The Feral Child (12 page)
The twisting tower leaned over them, sta
ggering against the moon. It blocked what little comfort there was from the silver rays, and the damp from the stones crept into their bones. A band of moonlight lit up a slice of shore that ran to meet the waves, but none of them suggested moving from under the oppressive shadow of the tower to walk by the whispering water. After everything they had seen today, Maddy didn’t trust the lake anymore. Who knew what was lurking beneath its surface?
They had not gone far when they heard the stamp and snort of horses from behind a pile of rocks that rose from the sand like the spine of a long-dead leviathan. Maddy froze, her eyes widening with fear. Were there more water horses waiting for her on the beach? She
grabbed Roisin’s hand in terror. Roisin looked at her, the same fear in her eyes, and she held a finger to her lips.
“Tack,” she whispered. “I can hear tack.”
Maddy clenched her chattering teeth and listened hard. Sure enough, there was the clink and jingle of buckled leather as horses shifted their weight on the pebbles. Whatever horses these were, someone had managed to saddle and bridle them.
They all looked at each other as the same thought flashed across their mind. Elven mounts!
Danny stooped and swept George up into his arms, clamping a hand firmly down on the little terrier’s muzzle. Slowly they all crept over to the rocks, their bodies bent double, and peeped over the edge to the beach beyond.
There, standing out as sharp and vivid as an ink stain, was a team of six enormous black horses, harnessed to a silent black coach. Its wheels were rimmed in silver that flashed and winced in the moonlight, while its wooden body was polished to such a shine that Maddy could see her face in its sides as clearly as in a mirror. The coachman seemed to be asleep. His body was bent over in the driving seat, swathed in a heavy black cloak, his head lost to view, no doubt hidden by the high stiff black collar. The horses were restless, and every time they snorted, sparks and little jets of flame flew from their nostrils. Where they pawed the ground the earth was left blackened and steaming.
“Do you think it’s waiting for us?” asked Roisin, her whisper hoarse in the silence.
At the sound of her voice, the coachman’s body stiffened, and he turned in his seat to look at them. But where his head should have been, there was nothing. There was a rustle, and looking down they saw the coachman’s hands turning his head in his lap.
A hideous, idiotic grin split the pale face from ear to ear, and the small black eyes darted about like malignant flies. The head didn’t seem to have noticed them, but the body leaned toward them with dreadful intent. It raised its arm, and with stiffened black-gloved fingers, it tapped the side of the coach, twice, before pointing to the door. It then stayed absolutely motionless, still pointing at the door, as if frozen in time.
“Anyone heard any stories about this guy?” Danny asked. Maddy and Roisin shook their heads, panting with fear.
“I think he wants us to get in the coach,” said Maddy, terror making her squeak. Her body had forgotten even to shiver.
“No way!” said Danny, his eyes wide. “Unless we know and like how his story ends, I’m not going anywhere in that thing.”
“He’s not making a move toward us though,” said Maddy. “I think Liadan may have sent him. He’s waiting for us.”
Roisin let go of Danny and stood looking at the coach, her hands clenching and unclenching by her sides.
Maddy heard her mutter, “Right!” under her breath, before she marched across the rocky beach to the coach and climbed in, leaving the door open behind her. The gloom inside the black coach swallowed her whole.
Maddy and Danny looked at each other and then at the coach. Maddy felt the tension build up in her chest as she realized she had stopped breathing and forced herself to take a deep breath, waiting for something to happen. But the coachman still sat there, still pointing at the door.
“I think he wants us all in there,” Danny said.
Roisin’s face reappeared from the gloom. “Are the two of you getting in or what?” she demanded. “I don’t think he’s leaving without you.”
“Roisin, what are you doing?” said Danny in a strangled voice.
She frowned at him. “Liadan isn’t going to try to kill us until
after
we get to the tower, so I reckon we’re safer with this guy than with anything else that might be wandering around out here,” she said, before pulling her head back in. Her words sounded brave, but her face was white.
Danny looked at Maddy in shock. Maddy shrugged just as Roisin yelled, “Come on, let’s get on with it!”
