by Megan Chance
Derry let out a breath—it was only then I realized how tense he’d been—and bought our tickets. The conductor called that it was time to board, and Derry grabbed my hand as the crowd surged, some pushing women and children out of the way to get a seat. Derry tripped the one who’d winked at me, and we slipped into the hard-backed wooden seat he’d been going for.
I glanced at Derry, and he gave me a wide-eyed, innocent look. “What?”
“You did that on purpose.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said, but his expression became smug. He stared out at the steam dummy, belching smoke, that pulled the cars. “I’d let you sit by the window, but I hear ’tis a dusty ride.”
There were no windows, actually. It was open as a streetcar, and the men smoking cigars had taken seats in the front so their choking smoke floated obnoxiously back. There was a whistle, a lunge, and the car jerked into motion. The chugging grind of the steam dummy was loud enough that people had to shout to talk to one another, and we were drowned in other people’s conversations about business meetings and getting a new cat and whether or not to eat the fried chicken now or wait for the beach.
“This is what angry kelpies sound like?” I asked.
He smiled so his dimple showed. “Close enough. The kelpies are a bit louder, though, and crosser. You don’t want to be near one, trust me.”
The road curved, and the cars went so fast that at times it was almost frightening, but soon we were passing through the countryside. We sped past farms dotting rolling hills, fields of tomatoes and cabbage, and villas sitting in the midst of green acres. Soon the dust of the city was mostly gone. Derry stared out as if he couldn’t get enough of the landscape, and I said, “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Reminds me a bit of home.”
“Yes. I imagine it does. I know how much you miss it. You must want to be back there.”
“I doubt I’ll ever see it again.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I don’t know. A feeling I have, I guess. Things aren’t what I thought they’d be. And who knows what will happen?”
The weight of what we were doing, everything that was at stake, hit me again and we fell into silence. I remembered the power I’d experienced with the sidhe yesterday, and my fear. I remembered how it felt to be in Derry’s arms as he comforted me, as if I belonged there. That was how it had felt to kiss him—something I’d tried to forget. It was becoming so hard to remember it was a spell. It all seemed so real.
But this was how Lucy felt, too, I knew. I only needed Derry’s help, and that was all. There could be nothing more between us.
It wasn’t long before we were at the Coney Island depot, and miles of open shore and blue water stared back at me. There were flags and signs everywhere advertising “Clams of All Styles,” “Roasted Corn Here,” “Lemonade,” “Beer!” and “Come Inside for the Best Ice Cream in Coney Island!” In every direction, you could see black-clad swimmers bouncing in the waves. Bathing houses, beach umbrellas, and blankets adorned the sand, along with a barrier of cardsharps and swindlers you had to cross before you could get to the water, their one-legged tables pushed into the sand, and men crowding around for their chance to lose at three-card monte. Organ grinders played lively tunes while their foolish monkeys jumped about and made people laugh. There was a shooting gallery, and a puppet show on a little makeshift stage at the corner. Restaurants, saloons, and hotels lined the road fronting the beach, and the smells of clams and saltwater, beer and smoke filled my nose.
Down the beach a short distance was the steamer landing from Manhattan, and next to it was a huge enclosure of several hundred bathing houses, and beyond that a wooden platform where people who weren’t swimming stood drinking beer and looking out over the water. The breeze was cooling. I lifted my face to it.
“Oh, I love this,” I said, laughing. “I love it.”
Derry smiled at me, his eyes looking very blue in the glare off the sand and the water. The moment held, again I felt shivery and strange, and it was a relief when he looked away. “Well, we should be looking for that sign, don’t you think?” he said.
“A sun and a moon and a sickle. I don’t even know what kind of shop that would be.”
“Diminished power, Deirdre said. Probably a Druid of some kind that they sucked dry. Maybe . . . we found Cannel at a sideshow. He was the fortune-teller there.”
“A fortune-teller.” I glanced at the row of shops and hotels and restaurants stretching along the waterfront. “I don’t see anything like that here, do you?”
“Not here.” He looked at the buildings snaking away from the depot. “’Twould be something small, I think. Someplace out of the way.”
We started to walk. I was hungry—we’d eaten nothing this morning, and not much for days before that—and the smells of clam chowder, melting sugar, and grease made my stomach growl. It was loud enough at one point that Derry said, “We’ll get something to eat soon. Let’s see what we can find first.”
“Don’t you ever get hungry?”
“I’m getting used to it,” he said, and I thought of the way he lived now, in tenement rooms, on beds of straw or the hard floor with stinking blankets.
“You’re no better than I am, you know. You were one of the elite bodyguards of the king. You had soft beds and plenty of food. Why, you were probably richer than I ever was.”
He sighed. “Aye, that’s true. We spent much of the time in battle, though, and away from home. You learn to suffer hardship quickly enough. We’ve a talent for it, you might say. But you’re right; there was always the thought of home. ’Tis easy to bear misery when you know it’s not permanent.”
