The Radiant Road (9 page)

It had been difficult to get into the tree unnoticed after dinner. But Clare announced with awkward untruthfulness that she was going to bed early. “Jet lag,” her father had said, and then: “Clare—I thought perhaps tomorrow morning, we'd decide about your mother's ashes. What do you think?” She had nodded yes.

She had watched from her loft till her father stepped outside to get something from the car, then slipped down and into the tree. Now she sat in the in-between, watching blue foxfire throb along a vein of the tree, until she felt the familiar arm against her arm. Finn's voice in her ear said, “Come with me, to meet someone.”

“Who?” she said, to stall. She liked it here, the only-Finn-and-Clare place.

“Her of the Cliffs.”

Clare was not sure that sounded like a person she wanted to meet. “Is she one of your people? Is she nice?”

Finn snorted. “One of my people, yes. She is our Hunter—our leader, you would say. Nice, howsomever: no. But I believe you must meet with her, and she agrees.”

Clare did not want to go. The air of the tree felt familiar and comforting already, so starry and still, faintly scented with wood and herbs. “But is she—”

“Wait and see for yourself what she is,” said Finn. “Now watch. You should know how to do this, too.” He placed his hand onto a knot in one of the yew roots at their feet. “Here, here, here,” he crooned, stroking it gently. Whispered, to Clare: “I am thinking and asking and feeling only of where in the two worlds I want to go.”

And just that moment the space around them got larger; or perhaps they got smaller. And the wood grew less solid—Clare could
see again the many veins, twisted together, veins and shoots where the thick sap moved slow. And the tree got larger still, or they got smaller still, and she followed Finn as he stepped inside one of the roots.

Now they were in a new and dangerous place. The wind was angry, where they were; the wind was mad.

Clare sat astride a high rock pinnacle, thrusting out of a wild ocean at the base of an enormous cliff. Clare's own home stood on a cliff above the sea, but that cliff was doll-sized compared to these dark, towering crags. It was as if the edge of a continent had been ripped way by a raging hand.

Clare bent low over the rock like a rider on a runaway horse, clinging to the sides so as not to be blown off. It was a wind like anger, raging and changeable, a hand that slapped your hair against your face, snatched the sock from your foot and blew it—where? Clare watched her gray sock sail out over the vast ocean. How slow the sea moved under the angry wind, until it reached the rocks and rose up to slap them hard.

“Where are we?” she said, her voice shaking only a little, so little she hoped he couldn't hear, though she hoped he could, as well. She didn't like it here. She put her hand to the silver star at her throat to slow her pounding heart.

Cool Finn, cold-fishy Finn, straddled the narrow rock ahead of her, legs dangling, looking out to sea. He said, not turning, “That is the Cliffs of Moher behind us, a great spot of ours, great with beauty, I mean, but also great with my people.”

“I don't like it here,” said trembling Clare. “The wind doesn't want us here. If I fell, I would die.”

The wind whipped his long black hair up and around and down again. He said, “Clare. You are here to know that you are in danger.”

“From the wind?”

He pointed up. “See that bird,” he said.

Clare saw a white seabird riding the wind, up, down, its wings still, serene.

Finn said, “You feel the wind is a bully, beating you. But that is your seeing. That is your story, not the wind's. To a bird who rides it, that wind is only a kind hand. Because the bird rides the wind's power. Do you understand?”

Clare, bitter, cold, and wind-battered, frowned stubbornly. “But a bird can fly. I can't fly.”

He turned to look at her, and his face was troubled. “If you cling to the safety of the rock, indeed you can't. To fly, you open your arms and fall, heart first, trusting the wind to bear you up. That's what the birds do.”

“Like you know how to fly!” said Clare, then wondered—well,
after all, maybe he did. She watched through the tangle of red hair across her face, the tangle of dark hair across his.

He looked abashed. “Well,” he said. “Once I did. I trusted, and I leaped, and I flew. It is hard, though, the trusting. It's hard, hard—and hard every time, the trusting, or so I've heard. I was a boy then, and it was easier. I never could again.”

“Well, I'm not a fairy, so I'm not going to try. Also because I'm not
insane
.”

Finn smiled, but the smile faded. “You should not make Her wait,” he said. He turned his back again. “Climb down.”

So Clare climbed down the side of the rock ledge, one bare foot and one socked foot, clinging with cold hands to the salty-wet rock, finding small painful edges for her feet. Just above the slapping, frothing waves, the rock flattened, creating a place to stand, half sheltered from the wind.

A woman stood with her back to Clare, facing the sea as Finn had done. She had reddish hair pulled back and roughly clipped behind, wore knee boots and a fawn jacket. A quiver of copper-tipped arrows hung just below her coppery hair, and a bow was slung over one shoulder. She didn't turn around.

Clare's teeth chattered as she waited, and not only from the cold wind. She was overwhelmed by the wild and fierce Strange of this place, of this woman. Through every vein, down to her smallest
bones, she felt magnetized by the woman's power. It was hard to catch her breath. She wanted to weep or kneel.

