But I did look. I kept on looking as the horses moved again, and as the uncanny procession re-formed, and as the Fair Folk lifted their lanterns high and rode off under the trees. I kept on looking, hoping I might glimpse the face of that man at whom Graceful Maeve had looked with her eyes soft with love. But both he and she were lost in the group, and if they mounted horses and rode off with the others, I did not see them.
After that I did not sleep, but lay awake staring up at the sky, where stars winked in and out of view between the shifting clouds. I did not weep; I had shed my tears earlier, for the loss of Bear and Badger and for the errors I had made, and now what I felt was a slow-burning anger. Why show me that? Why torment me? I had done nothing to harm these folk, nothing at all beyond stepping over their border uninvited, and I’d had good reason for that. Besides, Caisin herself had bid me do just that when she sent me after Finbar. None of it made sense. I watched the sky gradually lighten, and worked on various theories, including the notion that Caisin had not been among the folk I had seen tonight, but that perhaps Mac Dara had sent them. Caisin had not seemed inimical; indeed she had been both courteous and helpful, if more detached than a human woman might have been in the circumstances. And if the old tales taught us anything, it was that the Tuatha De did not think or act like humankind. Might Mac Dara find it amusing to tease me with visions of a perfect self?
As the dawn edged closer and the first birds began their tentative chirping out in the oak forest, I fought through the numbing grief of losing the dogs and made myself plan the day as Bran would. The goal. Get over that wretched bridge and back onto Sevenwaters land before nightfall. Reaching home would be a two-day journey. The equipment. What we had was limited, but useful: the waterskin, the remains of Caisin’s cordial, some nuts, the cloak, the blanket, which Finbar could carry. The nuts would be adequate to get us through one day, and as we’d already eaten some, it would make no difference if we consumed the rest. I would not touch any other food we found and I’d make sure Finbar didn’t, either. Once over the bridge, we could forage safely. At least we were unhurt, though I was tired and sore, and there was a wrenching feeling in my stomach, as if leaving Bear and Badger behind might cut me in two. But I had to get Finbar home. I had to put that first. They’re only dogs, a little voice whispered in my mind, and sudden, furious tears came to my eyes, but I did not let them fall.
There was one thing I had not allowed for in my planning: that Finbar might have other ideas.
“We can’t go home,” he said as we ate our breakfast of a few nuts washed down with a mouthful of water. “You wouldn’t go away and leave Bear and Badger here, Maeve. And what about Swift?”
“Mother and Father would expect me to take you straight home. That is the right thing to do.” It was painful to get the words out.
“Right for them, maybe. But not right for you. You can’t leave Bear behind.” He spoke simply, knowing exactly what this meant to me. When I was ten I had risked death trying to save Bounder from the fire. I had done so without a second thought. Had ten more years of growing up turned me into a coward?
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said. “My plan is that we head straight for home. It’s the only sensible choice.”
After a moment, Finbar said, “Can I tell you my plan?”
“You can tell me while we walk. I want you over that bridge today.” I rose to my feet. Beyond our shelter the day was brightening and the solitary chirps and cheeps had become a chorus to the sun.
“Which bridge?”
“Any bridge that leads home. The withy bridge I came over, or the one you used, if you can find it. Yours does sound much easier.”
“Maeve.”
I sighed and sat down again. “All right, tell me.”
“We need to follow Bear and Badger. I saw them go; I can find the way. It’s still early. We can rescue them and get to the bridge before dark.”
Oh, yes, yes! cried Wild Maeve. I closed my ears to her. “That’s not a very good plan, Finbar,” I said. “For all sorts of reasons.” Reasons I had no intention of discussing with him, lest I frighten him out of his wits.
“But it’s the right plan. We came here to find Swift. And now Bear and Badger have been taken, we need to find them, too. Going home now is giving up the mission. You’re brave. You’d never give up a mission.” There was something in his young face that terrified me: a naked longing to be proven right, and not to have me turn out to be less than he’d believed.
