The Dark Divide

by Jennifer Fallon

  He wondered now if it really wasn’t just the remarkable coincidence it seemed to be at first glance. Darragh had the ability to see glimpses of the future. Arguably, Ren should share the same talent. But while Darragh grew up knowing what he was seeing and learning to focus his Sight, Ren was oblivious to it. Was his interest in learning Japanese a manifestation of a gift he knew nothing about?

  Did my subconscious know that I would need this one day?

  It was an interesting idea, and one he could only discuss with Darragh. But first he had to find Darragh, and that meant finding a way home. There was no sign of Trása, but he wasn’t too worried about her. This place oozed magic. Kazusa claimed the Youkai were all dead, but it seemed unlikely, given the magic in this realm. It may have suited them to let the humans think they were no longer around. Trása was half-beansídhe. She’d probably found the local Youkai and was being coddled and comforted in their version of Tír Na nÓg, while bemoaning the terrible accident that brought her here, not for a moment caring what might be happening to Ren.

  She may even believe he was already dead. After all, they had been trying to slit his throat just after she left, and she hadn’t hung about to find out if the Tanabe had carried out their intentions.

  Dinner was an informal affair, Ren gathered. Everyone was dressed in much the same fashion as Ren, in cotton yukata. He entered the room after kicking off his wooden geta, stepping on to the straw tatami mats in bare feet, and discovered his hosts had seated him with his back to the tokonoma. Ren couldn’t read the hanging scroll in the tokonoma alcove, but he knew the place in front of the kakejiku scroll was always reserved for special guests. That made him very suspicious. Kazusa had escorted him here at the point of the sword, and now he was the guest of honour?

  There were four other places set at the low table beside Ren’s. As Daimyo of the Ikushima, Namito sat at the head. On his left sat Masuyo, Namito’s grandmother. She was a tall, gaunt woman who seemed to be suffering from some ailment. Her wrinkled skin was papery and pale, and as far as Ren could tell, she was a Celt, despite her Japanese name. She bowed stiffly, as if it caused her great pain, but watched him with pale eyes that missed very little. Next to her, and nearest the entrance, sat Daichi, an older man who was introduced as the commander of the Ikushima samurai. He was short and stocky and seemed almost as suspicious of Ren as Ren was of him. Opposite Daichi was Kazusa, looking very pleased with herself. Ren gathered she was not often present at meals with the adults. She occupied that frustrating limbo between childhood and adulthood where she was too old for one and not old enough for the other. Her role in bringing Renkavana to Shin Bungo could not be denied, however. Tonight she was a grown-up.

  Sitting between Kazusa and Namito was a young woman who bowed low to Ren as he took his place. Namito introduced her as his sister Aoi. She raised her head and smiled shyly at him, almost taking Ren’s breath away. He guessed this was what Masuyo might have looked like when she was young — slender, elegant, with porcelain skin, thick straight black hair and wide-set, sapphire eyes. She was a beauty, and her brother acted as if he knew her value. Kazusa rolled her eyes as Ren stared at her sister. She was used to — and unimpressed by — the reaction of men when they met Aoi.

  ‘Why don’t we be seated?’ Masuyo suggested, smiling as she watched Ren watching Aoi.

  They sank onto the cushions, the men sitting cross-legged, the women with their legs folded to one side. He could all but see the magic crackling the air in this reality, otherwise he could almost have convinced himself he was in his own world, in some high-priced Japanese restaurant.

  ‘Itadaki-masu,’ Namito said. I gratefully receive. The others around the table repeated the mealtime salutation before reaching for the food.

  ‘Who would have thought,’ Masuyo announced, reaching for her soup, ‘that I would sit down to dine with Youkai in my lifetime.’

  ‘You must forgive my Obaasan her manners,’ Namito said to Ren. ‘She is old and quite overwhelmed to meet one of your kind.’

  ‘I’m delighted to meet her too,’ Ren said, smiling at the old woman, who was watching him like he’d sprouted horns and a tail. ‘But, truly, Namito, I am not Youkai. How could I be? Kazusa tells me they are all dead here.’

  Namito nodded, picking up his chopsticks. ‘You came through the rifuto stones, wagakimi. Youkai, even from another realm, are still Youkai. That’s why the Tanabe were so anxious to be rid of you before anybody discovered your arrival.’

