“Well said, little mortal,” said a harsh
voice from a treetop. “You would make a fine pet.”
“I’m no pet,” Maddy called out, searching for the speaker in the trees.
Snow thudded to the ground as a faerie sprang from a branch and fluttered gracefully down to land just in front of Maddy. Roisin gave a little scream and ran back through the clearing to cling to Danny. As Maddy’s jaw dropped, she heard Danny suck his breath in behind her.
The faerie standing in front of her was no delicate little sprite. She loomed over Maddy, long and lean with ropes of muscle throughout her every limb. Maddy had to tip her head back to look at her; she had to be seven feet tall. Her skin was bone white and tattooed with pale gray Celtic patterns. Every inch of her was covered
with the swirling marks, from the tips of her fingers to the edge of her hairline. Silver scars marked her, from fights she had probably won. Her long white hair was stiffened and combed high above her head and away from her face, dropping down her back. Everything about her, from her fingers to her face, was unnaturally long. Her nose was hooked, and her mouth was thin and cruel. Her gossamer wings were covered in frost patterns, their beauty marred by a torn and trailing piece of skin and tissue in the lower half of the left wing. Her feet and legs were bandaged in soft white leather, and gold arm-rings bound straining muscles. Fine linen was wrapped around her breasts and between her legs, the skirt torn to the thigh and trailing behind her in ragged strips. A whip was coiled at her waist. Her eyes were blood red, with no whites and as cold and indifferent as a bird of prey’s. She was terrifying and magnificent at the same time. The dryads huddled behind her looked like old sticks in comparison.
“Not all has been well today in this little paradise of ours,” said the faerie. She kept her eyes on Maddy as she paced around her. “The stink of iron is in my nose and the rank taste of it on my tongue. The sun is taking an age to go down. It sits there, half over the horizon, and I can’t get my beauty sleep. It puzzles me greatly. But then I smell blood and I rejoice because it must be the Samhain Fesh, and mortals have come looking for war.” She stopped pacing and looked down at Maddy,
her lip curling into a sneer. “But what do I find? Insects, and no worthy opponent in sight.”
“The sun won’t set?” Maddy heard Danny say behind her. His voice was high with relief. She looked over her shoulder at him.
What are you doing?
she mouthed. But he was so happy he just kept talking. “Don’t you see? He’s helping us, the stag, Cernunnos. You said we had to cross over on Halloween night—he’s keeping the door open for us until we find Stephen.” He looked at the red-eyed faerie. “Your boss is looking out for us, which means you can’t touch us.”
Roisin hid her face in Danny’s shoulder as the faerie paced closer.
“Is that so, little man?” the faerie said, bending at the waist until her blood-filled eyes were level with Danny’s. “It’s a pity for you that Cernunnos isn’t my ‘boss.’ The stag doesn’t scare the hound.”
“But . . . But he rules in here, right? He’s the Horned God, the big cheese?” Danny gulped.
The faerie raised a pale eyebrow. “Cernunnos does not hold sway in the Winter Court. My pledge is given to the Winter Queen, and no one else can command me.”
“Who are you, then, and what do you want?” asked Maddy.
The creature swiveled slowly on her heel and began to pace around Maddy again. “I am Fachtna. I whip the hounds to the hunt, and when my queen calls for it, I head her war band. I am the strong arm that strikes when my queen is displeased.” She bent
down so fast Maddy had to take a step back. Her breath steamed in the air between them. “You will show me respect.”
Maddy nodded.
Fachtna walked over to a thick oak and leaned against the tree. It shuddered and lifted its branches higher as her tattooed skin touched the bark. She looked at the dryads, who waited fearfully.
“Go,” she commanded. “I have no business with dryads.”
Izzie gave Maddy an apologetic look, but he ran as fast as the others from the clearing. The little dryads melted away into their trees, and all that was left of them were a few leaves shaken loose from the branches that drifted in the wind.
