The afternoon air had weight. It made his eyes heavy, his limbs like lead. He stumbled down the path, yawning. He noticed a rounded hollow at the base of a stumpy apple tree, its gnarled limbs already clustered with hard green fruit. His eyes filled with tears as he remembered Apple Aeffie’s ample lap as she leaned against her favorite tree and sang and shelled peas or picked through berries or beans.
A few minutes curled up beneath the tree couldn’t hurt, he thought, as he yawned hugely once again. He slumped down beside the trunk. The base was covered in thick moss that smelled slightly sweet, just like Apple Aeffie. He drew a deep breath, curled on his side, his cheek pillowed on his hand. He glanced up into the tree and thought he saw a trixie watching him. He jerked upright, saw it was just a big black bird, a raven or a crow, watching him. The lassitude overtook him again, and his head felt heavy on his neck. He lay back down. “Tricksie trixies, run away quick, here I come with my big fat stick…tricksie trixies run away home, here I come with my big long bone.” I’ll just rest here a minute or two, he thought, even as he wondered fleetingly what kind of bone. He closed his eyes and almost immediately, fell fast asleep.
“Look at him—he’s sleeping,” Loriana breathed. She twined her long fingers around the trunk of the apple tree and leaned down, her nostrils flared. She could feel her grandmother watching from higher in the tree. Below her, Bran’s eyes slid closed. She crept down another limb, listening intently as his ragged breathing steadied and deepened. She could feel his mind, open and dreaming, the energy within him banked but palpable. He was very quickly sound asleep, one hand curled beneath his face, the other tucked between his thighs. His young limbs were tan and very smooth. He was so beautiful her breath caught in her throat. Before she could stop herself, she reached out and stroked his face with the tips of her fingers. It was then she noticed that his cheeks were tufted with fine brown down. All her senses were inflamed, every part of her alive. She reached out with a trembling hand and touched the rough silk of his nut-brown hair falling across his thick brown brows.
“Be careful, Loriana, don’t wake him yet,” rasped Finnavar.
But Loriana was entranced. She leaned down again, daring to trace the curve of his jaw, and a hissing and spitting erupted from underneath the apple tree. She gasped and startled back onto a higher bough as half a dozen leathery little faces peered out of knolls and between the roots of the tree. “Get away from him,” cried one, its gravely little voice as harsh against her ears as metal over stone.
More crept up and out of the ground, ears twitching, flat noses sniffing, their eyes huge and round. “Look, there they are,” one cried.
“A sidhe—a sidhe—look, two of them,” shouted another, so loudly Loriana wondered why the boy did not wake.
There were dozens of them now, all converging around the sleeping boy. “Get away from him,” a third hissed, baring his stumpy teeth.
“Grandmother,” cried Loriana. “What are these things?”
“Nasty creatures,” replied Finnavar. She plummeted down from her branch, wings extended widely, and the trixies scampered out of reach. “They’re gremlins, that’s what they are. The mortals call them trixies. They call themselves khouri-keen. And all of them have the same name. Get away from him—get back from him—we want him. We found him first.”
“You can’t have him,” wheezed a fourth.
“Unless you want us, too.” A fifth smiled up at Loriana, then dared to rub its filthy little head on her thigh. “She smells so good,” he whispered to the others and Loriana shuddered and withdrew up the tree.
“The grand callie told us the shining ones would come,” murmured still another.
“He’s ours and we don’t have to share,” said one, who stood on tiptoes, the tips of his ears quivering, his huge eyes wide and round as dark wet moons.
“What do you mean, he’s yours?” shrieked Finnavar, circling low. “We found him first—he’s ours.”
“He’s ours—the callie gave him to us.”
“We mind him.”
“We watch him.”
“We help him.”
From every side the voices rose, but Finnavar didn’t flinch. She landed on the lowest branch and cocked her head. “What callie? What druid?”
