by Jodi McIsaac
“What was the king’s gift?” Cedar asked.
Brighid looked surprised. “Don’t you know? Goodness, child, I know they’re not telling you everything, but I thought they would have told you this. He, too, had the ability to open the sidhe.”
Cedar thought of Eden, her ability to effortlessly swing open the door to any place she could picture in her mind.
“The king? How is that—”
“It’s very rare, of course, especially nowadays. There used to be sidhe all over the place for those of us who wished to travel back and forth between the realms. But when the Elders left, they closed all the sidhe, and only one Tuatha Dé Danann with that gift remained—Brogan.”
Cedar wanted to ask Brighid to slow down, to let what she was hearing sink in so she could try to make sense of it. But she saw Finn pocket his cell phone and head toward the café door, and she still had so many questions. “So did it work? Did Lorcan get the king’s power?”
“No, and I’m sure we’re all grateful for that. We don’t know why it didn’t work exactly, but the assumption is that this particular gift, because it controls the passage between the worlds, can only go to someone worthy, someone who won’t abuse it. Lorcan, of course, is far from worthy. So it’s a gift he cannot take through the death of the one who owns it.” She sat back in her chair, a strangely satisfied look on her face.
Before Cedar could ask another question, Finn arrived and threw some bills on the table.
“Let’s go,” he said to Cedar. “We have another plane to catch.” He gave Brighid a suspicious look. “What were the two of you talking about?” he asked.
Brighid stood up and enveloped him in what Cedar thought was a far too intimate hug. “Just girl talk,” she said, and gave his rear a squeeze.
“Why don’t you come with us, Brid?” Finn asked as he tried to disentangle himself. “Deardra is much more likely to cooperate with you.”
“Oh, I doubt that,” Brighid said vaguely. “Besides, I have a show tonight. So go get ’em, tiger,” she said with a wink. “Keep an eye on him for me, will you, dear?” she said to Cedar.
Cedar ignored this and simply said, “Thanks for your help. Good luck with your show tonight.”
Brighid beamed back at them. “My pleasure, my dears! Have fun!”
Cedar and Finn left the café, Cedar shaking her head. Finn grinned at her, “She takes a bit of getting used to, but she’s all right.”
“I wasn’t…I mean, yes, she does take some getting used to, but I was thinking of something else,” Cedar said as they got into a cab and headed toward to the airport. “Why does she call you Fionnbharr? I heard your father call you that too.”
“That’s what you were thinking?”
“No. I’m just curious.”
“Well, it’s my name, I suppose. My real name.”
Great, Cedar thought. I didn’t even know his real name.
“The names from our homeland are difficult to say with the human tongue, and they draw too much attention. So most of us have taken on more ordinary names for our time here.”
Our time here. So he would be leaving again.
“Where are we going? Where are these Merrow?” she asked, changing the subject.
“Ireland,” Finn said. “Some of the others are flying over from Halifax. They’ll meet us in Dublin. You’ve never been to Ireland, have you?”
“No,” she said. “My mum traveled there for a while, though, before she had me. I’ve always wanted to visit.” Cedar had never dreamed she would still be living in Nova Scotia as an adult. Not that she didn’t love Halifax. She found the small city quaint and the history fascinating. But when she had left for university, she’d figured she would never be back. She had wanted to travel, see the world, experience other ways of living and being. She had interned at Ellison West while in design school in Vancouver and, ironically enough, had been offered a job at Ellison East when she had graduated. So she had returned to Nova Scotia, determined to put in her time and then get transferred to one of the agency’s other offices in Toronto or Montreal, maybe even New York or London. Then Eden had come along, and she had realized that a stable income and a helpful mother were more important than seeing the world, at least for the time being. She still harbored dreams of spending a summer in Europe with Eden when she was older, or even homeschooling her for a year while they traveled through South America in a caravan. But for now, she was stuck. She hadn’t been outside the Maritimes since Eden was born.
