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core of this barge, you must understand that it is pure obsession that drives her, an ancient grudge she keeps against the goddess Danu. Everything here, this entire barge, is driven by that obsession.
"But we are at the dawn of a new age, and new gods will reign." He looked at the map. "It is good that you've given me this. Still, you and I have a long way to go."
I remained nervously silent. I felt his attention on me soften, and averted my eyes.
"This palace ... this barge," he said, pointing into the mist, "would not be such a bad place to spend eternity, would it?"
"It's too cold," I said.
"There's plenty of blue fire."
"That doesn't make anyone warm."
"It's very strong in some situations. You saw the burns on those little girls' arms and hands."
"Those are ice burns," I said. "Anyone living here is on the verge of freezing all the time."
"You can grow accustomed to it. I have. I have learned to experience the warmth of the fire."
"It is only the illusion of warmth," I said. "It isn't real."
"Maybe the illusion is enough, Maeve," he said with a softly challenging expression. "No," I said plainly.
He looked annoyed, and was about to say something else when another boat appeared through the mist, three of Uria's "ladies" in their human forms standing on deck.
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"They are coming with me," Tom said. "They are turning their allegiance over to me because they understand that we are at the dawn of a new age. They know how weak Uria is. All of them will eventually be loyal to me."
I noticed that some of the misbegotten mermaids were circling near the surface around his boat, peering up worshipfully at him through the water. A few suddenly hoisted themselves into the air, making whimpering noises.
"They are with me, too. The truth is, all of them are ready, as soon as power changes hands, to come to my side."
Mrs. Cavan appeared on her own small boat immediately after the vulture women. Tom addressed her sternly. "Make sure Maeve does not get away. I'll be back in a day or so, I hope." He turned and looked at me as one of the vulture women tied my hands behind my back. "If you see Uria, you will tell her nothing. Do you understand? Nothing about the things you've shared with me. If you do, the two iron boxes will be dropped into the sea." His eyes sparkled. "Our wedding will go on as planned, after I've found what I'm looking for."
At this, the mermaids grew distressed and swam in sputtering, frantic circles beneath my boat, causing it to rock so that I thought I'd fall in.
"Stop!" Tom yelled.
So admonished, they retreated into the depths, and the water went still.
Looking both amused and proud, Tom glanced expectantly at me to see if I was impressed, but I refused to offer any sign that I was.
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"I'm sure that you will behave from now on, but if it is the case that I must always hold something over your head, Maeve O'Tullagh, so be it. Even when we are married to each other. I'm already prepared to do that. You will see what I mean, soon enough." He smiled as he focused on me, then his boat moved away and he was gone.
One of the vulture women ordered me to get into Mrs. Cavan's boat, and then she climbed in, too. We docked at the barge, went up the stairs, then passed through a frigid corridor until we reached a vacant room where three ice sculptures stood. I approached cautiously. Both Mam's and Ishleen's statues were dark, a single tiny hole drilled into both their necks, and I assumed that was how their ghost souls had been drawn out. My entire being pulsed with remorse. It was because of my weakness that this had happened to them. I could hardly bear to imagine what each one was feeling, enclosed in the airless dark boxes. I stood before them, unable to leave.
"You should look at the third statue, Maeve," Mrs. Cavan said.
I glanced over. It was an ice sculpture of me.
I stared at it in shock. It was like looking in a mirror and seeing myself petrified and translucent. Clearly Tom had ordered it himself, because it wore an angry, defiant expression.
"That's what he meant, you know," Mrs. Cavan said. "Your ghost soul could easily be put into this. I've seen it done. It is an unbelievably simple process."
The vulture woman eyed me and smiled.
"Let's go," Mrs. Cavan demanded.
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As we continued on, I saw some of the tundra girls peering at us from the frozen entrance of a corridor.
"Go away!" Mrs. Cavan cried, waving an arm in their direction. I noticed Breeze and the other ash girls with them, cleanly dressed for a change. It must have been the true fire that had helped them escape the basement dungeon, I thought.
I gave a meaningful look to Gudrun and Breeze, then said aloud as if to Mrs. Cavan, "Where are the black iron boxes with my mother and sister in them?"
"Do you really think I'd tell you?" Mrs. Cavan sneered.
She and the vulture woman led me into the vast room outside the chapel of the frozen mothers and tied my hands to two metal rings ensconced in the wall, then left, locking the door.
For a long time there was only silence. I fell into a shivering sleep.
I was swimming down, trying to find Danu's candelabra. I saw it burning very far below, naked men swimming around it. One of them clutched it beneath the burning candles, the flames waving slowly in the current. I saw his figure become slender and darker before it disappeared with the candelabra in an undulating swim.
I awakened suddenly. Gudrun and Breeze had come in. We listened closely to see if Uria was eavesdropping, but we could not feel the pulse of her heartbeat. "She has
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been listening obsessively to Mrs. Cavan and to Tom," Gudrun said, "and maybe even to the vulture women she might be suspicious of. She knows something is going on."
