She opened her eyes.
‘I’m fine,’ she sighed. Aisha took an instinctive step back.
‘You look…’ She frowned worriedly. ‘Different.’
The queue of shoppers stared at Faye, but she accepted their gaze steadily.
‘I am different,’ she said. ‘And I never knew how different, until now.’
Chapter Thirty-Three
On her foraging walk, Faye avoided Rav’s modern house by the sea, careful also to skirt the faerie path that ran alongside the house. That wasn’t why she was here; she was staying in the ordinary world for now.
She was pretty certain there was no-one home anyway – the house looked deserted, so she followed her usual path down to the beach. Some things could be collected here: small shells to include in the readymade spell bags she sold alongside the Mistress of Magic incense; small spells that could still be remarkably effective. Feathers, too; she picked up a few small grey feathers belonging to sea birds, and one black crow’s feather.
Walking along the land way to give a wide berth to the faerie path up the hill to the right, she filled a bag with sea buckthorn berries, intending to dry some for incense and make some into the tart jam she liked. She filled another half-bag with lovage and one with orache, which was better than spinach to eat. Pine was everywhere: she used it in incenses for purification and divination. Faye could never forage without remembering Grandmother; the way she taught Faye which plants could be eaten, which berries could be dried and burnt, like hawthorn and rosehip; which looked tasty but were poisonous, like the red yew berries that covered the trees in the churchyard so prettily every year. For an hour or more, Faye lost herself in her foraging, taking pleasure in the small finds along the familiar ways she had trod since girlhood.
As evening came, she turned and followed the coast path back to Black Sands. The pull of faerie was strong now; more insistent than it had been before. Faye recognised the familiar call in her blood as her gaze settled on the faerie pathway outside Rav’s house again, and, clearer than before, she found she could see the fae twisting and running along it in their chaotic way.
In the old faerie stories, humans sometimes had their eyelids anointed with a faerie balm that meant they could see faeries in the ordinary world, but this seldom turned out to be a good thing. Faye remembered one story where a cunning woman had taken the balm and put it on her eyes herself rather than the faeries doing it. She had delighted in being able to see the faeries play their tricks on the unknowing humans, until the fae realised she could see what they were doing and struck her blind.
What did it mean if she was half-faerie and half-human? Would the fae take some kind of revenge on her for being able to go in and out of their kingdom at will? For being able to see them in the ordinary world? Or did it mean she was blessed in ways she was yet to discover?
‘I thought you’d be at the shop,’ Rav’s voice broke into her stream of consciousness.
‘Oh. Hi.’ She felt the same sense of coming home when she looked at him as she had before; that there was some unarguable rightness about Rav that made her feel at ease, whatever the situation. Ease wasn’t a feeling she associated with Finn, but she resolved not to think about him in Rav’s presence. With Rav she was a real woman with a real life, and he desired her for who she was.
There was an uncomfortable silence.
‘I’ll leave you to it.’ He turned away to walk back to his house.
‘Rav… please. Don’t go,’ she pleaded, reaching for his hand.
‘I didn’t think you wanted to talk to me. See me. Return my messages?’ Under his cold tone, he was hurt; Faye could feel it, and her heart twisted with sorrow.
‘I do want to. It’s just been…’ she sighed, not knowing what to say.
‘You don’t have to explain,’ he stopped walking, but refused to meet her eyes. ‘I thought we had something, but I understand if you don’t feel the same way.’
‘We do. We did. There’s a connection here, between us, Rav. But…’ She bit her lip and looked away, unsure what to say.
There were some black clouds coming in, far off on the horizon. Rav nodded to them.
‘Black horses coming. Better head in,’ he said.
‘That’s a strange expression.’ She was grateful for the change of subject; she sensed that he wanted to stay, to talk to her, and that was something.
‘Oh. Is it? My mum used to say it about a storm. Like white horses in the sea.’
‘I haven’t heard it,’ she laid her hand on his arm. ‘Look. Can we talk?’
