by Jim Ware
“The Morrigu?”
Simon nodded.
“She chased me,” said Eny with a shiver. “She sent the Fomorians to catch me. I lived in fear of her the whole time I was in the Land Underground. She’s after Lia Fail, but she wants me, too! She thinks I’m the fulfillment of a prophecy.”
“Of course. The prophecy of Eithne. She’s seen it in your eyes. If she knew your heart, she’d be even more certain. But that’s beyond her grasp.”
They walked on in silence until Eny said, “The Fir Bolg—the little people I met in the Sidhe—they told me that Ollamh Folla had been her lover.” She shot him a tentative glance. “Is that true?”
Simon smiled. “We both served the king. That meant we were often at court together. I admired her, and she knew it. But she came to hate me when I sent the Stone away.”
“Didn’t she realize the danger?”
A spot of darkness darted across their path; something rustled in the leaves above their heads. “She was always as proud as she was beautiful,” said Simon, scanning the branches with narrowed eyes. “A relentless foe. Implacable to anyone who displeased her in any way. She cares nothing for danger. She’ll risk anything to get her way.”
“But did you love her?”
It was a long time before the old man answered. “That would be hard to say, missy.”
“Did she ever love you?”
“No. I don’t think so. I don’t believe she’s capable of it. No one can love whose heart is set on power. To such a mind, everybody else is expendable. Everything can be sacrificed, thrown away. Everything can be made to serve a single end.”
“But love is about sacrifice, too. Isn’t it?”
“Not that kind of sacrifice. Love sacrifices to give, not to gain. It throws itself away to serve another.”
“But what if that was a person’s whole reason for wanting power? What if they were going to use it to help somebody else? What if they worked really hard to get it just so that they could save someone’s life with it? Wouldn’t that be a good thing?”
Simon gave her a penetrating look. “In my opinion, missy,” he said, “the person you have in mind is in far greater danger than he suspects. But he’s not without hope. There’s always hope for any heart that loves with that kind of love. He may come through all right in the end. Yet perhaps as if it were through fire.”
Even as he spoke there came a violent snapping and crashing among the treetops and a sudden spot of feathered blackness dropped down out of the foliage upon his head. Without so much as blinking, Simon lifted a hand and batted it away as if it were a fly or a bit of cotton fluff. The bird flew off with an angry screech, winging its way far out over the Point. Her heart pounding, Eny stumbled backward and pressed herself tightly against the slender trunk of a young pine.
“The Morrigu?” she said, searching the old man’s face.
“The Morrigu,” Simon nodded.
Soon they came to the top of a rise covered with live oak and low-growing green-and-purple scrub. Below them stretched the heaving expanse of the blue ocean. At their feet a rocky trail wound down to a narrow beach where the gray and rotting remains of a pier and some old docks straddled the foaming surf. A small houselike structure and a few ramshackle huts and sheds stood scattered about on the shore.
“When I was a little girl,” said Eny, leading the way down the cliff, “I used to hang around here on summer afternoons just to see the fishing boats come in. They’d bring back huge marlins and sailfish and hang them up on that dock down there. The square building in the middle was the Anglers Club. It had a cupola on top with a bell in it, and they’d ring it to let everybody know how many big fish had been caught. On a clear day you could hear it chiming all the way up in town.”
“It sounds lovely,” said the old man.
“It was. Come on, I’ll show you. My boat’s covered up underneath the pier.”
But when they reached the pier there was no boat to be seen. There was nothing but a broken rope, a shredded blue tarp, and some very large tracks in the wet sand.
“Gone!” moaned Eny. “I don’t understand it! No one else has ever used that boat! No one even knew it was here! Some kids must have taken off with it!” But no sooner had the words left her lips than a chill of doubt pricked her scalp and ran tingling down her spine.
Simon shook his head. “No, missy. You know better than that. Just look at the size of those footprints. That’s a Fomorian, that is. She’s on to us. Somehow she’s got wind of what we’re up to.”
