It rains. I keep walking. Out of the settlement, along the farm track past Scannal’s. The bull’s a darker patch in his dark field, just standing there. Can’t see far ahead, but that light in the cottage window’s a welcome sight. Stupid voice in my head’s talking again. She doesn’t belong to you, Bonehead. You’re not her keeper. If she wants to go off and get herself killed, that’s her business.
‘Shut it!’ I say out loud, hitting myself on the head. Voice just keeps on. You know what your problem is? You care too much. She wouldn’t like that.
By the time I get to the door I’m in quite a state. Ripple’s barking, but nobody opens the door. I know before I go in that Blackthorn isn’t there.
House is warm. Makes me dizzy. Have to sit down before I fall down. Dagda’s bollocks! Weak excuse for a man! On the bench now, everything swirling around. Ripple lays her head on my knee, looks up at me like she knows how I feel. ‘It’s all right, girl,’ I tell her. ‘She’ll be home soon.’
I sit there a while. See things in the flames that I don’t want to see. Glad the dog’s with me. She’s dried off now, hair all silky under my fingers. I think of Blackthorn when she was turned into a monster, skin scaly, mouth crammed with teeth, trying to talk to me and only groans coming out. How I held her in my arms and cried over her. Promised I’d stay by her if it took two hundred years. They talk about folk having their hearts broken. When she came back to herself I felt my heart mend, all the pieces coming together again. Stronger because it was broken before. Odd, that.
After a bit I get up, take off my wet things and hang them up out the back, put on dry ones. Set the kettle on the fire for a brew. Find some bits and pieces and make a supper of sorts, halfway between a gruel and a soup. It’ll be hot, at least. Get out a flask of mead, some cups. Feed Ripple. House is as cosy as I can make it. I’m tired enough to fall asleep right now. One more thing to do. If it’s foolish, so be it. Feels like it might help bring her home.
I get out the wax tablet again. Read it aloud: ‘What bird are you? I am a crow.’ Know already what I want to write, and it’s not what Blackthorn would have asked for: What bird are you? I am an owl, and so on. It’s something a lot harder. For me, anyway. So I write, or do my best to write:
Who is this woman?
Her hair is red as flame
Her eyes are wise as an owl’s
Her hands are strong as a warrior’s
They are gentle as a mother’s
All fight on the outside
All goodness within
She walks her own path
Her name is Blackthorn.
Takes me a while. Get up to put wood on the fire a couple of times, stir the pot, shift the kettle to one side, think of the next part. Spelling won’t be right. Never mind that. Nobody’s going to read it but me. When I’m done I go over it a couple of times, listening to the wind howling outside and the rain still bucketing down. Wonder if what I’m doing is a sort of spell. That’d be a joke. She’s the wise woman. I’m just the big lump of a hanger-on, not a speck of magic in me. Wish there was some. I’d use it to keep her safe even when she’s far away and I can’t bring her back.
Quick as a flash Ripple’s up and at the door, ears pricked, body tight, listening. Then barking so loud it hurts my ears. I slam the cover shut on the wax tablet, no time to rub over what I’ve written. Let this not be someone with bad news. Let it be her. Let it be her.
I open up. The wind bellows into the house, bringing rain with it. And there she is on the doorstep, cloak clutched around her, hair in rat-tails, face ghost-white, eyes hollow. Far from all right. But home. She’s home.
I get her inside, push the door shut and shove the bolt across, tell Ripple to quiet down. Blackthorn just stands there, water running off her clothes onto the floor. Think I can hear her teeth chattering.
‘Fire,’ I say. ‘Sit.’ Steer her over to the bench and sit her down. Pour a cup of mead and put it in her hand. ‘Drink.’
She drinks, chokes, drinks again. ‘Morrigan’s curse,’ she mutters. ‘I could do with some of Father Tomas’s brew right now. But on second thoughts, maybe not.’
Father Tomas’s brew nearly got both of us killed when that traitor Flannan ambushed us by night. Doesn’t do to sleep too sound. Your enemy can creep up on you. ‘Get you some dry clothes?’ I ask.