“And now? Do you think it’s permanent, the way you live now?” Then I realized: He couldn’t know that, could he? It was all up to the veleda. Who won and who lost. Who lived and who died. It is all up to me. “No, never mind. I . . . I wasn’t thinking.”
“’Tis a good lesson, whatever comes of it. We weren’t always good at remembering who we served.”
Arrogant. Greedy. The reason for the veleda.
I thought of what it must’ve been like for him to wake to such a foreign place, no longer wealthy and beloved, and I couldn’t help wondering what would happen to him when this was all over. If he would even still be here. The thought that he might not be saddened me—no, much more than that. Suddenly I was no longer hungry.
We had walked several blocks from the depot, and now the restaurants and hotels became booths and weather-beaten buildings and saloons. Signs advertised fishing and beer, and we had just passed a saloon called the Sea Keg when Derry stopped.
He was staring down an alleyway where a sign hung askew, one of the ropes that held it frayed to almost nothing. “Lewis Corley, Fortune-Teller and Mystic.” Below the words was a faded painting of the moon orbiting the sun, and the silhouette of a sickle.
I started toward the shop.
Derry caught my arm. “Be careful.”
“Deirdre said they don’t come here anymore.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s safe.” He led the way to the door instead, opening it as I followed. The door creaked as if it hadn’t been oiled in a long time. Inside smelled of mildew and dust. There was a small round table with two chairs. The walls held framed drawings, some of them foxed with mildew.
Derry said, “Those are the pictures on Cannel’s divination cards.”
“Tarot cards,” I noted. At the back of the room was a doorway covered with a curtain. I called out softly, “Mr. Corley?”
The place felt profoundly empty.
“He’s not here,” I said, disappointed. “There’s no one here.”
Derry shook his head. He gestured for me to stay as he went to the curtain. He stood at the side and slowly drew it open.
There was a whistling sound. Something shot past me so quickly
I jumped back. An arrow pierced the wall next to the door.
“Oh my God!” I cried.
Derry was already through the curtain. I heard a tussle, someone groaning, and then he was coming through again, hauling an older man holding a bow. Derry twisted the bow away, tossing it aside as if it were a toy. He shoved the man into one of the chairs.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” said the man. “I thought you were them! No one ever comes here but them! I didn’t mean to—did I hurt you?”
Derry grabbed him by the collar. “You could’ve killed her. I should cut your throat for that alone.”
The man shrank back. His long gray hair fell into his face. “I didn’t mean to! I didn’t mean to! It’s them! They come here, and they’re evil! They . . . she . . .” He looked at me as if he’d only just seen me. “Why, you have power.”
Derry’s expression was as grim and forbidding as I’d ever seen it.
“You have power!” the old man repeated, panicked. “You must leave this place. They’ll sense you’re here and come back. Please, you must go! I can’t . . . I can’t bear it!”
I tried to calm him. “We mean you no harm. I only need to ask you some questions.”
“He’s useless, Grace.” Derry kicked the leg of the chair so the whole thing shuddered and the old man cowered. “There’s a reason they don’t come here anymore. Look at him—they’ve sucked him dry.”
“They have, they have,” the man agreed.
“We’re looking for an archdruid,” I said. “Do you know where he is?”
“An archdruid?”
“He doesn’t know anything, Grace,” Derry said.
The old man whimpered. “If he exists, he’s gone already. They would have found him. They are always hungry.”
Derry leaned close to him. “He would be Irish. Very learned. There might be others around him, but he would be the one in charge. He would have spell books. Divination tools.”
“No, no.” The old man’s eyes were nearly rolling back in his head in fear.
Derry exhaled loudly. He peered around the room. “I’m going to search. Ask him what questions you will, but you’ll get nothing from this one.”
He disappeared behind the curtain. I went up to the man, kneeling beside him. “Think hard, please. This is very important. Anything you know . . . anything you can remember . . .”
He pushed his face into mine. “She is cunning and mean. She will kiss you, but ’tis not a kiss at all. A long slurp, a drink of power, and she’ll make you ask her to do it again. And again. Till there’s nothing left.” Tears welled in his eyes. He began to tremble. “I can’t even read the cards! Thirty years, and I can’t make sense of them!”
I felt sorry for him. I knew what Deirdre was like; I knew that terrible temptation to surrender. Seeing him made me understand Derry’s fear.
The old Druid was no help. Lewis Corley began to sob, helpless and heartbreaking, and I left him to go to Derry, who searched the room beyond the curtain. There was a narrow bed and bureau and shelves piled with knickknacks. He pulled down the few books sitting on the shelves and handed them to me. “What do they say?”
“The Origin of Species,” I read. “Principles of Geology.” The other two were no better, nothing at all to do with magic. “There’s nothing here.”
He had already moved to the bureau and was going through the drawers.
“What are you looking for?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Anything.” He jerked his head at the cubbyhole near the door. “See if there’s anything there.”
“How will I know?”
“You’ll know.”
From the room outside, I heard Lewis Corley muttering, “Go away. Flee, I tell you!”