Eny trembled as she lifted up the remnants of the tarp. “Whoever it was, they dragged it down into the water,” she said, pointing to some lines in the sand. “They could have smashed it up, but they didn’t. Maybe they rowed it farther up the coast. They might have hidden it in one of the caves. Let’s go and see.”
For more than an hour, then, they scoured the pebbly shoreline, working their way gradually north toward the great Rock of La Piedra. It was arduous going. In many places the soft white sand gave way to huge heaps of gray stone where gulls and cormorants sat hunched in noisy squawking battalions. Sea lions sprawled on flat-topped boulders, their grunts and barks echoing forlornly off the heights. From time to time sharp masses of bleached rock rose up directly across their path, forcing them to leave the waterside and take to the trail above the cliffs. When they were able to climb down again, their progress was slow and tedious, for the rock face along this stretch of shore was honeycombed with deep holes and dripping grottoes and tiny inlets of every imaginable shape and size. Searching for a small rowboat in such a place was like hunting for a needle in a haystack.
At length they came to the towering mass of the Rock itself. Here they were obliged to forsake the beach once more and clamber up a narrow track that skirted the base of the formation and snaked its way over the tip of the Point to the northern shore. Following this path, they came at last to the tide pools below the Cave of the Hands.
“There it is,” said Eny, panting and leaning on Simon’s arm. “La Cueva de los Manos. This is where I saw the crow for the first time. There were voices at the back of the cave that day, and when I ran to escape, she was standing right here—washing something in one of these pools.”
Simon grunted. “One of her most common disguises,” he observed.
“The next time I came, I saw a vision of the Green Island in the West. It seemed so real, but it must have been one of her enchantments. There were strands of light and strains of music. I was sitting on a rock, way up there on that cliff, slinging stones into the ocean, when—”
“Hsst! Young miss!”
Eny stopped short, nearly gagging on the tail end of her unfinished sentence. The voice was ominously familiar, and it had come from the direction of the cave. She turned and squinted up at the cliff. La Cueva de los Manos was like an empty eye socket in the glaring yellow face of the sun-drenched rock, and from out of the shadows under its low-arching brow a slight, spindly figure was leaning down and beckoning to her with a knobby-fingered hand.
“Eochy?” she gasped. “The little man from the alchemy shop?” She turned to Simon, clinging to the lapels of his coat to keep from falling. “He’s one of them! He works for her!”
“Eochy son of Umor?” A slow smile spread over Simon’s weathered face. Then he, too, glanced up at the cave entrance. “Eochy of the Fir Bolg of Eba Eochaid?” He slapped his thigh and laughed aloud. “Now there’s a stroke of good luck!”
Eochy was waving frantically and scowling like a thunderstorm. “Hush, man!” he hissed. “Not so loud! Do you want the bird to be hearing?”
“Luck!” choked Eny. “What do you mean? What are you talking about?”
“You poor, silly child!” he laughed, gripping her by both shoulders and almost lifting her off the ground. “He doesn’t work for her! He works for me!”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Broken Trust
“How is that possible?” gasped Eny as Simon took her by the elbow and tugged her gently up the bank toward the mouth of the cave. “I know who he is! I’ve seen him in Madame Medea’s shop. She’s the Morrigu, and he’s one of her slaves! He obeys her like a little puppy dog!”
“Patience, missy,” whispered Simon. “All now mysterious shall be bright at last.”
But once inside the cavern, Eny pulled away and threw herself against the wall near the door, glaring at the little man who cowered in the shadows on the far side of the chamber. “You don’t understand!” she said. “I heard his name in the Sidhe! He’s the brother they don’t talk about! That’s what Rury said! I know what he meant, too, because he told me that some of the Fir Bolg serve her willingly! I’ll bet he took the boat!”
