From across the field, the bodyguard had his gaze fixed on us. Pearl had approached him and stretched out her neck across the wall. Any fool could have seen she wanted him to scratch between her ears, but the man did not seem to understand.
“I know less about Mac Dara than my parents do, Lord Cruinn, since I have been away from Sevenwaters ten years. I don’t think he has acted out of any particular malice toward you or your men. His intention is to force my father into action.” I hesitated. It was not for me to tell Cruinn about Cathal, or mention Ciarán’s hope that Mac Dara’s son would return to Sevenwaters and challenge his father. “He abducted my little brother when he was a baby,” I said. “My sister and her husband went to the Otherworld to get
Finbar back. It’s not talked about much; people find such stories hard to believe. But it proves that people do sometimes come home safely from that other place. Finbar was only an infant. And he is fine now.” Fine outwardly, at least.
“If I knew,” Cruinn murmured, “if I knew where they were and how to find them, I would go to the ends of the earth to bring them back. The others were all killed. I’m forced to ask myself why these last three would be any different.”
Since I had no good answer to that, I held my tongue.
“You said,
force your father into action
. What action?”
“My lord, you should speak to him about that. I don’t believe Father would want me to be the one to explain it to you. Though I am a daughter of the household, I am new here. In many ways I am more stranger than family.”
Instead of replying, Cruinn offered me his arm, something men seldom did.
“Thank you,” I said. “You love horses; I can see that.”
“My wife used to say I should have been a groom, not a chieftain,” Cruinn said as we went out the gate. “I believe she was joking, but there was truth in the jest. My boys are fine riders. Our stables are something of a passion. Not that it means much now. Nothing seems important anymore. Only them. Only finding them.” He looked back at Swift. “Thank you for allowing me to do that,” he said very quietly, and if I had not known he was an Uí Néill chieftain, which meant he was second only to the High King in power, I would have thought him overtaken by a bout of shyness. “And for listening to me. You’re a kind girl.” Still awkward, he bent to stroke Bear rather than look me in the eye. “Who’s a fine boy?” he murmured. “Who’s a good boy, then?” Badger crowded in, uncharacteristically, making sure he got his share of attention. The two of them had been quick enough to recognize Cruinn’s affinity with animals, even if their initial greeting to him had looked more like an attack.
“Lord Sean’s on his way back, my lord.” The bodyguard had spotted my father walking down from the druids’ dwelling house, with Luachan on one side and Finbar on the other. Luachan was
holding forth, gesturing as he illustrated some point; Finbar and Father were both smiling.
“A lucky man,” Cruinn said, straightening. “A man with a son who walks by his side, safe and well. I did not understand the worth of that when my boys were children.”
“I often tell myself, there is no point in wishing certain things had not happened. We can’t change what has been, only do our best with what is to come.” After a moment I added, “I don’t mean any discourtesy, my lord. It is simply something I have often found helpful, since I have had some cause to feel sorry for myself over the years.”
“Thank you, Maeve. I understand the wisdom in that, but find myself unable to be philosophical. Instead I am angry and bitter. Above all, I am overshadowed by the fear that I will find them as you found poor Niall: a moment too late.”
“I wish I could have saved him.” I would never forget watching the light go out in his eyes. I would always remember that I had not managed to speak to him before he died.
“You were there,” was all Cruinn said. “You witnessed his last breath. In death, he was not alone.”
Scant comfort, I thought, if the dying man did not know I was by his side. But perhaps he had sensed it in the moment before his last breath left him. I hoped very much that this was so. I found myself possessed by a powerful, and entirely inappropriate, urge to rush off and find Tiernan, Artagan and Daigh all by myself, and ordered myself to stop being a complete fool. I was behaving as Bear or Badger might once have done, racing off the track at the first sniff of a scent. The conclusion to the sorry tale of the Disappearance must come through Mac Dara, Cathal, the Otherworld. It involved a sorcerous prince, a senior druid and a pair of chieftains. An impulsive girl with useless hands was not likely to make much of a difference.