‘Please. Don’t bother with the screen, you can just turn your back.’ Her voice is shaky. ‘You were home before the rain?’
‘Got dampish.’ I look in the storage chest, take out a gown, a shawl, a shift for underneath, some stockings. Lay everything on her bed. I find a big cloth for drying. ‘Ready when you are.’ Wondering if I can rub out what I wrote on the wax tablet while she’s busy getting changed. But no; she’s sure to see and ask me what it is. So I just move the tablet to the shelf and start setting supper out, making sure I don’t look at her. We’ve got good at that over the time we’ve lived close. We saw each other unclothed, shamed and hurt, time after time in that place of Mathuin’s. Means we’re more careful than most to show each other courtesy now.
I find some bread I didn’t spot before, put it on the table with the bowls of broth and the mead cups. Take my time about it.
‘That looks good, Grim.’ She’s dressed now, taking her wet things out the back to hang up.
‘Let me do that –’
Too late, she’s already gone. Soon after, she’s back. ‘Dampish, you said.’ She comes to sit at the table. ‘You were soaked through. Your stuff’s still dripping everywhere.’
‘Went looking for you. After I dropped Mercy off.’ I sit opposite her; Ripple settles by my feet. Bit more colour in Blackthorn’s cheeks. Hands steadier. Hope she’ll tell me where she’s been and why she was looking like a ghost. Don’t ask, though. Her and me, we’ve got our own way of doing these things. ‘I know about the raid at Cloud Hill. Spoke to some folk over at Winterfalls. Donagan. Deirdre. Eoin.’
‘Tell me.’ Darkness back in her eyes. Voice wobbly again.
‘Eat that while I do. Need something warm in your belly.’
‘Tell me, Grim. I know Cloud Hill was overrun. I know Flidais’s parents are in Mide.’
‘Can’t tell you much more than that.’ I share what I know, which isn’t a lot. ‘Plenty of folk upset. All them who came from those parts with Flidais. No news of who died and who survived. They’ve got families there, friends, comrades.’
She says nothing at all. Spoon halfway to her mouth, forgotten what she’s doing, staring into space.
‘Lady?’ I say it soft, put my hand on her arm. She starts, drops the spoon. Broth splashes onto the table. ‘Nothing we can do right now. Have your supper.’
‘Someone has to do something,’ she mutters. ‘How much more can that man get away with? He just takes what he wants, and folk let him push them down in the mud. This is – this is –’
‘One mouthful at a time. Want me to feed you?’
‘I’m not an infant!’ she snaps, and starts eating again, which was what I hoped she might do. ‘You didn’t ask where I was before.’
I break up the bread, pass her a share, keep my big trap shut.
‘I was here. Not in the house. In Dreamer’s Wood. Wandering about at first. Angry. Too angry to stay inside. I would have done some damage. It wasn’t just the news about Cloud Hill that had upset me. There was a – an episode here earlier, something odd. I’m not even sure what happened, but Emer saw some kind of fight in Dreamer’s Wood, and a fellow brought her back here and started asking me questions.’
‘A fellow? What fellow?’
‘A fighting man with tattoos on his face. From some place called Swan Island. Very polite. Said he and his friends were heading for Prince Oran’s, at the prince’s invitation. But Dreamer’s Wood was out of their way. So I had Mathuin on my mind even before I took Cara back over to the prince’s. Why would fi
ghting men be skulking around in the wood? Why would they want to know anything about me? It felt like Flannan and his lies all over again. And then, hearing what Mathuin had done at Cloud Hill – I was angry. Disgusted with myself for being so helpless. So useless. Furious with Conmael for making me come all the way to Dalriada and for making me promise not to go back. I tried to think it through. Made myself go through the possibilities. And then . . .’
‘Then what? Go on, eat that bread while you tell me.’
‘I tried to summon Conmael. Tried as many different ways as I could think of. But he didn’t come. And . . . No, you don’t want to hear this.’
‘I could guess.’ Hope I’m wrong, though. ‘Talked about the Otherworld, didn’t we? A while back? How, if Conmael wouldn’t put in an appearance, you might go looking for him there?’