Eochy stepped timidly to the center of the chamber. “True it is,” he said, “that some serve willingly. But others have no choice. Such a one was I. A spy she wanted, to keep watch on the Danaans. She would have destroyed my dun and killed my people. So I went and did her bidding—for their sake.”
“That’s no excuse!” said Eny.
“Excuses,” said Simon, “are of no use. Answers are what’s needed. A way out, a plan of escape.” He folded his arms and inclined his head in Eochy’s direction. “He came to me in Baile Daoine Sidhe, and we devised one. That’s how he started working for me.”
Eny looked from one narrow, craggy face to the other. A haze passed over her eyes and she slid to a sitting position on the floor. “I don’t understand,” she said.
Simon gave her a wink. “Do you know what a double agent is, missy?”
She stared and nodded slowly. But Eochy clapped his hands and jigged from one foot to the other.
“The worm turns!” he almost sang. “The spy spies on his mistress!”
Simon laughed. “And a good job he makes of it too! He’s the reason I’m here. I had a notion of what John Izaak was up to, but the Morrigu knew far more than I did. Eochy told me everything. I came on his advice, and I saw at once that giants were in the land. But until this moment I had no idea that she was in Santa Piedra herself. She must be close to uncovering the secret.”
“Close!” exclaimed Eochy. He hopped over to Eny and leaned down until his nose was nearly touching hers. “This is how close she is! And it is what she hopes, that the prize will soon be falling into her hands. Exactly where and when, she has not yet guessed. But Lia Fail is near, and she knows it.”
“Not just near,” said Simon quietly. “It is found.”
The little man’s mouth fell open, and he dropped to his knees.
“Yes,” Simon added. “In St. Halistan’s Church. On the tower stairs.”
“Great Rindail!” cried Eochy, clasping his hands above his head. “So it is! So it must be! I see it all now! But if this is true, she’ll soon be knowing! If not by the crow, then by the son of Izaak—your young gentleman friend.”
“Morgan?” said Eny. “I don’t believe it!”
“Believe what you like. He cares not for my warnings. Already he is deeper in her snares than he supposes. But however it is with him, you must realize that the Morrigu will stop at nothing to keep the Stone from crossing the sea. Nothing! That is why Falor, the great galumphing oaf, has taken your boat. She knew about it! She suspected how it might be used! From this point out, her accursed bird will be watching all your doings with an unsleeping eye. If, as you say, the Stone is found, then I fear she will soon be making off with it to her fortress under the ground.”
Eny sat listening to all of this with her head between her knees. Slowly a great heaviness descended upon her, as if a hundred-pound yoke of iron had been laid across her shoulders. Simon and Eochy seemed to feel it too, for they both fell silent. For a long time there was no sound inside the Cave of the Hands except the pounding of the waves on the shore and a ceaseless drip at the back of the cavern. After a while, dimly curious about the source of that interminable trickle, Eny lifted her head and opened her eyes. A faint light was welling up between the two boulders in the far corner of the chamber.
“Look!” she shouted. “It’s the tunnel! The portal is opening again!”
Simon followed her gaze. “I believe you’re right, missy!” he said.
Then came the dawning of another light—this time inside her mind. “The Fir Bolg!” she cried. “They could help us! One of their little skin currachs wouldn’t be enough, but think what we could do with a whole bunch of them! We could float Lia Fail to the Green Island on a huge cushion of leather bags!”
Eochy looked mournful. “Boats and bags they have indeed,” he said, “but not for me. I think you know they won’t be hearing my appeals!”
Eny scrambled to her feet and pushed the little man toward the tunnel entrance. “They’ll listen to me!” she said as the light strands entwined her arms and legs like the tendrils of a luminescent vine. “This is my chance to help them win their freedom! Come on, Simon! Let’s go!”
When Morgan woke in the morning, there was nothing left of his midnight dream but a thin, lingering fragrance. But that residue, vague as it was, had power to drive his thoughts and direct his actions.