The woman turned. Her face was long and unsmiling, with strong bones and a fierce, straight nose. She seemed about her father's age, Clare guessed. Her eyes were dark brown—dark and kind? dark and cruel? Clare could only see that this woman was far more powerful than the wild cliff wind, that the wind was this woman's smallest sigh.

Clare held tight to the face of the rock beside her. She looked away, because she couldn't look at her.

The woman did not raise her voice, but it pierced the raging wind and crashing waves. “Clare who guards the tree,” she said. “I asked Finn to bring you here, to tell you what is at stake. Listen.

“A thousand years or more ago, the human and Timeless worlds split apart.”

I know that.
But Clare was too shy to speak.

“That split left the two worlds with fragments of each other in their hearts. Humans—caught inside the churning changes of growth and decay, loss and love—humans long toward the perfect, Timeless world of art and dreams. But we who live in that austere, unvarying world, we long toward transformation and love.” She paused and smiled a Finnishly half smile. “Although we do not always admit it.”

She continued. “Finn told you that the connections between your world and ours are breaking down. When the world split, both our people were so lonely for the other; now they begin to forget, even, what they are lonely for. When you showed your people fairy-makings, what did they see?”

“They didn't see,” said Clare, soft.

“And do they seem happy, not seeing?”

“No. They seem angry and lost.”

“My people as well. I point them to love, and they shrug. This is why we must keep the gates open. When you protect that tree you protect the connection between human and”—(was that a tiny smile?)—“the Strange. If those gates close up entirely, it is the end of dreaming and making in your world. Your world will turn gray and colorless. And ours will grow colder and colder, our makings perfect, and loveless, and meaningless. Do you understand?”

Clare nodded. Her stomach hurt. Proud as she was to be a guardian, it seemed like a great weight to carry alone.

“Now I have a warning for you, Clare,” said the woman. “I also have a gift. And I will answer one question.”

Clare thought she had nothing to ask. She was afraid of this power and this wild wind, and she wanted only to be done and home.

“If you don't yet know your question,” said the woman, “then I will begin with the gift. Open your hand.”

Still clinging to the rock with her right hand, still looking away, still unable to look the woman in the face, Clare stretched her left hand out toward the woman. She felt the electrifying touch of the woman's dry hand, and the soft something placed in her palm. It felt like an olive or a small, smooth fruit.

“When the wolf's jaws are closing on you—and I fear they soon may be—eat this, and come under my protection.”

Clare held it tight. Behind her the ocean slammed the side of the big cliffs in rage, and she was splattered by salty foam.

“Now your question,” said the woman. “Ask.”

Clare opened her mouth, with no idea what she would ask, and what came out was this: “Why is Finn the only one of you who changes?”

In answer, the woman told Clare this story. Afterward, when Clare remembered this moment, she remembered it as a kind of fairy tale, for that was how she heard it that day.

Long, long ago, just before the spine of the world was split, when my people and yours shared the one world, when the fairies had change and birth and death, and your people had magic and making—this story goes back to that time.

There was a dark man, then—I mean all kinds of dark, you
understand?—a fairy man, named Balor. A prophecy was made about this Balor, that his grandson would be his undoing.

Balor had but one child, a daughter. To prevent her from ever bearing a child, he locked this unfortunate girl in a high tower in a deep forest. She was there in the tower when the world split, and felt the tremble of the earth, felt the splitting in two of her own heart, as all did that day.

Soon after that terrible time, a human man wandering his own world found and unlocked a fairy gate. This gate led him to Balor's tower, where he found the lonely girl. He could not get her out, but he visited her often, and of course they fell in love. His name was Finnegan, this human man. You might know Finn's Cap, which is the gate he used. It is named for him.

The daughter became pregnant. Balor, furious, hid himself within the tower, caught Finnegan, and hung him on a tree outside, just where his daughter could see her lover's death struggle. Her heart and mind both broke at the sight. She went into labor at that moment—too soon, do you understand? Far too soon. She gave birth to a son who was not ready to be born. And as she gave birth, she died, because her half-human baby's blood had mixed with her blood, which made it possible for her to die.

Balor seized the tiny, half-made infant, already an orphan, and made to throw him off the tower. But the screams of the girl in labor had attracted others, including I myself. I saw Balor at the tower window,
holding the child above his head. With a flaming arrow, I shot out Balor's eye. And I caught the child as he dropped.

The fairies banished Balor to the human world and locked all their gates against him. Meanwhile, I took up the child, wrapped carefully in warm cloths. I packed him into the crook of a yew tree that stood with roots in both the fairy and human worlds—just as the baby had roots in both those worlds. The fairies built a mound of stone and earth all around the tree, and they chose a wise and kind human woman—human, but with more than a little fairy blood—to be guardian of the tree and what it protected. Her daughter was its guardian afterward, and every daughter after continued to be its guardian.

And one day, centuries later—because a changeling creature made of earth and fairy takes its own time to be born—the baby boy opened his eyes inside the tree.

And that same day, that very day, a girl was born in the home, and opened her eyes. And so they grew together.