I cleared my throat, searching for good words and finding none. “The mission has changed. My first job must be to make sure you get home safely. You’re my brother; you’re our parents’ only son. And you’re a boy. Bear and Badger are dogs.” I could not bring myself to say only dogs. “They will look after themselves.”
“They didn’t last time. When you found them they were half-starved and scared to death.”
“They are strong now.” Stronger, yes. But how easily they might be tipped back into that nightmare. “Finbar, if I’d come down to the field and found Swift gone and you still there, I wouldn’t have run after him. I would have gone for help. Fetched Father, or Emrys, or Luachan. I only came here because of you. Because I needed to make sure you were safe.”
Finbar sat silent, hunched over, staring at his hands.
“That is the truth. It’s the way things are. I’m not giving up on my mission. Of course I want to go after Bear and Badger. I want to so much it hurts. But I can’t. I’m not being weak. I’m trying to be strong.”
“That means it’s my fault.” His voice had lost all its assurance; it was small and forlorn. “My fault you’re here; my fault you can’t rescue the dogs. My fault Swift is lost.”
“Hardly.” I put my arm around him. “Swift chose to bolt. That’s nobody’s fault, unless you want to blame Emrys or me for not training him better. As for Bear and Badger, they made their own choices. Come on, we need to move.”
“I think we’re meant to follow them.”
I felt the hairs on my neck stand up. “What was that?”
“I think, if we don’t follow them, everything will come out wrong.”
Now he was really worrying me. “What do you mean?”
“It’s like that story, the one about the valley being flooded because everyone forgot a geis. They did the wrong thing, and it all went bad until Finn and Baine were brave enough to break the rules and put it right.”
“This isn’t the wrong thing. It makes perfect sense for us to go home. If we follow the dogs we could both get hurt and we still might not find them. And there’s something else, something you might not have thought of.”
Finbar turned his big eyes on me.
“I’m not especially good at looking after myself out here. I can’t even put my shoes on without help. I’m certainly not the best person to look after you or execute a rescue mission.”
“You said you came to find me. So it is a rescue mission.”
Against the odds, I felt a smile creep onto my lips. “Then help me finish it well, Finbar. We must go home. There is no geis on you, or on me, or on Bear or Badger or Swift, unless it exists completely unknown to any of us, and if that’s the case, I don’t see how it makes any difference to our decisions. Mother will be distraught with worry. Father has Cruinn and his war band rampaging all over the forest hunting for the missing men. You and I are faced with a very simple choice and, because I’m older, I’m making it for us. We’re going home, and you’re not going to spend the whole day telling me I’m wrong.”
My brother got up, and when I, too, had risen, he folded the blanket precisely and put it under his arm, while I struggled into the cloak. I put Caisin’s flask in my pouch; Finbar picked up the waterskin. He said not a word, but his mouth was set tight and his eyes were full of trouble. We crept out of our hiding place and set our steps toward home.
DRUID’S JOURNEY: SOUTH
H e follows a winding pathway through birch woods, his sandaled feet soft on the d
amp earth. Fox and badger watch him pass. His progress is the subject of ravens’ gossip; larks sing his journey into the morning sky. As the wintry sun reaches its peak the druid sees the elms ahead, and the cottage tucked against a little rise, with a neat garden of winter vegetables to one side. There is the well, as he expected, and there is a young woman drawing up water. A creature is crouched in the long grass by her feet. A big cat or a terrier, he thinks as he approaches, and then, no: a hare. It lifts its long ears, examines the visitor with mild eyes. The woman hefts the bucket to her shoulder and turns to face him.
“My respects to you, wise woman.”
She gives him a thorough look up and down. Her features are handsome, her body strong; her clothing is that of a hardworking country wife. Her eyes are a curious shade, neither quite green nor gold nor brown, and their gaze goes deep. “And to you, druid. I’m about to make a brew; I have good herbs for weary travelers. Will you come in awhile?”