  ‘It’s why they wanted to kill you,’ Kazusa informed him cheerfully.

  ‘Manners, little sister,’ Aoi chided softly.

  Ren turned to Namito for an explanation. He shrugged. ‘My sister speaks true. The Konketsu and all who support them will go to great lengths to prevent you opening a rift back to your own reality.’

  ‘Why?’ Ren asked. He was hoping, given the trouble his presence seemed to be causing, that they would be glad to be rid of him.

  ‘The Konketsu fear that Youkai from other realms will see what the Empresses have done here … and seek vengeance.’

  Ren was silent for a moment, slurping his noodles to give him time to think. It was obvious they knew how to open rifts. All he needed to do was find out how they did it and he was home, preferably before anyone in the reality he’d just left realised Darragh was still there and tried to make his brother pay for Ren’s alleged crimes.

  There was that not-so-minor problem of the looming autumn equinox too. If he didn’t find a way out of here, return to his own reality, collect Darragh and then make it back to the Druid reality before Lughnasadh, it wouldn’t matter anyway.

  Perhaps he should stop denying he was Faerie to these people. Did it matter if they thought he was? While it would get him killed among the Tanabe, apparently, here among the Ikushima, it seemed to be worth a great deal.

  ‘Do you travel often to other realms?’ Ren asked, as casually as he could manage. What are the chances somebody here in this room can open a rift? Maybe Granny Masuyo is a great wizard? Or the shy and delightful Aoi?

  ‘Not any longer,’ Namito explained. ‘Not since the Empresses forbade it.’

  ‘Kazusa mentioned the Empresses earlier,’ Ren said carefully. ‘You’re not that fond of them, I take it?’

  ‘It would be treason not to be loyal to the Empresses,’ Namito said stiffly. ‘Kazusa was speaking out of turn if she implied otherwise.’

  Touched a nerve, there, didn’t I? He glanced at Kazusa who was slurping her noodles with great determination and avoiding her brother’s eye as well as the gaze of everyone else at the table.

  ‘Well, to be honest, I don’t know the first thing about your Empresses and whether or not I ought to be loyal to them. As you say, I came through the rifuto. First chance I get, I’d like someone to open it for me so I can go back through.’ He hoped he hadn’t broken any taboos by being so blunt over the dinner table, but as Trása reminded him when they arrived, it was only a couple of weeks until the Lughnasadh. If he hadn’t found a way back to the Druid realm by then, he — and Darragh along with him — would die when the Faerie Queen transferred the Undivided power to the new heirs. He didn’t really have time for social niceties. ‘Whatever it is the Konketsu have done here,’ he said, hoping to reassure them, ‘well, I think we’ll just have to invoke the Vegas clause.’ In response to their blank looks, he added, ‘You know … what happens in this reality, stays in this reality …’

  Aoi looked at him in confusion. ‘Surely, if you are Youkai you can open a rift yourself, Renkavana? That is what Chishihero will assume.’

  ‘He can’t even heal a little cut on his own face,’ Kazusa reminded her sister. ‘How do you expect him to know enough ori mahou to open a doorway to another world?’

  ‘Is that how they open rifts here?’ Ren asked. ‘Using folding magic?’

  ‘Isn’t that what they do in your realm?’ the old lady asked suspiciously.

  ‘No … it’s more … hell, I have no idea what it is.
It’s certainly not origami.’

  ‘Ori mahou,’ Kazusa corrected. She turned to her sister. ‘See? He’s hopeless.’

  ‘Not so hopeless as you think,’ Masuyo said, studying Ren closely. ‘Just because his magic is not the same as ours doesn’t make him any less useful for … other things.’

  The old woman may not be the head of the household, but Ren got the feeling she was the power behind the throne. And he didn’t like the sound of the other things she spoke of. They sounded ominous.

  ‘I’m not sure my magic is of any use here,’ he said, conveniently overlooking his miraculous escape from the Tanabe. ‘I don’t know the first thing about your ori mahou.’

  ‘Told you,’ Kazusa muttered, loud enough for everyone at the table to hear.

  ‘Really, I just want to find my way home.’

  ‘What of your mate?’ Masuyo asked. ‘The one who turned into a bird and flew away? Don’t you want to find her?’

