“It’s her, isn’t it?” pipes a small voice from the thicket.
A chorus of tiny laughs erupts as Puck gives a sharp nod then lets himself drop onto his rump, his left arm still stuck inside the bush.
“Wh-Who’s there?” I ask, wondering if I should get some help.
The laughter starts again, but this time I see the bramble’s lower spines shake, and a small brown mouse appears, its ears almost as big as its fluffy brown belly. With the barest of wheezes, the mouse sits on its haunches to stare more easily up at me, displaying a bright jewel at its throat.
“An ogham!” I let out in surprise.
Another burst of giggling gushes out of the bush.
The sitting mouse nods pridefully, its long whiskers quivering. “They were given to us as a reward for helping out our Lady Danu once,” he says, “and we wear them with pride.”
The mouse shifts slightly, and only then do I notice the pair of translucent wings that adorn his back.
“She is highly magma”—the mouse pauses, nose twitching—“magmamimouse, she is.”
The winged mouse nods again to give weight to its declaration, and the laughter starts anew.
“In any case,” the mouse says with a pointed look behind him, “I hear you may have questions for us?”
“I-I do?”
“Or should I call it a request instead?” The winged mouse’s large eyes sparkle expectantly.
“I’m sorry,” I say, finally releasing Puck from the thorny bush, “but I don’t even know who you are.”
“Of course, how silly of me!”
The mouse jumps up onto its rear paws, then proceeds to give me a sweeping bow that could rival Rip’s, large ears brushing against the snow.
“I am Papillon, longtime follower of the ever-brilliant, kindest-hearted, far-sighted, life-giving, gift-bestowing, mightiest of warriors, the Light Bringer herself!” the mouse proclaims in one breath. “At your service.”
Puck grins at me beatifically, as if this is the best thing that could have happened to me.
“Uh, pleased to meet you,” I mumble, still baffled.
“Now that we have been properly introduced, feel free to ask me anything you’d like to know,” the mouse says excitedly. “I promise that you will not owe me a thing for it!”
The bush’s lower branches quiver, and a second mouse rolls into view, its emerald wings fluttering until it comes to a stop before Papillon.
With a delighted hop, Puck flattens himself to the ground so he can be eye to eye with the two small Fey creatures, ruffling their fur with every snorting breath of his.
“Don’t be all hoity-toity, Pap,” the new mouse squeaks, smoothing her russet coat. “The girl has obviously no idea what you’re talking about, and the more turns you take around the pot, the likelier it is the Master of this Demesne will feel our presence.”
Papillon sniffs disdainfully. “He is not the ultimate ruler. He cannot order us around, when we serve a mightier liege.”
The russet mouse looks down her nose at Papillon. “How quickly your tune changes when he is here,” she retorts, the small ogham at her neck scintillating brightly against her fur with every syllable.
The giggling from the scrubs resumes, louder.
“You’re saying that you’re here on behalf of Danu?” I ask tentatively, and both mice nod at once. “And that you’re willing to answer any question I may have?”
“Correct.”
“And you’ll be able to answer?”
“The thing is, miss,” the russet mouse says, “our size makes people easily disregard us.”
“Not that we ever pry,” Papillon chimes in quickly.
“But our ears are also made to catch the smallest sound, and voices—even whispered—tend to carry.”
The two of them have just admitted that they’re spies. Spies who do not want Lugh to catch them. Which makes them doubly suspicious.
But Fey cannot lie, not outright, I remind myself, and Puck seems to trust them. So their claim to have come from this elusive Danu must be true. But why would this Fey Lady want to talk to me now? Unless…
Could it be that this powerful Danu might want to help me out? I shake my head. Don’t be stupid, Morgan, I tell myself. This Danu could very well have waited until I was vulnerable, away from any protection, to bait me into a trap.
I glance back down at the two flying mice’s guileless eyes.
“OK,” I say, tapping my chin thoughtfully, “let’s start with something easy. How can we defeat Carman’s dragon?”