‘You were the one who thought up that ridiculous idea.’ She’s not meeting my eye.
‘Didn’t think you’d try it, or I wouldn’t have said it.’
‘I didn’t try it, exactly. I spent a lot of time just standing by Dreamer’s Pool, wondering if Conmael passes through some kind of portal every time he comes to our world, and whether that doorway is a physical one. Often he just . . . appears. Out of thin air. That’s what it looks like, anyway. I walked around the wood, and the rain got heavier, and I peered down some cracks in the rocks and some hollows under trees and tried to convince myself I could actually find a way in. And . . . I tried some other tricks. Hearth magic. Chanting. Telling stories. The more I did, the more useless I felt. I hate that. It muddies my thinking. For a bit there, I’d half-convinced myself Dreamer’s Pool might be the portal.’
This shocks me more than anything else she’s said. ‘Morrigan’s curse! You wouldn’t do it, would you? Jump in there and get turned into an ant or something?’
‘An ant,’ she says, giving me a funny look. ‘When you put it like that, it seems an even stupider idea than it was that night when you nearly jumped in.’
‘Mm.’ I think a bit about what she’s told me. ‘Those men, the Swan Island men. They could be telling the truth. About Prince Oran calling them in. From what I’ve heard, they’re choosy about who they work for. Can’t see them doing Mathuin’s business.’
‘So you know about them?’
‘Not much. Heard a mention here and there. They’re dangerous all right. But not known for hurting women. The fellow did bring Emer home.’
We’re both quiet for a bit. Listen to the rain pelting down out there. Wind howling.
‘Good night for a story,’ I say, to get her mind off other things. Then I wish I hadn’t. Don’t want her looking at the wax tablet. Not before I’ve rubbed out my little bit of foolishness. ‘That fellow I’m working with, Bardán, he’s got a story that would make the hairs on your neck prickle, or I think he has. Only he can’t come out with all of it, or won’t. Says his father taught him to build. But the way he talks, it’s like he was in some other world, and not just for a bit. For years and years. Makes me wonder about those doorways. Portals. Bardán talks about going down. Falling. I’ve wondered if that’s what he means. A cave that leads to the Otherworld.’
‘You think that’s where he got his remarkable gift for building, not from his father?’
‘Polished it, maybe. He told me part of a story about folk escaping from the fey world. Could have been his own story, that’s if he brought a wife back with him. Could have been his father’s story. The fellow was switched for a changeling, as a babe. Raised in that place. Met a girl who was half-fey, half-human. She found the way out. They got away together. The more I think about it, the more I think it was his dad’s story. If he grew up there, didn’t leave until he was a young man, he could have learned all sorts of fey building tricks and taught them to his son. No wonder Bardán knows how to make a heartwood house.’
‘A changeling.’ The firelight’s on Blackthorn’s face, flickering. She’s got that thinking look. Hair curling in wisps as it dries out. Like little flames. ‘I can’t help wondering if that’s the key to getting Conmael back,’ she says. ‘Or to understanding why he isn’t coming back. I never told you, did I? The whole story about Cully, and my theory about why Conmael rescued us from prison?’
‘Tell me.’
‘It was a long time ago, when I was a child of ten or so. In the south, at a place called Brocc’s Wood. I’d been sent to live there with a wise woman who’d agreed to take me as her student. I got on all right with the other children, though they were wary of me, and with good reason. But they treated me with respect, because their parents trusted Holly – that was my mentor’s name. There was a woman who lived on the very edge of the village, a woman with a child but no husband. She was never looked on as part of the community. Folk told stories about her, how she’d lie with any man for a loaf of bread or a jug of ale, how she’d been thrown out by her husband for her slatternly ways, how she didn’t even know who her son’s father was. It was cruel. Even at that age I saw how unjust it was, since she and her son had only come to the village a couple of years before I did and nobody really knew much about her. It was all invention. But she was a poor soul, too beaten-down and sad to stand up for herself.
‘The boy, Cully, was a year or so younger than me. He was an odd-looking lad with long spindly limbs, pale skin, big eyes, and a nervous way with him. People called him the changeling. They didn’t mean he really was a fey child. They meant he was different; he didn’t belong. Cully had no friends. The other children shunned him as their parents did his mother.