“Speaking of mothers…” Finn began, and Cedar tensed. He noticed, and his brow furrowed. “I was just going to say that my mother gave me something to give to you.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a long silver chain. Cedar stared at it.
“Your mum is giving me a necklace? Why?”
Finn glanced at the back of the cabbie’s head and lowered his voice. “It’s more than a necklace,” he said as he handed it to her. She took the chain in her hand it. It was delicate but of good quality. Hanging from the chain was a large stone, about the size of a silver dollar, set in an ornate silver frame. The frame was designed with the same swirling, twisting patterns Cedar had seen on the door of the Fox and Fey. She brushed her thumb over the stone, which was the color of onyx. Its surface was gritty, like a fine layer of sand had settled there. When she moved it, it glittered slightly in the light, as if the grains of sand were the dust of diamonds. She was, for a moment, mesmerized.
“It’s beautiful,” she said. “What is it?”
Finn reached into his pocket again and pulled out what appeared to be an old-fashioned pocket watch. He flipped it open, and Cedar saw that instead of clockwork, the gold frame held a large round stone similar to the one embedded in the necklace.
“They’re called starstones,” he said. “This set belongs to my parents. My mother insisted we take them in case we become separated. They’re connected, so we can communicate and see each other if we need to.”
In response to Cedar’s silence, he said, “You don’t have to use it. She just asked me to give it to you.”
“Your parents don’t have cell phones?” Cedar asked, and then regretted her sarcastic tone. She had never held anything more beautiful.
Finn didn’t look offended. He smiled and said, “They do, and they use those most of the time, but these are a kind of tradition among our people. And they do come in handy. They were used a lot more when our people were traveling between this world and ours, but they sometimes use them here. It beats long-distance roaming fees.”
Cedar started to smile, then stopped herself. “Why did you tell me your parents were dead?”
He looked at her mournfully. “I’m so sorry. I just…there are rules for my people. Rules I’m not very good at keeping. One of the main ones is that we’re not supposed to get close to humans. I knew if I told you about them, you’d want to meet them. You wouldn’t understand that I couldn’t tell them about you. So it just seemed best to pretend they didn’t exist.”
“And you thought I’d never find out? That you and I could live in the same city as your parents and they’d never know about me? How—” Cedar cut herself off abruptly, clenching her teeth together. His rationale made sense, of course, now that she knew the truth. Of course he didn’t want his parents to know he was dating a human. Well, they were stuck with her now, at least until she had Eden back.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “How do these starstones work?”
To her surprise, Finn blushed. “Each pair is activated by a particular song,” he said. “The person who wants to use it needs to sing the song in order to activate the stone. It’s simple to learn, though. Shall I sing it?”
She looked away. “If you want.”
Finn cleared his throat and took a breath. Then he began to sing, and Cedar bit her lip as she felt her heart ache and tears spring to her eyes. She stared out the window as he sang, his voice rising and falling as effortlessly as an eagle coasting on the winds. It was a
beautiful song, but made almost unbearably so by his tender voice, which she remembered so well. Finally, she could take it no more. Without looking at him, she whispered, “Stop. Please stop.” He fell silent, and she could feel his gaze on her.
“I’ll take the necklace,” she said after a moment. She forced herself to look at him. “Thank you.”
Finn wordlessly put the pocket watch away and looked out his window. Cedar closed her eyes and laid her head against the back of the seat, thinking of what Brighid had said: You should really give him a second chance. Cedar huffed. Easy enough for her to say. She’s probably never been abandoned or betrayed. She has no idea what I’ve been through. She thought about the rest of what Brighid had told her, and then straightened up and opened her eyes, breaking the silence.
“Brighid told me that opening the sidhe was the gift of the High King,” she said. “She also said he was killed by Lorcan.”
Finn looked at her cautiously. “He was.”
“So, is your family part of the royalty over there? How did Eden end up with this gift if it’s so rare?”