Fachtna stretched out one scarred arm and examined her talons. “You are fortunate, human child. My queen is wise and just. You amuse her. I’ve come here with a bargain.”
“I don’t trust any faeries enough to bargain with them,” said Maddy.
Fachtna threw her head back and laughed, showing off teeth that had been filed to points.
“And you would be wise, little pet, not to do so,” she said. “But I think you will like this contract.”
“I’m listening,” said Maddy.
“Queen Liadan finds your devotion to the mortal child touching. She bids me tell you that you may come to her in the White Tower and take him back. He is
unharmed, and she will not lay a finger on you until he is in your arms,” said Fachtna.
“And what do I have to give in return?” asked Maddy.
“You must provide her with sport,” said Fachtna. “Once you have the child, you can try to go home. But the hunt will pursue you.
I
and my scucca hounds will chase you. And if I catch you, your life and that of your companions is forfeit.”
“What if we decide to turn around and go home now?” asked Danny.
Fachtna smiled at him. “Then there is no contract, and the hunt is unleashed. The deal is that you
all
come and you
all
run before me.”
“What’s the catch?” Maddy asked. “There always is a catch with you lot.”
“That’s a puzzle for you to solve,” said Fachtna.
“Liadan . . .” began Roisin, before Fachtna stopped her with a glare. “Sorry,
Queen
Liadan, says she won’t try to stop us coming for Stephen. Can any other faerie try to stop us or hurt us in any way?”
Fachtna smiled broadly. “Clever pet—I’ll let you die first. No, the promise is that no faerie may seek to do you harm. But you have to come on your own, with no help.”
“Can we have help getting away?” asked Maddy.
“If you can find any brave enough to give it,” said Fachtna.
Roisin and Danny looked at Maddy. “I don’t see what choice we’ve got,” said Roisin.
“Why should we agree to anything she says?” Danny objected. “She could be telling us anything. It could be a trap.”
“Because faeries can’t lie, can you?” said Roisin.
Fachtna put her hand on her heart and bowed low. “My mouth is pure.”
“What’s stopping you from just killing Stephen anyway?” asked Maddy.
“If we did that, you would not fight so hard or run so hard. You wouldn’t have any hope to be crushed,” said Fachtna. “Failed hope gives despair a much stronger taste.”
Maddy thought the terms of the contract over in her mind. She couldn’t find a catch, but Granda had told her never to strike a bargain with a faerie. But then, Granda had never been this far from home.
“Fine,” she said. “We come to you unopposed by any faerie, and we take Stephen back unharmed. Then we’ll see what happens.”
“You give your word?” asked Fachtna.
“I give you my word,” said Maddy.
“
All
of you?” the faerie pressed.
Danny and Roisin looked at each other, their faces grim.
“We do,” they said.
“Your word is cast, as is my queen’s,” said Fachtna. “None can be released from it until you are dead or the hounds thwarted.” She smiled her ghastly smile. “And I always catch my prey.”
With that she launched herself into the air, a white blur against the sky, and she was gone.
Maddy sighed and her shoulders sagged under the weight of her fear. She had no idea what they had all just agreed to. She thought of her warm bed.
I want to sleep forever,
she thought.
I want to curl up under my duvet, and I want this all to go away when the book closes.
Instead, she lifted George from Roisin’s arms and put him on the ground, snapping the leash on to his collar. She pushed her way through the undergrowth and found the path continued ahead, starting up from the ring of trees as if the huge plants had simply shifted their weight on to it for a little while. She didn’t look to see if Roisin and Danny were following, but she could hear them walking behind her.
No birds or little faeries came near them, and the forest was hushed. Every twig broken underfoot cracked through the silence and made them jump. As her fear subsided, Maddy began to get angry. She was cold, hungry, and worn out with fear. She wanted someone on whom to take out her temper, and the more she thought about it, the more obvious it seemed.
She stopped on the path and turned to look at Danny.