“Thank you. I have some honey cakes to share. And I would speak with you.”
Inside, she busies herself with the brew while he brings out his supplies and sets them on the table. The hare retreats to a basket, from which it watches him unblinking.
“I’d be surprised by any visitor who did not want to speak,” the woman observes after a long silence. “Mostly, it’s talk they want, with the brew coming second.”
“I’ll take what you have to give. I’m come from your sisters in the north and the east, and I seek your share of a rhyme. I expect you know which one it is.”
“Ah,” is all she says.
While she is chopping her herbs, watching the pot, fetching the cups, the druid takes the bucket and goes back out to the well, drawing more water to save her the trouble later. Under a gnarled apple tree he spots some windfalls and collects the least damaged. Back indoors, he cuts an apple into neat slices and offers it to the hare, piece by piece. The creature eats with some delicacy, as if doing the giver a favor with its acceptance.
“Well, then,” the wise woman says when they are seated at the table enjoying their meal, and the hare has settled to rest in its basket—its eyes are still open to slits; it will not relax until the stranger is gone. “This rhyme. A geis, yes? And not pronounced over you, but another. That was many, many years ago. What makes you believe this is the time for it?”
The druid wraps his fingers around his cup as if to warm them. “A change in the manner of things. An urgency about his deeds, as if he sensed time running out. It seemed to me…” He hesitates. “It seemed he might have seen something, heard something to suggest the conditions of a geis would soon be met. Perhaps he saw his own death coming.”
“What would he do then? Try to prevent those conditions from coming about? A geis is a geis. Sooner or later, it will be fulfilled. He is a prince of the Otherworld. He knows this.”
The druid frowns. “He might strive to ensure his chosen successor was ready to take his place.”
She ponders this awhile. “That much I understand, for he has long desired to entice this precious son of his back to his side for just that purpose. What I do not understand is how your knowledge of this rhyme can make a jot of difference. That which the geis has set down will in its own time come to pass. You cannot halt it. You cannot change it. You might perhaps delay it, as he no doubt has attempted to do, but what would be the purpose in that?”
There is a darkness in the druid’s face, a shadow in his eyes. “Change is coming,” he says. “Great change. You are right. I have no power to prevent it. But with the right knowledge, I can alter the manner of that change. My blood demands it of me. My training sets the tools in my hands. I am the son of a fey mother. And I am a son of Sevenwaters, with a bone-deep loyalty to clan, kin and hearthstone. How can I not act?”
She looks at him long. “There’s a heavy price to be paid,” she says.
“I have paid heavier and lived with the burden.”
A silence then. After a while she says, “My share of the knowledge you seek is this: Evil’s defeat demands the price of a brother’s sacrifice. As the age begins to turn, that is when the oak will burn. This would come at the end of the rhyme, I believe, since it deals with the demise of a certain person. As for brothers, I cannot imagine what brothers they mean. Lord Sean has only one son. And you walk alone. I see you no longer have that raven who used to shadow your every move.”
The druid gives her one of his rare smiles. “He moved on to warmer climes.” His meal finished, he rises to his feet. “I thank you for your hospitality and for your wisdom.”
“And you know, I imagine, that the rhyme is yet incomplete. If you would have the last piece in your puzzle you must seek out my sister the storyteller, who lives in the west. You must come full circle. Make haste, for a long journey still lies before you.”
“I will.” He bows his head to her, then turns and makes the same courtesy to the hare. It observes him through its slitted eyes.
The wise woman walks to the door with her visitor. She stands watching as he slings his bag over his shoulder and heads off up the path.
“A long journey,” she says again.
He turns; waits.
“But not such a lonely one, I think,” she adds, and her tone holds affection and sorrow and a farewell that stretches long into the future. “Our brother is close by and looking for you.”
The druid becomes very still. This, he has not expected. This is both gift and peril, the key to the mission and its possible undoing.