‘Sure.’ Rav met her eyes with a direct but kind stare; he didn’t make any move to either remove her hand or put his own hand on top of hers.
‘Okay. So… I’m sorry. About not answering your texts, about being distant. There is a reason, but it’s… it’s hard to explain.’
‘So what are we going to talk about if you can’t explain anything?’ He shrugged and pulled his arm away from her hand. ‘Seems to me that you think you want to talk, but maybe you just want to sleep with me and not call me after. It’s cool. Whatever.’
‘No! That’s not it.’ she said, firmly, and Rav raised an eyebrow.
‘I mean to say, obviously, I did enjoy… that. I would like something with you, Rav. I just… I just… can’t, right now.’
‘Like I said, whatever.’ He turned and started walking away. ‘I’ll see you round, Faye. Let me know when you’ve worked out what it is you want.’
The storm clouds were growing nearer; the air was changing. Now it had an electric smell like burnt ozone. Fear contracted Faye’s body; she didn’t want to lose Rav. Someone warm, funny, kind, who listened to her, who had wanted her, without conditions. Her heart ached, and suddenly she was sick of all her secrets. She knew she had to open up to Rav. To tell him everything.
She ran the few steps between them and made him turn around, back to her.
‘Please. I will explain. Everything. Just listen.’ She reached up to his face and touched his cheek. His eyes met hers again, and she dropped her hand.
‘Faye, I don’t know…’ he muttered, and a distant thunder rumbled in the distance. ‘I don’t want to get involved if you’re going to mess me around. I like you too much.’
She nodded.
‘You’re right. I’m sorry.’ She turned to go. This was stupid; she hadn’t planned to see Rav, and his presence was confusing. She liked being around him, but she knew that even speaking to him was dangerous. He deserved better than that.
He caught her arm.
‘Don’t go,’ he murmured, turning her back to him and stepping close to her. He pulled her to him and stroked her cheek. ‘Why does it have to be difficult? I like you and you like me. I think you do, anyway.’
‘You know I do,’ she confessed, her tone urgent. ‘But I’ve got something to tell you. It’s going to sound really strange. But I have to, I think.’
He pressed his finger softly to her lips.
‘Tell me later. All I care about is that you like me.’
‘I have to tell you, Rav. It’s important. Please?’ she insisted, fighting the desire to kiss him, to lose herself in him. It would be terribly dangerous, a kiss; the faeries had watched them make love on the beach before. This close to the faerie road, any number of Finn’s spies might be watching, or even Finn himself.
‘Fine.’ His lips brushed hers, and Faye felt the heat between them build. ‘But…’
He kissed her. It was a sweet yet rough and wanting kiss; his mouth was warm and she could feel her own deep yearning for him respond.
She closed her eyes and surrendered to it, unable to do anything else, despite the danger. His hands held the small of her back; his touch was at once intimate and gentlemanly, and she breathed in his warm, woody smell, remembering how he touched her, how cherished he had always made her feel, even in their short time of knowing each other.
The thunder had moved quickly, and the kiss brought on the rain, or so it seemed. The blac
k sky rumbled ominously and lightning split it like slivers of moonlight, even though it shouldn’t have been dark yet. Rav pulled away from the kiss; they both stared up at the storm for a brief moment, startled at its speed, and Faye felt a wave of unease clutch her heart.
‘God. Come on, we’ll get drenched,’ he shouted over the thunder and guided her down the path towards the beach, but the rain came down hard and there was no escaping it.
Faye’s gaze flickered to the faerie road alongside Rav’s house: there was something odd happening. As she followed him, ducking her head under her arm in a vain attempt to keep off the rain, some of the black clouds had lowered to the path itself, disconnected from the sky, like a stray, angry storm-cloud, separated from the rest.
And at the same time, the seawater rose in tall waves and crashed onto the beach; when Faye looked into the waves, she saw the shapes of horses surging forward, relentless, driving the white sea spray in front of their glassy black manes. Her breath caught in her mouth. No.