“The big druid,” they replied in unison. They smelled wet but their skins were leathery, like a snake’s, and their eyes were beady and huge.
“There’s no druids here now,” Loriana shouted down from her perch, but to her surprise, Finnavar only rose and circled. The creatures jumped onto to Bran’s chest and began to wave and spit and hiss.
“Come, Loriana,” screeched Finnavar. “There has to be another way.”
Beside the tree, Bran lay oblivious, a hint of a smile curving his soft pink lips. Loriana ached to kiss them. But there was no help for it. Her grandmother was gone. She stepped back over the border, leaving the gremlins dancing on the sleeping boy’s chest.
“Now what?” she asked the moment she was across. Finnavar was perched on a log, daintily stripping the flesh from a fish. She shook her head and pretended not to be disgusted when her grandmother offered her a stringy red slice.
“There’s only one thing to do,” said Finnavar as she spat the last of the bones into the river. “I’ll go find the druid—”
“How will you do that? How will you know which one?”
“There’s only one druid who’d have the audacity to do that—only one I can think of, that is.”
“Who?”
“She’s quite well known in Faerie, for she’s been ArchDruid in Shadow for years and years now—forever as the mortals would count time, I think. This working has her scent all over it. Mortal magic leaves a trail, a residue. You know that scent you find so irresistible about the boy? Every working he ever does will have something of that odor about it, Loriana. Remember that. Now. I’m going off to find this big callie, find out why she did it, and see if there’s a way to convince her to undo it.”
“What about the boy? What if he wakes up—”
“Stay and watch him, then. But keep your distance. Those gremlins would love to get their dirty little hands all over you.” Then she was gone, without further explanation, in a blur of black feathers and a rush of cool air, leaving Loriana open-mouthed and dismayed.
Eavan Morna
Night was falling, but the rain had mercifully stopped and when the sergeant suggested they stop by the ford of a stream for the night, Connla was more than willing to agree. They made camp beneath a stand of oaks. A few of the druids grumbled sacrilege, but Connla wearily dismissed them. She was tired, she thought, as she crouched over the measly fire, attempting to warm her stiff joints. Since the night on the Tor when she’d bound the trixies to Bran, she’d not been able to get warm. It was as if part of the cold wet earth she’d lain on had permeated her very skin. She pressed her cold fingers to her clammy face and blew on them, rocking back and forth in her shawl. A tap on her shoulder roused her.
“Cailleach.” Duirnoch, the bony athair who’d helped her bind the trixies to Bran stood there, his hands knotted together between his sleeves, double thicknesses of cloaks draped around his shoulders. She wasn’t the only one who felt invaded by the damp. “We think you should see this.”
“Eh?” she asked, not understanding at first.
He beckoned and gestured, and finally she understood he wanted her to come. She rose heavily to her feet, settling her shawls into place. “What’s this about, athair?”
“Just come.”
He led her through the wood to a track. It led up the hill and down to the river. “Well?” In the dark, it was hard to see.
“This way.”
The smell of rotting meat wafted on the breeze, and Connla wrinkled her nose. “What’s that?”
“You’ll see.” He took her arm. “Watch your step.”
At the top of the hill the path opened up to a small clearing and a little hut. Firelight flickered inside. “There’s someone there?�
� she asked.
“No, that’s Athair Tam. We found this place when we were down by the water’s edge. We noticed the path, decided to see where it led. This must’ve been a woodsman’s cottage—a woodsman and his wife.”
The smell of death was thick in the air, suffocating the closer she got. She peered inside, and the other druid turned and held his lantern higher. “Callie Connla, we thought you should see this.”
A slaughterhouse was cleaner, she reflected as she gazed around the blood-splattered walls, the floor flecked and stained with clots and gobs of flesh. “It’s goblins,” she said. She turned away and tottered to a stump, then sat down heavily, taking great gulps of the fresher, cleaner air. She covered her face with her hands then looked up at the men. “Get the sergeant. Rouse the others. What was I thinking when I agreed to stop here for the night?”
