by Kate Ristau
“Don’t!” Áine yelled, and the Eta flashed white beneath her feet. “Don’t use her name. And don’t talk about my father.”
“Can we get some saffie cakes now too?” Tiddy Mun interrupted.
“Get out of here,” Áine snapped.
Tiddy grabbed Keva’s hand. “Come on. You haven’t lived until you’ve eaten saffie cakes.”
“Go gently,” Keva said. She stepped around Eri, the Eta trailing in her wake as they disappeared into the house.
“You left them there to die,” Áine said. “All of them!”
Eri looked back toward the door. It shut softly, and Eri’s voice hardened. “I had no choice.”
“Choice,” Áine said, and her voice broke. “You had a choice. And you chose to leave her. You chose to let them kill my mother. And then you turned around and sucked the life out of me too.”
“Listen,” Eri said, reaching out her hand. Her voice grew soft. “It’s not—”
“Don’t!” Áine snapped. “Don’t touch me. I know what you are. I’ll say your name. You have no power over me. Leanán sídhe. You’re no better than the Dullahan.”
Eri’s hand fell. “You’re right. I cannot deny what I am. It is my blessing, and it is my curse.”
“You fed off me! All those years—”
“And I protected you.” Her voice firmed, her face taking on that look Áine had seen a thousand times. “Stop it, Áine. We all had to make choices that day. When I chose to protect you, I left my best friend behind. I left Niamh to suffer.”
“Why?” Áine asked. “Why didn’t you go back for them?”
“It’s not that simple,” Eri said, her eyes slipping past Áine, staring out toward the river.
“Yes, it is. I did it. I stepped across that Oberon-forsaken crossing and walked right up to the spot where she died.”
A chill fell across her arm. The Dullahan was coming. They were running out of time.
Eri’s eyes caught Áine’s, burning into her. “And I could never cross. What exactly do you think I took from you?” she demanded.
“My life,” Áine said, but that wasn’t all. There was something else. Something darker. But she couldn’t say the words out loud.
“I took your shadows,” Eri said, and the ink finally disappeared from her eyes. Her face turned gray. “I took your life, and I took the darkness away.” Her shoulders collapsed. “And yes. I left your family there to die. I left my best friend. I had no choice. The crossings were no longer mine. The shadows slashed my face and tore at my legs. They would not let me pierce the veil. I still don’t know why.”
Áine remembered how Hennessy’s hand had been ripped from hers. How the shadows had pulled her under, pulled her away.
The shadows had a plan of their own. If they didn’t want Eri making the crossing, she would be trapped in the Aetherlands.
“My shadows,” Áine said. She felt the weight of them coiling inside her. “How did you get rid of them?”
“They are never gone. They keep coming back, gathering inside you from every part of the Aetherlands. They are filling you up. Pushing the Eta out. That’s why I couldn’t go back, Áine. That’s what I’ve been fighting all these years. I’ve been taking them in. Keeping you safe. I’ve been weaving my protections here, keeping the Barrows safe and the queene away. But the shadows keep coming. Somehow they make me stronger, but my magic is wild, and my heart is broken. I use the Eta to fight the shadows, but the shadows push out the Eta inside me. I’m not healing anymore.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Áine asked, stepping toward Eri. A leaf fell from the oak tree overhead and landed at her feet. “I could have helped you—”
“I didn’t need your help,” Eri said, smiling softly. “I needed time. And so did you. So I gave you as much as I could.”
“I could have helped you—” Áine said again. She rested her hand against the oak tree. She felt the water flowing from its roots to its branches. “You didn’t need to. I could have…” Her words disappeared. She didn’t know what she could do, or what she would have done. Could she have controlled the shadows?
“And that’s why I never told you. What would you have done, child? You would have run away. Gone off to save everyone else and to lose yourself. I had to protect you.”
“But I could have actually saved them,” Áine said, the bark catching under her fingertips. “I could have brought them back.”
“And you did,” Eri said with a nod. “You brought Keva back.”
“But—” The words stuck in Áine’s mouth. Her mother. Her father. Everything.
“Why do you think I’ve been training you?” Eri said.
Áine laughed darkly, pushing off the tree. “Training me? Are you kidding? You’ve barely showed me anything.”
“I’ve showed you everything,” Eri said, her eyes flaring again. “But your Eta would never listen, and neither would you. Too much anger. Too many shadows. Even after I cleaned you out—”
“Cleaned me out?” Áine said, clenching her fingers in her shirt. Eri’s face darkened, and she looked away, but Áine refused to back down. “Like I’m the hearth? Like I’m full of ashes and soot? You stole from me, Eri. That wasn’t yours to take.”
“You think I wanted them? Do you have any idea how many nights I spent retching into the Caerning? Trying to get them all out, then fighting to disperse them? You think it was easy?”
“You said they made you stronger.”
“Yes. Just like an apple makes you stronger. But how many apples can you eat before your sides begin to ache? Before your soul goes dark? How many can you take in?”
“I—” Áine began, but the words wouldn’t come. Not the right ones, anyway. She wasn’t sorry, and she wasn’t thankful—she was angry. Angry that Eri had never told her anything. Angry that Eri had held so much back.
