The Summer King (27 page)

“Hold on!” screamed Laurel, “I’m coming!”

She had only begun to renew her struggle, when her ankle was released.

And a green streak arrowed through the water, straight for Ian.

It was like a shark attack. One violent pull and under he went. There was a gurgling sound and bubbles. But he didn’t surface again.

Then the bubbles dispersed and there was only silence.

For one interminable moment, Laurel tread water in that bog pool high on the mountain, knowing there was no one around to help. Then she wailed with despair.

“No, Ian! No!”

He was gone.

here was no sign of Ian. She had to dive and find him before he drowned; but she didn’t get the chance. A great bird swooped down at her.

“No!”
she cried, as the talons gripped her shoulders.

She was pulled from the water with brutal force. Choking with despair, she struggled against her captor, then stopped when she realized it was Laheen.

He carried her into the sky, soaring over the mountain. The bog pool receded below to the size of a puddle and the ravens buzzing over it, to black specks like flies. Now a rush of cold wind and a blur of sea-washed cliffs as they flew westward toward the precipice of Croaghaun.

The moment he dropped her into his nest, she begged him to return to Slievemore.

“Please save my friend!”

His golden voice echoed with sympathy.

“There is nothing I can do for your companion.”

She felt herself going numb.

“No … this can’t be happening.”

Instinctively she joined her hands together as she pleaded with him.

“Then take me back! Please! Before he drowns! Before it’s too late!”

“Your friend is no longer in the water. He was captured by the Fir-Fia-Caw.”

Laurel received this news with a mixture of relief and fear.

“He’s alive then? Will they hurt him?”

“I do not know his fate.”

“You’re the Lord of Clan Egli. Can’t you stop them? Tell them to let him go?”

The dark eyes regarded her with an old sorrow.

“Long has it been since the Fir-Fia-Caw obeyed my command. They follow only their kinsman, Ruarc, who is blind and deaf to all but vengeance.”

“And you won’t fight this evil?”

Her accusation was bitter.

The sadness in his eyes deepened.

“Your kind are quick to call ‘evil’ what they do not know or understand. Ruarc was my Queen’s champion and the Captain of her guard. He has gone mad with grief and guilt, because he still lives when she does not.”

Not for the first time, Laheen’s words cut the ground out from under her. Laurel didn’t know what to think. She yearned for the simple division of good and evil instead of this tangle of right and wrong. For she understood her enemy. Knew exactly how he felt. The grief of the one who didn’t die. The guilt of the survivor. In that moment, she was able to pity him.

“With his brothers and sisters, the last of the Fir-Fia-Caw, Ruarc guards the Summer King inside the mountain. Only his noble nature has stayed him from slaying in cold blood the one whom he hates. But he would die rather than see the king freed and he will kill any who attempt such a deed.”

Laurel felt sick. She couldn’t bear to think that Ian might be dead. She clung, instead, to the hope of her mission. If by saving Faerie she could save Honor, didn’t that mean she could save him as well?

Laheen spoke again, and his voice took on a timbre that seemed to echo through the mountain.

“When you come to the edge of all that you know, you must believe one of two things: either there will be ground to stand on, or you will be given wings to fly.”

As he spoke, he spread out his own wings in a grand gesture of gold plumage. Warmth and light shed from his feathers to fall around her. The tightness in her heart eased. Courage surged in her veins.

His golden voice resounded once more.

“Death is not the enemy. Light the fire!”

With the eagle’s words ringing in her mind, Laurel was set down at the foot of Croaghaun beyond Keem Bay. She looked like someone who had been lost on the mountain for days. Her clothes were wet and dirty, she was covered in cuts and scrapes. Trudging down the road to Keel, she could only hope that a passing car might give her a ride.

All her thoughts were of Ian. Was he okay? Was she abandoning him? Was she doing the right thing? It was all her fault. If they had gone with his plan, not hers. If only …
if only
… She stopped short when she realized what she was doing. Tormenting herself, as he would say. And it did her no good, only made her weaker. She needed to be strong, for his sake as well as Honor’s. Laurel closed her fists so tightly her nails dug into her palms. She would not wallow in self-pity or blame. She would join up with Grace, raise an army, and return to the mountain to free the Summer King and Ian too. Then tomorrow they would set sail for Hy Brasil to light the Midsummer Fire and wake Honor from her sleep.

“And we’ll all live happily ever after,” she said, through clenched teeth.

Laurel was not long on the road when she heard a clopping noise behind her. She stepped into the verge as an old-fashioned jaunting car pulled up beside her. It had two wooden benches in the back, facing outward on each side, and a high seat in front for the driver. The donkey that pulled it was gray and round like a barrel. The driver was a big teddy bear of a man, almost too big for his old tweed suit. His face was covered with whiskers the same gray color as the donkey. His baggy trousers were tied with rope instead of a belt, and his jacket was closed with safety pins. A battered Walkman sat on his lap, while a pair of enormous headphones covered his ears. Lively music spilled out. His whole body twitched.

“Would ye like a lift?” he roared over the Walkman. “Take the weight off your feet!”

It was the Walkman that somehow reassured Laurel. She climbed up beside the stranger.

“Janey Mack, would ye look at the state of ye,” he said. “You’re like the wreck of the Hesperus.”

He reached back into his cart and hauled out a plaid blanket. As he tucked it around her, he passed her the headphones.

“Éist nóiméad,”
he said. “Have a listen to Altan. They’re only powerful, a fright to God and the world!”