“This place?” Tam glanced. “You know this place?”
“This is near the place last year where the silver went into the water, remember? At the solstice? They couldn’t get all of it out, because the water is so cold and so deep. I guess what I was afraid would happen did happen. But why wasn’t there a ward put on this place?”
The athairs glanced at each other and Tam said, “I’ll go fetch the sergeant.”
The leaves in the forest whispered and rustled and Connla felt the hair rise on the back of her neck.
“You think they could come back?” Duirnoch whispered.
Connla snorted softly. “Of course they could. These people have been dead and gone awhile and there’s more remains scattered through the yard and down the path than two bodies would justify, even two bodies torn to shreds. The silver burned a hole in the border and water is the surest conduit from here to TirNa’lugh. The goblins are using this as a track—they come out of the river, hunting, and bring their prey back this way.”
“What’s all this about, Callie?” The sergeant sounded as sour as he looked at having been dragged from his warm spot by the fire. He was surrounded by five or six grumbling soldiers.
“Show them what you showed me,” she said.
But instead of coming directly back and agreeing, the men tramped in and out, around and over the clearing a dozen times, pointing and gesturing, shrugging and arguing. Finally Duirnoch came to squat beside her stump. “What’s going on?” she asked, frowning. The sky overhead was clear and the moon was very bright. Fair weather, at last. She was sick of rain. If she’d seen her last rainy day, she’d be glad.
“They don’t agree with us it’s goblins.”
“What?”
He shrugged and shook his head. “They seem to think there’s a human hand behind it…that it was made to look like—”
“Do they understand those things could come back at any time between now and dawn? Do they understand we have to take what small precautions we can?” She looked around. “We have only moonlight and starlight. Go call the others. Let these soldiers dither all they will. Something has to be done—” She stood up.
“And it will be done, Cailleach. Just sit down and rest yourself. My men and I will see—” said a voice behind her.
Connla spun around to confront the sergeant. “You and your men are blind—you don’t know what you’re looking at—”
“With all due respect, Cailleach, I could say the same of you. You believe this was done by goblins and so that’s what you see.”
“But there’re signs—”
“Have you ever seen a battle, or cleaned one up?”
Stung, she shook her head.
“Then sit down and let my soldiers work.”
He turned on his heel and stalked away and Duirnoch let out a long low breath. “And just who does he think he’s talking to, and how does he think he can speak—”
“He thinks he’s talking to a greedy old woman and her greedy young servant, Duirnoch,” Connla replied flatly, staring after the sergeant as he bawled out order after order. “That’s the brush Meeve’s tarred us with, don’t you see?”
“It isn’t right that he dismiss us so—”
“It’s what my sister did.” Connla pressed her mouth shut. Patience, she told herself. Patience and this would all be sorted out when they reached Ardagh. Assuming, of course, they lived to reach it. Great Mother, don’t let me think that way, she told herself. “Summon the others, Duirnoch. Let’s do what we can. It may not be much, but…well, who knows? Maybe the sergeant and his men are right.”
In the end, they were able to weave a weak caul of watery light. It wasn’t much, but it was more than Connla had expected, and she was able to close her eyes when exhaustion finally overtook her. It only needs last till dawn, she told herself sleepily as she snuggled between Bronwythe and Nialla.
A spray of warm droplets woke her. She opened her eyes and heard screaming and an odd gurgling sound near her ear. She turned her head and watched Nialla’s eyes go blank. And then Connla realized that the liquid she’d felt was blood—Nialla’s blood. She heard shouting, running footsteps, and she twisted her neck to look.
A wide metal blade thudded into her neck, severing skin, gristle and bone in one horrific swoop. In the moment that her head tumbled off her shoulders, Connla realized that there were indeed those who killed just as savagely as any goblin.
