The Raven Queen

by Che Golden

  ‘I am a coward,’ whispered Roisin. ‘But staying here, wondering what is going on when everyone else is carrying on with life the same as usual, is going to send me nuts. And we’ve all seen where you go when that happens.’

  Maddy thought about this for a second. ‘Rubbish, isn’t it, being Sighted?’

  ‘Yes,’ sighed Roisin, and then she was quiet again.

  Maddy listened to Roisin’s quiet breathing, the soft rustle of her clothes. She wondered if her cousin had managed to fall asleep after all. Outside the rain stopped roaring down and began a gentler, softer whisper against the glass panes. Maddy had no idea how much time had gone by when the door to the room opened a few inches and Danny slipped his body sideways through the small gap, trying to avoid the point where the hinges would creak loudly in the silence of the sleeping house.

  ‘Time to go,’ he whispered, handing Maddy and Roisin a small rucksack each as they kicked back their duvets and began to pull their trainers on. Maddy looked at her watch. 4 a.m. She rubbed at her eyes.

  ‘What’s in the bags?’ asked Roisin.

  ‘A change of clothes, some bars of chocolate, a torch each.’

  ‘Blimey, you’re organized,’ whispered Maddy.

  Danny shrugged. ‘I had a feeling we were going to have to go back in. So I stowed these away under my bed, just in case.’

  ‘Good thinking,’ said Roisin.

  ‘Any proper food in here?’ asked Maddy.

  ‘Give over!’ said Danny. ‘I’ve had these under my bed for months – fresh food would have evolved by now. I wouldn’t have had to pack it; it would have been able to walk after us.’

  ‘We can always stop at the petrol station and get some sandwiches,’ said Roisin.

  ‘Weapons?’ asked Maddy.

  Danny shook his head. ‘We don’t have any iron in the house that can be used as a weapon, sorry. We’ve all got iron on us. It will have to do.’

  Maddy clambered over her own bed and eased the wardrobe door open, bracing it with her palm so the pressure catch would not open too fast and too hard and make a loud click. She grabbed her fake leather jacket and felt for the lump in the lining where she had hidden a crude iron knife that Granda had made for her. She was going to roast, wearing the jacket in this heat. She could already feel the temperature begin to climb as the storm blew itself out. And she had no more knives for Danny and Roisin. It was meagre protection, but she felt it was better than nothing.

  She took a deep breath and shrugged the jacket on before looking at her cousins’ white faces floating in the dark, their pale skin picked out by wan rays of moonlight.

  ‘Let’s go,’ she said.

  Ronan was fast asleep in the room he shared with Danny, starfished in his boxer shorts on top of a rumpled duvet. The door to the bedroom where Sean and Paul slept was slightly ajar and they were unconscious from a day of kicking, gouging and biting. Danny jerked his head toward the stairs and they crept down them as quietly as they could, wincing at every creak the steps made beneath the floral carpet. Aunt Fionnula and Uncle Jack were fast asleep at the back of the house and Danny took great care not to rattle the keys on the hook beside the door as he lifted them off. He turned the keys slowly in the locks, so the tumblers turned with sleepy clicks, and one by one they tiptoed out into the moonlit, drizzly summer night.

  Although the temptation to run was overwhelming, they walked gingerly on their cushioned feet down the dark terrace and Maddy didn’t dare breathe normally until they had reached the top of the ancient steps that led them down the hill and into the heart of the city. She gripped the narrow railing that ran up the middle and watched her feet carefully on the wet, shining stone.

  ‘How are we going to get to Blarney?’ asked Roisin as they hurried down the long flight of steps. ‘It’s miles away.’

  ‘We’re going to get a cab,’ said Danny. ‘But we have to start walking toward the village. I’m not going into a taxi office – they’ll call the guards on us. We have to make someone feel sorry for us.’

  ‘But we haven’t got any money,’ said Maddy.

  ‘We do,’ said Danny.

  ‘How?’ asked Rosin.

  ‘I stole the monsters’ birthday money out of Mam’s chest of drawers,’ said Danny.

