The Angel Stone: A Novel

by Juliet Dark

  William appeared to Nan after he’d gone back to Faerie, and he told her a story. Nan had told that story to Mairi—Mary Brodie McGowan—and she’d written it down in a book that Nicky had found in Edinburgh. That story had changed from the story I’d read before Halloween. Maybe William had only sent a final goodbye across time, but even that—one more word from him—would be better than nothing.

  I ran up my porch steps, slipping on a light coating of snow and dropping the keys onto the floor. As I bent to retrieve them, I found myself looking into emerald-green eyes. I had forgotten to leave the outside light on, but the light from my foyer shone through the fanlight, casting a reflection of the stained-glass face on the porch floorboards. Liam’s face, then Bill’s, then William’s, looking at me as though across an ocean of time. Hurry, those eyes said, I am waiting for you.

  I retrieved my keys and opened the door. Without taking my coat off or closing the door behind me, I crossed the foyer into the library. I went to find the book on the shelves, but where I’d last seen it there was an empty slot—or not exactly empty. Ralph was curled up napping where the book had been. I looked down and saw the book lying open on the floor. I knelt and picked it up. It was open to the story of William Duffy. Still kneeling, melting snow dripping from my hair, I read.

  It was the same story I remembered, until I got to the part where the Fairy Queen rides out with her captive. Now a girl named Katy (which I remembered was what the villagers had called the first Cailleach) is waiting at the crossroads to pull William from his horse. He changes into a lion, a snake, and a burning brand, but she holds on to him until he’s human again. The Fairy Queen tells them that if either of them steps into Faerie again, she will pluck out their eyes and hearts and replace them with eyes and heart of wood—the same curse the Fairy Queen had placed on William and me! The story in the book had changed because I had gone back in time. The page shimmered in my hands like moving water, as if it were caught in the flow of time and it might vanish at any moment, but then I saw it was only because my hands were shaking and my vision was blurred by tears. I wiped them away and read on.

  Unlike Tam Lin, the story didn’t end with the hero and heroine reunited. Monsters descend on William Duffy’s village, and he and Katy defeat them with a magic plaid. But they still can’t be together, because Katy must return to her own village to fight their enemies. To buy her passage through Faerie, William sacrifices himself to the Fairy Queen.

  My hands were shaking so badly, the tears flowing so freely by this part of the story, that I was forced to sit on the floor and lean on the bookshelf. I let the book fall in my lap and my head drop into my hands. My poor William! What really broke my heart was that he must have come back to Nan to tell her this story, as if he’d had to explain it to someone to justify the choice he’d made—to willingly become a monster so his beloved could become a heroine. Or perhaps William had told it to Nan so I would understand.

  I looked back down at the book. William says his farewell to Katy, but before he goes, he whispers something in the Fairy Queen’s ear, a condition of his deal. His beloved could not hear what he asked and mayhap she would never know, but I heard this tale from my gran, who heard it from Old Nan Stewart of Ballydoon, who said she had it from …

  “For the love of Mike, Mary Brodie McGowan, spit it out!” I cried, turning the last page so fast I nearly ripped it from its binding.

  … from William himself, who appeared to her in the Greenwood and told her that the boon he asked of the Fairy Queen was this: to give his beloved three chances to gain him back.

  The book nearly slipped out of my benumbed fingers. Three chances? I stared at the words. The rule of three was the most common fairytale device of all. Cinderella goes to the ball three times; Jack climbs his beanstalk three times; Snow White receives three visits from her evil stepmother. Mary McGowan might have added it just to give her story a more satisfying rhythm.

  Or perhaps William really had asked the Fairy Queen to give me three chances to get him back.

  Once for Liam, who I didn’t love enough.

  Twice for Bill, who I loved and saw die.

  Thrice …

  I looked up from the book to the clock on the mantel. It was ten minutes to midnight on the winter solstice. A time, like Halloween, when the fabric between the worlds grew thin. Was William waiting for me in that gauzy membrane between the worlds, waiting for me to pluck him out of limbo as I had dragged him from his fairy steed? Did I really have one more chance to save him? Could I dawdle here a moment longer if I did?

  I ran out the back door, not pausing to change into boots. The snow seeped through my thin party shoes, but I didn’t feel the cold. My heart was knocking against my chest, unbound for the first time since I’d returned from Ballydoon, pounding out a three-beat rhythm. Once for Liam, twice for Bill, thrice for … for whom? William? But hadn’t I already had my chance with William and lost him, too? What if I’d already used up all my chances?