He halted in front of her.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“You know, for as long as I’ve known you, you’ve been a nasty, mouthy git who has no problem using his fists on people,” she said, as she got right up into his face. “So do you want to explain what happened back there?”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Oh, you know, the wolves, the dryads, Fachtna issuing death threats, and you just standing there with your gob hanging open, letting me and Roisin do all the talking. It’s just that you always seem so brave when you’re picking on me or your sister, I was wondering why you turned so chicken when we really needed you to do something.”
Roisin groaned and threw herself down on the grass. “Do you two have to get into it every half-hour? We’re not going to get anywhere at this rate.”
“And where is it exactly that we’re going, thanks to her?” said Danny. “Did you hear her? She actually agreed to our being hunted. It’s like a bad horror movie. I didn’t sign up for this.”
“We all agreed to it, Danny,” said Roisin. “We couldn’t just keep wandering around in here. We had to do something.”
George lay down, put his head on his paws, and sighed.
“Anyway,
you
didn’t sign up for anything,” said Maddy. “You’re here because you just had to follow us and make fun of us. It serves you right.”
Danny stepped closer to her and glared at her, nose to nose. “At least I’ve been watching what’s been going on around us since we started walking again,” he hissed through clenched teeth.
Maddy narrowed her eyes at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“This.” Suddenly, Danny bounded to one side and ran into the undergrowth after a fleeing white shadow that was running away from the path from tree to tree. There was scuffling, and Danny came back, struggling with a creature that kicked and clawed. Panting, he threw it down at Maddy’s feet. “That little sneak has been following us for ages,” he panted.
“What are you doing?” Maddy challenged him, as she bent to help the creature up. “You picked on a girl half your size!”
A pale dryad got slowly to her feet, her whole body trembling. Standing straight, she was still a head smaller than Maddy and very slight. Her eyes were jet black in her heart-shaped face, and long, thick silver hair reached to her heels. Her silver skin was covered in fine traces of emerald-green moss, and her lips and nose were smooth and polished. The hands that reached up to brush the dirt from her hair were long and delicate, as were her feet. She was very beautiful and very, very naked. Maddy hoped her thick hair didn’t move too easily.
Roisin rushed over to her. “I am
so
sorry. Are you hurt?”
The dryad gave her a sleepy smile. “No.”
George was sniffing at her, and Maddy pushed him away with her foot in case he decided she was more tree than girl and cocked his leg.
“What are you apologizing for, dimwit?” said Danny. “She was following us—she could be Liadan, for all you know.”
The dryad broke into tinkling laughter while the girls rolled their eyes. “Didn’t you listen to what they were saying back there?” said Roisin. “Liadan is an elf, and this girl is obviously a dryad . . . dimwit.”
“That still doesn’t explain why she was following us, and you had better find out before you decide to be bestest friends,” said Danny. “She could be working for Fachtna.”
“Fachtna no friend of mine,” said the dryad, wrinkling her little nose. “But I help you till the trees are no more, bring you to the White Tower. And you make Winter go away.”
Before she would answer any questions,
the dryad urged them to leave the path. “Stay hidden,” she urged, with a finger to her lips. “Like little, little mice in the forest. No one must see.”
She led them to a hollow beneath the roots of an ancient oak. “But first, I need heat. Snow everywhere; my tree is tired,” she said. “I get too cold, I fall asleep, and you will be all alone.”
Maddy and Roisin curled around the dryad, who sighed and snuffled with pleasure as their body heat warmed her, sending a faint green blush through her skin. Danny refused to snuggle down with them, and he squatted between the iron-hard roots that arched above his head. “No offense, but I don’t want any body contact with my sister and my cousin. That’s just too gross.”
“Sorry Danny got a bit rough with you, but why are you helping us?” Maddy said to the dryad.
The silvery faerie hid her face in her hair. “It means talking about bad things,” she said. “Bad, bad things. I doesn’t like it.”
“I’m sorry, but we don’t know what’s happening here—you have to tell us,” said Maddy.
