The Dark Divide

by Jennifer Fallon

  ‘But we can find our way home, can’t we?’

  She nodded. ‘You can always find your own home. It’s when you start jumping about in realities in which you don’t belong that rift runners run into trouble.’

  However reluctantly he wanted to admit it, she did have a point. ‘But we can contact other people,’ he said. ‘Even if they’re not in a reality we can get to.’

  She nodded. ‘Scrying has more to do with the person than the realm they’re in.’

  ‘So we can contact Darragh?’

  This time she shook her head. ‘I doubt it. The realm where you grew up is very depleted. You saw the trouble we had when you and Darragh together tried to call Brogan in our realm.’

  ‘I have to get in touch with him, Trása. I need to let him know I’m alive.’

  ‘He knows you’re alive, Rónán. He’s alive too.’

  Ren wondered what the point of this whole psychic link business was. ‘It sucks, you know, that he can get punched in the face and I get a black eye across different realities, but we can’t talk to one another.’

  ‘You don’t get a black eye if he gets hit,’ she reminded him, a little impatiently. ‘You only manifest each other’s wounds if they’re inflicted with airgead sídhe.’

  Ren knew about Faerie silver. At least he did now. He wished he’d known about it sooner because he’d suffered plenty of odd, inexplicable wounds during his lifetime. His sessions with the eminent Murray Symes, Psychiatrist to Troubled Children of the Stars, were a direct result of his link with his brother. His time in therapy had been a complete waste and served no purpose other than to make his mother feel better and Murray Symes a whole lot richer. Nobody had ever believed he wasn’t cutting himself because of some deep-rooted psychosis that hundreds of hours of psychoanalysis had never been able to uncover.

  And then another thought occurred to him. If he were cut in this realm with a blade forged from airgead sídhe, Darragh would suffer the same fate back in his reality.

  Painful and bizarre as it would be, he might just have hit on a way to talk to Darragh. But it would be a one-way conversation. There was no airgead sídhe in his realm. Even if Ren carved an entire manifesto on his arm for his brother to read, there was no way for Darragh to write back.

  ‘Did Darragh ever manifest a wound from me?’ he asked. He tried to trawl through his brother’s memories, but pain was something one tended to archive fairly quickly, so accessing Darragh’s memories of every injury he’d ever acquired, and how he’d acquired it, was such a laborious process that it was much quicker to ask the girl who had grown up with his brother, if she remembered anything.

  ‘Only once, that I can recall,’ Trása said after a slight pause. ‘He was about nine or ten, I think. He woke up crying early in the morning. He was bleeding all over the bed.’

  Ren tried to imagine what had happened to him that would have had that effect on Darragh, but he couldn’t think of anything, offhand. ‘What sort of injuries did he have?’

  She thought for a moment before answering. ‘Some deep scratches on his leg, as I recall. One of them so deep it was as if he had been stabbed with a very long, thin nail. I remember him refusing to heal it or have anybody else use magic to heal it, because it was the first hint he’d ever had that you were alive and out there somewhere and he might eventually bring you home.’

  Now she’d triggered the memory, Ren found himself filled with the same mixed emotions his brother experienced the only time he’d ever had one of his missing twin’s wounds manifest itself on him. With the memory, came recall of the injury. ‘I remember now. I crashed my bike. It was really early in the morning. I was running away from home, I think.’ He smiled at the memory. ‘I only got as far as the end of the street. It was winter and still dark and I slipped on a patch of ice and hit a tree. The bike was totalled. It was the spokes on the wheels that sliced me up, good and proper. My dramatic escape from my terrible life didn’t seem nearly as heroic after I’d limped home, crying like a little girl.’

  She cocked her head to one side. ‘You had a bicycle made of Faerie silver?’