  ‘She’s not my mate,’ Ren told them. ‘And I’m sure she’ll find me if she wants to. For the record, she’s the Youkai, if you’re looking for one.’

  ‘Do you not have a life mate, Renkavana?’ Aoi asked with a coy smile.

  ‘No way! I’m only seventeen,’ he said, realising as he said the words, he was wrong. He was older than that, almost nineteen, in fact. The mystery of his actual date of birth was now solved with the acquisition of his brother’s memories. The realisation stopped Ren in his tracks for a moment. He hadn’t expected that little snippet to burble its way to the forefront of his consciousness without warning. ‘Or thereabouts,’ he added with a frown.

  ‘And in your realm,’ Masuyo asked, ‘one does not have to be Youkai to wield magic?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘They need one of these.’ He held up his tattooed left palm for them to examine. ‘You have the tatt, you have the magic.’

  ‘So anybody can be branded and then taught to use magic where you come from?’ Kazusa asked. With the prospect of magic being available to the masses, she was suddenly a little less dismissive of Ren’s brand of sorcery.

  ‘No … the ink is magical, I think. It doesn’t take on everyone.’

  ‘Perhaps it only takes on those with Youkai blood running in their veins,’ Masuyo suggested, reaching for the fish. ‘Magic is magic, after all. Just as the sun rises and sets in all the different realms in the same fashion, I imagine things as fundamental as who can and cannot wield magic are also the same.’

  Ren shook his head. ‘In my realm, mixing Faerie and human blood in those who can wield magic is frowned upon.’ God, did I just say that? I sound like Darragh, he thought, as he realised it was his brother’s knowledge he was quoting. He was calling Darragh’s reality ‘my realm’ now. Did that mean Darragh’s memories were starting to blend with his? When would he no longer be able to tell the difference?

  And was the same thing happening to Darragh back in Ren’s world?

  ‘Whereas here in this realm the opposite is true,’ the old lady was saying. Ren dragged his attention back to the conversation. ‘Here, without Youkai blood in them, one cannot so much as light a candle with magic. Rather inconvenient, after one has eradicated all the Youkai from their realm.’

  Ren stared at her in surprise. Kazusa had said the same thing, but coming from a child, it seemed an exaggerated claim. ‘They’re all gone?’

  ‘You’re the first I’ve met in my lifetime,’ Masuyo said. ‘And I’m older than I have any right to be.’

  ‘Then where is all the magic coming from?’ Ren asked without thinking.

  Namito smiled. ‘So you can sense it?’

  ‘Sense it?’ Ren asked with a shrug, realising he’d well and truly blown any chance he had of denying his magical ability now. ‘This place reeks of it. Every breath you take is dripping with it.’

  Masuyo smiled and looked to her grandson. ‘See, Namito. I told you it was worth the risk.’

  ‘It won’t be if the Tanabe learn he’s here,’ Namito said to his grandmother with a frown, and then he turned his attention back to Ren. ‘The magic comes from the kozo trees. They are the trees from which the washi is made — the paper used by those who wield ori mahou.’

  ‘Like Chishihero?’

  ‘Like her,’ Namito agreed with a frown. ‘She is of the Konketsu — those who are part-Youkai and part-human. Only they can perform ori mahou.’

  ‘So … if I want to find my way home, I need to find someone like her who knows folding magic to open the rift?’ Ren asked cautiously, aware of how such a suggestion might sound to the enemies of such a person.

  Masuyo shook her head with a thin smile. ‘Chishihero cannot help you, Renkavana. Even if she did not kill you on sight, she is a minor member of the Konketsu. Otherwise, she would not be stuck out here in the colonies with us in the wilds of Airurundo. She would be at the Imperial court, serving the Empresses themselves.’

  So much for Plan A, Ren thought as the conversation moved on to Masuyo’s childhood memories of her visit to the Imperial court. Kazusa and Aoi couldn’t get enough of these stories. Ren only half-listened to her speaking, because something else the old woman said bothered him.

  Magic is magic, after all. Just as the sun rises and sets in all the different realms in the same fashion, I imagine things as fundamental as who can and cannot wield magic are also the same.

  Suppose she was right about that? Ren wondered. What does that make my brother and me?