The wild-paced Donegal music clamored in her ears. Fiddles, pipes, flutes, and bodhráns played in a frenzy. Instinctively her feet began to tap.

“Now list to this. It’d make the stones weep.”

He fast-forwarded the tape. A sad tune keened in her ear with such yearning and loss that her eyes filled with tears. She thought of Honor and Ian.

“The three great gifts of music,” he told her. “Songs that bring the comfort of sleep, songs that make ye dance, and songs that make ye weep.”

He took up the reins and told the donkey to “gee-up.”

When she told him she was heading for the Deserted Village to pick up her car, he let out a great laugh.

“Amn’t I goin’ that way meself?” he said. “What a grand coincidence!”

The donkey trotted along at a leisurely pace, but Laurel was happy enough not to walk the long road. She was happier still when he handed her a little straw basket. Under the clean cloth were buttered slices of soda bread and a small round apple cake, along with a flask of hot sweet tea.

“Thank you so much,” she said, between bites. “I didn’t realize how hungry I was!”

Her spirits were reviving.

“Think nothing of it,
girseach,
don’t we owe you that much in the heel of the hunt?”

Laurel turned to him, aghast. It was the cluricaun, and she had eaten his food! She was about to fling away the last of the cake, when he caught her arm.

“Don’t be at that! ’Tis not from Faerie. I bought it in a shop. And, begob, the price of it! Cost me a bloomin’ fortune! That oul Celtic Tiger would devour your wallet, so it would.”

“How can I believe you?” she demanded, trying not to panic.

Her mind raced. What did fairy food do a person? It could trap you in Fairyland forever. But she was still on Achill. What else could it do? Put you under their control!

“I can prove it,” the cluricaun assured her. “Look, I’ll give ye an order, and if ye don’t follie it, ye’ll know you’re not under me sway.”

She waited for his command. He rolled his eyes sky-ward, thinking hard. Her fear dissipated as she grew impatient.

“Well, do it,” she prodded him.

“Don’t be rushin’ me. It’s not every day I get to be makin’ suggestions to a fine girl like yourself.”

“You’re being creepy.”

“Right then. Touch the tip of your nose with your tongue.”

“What?”

“Go’wan. Let me see ye do it.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Well, the fact you’re arguin’ proves me point. The food’s the real Ally Daly.”

Satisfied, Laurel finished off the cake, but now there were more serious matters to discuss.

“You’ve been lying to me from the start,” she accused him. “You told me the Summer King was lost and it was my mission to find him. That’s a long way from the fact he’s in prison and for very good reasons. And what about the Fir-Fia-Caw who guard him? Who will kill anyone who tries to free him? You didn’t think I needed a heads-up on that? Oh, and let’s not forget that the Summer King is the bad guy and doesn’t deserve to be set free! Or was that just another ‘slight oversight’ on your part?”

Her voice grew louder and higher as she warmed to her tirade. Here was a fitting scapegoat for all her worry about Ian.

“It’s been lies, deceit, and betrayal from the very beginning. And why? Because Faerie wants me to do something none of you would dream of doing yourselves!”

He hung his head as she berated him and didn’t once interrupt or make excuses. By the time she was finished, he was no longer the burly jarvey who had driven up to her, but was now his own diminutive size. His legs swung over the seat and he was barely able to manage the reins.

“Are you shrinking again?!”

“Forgive me quick!” he urged her. “Or I might disappear altogether!” Her eyes narrowed. She didn’t believe a word he said, but at the same time she didn’t want him to go just yet.

“I forgive you,” she said.

His features collapsed with relief.

Then she added immediately, “If you promise me something.”

He looked alarmed again.

“Not my store of
poitín
!”

“Of course not,” she said impatiently. “I don’t even know what that is. I’ll forgive you if you promise to tell me the truth.”

“I’ll do me best,” he swore fulsomely. “Swelpmegod.”

“Do you know anything about Ian?” was her first question.

“Who?”

His eyes squinted in a shifty manner.

“My … my friend who’s been with me on the mission. Dark-haired guy, motorbike. Do you know what’s happened to him?”

The cluricaun smacked his lips.

“Can’t say that I do,” he declared, “and that’s the truth of the matter.”

It sounded true. But whether it was or not, there was nothing she could do about it.

They were approaching the village of Dooagh. Though they passed cars and a few pedestrians, no one seemed to find the cluricaun or his cart out of the ordinary. Whenever he nodded hello, they always greeted him back. “As for me not tellin’ ye the whole shebang,” he said, “Ye hardly believed in us at’all at’all. How was I supposed to be recitatin’ the Doom of Clan Egli, one of the Twelve Tragic Tales of Faerie? Sure ’twould take days to tell it, and that’s only the fairy half. The human tale is another story, but none of us knows it or what happened to that gobshite of a king once he got his comeuppance, the curse of Cromwell upon him.”

He spat into the ditch beyond the jaunting car.

“His fate was kept on the QT. All hush hush. A matter of national insecurity, as your kind do be callin’ it. The only one who knew the ending was the First King, for wasn’t he the headbuckcat and Boss of the business? But that knowledge was lost along with himself.” The cluricaun heaved a huge sigh. “So much was lost. I’ve a terrible drooth just thinkin’ about it.”

Gripping the reins with one hand, he reached under the seat to grab a big earthenware jug. Unstoppering the cork with his teeth, he took a long swig.