The Solstice Cup

by Rachel Muller

  THE

  SOLSTICE

  CUP

  RACHEL DUNSTAN MULLER

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  Text copyright © 2009 Rachel Dunstan Muller

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Muller, Rachel Dunstan, 1970-

  The solstice cup / written by Rachel Dunstan Muller.

  ISBN 978-1-55469-017-6

  I. Title.

  PS8626.U4415S65 2009 jC813'.6 C2008-907306-1

  First published in the United States, 2009

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2008940980

  Summary: On a visit to Ireland, twin sisters are lured into the “Otherworld,” where a dangerous enchantment threatens to separate them.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Cover artwork by Juliana Kolesova

  Cover and text design by Teresa Bubela

  Typesetting by Christine Toller

  Author photo by Bern Muller

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  PO BOX 5626, STN. B PO BOX 468

  VICTORIA, BC CANADA CUSTER, WA USA

  V8R 6S4 98240-0468

  www.orcabook.com

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  Printed on 100% PCW recycled paper.

  12 11 10 09 • 4 3 2 1

  For Rebecca and Naomi, my favorite twins.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  Aunt Joan peered out of the tiny kitchen window into the darkness, her stout body bent over the sink. “What on earth is keeping your sister?” she asked. “She promised she’d be back before the sun went down. I’ll have to send your uncle out looking for her if she’s not back in ten minutes.”

  “I can go,” Mackenzie offered, pushing her chair back from the table.

  “No, lass, you sit tight and finish peeling those potatoes,” said her great-aunt. “The last thing we need is both of you wandering out there. And on a wild night like this!” She shook her head. “I should never have let her go off alone, not with that leg of hers. Still limping after five years—imagine. Your mother says the doctors have no explanation for it.”

  Mackenzie had just started on her last potato when Breanne stumbled in through the back door of the stone farmhouse.

  “There you are!” Aunt Joan threw down the turnip she’d been scrubbing and rushed to her great-niece. “I was ready to call out the gardai on you! Do you have any idea what can happen to a child out in the glens after dark? And a child like you, all alone…”

  Ignoring the anger on Breanne’s face, she helped her out of her wet jacket. “Look at you,” she continued. “You’re covered in mud from head to toe! But you’re home and safe, and that’s what matters. Get those boots off and then wash yourself up while I finish getting tea on the table.”

  Mackenzie found her twin sister in the front room a few minutes later. Breanne had released her blond hair from its soggy ponytail and was shaking it out in front of the turf fire that crackled in the fireplace.

  “You could have told me you were going out,” Mackenzie said as she tried to help her sister untangle a knot at the back of her head.

  Breanne yanked her hair away. “I didn’t want company.”

  “Come on,” said Mackenzie. “We’re ten thousand miles from home. Just for once, maybe we could stick together.”

  “Stick together?” Breanne shot Mackenzie a dirty look. “After what you did at the Christmas dance last week?”

  Mackenzie felt her face go red. “You never told me you liked Dylan. Besides, he asked me to dance. I didn’t ask him.”

  “I saw you out there. Every time a song ended and a new one came on, you were like, ‘Oh, this is my favorite song.’” Breanne’s voice was high and sickly sweet. “It was disgusting.”

  “Fine. Be like that.” Mackenzie dropped into the overstuffed armchair behind her. “Are you trying to punish Aunt Joan for something too? She was really worried when you were so late.”

  “Why? Was she afraid I wouldn’t be able to outrun the banshees with this leg? A ‘child like me’!”

  “Don’t be so touchy,” said Mackenzie. “Anything could have happened—we’re in a foreign country, after all.”

  “Foreign country,” Breanne snorted. “We’re on a sheep farm in Northern Ireland.”

  Mackenzie watched her sister tug at the knot in her hair. “You went up to the stones, didn’t you,” she said.

  Breanne shrugged. “Maybe. So?”

  “You were looking for the ring.”

  “Don’t be retarded,” Breanne said. “It’s been five years since you tossed it. It’s long gone.”

  “Yeah, well,” said Mackenzie, “you shouldn’t have gone up there—especially by yourself. We swore we would never go back.”

  “Oh please,” said Breanne contemptuously. “You can’t be serious. We were little kids. We were, like, eight years old. I don’t even know how you can remember anything that far back.”

  Aunt Joan called from the kitchen before Mackenzie could respond. “Tea’s ready. Come and eat while it’s still hot!”

  “I don’t suppose you hear much about the fair folk in Canada, now do you?” Uncle Eamon asked after they’d finished their evening meal. He pushed his chair away from the cleared table and lit his pipe with fingers that were thick and callused.

  Mackenzie shot her sister a warning glance. “The fair folk?”

  “Aye, the wee folk, the ‘faeries’,” Aunt Joan said as she set a tray of small cakes on the table.

  “Uh, no,” said Mackenzie. “Not really. Except in kids’ books.”

  “Here in Ireland, we take the fair folk a bit more seriously, especially at this time of year,” said Uncle Eamon. “You know what day it is, lass?” he asked Breanne, who was smirking.