  ‘Oh God,’ said Roisin. ‘We’re never going to be able to go home – Mam is going to skin us alive when she finds out!’

  ‘I can’t worry about that right now,’ said Danny. ‘Let’s just get to Blarney.’

  It would be a nice problem to have, thought Maddy. If we’re worrying about Aunt Fionnula finding out the birthday money is gone, it means we came back. She knew Roisin and Danny were thinking the same thing, but they all avoided looking at each other. At the bottom of the steps, Danny turned away from the quays at the heart of the city and instead followed the road that joined up with the motorway, the road that would lead them away from the safety of the iron-clad city and into the fields and woods of the countryside, the road that would eventually lead to the faerie mound that pulsed like a tumour in the grounds of Blarney Castle.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The motorway was lit up almost as bright as day with giant arching sodium lights and clusters of road signs, each group with its own white light to combat the sulphur. Despite the lateness of the hour, the road leading to it was still quite busy. No one seemed to notice the three children walking along, although one lorry driver did sound his horn in a blaring blast that made Maddy jump out of her skin, but he didn’t stop. She was wide awake and jittery with lack of sleep. The lights hurt her eyes and she felt a bit nauseous.

  They walked for a little while, cringing at every car that passed them in case the driver stopped and tried to make them go home, while looking over their shoulders to see if it was a taxi. When they drew level with the Blackrock Shopping Centre, Roisin refused to walk any further.

  ‘We’re going to be walking on the motorway at this rate and it’s not safe,’ she said, when Danny tried to persuade her.

  ‘We have to keep walking,’ Danny said.

  ‘Why?’ asked Roisin. ‘We’re supposed to be getting a lift anyway. There’s no point in hiding from all the traffic, is there, or scurrying away from everyone?’

  ‘We might have to,’ said Maddy glumly. ‘There is no way a taxi driver is going to take us out to Blarney at four thirty in the morning.’

  ‘What are we going to say if a taxi does come along?’ asked Roisin.

  ‘Leave that to me,’ said Danny. ‘I’ll think of something.’

  So Roisin and Maddy slumped to the ground and sat cross-legged with bowed heads, fighting their tiredness and closing their eyes against the glare of the lights. Maddy’s eyes ached and the car headlights were painful as they swept over her face. Danny stood by the side of the road watching the traffic coming out of Cork and chewing on a cuticle.

  Despite the tension, Maddy found herself dozing off. Her head nodded against her chest and snapped forward, waking her up with a jerk. Her eyelids flicked open and she gazed at the deserted shopping centre, still lit up with lights trained on shopfronts and signs even though there was no one awake to go shopping. She found herself thinking of her lumpy double bed in Granny and Granda’s spare room with its fussy, shiny wallpaper. She wished she was tucked up in it right now, thinking the thoughts she used to think when the biggest problems in her life were hating Blarney and missing her parents. The good old days.

  ‘Taxi!’ yelped Danny, frantically waving his arm up and down as a taxi put on its indicator and pulled up a few feet away from them. Danny grabbed his rucksack and yanked a sleepy Roisin to her feet. ‘Just hop straight in,’ he said. ‘He’ll find it harder to get rid of us.’

  Danny jogged along the pavement, opened the rear passenger door and dived on to the back seat, Roisin and Maddy piling in right behind him.

  ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold your horses!’ said the driver, twisting round in his seat to glare at them. ‘I never said I was taking you lot anywhere – wha
t are you doing out and about at this time of night anyway?’

  ‘We need to get to Blarney, our Granda is really sick,’ said Danny.

  The taxi driver, a dark-haired man with red, tired eyes and stubble shadowing his jaw, snorted. ‘A likely story. Why aren’t your parents driving you out there, so?’

  ‘They went out to him before the storm started and then they must have had to stay there. We haven’t heard from them and we can’t stay in the house all night on our own.’

  ‘Give me their number and I’ll call them,’ said the man.

  Danny shook his head. ‘You can’t. My mam left her phone at home and my da isn’t picking his up – the battery has probably died on him. No one is picking up the landline either – my granda’s phone must have been cut off by the storm.’

