by Jodi McIsaac
“No!” Cedar screamed. “She’s getting away!” She ran over to where she had seen the others climb down a thick rope, but all that was left was a thin golden thread. She put her hands around it, but it was no thicker than a strand of sewing thread. How did they do it? she asked herself. She grabbed the thread again. “Help me!” she yelled at it. “I need to get down!” Still it remained limp in her hand. Tossing it aside, she slid onto her stomach and without another thought lowered herself over the edge, searching for a toehold. She tried to remember what she had learned during her weekends of rock climbing while at university, but this was a far cry from those excursions, with their safety harnesses and anchors and belayers. The rock face was almost perfectly vertical, and Cedar knew one false step would send her plummeting to the rocks below. But she merely tightened her grip and searched for the next hold.
Suddenly, she heard a cry coming from one of the Merrow, louder than any of their screams thus far.
“Human!”
Cedar froze. She knew she was completely exposed. There was no possibility of hiding or climbing back up to the top. Then she cried out in pain as something hard hit the small of her back. A trident clanged off the wall just inches from her head. Barely clinging to the rock, she turned her head and almost released her hold in terror.
Beside and above her loomed a creature more terrible than anything she had ever seen. Its body, as large as the cliff she clung to, was covered in green scales and large, round, pulsating suckers. Claws as long as her arm extended from each of its dozen fingers. Instead of a mouth, the creature had a swarming mass of tentacles, as if it were in the process of swallowing a giant octopus. Two golden eyes protruded grotesquely from atop its head, and a pair of dragon wings unfurled from between its shoulder blades. A harpoon struck it in the neck but the weapon just glanced off, as if it had hit the rock wall. The creature turned its eyes on Cedar, and she screamed, her fingers losing their grip on the rocks. A tentacle shot out and wrapped around her, but instead of devouring her or thrashing her against the rock as she had expected, the beast lowered her to the ground. It set her in a crevice in the rock wall and rolled a large boulder in front of her. Then it turned and, with a deafening roar, moved its massive body toward the screeching Merrow.
Cedar stared after it in horror, shocked to still be alive. Then she remembered why she had been trying to climb down the cliff in the first place. Eden. She hoisted herself up and over the boulder that was blocking her way and ran as fast as she could down the beach, ignoring the stabbing pain in her back where the Merrow had struck her. She watched as Nuala and Eden reached the island and rested for a moment on the rocks, both of them panting. Then Nuala stood and dragged the girl to her feet. Eden’s eyes were wild with terror. Cedar sprinted the last few feet to the shore and started to wade into the water. “Eden!” she called as loudly as she could. “EDEN!”
Eden turned her head in the direction of the sound and screamed back, “Mummy!”
“Eden, I’m coming! Hold on!” Cedar yelled as she tried to run through the water.
“Stop!” Nuala raised a hand toward Cedar, and she felt herself immobilized.
It’s just a spell, she told herself. You can move. You want to move!
Nuala yanked Eden back against her side. “We can go now, Eden. We can go to Tír na nÓg, where your father is waiting for us. You’ve seen what it looks like, now all you need to do is open the door!”
“Mummy!” Eden screamed again, trying to get out of Nuala’s grasp.
“No!” Nuala screamed back at her. “We are going home! You open that damn door or your mother will drown.”
Eden sobbed hysterically while Nuala dragged her up the rocks and to the hut’s door. “Open it,” Nuala hissed.
Cedar fought against the fog in her head. Think about Eden. You have to get to her. “Eden, don’t!” she yelled, and felt her body start to free itself.
She saw Eden reach for the door, which was barely hanging onto its hinges, and push it open.
“Why isn’t it working?” Nuala yelled. “You stupid child!” She slapped Eden’s face. “I said open it!”
“I’m trying!” Eden screamed back.
“We don’t have time for this!” Nuala said. “Just get us out of here!”
Cedar had almost reached the rocks when Eden opened the door for a second time. “Eden! Eden! Come to me!” she cried out in desperation.
Eden spun away from the open door and started to run toward her mother, but Nuala caught her by the hair and jerked her back. Then Nuala looked Cedar in the eye and said in a low but clear voice, “You will stop trying to find us. You will forget about her. You never had a daughter.”
Cedar fell to her knees in the water as her thoughts turned as thick as cold molasses. She looked up just in time to see Nuala and a small child disappear into the hut, and watched as the door slammed shut behind them. The sound of screaming was all around her, but she stayed on her knees in the shallow water, staring at the door and wondering what she was supposed to be doing. Then everything around her fell silent. The next thing she knew, Finn was splashing toward her and pulling her to her feet. Rohan stormed past them and into the hut. His curses filled the silence and sent a chill down Cedar’s back.
“Cedar, where is Eden?” Finn shouted, though she was only inches away from him. She stared at him, her brow wrinkled. “Who?” she asked.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“There was a monster…did you kill it?” Cedar mumbled as Finn pulled her back onto the shore. She stumbled across the rocks, her arm firmly encased in his grip.
“I’ll explain later,” he said. “Right now we need to get out of here.”
She ducked and screamed as a giant eagle swooped down toward them. He pulled her in close.
