Authors: Jennifer Fallon
‘So get me out of here!’ Brydie shouted, her pleas wasted. Nobody could hear her. But her voice trailed off as she put the pieces together.
The bloodline of RónánDarragh the
Matrarchaí
were so desperate to preserve. Darragh’s ability to disappear in and out of his chamber without using the door. Álmhath speaking of staging accidents to hide the fact that the Undivided were long-lived.
Matrarchaí
midwives smothering newborn babies with pointed ears and cat-slit eyes …
It all added up to one inevitable conclusion, she decided.
The Undivided are not human. They are Faerie.
And I was selected to continue the line
, which means, Brydie realised, not sure how she felt about the revelation,
I am probably mostly Faerie too.
What does that make you, Anwen
? she wondered.
Are you human? Faerie? Or something else entirely?
And why, when she spoke of achieving Partition, did Brydie get the feeling Anwen wasn’t talking about the few old men who sat around the hearth at Temair drinking mead, as they drunkenly fantasised about a world that didn’t rely on the untrustworthy
Tuatha Dé Danann
for their magic?
Cuan Mó
, in every reality Trása had ever visited, was a natural ocean bay dotted with hundreds of sunken drumlins — long, narrow, whale-shaped hills formed of gravel, rock, and clay debris. In the reality where Rónán grew up, they insisted the islands had been formed by the movement of glaciers. Trása had been to another reality where the drumlins were considered unhatched dragon eggs. There was supposed to be an island in the bay for every day of the year, but anybody who could fly over it knew that was a myth. There were barely more than a hundred drumlins.
Still, the bay was impressive, particularly at low tide. Not far from here was, in her own reality, the small village of Breaga.
It was raining when Trása landed in the trees, dropping the parcel she’d carried in her beak. This time she’d fashioned a sling from the torn strip of the sheeting from Ronan’s bed at the Ikushima compound so she could have some clothes to wear, as well as the bacon she needed to bait her trap. It may be necessary to seek out human civilisation in human form, she reasoned, and the temperature was dropping, every day a little cooler than the next. This way she wouldn’t have to waste time looking for something to keep warm.
The trap was simple enough to recreate — it was little more
than a box, made of twigs and leaves. The trap’s effectiveness lay in the enchantment she would cast over it, not its structural integrity. It took Trása less than an hour to fashion an effective trap. It took her a little longer to find a suitable clearing in the forest. Once she found a likely spot, she set the trap, baited it with the bacon and then stood back. She closed her eyes, feeling the powerful magic of this realm swirl around her, she called on the gods Flidais and Tuan MacCarell in the Faerie language of her own realm, to bind the
Leipreachán’s
secret name into the trap. Then she leaned forward and whispered the name over the trap, felt it settle on the fragile structure, stepped back and waited.
Nothing happened. Not that she’d expected it to have an immediate result. While Trása hoped it wouldn’t take much time or effort to catch a
Leipreachán
, the more pragmatic part of her knew better. So after a few moments of silence, the forest disturbed by nothing more than the local wildlife, Trása sat herself down at the base of a large oak tree to wait.
A few moments of the rain dripping on her made her shiver, so she morphed back into her feline form — better something with a fur coat in this weather — and then clawed her way nimbly up the trunk to the nearest broad branch where it was reasonably dry. Then she settled down under the shelter of the leafy canopy, amidst leaves just starting to turn gold with the oncoming autumn, waiting for the right
Leipreachán
to happen by.
Trása had dozed off, her paws tucked under her chest for warmth, when she was woken by the infuriated protestations of a creature caught in her trap. She stared down at it for a moment, her feline curiosity piqued, her human awareness not yet fully engaged. After a moment or two she remembered why she was sitting up in the tree. She rose to her feet, arched her back for a moment, stretching elegantly and luxuriously, and
then made her way down the trunk. Not until she reached the trap, and the outrageously dressed creature trapped inside it, did she transform back into human form.