The shelves in the cubbyhole held five different hairbrushes tangled with strands of gray hair, a shaving razor, a strop, a mug of shaving soap, several bits of different-colored sea glass, three seagull feathers, and a deck of stained and tattered tarot cards. I held the cards up to Derry. “These?”
He glanced over his shoulder. “Do you feel anything in them? Any power at all?”
“Would I?”
“The ogham stick burned you.”
“Yes, but—”
“You would feel it.”
I put them back, reaching deeper, finding handkerchiefs and a pair of cuff links shaped like Irish harps and stones that looked as if they held tiny snails locked inside of them. I touched something flat and wooden, like a ruler but with what felt like holes punched into it. I curled my fingers around it. It was warm, and then—
“Ouch!” I jerked my hand back.
Derry twisted. “What is it?”
“It burned me.” In spite of the pain, there was not a mark on my skin. A burn that wasn’t a burn. Just like Patrick’s ogham stick.
Derry was beside me in an instant. “What?”
“In there. In the back. Something wooden. Be careful, it’s—”
He pulled it out and laid it flat on his palm. The holes I’d felt were markings, runes—again like the ogham stick.
I said, “It doesn’t hurt you at all, does it?”
He shook his head, turning it over in his hands, studying it.
“Is it another ogham stick?”
He nodded.
“You can read this?”
“Aye. For once.”
“What does it say?”
“’Tis puzzling, but then, all these things are. It doesn’t make any sense unless you know what it’s for. They wrote that way on purpose: to keep those like me—who can read ogham but aren’t Druids—from understanding. Wasn’t a Druid alive who didn’t think he was better than everyone else.” A glance at me, and then a grin.
“Sounds like someone else I know.”
“It’s hard to read in here. Too dark.” He pushed aside the curtain and we stepped out. He cast a contemptuous look at Lewis Corley.
Corley trembled. “Take what you want. Whatever you want. None of it’s any use to me. They stole it all. They stole it all.”
“What does this stick do, Mr. Corley?” I asked.
He tucked his chin into his chest and said nothing.
Derry said, “It’s not a spell. It’s a prophecy.”
“A prophecy? How can you tell the difference?”
“There’s nothing to call. No incantation. But if they wrote it down, it’s important. It says: ‘The sea is the knife. Great stones crack and split. Storms will tell and the world is changed. The rivers guard treasures with no worth. To harm and to protect become as one, and all things will only be known in pieces.’”
“The sea is the knife. To harm and to protect are as one.” My grandmother’s words. I stared at Derry.
“What?” He frowned. “What is it?”
“Those are the things my grandmother said. I thought . . . I thought it was nonsense.”
“To harm and to protect,” Corley repeated.
Derry’s frown deepened. “Where did you get this?”
Corley peered at us as if he were half-blind. “It isn’t mine.”
Derry held out the stick. “You don’t recognize this?”
The old man shook his head. “They left it one day. She did. Something for the future, she said. And she said . . . she said it needs a key, but she never said where it was. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what it says. Take it! Take it!”
“My grandmother said that too,” I told Derry. “She said something about a key. And . . . and Aidan says it in my dreams. ‘We need the key.’ Over and over again.”
Derry looked back to Corley. “Who is the she who left this? D’you mean Deirdre? Did the sidhe leave this? Or someone else?”
“Was it an old woman?” I asked. “Or . . . perhaps not old. Her hair was once nearly black, like mine—”
“I don’t know!” he shouted. “I don’t know! Go. Please go before they come back.”
Derry said to me, “We’ll get nothing more from him.”
I knew he was right. The sidhe had damaged Lewis Corley beyond repair—and I might have become like him. I still could, if I wasn’t careful. Derry shoved the stick into his pocket and we left. I could hear Corley sobbing long after it should have been possible.
“It doesn’t make any sense at all,” I said as we started back to the depot. “Why would my grandmother have said the same words?”
“Had she any Druid training?”
“Druid training?” I gave him an incredulous look. “From who? Where? Have you forgotten what time we’re in?”
“A time when there are Fianna and Fomori and sidhe walking about,” he said wryly. “It doesn’t seem such a bad question. We’re looking for an archdruid, remember.”
“The next thing you know, we’ll be hunting Minotaur and basilisks too.”
“What are they?”
“Don’t worry. They don’t exist. They’re only stories.”
“Ah,” he said, quirking a brow. “The way the Fomori exist only in stories. The way I do.”
That made me pause. “You have a real gift for reassurance. Has anyone ever told you that?”
He laughed.
I sighed. “Truthfully, I don’t know what is real anymore. Archdruids and sidhe and mysterious ogham sticks that need a key when there’s no lock to open—”
“A key to decipher it, maybe. Like a kind of code.”
“How would we ever find such a thing?”
“You said you were dreaming about a key—have you seen anything to tell you what it might be?”
“Only Aidan telling me we need one.”
“Aidan said once that your dreams might hold answers.”
“Answers? Ha! He would say that. More like riddles. Mazes. Labyrinths. If there’s some power trying to show me the way, it should give better directions.”