The Light-Bearer's Daughter (26 page)

e goes in the bowl!” said Ivy.

Before Dana could ask what she meant, the boggle hurried to the stone saucer a few feet away and, scrambling over the rim, disappeared inside. Then her head popped up.

“Quick! Gets in!”

Despite her bewilderment, Dana ran to join her friend, happy to escape the demon’s glare.

The interior of the saucer was deep and wide, with enough room for at least six people. The sides were smooth and polished. Dana slid into the center where Ivy reclined against the curve.

The boggle’s eyes were huge with excitement.

“I loves this,” she said, shivering with anticipation. “You wills too. It be’s great fun!”

“What—?”

The bowl began to rock gently like a cradle. Dana clambered up the side to investigate. The first thing her eyes settled on was Murta’s prone body. She shuddered, thankful that he wasn’t moving. The glistening sands were still avoiding him. Her mouth dropped when she saw what else they were doing. Like waves to the shore, from all over the vast chamber, they were converging on the saucer. Gathering beneath it. She suddenly realized what was about to happen. With a yelp, she let go of the rim and slid back to her friend.

“Holds on to your hat!” Ivy giggled.

Soon the sands garnered enough force to thrust the bowl upward. Up, up it flew, at ever-increasing speed, hurtling past the walls of glistening rock. The girls screeched with the same joy and terror of children on a carnival ride. It was as if they were shooting through a column of white and gold light. As the ground dropped miles below them, a glimmer appeared overhead, slowly widening like an open mouth. Dana wondered, with a pang of fear, if they would spurt out the top and into the air! But the saucer began to slow as they neared the summit, finally coming to a gentle stop inside a crater.

They had arrived on the peak of Lugnaquillia. Beyond the walls of the crater, the storm raged. Winds tore in howling circles. Rain whipped the air. Lightning crackled, setting the sky ablaze. Thunder roared like the throat of war.

But the weather was the least of their worries.

They had just climbed out of the saucer and turned to watch it drop below when they discovered they had not been the only passengers. Engrossed in the ride and staring upward, they hadn’t noticed the hands that gripped the rim behind them.

There stood Murta, eyes leaking red.

Paralyzed with horror, Dana didn’t move as he lurched toward her. His feet dragged over the ground. His arms hung limp. The demon was using all its will to propel the sleeping body. And it wouldn’t be long before the spell broke.

Dana grabbed hold of Ivy, who was frozen beside her.

“
Run!
” she screamed.

Scrambling up the bank of the crater, they fell out onto the summit of Lugnaquillia.

Where the full brunt of the storm struck them.

It was merciless. Fists of wind hammered them. The rain lashed like cat-o’-nine-tails. The ground underfoot oozed with muck, sucking at their feet. Only Dana’s fairy cloak kept them moving. The moment she drew Ivy into the folds, it closed around the two of them like armor.

At least the storm would slow the demon. Or so Dana hoped. A quick glance back at the crater showed no sign of him. Directed by Ivy, she fought her way across the summit toward the southernmost edge.

Lugnaquillia was the highest mountain in the Wicklow chain, towering over the surrounding landscape. Its flanks were carved with three great cirques. Its peak was a lofty plateau as wide as a soccer field.

Ivy peered around her in dismay.

“This be’s the dancing lawn … where we hast our parties … That be’s the spot the bonfire’s lit on Midsummer nights … We feasts at long tables under the stars …”

Dana couldn’t imagine such happy scenes. The place looked like a battlefield.

They reached the edge of the cirque called the South Prison. Its slopes sheered down into a natural amphitheater. On the ridge to the west, a saddle of blanket bog lay between Lugnaquillia and the smaller mountain of Slievemaan. Ivy pointed to the bog.

“Do you hears them?”

At first the wails of the wind drowned out all other sound. Then Dana detected a faint ululation rising through the maelstrom. High sweet voices, like a choir of seraphim, sang a lullaby that was also a lament.

Tá an croí á réabadh sa ghleann, sa ghleann
,

Tá an croí á réabadh i ngleann na ndeor
;

Ceo is gaoth sa ghleann, sa ghleann
,

Ceo is gaoth i ngleann na ndeor
.

The heart is torn in the valley, in the valley
,

The heart is torn in the Valley of Tears
;

Mist and wind in the valley, in the valley
,

Mist and wind in the Valley of Tears
.

“The girl boggles,” Dana whispered.

“Can you see’s them?”

Dana strained to see through the veils of rain. At first she could just make out the contours of the giant, embedded face down in the earth. But her sight kept wavering. One moment she saw Lugh, arms and legs splayed, a great boulder the size of a hill on his back; the next, she was viewing patterns of eroded turf topped by a cairn. Then she spotted the erratics: rocks dropped at random by glaciers in ages past. They were dispersed amid haggs of rain-sculpted peat. Both the rocks and the haggs encircled the giant. Now the image blurred and Dana saw the girl boggles, the tune-makers and the word-weavers. Crouched in the rain, miserable but steadfast, they guarded their king.

The giant stirred fitfully. His arms and legs thrashed under the stone that pinned him down. Every time he moved, the storm seemed to worsen. Then all of a sudden, in one huge motion, like a whale turning in the sea, he twisted onto his back. He was still bound, but Dana could see that his eyes were open, dark and deranged with grief.