Papillon opens his mouth to answer, then his shoulders slump. “I’m afraid we do not know that,” he says.
“Can Lady Vivian be revived?” I ask instead.
“We do not know that either,” Papillon replies, looking more dejected.
“Then how about Carman’s next move?” I ask. “I know she wants to free Balor, but what does she need to finally free him? More bloodshed?”
Papillon’s face looks positively glum. “We do not know.”
I grimace in disappointment. “Not much use, are you?”
“Why don’t you ask us about things we actually know instead?” the russet mouse retorts. “Like why Arthur had your picture with him all these years, or who wants to kill you in your sleep, or why the One-Eyed one has gone back on his word not to kill just so he can protect you.”
One-Eyed one? Are they talking about Lugh again? I eye the two Fey suspiciously.
“Well, it’s been very nice meeting you,” I say, getting ready to leave, “but you’re evidently talking to the wrong girl.”
“We do not have the wrong person,” Papillon bristles, “you look just like her! There’s no chance at all we wouldn’t recogmice Her Wisestness’s own daughter.”
My breath rushes out. “What did you say?” I ask in a choked voice.
“That we cannot be wrong,” Papillon starts.
“No, not that, after.” I swallow audibly. “About my…mother.”
Two pairs of large, liquid eyes blink up at me questioningly.
“You mean you don’t know Danu’s your mother?” Papillon squeaks in surprise.
The russet mouse pushes him away. “Of course not, cheese brain, or she wouldn’t have asked now, would she?” She twitches her dragonfly wings. “Poor thing, to not have known who her mother was all these years. Why, even the idea of Roquefort, Stilton, Taleggio, Brie, and Munster growing up without knowing how much I love them hurts my poor little heart!”
Blood rushes from my face, and I drop back down into the snow. “You mean to say—” I whisper, the wheels in my mind revving up.
“—that her loftiest-minded—” Papillon says.
“—the Fey warrior you mentioned—” I continue.
“—the Light Bringer herself,” Papillon adds with another one of his sharp nods.
“—is my mother.”
“The mighty Danu herself,” the russet mouse finishes.
“But I thought my mother was Lucifer,” I say.
“Lucifer is derived from the Latin Luciferus,” Papillon recites, his whiskers twitching meaningfully, “which means the morning star, Dawn-Bringer, she who delivers the light.”
“And she sent us to you, sweets,” the russet mouse says kindly.
This can’t be real. I must’ve been right earlier—this has got to be a trick of some sort.
A soft breeze suddenly picks up, and I find myself basking in a warm glow, the scent of flowers and sun-ripened fields wafting through the air, surrounding me in a familiar, comforting cocoon. The same force that held me safe when facing Agravain that time he tried to kill me during practice, that shielded me against Carman, that healed me when I tasted death in the harpy’s talons.
A chill snakes its way down my spine. I should’ve known. Deep down, I should’ve known who she was, even if she did abandon me.
“Will you take me to her?” I ask.
“Take you to whom?”
I jump at Lugh’s sudden voi
ce, and look back down, but the two winged mice have disappeared. My throat constricts at the thought of losing what could have been my one chance to meet my birth mother.
“What are you doing?” Lugh asks again.
“Just minding my own business,” I say, more sharply than intended.
Lugh’s jaw tenses, golden eye straying to the verdant bush next to me. “Arthur thought you might need help finding your way back,” he says at last.
I nod silently. Then, bundling Puck into my arms, I stand back up to look at the brooding Fey Lord. A part of me wants to ask him what he knows about Danu, if it’s true she’s my mother, and why she ever abandoned me and my brother.
But Papillon was right about one thing. Lugh’s hiding something from me, and I need to find out what.
Chapter 23
“I’ll have your filthy head for that!”
Oberon’s voice booms out across the circular entrance hall of Lugh’s Oak Tree, making everyone there cower in fear.
“Ease up, Lord Oberon,” I hear Gauvain say, any trace of his usual mirth stamped out. “I am sure she meant no harm.”
