The Radiant Road (27 page)

“Clare,” said the yew-girl.

“Yes,” said astonished Clare.

“What do you want most, right this second? Most of anything. Say fast without thinking.”

Fast, without thinking, upside down, Clare said, “I want to make up for what I did.”

“Ahhhhh,” said the yew-girl. “Then you better go in.”

“Go in?” asked Clare. “What do you mean ‘go in'?”

The yew-girl burst out laughing. “I mean let GO,” she said, “and go in!” A brief, prim pause: “Unless you're scared.”

So Clare held her breath, gave the yew-girl's hand a last squeeze, straightened her legs, and slipped headfirst into the clear, bubbling water.

The Moon in Her Mouth

Upside down, damp, snorting water from her nose, Clare spilled back into air. She found herself in a narrow space: cozy, dim, firefly lit. Pushing wet hair from her eyes, she righted herself and looked around.

The in-between. Just as one pool had taken her to Timeless, the yew's well had brought her home.

For a moment, she allowed herself the comforting beauty and scent of it. But only a moment. This was her chance to make up for what she had done, as best she could: to get the flag and bring it back to Finn, so that he could fulfill his life's task.

(If Finn could still shoot, with only one eye. But she wouldn't think of that.)

Everything depended on whether Balor was here, and if so, whether he was asleep or awake. She put her ear to the slender crack in the yew: nothing, not even a sleeping sigh (but would he even be sleeping? she had no idea what time it was).

Cautious as a cat, Clare thrust out her head and looked around. Nothing, still nothing. Not a sound or a sign. Could she be so lucky—was he gone? Would it be this easy? She slipped out as
silently as she could, in case he was hidden, and as quickly as she could, in case he came back.

The light was cool. In the stone window, Clare was taken aback to see half-light, the magic hour of the Strange. But this light was changing, she reminded herself. If it was getting darker, then night was only just coming, and she had plenty of time. If it was getting lighter, then it was already morning, and she was almost too late.

In the dusty quiet of the great vaulted room, Clare darted behind the screen to the small bookshelf by her father's bed. She left damp footprints across the floor, and didn't care: no time to care, and she'd be back and safe in the in-between in a moment.

As she knelt at the shelves, her heart failed her: the book wasn't there. She knew it well, from bedtime stories, from long summer afternoons sprawled across carpets. She knew its old and peeling pale green jacket, with a pen-and-ink drawing of Skye itself, craggy mountains set into the sea.

But it wasn't there.

No, wait! Here it was, tucked in sideways and wrong ways out. Holding it, she was surprised by a stab of fear—her father's book, from when he was a boy, and now that boy was buried under thousands of tons of rock. Even if her making had managed to turn Balor's thoughts from him . . .

But she had no time for thinking the worst. Instead, she turned to the middle of the book and paged forward, looking for the Fairy Bridge chapter. Just a few pages in, and a few more—yes. Here it was, that thin, gray scrap of fabric. She held the bit of flag in her hand, as she had rarely been allowed to do. It tingled of Strange. She put it to her heart, and then to her face, to catch any scent of father or fairy.

She pulled out her commonplace book, once again somewhat damp, though luckily the pages were dry. She paused at a verse in her mother's neat girlhood hand:

Come away, O human child!

To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand,

For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

She laid the bit of flag on that page, and returned the book to her pocket. Now a glance at the darkening stone window told her that it was night, not morning, so she still had time. Heartened, full of intention, she stood and ran out from behind the screen that made her father's bedroom.

Outside the screen, she stopped short.

It was lucky she no longer held the flag in her hand, because if she had, it would have fallen to the floor.

Hovering in front of the yew tree, just a little above her eye
level, was the totem: its faded, sickening yellow and red, its exploded eye, its ravenous mouth in a silent scream. It hovered, watching her.

Where are you safe?
Balor had said.
Nowhere at all.

In the silence and deepening darkness, it all came back to her, the despair of that terrible day and worse night at the castle. Now she understood—she thought she understood—that the despair had never truly left. It couldn't leave, because the despair was the truth. All her hopes of making it up to Finn, all her odds and ends of joy—finding the flag, dancing with Asterion, telling stories with the yew—those were stupid delusions and lies.

As if it had heard her thoughts—almost as if it were galvanized by them—the totem began to move. Slowly it scraped its tail along the stone wall behind it, back and forth, back and forth, charging itself, preparing to strike.

Clare sank to the ground, physically sick, knowing with certainty that all was lost. She saw—she thought she saw—the bleak and hopeless reality: that of course Balor would win. He had nearly won already, and she had helped him, by putting out the eye of the one person who could have stopped him. She was the teeth of the wolf.

She knew that Finn would never make again, would never be his own wry, proud self again.

She knew that the yew would remain walled off from the other trees, lonely forever, as long as Balor allowed it to live.