Stung into action, Maddy and Danny half ran to the coach. Danny stepped up to the door, but as Maddy pushed a reluctant George into the boxy interior, she paused to look up at the coachman, who up close seemed to be as enormous as his horses. His body and
clothes were an indistinguishable black, but his pale, bald head glowed with a sickly green light. His eyes never stopped darting in their sockets. It was as if the head and body had nothing to do with each other. The smell of musty clothes and decay washed over her, and she suppressed a shudder as she put her foot on the carriage step and vaulted inside.
As soon as she was in the coach, the door was slammed shut by an invisible hand, and she was thrown back against the black velvet seat as the horses lurched forward into a gallop. She would have screamed with fear had she been able to take a breath, but the coach bowled along the shore with unnatural speed. They were all thrust back against the seat, and as the coach rattled along, Maddy felt her internal organs sloshing around inside her, bruising against her ribcage.
Now I know why Hobbs called me a meat bag,
she thought.
It didn’t seem possible, but the coach was gaining speed. Maddy could see that Danny and Roisin were pinned to the seat with their elbows and necks at odd angles, the flesh juddering on their faces. George rolled back against the foot of the coach seat, paws splayed on the floor and his lips peeling back from his teeth from the g-force. The wind screamed as the coach sliced through it.
With every muscle straining in her arms, Maddy let go of George’s leash and pushed against Danny to propel herself to the window in the door. Pressing her face to the glass she could see sparks flying off the wheels.
The scenery outside blurred past, but she could see that they were climbing higher and higher, hugging a road along the tower walls as they rose. The hoofs of the horses thundered through the yowling wind, but from the coachman there was not a single sound.
Soon they stormed through a gateway in the tower. Massive, ornate copper gates reared up in their path, and just as it seemed the coach would crash into them, they flew open. On and on they raced, higher and higher, images of ruined houses and crumbling streets flashing past the window.
Suddenly the coach stopped, throwing the three children to the floor. George yowled and scrabbled out from under their groaning bodies. With shaking fingers Maddy pawed at the door handle and the four of them tumbled out on to stone steps, staggering from side to side as they tried to recover. Maddy felt as if every bone in her body had been shaken to powder, leaving her with floppy arms and legs.
She straightened up and tried to still her swimming vision. Dimly she heard the coach rumble away at a more sedate pace. As her surroundings sharpened into focus, she became aware of a white-clad figure picking its way down some stone steps in front of her. The steps rose to a hall fronted by fluting columns that flanked vast wooden double doors black with age.
As Maddy looked around, she could see that they were standing in a courtyard of broken flagstones. All around them the inner walls of the tower twisted
upward, folding like petals around the hall at its center and turning in on itself until the distant sky was a small O far above. Beams of moonlight crisscrossed the tower’s interior, tumbling and bouncing off polished discs set into the crumbling walls before breaking against the hall. The hall itself was as neat and simple as the shabby and decayed tower was overblown and fanciful. It was as if a sophisticated marble temple had been set down inside a castle created by a child. Frost and snow lay over all the flaws and smoothed them to the eye, but Maddy could see that the tower was sick. She guessed that Liadan had created it to swallow the hall, which must have been the home of the Tuatha who had ruled before her.
Look at me!
the tower seemed to say.
Look at how grand and tall and impressive I am compared to what the old queen built. Is the new queen not wonderful?
Nutter,
thought Maddy.
The tip-tapping of a woman’s shoes on the stairs brought Maddy back to the present. She was beautiful and dressed in white furs over a flowing white dress that dragged in a train behind her. Jewels dripped from her ears and neck and crusted her elegant, tapering fingers. Her dress was embroidered all over with plants, birds, and butterflies, making her a promise of Spring in Winter’s home. Her hair was blond and hung in huge glossy waves to her knees. A smile hovered on her lips, and her green eyes were full of laughter. But her white hands were forced to hold up the edges of her dress as
she carefully made her way toward them and it wasn’t high heels that made her feet ring against the stone. She had no feet, only the cloven hoofs and thick hairy legs of a goat.
With her teeth still vibrating in her head from the coach ride, Maddy could only gawp at the faerie. When she was a couple of steps from the children, the creature stopped and dipped in a slight bow.
“Lady Aoife, at your service,” she said. “My mistress, Queen Liadan, bids you welcome to the Winter Court.”
Maddy looked up at the woman and tried to
get her jellied tongue to work.
Aoife laughed, a bright, tinkling sound that cascaded through the frigid air. “Compose yourself, honored guest,” she said. “A ride with the dullahan can be quite breathtaking.”