“Shh! It’s okay!” he said. “It’s just Riona. The rope has disappeared so she’s going to lift us up to the top of the cliff.”
Cedar closed her mouth tightly to keep herself from screaming again as she felt the eagle’s bony talons close around them like a cage. It lifted them into the air and, seconds later, deposited them gently onto the same grassy bank where she had witnessed most of the battle. Finn immediately lifted her into his arms and started running toward the car. “I can walk!” she protested, but he ignored her. She saw Murdoch settling Oscar’s limp form into the back of the van.
“Is he…?” she asked Finn as he helped her into the car’s back seat and climbed in beside her. Rohan, who was already in the driver’s seat, started the car, and they turned onto the dusty road.
“Dead? Yes,” he answered. “And Molly is badly wounded, but she should be all right once Felix can tend to her. Riona is with her in the van. Anya probably has a concussion, but she’s too proud to admit it, and too distraught to let Felix even look at her. And now we have a new enemy, thanks to Nuala.”
“Where are we going?” she asked. Cedar felt as if she, too, had taken a hit to the head. She tried to focus, to remember what was going on, but her thoughts stumbled around in her head like a drunkard after last call.
“Away from here,” Finn said. “Someplace where we can lay low and figure out what to do next.” His face was pale and his eyes bloodshot. “What happened? All I know is they’re gone. We couldn’t hear their Lýra anymore. Did you see Nuala and Eden go through a sidh?”
“Nuala…” Cedar murmured. “Yes, she was on the rocks by that hut. She went into it. And then…I don’t remember.”
Finn’s mouth grew tight and he put his arm around her, drawing her close. She was too tired to resist, and leaned into him.
“I think I might be in shock,” she said.
“That doesn’t surprise me. Felix can help you once we stop.”
“Riona can turn into a bird.”
“Yes.”
“And there was a giant monster, but it helped me. What was it?”
“Uh, that was me.”
She rubbed her temples, certain she had misheard him. “That was…you?”
>
“I’m what you would call a shape-shifter. My mother has that ability as well. We can take the shape of any living being. One of the benefits of being a firstborn child is that we sometimes end up with more than one ability.”
Cedar shuddered at the memory.
“I’m sorry I frightened you,” Finn continued. “It’s a good form to take on when warring with creatures of the ocean. I was just trying to protect you.”
“You did,” she said, her words slurring slightly. Her head ached, and she put it into her hands. She felt untethered, like a balloon released into the sky. She wanted to hold onto something, but her thoughts kept slipping out of her grasp and floating away.
“Sleep, Cedar,” Finn said, his voice wavering. “We’ll take you somewhere safe, and we’ll figure out how to fix this.”
She closed her eyes, rested her head against his chest, and fell asleep listening to the steady beating of his heart.
Two hours later, they pulled up in front of a small cottage surrounded by thick trees. Finn gently nudged Cedar awake and they went into the cottage, where the others were already crowding into the front room. Oscar’s body was wrapped in a cloth, lying on the floor in front of a smoldering fire. Anya was hunched over it, her moans filling the room. Felix carried Molly in and set her on the sofa, placing her head in Riona’s lap. Angry red welts covered her face and arms. Felix started pulling what looked like packets of dried herbs out of the small bag he wore around his waist.
“Logheryman!” he said. “I’ll be needin’ some hot water, and a clean cloth. And some whiskey, if you’ve not drunk it all.”
Cedar looked around. Logheryman, she supposed, was the sinewy old man standing in the corner of the room, watching them all with a haughty expression. Instead of answering Felix, he walked out of the room.
“Where are we?” Cedar asked Finn.
“At the house of a friend,” Finn said. “This is like a safe house for us. Logheryman is a cousin of ours.”
“You mean he’s another Tuatha Dé Danann?”
“Not exactly. He’s a leprechaun. Our races are distantly related, but the leprechauns were permitted to stay on Ériu when our people were banished. The humans believed if you could catch a leprechaun it would make you rich, so they wanted as many around as possible to increase their chances.”
“Is it true?”
“No one’s ever caught one,” he grinned, “so who knows?” Then he grew somber again. “How are you feeling?”
“Foggy,” she said. “I just need to wake up a bit more, I think.” There was a horrible feeling in the pit of her stomach, a vast emptiness, as if someone had removed all her vital organs. “I feel awful about Oscar and Molly.” She looked around the room again. “Where’s Murdoch?”
“Outside, I think. Tearing down trees,” Finn answered.
“He can do that?” Cedar asked. Now that she was listening for it, she could hear crashing and breaking sounds echoing from outside the cottage.
Finn nodded.
“Can Felix do anything for Oscar?” she asked.
He looked grim. “No. Oscar was dead before he could get to him. Even Felix’s grandfather, the great healer Dian Cecht, could not bring the dead back to life.”
Logheryman came back into the room carrying a tray laden with a steaming kettle, a folded white cloth, and a half-full bottle of amber liquid. He didn’t look like he’d be that hard to catch, but by now she knew better than to make any judgments based on appearances. He placed the tray on the floor beside Felix and retreated to the other side of the room.