‘Ye gods!’ the
Leipreachán
cried when he saw her, cowering in the corner of the trap. ‘I be sorry, mistress. I be so sorry …’
‘What have you to be sorry for?’ Trása asked, peering through the twig bars of the trap, relieved he’d spoken to her in the language of the
Tuatha Dé Danann
. It didn’t seem to matter which reality she was in, the
sídhe
spoke the same language, wherever they were. ‘And why are you dressed like that?’
She was expecting the
Leipreachán
to look just like Plunkett with his little suit and his jaunty cap, given Plunkett’s true name had trapped him here, making him almost certainly Plunkett’s
eileféin.
This
Leipreachán
was bearded, and ginger-haired, but he was dressed like a very short, rather portly ninja.
‘Does it offend ye, mistress?’ he asked, wringing his hands. ‘I can change into something less offensive if it offends thee.’
‘It doesn’t offend me,’ she assured him. ‘What’s your name?’
She knew his secret name, but it would have been the worst breach of protocol imaginable for her to call him by that name where others might overhear.
‘I be known as Toyoda Mulrayn,’ he told her.
‘Toyoda? Really? Who gave you that name?’
‘’Twas the name I be given by the
Konketsu
.’ He peered at her through the twigs. ‘You not be
Konketsu
.’
‘I’m
Beansídhe
,’ she said. ‘Well … half-
Beansídhe
, at any rate. I’m going to let you out now, but remember, Toyoda, I know your true name. Don’t make me use it.’
The
Leipreachán
nodded meekly as Trása lifted the twig trap off him. He sat there in the rain, looking at her for a moment, his bottom lip quivering. ‘Are ye truly
Beansídhe
, mistress?’
‘Yes, I truly am.’
‘Not
Konketsu
?’
‘No, I’m not
Konketsu
.’
‘And ye came through the
rifuto
from another realm to help us?’
‘If you mean the stone circle through a reality rift, then yes, that’s where I came from, and I suppose, if you need my help …’
The
Leipreachán
burst into tears and flew into her arms, blubbering like a broken-hearted child.
‘Hey there!’ Trása said, not sure how to react. The little
sídhe
sobbed in her arms as if a dam had burst after a spring flood. She didn’t know what to do; Trása didn’t even realise
Leipreacháns
could cry. She’d never seen anything like it in her own reality.
She patted the little man’s back awkwardly. ‘There … there … Toyoda, it’s all right, I’m here now.’
‘It’s so good to have ye here, mistress,’ Toyoda sobbed, drenching her shoulder with his tears. She’d not had time to dress since he’d sprung her trap, but his tears were warm on her damp skin compared to the gentle rain falling on them in the clearing. ‘We’ve missed ye kind so much, mistress. We hide whenever the
Konketsu
come looking for us, but it’s been so hard just waiting and waiting and waiting, all the time.’
‘We?’ Trása asked, as she realised he wasn’t talking about missing her, so much as the whole
Daoine sídhe
race. ‘There are more of you about?’
He nodded and leaned back in her arms, staring up at her with adoring eyes. ‘A few of us. The numbers get smaller every year. We been waiting, mistress. We knew ye couldn’t all be dead. And since the other night when the rift opened, we hoped ye’d come back, and now ye and ye mate be here, and we can take back this realm, and —’
‘Whoa there, little man!’ Trása cried in alarm. ‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. How many of you are there left?’
Toyoda shrugged. ‘I not be sure of the exact number.’
‘And there are no
Youkai
left in this reality at all?’
He shook his head, sniffing loudly. ‘Ye and ye mate are the first to be seen in years.’
‘My mate? Oh, you mean Rónán?’ she asked, gently pushing the little man away so she could get dressed. ‘He’s not
Daoine sídhe
, Toyoda. He’s human. And for the record, he’s not my mate, either.’
The
Leipreachán
cocked his head to one side, looking very puzzled as she pulled on the linen coat-like garment she’d borrowed from the Ikushima compound. ‘He canna be human,’ the little man said. ‘He be able to wane like a
sídhe
.’
‘No, he can’t,’ she said, looking down at him as she tied off the belt at her waist. ‘Why would you think that?’