“Bring Stephen out,” said Maddy, when the muscles in her mouth had solidified. “We have kept to our side of the bargain, so bring Stephen out here now.”
Aoife smiled. “You have kept your side of the bargain?” she echoed. “I think not. You’ve had a lot of help getting here. And still you were so slow, My Lady felt compelled to have the dullahan deliver you.” She frowned, anger clouding her bright face. “You have been untruthful from the start, so do not make
demands on this court with your vulgar speech. Faeries, unlike humans, cannot lie. You will have your lost child soon. But first you will attend an audience with Queen Liadan.”
Maddy ground her teeth in frustration. “Fine.” She bit the word out. “Let’s get this over with.”
They all started to follow Lady Aoife toward the steps, but the faerie held up a hand to stop Danny and Roisin. “Queen Liadan requests only you come before her,” she said to Maddy. “She finds it exhausting conversing with mortals and does not wish to deal with more than one of you at a time.”
“Why?” asked Roisin.
“Your minds work in a way very different from the minds of faeries, and your deceitful natures can be quite . . . wearing,” said Aoife.
“Charming,” muttered Danny.
Maddy looked Aoife in the eye. “I’m not going in there on my own.”
Anger flashed again in Aoife’s eyes. “Do not insult us!” she snapped. “You have the word of the Winter Queen herself that you will not be harmed until the hunt starts.”
Maddy turned to look at Danny and Roisin. Danny put his arm around his trembling sister, who looked up at Maddy and shrugged before sinking down at the bottom of the stone steps, huddling against their edges.
“What’s the point in arguing?” she said. “They’re not going to kill us yet, at any rate. They want their hunt.”
“You go on in. We’ll be waiting for you when you come out. Promise,” said Danny, before sitting down behind Roisin and lacing his fingers through hers. Roisin closed her eyes as tears spilled down her cheeks.
Maddy looked at their bowed heads and swallowed a lump in her throat. Sitting so close together, it struck her how alike they were in their gestures and features. They were family; they had what she had lost. Her eyes burned with hot tears, but then Danny looked up at her. “We’re not leaving without you, Maddy. And if you’re not out soon, we’re coming in to get you.”
Maddy wanted to sit down and put her arms around them both, to go to sleep and pretend this place didn’t exist. Instead she merely nodded at Danny, turned her back, and began to climb the steps toward Aoife. The faerie’s face shone bright with pleasure again, and she turned and led the way to the doors.
There was a clicking noise on the steps behind them, and Maddy turned to see George trotting after her, a determined look on his face. Aoife raised an eyebrow and opened her mouth to say something, but Maddy cut her off.
“Forget it,” she snapped. “You can’t say anything about him—he can’t talk, much less lie.”
Aoife frowned and then nodded. “Very well. But if you value him, keep him close. Oh, and one more thing.” The faerie laid a hand on Maddy’s soaking-wet arm, sending a pulse of warmth through her. Her skin warmed and steam rose from her clothes.
“A gift, to make you comfortable,” said Lady Aoife. She wrinkled her pretty nose. “A pity I can do nothing about the smell.”
The huge doors were standing slightly ajar, just enough for Aoife to slip through. Maddy followed her while the doors boomed shut behind her, locks and bolts clicking and whirring and sliding into place. George jumped at the noise and pressed himself against her leg.
When her eyes adjusted, she found herself standing in a hall dominated by high arched windows that flooded the room with cold moonlight, filtered down from above, caught and magnified and thrown about the room by more giant silver mirrors that were propped up on ornately carved stone easels. Fluted columns carved with twisting vines and flowers rose up to support a roof decorated with hunting scenes, and everything gleamed in rich jewel colors. The moonlight lit the hall up as bright as day, but warm yellow candles burned brightly where the deepest shadows lay. Outside might be virginal and plain beneath the snow and ice, but in here was decadence and wealth and beauty. Even the cold air was perfumed, and thick carpets muffled noise beneath the columns as effectively as snow.
At the far end of the room, a crystal throne stood between two windows, shafts of reflected moonlight shattering against it to set its edges twinkling. Aoife was walking toward the throne to bend and whisper in the ear of the woman seated there. Queen Liadan.