  I skidded to a halt, my heart juddering as if it had gone ahead without me, and looked around at the bare limbs and vines, first blasted when the door was destroyed last summer and then scorched by the Halloween fire. The door wasn’t in these woods anymore. I was the door. I was William’s way back into this world—but how? I could open a door to Faerie, but would he be there?

  I started to walk again, instinctively heading for the glade in the center of the honeysuckle thicket where the door had once been, where Liam and I had stood together a year ago, where Bill had died. Where I’d come back after leaving William. If there was any place where I could make him whole again, this would be it.

  Walking slower now, I noticed something happening to the woods. Draped in snow, the vines looked almost as if they were in bloom, and the dark places between the trees were full of the glint of snow sifting down from the pine boughs. The whole forest was starred with floating orbs of light, like Christmas lights or …

  Looking closer, I saw that the floating lights were tiny winged creatures no larger than fireflies. They flocked around me, gaining in numbers as I walked—a host of tiny fairies accompanying me. As they touched the honeysuckle vines, flowers burst into bloom, filling the snowy woods with a summery scent but also with the smoky peat smell of autumn on the Scottish moors and the wild-heather scent of spring. All of time surrounded me, as if it were happening at once: my time with Liam and then Bill and then William. They were all with me now as I walked through the snow and blossom-laden woods.

  As I remembered the first moonlit, honeysuckle-scented air that had brought Liam to me, the vines around me erupted into bloom. I remembered Bill humming the lullaby his mother had once sung, and the wind in the trees sighed the tune. I remembered the wild heather William had brought me, and the purple blooms broke though the snow-covered ground. My memories brought each time to life because I was the door between those times. I had the power to bring each moment back to life, and if I could do that, I could bring my incubus back—not just one of his incarnations, but all of them. I wanted the wild lover who’d come to me in moonlight and shadow, the kind man who’d fixed my broken heart, and the boy who’d given away his youth so he could become those men. I said their names as I walked through the woods. William, Liam, Bill. William, Liam, Bill. The same name, really. William, I had read once, meant desire. Their last names—Duffy, Doyle, Carey—all meant dark. My dark desire. Come into the light.

  As I stepped into the glade, the moon rose above the trees on the other side. When its light touched the ground, a gust stirred up the snow into a whirlwind. I stood transfixed, barely daring to breathe as the snowflakes moved faster and faster, coalescing into the shape of a man made of moonlight and shadow, of desire and dreams, of joy and pain. He took shape in front of me, but he was still insubstantial. A moment’s errant breeze would blow him out of my life forever. How did I make him flesh … what spark …?

  I felt something tingling in my hand. Looking down, I saw that the scar the Luckenbooth
brooch had left in my hand was glowing, the two hearts pulsing as one. This was the spark.

  I reached into the swirling chaos and grabbed his hand, the blood that pumped beneath my flesh igniting his atoms into life. His hand clasped mine. He turned in a flurry of snow, becoming flesh in my arms, green eyes still carrying the primordial spark of the ether from which I’d plucked him.

  “I knew you’d find me,” he said, pulling me into his arms. For a moment I felt the world spinning, but then I looked into his eyes and knew where I wanted it to stop. He crushed his mouth to mine, my flesh to his warm human flesh.

  “You’re really here,” I cried, trying to touch and see all of him at one time. “You’re really …” I stopped, unsure what to call him.

  “Will,” he said, smiling. “Call me Will.”

  For Linda Marrow,

  eloquent editor and dear friend

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I was lucky enough to be teaching a class in fairy tales at the State University of New York at New Paltz while working on this book. I’d like to thank my students there for their insights and observations that helped fuel this book.

  As always I am grateful to my first readers: Gary Feinberg, Juliet Harrison, Lauren Lipton, Wendy Rossi, Cathy Seilhan, Scott Silverman, and Nora Slonimsky. Nor could I venture into the lands of Faerie without the constant love and support of my family: Lee, Nora, and Maggie.

  Thanks to Robin Rue and Beth Miller at Writers House, to Dana Isaacson and Lisa Barnes at Random House, and Gillian Green at Ebury for opening a door for Callie’s adventures in Faerie and beyond. I would especially like to thank Linda Marrow, whose editorial wisdom and constant friendship have given a home to my imagination for all these many years.

  BY JULIET DARK

  The Demon Lover

  The Water Witch

  The Angel Stone

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  JULIET DARK is the pseudonym of bestselling author Carol Goodman, whose novels include The Lake of Dead Languages, The Seduction of Water, and Arcadia Falls. Her novels have won the Hammett Prize and have been nominated for the Dublin/IMPAC Award and the Mary Higgins Clark Award. Her fiction has been translated into thirteen languages. She lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with her family.