She knew that humans would never dream again, or make again, and that fairies would never be unsettled by love.

And she knew that she would never see her father again, a thought that bent her over with grief, face to the ground, as the totem scraped and ratcheted, and outside the sea sighed its own, uncaring sigh, back and forth. It was too hard, she was too small, and too afraid. And Balor would be back any minute.

Please
, she thought,
I just want to close my eyes. No more, no more.

The last light was leaking away. The room was dim, and the totem's ratcheting, scraping progress echoed across the stone. Clare turned her wet face to the small stone window, where a star had come out, and another. No moon, no calming yellow-green light; only a black hole, where the moon should be, like the moon in the yew-girl's bedtime story. A black hole, and a few cold stars too far away. Clare thought of the fairies who worshipped those distant lights that they could not see from their own world, and because of her would never see again.

And at that thought, she felt a tingling against her skin, under the pocket where she kept her commonplace book. As if in a dream, as if she had no choice, she pulled out the book. It fell open to the page where she had tucked her scrap of fairy flag.

Come away.

Lying on the ground, Clare began to think slowly, as if she were working out a difficult math problem.
My great-many-greats-grandmother on my father's side
was a fairy herself,
she thought.
And she left this flag for my family's protection. It will protect me. And it will protect my father.

The scraping noise across the stones moved faster.

What do you do if you're afraid, and you know you'll fail?

To watch Clare struggle to her feet, you'd think a weight were pressing down on her. She walked toward the tree, leaning hard into the malignant power surging from the totem, pushing her back. It was like the power that swelled from Her of the Cliffs, except this power was a poison that dissolved all confidence and hope. Once, she staggered back a step, almost fell, but pushed on.

Scrape, scrape
, went the totem, swishing its tail against the rocks. Now its mad, chaotic eye had an almost electric glow, and its mouth looked ready to scream or sing.

“I can't take you with me,” Clare said through gritted teeth. It was as if she spoke to the totem itself, rather than her own doubts. It was hard to find breath, its power pushed at her so hard. She raised her voice as best she could. “I'm not taking you with me! You can't come!”

And with her last bit of strength, she seized the totem by the throat, slid her hands down its long stick-body, and smashed it with all her strength on the hard floor.

In the in-between, her heart wild as a bird, Clare braced herself against the tree-walls on each side. She felt on fire, that she had done such a thing, had fought the worst of fear and despair, had fought that thing, had won. Her body felt charged with some ferocious electricity—she was almost sure her hair was floating around her head.

Tomorrow was Midsummer's Eve. That's what that black hole of a moon had meant. With the fairy flag, the fairies would ride, and Clare meant to ride with them. She put her hand down to a root, to feel her way toward the Strange.

And stopped.

After all, she had a whole night before she had to be back.

She stood like that, bent over, one hand on the root, one to her mouth, thinking hard.

The black hole where the moon should be.

She moved her hand from her mouth to the star around her neck. Now, finally, she moved her hand along the root, saying softly: “Asterion. Take me to Asterion.”

Clare and her beast stood facing each other on a ragged mountain peak, silhouetted against a deep red-violet sky. It was dark: so this was not fairy. She didn't know if it was the human world, exactly, but it was not fairy.

A faint, chilly light silhouetted Asterion's vast, dark bulk against snow-spattered black crags. But it was a moonless night. Where did this delicate light come from? Clare looked up.

One star. Far above, one small, silvery star.

She picked her way over rough black rocks to Asterion, eyes focused on the uneven ground, using his wet, hoarse breath to find him. How that breathing used to frighten her, and now it was longed-for comfort.

“Asterion,” she said, when she reached him. “The yew told me a story about . . .” And she paused. She wasn't sure how much the beast understood of words, but she was certain a long, involved fable would mean nothing to him. And yet they made their dreams together. What was the language they used in dreams?

Wanting.

Clare reached up, as far as she could, to embrace her beast. Her face rested against his chest, just below the star. Eyes closed in concentration, trying to put all her heart and will into each word, she began to whisper, though too softly for him to hear, at least in any normal way. “Asterion,” she said. “I need the moon. I need it more than anything, more than
anything
. Please take me there.”

Gently, Asterion pushed her away. She looked up, afraid he had not understood or was angry. He knelt beside her, and his huge, inhuman head, its elongated black eyes set on either side of a long, thick muzzle, came up to her shoulders.

An uncertain pause. Asterion gave a guttural growl that echoed as if from the bottom of a well.

“I'm sorry, I don't know . . . ” Clare began. But he had extended one huge arm, pulling her closer, and—oh! onto his back.

It was awkward, at first, and prickly around his waist. She had to sort of shimmy up until she had one arm over his shoulder and down his chest, so she could see. When he stood, she kicked out a leg to keep her balance.

For a moment, they stood among the black crags. Then, without preparation, without even a running start, the beast leaped upward, legs kicking against the night air, and headed for the star.