Some days had passed since Cruinn’s visit to the nemetons, when the chieftain of Tirconnell had surprised me with his openness. I
was at the back of the cottage, watching as Bear and Badger chewed through a strip of linen Finbar had tied between two benches at my request.
“They’re getting much better at it,” my brother commented.
He was right; with rigorous training and daily practice, both Bear and Badger had learned to chew through bonds of linen, leather and woven straw in turn. It had been hard work, but necessary, since I’d never be able to untie knots on my own. With my mind on that man Niall and his hideous, suspended death, I’d resolved that since I could not rescue someone who was tied up, I’d make sure Bear and Badger could do it for me.
“Maeve.”
“Mm?”
“If someone really was tied up, it would be much harder. How could Bear and Badger bite through the rope without biting the person?”
“I’m not sure how we could teach them that,” I admitted. “Perhaps you can work out a way.”
“I could tie you up,” Finbar suggested.
“It might be better if you tied the rope around something else. Shall we try it now?”
We did so. Bear and Badger obediently freed two turnips, a stool and a bag of flour from their bonds. I knew in my heart that it was most unlikely I would ever have to put their new skill to real use. There might be three men still missing, but the odds of my being the one to find them were slim indeed, and Mac Dara’s method of dealing with the lost men had been different in each case. Why had he devised such bizarre endings for them? Simply to entertain himself? I shuddered to imagine what the fey prince might try next.
Later, we took the turnips over to Pearl, since they were no longer at their best. While the goat picked at them, we leaned on the wall watching Swift frisk around the field, as graceful as a swallow and perfectly at ease. He seemed a different creature from the nervous, fearful horse we had brought to Sevenwaters. I found myself hoping Father would give him to Cruinn after all. The journey might be hard for him, but I knew Swift would be well loved in that stable.
“Maeve,” said Finbar in a tone I knew well. A difficult question was coming.
“Mm?”
“Have you ever seen…When you go walking in the forest, do you ever…No, it doesn’t matter.”
“Have I ever seen what?” I wasn’t going to let this go. His hesitancy troubled me. This was not the first time I had wondered if he was afraid. “Are you thinking of Mac Dara and his kind? You do know you’re safe here in the nemetons, don’t you? Luachan must have explained that.”
“Not Mac Dara. The other ones, the good ones.”
“Do you mean the Lady of the Forest? The Fair Folk? Aren’t they all gone now, Finbar? That’s what Uncle Ciarán told me, and it’s what most people believe. The way he said it, they sailed into the west, never to return.”
“They might not be gone. Not all of them.” Finbar’s little face was fierce with the will to make it true. To banish the bad things and restore the good.
I could not bring myself to explain that Ciarán had made it clear the good ones were all departed, and that if anyone knew about such things, it would be him. “I can’t say, Finbar. I suppose there are still all manner of folk living in the Sevenwaters forest, even though people don’t see them as often as they once did.” I was sure I could remember strange beings floating in sunbeams or dancing among cobwebs; I thought I recalled distant winged presences that were neither birds nor insects. But perhaps that had only been a child’s imagination.
“You might meet one of them one day.” Finbar’s tone was grave as an old sage’s. “You might be walking down the path and there she would be, just like the old days. What would you do?”
“Probably turn and run,” I said with a grimace. “What about you?”
“Why would you run?”
“I was joking,” I said. “I simply meant that with the search taking place all over the forest, I might not be inclined to trust anyone straightaway, even if that person appeared to be…a beautiful
goddess. Or one of the Tuatha De, the good ones.” This was an odd conversation.
“Of course, being beautiful does not make a person good.” Finbar had evidently thought about this, or had been taught it.
“And being ugly does not make a person bad,” I said, feeling my mouth twist. “I know that lesson very well, Finbar.”
He turned his gaze on me, and in his clear eyes I saw myself as he saw me, a beloved sister, perfect in every way. I saw that he had no idea what I meant.
“You’re the best brother in all Erin, Finbar,” I said.
“How do you know that? You only have one brother.”
“I know it the way dogs know things. Inside. In my heart.”
“That’s good,” Finbar said. “I can’t say you’re the best sister, even if it is true, because I have lots of sisters and it would not be right to say any of them was the best.”