The creature sighed and her breath sounded like leaves rustling in the wind. She was so still and quiet Maddy wondered if she had gone to sleep. She was about to lift the thick locks of hair that covered the dryad’s face to see if she was awake when the faerie started speaking in a small voice.
“Cernunnos and the Morrighan were the first of the Tuatha de Dannan to come to Ireland,” she began. “He took the forests and the mountains to rule; she took the skies and the water. Their tribe followed them, and the Tuatha lived in your world when it was young, and mortals and faerie people worshipped them. They were so powerful, so strong. They could make the rain fall, the sun shine, the winds howl. But the Tuatha do not have many children, while men do. The tribes of men grew bigger and bigger, and when the cross came and other men told them it was wrong to worship the Tuatha, they turned against them and drove the Tuatha into the mounds and under the earth. They were gods no more to mortals. The Tuatha wept to be shut away from the mortal world, so the Morrighan slept and created a world of dreams for them, safe from the touch
of mortals, where they would be forever young.” The dryad sobbed and fell silent.
“Tír na nÓg,” breathed Roisin. “It means ‘Land of Eternal Youth.’”
Maddy waited a little while as the dryad shook with misery. “What happened then?” she prompted.
The little dryad sniffed and smiled sadly. “Without humans to rule, the Tuatha fought. Each thought
they
should rule. The other faerie peoples tried to live on in your world, hidden from mortal sight, but with the coming of the cross, the brownies, the trolls, the glaistigs, and all their kind fled to the Land of Eternal Youth and pledged allegiance again to the Tuatha de Dannan. Cernunnos and the Morrighan wanted peace so they made eight of their tribe the Kings and Queens of Summer, Autumn, Spring, and Winter and gave them equal power.”
“Why do it by seasons?” asked Danny.
“Because every season must come and go, so every court gets a turn at ruling, and none can be stronger than the other,” said Roisin. “Checkmate.”
“Did it work?” asked Maddy.
The little dryad shook her head. “No. They fought and fought but could not win out against each other. But something happened to the Winter monarchs, and the Summer Court gained the upper hand,” she said. “The Land was parched, and the forest burned. Chaos reigned, and the Morrighan struggled to bring the courts to peace.”
The trees around them shuddered and snatched their branches a little higher, as if they could still remember the pain of the flames licking at their trunks.
“How does Liadan fit in? Is she a Tuatha de Dannan?” asked Maddy.
The dryad shook her head. “She is an elf, one of the faerie people from the cold northern countries. Liadan came to these shores with her kin on dragon-headed ships. They hunted and slashed and burned until the forest was nearly gone. The Morrighan and Cernunnos thought the elves were the answer. Liadan and her kind are strong—strong enough to take on the mantle of a Tuatha, or so the Morrighan thought. She offered the Winter Queen’s crown to Liadan, so that Winter would once again balance the power of the Summer Court, and Cernunnos offered himself as a husband, to bind Liadan to the forest and stop her hurting us. With a non-Tuatha reigning over Winter, the courts could not join against the Morrighan and bend her to their will. Liadan agreed. She was greedy for a crown, but she didn’t know what it would do to her.”
“What did it do?” asked Roisin.
“Each crown was forged with all the power of the season it rules. When Liadan took the Winter Queen’s crown, she had to take Winter’s cold as well,” said the dryad. She shook her head in despair. “Liadan is an old and powerful elf, but the Winter crown was meant to be worn by a Tuatha. The Morrighan was wrong—Liadan did not have the strength to bear Winter. The crown’s
cold burns through her veins, twists her body, makes every step she takes, every tear of ice she cries, agony. The Morrighan’s gift has made Liadan’s mind as bent as her body. She has gathered dark faeries around her, and now the Winter Court is a bad place. With the Tuatha Winter Queen gone, her brethren have fled to other courts. No Tuatha will pay allegiance to Winter now; none of them will bend the knee to a crippled, foreign queen.”