I hop onto a narrow staircase made of floating wooden disks to get a better view. Oberon’s fuming, his booted foot forcing a red-headed girl’s face into the floor. The girl lets out a soft whimper, her eyes rolling up beseechingly. I hiss out a breath as I recognize Marianne, the superstitious knight I once helped out at the infirmary.
Across the hall is Gareth is swearing viciously, preventing from joining his cousin by a swarm of pixies. Lightning from his war hammer flashes along the high ceiling, singeing the red oak in long, crooked lines.
Worry coils tighter around the gathered crowd. People and Fey alike are getting restless, and if nobody intervenes, it’s going to turn out into an all-out brawl.
Brow lowered dangerously, Lugh leaves my side and cuts a path straight to the other Fey Lord. I jump off the floating step to follow along, but a shadow moves in front of me, stopping me in my tracks.
“Let Lugh handle it,” Arthur says, grabbing my hand and leading me away.
“But Oberon’s going to kill her,” I say, trying to pull free.
“No, he’s not. Now for once in your life, stay put!”
A part of me wants to punch him. The other, irrational part, is glad Arthur’s talking to me at all after what I said to him earlier, even if it’s to bark angry orders at me.
There’s another thunderous crack, followed by frightened screams. My heart goes still, and Arthur reflexively draws me closer to him, his free hand going up to Excalibur’s hilt.
“Have you calmed down, now?” Lugh’s chocolaty voice speaks up.
My hands unclench from around Arthur’s arm as the tension eases slightly around the room. I can almost hear the collective sigh of relief.
“Will you release the girl?” Lugh asks.
I glance over the crowd at Oberon’s puckered face. “She offended me and my people, she needs to be punished for it,” he says. “I did not join your rebellion just to see these humans subjugate my kind to their whims. We are not slaves.”
“I thought we had a truce,” Gauvain growls menacingly. “The deal was to fight side by side against Carman, and in exchange we promised to stop hunting your people down, just as you promised not to harm any human.”
“Any human on our side,” someone adds.
“I’ve just changed the terms of the contract,” Oberon says, eyes glinting dangerously.
“You know very well that once a word is given—” Lugh starts.
Oberon holds up a large ruby-encrusted ring. “These oghams do not belong to them!” he bellows.
“How else are we to fight, then?” Gauvain asks, his biceps bulging as he crosses his arms.
Oberon’s lips curl up into a smirk. “Why, however your kind managed before.”
“He’s askin’ us to sign our death warrant!’ someone shouts.
“We’ll never survive without the use of EM!” another adds.
“So it’s OK for us to sacrifice ourselves to save your asses, but not the other way around?” Oberon retorts, flaring up again.
From the strained look on his face, I can tell Arthur’s itching to intervene, but he doesn’t leave my side. I don’t know what’s happened, if it’s because he lost the KORT Presidency, or because of what his father’s accused of. But except for our little raiding party, Arthur’s pulled himself away from any leadership position. And I can tell it’s gnawing at him.
“Considering our foes,” Gale says, appearing silently at their sides, “would you agree to our use of oghams when absolutely needed? We do not have the ability to restore all the Fey whose oghams are currently in use. And forcing us to fight the old way on such short notice, without proper training, is signing our own death warrant—no matter how much Nephilim blood flows in our veins.”
There goes that strange word again. Nephilim. I’m apparently not the only one who’s confused by it, as shocked whispers rise among the crowd.
Gale tilts his head to the side with a slight smile. “Although I’m sure that under your guidance,” he adds before Oberon can object, “we would progress towards it much quicker.”
“What say you, Lord Oberon?” Lugh asks, cocking an inquisitive look in Gale’s direction.
Oberon’s mouth snaps shut, as he considers the offer. “We could start with that,” he says slowly, “for I’ll be damned if I ever face that dragon on my own again.”
At long last, he lifts his foot off from Marianne’s face, and Gauvain hurries to help her up. The girl’s face is purple, blood flowing freely from her broken nose, but she’s alive.
“Come,” Arthur says quietly, pulling on my hand again.
