by Terry Madden
Peering through them, she saw Talan and his company on the north shore of the island. There was Angharad, stroking the neck of her pony to calm it. Dylan and Elowen had left their horses behind, and they flanked Angharad protectively. The soldiers’ horses whinnied and jigged nervously until the men dismounted to let them flee. The animals charged back into the water and began paddling out of the bog.
Lyleth made her way onto the mossy shore of the island, crawling from the cattails into the shadow of one of the standing stones, the Knights of the Stoney Ring, as they were called.
There was Talan. He reached up to Angharad as if he were her father and took her from the pony. He carried her. She must be resisting, Lyleth thought. Elowen was talking, imploring, but Lyleth could only catch words here and there.
“I beg you,” Elowen repeated.
Talan carried Angharad to the center of the ring of stones where the cromm cruach stood. “The Crooked Head” was a low, rounded stone that suggested a head, and it rose from a pool at the center of the island that was said to have been formed from the blood of the fallen during the battle a thousand years before. It was here that Black Brac defeated the Old Blood. After the battle, the severed head of the Old Blood’s king, the Crooked One, was encased in clay, then lead, then gold. After the druada had covered it in their charms and carvings, it turned to solid stone and was left here, guarded by the twelve Knights of the Stoney Ring. The Crooked One’s body was cast into the deep water, into the Void between worlds. Some said it searches through eternity for its head, or for another body to take as its own. The Crooked One was god of this place now.
And some still worshiped him.
As Talan approached the pool with Angharad in his arms, Lyleth nocked a wet arrow on her bowstring. She would drop Talan where he stood if he tried to enter that water with her daughter.
Elowen raised a cry as both she and Dylan were held back by the soldiers. Talan seemed to be whispering to Angharad, smiling and laughing as Angharad nodded slowly. Then Talan set her on the ground.
The child didn’t run.
Now she had a shot. Lyleth pulled and took aim at Talan. But he went down on one knee, speaking to Angharad, her tiny hands in his. He wore no armor, no finery, but a black woolen surcoat over simple linen. Like a bard or a scribe.
Lyleth relaxed her draw on the bow.
As if in reply to Lyleth’s thought, he removed his surcoat and dropped it in the mud. Bare-chested, he led Angharad to Elowen. Words were exchanged that Lyleth couldn’t make out, but then Elowen cried out, her hands over her mouth. Two guards had Dylan on the ground, one having dropped him with the pommel of a sword.
“You’ll not harm him!” Elowen cried. “I’ll do as you ask, just don’t harm him.”
Dylan was face down in the mud as Angharad took Elowen’s hand and led her toward the stone where Lyleth was hiding. For a moment, she believed the child knew she was there. For a moment, she considered snatching the child up and running. But where? The soldiers would see to it they didn’t get far.
Lyleth pressed her body flat against the cold stone. When she peered around it again, Angharad had stopped twenty paces away. The child turned Elowen so her back was to Talan who was coming toward them.
“Stars and stones keep you,” Angharad told Elowen. “Kiss me farewell, sister.”
“Farewell?”
Elowen knelt, and Angharad held her face between her tiny palms. She kissed Elowen on the lips.
Elowen’s eyes widened as Talan’s arms closed around her from behind and started dragging her toward the inner pool. She fought him, digging in her heels and slipping in the mud.
Dylan tried to rise from the muck, but was laid out again by the guards, his hands bound behind him.
Yet Angharad showed no fear, nor tried to stop it. She watched placidly, her little hands clasped as if in recital, as a guard bound Elowen’s wrists and Talan placed a cord around her neck.
“No,” Lyleth said, and moved from the shadow of the stone to draw back her bow. Aiming at Talan, her hand began to quake. Her fingers refused to release the draw. Kill the king? She would die in moments at the hands of his guards, leaving Angharad motherless. But Elowen would live. She would care for Angharad.
