The Radiant Road (19 page)

The joy washed through her; she closed her eyes; she let her head drop back and her throat open up; she laughed and laughed and laughed.

Digging

When Clare opened her eyes again, still laughing, a wooden tunnel and a tall mirror were draining away into the beach sand, leaving only beach sand, low, shining waves, and a crackling bonfire beside her.

Finn was a few feet away, kneeling on the sand and grinning. “Not so bad, student,” he said. “Not so bad at all. I did not understand all your making, but”—adding hastily as she opened her mouth to answer—“I know it was not made for me to see.”

“I didn't make the roots I ran through,” she said, “but I could control what happened there. It was like partly I was controlling it, and partly it was happening on its own.”

“That is the customary way of making,” he replied. “Another part of you made the roots. That you can control what happens is all that matters.”

“Wait, but”—Clare sat up, shook sand from her hair—“but if I made it and it was real, where is it? Where are the roots, and the mirror, and . . .” She thought of the snuffling, raspy breath, the heavy tread behind her. “And all that?” she finished awkwardly. The ocean crashed, gentle and regular, a slow, soft metronome. Clare had a
sudden realization: “Oh, Finn, did you make this place? Is this one of your makings?”

“I did,” he said, with a crooked smile. “As you made the dream. But what I make stays, as long as I wish, for the most part. What you make here dissolves when you awake.” He regarded the ocean with a disapproving eye. “I know it's wrong, that changeless rhythm of the waves. Ah, making here is poor making,” he added with sudden passion, “because nothing changes, nor will ever change, nothing changes but the moon.”

No wonder I hurt his feelings.
“It's beautiful here,” Clare said, “and peaceful, and it reminds me of a place I loved.”

No reply.

“You really love making, I guess,” Clare ventured.
Boy, that came out stupid.
But Finn didn't seem to mind.

“I do,” he said. “I know my task in life is to end my grandfather's evil. I've known since I could speak. But I will be greatly glad when the task is done, and I am let alone to make in your world, where the makings change and decay and die, and are so much richer for that.”

They were quiet again. He was vivid against the gray waves, all shoulders and angles, dark hair and set jaw.

“I have a question,” said Clare. Finn pulled in his long legs and rested his face on his knees. His eyes caught their color from the
sea, a shining gray-blue. She cleared her throat. “There was something I couldn't control in the dream. Do you remember when I said NO MONSTER, but the monster-sound stayed? What was that? How come I could control everything else, but not that?” Her voice sounded high and strained, the joy of the dream beginning to drain away like the dream itself.

“Well, it may have been your beast,” Finn said. He sat up straighter and looked out on the waves, whose regular, mechanical crashing was beginning to wear on Clare's nerves.

“A woman at the banquet said humans make with our beasts without knowing,” she said, “but fairies have tamed theirs and can maybe almost become them.”

Finn looked down, as if something in the sand had drawn his interest.

“Have you tamed yours? Even though you're only half?”

“I have,” he said. He was drawing in the sand, crosses and curves and swirls. “I have.” He looked up at her. “But it was not easy, Clare, though I was too young and foolish at the time to fear it as I should have. It was not easy, and very nearly I did not succeed. Do not trifle with your beast, I beg you.”

He unfolded his legs, dragged a heel across his sand doodles, and smiled at her. “You did so well, Clare, making awake in your dream. You have your mother's fairy blood, I'll swear to that.” He
stood and brushed off his pants. “Let's return to the hall and proclaim your progress.”

“It's not just my mother's blood,” said Clare as she stood and brushed as well. “Not just Mam but Dad, too, he's a Macleod, have you heard of them? He even has a little piece of this fairy flag his family has, supposedly like a zillion years ago this . . .”

She stopped.

Finn was staring at her, mouth open. Then he smacked his own head. “Macleod, of course!” he said. “I never thought—and your father has a piece of the flag? But Clare, that's great luck, greater than any I thought to have. That flag has the power to rally the fair—the people of Timeless. They are bound to it, absolutely bound, even Her of the Cliffs is bound. Ah, my worst worry soothed then, you brilliant Clare!”

“I don't really understand,” said Clare, though it was hard not to be delighted at his joy.

“You heard some grumble at the banquet, that we ought not make our Hunt. It was not the first, and many say worse than that. They say we should let Balor succeed, let the gates be closed.” He was striding around now, kicking up gouts of sand with his energy. “But if I hold the flag, they have no choice. Ah, mad Clare,” he said, and took one of her hands in both of his, “you are the mad savior of both our worlds. Is the flag in your home? If we went there now, could you find it?”

Clare, who was staring at her hand in his, looked up. “Oh! Well, I don't know exactly. I think Dad brought it, but it might also be in one of the boxes that hasn't come yet . . .” She felt him deflate. “Couldn't we go find him where he is and ask . . . Yeah, I know. Not safe for him. Well, then, but let's just go home, I can look. If it's there, I bet I can find it! I mean”—a second, terrible thought—“as long as Balor isn't there, so I have time to look. I'd need a lot of time.”

Finn dropped her hand, clapped his together. “Better idea,” he said. “We'll visit your father's dream and ask him where it is.”

Clare was not sure she'd heard correctly. “Visit his . . .
what
?”