Just then, the door flew open with a loud crash and Murdoch burst into the room. His clothes were ripped and the palms of his hands were bleeding, but he didn’t seem to notice. He advanced on Cedar, his eyes wild. “You!” he snarled. “You did this! It’s your fault my son is dead!”
Finn stepped between Murdoch and Cedar, his hands raised and palms outward, “Murdoch, just wait—”
“I’m sick of this! I’m sick of you and your human pet always getting what you want! I told you she would cause nothing but trouble! I told you she would slow us down! If we had gotten there sooner, this wouldn’t have happened!” Spit flew from his mouth when he spoke, and Cedar cringed at the fury in his eyes. The two men were standing only inches apart, both with their fists clenched and the tendons in their necks strained and protruding.
“This isn’t her fault!” Finn protested.
“Like hell it isn’t!” Murdoch bellowed.
“It’s mine!” Finn shouted back.
“Finn, this isn’t—” Riona began, moving toward her son.
“IT IS!” he yelled, and she stopped in her tracks. “This is all my fault, everything that has happened. None of this, not Oscar or Molly or even Nuala doing what she did, none of it would have happened if I had just followed the damn rules. Eden wouldn’t even exist. It’s my fault. I accept that, and I will do whatever I can to make up for it. But I don’t regret what I did. I don’t regret being with Cedar. I’ll never be sorry Eden is alive. And part of fixing this, of making things right again, is finding her and keeping her safe.”
“It’s rather late for that now, isn’t it?” Murdoch said with a sneer.
“I don’t believe that,” Finn said. “There has to be another way to get to Tír na nÓg. There has to be a way to find her or to communicate with her somehow. Maybe she’ll escape; maybe she’ll find a way to come back. We can’t give up hope! We just have to keep trying.”
“And risk more lives? More of our children? Why is it that your child is worth so much, and mine so little?” Murdoch said, gesturing at the body by the fire. “Tell me that! You’re just fooling yourself. Lorcan’s got his hooks in her now, and she’s beyond our reach. Well, good riddance, if you ask me. That bastard child of yours has brought us nothing but trouble.”
“Don’t be stupid, man,” growled Felix, who was laying long strips of cloth over Molly’s burns. “Yer in grief, and we understand that. Oscar was like a son to many of us. But now you’re talkin’ nonsense. If Lorcan has his hooks in her as you say, then soon he’ll be doing what he’s always wanted. He’ll use her power to send his whole blasted army here and kill every man, woman, and child with human blood in ’em.”
Murdoch spat angrily. “And who would miss them? Maybe Nuala’s right. Why should we sacrifice our own children to save theirs? We need to be thinking of ourselves, protecting ourselves, not them!”
“And do you think he’ll let you live?” asked Riona angrily. “Just because you’re not human? I don’t remember him being kind to the rest of the traitors in Tír na nÓg. We’re all in the same danger. We need to stop fighting each other, and figure out how to fight Lorcan! Finn is right. There must be another way to save Eden.”
“What makes you so sure she’s still alive?” Murdoch said, staring hard at Riona.
“You know very well he can’t assimilate her ability. He couldn’t take Brogan’s power after he killed him, so he won’t dare risk killing Eden. He needs her alive, and that means we still have a chance to rescue her.” Riona turned and looked at Cedar. “I’m sorry, Cedar, this must be so upsetting for you.”
Cedar looked back at Riona, conscious that all eyes in the room were on her, but unsure of what to say. She had tried to follow the volley of conversation, but her mind was still sluggish. She felt foolish, like a child trying to join an adult conversation. Finally, she asked the only question she could think of.
“Sorry,” she said, “but who are we talking about?”
Riona looked nonplussed. “We’re talking about Eden, of course,” she replied, “about what will happen to her now.”
Cedar waited for further explanation, but Riona just sat there, looking at her expectantly. Finally, Finn spoke up.
“I was going to mention it, but I thought it might wear off. Cedar doesn’t seem to remember Eden. She said she saw Nuala go into the hut. But I think Nuala must have spoken to her and made her forget…about Eden.”
&n
bsp; There was another silence while the group absorbed this unexpected news. Then Murdoch snorted. “Well, that makes things a bit easier then, doesn’t it? Wasn’t it you, Rohan, who wanted her to go home and stay out of this? Maybe now she will.”
“That’s enough, Muireadhach,” Rohan said from where he was standing by the window.
“No, that couldn’t have happened,” Riona said. “How could she forget Eden?” She looked at Cedar. “You don’t remember your own daughter? Not at all?”
“I don’t have a daughter,” Cedar said. She didn’t understand what they were talking about, or why Riona was having a hard time believing her.
Felix started cursing, and Molly moaned, “Oh, no, Cedar.”
“I think it’s fitting,” mumbled Anya, who still sat huddled over Oscar’s body. “We’ve lost our son, and now she’s lost her daughter.” She looked up at them all, the rage in her eyes intensified by the flickering reflection of the fire. “My husband is right. This is her fault. Maybe she got what she deserved.” No one dared argue with her, so pitiful she seemed there on the floor, hunched over her son’s dead body. She turned away from them and resumed her mourning.