  ‘Of course not.’ He stopped for a moment, trying to recall what the bicycle had been made of. Nothing else in his world seemed to have the same properties as airgead sídhe. He remembered the bike only vaguely. His memories of that incident were mostly about the pain he was in, as he hobbled home with his ruined bike, and the tantrum Kiva threw when she realised he’d been trying to run away. She had gone ballistic about the cost of the bike too, he recalled, and swore he’d never be allowed to own another — a threat she kept for all of two months before presenting him with a shiny new bicycle, in the hopes of easing the blow when she told him she was taking him out of school again to live in Prague for the better part of the year while she made a movie there. Kiva’s explosion about the cost of the bike was the key. ‘Now I think about it, I’m pretty sure it was titanium.’

  ‘Named for the Titans, do you think?’

  He shrugged. ‘I guess. I wonder if Darragh could get his hands on something made of titanium, could he injure himself enough to affect me?’

  ‘Probably,’ she agreed with a concerned frown. ‘But why would he want to?’

  ‘Blood will have blood,’ he said darkly, thinking his plan both ingenious and horrific.

  Trása looked at him blankly. ‘What?’

  ‘It’s a line from Macbeth,’ he told her. ‘It seems fitting.’

  ‘Who’s Macbeth?’ she asked.

  ‘A Scotsman in my realm who exists solely to torture high school students,’ he told her with a smile, figuring there was nothing to be gained by trying to explain Shakespeare to a Faerie. ‘Can you get your hands on an airgead sídhe weapon?’

  ‘Are you kidding? Have you seen the Leipreachán in this realm? What are you going to do with a weapon?’

  ‘Send my brother a message he can’t ignore.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be easier to scry him out?’

  He shook his head. ‘Darragh was behind us, Trása, when the rift exploded and threw us into this realm. Don’t you think, if my brother was anywhere he could contact us, he’d have called us on the puddle phone himself by now?’

  ‘I suppose,’ she conceded with a great deal of reluctance.

  ‘So now we have a Plan B,’ he told her, with an encouraging smile. ‘How much longer have we got before the Empresses get back, do you think?’

  She shrugged. ‘A while yet, I’m guessing.’

  ‘Then let’s find you some clothes so I can have mine back, and then we can try calling my brother,’ he said.

  ‘What are you going to tell him?’

  ‘About the titanium, for one thing,’ Rónán said.

  ‘Shouldn’t you warn him about the Matrarchaí?’

  ‘What would be the point? He’s in a depleted realm,’ Ren pointed out. ‘What would the Matrarchaí be doing there?’

  ‘I suppose.’

  He smiled at her encouragingly. ‘Cheer up, Trása. We’re alive, and —’ He stopped abruptly and the tent flap opened. A moment later a woman wearing a rich blue silk kimono slipped into the akunoya, looking furtively over her shoulder, before she dropped the flap and placed her finger on her lips, cautioning them to silence.

  Outside, the rattle of metal against leather and footsteps marching in unison warned them a patrol was passing the tent, although Ren had no idea if it was an Ikushima patrol protecting the Empresses’ camp from the Tanabe, or a Tanabe patrol protecting the camp from the Ikushima.

  Ren stared at the woman in surprise. Their unexpected visitor was Wakiko, the mother of Isleen and Teagan. Her fair hair was piled up in the traditional Japanese manner and her lips were painted red, but her skin was so naturally pale she needed no whitening powder to achieve the same look as the other courtiers in her daughters’ court.

  ‘You are alive,’ she said to Ren, nodding as if his continued existence confirmed something she already expected. ‘That is rare, and better than I h
oped for.’

  ‘Can we do something for you?’ Trása asked, climbing to her feet, a little like she was prepared to fight Wakiko to protect Ren, which he found rather touching.

  Wakiko nodded and stepped further into the akunoya. ‘You can, little Faerie, and so can you,’ she added, looking directly at Ren.

  He felt at a distinct disadvantage, naked and stuck under the blankets on a futon, but there was no chance he was going to climb out of bed with these two women watching. But he was curious about how Wakiko thought he could help her. Ren didn’t feel able to help himself, let alone someone else. Maybe she wanted to intercede with the Matrarchaí. If she did, they were going to be in trouble when they discovered he had nothing to do with them.

  ‘What do you want from me?’ he asked.

  ‘You are one of the Undivided in your realm, yes?’