She saw the power in their legs, which was the weight that drove the waves forward and rolled underneath them. Faye knew the power of the waves at Abercolme; knew from experience how, if you tried to wade out in a storm, they would throw you off your feet in seconds; how the cutting cold water would freeze your limbs in less than a minute, rendering you immobile; how the scorn of the water would choke you with salt and pummel your skin with sharp stones, taking your blood as a sacrifice in the water. And she knew what the horses were, and why they had come.
She could see the fae on the pathway, who seemed unbothered by the abrupt change in weather. But the black cloud, if that was what it was, pulsed in and out of sight around them; tall, bigger than most of the fae which varied in size as they had before.
Rav started running ahead. He turned back to wave something at her, but she couldn’t make it out. He shouted something, but the wind took it away. He pointed to his house. She took it to mean he was going to open up so she could run straight in. She screamed at him, run, run, but he was too far away to hear her over the wind and the crashing waves.
Unlike her, Rav couldn’t see the fae or the faerie road. He was completely ignorant of the strangeness ahead of him. And the cloudy blackness was so close to the house that Faye started running after him, a shout growing in her throat, No, no, no!
The shadow struggled and flailed as if it was caught; it darkened and lightened, coming in and out of focus. And Faye watched, aghast, as the black water horses – kelpies, like the one she had ridden under the water from the crystal castle back to Glitonea – rode out of the sea towards Rav with a white fire in their eyes.
She started running, then, but the kelpies were faster. They galloped towards where Rav was standing with his back to the sea, fumbling for his door keys. Their serpent tails powered them along, swishing side to side in the wet sand.
‘Rav!’ she shouted, but he couldn’t hear her over the rolling of the thunder and a screaming sound that came with the wind and the rain. ‘Rav! No!’
He hadn’t seen them; perhaps he couldn’t.
Faye wanted to scream at him to run, run away as fast as he could from the kelpies, but she knew he would never be able to outrun them.
Rav turned around just at the moment that the kelpie reared up towards him; its webbed black hoof struck Rav at the side of the head, and he crumpled to the ground. The water horse gripped Rav’s arm with its long teeth and swung him onto its back in one lithe, wet motion. As soon as Rav was on its back, black tethers of some kind lashed him to the horse’s back; running, Faye watched as he struggled but failed to get free.
Faye screamed at the kelpies to free Rav, but they showed no evidence of having heard her. She felt the betrayal slap her in the face; she had ridden a kelpie, she had taken its leathery scale as a token of her communion with it, under the sea. And yet, that meant nothing now. She had had some power within faerie, but it seemed that was inconstant and fleeting.
‘Rav!’ Faye yelled again, panting with the effort of trying to catch up to the kelpie, but it was as though she was running on wet sand. Small butterfly-like faeries crowded her, trying to obscure her sight. Mad Rav, sad Rav! Gone Rav, glad Rav! Bye, Rav! Bye, Rav! they sang cruelly to her. She batted them away angrily.
‘Leave me alone!’ she shouted, but they ignored her, and the kelpie galloped away, along the faerie road and over the headland. The rain pelted her mercilessly; she was drenched already.
‘Stop, please stop!’ she shouted, trying to run, but no-one was listening to her, and the wet sand underfoot grabbed at her, refusing anything other than a fast walk. From the side of the road, tendrils crept out and wound around her ankles; grinning faces appeared on the buds and flowers of plants she could not identify. She shook them off, tearing at their leaves desperately as she tried to run, and failed.
By the time Faye had reached the headland and gone on to the gates to the labyrinth, Rav and the kelpie had disappeared.
Gasping for breath, she looked expectantly at the same two bearded gnomes that had let her in the first time.
‘I need to enter the labyrinth,’ she said, her breath ragged. ‘My… my friend… has been taken,’ she panted, trying to catch her breath and failing.
‘She didn’t say the magic word, did she?’ the gnome on the left said to the one on the right.
‘Nope,’ said the gnome on the right. He looked up at her expectantly.
‘Password,’ he said, seriously.