Finn was silent for a moment. Then, looking out the window again, he answered, “The ability to open the sidhe is given to someone who is worthy of it. That person was our king. Now, apparently, that person is Eden.”
Nuala. Nuala. Maeve’s consciousness reached out as far as it dared. Are you there? Can you sense me? I’m not here to harm you. Let me speak to you. Let me help you.
Maeve could feel Nuala’s consciousness, faintly at first, and this only after hours in her self-imposed dream trance. She tried to speak to Nuala, tried to touch her mind so they could communicate, like the Tuatha Dé Danann and their druids had done for centuries. But there was nothing but stony silence. Maeve felt her thoughts bouncing off Nuala’s closed mind like a child off the walls of a bouncy castle—repeatedly, and without harm, but without any luck at breaching the wall. Nuala was alive; that was all she could determine.
After Maeve awoke from the trance, she sat still for several long minutes. There was one other person who might be able to help her, but she was unsure if she could reach him, or if he would even respond to her.
She did not even know if she would be able to handle seeing him again, but then she thought of Eden, and her resolve hardened. With shaking hands, she began to mix the tea again, this time making it stronger, so her sleep would be deeper and longer, and her consciousness able to travel farther.
She was going to attempt contact with Brogan, the High King of the Tuatha Dé Danann, who had once been her lover, and who had been dead for twenty-two years.
CHAPTER TEN
They were close. Nuala could feel it as she walked hand in hand with Eden down an empty country road in the west of Ireland. It was Saturday afternoon back in Halifax but already evening here in Ireland, and the sun was hanging low in the sky over the ocean.
Nuala hated human technology as a rule, but she had to admit that Google Earth was very convenient when traveling with a child who could open sidhe if she knew enough about where she was going. That, of course, was the problem, and one Nuala had not anticipated. She had thought it would be easy to get the girl to open the sidh to Tír na nÓg. At first she had thought Eden was lying to her when she’d insisted she couldn’t do it because she didn’t know what Tír na nÓg—or Fairyland, as Nuala had called it—looked like. The Internet had been of no help; none of the human artists’ depictions of her homeland had been even close to accurate. Nuala had tried to draw it, but that hadn’t worked either. Finally, she had sought out help.
Eden was dragging her feet, so Nuala led them to the top of a small hill, where they sat on the grass, facing the sunset.
“Why couldn’t we stay in New York City?” Eden asked. “I liked that tall lady.”
Nuala pulled a chocolate bar out of her bag and handed it to Eden. “Because I told you, we need to go see the mermaids.”
“Mermaids aren’t real,” Eden said, but she sounded uncertain.
“They are, and I’ll prove it to you,” Nuala said. “It’s too late to go see them now. It’s hard enough to find them in the daytime, let alone at night. But first thing in the morning, we’ll go down to the coast and I’ll introduce you to one: the Mermaid Queen.” She gave Eden a playful nudge. “And then maybe you’ll believe me when I say you’re a fairy princess.”
Eden didn’t answer, her mouth full of chocolate and caramel.
Nuala lay down on her back and crossed her hands behind her head. This was the land her ancestors had conquered millennia ago, the land where so many of them had died in battle with other ancient races and, eventually, humans. She closed her eyes and tried to feel their power seeping up through the ground. Why did you think this place was worth fighting for? she asked them. There was no answer.
She glanced over at Eden, who had mimicked her and was now lying on her back and looking at the sky. This child was the key to her escape, she was sure of it. She remembered Lorcan’s edict during the waning days of the war.
Bring the child to me, alive, and you will be richly rewarded. All will be forgiven. Just bring me the child.
Eden was not the child he had meant, but she was a worthy substitute. It would be enough, and Nuala was desperate to return home. All would be forgiven, and the power and status she had once taken for granted would be returned to her at last.
The sooner they got there, the better. She stood up and brushed the grass off her legs. “Let’s go,” she said. “There’s a village down the road where we can stay the night. Then it’s off to see the mermaids.”
