, as if from a wounded heart. Pouring down from the queen’s pool in swollen waves over the walls; dripping thickly from the stone vines and flowers; oozing from the mouths and hands of the gargoyles.

  Her mother’s precious pool had once been a delicate pink, stained by the blood of a single man – his body slit from gut to throat and hurled down the city walls by Dorocha. But now …

  Disguised in her dress of grey feathers – a grey gull in a grey sky – Aoife circled above the minaret; and the creature that she had become stared down through her eyes at the ruinous scene.

  The hawthorns that crowned the tower were now decaying stumps, shrivelled and dying. And among them stood the devil and his demon lover, between them tossing the body of one murdered boy after another down the city walls – a tangle of arms and legs, tumbling and hitting corners and gargoyles and golden gutters; limbs breaking; heads cracking open; broken bodies plunging at last into the moat that circled Falias, and disappearing from sight into the water.

  And with each falling body, the water flowing over the city darkened and reddened, and grew thicker.

  Fouled beyond repair.

  Cold, focused hatred poured into Aoife’s hands – freed now of their iron bands. She would murder Dorocha and the Deargdue right now, with two shimmering, blazing blasts of power. She would take back her tower; take back her world. Her riches. Her wealth. All that was hers. In bitter excitement, she circled slowly lower. She was invisible against the grey dawn light, in her grey dress of gull feathers.

  Eager to kill, she prepared to dive …

  A disturbance sounded in the shadowy staircase that led up through the hawthorn roots from the tower below. Feet pattering; high childish chattering.

  Aoife pulled back, circling again. Watching and waiting.

  A host of small orange grogoch spilled out from the stairwell across the tiled floor of the minaret and plunged shrieking into the blood-red water, like children into a swimming pool. The devil and his demon lover turned to salute them, hands above their heads, applauding.

  Aoife prepared again to dive.

  A druid was climbing the stairs; the tallest of the women. She stepped out into the light, cradling the limp body of Killian – his head on her shoulder, and knees drawn up like a baby; his ridiculous druidic robes trailing on the wet floor like a christening robe; white berries in his white-blond hair.

  The creature that was Aoife laughed to see this murderous boy slowly dying. She had drunk at the source of his dark power, and it had tasted good, and she had no more use for him. Yet deep inside, her old self wept, because he was the boy she had known since she was four years old, and who Carla had loved since junior infants.

  Briefly – but only briefly – weakened by those tears, Aoife circled again.

  The devil and his demon crossed the floor to look upon their son, shaking their heads. The Deargdue touched Killian’s face, then glanced up into the grey sky. And then she laughed, and whispered in her lover’s ear, and kissed him; and dropped one last kiss upon her evil child, and ran away down the stairs into the darkness. Left to himself, the devil took the dying boy in his arms, and gazed on him, and walked with him to the perimeter of the tower, where he stood among the withered cage of thorns, studying the boy’s blank face. And then, with a smile upwards into the dawn sky – clearly knowing that Aoife was circling directly above him with murderous intent – the devil tossed his own son over the edge of the tower, sending him tumbling down the blood-bathed walls.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  She caught Killian’s tumbling body a split second before his skull shattered to pieces against the city walls. And then, with him in her arms, she cont
inued to fall – struggling to fly upwards, but spiralling downwards.

  She was a fool. She should have just left him to die.

  She would have left him to die. Yet the soft, humanized Aoife inside her had thrown a stupid fit, and forced her to dive like an eagle after her prey – just as Dorocha had known she would.

  Weak. He knows how weak I am inside.

  And now this boy’s weight was dragging her down, because his evil was all sucked out, and human clutter filled him up like stones – all the memories he had gathered since his childhood: his mother’s face and father’s laugh; playing with school friends; kicking a ball; his pony; a kitten he had liked; his motorbike. And above all and everywhere – Carla.

  Carla!

  On the point of dropping Killian’s unconscious body, the memory of her best friend rushed warmly into Aoife’s heart. And instead of abandoning Killian to death, she held the boy tighter. The memory of Carla came linked to other memories – her parents, Eva … Shay.

  Shay!

  She had to save Shay! Her parents, everyone was in danger! She had to swim through the queen’s pool before it closed again, and kill the grogoch before they reached Kilduff …

  Below her, the empty city square was in deep shadow as the new sun struggled to crest the cliffs behind. Gliding in to land on the cobbles, Aoife raced up the steps of the plinth and laid her burden under the belly of the bronze elk, then – with Killian’s weight gone from her – she sprang up onto the elk’s broad back, then to its antlers, then burst once more into flight, soaring upwards through the dawn. Up over the massive temple, where druids had gathered on the steps, bearing Morfesa’s body; up over the streets, where banshees stood gazing skywards in their doorways, cradling their human babies; past the abandoned balconies of the lenanshee quarters; the darkened stables of the dullahans; the blood-stained walls of the minaret …