He steers me to the wall behind the floating stairs, and presses his foot on a low-hanging conk[18]. The heartwood unfolds outward, like the Apple Tree did back at Lake High, revealing another staircase in the soft light that emanates from thousands of glowworms moving inside the walls themselves.
“What are Nephilim?” I ask as the doorway closes behind us.
“The descendants of humans who procreated with the Fallen Ones,” Arthur says, not letting go of my hand.
“You…you mean other people like me?” I ask.
Arthur nods. “Because of their Fey blood, these Nephilim inherited their holy parents’ powers. But the ability to manipulate the elements got lost over the generations, though the purer bloodlines still exhibit some latent aptitude. A trait some families tried to maintain through inter-marriage.”
I stop dead in my tracks, and Arthur stumbles at the sudden resistance.
“You’re saying there are more knights out there who are like me?” I ask. “More like…Jennifer?”
“We all are, to some extent,” Arthur says carefully.
I shoot him a withering glare. “You’re saying that all these knights who mocked me and treated me like shit because of who my mother is, even tried to have me executed for it, are no better than me?” I take a deep, steadying breath. “How long have you known?”
Arthur looks away. “It has been theorized—”
“I’m not as stupid as Keva makes me sound!” I shout at him. “Why can’t you tell me the truth for once?”
“I am telling the truth,” Arthur says. He closes his eyes, letting out a tired sigh. “Look, I don’t want to fight. Not with you. This theory has been debated for centuries, but fell out of favor during the Renaissance, and it isn’t until recently that it was brought forward again. Jennifer only confirmed my own doubts today.”
His mention of Jennifer only makes my blood boil all the harder. But before I can protest further, Arthur leans against the wall, eyes closed, the glowworms’ diffused light hollowing his cheeks out and deepening the dark smudges beneath his eyes. I find myself unable to look away from him, eyes drinking him in, noting every new bruise, scar and wrinkle on his face, picking out the few white strands catching the light in his brown hair. Harsh imprints left upon him by this war.
And all the anger drains out of me. In the end, what does any of this matter anyway? Arthur’s proven his trust in me over and over again, despite all my slipups, my own doubts, against the judgment of his own parents and friends, and even after I almost had him killed.
My heartbeat picks up at the sudden need to touch him, the desire so strong I forget to breathe. All I want is to hug him tight until he feels better and those deep lines of worry are erased from his forehead.
As if it senses my intent, Excalibur flashes once from its scabbard, and I find myself blinking just inches away from Arthur’s face. With a muffled gasp, I back up into the opposite wall, biting my lip hard. What is wrong with me?
“Percy must’ve known,” Arthur says in the barest of whispers. “I think his berserker mode was his way to access his…abilities.”
Arthur opens his eyes again, and I feel a stab of guilt at the raw emotion spilling from them. If Percy hadn’t been trying to help me, Dub would never have gotten his hands on him.
“Yet he never whispered a word of it to me,” Arthur continues with a self-deprecating chuckle. “So I can’t blame you for feeling the way you do, when I know even my best friend couldn’t trust me.”
“Was Percy’s line, uh, pure then, that he knew how to use his Fey powers?” I ask awkwardly, still unable to coach my heart into a regular beating pattern.
“Not exactly,” Arthur says, eyes lost in his memories. “Not many know this, but that way of fighting only developed after his family was attacked at their home by a Fey servant gone rogue.
“It happened long before he was knighted, and although he never talked much about the event, I think it must have shocked his system into using his own powers.” Arthur squeezes his hands into tight fists, knuckles going white. “That’s what made his parents lose it. They couldn’t bear the thought that their only son was one of them. And so they abandoned him.”
Arthur rakes his hand in his hair, laughing self-deprecatingly.
“And I was never able to do anything to help him,” he adds, voice breaking.
This time, I don’t stop myself. The pain in his voice is too deep, exposing years of pent-up remorse, and finding an echo inside my own chest.
Curse of the Fey: A Modern Arthurian Legend (Morgana Trilogy Book 3) Page 20