“Why don’t the other courts get rid of her, if she’s so bad?” asked Danny.
The dryad smiled. “The Tuatha hoard their power, and they cannot bear to give it away, even to their own people. But someone must rule Winter. It’s easier to let Liadan wear the crown for now than for the Tuatha to agree on who should take it from her.”
“Hobbs said she has had humans in her court?” asked Maddy.
“Captives, all children,” said the dryad.
Maddy felt her throat close with fear. “What does she do with them?”
“I don’t know . . .”
Maddy looked up at the forest canopy and blinked away the tears that gathered at the corners of her eyes. So this was the faerie who had Stephen.
He’ll be so scared
, she thought.
“What does this have to do with Stephen?” asked Roisin.
“Since she took the little one, Liadan has been stronger,” said the dryad. “Winter has come early, and the
cold bites and gnaws us. The balance is gone, and the other courts will go to war to bring it back—or to gain power themselves. The old trees say it was like this last time the Tuatha fought—the hush before the storm. Everyone is scared; everyone hiding.”
The dryad sat up and curled her tiny hands into fists, her little face flushing a deeper green with anger. “When the Tuatha de Dannan go to war, us all suffer. Us dryads are our tree’s spirit made flesh,” she said. “My tree is sick. Winter has been too long. Liadan will make the other courts angry if she does not give way, and who knows what war will bring? I don’t want to die.” She looked at Maddy. “The child makes Liadan strong. You take him, Winter goes away, war goes away.”
“How can he do that?” asked Maddy. “He’s still a baby.”
“Don’t know,” said the dryad, shaking her head. “But it must be him—we felt the change when he came.”
“Are we not forgetting one small but very important detail here?” said Danny. “The deal is we get to the tower without any help. If you help us, the contract is broken.”
“Won’t get there without me,” insisted the dryad.
“But the contract says that no faerie can harm or help us,” said Roisin.
“No
faerie
, no,” chuckled the dryad. “But there is more than faeries in the forest. There are lots of ways for the unwary to come to harm and not by a faerie’s hand.”
So there’s the catch
, Maddy thought.
“Fachtna said she would come after us with her scucca hounds,” said Danny. “What does that mean?”
“‘Scucca’ means ‘demon’ in the old tongue,” said the dryad. She went pale again and looked at Maddy. “You made a bad, bad bargain. The scucca don’t stop, don’t rest. The fir dorocha, the dark men, faeries that breed fear and hatred, drive them on, and terror travels before them.”
Maddy looked at Danny and Roisin and could see the fear in their eyes.
“Fachtna called this place a ‘paradise,’” said Roisin sadly. “It doesn’t sound much like paradise to me.”
“It can be,” said the dryad softly.
“What’s your name?” said Maddy.
The dryad smiled. “Fionnghuala. It means ‘White Shoulders.’ Call me Fionn.”
It was hard keeping up with Fionn. She wanted them to get to the tower as fast as possible, and they all stumbled after her as she glided from tree to tree as quick as a bird. As Maddy tripped over roots and twisted her ankle on rocks, she looked longingly at the smooth path to her left. But shortly after they started, they had to take cover as seven elves went running by. Fionn curled up into a tight little ball until they were gone and had to be coaxed into unbending long after they had disappeared from sight. It took even longer for the little dryad to stop shaking with fear.
Maddy felt as if they had been walking for hours. Her watch had stopped working, her feet were numb in her sneakers, and she had to suck her fingers to warm them up. Every now and then they stopped and huddled close to Fionn to warm her and keep her moving when she became sluggish and sleepy. Danny was horrified at being asked to press close to a naked female, but he compromised by standing back to back with Fionn, while Maddy and Roisin opened their jackets and held her close. Fionn refused to let them try and light a fire with Danny’s lighter—the forest would be angry, she warned, even if they only burned dead wood and leaf litter.
Maddy fervently wished she had brought something more substantial than jam sandwiches. She had shared them with Danny and Roisin, and now all they had left were biscuits.