As she opened her fingers to release the string, a strong hand grabbed her by the hair. The nocked arrow dropped from Lyleth’s bowstring to the mud as she was dragged back behind the standing stone.
“Don’t be a fool.”
It was Nesta.
“Talan feeds the Crooked One,” Lyleth cried under her breath. “He’s trying to free him!”
“And you should be thankful. Your daughter’s not the sacrifice.”
Across the mossy island, Elowen gasped, her hand clawing at her throat as Talan tightened a garrote around her neck. He held her until she stopped convulsing, then gently, with the tenderness of a lover, he let her slip beneath the pool.
Chapter 8
Rain clouds rode the midday breeze, and Connor figured they’d get drenched just when they reached the brook. He couldn’t help wondering what Dish hoped to find under Lyla’s tree. Merryn had been dead for less than eight hours, and Dish had already launched into an unexplained search. For what?
With Dish draped over his back, Connor clutched the man’s lifeless legs in piggyback style, but they were like swinging dead weights and threw off his balance. The sheep bleated in fear and ran to the far end of the pasture and Connor gave up trying to avoid the piles of poop.
“You’re choking me,” Connor managed to say.
“Sorry.”
Dish loosened his grip around Connor’s neck. He was heavier than he looked. Connor hoped Peavey wasn’t around. He tended to spend a good deal of time at the brook. He had instructions of his own from Merryn, and one he had made very clear: Connor was not to interfere with Peavey’s doings at the brook. Merryn had insisted Dish was never to know about Peavey’s true nature. But Connor had never shaken the feeling that he’d met Peavey before. There was something incredibly familiar about the old man.
When they finally reached Lyla’s tree, he was forced to let Dish fall like a sack of grain. The landing was soft, for the ground was covered in moss and bluebells.
Dish dragged himself upright and leaned against the silver trunk of the hazel. He laid his hand against the smooth silver bark, drew a deep breath, and finally said, “Look around. If people are coming here, they should be trampling the plants down.”
“I’m not a hunting dog, Dish.”
“Just use your eyes. That’s all.”
Connor waded through some brambles, moving toward the burial mound. When he first came to Merryn’s farm five years earlier, he had been captivated by the fact that some Iron Age chieftain was buried on her property. But when he started using geological survey maps, he discovered that burial mounds like these were all over the place, some just more visible than others. This one was no different than the rest, probably pilfered many times from the Middle Ages to the present day. No exposed doorway remained. It had likely collapsed with the inner chamber.
Burial mounds, or sidhe as they were called in Ireland, had long been considered to be portals to the Fairy world, inhabited by the Aos Sidhe, the Fair Folk. But Connor agreed with Merryn, it probably all started when someone managed to make it across to the Five Quarters through one of these things.
This mound was covered with waist-high ferns and saplings. But there was something, a narrow path where the foliage had been trodden down. Like a game trail, wide enough for a fox. Peavey could have been down here as easily as anyone else.
Connor followed the trail to the top of the mound. A hawthorn grew there, the traditional tree of the Fairy Folk. Here he found something interesting. He’d seen clooties, little strips of cloth, tied to trees near holy wells, crossroads, burial mounds, many times. People asked for prayers to be answered, or cast spells with them, and left cloth, corn dollies, or herbs. But these weren’t exactly clooties. Long strands of hair were tied
to the branches of the hawthorn like someone had tried to climb through and gotten their hair caught. They shimmered in the sun like spider silk. Blond, black, gray. So not from one person. And they weren’t just snagged, they were tied to the branches with purpose.
“What the fuck,” he muttered. He called down to Dish, still leaning against the tree, “You never excavated this burial mound?”
“Yes,” Dish replied. “They used ground-penetrating radar and decided it had been robbed long ago. It’s collapsed inside.”
“That doesn’t stop the Google Earth treasure hunters.” Connor followed the trail that dropped down the western side of the mound to the brook. He yelled back, “People are leaving their hair up there. You should excavate this thing. They wouldn’t see a well with radar.”