“You will find him five miles to the northwest, close to a circle of stones,” says the woman. “By dusk today you should be close to that place. He will be ready to meet you.” A long pause. “I wish you well, druid. You have great courage.”
“You think?” He smiles again, turns away, is gone.
“Make haste,” she whispers to the empty space. “Make haste, brave soul, for the dark is coming.”
CHAPTER 11
F inbar, keep up!”
We’d been walking a long time. We were both tired, and our pace had slowed as the morning passed. But Finbar was dawdling. He kept stopping to gaze along the pathways between the oaks, or to look up at a sky now filled with heavy gray clouds, their bellies swelling toward a thunderstorm. Spots of rain were starting to fall. I judged it was around midday, and we were less than halfway back to the bridge.
“Finbar!”
He’d stopped again and was staring off into the distance, perhaps watching something in the trees, perhaps lost in a daydream or vision. I regretted ordering him not to complain on the way home. This snail-slow progress was my punishment.
“Come on! Can’t you see it’s about to pour with rain?” I failed to keep the frustration from my voice. It didn’t help that my arm was throbbing; the splinter I’d picked up while climbing the spider tree had gone deep and the flesh around it had turned an angry red. I should have asked Finbar to dig it out with his little knife before it got so bad. The job would be beyond his skills now. Besides, there was no time. “Come on! What are you looking at anyway?”
“I keep seeing them. Up in the trees. Those people, the ones all made of twigs and leaves.”
Despite myself, I halted and stared into the thinning canopy of the nearest oak. The wind was moving the branches and shivering through the last clinging leaves, but I did not see anything else up there.
“I saw him,” Finbar said. “That boy. The one Mac Dara left when he stole me. I’m sure it was him; he’s the same size as me. He was waving to me, giving me a signal. I think he wants to tell me something.”
I looked again. Dark branches clothed in tattered leaves, blood red, ochre yellow, sunset gold, all withering now, ready to admit defeat the moment the storm came. By tomorrow’s dawn these forest giants would be stripped bare. “I don’t see him,” I said.
“He was there a moment ago. Over there, where that path goes off under the trees—there! He’s coming out on that big branch, look—”
For a moment I saw the cre
ature—a spindly, awkward being all fashioned of forest matter, a leaf here, a spray of autumn flowers there, a handful of grass, a cobweb…His eyes were unmatched pebbles in a face that had the general semblance of a human boy’s, with the correct complement of nose, mouth, ears, in the usual arrangement. Yet he was profoundly uncanny. He waved a long, twiggy arm and Finbar waved back.
“See?” my brother said, striding with confidence toward the tree where the being was perched on a perilously high limb. “He wants to tell me something.”
“Finbar, no—”
My words dried up on my lips. Over the rising wind came the sound of hoofbeats approaching, the jingle of harness, and—oh, blessed relief!—a voice that was unmistakably human calling, “Maeve! Finbar!” Luachan. Help had come at last.
In the moment before I turned I saw the twiggy boy go still, then dart back along his branch to vanish into the forest. Whether he’d had something to say to Finbar we would never know; the opportunity was lost. Then Luachan rode up on his bay mare, Blaze, swung himself gracefully down next to me and opened his arms, a look of utter relief on his face.
“Maeve! Thank all the gods! Are you all right?”
I was tempted to throw myself into his embrace; that would have felt good. I held back, though his words warmed me. “I’m fine. Tired and dirty, but otherwise unharmed. Finbar, too. But Bear and Badger are gone, and we never found Swift.” I drew in an unsteady breath, telling myself I was not about to break all my own rules and collapse into tears of relief and exhaustion. “It’s so good to see you, Luachan,” I said shakily. “I don’t know how you found us. I was told—someone said that on this side of the bridge, we’re in the Otherworld.”
Luachan’s brows went up. “Then it’s just as well I have supplies,” he said with perfect calm, unfastening his saddlebag. “I imagine you’re hungry. Finbar, come over here—let me look at you.”
Sevenwaters [06] Flame of Sevenwaters Page 28