  ‘They’re probably on their way back out to you,’ said the driver. ‘Imagine what they’ll think when they come home and find you three gone.’

  ‘They’d have been home by now,’ said Danny. ‘Something is really wrong. We need to get out to them and there’s no one at home who can take us.’

  The taxi driver said nothing but kept glaring at them, his eyes lingering on Maddy a little bit longer than she thought necessary.

  ‘Please help us – our Granda could be dying,’ pleaded Roisin.

  ‘We’ve got money, if that’s what you’re worried about. You’ll get your fare,’ said Danny, digging into his jeans pocket.

  ‘I don’t want your money,’ snapped the taxi driver. ‘It’s not getting paid I’m worrying about, it’s getting done for kidnapping.’ All three of them stared back at him while he looked at Maddy, the car pinging gently as it reminded him there were three people in it with no seat belts on and the engine was running.

  ‘Who did you say your granda was?’ he asked Maddy.

  ‘We didn’t. He’s Bartholomew Kiely,’ said Danny, trying to attract his attention away from Maddy.

  The taxi driver looked back at Danny and thought again for a moment. ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do,’ he said. ‘I’ll take you to the door of the house, but I’m getting out of the car with you and I want to talk to an adult, do you hear me? Otherwise, it’s back in the car for the lot of you and off to the nearest Garda station, where I’ll be leaving you. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ they all said at once, grabbing at the seat belts and buckling up.

  ‘And you can put your money away, lad – I’m off the clock,’ said the driver. ‘I was heading home anyway.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Danny.

  Roisin looked at Maddy and gave her a little smile as the car pulled away from the kerb and began to pick up speed. Maddy knew what she was thinking. They would be able to give the monsters their birthday money back. One less thing to get into trouble over.

  The driver seemed to have bought their story, but Maddy was still stiff with tension. It was stuffy in the car and her jacket was too hot and heavy. She could feel her T-shirt begin to cling to her back, and her rucksack was digging into her spine. To make things worse, the driver had one of those horrible car fresheners swinging from his rear-view mirror and the sickly scent of fake pine was making her stomach churn. She pressed the button in the door of the car and let the window slide down a few inches, enough for her to gulp at the balmy summer air and settle her stomach a little.

  The smooth surface of the motorway hummed beneath the wheels of the car and the engine purred along. She looked at her watch – it would only take about fifteen minutes to get to Blarney at this rate. She looked at the driver and caught him looking at her in the mirror. He looked away again quickly, but not fast enough for her not to see the anger and the fear in his eyes.

  Her breath froze in her throat. She thought of what the Blarney Stone had said to her when it had declared her the new Hound. ‘Men may sing of your deeds when you are long dead, but they will curse you while you live!’

  He didn’t ask us for the address! He knows who Granda is, he knows who I am, where we live. He’s Sighted!

  She looked at Roisin and Danny beside her. Roisin was rubbing her fingertips around her eyes and stretching the lids in an effort to keep alert. Danny was back chewing on his fingernails and staring out of the window. Neither of them seemed to notice anything was wrong. Perhaps the driver had given them enough of an argument to fool them into thinking getting the lift had been harder than it really was.

  Anyone else would have brought us straight to the Guards, thought Maddy. He’s making sure I don’t get away and bring trouble into Blarney.

  She swallowed and looked out of the window again. The street lights rushed past at frightening speed – she needed time to think. Tentatively she tried the door handle while keeping her eyes trained on the driver, but it was child-locked. She watched the road speed by beneath the car’s wheels and chewed on her lower lip. She had to get out of this car.

  It began to turn in a smooth bend as they followed the road to Blarney. There was the castle, a black monolith against the indigo sky, featureless in the night and hulking. At its feet was the mound. It couldn’t be more than three quarters of a mile away.

  She gripped the door handle until her knuckles turned white. ‘I’m going to be sick,’ she said. Roisin practically scrambled into Danny’s lap to get away from her. ‘Please, stop the car. I’m going to be sick!’

  ‘You’re joking?’ said the driver, but he put his foot on the brake and began to slow the car down.