“I’ll be sure to get on it tomorrow.” Dish was as sarcastic as ever.
Connor followed the brook back toward Dish. The foliage on either side seemed untrodden. Dish was lost in thought, his forehead knotted as he stared at the ground. He looked so much older than he had six years ago. His sharp features had grown sharper, from distinguished to tragic, gaunt and wasted like the muscles of his legs.
Connor tried to break the spell saying, “Why would somebody tie their hair to the tree up there?”
“I don’t know. But they’re looking for something.” Dish picked up a fallen catkin that looked like a white wooly caterpillar and spun it like a little helicopter. Golden pollen drifted from it like a cloud of fairy dust. A distant smile creased his face. “They’re looking for the same thing we’re looking for.”
“You’ve come here before,” Connor said, sitting down beside him.
“Of course. I used to sit under this tree and read when I was a lad. It felt as if the tree… embraced me. I can’t explain.”
“Because it’s Lyla.”
“It isn’t Lyla, nor Lyleth. It’s a way across, a ferry, and nothing more.” Dish pointed at the freshly turned ground five yards away. “And Merryn will grow until her soul’s roots find a way through the darkness. Until she draws breath on the other side.”
“How long?” Connor asked.
“Time means nothing between worlds. It’s impossible to say.”
“This blood magic,” Connor said. “It’s dark stuff, right? I mean, what kind of negative energy have I stirred up by doing what Merryn asked?”
“You’re asking the wrong person,” Dish said.
“But I can’t see Merryn as some kind of evil sorcerer type. She’s one of the kindest people I’ve ever met.”
“Good and evil are matters of degree and intention,” Dish explained. “A sword can cut both ways; it depends on who wields it. We’d better get back before it rains.”
“Let me just take a look farther downstream,” Connor said.
He got up and went back to the brook. Distant thunder sounded, and Connor felt the first few drops of rain on his face. The stream was narrow enough to jump across in some places, and in others, it stalled into deep pools where the water boiled with the current. The remains of a fishing weir slowed the flow into a channel that slipped over black stones.
A bright flash of sunlight danced over the shallow water for an instant before a cloud passed over. The pale image he saw beneath it must be the reflection of a cloud. But as he drew closer, it became clear there was an object lying just below the surface of the water, wavering with distorted, refracted light.
He bent closer, unsure of what he saw. So white, it was incongruent against the dark stones at the bottom of the brook. Like a tomb effigy of white marble, it was a statue someone had cast off into the brook. Water slipped over it in laminar sheets; small breasts almost broke the surface. The chiseled folds of a gown of stone encased the perfect form of a woman, her lips slightly parted as if to speak or cry out. It must have been moved here from a church crypt. Stolen maybe. Was this what the strange people were looking for?
He stepped into the water and reached down. As his fingers met smooth stone, it softened under his touch. He jerked his hand back, feeling like he’d deposited a bit of his life force on the marble flesh. But the spot he had touched looked like it had thawed. It had turned to the color of flesh. He put two fingers on the statue’s shoulder and when he drew his hand away, the places where his fingers had touched left a bright stain. There on the image’s neck, it looked like skin. He touched the face, then lips, and felt the softness of flesh under his fingers.
He called to Dish who was out of view behind some bushes, “I found something… strange.”
When he turned back to the statue, he ran his hands down the solid arm, and marble turned to flesh. Once partially freed, the woman moved with lightning speed and clutched at her throat as if she were drowning.
Connor touched her body, running his hands over her as quickly as he could until she sat up and gulped for air, both hands at her throat. He watched color pour into her cheeks, not just the color of a blush, but the most vibrant tones of flesh, like a stained-glass lampshade lit from within. And from her eyes came starlight.
Calling for Dish, he stumbled backward and fell onto the bank.
“What was that?” Dish’s voice seemed so far away.