  Ren and Trása traded a glance, both of them instantly on guard.

  ‘Why would you think that?’ Trása asked.

  ‘I saw the tattoo on Renkavana’s hand before he collapsed. I have seen it before. I know what it means. And I know what its disappearance means.’

  Well you’ve got one up on me, right there, Ren was tempted to reply, but Trása answered for him. ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘It means my prayers have been answered,’ Wakiko told them. ‘It means you can save my daughters.’

  ‘From what?’ Ren asked.

  ‘Themselves,’ Wakiko said.

  CHAPTER 53

  Darragh woke to find himself covered in electrodes with tubes poking out of every place they could find to put one. Choking on the tube they’d pushed down his windpipe, he instinctively grabbed at it and jerked it free, crying out as it scraped along his throat on the way out. Next came the drip in the back of his left hand, and worst of all, the catheter they’d inserted to collect his bodily waste. He pulled them all out, setting off a cacophony of beeps and whistles, and bringing the ICU nursing staff at a run.

  He struggled to climb off the bed, pushing the staff away so violently he knocked one of the nurses to the floor. Everyone was shouting. Darragh was disoriented and afraid of what they might be doing to him with their machines. He didn’t want to hurt anyone. But he was alive and couldn’t figure out why. Or perhaps he wasn’t alive. Perhaps this was some sort of hellish afterlife, peopled by the cold, heartless, technology-driven gods of this realm.

  There were figures all around him, trying to calm him down. He wasn’t wanting to make trouble. He called for Rónán, but his voice was dry and painful and he couldn’t make himself understood. He didn’t know what they were doing to him … or what they’d done to him.

  Darragh tried to demand answers. He would have settled for a familiar face. But all around him were strangers, urging him to calm, while he thrashed about, trying to get free of them. A tall metal stand holding a bag of fluid crashed to the floor. Some inexplicable machine that screamed with a high-pitched squeal, rolled across the floor and slammed into the wall.

  Darragh was panicked and lost and wanted, more than anything, to be gone from this strange place. The people around him could barely contain him. Then the door burst open and the guard posted outside his door charged in to help subdue him. On his heels was a woman with dark hair and a white coat … carrying a syringe.

  Without having any idea what it was she carried, Darragh knew the syringe was meant for him and whatever it contained, he probably wouldn’t like it. He redoubled his efforts to break free of the guard and the others holding him down.

  ‘Hold him still!’ she ordered.

  Darragh bucked and struggled, making it impossible for her to get a clear shot at him.

  ‘I need to see Jack!’ he demanded, as it dawned on him he wasn’t in the afterlife. There was no need for needles and syringes in the otherworld. He was still in Rónán’s realm.

  And he was alive.

  ‘Jack O’Righin!’ he tried to shout. ‘I need to see Jack O’Righin. I need to speak to Sor … ow!’

  The woman in the white coat had managed to jam the needle into his thigh. Darragh redoubled his efforts to fight them off. But he couldn’t fight them all. He struggled violently for a short time, and then, a few moments after the sudden sharp prick in his thigh, the room started to spin and this strange world of needles and machines and beeps and white lights brighter than the sun began to recede.

  No matter how hard he tried to fight it, the drugs worked their magic on him and Darragh was soon drifting back down into the warm dark embrace of unconsciousness.

  When he woke some time later, Darragh’s eyes focussed more slowly than he would have liked. His throat was dry and raw and when he tried to move, he discovered he was strapped to the rails of the hospital bed with wide strips of Velcro.

  But at least the tubes — especially the catheter — were gone.

  He looked around, as much as he could with the restraints. He was in a hospital, he realised, calling on Rónán’s memories of this reality, something he hadn’t done the first time he woke up in this strange place — he had panicked because of all the tubes they’d thrust into him.

  He was no longer in the ICU, he guessed. The machines were gone. The walls were a tacky shade of mustard, there was an inoffensive, matching geometric pattern on the curtains, a single hospital bed, a small basin with a mirror on the opposite wall. The detective who had caused his brother so much grief of late, Pete Doherty, was sitting beside his bed, flipping through a magazine.