On the road to Ardagh
In his dream, Bran was lying with his head in Apple Aeffie’s lap, staring up at a blue sky through the leafy branches of a flowering apple tree. She stroked his hair with her work-roughened hand and hummed a little tune.
“Apple Aeffie, it isn’t anything like I thought it would be.” They seemed to be in the middle of an extended conversation.
“It never is, boy. The Hag keeps things stirred up enough that it’s never the same thing twice. And just when you think you have the lesson learned—Ha, it’s then she throws a new one at you.” She patted his cheek. “Have an apple.”
“That can’t be the answer to everything,” he said. He sat up and looked around. They were sitting beneath an apple tree, but they weren’t in any orchard. Instead, they were in a warm sunny place surrounded by what appeared to be hundreds or thousands of trees stretching out in all directions. “Apple Aeffie, what is this place?”
“This is the place between all the other places, you might say. It’s easy to get here if you know how, but impossible to find if you don’t know where to look.”
“That’s why there’s nothing here but trees?”
She chuckled. “Nothing but trees, boy? I suppose that’s how it looks. This is where the magic happens. Right here—in the in-between. This is where the power in is, Bran. Remember that.”
“In the trees?”
She nodded as she sighed. “You used to know that. A long time ago. That’s why I’ve come, you see. To help you remember all that you’ve forgot.”
“Forgot what?” he whispered.
“There isn’t much time, child. Things are happening faster than even the Hag can control. Now, just shut your eyes. Shut your eyes, and let yourself remember.”
He closed his eyes and saw a dark void stretching out before him, but he felt Apple Aeffie holding his hand. As if from very far away, he heard the skirl of an ancient pipe and smelled burning heather on the wind. He opened his eyes and stared down the long rows of trees, into the far and distant past. He saw himself in a life similar to this one, but older and bigger, stronger and wiser—druid, warrior, then king, called upon to do the thing that no one else could do. It had cost him his life. But it hadn’t mattered, because his daughters and his sons and their mothers, his sisters and their children had all lived and Brynhyvar had been left stronger, better, than it had been before. “I do remember,” he whispered. “I do. Will I remember this when I wake up?”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t work that way, Bran. But what you can remember, what you should remember, what you will remember, is that in the end, you always come back here. Here to the trees, who remember everything.” The old woman smiled and cupped his chin with a h
and so smooth and pink, it felt as if she’d never done an hour’s work. “Remember Bran. Before there were trixies, there were trees.”
Another voice was coming from very far away. “Wake up, boy. Come on, wake up.” The voice came again, this time accompanied by a rough kick that jolted him out of the most pleasant dream. The details instantly vanished, leaving him with an impression of luminous light on his skin beneath a sky of brilliant blue.
Bran opened his eyes with a groan, and met the brown eyes of a girl wearing a dirty apron over her tunic. Her stringy brown hair hung lank over her shoulders, and she had a basket under her arm. The basket was filled with onions.
“Wake up,” she said, and she kicked him again. “You’ll make it bad for the rest of us. Wake up.”
“Enough, enough—I’m awake.” He sat up and scrabbled away as Apple Aeffie’s presence faded with the dream. He felt sore all over, as if he’d been trampled on. Maybe sleeping on the ground did that. With a start, he realized he was naked, his clothes tossed in all directions. Blasted trixies, can’t I escape them even when I sleep? he thought as he made a grab for his breeches. He backed away, trying to cover himself.
The girl was looking at him curiously. She was about his age, he saw, her face freckled and tanned, her long hair streaked all shades from light brown to lightest blond. He was still swept up in the dream, the experience, or whatever it was, for he was overly aware, all of a sudden, of the way her breasts filled out her homespun bodice, of the lush swell of her hips as she bent over him with a disgusted expression. Her sleeves were rolled up past her elbows, and her forearms were muscled and tanned. “Are you all right? You look sick. Are you sick? Why’d you take off all your clothes?” She turned her head suddenly and coughed.
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