  Mackenzie answered quickly, before her sister could come up with some sarcastic reply. “Thursday, the twentieth of December.”

  “Which makes tomorrow the twenty-first,” said Aunt Joan. “That’s the winter solstice.”

  “The shortest day of the year,” said Mackenzie, ignoring her sister’s rolling eyes.

  “And one of the most dangerous, if you don’t mind yourself.” Aunt Joan filled the first of the four cups in front of her with tea. “You don’t want to be caught out after dark on the solstice, that’s for certain.”

  Breanne took the teacup from her aunt’s hand. “Why not?” she asked. “What do the faeries do on the solstice—set people’s hair on fire? Steal babies?”

  Uncle Eamon’s grizzled chin bobbed up and down. “Aye, ’tis easy to mock the wee folk when you’re inside a warm house with the lights on and good company around you. I doubt you’d feel so brave all
alone in the glens.”

  “Seriously.” Mackenzie leaned forward. “What happens at the winter solstice?”

  “The barrier that separates our world and the world of the fair folk is stretched thin, so it is,” Aunt Joan said. Her voice dropped to a dramatic whisper. “Your uncle can tell you a tale or two.”

  “My sister, your grandmother, was the best storyteller in the family, God rest her soul,” said Eamon. “But I’ll do the best I can.” He took a few puffs from his pipe before beginning the first story.

  Mackenzie let herself down carefully onto her collapsible metal cot a few hours later. Breanne was already in bed on the other side of the cluttered sewing room that doubled as a guest room.

  “One night down, twelve more to go,” Breanne said. “Let’s hope they don’t go on like that every night. That was so boring, I was ready to stab myself with a fork.”

  “Shhh—they’ll hear you!” Mackenzie whispered. “Besides, I thought it was interesting. I learned some new stuff. Do you realize it was the solstice the last night we were here, five years ago?”

  “What are you talking about? We were here in June. We missed the last few weeks of school.”

  “We flew home on June twenty-third—I remember because it was the day before Mom’s birthday,” said Mackenzie. “The day before that was June twenty-second. That’s the summer solstice, the longest day of the year.”

  Breanne yawned. “So?”

  “So—it’s starting to make sense now,” said Mackenzie. “What happened up at the stones.”

  Breanne raised herself up on one elbow. “Why are you so obsessed with that night? Nothing happened, Mackenzie, except that I found a ring near the stones, and you were jealous and threw it away. And then you made up some story about an arm reaching up from the shadows to scare me. I would have gone back up to look for the ring the next morning if we hadn’t left so early.”

  “You saw something too,” Mackenzie insisted. “I know you did! And what about your leg?” she asked after a pause. “Breanne?”

  “I twisted it,” her sister said.

  “Then why hasn’t it healed?”

  Breanne flopped down angrily. “Just give it a rest already! We’re not little kids anymore.”

  “Aunt Joan and Uncle Eamon would have known what to do,” said Mackenzie. “We should have told them about it back then, but we were too scared.”

  Breanne snorted. “Too scared they’d laugh at us. You don’t think they really buy all that stuff about faeries, do you, Mackenzie? They were just entertaining us tonight. That’s what old people do in Ireland after dinner. They sit around telling stories—if they don’t have satellite tv, that is.”

  “They do so believe in faeries,” Mackenzie said. “Why do you think there are horseshoes over the doors and iron bars over the windows? To keep the wee folk out.”

  “Whatever.”

  “I’m not making this up,” Mackenzie said defensively. “Aunt Joan told me all about it. And those thorn bushes in the middle of all the fields we passed on our way here? Those are faery thorns. No one who lives in the glens would ever dare cut down a faery thorn.”

  Breanne’s voice was dripping with sarcasm. “Would someone please invite these people into the twenty-first century? I can’t believe Mom ditched us here!”

  “What was she supposed to do?” said Mackenzie. “Grandpa’s dying in the hospital in Belfast. She couldn’t leave us in Vancouver while she spent time at his bedside.”

  “I know, it’s very sad. But it’s not like we were close to him. We’d only met him a few times. She didn’t have to drag us halfway around the world,” Breanne said. “We could have stayed with friends.”

  “For two weeks? With Dad long gone and Mom in another country?”

  “You are such an old lady, Mackenzie,” her sister said angrily. “Why do you always have to take Mom’s side? She could have let us stay in Belfast with her. At least then we would have been in a city.”

  “We’re too young to be hanging around Belfast by ourselves,” said Mackenzie.

  “We’re not babies,” said Breanne. “We’re almost thirteen.”

  Mackenzie turned out the lamp beside her bed. The cot creaked as she rolled over and tried to find a more comfortable position. “You could try to enjoy yourself, you know. It wouldn’t kill you. Uncle Eamon said he’d drive us into the village tomorrow after lunch if we wanted.”

  “Oh wow!” Breanne’s voice rose in mock excitement. “The amazing seaside metropolis of Cushendun! Population, like, seventeen! I can’t wait!”

  “Fine, stay here then. I’m going to finish my Christmas shopping.”