  And if she was right, why hadn’t anybody mentioned before now that Ren and Darragh — and probably all the Undivided to come before them — might be Faerie?

  CHAPTER 13

  Pete Doherty hated family gatherings and he’d been dreading this one for days. Normally, he’d keep himself distracted by working, but his suspected concussion and Inspector Duggan’s fear that Pete was seeing double after he was laid out during the Kavanaugh kid’s escape, meant he was stuck at home, discovering just exactly how much crap there was on television on a Saturday afternoon.

  Even so, with nothing else to do all day, he still managed to be late for his grandmother’s birthday gathering. Bracing himself, he opened the front door of her house to a wave of music and laughter coming from the living room.

  Pete didn’t hate his family — quite the opposite. He just hated being the less blatantly successful one. Not that he considered himself a failure, nor did he resent his brother’s high profile. It was just irritating that it was so public. Pete’s career in the Gardaí had been stellar. He’d studied at Cambridge. He had a masters degree in criminology. But if he ever took a bullet in the line of duty, the one everybody would see on national television going on and on about it, would be his twin brother, Logan.

  A door opened down the empty hall. The music and the chattering grew louder for a moment as his mother emerged from the room carrying a tray of empty glasses. She was dressed, as always, in an elegant suit, probably from some fabulous designer in Paris. Logan would know which one. All Pete really knew was that his mother ran a very successful modelling agency and dressed that way because it was one of the perks of her job. He had never, now he tried to recall, seen her dressed in jeans and a t-shirt.

  His mother glanced up when she saw him and smiled. She was a beautiful woman, one of those ageless women who seemed to reach their mid-thirties and never get any older. He’d run into one of his colleagues when he was having lunch with her once, and later, back at the office, the man had asked if Pete was dating her. To this day, he still thought Pete was lying about her identity, because he simply couldn’t believe this woman was his mother.

  ‘Peter, ma cherie! We were starting to worry you weren’t going to make it!’

  ‘Didn’t think anybody would notice if I was here or not,’ he said, shouldering the door closed.

  She smiled sympathetically. ‘I would have noticed, cherie. This is probably the only chance I’ll get to see you before I leave.’

  He walked the length of the narrow hall to kiss his mother’s cheek. A
s usual, the faint aroma of Chanel No 5 clung to her perfectly styled hair, the perfume she’d worn as long as he could remember.

  ‘What exotic destination are you off to this time?’

  Pete’s mother was always travelling. She had done most of his life, leaving him and his brother to be cared for, more often than not, by their grandmother, whose birthday it was today. His mother never spoke much about her job, insisting it would bore them to tears, but she always brought them back a gift, no matter how small, to remind them that even though she was away, she was thinking of her children.

  ‘Nowhere exciting,’ she said. ‘Just a quick trip across the Atlantic. I’ll be back by next Thursday. Are those for your grandmother?’

  Pete held up the large bunch of roses he was carrying. ‘Think Mamó will forgive my tardiness when she sees these?’

  His mother chuckled, a warm throaty sound that Pete always associated with warmth, happiness and home. ‘I think she’ll tell you how well they’ll go with the roses Logan brought her. You two really should phone each other beforehand, you know, when you’re coming to these sorts of events. You’re always getting people the same present.’

  ‘Logan’s here already then?’ Not that he’d needed to ask. Logan’s red Porsche was parked out in the street.

  His mother nodded and jerked her head toward the living room. ‘He’s inside. Brought a lovely girl with him. She’s been in a few commercials your Mamó’s seen, so he’s her favourite, for the moment.’ She focussed her eyes on Pete and added pointedly, ‘Your twin brother, at least, seems to be trying to give me grandchildren. Did you bring someone with you, perhaps?’

  He glanced over his shoulder at the empty hall. ‘Obviously not.’

  She seemed rather disappointed, but undeterred. ‘Are you seeing anyone at the moment, maybe?’

  ‘Maybe.’ It was the safest answer he could give. Experience had taught him long ago that to answer in the affirmative meant the third degree about whom he was dating. A negative response would trigger a lecture about how he was wasting time, because all the good girls in the world would be married to other men soon, if he didn’t start taking his duty to get married and give her grandchildren seriously. Like his brother.