The girl boggles wept out loud, sobbing as they sang.

Dana thought they cried with fear, for they were surely in danger, but then she saw that Ivy was weeping too.

“Our poor dear King. We can no longer saves him.”

Dana shook her head. It was all wrong, like children being responsible for their parents’ problems.

“He’s the King,” she said to Ivy. “He’s the father. He’s supposed to look after
you
.”

Ivy didn’t reply, but started to shout.

“The boys! Look! Our boys!”

Below them, the boy boggles scampered through the rain, across the bog and toward the King. Dana was stunned by how fast they moved. Their webbed feet skimmed the rain-soaked land as if they were surfing. The silver lining in the storm: it had sped them all the way from the Boglands!

In front of them dashed a streak of gray fur.

“Mrs. Woodhouse!” Dana cheered.

But her cheer turned to a scream as Murta attacked her from behind.

The sleeping spell had worn off. The demon was in full command of the human. Wrenching Dana’s hood back, he gripped her throat and started to strangle her.

Ivy leaped out of the cloak and onto Murta’s arm. He let out a shriek as her sharp teeth sank in.

The two girls struggled with the demon on the mountaintop, even as the boy boggles rolled away the stone that held Lugh down.

Now the giant rose up with a roar that shook the land. And as he rose up, bellowing his sorrow, shedding earth and peat and mud, he brought the rest of the bog with him in one great eruption.

In slow oneiric motion, Dana saw the bog-burst explode around her. Avalanches of sodden turf surged down the hillsides, swamping all in their path. Like sluice gates opening, they triggered more landslides throughout the mountain chain. Roads and bridges were washed away. Trees toppled. Wild creatures drowned. Even birds were caught as they tried to flee the branch. As the viscous flow raged on, it skinned the topsoil from the land, leaving raw wet wounds. The girl and boy boggles, along with Mrs. Woodhouse, were engulfed in the brown torrent and carried away. There was no time to cry out, no time to mourn. Dana herself, along with Ivy and Murta, was swept from the summit and into the quagmire.

Immersed in a murky dream of the bog, Dana didn’t know if she were swimming or drowning, flailing or floating. Layer after layer churned around her in an upheaval of all that had been buried through the ages: primeval forests and ancient fields; the bones of giant elks and aurochs; and torqued human bodies, corded like black bog oak. Celtic gold that was the wealth of nobles and the pelf of thieves swirled around like debris in a sinkhole—jeweled brooches, coiled torcs, gorgets and armbands, bells and miters, shrine boxes encrusted with precious gems. As with the darkest recesses of the mind, the bog was the repository of the land’s oldest memories.

Like a fossil petrified in the peat herself, Dana was caught up in the kingdom’s apocalypse. When the gigantic hand plunged into the brown haze to seize her, she didn’t think to fight it off. Then she found herself held against the stormy sky, far above the chaos.

Acting on instinct, David facing Goliath, she screamed at the King.

“You’re killing everything! Stop it! You’ve got to stop it!”

Now occurred the strangest thing of all in that turbid nightmare. The giant’s eyes settled on Dana and in that instant, he grew suddenly calm. Her presence was clearly a shock that jolted him out of his madness.

The wind stood still. The rain ceased. The storm died.

Dana was back on the summit of Lugnaquillia. Before her stood a young man with craggy features and amber-brown skin. He appeared nothing like the giant freed from the stone. His manner was quiet, his look gentle. He seemed no older than someone in his early twenties, but the shadow of grief made him sterner. He wore earthy colors, bronze tunic and trousers, and a flowing mantle as purple as the heather. A gold circlet bound his black hair.

“Who are you?” he asked her. “How came you here?”

He sounded dazed, but not insane or angry.

Dana was trying to stop shaking. She was still in shock, overwhelmed by the scenes of destruction and the death of her friends. Her voice was barely audible as she started to speak, but once she got going it grew louder and stronger.

“H-h-how can you do this?” She waved her arm to include the devastation around them. “How can you make everyone else pay just because
you’re
unhappy? The poor little boggles who did so much for you! And Mrs. Woodhouse and all the animals—” She choked back her tears. She had never been so mad or so sad. But she forced herself to stay calm. “I’ve got a message for you from the High King of Faerie. But I’m not going to give it to you, unless you put everything back where it was. You’re the King. You must be able to do it.”

She expected him to explode. To rant and rave again. She braced herself for more storms.

The sorrow in Lugh’s features deepened. His look was grave.

“Do you really care for my people, O human child? Then prove your love.”

His voice was quiet, but as his next words sank in, Dana jerked back as if he had hit her.

“Today is the feast of
Lá Lughnasa
. The day on which I may grant you a boon. I will restore my land and my people … if you
wish
it of me.”

ana didn’t know whether to scream or cry. Every part of her protested.
No fair! No fair!
After all the days and nights in the mountains, the trials and suffering, the fear and loneliness, the terrible loss of her dear guardian … to have it taken away: the dream that had carried her forward! The promised reward! After all those years of being a motherless child. The piece that was missing from her heart, her life: no mother to pick her up from school; no mother who smelled of perfume and who brushed her hair; no mother who kissed and hugged her goodnight; who loved her the way mothers love their girls. She would rather have it late than never at all. She needed a mother in her teenage years, to help her grow up, to become a woman.