  “Cushendun isn’t big enough to have any decent stores,” said Breanne. “You’ll be lucky to find a tourist shop. Hope everyone on your list likes leprechauns and shamrocks.”

  Breanne was sitting on the hood of Uncle Eamon’s Land Rover when Mackenzie came out of the farmhouse after lunch the next day. “If I stay, I have to help Aunt Joan make sandwiches for some stupid church tea,” Breanne said with a sullen shrug.

  Uncle Eamon came out a moment later, adjusting his tweed cap. “Och, there you are. Doors are unlocked— go ahead, hop in.”

  The car reeked of wet wool and sheep dung. Out of the corner of her eye, Mackenzie saw her sister wrinkle her nose in disgust as she tried without success to make the seat belt work.

  “Don’t worry about those,” Uncle Eamon said with a wave of his hand. “They don’t work.”

  Fifteen minutes later, he pulled over in the center of Cushendun. “I’m just going up the road a bit to see a friend and have a look at his wee heifer. I’ll be back to pick you up by half-four at the latest.”

  “That’s four thirty,” Mackenzie translated as the Land Rover pulled away.

  “I know what ‘half-four’ means, thank you,” Breanne said. “It means we’re stuck here for the next two and a half hours.”

  Mackenzie looked up and down the narrow road. There wasn’t much to see: a gray expanse of water on one side, and a curving line of black and white houses and a few small shops on the other. It looked pretty dreary in the December rain.

  “Gee,” said her sister. “It’s all so overwhelming I don’t know where to begin.”

  “Oh, give it a rest, Breanne,” Mackenzie said. She started across the street toward a shop with a display of silk scarves and pottery knickknacks in its window. Her sister followed behind.

  “Well, aren’t we going in?” Breanne asked impatiently when Mackenzie stopped in the shop doorway. “At least we’ll be out of the rain.”

  Mackenzie stepped aside so her sister could read the handwritten sign taped to the door. The store was only open on Fridays and Saturdays during the winter season. It was Thursday.

  “Great,” said Breanne. “Now what?”

  “There’s got to be something else,” said Mackenzie. But aside from a few pubs, a small grocery store, a postal outlet and a veterinary office, there wasn’t.

  “Well, that’s it. I’m out of here,” Breanne said when they had completed their two-minute survey of the town.

  “What are you talking about?” said Mackenzie. “We can’t just take off.”

  “Watch me,” Breanne said over her shoulder. She walked away, her left foot dragging a little with each step. “I’m buying a couple of chocolate bars, and then I’m hiking back to the farm.”

  “And what am I supposed to do, wait here for Uncle Eamon all by myself?” Mackenzie called.

  Breanne shrugged. “Stay here, come with me, I don’t care. But I’m not hanging around this ghost town all afternoon.”

  Mackenzie caught up with her sister as she entered the tiny food market at the end of the short main street. “But we have no way of reaching Uncle Eamon. How will he know where we’ve gone?”

  “How long is it going to take him to figure out we’re not in Cushendun—maybe five minutes?” said Breanne. “When he can’t find us, he’ll call Aunt Joan. She’ll tell him we’re back already, and
he’ll drive home. Simple.” She stopped in front of the candy display next to the till and selected a few chocolate bars. A cashier with a pierced nose accepted her payment without comment.

  “We can’t, Breanne,” Mackenzie argued after they’d left the store. “We promised Mom we wouldn’t be any trouble for Uncle Eamon and Aunt Joan.”

  “So what did Eamon expect we were going to do here for two hours?” said Breanne. “Skip stones in the bay?”

  “All right, what about the solstice then?” Mackenzie asked, holding her breath.

  “What about it?”

  “It could be dangerous to go walking through the glens today.”

  Breanne groaned. “When are you going to grow up, Mackenzie?”

  “I told you this was a bad idea,” Mackenzie said. They’d been walking for forty minutes, and they were still crossing the same boggy field. Mackenzie’s not-so-waterproof boots had long since surrendered to the oozing mud. She was soaking wet and covered with slime up to her knees.

  “It’s not like anyone kidnapped you,” Breanne snapped.

  “I couldn’t just let you take off by yourself,” said Mackenzie. “I promised Mom I’d look out for you.”

  Breanne stopped. “Look out for me? What the heck is that supposed to mean! Did she ask you to?”

  “No, but you need someone to watch out for you,” said Mackenzie. “You’re always taking off, always going on these stupid adventures—like you have to prove yourself or something. Like walking across this bog. It’s too much for you!”

  “Too much for me?” Breanne’s hands were on her hips. “You’re the one who’s been whining about how tired you are for the last half hour!”

  “It’s you I’m worried about,” said Mackenzie. “Look at the way your leg is dragging!”

  Breanne started marching again. “Don’t talk to me about my defective leg, and I won’t talk to you about your defective brain,” she called back angrily.

  “All right, let’s change the subject then,” Mackenzie said as she picked her way through the mud after her sister. “I know—here’s a good question. Do you really know where you’re going? Because in case you haven’t noticed, there’s some fog rolling in, and it’s starting to get dark.”