‘There be wee wood sprites hiding in the
kozo
forest around the stone circle keeping watch,’ he explained. ‘They be chattering about nothing else since ye got here. First, they say, ye changed into an owl to get away when Chishihero tried to be rid of ye, and then ye mate waned himself into the forest when she tried to kill him, too.’
‘Hang on … let’s just get something straight here,’ Trása said, astonished by the information. ‘When you say “waning” you mean the same thing it means in my reality, don’t you? Translocation? Vanishing from one spot and reappearing somewhere else?’
‘Aye,’ Toyoda agreed, wiping his eyes now his tears seemed to be under control. ‘What did ye think I be meaning?’
‘That’s not possible,’ she said. ‘Rónán is human.’
‘He may look human on the outside, mistress, but he be more
sídhe
than ye, if he can wane and ye can’t.’
Trása sat down on the damp ground, confused and more than a little unsettled by the news that Rónán had escaped the Tanabe compound by performing a feat no creature not almost pure Faerie should be able to perform. It explained why he’d been so vague on how he got away. The implications were quite terrifying.
And right now she didn’t have time to ponder what they meant. She needed to know what had happened to the rest of her people in this realm.
‘What happened to the
Tuatha Dé Danann
?’
‘They be dead.’
‘They can’t
all
be dead.’
‘The
Konketsu
hunted them down and killed them,’ Toyoda told her, as he rearranged his belt with its array of tiny weapons that all appeared to be of Japanese rather than Celtic origin. ‘The rest of them they herded up like sheep and drove them through the rift into realms with no magic. Most of them be dead before they took more than a dozen steps into the other magic-less realms they be pushed into.’ He sniffed away the last of his tears and added, ‘When the
Futagono Kizuna
went through the rift to meet with the envoy from the
Matrarchaí
, they told us to wait for them. They said the Empresses were safe in
Tír Na nÓg
.’
He’d said the
Futagono Kizuna
. If her translation was correct, he meant
the bonded twins
. That could only mean this reality’s version of the Undivided. ‘So the
Youkai
shared their magic in this reality with humans, too?’ She didn’t know why the Undivided had left their realm to meet with the
Matrarchaí.
It seemed an odd thing to do, but no more odd than the reason Darragh and Rónán had left their realm to go rift running.
Toyoda nodded. ‘I hear that be the same for many realms,’ he said. ‘And we be fine here until the Empresses met with Lady Delphine. After that, they not be needing the
Youkai
for their power. They be strong enough to channel it without any help from our kind.’
‘Who is Lady Delphine?’
‘She be the envoy from the
Matrarchaí
.’
Trása studied the little man for a moment, wondering if he was telling the truth or spinning a fanciful yarn to make his cowardice seem more acceptable. ‘And the
Konketsu
are human?’
‘Not completely. Turns out ye need some
Youkai
blood in ye, and ye have to produce enough
washi
from the
kozo
trees, but once ye do, then ye can wield all the magic ye want with
ori mahou
and ye don’t need the
Youkai
at all.’
‘So they discovered folding magic in this realm and then just killed all the Faerie? That’s monstrous!’
‘It didn’t happen quickly,’ he told her, shaking his head. ‘It be quite insidious-like. And it be too late before the
Futagono Kizuna
realised what be happening. By then the Empresses be born — although they weren’t the Empresses back then. Once the
Futagono Kizuna
were gone, the
Konketsu
got a taste for
Youkai
blood, and it be all downhill from there.’ He sniffed and wiped his runny nose on his sleeve. ‘Now the
Konketsu
fear
Youkai
from other realms will come through the stone circles and see what they have done here. They destroyed most of the
gampi
bushes needed to fold the
ori mahou
to open the rift, which be why ye and ye mate were supposed to be killed on sight. Chishihero would figure if ye can travel through a rift, ye be a danger to the Empresses.’
‘Didn’t you say the Empresses were supposed to be safe in
Tír Na nÓg
?’
His bottom lip began to quiver again. ‘The
Futagono Kizuna
were betrayed by the man they trusted like a father. That’s how the Empresses escaped. Soon as they were free and they realised the
Futagono Kizuna
weren’t here to stop them, they ordered the rest of the
Youkai
killed.’