  Maddy clamped her hand over her mouth and heaved, making retching noises.

  ‘Oh for the love of God, hold it in, I just had the car cleaned!’ snapped the driver as he pulled in to the side of the road. The door handle sprang open and Maddy leaped from the car, raced to a wooden post-and-rail fence and vaulted over it.

  She could hear shouts from behind her as she dashed into tall grass and trees, praying she wouldn’t turn her ankle on the rough ground. She stumbled and almost fell as she ran blindly into a hollow, then she tucked and rolled, pushing her face against the ground and her hands inside her jacket to stop the moonlight from picking out her pale skin. She could hear the driver crashing through the undergrowth, his grunts of effort and his curses as he searched for her in the dark. She kept her body still and her breathing shallow as she heard him stop just a few feet away from her.

  ‘You might as well make this easy on yourself,’ he called. ‘In five minutes the Sighted are going to be looking for you and your granda won’t be able to protect you this time. Come out now and I’ll take you straight to him.’ He waited for a few seconds and then began to walk away in the direction of the castle. Maddy started to relax until she heard the sound of a number being dialled on a mobile phone.

  She waited until the sounds of the man’s footsteps disappeared before cautiously getting to her feet and slowly making her way back to the car, careful to make as little noise as possible.

  Danny and Roisin were still sitting in the back seat. Their mouths opened as Maddy appeared in the headlights. The engine was still running so she walked around to the driver’s seat, turned the engine off and flung the keys into the nearest bushes.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked Danny.

  ‘He knows who we are,’ said Maddy. ‘Anyone else notice he didn’t need an address in Blarney? He knew just where to take us.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Roisin as the realization dawned on her.

  ‘And now he’s calling the Sighted to let them know we’re here,’ Maddy went on. ‘So if we want to have a hope of making it to the mound before they do, we’d better start running.’

  ‘What about Nero?’ asked Roisin as she and Danny scrambled out of the car with their bags. ‘We can’t just leave him!’

  ‘We’ve no choice, Ro,’ said Maddy. ‘If we stop to look for Nero, we’ll never get out of here.’

  Running for their lives for the last two years had kept them fit, and all three were able to maintain a steady pace as they jogged past the village school and over the bridge that led them into
Blarney. But Maddy panicked as she saw lights on in some of the houses and a dog began to bark.

  ‘They know we’re here!’ she yelled. She put on a burst of speed until all three of them were sprinting through the car park of Blarney Castle, their breathing ragged as they pulled themselves through the familiar gap in the fence hidden by bushes, and still they raced on, over the footbridge that spanned the chuckling stream, on to the smooth concrete path that led straight to the forbidding medieval castle and past it, to the low tunnel that led to the landscaped gardens and the mound.

  Maddy didn’t dare look back as her breath caught in her chest and her lungs began to burn with the effort of running. She could taste copper in her mouth and her legs felt heavy but still she ran on, her feet slipping a little on the pebbly paths of the rocky close, the earth and stones dry and loose. Every time she stumbled, her heart went into her mouth and her body tensed for a fall, but she managed to keep on her feet. She knew Danny and Roisin were still running with her because she could hear the sound of their trainers hitting the earth and their panting, which seemed increasingly wheezy, but she didn’t have the strength to turn her head to look at them. She kept her eyes fixed on the tiny moonlit path that led them straight to the mound and kept going.

  She didn’t know what she had been expecting as she stumbled up to the mound itself, exhausted. She knew the boundary between the faerie world and the mortal one was really only at its weakest at Halloween, but she had hoped, with all the weird stuff that was going on, that the mound would be reacting in some way.

  But it wasn’t. It lay there in the moonlight, as peaceful and unremarkable as any other grassy hillock. There was no yawning opening into its depths, no pitch torches smoking greasily in their metal brackets, no faerie guide and, most importantly, no way in.

  ‘Oh, COME ON!’ screamed Maddy in frustration as she sank to her knees and beat at the ground with her fists. ‘This is not happening, not tonight!’

  They all froze and stared at each other as the faint sound of baying dogs drifted toward them on the night air.