"How did you undo the lock?" I whispered
"With the flame," Breeze answered, moving aside her jacket and showing me a necklace with a bottle containing a vibrant red flame similar to the one the Swan Woman had given me years back. "Everything here on this barge softens and responds immediately to contact with true fire."
Breeze introduced the flames to the knots on the ropes around my hands, and they gave way quickly.
"Didn't they notice that you'd escaped the dungeon?" I asked Breeze as she and Gudrun worked hard to unravel the ropes.
"They pay so little attention to us, and think us of so little consequence," she answered. "And without blue ashes on us, we are no different from the others."
"And the vulture women," Gudrun said, "are so disorganized and so distracted because they are sure Tom Cavan will soon be coming into power. There are a few that are still unsure and are afraid to betray Uria. Those are the ones we watch out for more. They have more interest in what goes on here."
At last, I was completely untied. I rubbed my wrists and forearms, chafed and sore from the ropes.
"Do you know where the iron boxes are?" I asked.
"They're in Mrs. Cavan's room. She demanded tea before taking her nap. Trillip hid inside behind the curtain,
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crept about and watched until she found them hidden under the bed. She was going to try to take them then, but she must have made some noise, because Mrs. Cavan woke and sat up in her bed. Trillip managed to escape but without the boxes. At least we know where they are."
I told them about my meeting with Danu and how she'd instructed me to look for a druid wheel camouflaged among navigational equipment. "It has a triple spiral emblem forged on it," I said with quiet urgency. "If we can somehow loosen that wheel and let it release from its stuck position, time and vitality might return to the air of this barge. Every frozen soul will be released. The real fire will help us find it. Otherwise, the search will be difficult. False light will only keep it hidden."
"There are a few places on this barge with a lot of wheels and pipes," Breeze said.
"One place," I added, "is downstairs in the basement where you lived."
<
br /> "Having spent seven centuries in that basement, I can guarantee you that there isn't one with a druid symbol."
"There are wheels and pipes in a room connected to the chapel of the frozen mothers," Gudrun said. "And a lot in the vestibule that leads to Uria's lair, guarded by the spiders and that other creature. But without a narcotic on the air current, it is too dangerous a place to go."
"Danu gave me something," I said. "This shawl is woven with true firelight and can even ignite without injuring me if I need it to. I will look in the vestibule, and you two go to the other room."
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We crept quietly out into the corridor and to our respective places to search. At the threshold of the vestibule, I stepped into a shadow. I rubbed one of the beads on my shawl, and it glowed, illuminating everything around me in vague reddish light. There were dozens of defunct rust-encrusted wheels, warped wood pieces and metal pipes. The spiders with the women's faces stared at the red light, paralyzed. The chimera awakened and turned, looking wide-eyed at the redness, which soon faded. Feeling bold, I entered farther into the vestibule and was about to rub the bead again for another moment of light when I felt a succinct, powerful blow at the back of my neck and an explosion of astonishing pain. Everything faded to black.
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***
CHAPTER 23
***
I awakened in a torrent of confusion, shaky and nauseated.
I turned toward a blur of brightness and focused until I saw a log burning false fire, and I thought for a moment that I was in the bedroom where I had stayed and the snow had fallen. My nerves began to prickle when something moved. On the floor, the fleshy cord snaked and slid, knotting and unknotting itself, winding and unwinding in a pile. Attached to it was Uria's emanation, bent over my shawl, examining it cautiously. Sensing I was awake, her head whipped around and she peered at me with her falcon eyes. The shawl was all that might protect me from her, and it was out of my reach.
The flesh walls around us began to breathe and contract.
The emanation did not move its mouth, the voice low
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and booming and disembodied as she asked, "Weren't you told not to trespass here?"
"Yes, Goddess."
"What were you looking for?"
"I was looking for you, Goddess," I said.
She paused as if considering something, and then asked, "Where did you go when you left the barge?"
"I tried to escape. I've always hated Tom Cavan. His mother brought me here under false pretenses. I never wanted to marry him, Goddess. I tried to find the Holy Isles."
"Did you reach them?"
"No, but I saw one of Danu's servants, a Swan Woman. She sent me back here."
The emanation loomed suddenly very close, her golden eyes large and staring. But it was the cord of flesh that struck me as the more sentient part of Uria, quivering and attentive. The emanation at some moments looked like nothing more than a doll. The flesh cord brushed against my leg, and my nerves prickled cold, my body stiffening so intensely that I could not breathe. The shawl was too far away for me to reach.
Pit them against each other, I thought, remembering Danu's words.
"Tom has gone to retrieve a very valuable weapon, but he made me promise not to tell you."
The emanation deflated slightly for a moment, then swelled up, and the disembodied voice boomed, "Why are you telling me?"
"Because I hate him, Goddess. He has trapped my
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mother's and sister's ghost souls in two black iron boxes. I have come to you to ask you to release them, and I will do anything for you."
The cord of flesh shivered, and traces of foaming saliva appeared at the corners of the emanation's mouth.
Her voice tolled like a low bell of doom as she asked, "Where has he gone to find the weapon?"
"This place," I said, my hand shaking as I reached into my pocket for the other map.
The emanation grabbed it, and her fleshy cord rose up in a high undulation, then slapped the ground like a heavy whip.