“He comes to Timeless, at night in his dreams, as you all do. We'll visit him there. It's night, now, in the human world. That's why you've been so sleepy.”

“Let's go, then!” Why had no one mentioned she could see her father? “Let's go right now, let's not wait! Where is he?”

Finn looked surprised. “I don't know. Why would I know? Timeless is vast, as vast as your world, and great parts of it uninhabited, except by a once-in-the-while sleepwalker from Time.”

Clare pretended a patience she did not feel. “But you came to
me
in my dream. How did you find me?”

“Oh,” said Finn. “I described you to a bird.”

That was why Clare now sat under a stand of birches, while Finn stood nearby among the turning leaves.

She thought:
I miss shadows. Stars and shadows.

But where there is no night, there are no stars; and where there is no noon, there are no shadows. She felt a surge of impatience. “What are we waiting for?”

“We are waiting for a bird to come by,” said Finn. “This is a good place for birds.” Clare recalled that the Finn-made beach had had no gulls, and she felt a protective tenderness toward him for this error. Slouching against a white trunk, he plucked a birch leaf and twirled it in his hands. She watched the changeless, rushing wind excite the birch leaves; it was like seeing the sound of a thousand tiny silver bells. Glancing up to make sure Finn wasn't looking, she pulled out her commonplace book and made a quick note:
Even the birch leaf knows how to ride the wind that is.
But I still don't.

“Hey, Finn?” said Clare, tucking the book in her pocket.

“Hey, Clare?” said Finn.

“Was that you, was that your voice, when I dreamed under Finn's Cap?”

His slow, pleased smile. “It was indeed. You remember.”

“If it was you, though,” said Clare, “then why didn't you just tell me what the key to Finn's Cap was, so that I could get through?”

“Ah well,” said Finn. “But it doesn't work like that, does it? You must make your own key. If the key was to draw a picture, I could not draw it for you, or tell you where to move the pencil, each line of it, could I?”

“I guess not.”

“Also, and you should know this for your father's dream, dreams are not made for business-talking. Dreams are poems, are complicated and savory, like a stew. They are not efficient. ”

This made Clare feel both somewhat discouraged, but also more interested in dreams, if indeed they were like poems.

“How will the bird recognize your father, to know where to take us?” Finn asked. “You should think of how you will describe him. What is he like?”

Clare hesitated. Out of all the dreamers in the world, how could she describe her father so that a bird could pick him out? “Well, he's not very tall, and he has brown eyes that sort of turn down at the corners, and he—”

“No,” said Finn. “What is he
like
. The bird is looking for his true self, not his body.”

“Oh,” said Clare. She wasn't sure how to begin. “Well,” she said, “he's really nice, and funny . . .” Finn's frown made her stop.

“This poor bird. How many billions of you are
nice
or
funny
? Do you not know your own father, for who he is, for who only he in all the world is?”

Clare frowned back at him, because sticking out her tongue, which is what she would have preferred, would be too babyish. But she understood what he meant, and thought harder. She said, “Okay. I'm just going to close my eyes and talk. And you tell me if it will
work—
afterward
,” she added hastily. “Don't interrupt me
during
, just don't, Finn.”

She closed her eyes without waiting for his assent. She thought about her father; tried to feel him sitting right next to her. She said:

“He strokes my hair when he's thinking, so his hand is on my hair, but his mind is not, and sometimes his hand just stops and rests on my head, because he forgets.

“He also strokes my hair when he's sad about my mom, and then his hand touches my hair like there is nothing more beautiful and nothing more sad. It's a totally different feeling.

“He likes to sing old songs from Skye that his mother sang, but he doesn't remember all the words, so he sings ‘and so and so and
so
, and this and
that
' for the parts he forgets. He always uses those words.

“If a rock on the road catches his eye he will tell you the whole history of the place—not the person-history, but land-history, that starts with ‘A hundred thousand years ago' and goes back from there. He can tell you everything from, like, one or two rocks. He gets really excited. It's kind of dorky, and also kind of cool.

“When we go out for ice cream, he always holds my cone up before he gives it to me, like he's giving it this big scientific examination, and he always says, ‘Bit crooked on that
one
side, let me
correct that for yer, miss.' Then he gives it a big lick. When I was little, it made me so mad, but now, even though it's still annoying, it's also sort of hilarious.

“When there's a part on a movie or TV when the people who love each other will never see each other again—married people, or a mom or dad and a kid, or a grandma and someone, or even like a girl and her dog—anytime they love each other and have to say good-bye—when a part like that comes on, he doesn't cry exactly, like make any noise or breathe, but the tears go down and down his face, like rain on a window. Every time. Even before Mam died, but even more after.”

Clare was quiet then, but she did not open her eyes. Finally, she said, “Once, about a year ago, when we were driving in Texas, we saw a bird flapping on the ground in circles, really badly hurt, and he stopped to go look. Then he came back to the car and got the tire iron, and he killed it with one hard hit. He got back in the front seat, and he put his head on the steering wheel, and then he did cry, really hard, mostly totally quiet, but his shoulders shaking and shaking, and sometimes he made these loud gasps of breath, like he was drowning. It really scared me. And we never talked about it afterward. After a while he just started the car, and we kept driving.”