I don’t care what the others think, he told himself over breakfast, hardly knowing what he said or why he said it. It’s shameful to waste a thing like that—to just take it and throw it into the sea! Nothing good can come of that!
After eating, he went early to St. Halistan’s Church, rustled up a few boxes, and removed his father’s alchemical books from the tower lab. Once the entire collection was safe under his bed, he grabbed his backpack, jumped on his bike, and headed off to school.
It was always difficult to concentrate on schoolwork during the final weeks of the semester, but today he found it impossible to corral his scattered and wandering thoughts. All day long they went bounding from horizon to horizon across the jumbled plain of his inner mindscape, spinning and looping through the aftermath of the previous night’s cataclysmic visions. As a result, he failed a pop vocabulary quiz and missed six words, including magnanimity and renunciation, on a spelling test. When asked to name one of Shakespeare’s plays, he answered “Medea.” He told his math teacher that the first two steps to solving a geometry problem were “distillation and calcination.” He dropped three fly balls in right field before the gym coach finally sent him to the bench. Everywhere he went he heard the deafening roar of Lia Fail. Everywhere he turned, his eyes were blinded by the light of Jacob’s Ladder. And through the midst of all these confusing mental pictures, like a thread through a string of beads, ran the single most disturbing image of all: the face of his mother, wan and hollow-cheeked, crowned by a halo of thin, wispy hair.
By the time the final bell rang he knew exactly what he had to do. Stuffing his dirty gym clothes and a few books into his backpack, he slammed his locker and ran directly to the bike racks without speaking to a single soul. While unlocking his bike, he caught sight of Eny. She was standing just outside the fence, and she seemed to be waiting for someone. But he didn’t call out to her, and he didn’t let her see that he was there. Once outside the gate, he rode as fast as he could straight down the hill to Front Street and Old Towne.
Madame Medea’s shop looked strangely forlorn and barren as he leaned his bike against a post and stepped in under the squeaky, swinging signboard. Far out over the ocean a thick gray line of fog lay like a sleeping serpent on the horizon. Gulls screamed in the distance and a stiff shoreward breeze ruffled the choppy swells just beyond the foam. Morgan looked up and saw the White Hand swaying in the wind. He felt as if it were motioning to him—whether beckoning him closer or waving him off he did not know. It didn’t really matter in either case. He had already made up his mind what he was going to do.
He walked up to the door and found it standing aja
r. The little bell tinkled softly as he touched the handle and pushed it open. It was very dark inside—dark, silent, and empty. There was no little man on the threshold to greet him or scold him or shoo him away. There was no crow perched above the signboard to screech or caw or clack its beak at him. There was no giant lurking in the shadows, no Baxter Knowles emerging from a neighboring storefront to frighten him off. There was nothing but a soft ripple of harp music and a faint flicker of flame at the rear of the shop, back behind the dusty display cases and the ramshackle shelves of bottles and jars.
Slowly he made his way down one of the cluttered aisles, bumping into things that rattled or jangled in the darkness, keeping his eyes fixed on the guttering yellow candle at the end of the row. On every side of him the endless ranks of brass tubing, glass globes, and copper pans flashed uncertainly in the intermittent glow. He could see her clearly now, sitting beside one of the café tables, just in front of the screen of shimmering wooden beads, the light of the taper glimmering palely on the wire strings and polished pillar of the harp. The tune she played was gentle, soothing, and familiar, though he could not think of its name. He walked straight up to her and bowed stiffly.
“I have something to tell you,” he said.
Madame Medea played on until the tune came to an end. When she looked up at him, it was with an expression of bland disinterest.
“Where is your friend?” she said coldly. “Didn’t I tell you not to come back without her?”
“You don’t understand!” said Morgan. “I’ve brought the news you’ve been waiting to hear!” So violently was his heart pounding that he found it difficult to speak. He closed his eyes and clenched his fists to keep himself from trembling. When he spoke again, his voice was not much more than a whisper. “The Stone of Destiny has been found!”
