The Light-Bearer's Daughter (6 page)

“
Tánaiste?
” Dana was growing more confused by the minute. “You mean in the government?”

“No, not your Tánaiste.
Our
Tánaiste. The second-in-command to the High King of Faerie. He’s the King of Wicklow. Lugh of the Mountain, Lugh of the Wood. We haven’t been able to contact him. His borders are closed and—”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Dana jumped to her feet. It was time to get out of there. “Look, I can’t help you. And even if I could, why should I? I don’t know you. This has nothing to do with me.”

“Please don’t go!” the other begged. “Hear me out!” Dana hesitated. Though it was all too bizarre, she found herself feeling sorry for the girl. Between her bedraggled look and desperate pleas, she was like a homeless waif.

“Go on,” said Dana reluctantly.

“I’ll be as honest as I can,” the young woman said, both relieved and anxious. “I seem to have forgotten a lot of things. I guess because I’ve reverted. All I know is this: you’re the best person to do the job. You’re the only one who can reach King Lugh. As for your question about why you should do it?”

Her eyes flashed with mischief, and the grin was so infectious Dana couldn’t help but smile back.

“Well, get this,” the girl said in a conspiratorial tone. “If you do something for Them … I mean us … in return, we owe something to
you
.”

Dana was caught.

“What kind of something?”

The other shrugged and then giggled.

“Your heart’s desire. Whatever you wish.”

here was she? A green valley lush with life. She smiled to see its beauty
.

The vision lasted but the length of a heartbeat
.

Then they came
.

At first they appeared to be a storm on the horizon, a dark squall rolling over the sky. Then, as they drew nearer, she saw they were ragged crows with their eyes sewn shut. As they swarmed into the glen, they attacked everything that lived, ripping out plants and stripping trees, tearing apart animals, devouring birds and the tiniest of insects. The silence of the slaughter was more terrifying than screams. A red fog of blood obscured the scene
.

And when the demon birds departed, there was nothing left
.

Dim shadows descended over the desolation. The earth lay barren without a single blade of grass. No bird sang. No creature stirred. A venomous wind wailed over the landscape, hot and dry and choked with dust
.

She sensed the suffering of the land. It seeped into her body and withered her soul. Was this
Dún Eadóchais?
The Fort of Despair? Or was it
Dún Scáith
? The Fort of the Shades?

A deep dread crept over her. She grew aware of the ground beneath her bare feet. Deathly cold and slimed with oil, it yielded too readily. Each step she took sank further than the last
. Generations have trod, have trod, have trod.
With dawning horror, she realized she was not walking on solid earth, but over a cesspit of noxious substances. Foul draughts of air rose to assault her nostrils: the sweet, sickly scent of putrefaction
.

And even as the nightmarish thought struck her, it began to happen. She felt herself sinking into a pit. The noisome mud gurgled around her, opening like a maw to gorge on her. She fought like a wild thing, twisting violently, clawing against the trap
.

She screamed for help
.

But her screams fell like stones into a bottomless well
.

She screamed again
.

And again
.

AMA! MAMA!”

Dana woke screaming. As always, she changed her cries when Gabriel came rushing into the room.

“DA! DA!”

“I’m here, princess. It’s all right. I’m here.”

He gathered her up in his arms and held her tightly.

She was shocked and trembling. It had been a while since that particular nightmare attacked her. By the guilty look on Gabe’s face, she knew he believed it had come from the news about their move. She herself believed differently.

“I shouldn’t have touched the feast,” she muttered.

“What feast?” Gabriel asked, humoring her.

“At the glen.”

It was a valid suspicion. She had grown up on tales that warned against taking food or drink from “the Other Crowd.”

“The cups were pretty manky,” Gabriel agreed. “But as your grandmother likes to say, ‘you have to eat a peck of dirt before you die.’”

“Yuck,” said Dana.

But she let him think she was referring to the eco-warriors. She hadn’t told him about the Lady in the woods, nor of the pact they had made. In return for a wish, Dana had agreed to go into the mountains to carry a message to the King of Wicklow. Not something to tell a parent!

“How about a midnight snack?” she suggested.

They padded down the stairs in their pajamas. It was three o’clock in the morning, the usual time for Dana’s night terrors. Some were worse than others. The really bad ones were always treated with hot cocoa and a bite to eat.