She held the map near the blue fire and studied it.
Something occurred to me. "His mother is also trying to help him. He wants to be a god, you see. He wants to usurp you."
For a moment, the fleshy cord itself seemed to disintegrate into particles. I remembered what Danu had said about anger weakening Uria, and I took it further. "Tom's mother is guarding my mother and sister in the iron boxes. It was originally her idea to betray you. He has also persuaded some of the vulture women. He says he will have the weapon soon and he will be a god."
The fleshy cord and emanation both began to shudder uncontrollably. Suddenly a deafening crack sounded from the other side of the lair, and I saw ice thawing and dripping at an unnatural rate. All I could assume was that the heat of Uria's rage was melting the cocoon. At the same instant, I heard ice howl and break outside from
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the barge, groaning as it crashed into the sea, its echoes causing the floor and walls to shudder.
I watched with awe as Uria's original body, releasing gusts of steam, broke free of the frozen bed. The ice frosting her hair and clothes melted and trickled away. She was more massive than the emanation, standing and struggling to move her limbs, still wounded with red and open sores that Danu had inflicted seven centuries before. The life went out of the emanation. It remained attached to her by the long cord, floating and bobbing above, like a balloon. Uria noticed the crystal apple in its cage of threads meant for the Fire Opal. She stared horrified at it, then tore it out and threw it against the wall, shattering it. She seemed, in her swollen fury, to have completely forgotten me.
Making a horrific noise and clutching the map, Uria moved heavily out of the lair. I grabbed the shawl, then followed as she stormed clumsily through the vestibule. The vulture women who were still true to her flanked and swarmed around her. I watched as she made her way through the corridors, groaning like the ice around her barge. In slow motion, and with a low-pitched, drawn-out roar, she ordered the barge steered south and inland toward Rosscoyne.
Uria knocked down the door of Mrs. Cavan's room and grabbed the sleeping woman by the hair, dragging her after.
When the boat was close enough to shore, the giant Uria walked across the rocks still dragging Tom's mother, who kept screaming out her son's name.
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I ran out to one of the decks, where I found Gudrun, who handed me the shifts and veils meant for Mam and Ishleen. They folded up quite small, and I hid them in the pocket where I had carried the Fire Opal.
"All the girls have laid the ethereal dresses over the ice carvings of their mothers," she said excitedly. Then, eyes opening wide, she pointed out past my shoulder toward Ard Macha. The mist that usually encased the ice barge had broken up and dissipated, and from the decks where we stood, we could now see Uria climbing the hill to Rosscoyne. I told Gudrun that she should get a group of tundra and ash girls to help her unhinge the dormitory of their mothers' bodies and let it fall into the water. Just as she ran off to do this, I saw Wheeta.
"Get girls to help you prepare a group of small boats so everyone can flee into the surrounding water and wait there for their mothers' ghost souls in the dresses to float down to them!"
I rushed inside, back to the vestibule, where I breathed on my shawl. The garment ignited, and immediately I saw the triple spiral on a wheel glowing red in response to the fire. The spiders crouched in a back corner looking for refuge in a shadow.
The firelight illuminated the face of the chimera, and with a shock I recognized for the first time who he was: Michael Cavan, Tom's father.
"Mr. Cavan!" I said. "How did this happen?"
He looked sadly at me in his bizarre form. "I am too ashamed to say."
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"You don't have to. I think I know, and I am very sorry for you."
I struggled to twist and turn the wheel from its locked position. "The awful magic is sustained here because of t
his wheel," I told him.
"Let me help you, Maeve," Mr. Cavan said.
In order to melt some of the ice, I rubbed a bead and held fire directly up to the wheel, so that the frost disintegrated and dripped away from it like a waterfall. When we tried to turn it again, it gave suddenly, with a great hissing exhalation accompanied by gusts of mist and condensation. The ice-locked walls began to dribble and steam, and release eerie, echoing screeches.
"Come with me," I said.
Encased in my shroud of red and orange flames, I moved through the corridors of rapidly melting ice. Through a big arch in the passageway, I saw the hull that comprised the dormitory of mothers adrift in the tide, and felt a pang of joyous satisfaction. In spite of the wetness everywhere, numerous self-contained fires broke out as I passed. Mr. Cavan followed closely after, breathing noisily, awkward on his four thin, stiff legs.
I got on the floor in Mrs. Cavan's room and searched under the bed, but the iron boxes were not there.
"Tom has put my mother's and sister's ghost souls into two iron boxes," I told Mr. Cavan. "I've got to find them."
He helped me search, tossing things aside, pulling drawers from bureaus and emptying them.
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The fire was overtaking the corridors, and even Mrs. Cavan's room was now going up in flames. "We can't stay here, Maeve," Mr. Cavan said.
The smoke began to blind him and burn his eyes, and he gasped, choking for breath. I grabbed a folded blanket off the bed, and as I offered it to him to breathe through it to block the smoke, something fell to the floor: the two boxes.
"Mr. Cavan, I have them!" I cried out.
We rushed out the nearest open arch into the clearer air of the deck.
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