“Very tactful of you,” I commented. “I think Rhian may have that nut cake ready by now. I can smell it from here. Shall we go and see?”
Luachan was busy with his fellow druids—he had not explained what he was doing, but I imagined he needed time for prayer and study—so Finbar was with Rhian and me for the whole afternoon. We sat in the cottage awhile enjoying Rhian’s baking. Bear and Badger got a generous share, since their cooperation in the biting experiment had earned them a treat. When we were finished, I gave Rhian leave to walk up to the keep with some cake for Emrys and Donal, bidding her be sure to get home before dark. I’d have been happier if she had not been alone, but I knew she wanted to see Emrys, and the path was considered safe. Rhian, in her turn, was more willing to leave me if I had Finbar to act as my hands.
We lingered awhile before the fire, my brother and I, on the floor with the dogs. I sat with my back against the bench; Bear was asleep, his big head resting on my knee. Finbar sat cross-legged, staring into the flames. Badger stretched out on the mat with one eye half-open.
“Can I tell you a story?” Finbar asked.
“I’d like that.”
“Are you sure? It has a fire in it.”
After a moment I said, “All right.”
“Once there was a great forest, and in the heart of the forest there lived a white dragon. You know how dragons live in caves and breathe flame? This dragon could breathe fire all right, but she didn’t like dark caves, so she lived on a high hill in a grove of oak trees. This was a dragon who loved the light.”
My brother paused as if thinking out the next part of his saga. I could hear that he already had a druid’s gift for storytelling, and I sat quiet, waiting for him to go on. Bear’s head was heavy on my knees; he was sunk deep in his dreams.
“The white dragon watched over all the smaller creatures of the forest and kept them from harm. So it went for a hundred years, two hundred years and more. Then the dragon grew old and tired. One day when the birds and mice and squirrels went up the hill at daybreak, they found that she had flown away. All that was left was the warm hollow under the oaks that had been her resting place.
“That made the animals sad. Now there was nobody to protect them from hunters, or keep them warm in winter, or listen when they squeaked and chirped out their little tales. But life went on. They learned to manage without their white dragon. Until one day, when the small creatures came out from their roosts and their burrows and their hollows, they found that a new dragon had come to watch over the forest: a dragon black as night.”
Finbar paused for dramatic effect.
“What happened next?” I asked.
“The black dragon didn’t make his home on the hill, but down in the shadowy depths of the forest, out of reach of both sunlight and moonlight. He hunted by night and slept by day, curled around the roots of a great oak. All the other creatures were afraid of him. He didn’t look after them the way the white dragon had. When they dared to come close, he burned them with his fiery breath or crushed them to splinters.
“The black dragon ate up all the larger creatures of the forest:
badger, wolf, wildcat. Hunters didn’t come there anymore, because there was nothing left to hunt.”
Morrigan’s curse! My brother had a dark imagination.
“Under the black dragon’s rule, the peaceful forest became a place of fear and flight. Nobody came in; nobody went out. The little creatures lived in terror for their lives. They were too scared to look for food; too scared to leave their young ones in the nest. Surely they would all die. The age of the black dragon was dark indeed.”
Finbar looked at me as if concerned that his story might be upsetting me. “Shall I go on?” he asked.
I nodded, wondering if this was indeed a story of his own invention, or something he had discovered during his studies with Luachan. Part of becoming a druid, I seemed to remember, was memorizing a vast body of lore, including ancient tales. This might be one of those, retold in Finbar’s own words. I suspected it was not.
“You might think, Maeve, that the story ends with all the creatures dying and only the black dragon left. But that wasn’t what happened. One night the black dragon thought,
I am master of this whole forest and all that lives in it, except for that one hill where the white dragon used to hold court. That hill should be mine. I will go there and claim it.
“Of course, there was nothing much on the hill. Only a few oak trees. But the white dragon had left something behind: her spies, a flock of doves that nested in the shelter of the trees.”
“Wouldn’t they have died long ago?” I asked. “The white dragon had been gone years and years, hadn’t she?”