But when she looked down at Eri’s hands, wringing in the folds of her dress, she remembered how she had baked bread for Áine the very morning she left. She remembered how Eri had picked her up when she fell, how she had tried to teach her to hold the Eta, to bend the spoons and make them disappear. She had tried.
Áine felt angry but also guilty that she felt so angry. And sad. Oberon. She didn’t know what she was feeling anymore. Everything was a jumbled mess, and Eri had stolen so much from her but given her more, and Hennessy was gone, and it was her fault, and she had to get her back, and her father was marked with the sign of the beast—he would never rest. He would walk the path of suffering. It had all gone to Hether.
She needed to let the anger go. They needed to work together.
She sighed, then lifted a hand and rested it on Eri’s shoulder.
Eri winced, her hands clenching her stomach. Her apron balled in her fist.
“What have you been doing since we got here?” Áine asked slowly.
“You,” Eri whispered. Áine finally realized what the gleam in Eri’s eye was. It flashed in the midday light. “I took your shadows. Pulled them out. I’m saving you.”
“You can’t!” Áine said. “It’s too much. And you don’t need to anymore. I can handle them.”
Eri held her side. “I’ll be fine. I just need to get to the Caerning. I need the river.”
The water. Áine nodded her head and grabbed Eri’s hand. “Keva!” she yelled.
Twenty-Three
A hand slid down her face, tucking her hair behind her ear.
“Nana?” Hennessy whispered.
It was warm in her bed. And dark. The middle of the night. Nana ran her hand through her hair again, humming low.
“I had the strangest dream.”
So dark. The covers heavy against her skin. Hot.
“They were so hungry.”
She rolled over, and the covers pulled taut. Too tight. She tried to shove them off, but they slid through her fingers.
Her fingers. Scraped raw, down to the bone.
Bone.
She jerked suddenly, scrambling, flailing, try
ing to tear away the shadows, but they held tightly to her skin. They ran across her fingers, lighting fires up her arms. They climbed over her shoulders, slid down, and pulled at her hoodie. She tried to shove them off, but they wrapped more tightly, rubbing along the scrapes and cuts, digging into her head and back, pulsing pain, aching, all over, lightning across her skin, down to her ankle and into the bone and then suddenly, in one excruciating moment—nothing.
No pain. No aches. Just her.
The shadows loosened, lightening their touch, just a whisper against her skin. She let out the breath she was holding, slowly and carefully. Then she drew in another one. It was easy and light. And incredibly good.
They had healed her—taken away all her pain. Not even a dull ache anywhere in her body. She felt fresh and amazing, clean and new.
“What did you do?” she whispered.
The shadows twirled around her, lighting fires across her skin. The faster they moved, the warmer she became—it was like sinking into a whirlpool.
A very creepy whirlpool.
What in the hell was happening? She had been in a scrambling, clawing, biting battle in the darkness, and now she was right back where she started.
She felt the pockets of her hoodie.
“Rego,” she said. “Where is he?”
He had been there beside her, fighting them, and then she had gone under, and the lights had gone out, and now, now they were moving her on through the darkness, and he was gone.
She felt the wind against her face, and she listened for the sound of the fighting creatures, crunching and crashing into each other. But there was nothing. Just the wind. The monsters were gone, lost somewhere in the night.
And Rego was too.
“Where is he?”
The shadows said nothing, did nothing. What would they say? He was gone.
A shadow fell across her face and wiped the tears from her cheeks. She cringed, but its touch was gentle, warm, and soft in the darkness.
Hennessy still couldn’t see anything, but she finally understood what she had missed before. The shadows—they had saved her. They wanted to help her. They had picked her up and carried her away from the battle, and then they had healed her.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked.
Again, they didn’t answer. The shadows had no words. Seriously, they didn’t even have any mouths. They couldn’t talk—they couldn’t even think. How could they help her?
She remembered the light of the Aetherlands, how it had shone on her face. She had held Áine’s hand, felt the pull of her skin and the feeling of the light, and then the shadows had dragged her into the darkness. They wanted her in the Hetherlands.
“Why did you bring me here?”
The whisper of wind against her cheek stopped. They held her in midair, suspended and still, and then they moved on again.
This wasn’t working. She needed to use her brain. Think. How to get them to respond? They couldn’t speak. And she couldn’t see them. But she could feel them.
“Tap me. Once. If you can understand me.”
The wind stilled again. They stopped. Then all at once, the shadows tapped, a blast of feeling across her body. It tickled and ached and—
“Stop!” she said. “Just stop.”
They stilled immediately, and warmth rose through her stomach. She broke into a smile. They could understand her.
She thought about what that meant—what it really meant.
It changed everything. The shadows weren’t just mindless, swirling, creepy eel things. They had a reason, a purpose. And it wasn’t all evil. It was something else.
She needed to figure out what it was.
“Okay, here’s what we are going to do. I’m going to ask you some questions. Tap once for yes, tap two for no. And tap my toe! My right toe. Not my whole damn body.”