Scrambling back to his feet, Connor watched the woman rise from the water, her wet gown revealing a form of very definite beauty. He was paralyzed by the sight of her. Dish was yelling something, but Connor couldn’t understand. Wide-eyed, the woman knelt beside him, reached out and placed her palms on his cheeks. Her hands weren’t cold as the brook water, but warm with life.
“Who are you?” he managed to ask.
She drew close, and kissed him.
He let his arms close around her as a rush of heat spread through his body, then a flutter of wings, like a moth, moving from her lips to his. Something beat inside his mouth. He tried to turn and look toward Dish, but as he did, his vision fractured and he drifted like powdered sunlight. He didn’t float on the surface of the water, but sank. Deeper and deeper, far beyond the bottom of the brook.
His vision was filled with a watery void, brackish and thick, and the sun was a distant, brown beacon.
Chapter 9
Connor’s voice sounded much more distant than just beyond the thicket where the brook ran. “I found something…” Some words followed that Dish couldn’t make out.
“What was that?” Dish called.
Nothing but the sound of splashing came in reply.
“Connor?”
Dish waited for an answer, picturing Connor prodding some poor water creature with a stick.
“Connor?”
How long had he been down there?
“We must get back to the cottage before Peavey arrives.”
With no reply, Dish decided the only option was to crawl. He pulled himself along on his elbows across grass and ferns and daffodils, cursing as his arms were snagged by wild rose thorns, until he reached the edge of the thicket above the brook. He was out of breath from the exertion, and Connor was nowhere in sight. However, standing there in the water in a sodden gown of dark homespun, a woman was bent over the water, searching it for something.
“Hello?”
She turned a frightened face to him and started to flee.
“Wait!” He held up a hand in an attempt to stay her, saying, “There was a man here, tall, scruffy beard. Did you see him?”
The woman’s wet hair was plaited in several intricate braids. Was she one of the people Mr. Peavey had seen in Merryn’s grove? Her gown was tied at the waist with a broad belt embroidered with interlace, and a leather pouch hung from it. The skin that peeked from under her attire, her face and hands, reflected the light in such a way that momentary flashes, points of colored light, flared intensely like tiny laser bursts all over her skin.
Dish rubbed at his eyes.
“Perhaps you saw my friend,” he repeated. “He can’t be far.”
Dish shaded his eyes and looked across the brook at the pasture on the other side that vanished into the for
est.
“It’s not like him to take off,” he added.
The dripping woman crossed the grassy bank and closed the distance between them. She squatted before him, smelling of mud and peat bog, her face close to his. She looked into his eyes as if she were trying to find a speck of dirt there. A leather cord dangled from around her neck and bruising showed on the creamy skin beneath it. Was it a noose? She couldn’t be more than sixteen, lightly freckled, and her eyes were bright green… He knew those eyes.
Suddenly, her hands were on his face, her brow twisted in confusion that turned to excitement.
“Nechtan? My lord king?” She spoke in perfect Ildana. “Your face is not your face, but I see you. I see Nechtan.”
His heart raced. She knew him. “Aye.” And he knew her. A child’s face, dirty and thin, holding a sling and wiping her nose on her sleeve. “It’s not possible,” he said in Ildana. “Elowen?”
Her skin seemed formed from the iridescent powder of butterfly wings. She was a vision, surely, and just as she’d come, she would dissolve into the breeze.
“Why do you crawl about on your belly, my lord?”
“Paralysis.” Dish took hold of her arm, feeling flesh and bone beneath, as she helped him to a sitting position.
“’Paralysis,’” she repeated the English word.
“How did you cross over?” His mind was racing. If she could cross, then perhaps he could do the same. And then what? Crawl up on the shore of that other world like a legless lizard?
“Cross?” Her face was knotted as she gazed at the landscape around them. It must appear in black and white to her, he thought. She asked, “Where is this place?”