Nuala had to drag Eden out of bed the next morning. The child seemed more and more exhausted as time went on, and Nuala wondered if opening and closing the sidhe sapped her strength. Eden had created several over the past couple of days, as Nuala strived to keep herself and the girl away from the others while she gathered information and planned what to do next. Fortunately, Eden’s ability made it rather easy to stay one step ahead of the others, who must have noticed her absence by now and put two and two together.
Nuala and Eden headed back up the same dusty road they had walked the night before, but then veered off onto a small track that looked as though it had been made by animals, not people. The track led through a sparse and rocky field, dotted with the occasional scraggly bush. At last, they came to an outcropping of rock. In front of them stretched the ocean as far as the eye could see, still black and ominous in the early morning light. “Stay away from the edge,” she warned Eden.
Nuala peered down. About fifty yards directly below them, a rocky beach ran along the coastline for a couple hundred yards before meeting the vertical sides of the cliff. A woman dressed in a sheer white gown walked along the beach. She was pacing back and forth, from one end of the beach to the other, moaning such a mournful tone that Nuala felt the hair on her arms rise. On a small island of rock several yards from shore was a battered old hut, big enough for two men, at most, to move around in. Nuala had heard the stories. Long ago, an aging fisherman had struck up a friendship with one of the Merrow, and this hut is where they would meet and get drunk together. There were no such friendships now, not since the Merrow queen had been betrayed by a human lover. Now the Merrow hid themselves from humans, all past affections forgotten.
Nuala swore as she saw Eden leaning over the cliff’s edge to get a better look. She yanked her back by her belt. “Are you stupid?” she said. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?”
Eden looked at Nuala in surprise, her face crumpling.
“Oh, don’t start crying,” Nuala snapped. “I just don’t want you to get hurt.”
“Is that the mermaid?” Eden sniffed. “Where’s her tail?”
“How the hell am I supposed to know?” Nuala said with a scowl. “I suppose we’ll have to go down and find out. And Eden, whatever I say to Deardra, just go along with it, okay? We need her to help us so you can get to your father, but I might need to make some things up. So it’s best you don’t say an
ything. Got it?”
Eden nodded, and Nuala hoped the kid would keep her mouth shut. She was nervous about meeting Deardra. The Merrows’ minds were not susceptible to Danann abilities such as hers, and there was bad blood between the races. Nuala knew she would have to resort to old-fashioned diplomacy, something that had never been her forte.
“I don’t want to go down there!” wailed Eden.
“Don’t worry. Brighid said there’s a rope here somewhere that should carry us down.” Nuala groped around until her eyes fell on a single golden thread that seemed to grow out of the rock. She grabbed it and spoke the words Brighid had taught her.
“I mean no harm to the sea, or to those who dwell therein. I seek only to find, and not to take. If my words prove false, may I be buried forthwith beneath the waves, never to taste the air again.”
When she finished speaking, the rope grew thicker and sturdier in her hands. She told Eden to climb onto her back and wrap her hands around her neck. Clinging to the rope, she backed up and took a tentative step off the edge of the cliff, looking for a foothold. Eden screamed as all of a sudden they started dropping. But it was a controlled drop, and Nuala realized there was no need to climb down. The golden rope was dangling them out away from the rocks and gently lowering them to the beach below. When their feet touched the rocks, the rope receded to the top of the cliff. Nuala set Eden on the ground and turned to find the white woman standing only a foot away. Eden stared at her, eyes and mouth wide open. The woman’s gown was made out of sheer white fabric that clung to her wasted body as if she had just emerged from the ocean. Her skin was even paler than the dress, and tinged slightly with green. Her eyes were bloodshot, so much so that the whites were almost completely red, and her hair was the color of the deep purple sky Nuala and Eden had reclined beneath the previous night. It fell in a series of tangles and knots down the length of her back.