Her hair was a black river that flowed over her simple ivory dress to puddle at her tiny feet. Her skin was as smooth and white as fresh snow, and her cheeks and lips were stained as red as blood.
Snow White,
thought Maddy.
I’m looking at Snow White.
Around her stood her court, luminous elves dressed as rich as she was plain, in embroidered silks and elaborate brocades, heavy furs draped across their shoulders and fastened with silver and gold brooches. Their eyes and even their fingernails glittered like diamonds in the light as they clapped their jeweled fingers. Their mocking laughter was as light and sweet as breaking glass.
Maddy felt small and dirty and ugly as she began her lonely walk on uncarpeted flagstones that marked a path to the foot of the throne. Her fingers itched to comb her tangled brown hair. Aoife had been right: Maddy stank, and her face and hands were streaked with dirt. Blood still crusted her nose from when she had fallen on the ice, and the sour taste of bile coated her mouth. Her now dry T-shirt stuck to the dried blood on the wounds on her back, and the fabric pulled at her every now and then. George sauntered beside her, his chest puffed out in a show of bravado, smelling to high heaven of wet, dirty fur.
Aoife stepped down from the dais of the throne and went to sit with a group of women on the left-hand side of the throne who all had cloven hoofs peeping from under their lovely gowns. While the elves shone cruel and bright, there were other, darker,
more unwholesome forms gathering among the pillars. Green-skinned pixies stood knee high to lumpen, glowering trolls whose tusks curved up from their lower jaws. Banshees clawed at their hair, plucked at their gray rags, and watched Maddy with eyes that burned like coals. Red-skinned men covered in thorns grinned at her menacingly from the shadows. Smaller twisted shapes scampered between the legs of these horrors, like children at a carnival. Maddy clenched her fists as the familiar leering face of Sean Rua winked at her from beneath his mop of red hair, before he dived behind the legs of a glowering knight dressed in black armor. Maddy took a deep breath and reminded herself that there was no time to go after Sean Rua now. She would get Stephen back, and if she survived this, she was going to punch the living daylights out of that child-stealing faerie if he ever set foot in Blarney again.
She had almost reached the foot of the throne when a movement to her left caught her eye. There, gleaming bone white in the shadows between the mirrors, was Fachtna. The dark faerie sat sprawled in a carved wooden chair, her pointed chin resting in the palm of her hand as she watched Maddy. Her face was smooth and blank. Her other hand gripped heavy silver chains, which were attached to the collars of the most gruesome creatures there. They looked like dogs as they strained against their leashes and snapped their huge jaws at her, but their bodies were a boiling mass of darkness. Maddy blinked and tried to see them properly, but
they blurred and shifted so she only caught glimpses of scales, claws, folded leathery wings, and fur. Scucca hounds, she realized. She cried out in fear and flinched away when one massive beast lunged at her, causing the whole court to erupt into laughter. George snarled back, but she gripped his collar tight. The fir dorocha stood behind Fachtna’s chair, their bodies shadowy and indistinct. The only thing that stood out was their eyes, pinpricks of light that gleamed in their formless faces. Fear wafted from them like cheap aftershave.
Maddy swallowed and walked on, stopping a few feet from the foot of the throne. Her back felt cold and vulnerable, and her fingers curled into her palms, longing for a warm hand to hold. George pressed his muscly little body against her leg. She looked up at Liadan and just as quickly dropped her eyes.
Fionn had said that the Winter crown had cost Liadan dearly. Now Maddy could see how enormous that price had been.
Up close, Liadan was a ruined beauty. The color in her cheeks and lips had been painted on. Her eyes were white with just the faintest smudge of a pupil, all color boiled away by the ferocious cold. Her long fingers were curled into claws, the joints and knuckles painfully swollen. Cold radiated out from her bare feet, the frost creeping across the flagstones to Maddy’s sneakers. What must once have been unearthly beauty haunted her in her glossy hair, her slight frame, and the curve of her cheek. Now her body was twisted with pain, and
the cold burned in her, lighting her up with its hunger. When she spoke, her voice was the relentless grind of a glacier as it crushed and ground everything beneath its bulk.
“Tedious child, you stand before me at last,” said Liadan. “I thought you would never arrive.”
“I am here now and ready to honor our bargain,” said Maddy. “Give me Stephen, and then I will do as you ask and run from your hunt.”