Now and then, Fionn would ask them to wait while she went on ahead. They heard the great trees groaning and saw them thrashing their branches, before all was still and Fionn came back to lead them on again.
“Why do the trees behave like that?” asked Roisin as they stopped for what must have been the sixth time to watch the old trees groan and bend their creaking trunks slowly as Fionn talked to them.
“When tree and dryad become very old, they grows into each other,” said Fionn. “The ancient trees in this forest can see and hear you. The young trees need their dryad to do that. But you can’t talk to the old ones—they
would lead you in circles until you died of hunger and thirst. The old ones don’t like you, but they listens to me.”
They looked nervously at the trees around them and shuffled closer to Fionn.
“I don’t understand why dryads get such a hard time here,” said Danny. “You all seem pretty scary to me.”
Fionn scowled. “Because we’re not borned from faeries—we grow with our elements, and have no magic—other faeries thinks they are better than us. And the Tuatha de Dannan don’t even notice us.”
Maddy looked at the brooding forest that surrounded them.
That could be a mistake,
she thought.
But it wasn’t all fear and danger. As they scrambled down a rocky incline and steeled themselves to splash through an icy stream tumbling over slippery rocks, Fionn hustled them behind a tree and told them to hush.
“Not a word!” she hissed. “Remember, like little mice.”
Maddy scooped George up and felt her stomach clench in dread as she wondered if the wolves had finally caught up with them. She was squeezed between Roisin and Danny, and she could feel the same tension in their bodies. Then she heard, or rather felt, a sound that throbbed through her whole body. Noise like whale music drifted upstream, and the birds in the forest hushed. Even the trees leaned forward to catch the notes, and suddenly there appeared two unicorns,
cantering through the stream, water spraying up from their legs and bursting into iridescent light as it caught the sun. The mare paused to drink, and the stallion stood over her, gazing into the forest. She lifted her dripping muzzle and lipped at his neck, while he tossed his head and entwined his neck with hers, caressing her and calling out his throbbing song. The air around them shimmered, and the outline of their white bodies burned blue. Rearing up, the mare bounded away, and the stallion chased after her until they were lost from sight.
The forest kept its hush for a moment after the pair were gone, the haunting melody of their cries trailing off into the distance. Then the birds burst into song, their breasts swelling as they fought to sing louder, more joyously than their neighbors. Maddy found her cheeks were wet with tears. George wriggled happily in her arms and licked the tears away.
“Unicorns,” breathed Roisin, her eyes shining feverishly. “They do exist!”
Fionn was grinning from ear to ear and looked more awake than they had seen her yet. “They are old magic, created from the bones of the earth,” she said.
“We tell stories about them at home, but I never thought they existed,” said Roisin.
“You chooses not to believe in them, and so you don’t see them,” said Fionn, shrugging.
“It’s that simple?” said Danny.
Fionn looked back at him and grinned. “Yes, that simple.”
“How do we see them now?” asked Maddy.
“You believe in faeries now?” said Fionn.
“Good point,” said Maddy.
Just at that moment Danny’s feet slipped on the moss-covered roots of a massive oak, and he tumbled face first into a puddle, covering himself in mud and black-brown leaf mulch. They all stared at him as he blinked in surprise, and before Maddy knew it, she and Roisin were bent double with laughter. George tried to lick Danny’s face clean, his tail wagging at a million miles an hour, while Fionn rushed to help him up.
Furious, Danny pushed her helping hand away. “Why the hell are we doing this anyway?” he snarled.
“What?” said Roisin.
“Why is it up to us to run to Stephen’s rescue?” he demanded.
“You’re not suggesting we just leave him?” snapped Maddy, her cheeks flushing red with anger.
“No, what I’m saying is, there are plenty of other people better able to rescue him than us. Like Cernunnos and the Morrighan. Where they hell are they?” He made a show of thinking for a second. “Oh, wait, we know where Cernunnos is—he’s in Blarney, on holiday.”