‘That disturbed me. When I got the chance, I talked to him. Told him stories. Taught him some games, just little things we could play with sticks and stones. We weren’t friends, exactly. I didn’t have time for friends, what with Holly’s lessons and gathering herbs and helping around the house – Holly was quite old and had sore joints, so a lot of the cooking and cleaning fell to me. But I didn’t see why Cully should be taunted and bullied and shamed.’
I can see that boy, funny little thing he is, all by himself under a tree, watching while the others run after a ball. Them in the sun, him in shadow. ‘Go on,’ I say.
‘There was one time when I caught the others red-handed, abusing him,’ Blackthorn says. ‘Calling him names, worse ones than changeling. Calling him bastard, saying his father was a murderer or a madman or a demon. Saying foul things about his mother that they must have learned from their own mothers and fathers. Things they probably didn’t even know the meaning of. And Cully just standing there in the middle of their circle, white as a sheet, letting it all rain down on him. I marched in and told them what I thought. Shamed them with their own cruelty. Said if I caught them at it again I’d turn the lot of them into toads. I wasn’t sure I could really do that, but they must have believed I could. They never teased him again. And if they told their parents what I’d threatened, I never heard a thing about it.’
‘Could be the parents didn’t fancy being toads either.’
‘Anyway,’ says Blackthorn, ‘in time I moved on. Left Brocc’s Wood. Never did find out what happened to Cully. Only . . . I’ve wondered if it could have been him. Conmael. A real changeling. A fey child brought up as a human boy. A boy who was always out of place in this world. A boy who repaid my small act of kindness, years later, by saving my life. Though he did put conditions on it. As if he saw, even when we were children, that my anger could all too easily boil over and make me lose my good judgement.’ She gets up to fetch dried herbs for a brew. ‘What do you think, Grim? It seems a mad theory. The favour Conmael did for you and me was huge. It changed our lives forever. And what I did for Cully was such a little thing. Besides, you know what Conmael is like. Tall. Imposing. Handsome. Every bit a nobleman and obviously fey. A different creature from that awkward, frightened boy.’
‘What do I think? I think the only way you’ll know is if you ask him straight out.’
‘Which I ca
n’t do.’
‘You could be right about him. The world’s full of strange things. Stuff that doesn’t make sense until you really think about it. Happenings like the ones in the old tales.’ I fetch out two clean cups. She drops the herbs in, tops them up with hot water. Fine smell. I’m guessing chamomile, lavender, pinch of something I can’t put a name to. ‘Take Bardán. There we are, building this house for Master Tóla, and Bardán keeps singing bits of old songs, muttering bits of old rhymes. No sense to it. Only, deep down, I’m thinking it all links up. Meaning something bigger than what’s in the words. Only I can’t understand it. Can’t work out how the pieces go together. Makes me wish I was a clever man.’
Blackthorn gives me a look I’ve seen before, often enough. ‘You have a great talent for putting the pieces together, Grim. I’ve seen you demonstrate it over and over. Now tell me, does this rain mean you’ll be home for a while?’
‘If it keeps on like this, yes. Not much I can do up there in a downpour. Only . . .’
‘Only what?’
‘Bit worried about Bardán. They’re not kind to the fellow. If I’m there I can keep an eye on him.’
‘Like me with Cully.’
‘Don’t think there’s anything fey about Bardán.’
‘There would be,’ Blackthorn says, ‘if that tale was his father’s. About being switched at birth, and then being led out of the Otherworld by a girl who was half-fey and half-human. That girl would be Bardán’s mother, if she and his father stayed together. So he’d have fey blood. That could be what gives him his unusual knack as a builder. That and his father’s teaching. Does he look fey? Part-fey?’
I’m ready to say no, but I stop to think. ‘Can’t tell. Bardán’s wild looking. Tangle of hair and beard and leaves and dirt. Doesn’t wash, doesn’t shave, doesn’t change his clothes. Not that I’ve seen. And doesn’t want to.’