“Ah, yes,” Liadan’s voice groaned from her brittle chest. “The little child who has caused all this trouble. Tell me, now that you have seen this land, do you still wish to try to return home?”
“Of course,” said Maddy.
“What say you?” she called to her court. “Here comes this little mortal, fashioning herself as a hero. She dares to defy us. Shall we see if we can make her betray her quest?”
As the court roared its approval, Maddy felt her heart sink. Liadan was going to make this as hard as possible.
“Hmmm, how shall we test you?” asked the Winter Queen, as she sat back in her throne and drummed her twisted fingers on its arm. “Are you too young for a kiss from a gancanagh? Connor, show yourself.”
A dark-haired man stepped from the crowds that lurked beneath the pillars and bowed to Maddy, giving her a warm smile. He was so beautiful it made her throat ache to look at him. But she shook her head and tore her gaze away from him to look at Liadan.
“Please, give me Stephen,” she said.
“Alas, Connor, the child is impervious to your charms—the first mortal to be so in a long time,” Liadan commented. The hall erupted into laughter, and the dark-haired faerie smiled and stepped back into the crowd.
“If you are too young for a kiss, perhaps a mother is what you crave,” said Liadan, waving one hand at the goat-legged women. “One of my glaistigs would no doubt love to take the post. They may look strange to your eyes, but they are very maternal.”
The glaistigs giggled and blew her kisses while the Winter Court’s laughter turned shrill and mocking.
“I have a mother, Majesty, and I have no wish to replace her,” said Maddy. “Please, if you will, give me Stephen as you promised.”
“You have no mother, for she is dead,” said Liadan. “What use is a dead mother?”
“She is more than enough for me,” said Maddy, her voice low as anger began to boil.
“Does she rock you to sleep? Comfort you when you are sick?” asked Liadan.
“No.”
“Then I ask again, what use is a dead mother?”
Maddy ground her teeth. “I couldn’t tell you, Majesty, but to me, she is enough.”
“How pathetic. Is that really the best answer you can give?” asked Liadan, her face twisting in an ugly sneer, the painted mouth a vicious wound in the ravaged face.
Maddy said nothing. “Very well,” she sighed. “Bring the child forth.”
A ripple went through the group of glaistigs, and they parted to show a dark-haired one among them sitting with Stephen curled up asleep in her lap. She gathered the slumbering child in her arms and stepped toward Maddy, her hoofs trip-trapping over the flagstones. Maddy snatched him from the faerie and snuggled him close, kissing his hair and breathing in the warm, soft, familiar smell of him. She bit back a sob of relief when she saw the plastic dinosaur still clutched in his chubby fist. Stephen lay limp in her arms, his eyes roving restlessly beneath blue-veined lids, a frown puckering his face. She wrapped his dressing gown tighter around him and put her lips to his ear.
“Stephen, wake up, darling,” she said. “It’s Maddy, I’ve come to take you home. Stephen?” But Stephen slept on.
She looked up at Liadan.
“He is unharmed, as you promised?” she asked.
“Not one hair on his head has been hurt,” said Liadan. “My ladies-in-waiting have cared for him as if he were their own.”
“So why isn’t he awake?” asked Maddy.
“A harmless glamour to save him distress,” said Liadan airily. “My soft-hearted attendants could not bear to see him cry. He will wake as soon as he gets home.”
“So that’s it?” asked Maddy. “We can go now? No more trying to tempt me to stay?”
“No, I think a night’s hunting will be much more fun,” said Liadan, yawning. “You are free to run.”
“How am I supposed to get off this island?” Maddy asked.
“That’s not really my concern, nor is it part of our bargain,” said Liadan.
“No, but it will be a short and boring hunt if we just run round and round the tower,” said Maddy. “It would benefit you to help us off the island and give us a head start.”
Again laughter roared up to the painted roof.
Liadan smiled, a cold, ghastly imitation of the real thing. “Let us hope you can run as fast as you talk, little one,” she said.
She stood and made her painful way down the dais to Maddy. One shoulder hunched and a foot dragged behind ever so slightly, giving her a shuffling step. Maddy’s body involuntarily jerked away from the cold that splashed around the queen as she walked past Maddy toward the double doors at the back of the hall. Maddy fell in behind her, as did the rest of the court. She noticed that all of them took great care to keep their feet beyond the frost that shivered from Liadan’s every step.