Their terraced house was small and narrow, with two bedrooms upstairs and a living room, kitchen, and bathroom below. The living room was Gabriel’s work space, cluttered with his instruments, amplifiers, and computer. The sofa and television were crowded into the kitchen along with bookshelves, appliances, table and chairs. When weather allowed, they always ate in the backyard.

Dana poured milk into a small pot, while her father popped brown bread into the toaster and set out their assortment of jams—homemade marmalade, blueberry, black currant, and plum.

“It’s been a while since you rode a night mare, eh?” he ventured.

“Yeah,” she said with a shrug.

She leaned over the stove to watch the pot. Her hair got in the way and she pushed it back. It was tangled from all her tossing and turning, and her eyes felt puffy. The gas flame flickered blue and orange. The milk began to bubble. She tested the temperature with her finger. The last trails of the dream wormed through her mind, but she thought about the Lady instead and the wish she had promised.

“Look, Dana,” her father began carefully. She could hear the remorse in his voice. “How about we agree just to try it? Maybe a year or two? If it doesn’t work out … if you’re really miserable … we’ll come back. I swear.”

Without stopping to think, she asked the question that burned in her mind.

“If we move to Canada, Gabe, how will she find us?”

It was like a great soft blow. He almost staggered back. When he spoke at last, he fell over his words.

“Dana … sweetheart … I thought … We’ve been through all this. You know very well …
Your mother’s not coming back
.”

Her features hardened.

“You don’t know that! Things change. Anything can happen!”

His dismay was obvious. She was upset herself that they were talking about it. She felt the memory of a stone in the pit of her stomach. Neither of them had spoken of her mother in years. Dana remembered exactly when she stopped asking about her. It was Mother’s Day. She was six years old. For some reason she had got the idea into her head:
this is the day missing mothers come home
. Without explaining to her father, she had taken a bath, put on her Sunday dress, and brushed her hair. Was Gabe uneasy that day? Did he suspect? All she could remember was sitting on the front step, hour after hour, looking hopefully up and down the street. There were no tears when the day ended, but a stone had dropped inside her, cold and heavy. Whenever Gabriel mentioned her mother, Dana would turn her head away. Eventually he stopped raising the subject altogether. As far as Dana was concerned, her mother didn’t exist.

The meeting with the Lady in the woods had changed all that. No sooner was the wish proffered than hope surged through Dana and shattered the stone.
I’ll find her at last!

Gabriel was floundering. Even as he measured out his words, she recognized the tone: the one he used in the days when she still begged him to search for her mother.
She must be lost, Da! Like the time on the beach when I couldn’t find you! We’ve got to go look for her!

It was not his way to avoid the issue. He always told her the truth. What else could he do?

“You know the story, kiddo. But I’ll keep telling it to you as long as you need to hear it. It all happened a long time ago, before you were born. Your mother and I were madly in love, but we were very young. Kids really, both in our teens. Way too young to marry. We rented an old cottage in the Glen of the Downs. You were born a year later. We were poor but happy. Your mother grew vegetables, made her own bread and just about everything else we ate. Okay, we were hippies. I played in pubs, took on a few students, even busked in the streets. We got by, and it was a good life, believe me. And you were a great baby, always laughing.”

His face shone as he remembered.

Then his features tightened.

“It was like a bolt out of the blue. That’s the only way I can describe it. I left a happy home that morning and when I came back for lunch, everything had changed. Changed utterly.”

Dana put her hand on her father’s shoulder. He didn’t cry. Like her, all his tears had been shed years ago, but his body was clenched as if in pain.

“I found you in the house alone, crying your heart out. She was gone. Without warning or explanation. Not even a note. The police thought maybe an accident, maybe something worse. They searched the glen, the mountains, the bogs, the lakes and rivers, but no sign of her. In the end, they called her a runaway and closed the case.”

Gabriel gazed out the kitchen window. Dawn was creeping through the sky to light up the backyard. The wild roses trailing over the shed blushed red in the dimness.

“And that’s when we moved here,” Dana murmured, ending the story the way she used to when she was little, “to Wolfe Tone Square in the town of Bray where we lived happily ever after, just you and me.”

Yet something in her voice implied that the ending was no longer satisfactory.

“Why can’t I remember her, Gabe? I try to picture her in my head and I can’t.”