‘I don’t have a password,’ Faye snapped. ‘I’m the king’s lover. I am sidhe-leth, half-fae. I don’t need one. Let me in, quickly. I command it!’ she said, feeling the now-familiar lassitude of being in Finn’s kingdom cover her, but she fought against it and held on to her panic at Rav’s abduction into faerie.
‘Ooooh. She commands us!’ the gnome on the left smirked.
‘Password,’ the other gnome said again. ‘Orders from Up High. Even half-humans got to give the password or be locked out.’
‘Well, I don’t know the password!’ Faye shouted. ‘Just let me in! There must have been some mistake.’
‘No need to shout,’ said the gnome on the right, looking affronted.
‘But… but I need to get in. That horse kidnapped my friend! My human friend. Please.’ She knelt down in front of them and looked beseechingly at them both, but they avoided her gaze. ‘Please. For me. I’ll… I’ll see you’re richly rewarded.’
Faye had no idea what she was saying or indeed how she would be able to reward anything in the faerie kingdom, but she was desperate. The gnomes conferred between each other and the one on the left pointed to the silver pentagram ring she wore on her right hand; it had been Moddie’s.
‘We’ll have that. Give us that and you can come in,’ he said, stroking his beard. ‘But you can’t tell anyone we let you in. Say it was an accident. You just woke up in the labyrinth. They believe that sometimes.’
‘It was my mother’s,’ Faye appealed to the gnomes. ‘Have a heart.’
The gnome on the left pursed his lips.
‘We want it, or you don’t come in,’ he repeated.
‘Fine. Yes. Have it!’ she pulled the silver ring off with some difficulty – she hadn’t taken it off for years – and threw it on the ground between the gnomes. Sorry, Moddie, she thought. I’ll wear another one to remind me of you, I promise.
‘No need to be in such a hurry,’ the slightly fatter gnome on the right bent down with some difficulty and retrieved it from the gravelly ground. ‘Humans are so rude. I’ve never been to the human world and I don’t want to, I’ll tell you that for nothing,’ he grumbled.
‘Oh, whatever!’ Faye muttered as both gnomes fumbled with a heavy lock on the labyrinth doors. ‘Hurry up!’
The doors creaked open slowly, needing both gnomes to push them, and Faye barged through them. Yet, this time, the labyrinth loomed dark in front of her, reaching away into blackness. Faye stopped in her tracks.
‘I can’t see anything!’ She
turned to the gnomes, who were shutting the gates behind her; the last shards of the strange golden light of the entry to faerie narrowed to a crack, threatening to plunge her into oblivion. ‘Please! Stop!’ She ran back, putting her hands in the crack of the gate as it closed, trying to hold them apart. ‘I can’t see! I need light! Please, I’ll be trapped in here!’ she cried, but the doors closed and she had to pull her fingers out to avoid them being crushed. Faye heard the gnomes chuckling as the lock turned, and complete quiet and darkness suffocated her.
‘No light for traitors, miss,’ one of their voices called. ‘King’s orders.’
Chapter Thirty-Four
Before, the labyrinth had opened to her like a rose; now, it clutched at her with branches and tendrils and refused to let her go.
Faye groped ahead of her in the dark, following only by instinct. Dead silence accompanied her concentration; the only sounds were her jagged breath and occasional cries of frustration as she met one dead end and then another. The stream of faeries of all sizes that had swarmed around her before, treading on her toes, singing, dancing, rolling and fighting, were gone. It was as though she was alone in the world.
‘Help! Please, someone, help me!’ she called out, but there was no reply. ‘Finn! Finn, I command you to hear me!’ she called in vain, but she knew there would be no answer. He had taken Rav, of that she was certain, and abandoned her here to the labyrinth; locked her in like any mortal woman. As a punishment; to stop her coming after him.
But she was sidhe-leth.
If I could come through before, then the only thing stopping me now is Finn, she thought. So there’s no point calling on him for help. He’s angry… because Rav kissed me. Jealous.
Daughter of Light and Shadows Page 22