  ‘You’re awake.’

  Darragh nodded, not certain there was an answer to such a blindingly obvious statement.

  Pete put down the magazine, leaned forward in his seat and fixed his attention on Darragh. ‘What did you take?’

  ‘What?’ Darragh croaked. His throat was as dry as driftwood. He looked at Pete imploringly. ‘Water?’

  The detective stood up, poured some water into a plastic cup on the chest by the bed and then held the cup for Darragh while he drank. ‘Better?’

  ‘Thank you,’ Darragh said, dropping his head back on the pillow.

  ‘All part of the service,’ Pete said insincerely. ‘You gave everyone quite a scare.’

  ‘I wasn’t aware anyone in this realm knew me well enough to be concerned, Mr Doherty. I’m touched.’

  ‘What did you take?’ he asked again. ‘All the tox screens have came back negative so far, but you went down too fast and bounced back too quickly, for your collapse to be just a bad dose of some nasty twenty-four-hour bug.’

  Darragh frowned, not sure to what Pete was referring. He hadn’t taken anything. He had — to his amazement — survived Lughnasadh. At least, he was alive for now. That didn’t mean he would live for very much longer. Maybe this was a temporary reprieve. He might still be dead by the end of the week, although he felt well enough to believe that might not be the case. But he wasn’t going to be falsely accused of trying to kill himself. ‘How could I take anything?’ he asked. ‘I have been in prison.’

  ‘Sure … and nobody has ever smuggled anything narcotic into a prison.’

  ‘Then it could not have been something I took,’ Darragh agreed, pretending not to notice the detective’s sarcasm. He glanced down at the straps holding him to the bed. ‘Are these really necessary?’

  ‘You took some putting down the last time you woke up,’ Pete reminded him. ‘Hospital staff don’t take kindly to that sort of behaviour.’

  ‘It was not my intention to hurt anyone,’ he said. ‘I was just surprised to discover I was still alive and in a strange place with tubes poking out of every orifice.’

  ‘That’s what happens when you drop into a coma without warning.’

  ‘I warned Doctor Semaj something would happen to me.’

  ‘Yeah, he told me about that. Lughnasadh wasn’t it?’

  Darragh was pleased the detective seemed to have some grasp of the situation. ‘I am as surprised as you that I have lived through the night and I’m here talking about it, officer.’

 
‘Let’s talk about it,’ Pete said, leaning back in the mustard-coloured armchair that matched the disheartening décor of the rest of the room. He appeared quite relaxed, but Darragh had a feeling very little got past this man. He would know if Darragh was lying. That put the detective at a disadvantage, because Darragh hadn’t lied about much at all.

  It was not his fault what he was saying was completely unbelievable.

  ‘What did you want to know?’

  ‘I want to know about your relationship with Jack O’Righin,’ Pete said.

  Darragh shrugged. ‘I barely know the man.’

  ‘And yet the first person you called for when you woke up out of a coma so deep you were damn near brain-dead, was the inimitable Jack O’Righin.’

  ‘From your tone, I gather you dislike him a great deal, detective.’

  ‘I dislike people who profit from other people’s misfortune,’ Pete said. ‘O’Righin’s a thug, profiting from the death of innocent people while masquerading as a political activist. It’s people like him who give the other side all the ammunition they need to continue to suppress the very people he purports to help. That’s what I don’t like about him.’

  Pete’s position made a great deal of sense when he explained it like that, but Darragh, like his brother before him, still had trouble reconciling the old man who loved his glasshouse and his bromeliads with the terrorist he had been as a younger man.

  ‘I have no interest in Jack’s politics, sir.’

  ‘So you’re an opportunist.’

  ‘I don’t mean to be,’ Darragh said, feeling as if he should be apologising for something. ‘Can you tell me what they did to my hand?’

  Pete glanced at Darragh’s right hand. ‘Your tattoo washed off.’

  ‘That’s not possible.’

  ‘Clearly, it is possible. What did you do it with? Henna? A sharpie?’