They tapped her toe, a gentle response, then continued on. As they carried her through the air, she formed her questions.
“Did you mean to bring me here?”
One tap. Yes.
She wanted to ask why, but they couldn’t answer that. The question was too complicated. What else could she ask?
“Are there other people here?”
A long pause. Then two taps. No.
That pause, though. They were trying to tell her something. She closed her eyes, and considered where she was, and what she knew.
“Are there fey here?”
One tap, quickly. Yes.
The creatures. Those crazy black monsters. And the tree people. Maybe that is what the shadows meant.
“The creatures down there—are they fey?”
A pause again. Then a long push.
Yes. But there was more to that story. How could she find out the rest?
“Besides the creatures…and the tree people…are there other fey?”
A quick tap. Yes.
“Can you take me to them?”
Another long moment. Then a tap. Yes.
Yes. But. The pause. It meant something. What did she need to ask?
She ran through all the possible questions and landed on one.
“Is it safe? Are they going to hurt me?”
Nothing. Not one tap. Not two. Nothing.
They didn’t know.
Well, that wasn’t very reassuring.
But it wasn’t as if she had any other options.
“Take me there.”
They flew on through the darkness, but now she knew their purpose. They were headed toward something, though she had no idea who—or what—it was.
She wished she had her phone. Not just for the light—for the distraction. She was sick of being in her head, only talking to shadows. It was so mindless, so endless.
“Excuse me?” she asked. “Rego. The little weird dragon-puppy creature. Where is he?”
No response.
“Sorry, not a yes or no. Um, did they kill him? Is he dead?”
A long pause, and then two taps.
Dead or not dead? Usually that was much more straightforward. But at least he was kind of alive.
“Can you…can you get him for me?”
They tapped once, hard, on her toe, and she winced.
“Thank you,” she said.
So sassy. But really, they were carrying her. Why couldn’t they carry him too?
They flew on through the darkness. She had run out of things to say, and they weren’t giving her any ideas. Just darkness, silence, and the occasional swish of wind.
Then she saw it. A flicker. A flash of light in the distance. She could have sworn—no. It was gone. Like a mirage. Or an illusion. She was dreaming. Wishing away the darkness.
Or maybe she was losing her mind. Talking to shadows. Traveling to fairylands.
Crazy. Obviously crazy. Or dead. She could be dead. Sounded right. Flying through the air in an endless journey through the night. Yep.
She was so sick of the darkness. It made her want to scream, but more than that, she just wanted the light back. Not the loopy green light of the tree people, but a real, white lightbulb. On a lamp. In a house.
A flicker of life, a flicker of something—
There. Again, a flash of amber. Not green. No rainbows. She squinted, and it grew brighter. Closer. Yes! They were flying toward it. She reached her hand toward the light, watched it play off her fingertips. Brighter and brighter, faster and faster. One light became two, three, and then twenty. Deep amber fires flanking tall spires—a castle. Dark as onyx. Like something out of a Gorey painting. Or The Labyrinth. Except more austere. Stark. Like a thousand downward brushstrokes that someone forgot to blend in.
The castle was dark as night but bathed in a golden light. It was wonderful—and terrible. So completely creepy.
“This place really sucks.”
She eyed the castle walls. She expected to see orcs patrolling the perimeter, to hear dark music and deep narration, and to smell the stench of death. She had seen this movie before.
Instead, the shad
ows flew her lower to the ground, closer and closer, slipping and sliding. They softened around her, whisper touches against her skin, dissipating, until her feet touched the ground. They nudged her hand, and she opened it. With a flurry of soft touches, they tucked in something long and hard.
The spear. They had saved it for her. She smiled.
“Thank you,” she said.
They touched her cheek, gave her one final nudge forward, and then disintegrated.
And there she stood in the firelight, holding a spear, on the edge of a long narrow bridge leading up to a black castle, with torches guiding the way to the gate. So much fire, pushing back at the darkness. Pushing away the shadows. But if the shadows were gone, what remained?
She didn’t know. But she was ready to find out. She crossed the black stone bridge, wishing for shadows to hold her again but walking toward the light.
Twenty-Four
Keva stepped out the door, and the horn sounded.
“The Dullahan,” Eri whispered, then fell to the ground. Tiddy gathered her up.
“Get her back in the house,” Áine said. “It’s safer in there. Protected. The Dullahan won’t be able to cross into the Barrows.”
Eri shook her head, her eyes rolling. “They’re fighting through. Even now. The leaves are falling. They’ve come so far. It won’t hold. Nothing will hold. All will fall.”
Tiddy lowered Eri into her chair by the fireplace. Keva stood by the door, but Áine pulled her away.
“She’s here,” Keva said.
“She’s here,” Eri repeated.
“Cra,” Áine said.
“Language,” Rashkeen said, bringing Eri a mug of water.
“What’s wrong, Auntie?” Saroo asked. “Are you okay?” she added, wrapping her hands in Eri’s apron.
Eri waved the mug away. “The Dullahan is here.”
“We need to get them out of here,” Áine said.
“I can help,” Rashkeen said. She placed the mug on the table and started opening the cabinets.
