‘I’ve tried every way I can think of to summon him. You know that!’ I made myself take a breath. ‘Sorry. But I never did believe he could make time go backwards. And I don’t need his permission for anything now. It’s too late for that.’
Grim stared down at his hands. Frowning. ‘Might not be,’ he said. ‘Feels wrong that they’d have the hearing and you wouldn’t be there to speak up. You could try to call Conmael. Try again, I mean. Do something different.’
My sigh of exasperation was loud enough to turn the heads of the Longwater men, who were organising themselves into two groups, one to walk with Brígh and her father, since Bardán’s crippled hands meant he could not ride, the rest to go ahead with the horses and prepare the folk of the settlement for two unexpected additions to their number. They felt a duty, maybe; the need to make amends for their poor treatment of Bardán in the past. They were good folk at heart, even if, as it seemed, some of them had accepted Tóla’s money to hold their tongues. They would look after Brígh and Bardán until they got on their feet. As for Tóla, Prince Oran would see justice done there.
‘Not like you not to try,’ said Grim.
‘All right, I will,’ I snapped. ‘But not here. And not in front of Cionnaola and Cúan, either. It’ll have to wait until we’re back at Dreamer’s Wood. And I doubt those two will be happy about yet another delay.’
He didn’t say anything. I remembered that he had spent hours trussed up in the dark, not knowing what came next. That he had a head wound and had lost quite a lot of blood. That I was expecting him to get on a horse and ride off to some unknown place without any kind of rest first. ‘I’ll tell them you need a meal and a bath before we go on.’
‘Mm-hm.’
‘What?’
‘Might be night time before we get going.’
‘It might. That’s why we need Conmael. Look, those two are on their way back. Let’s go, big man. One step at a time, yes?’
‘Lady.’
‘You know I don’t like you calling me that. What?’
‘Thanks for saving me. Thanks for . . . I still can’t get my head around it.’
‘Don’t try,’ I said. ‘It’s what we do, isn’t it? Save each other?’
45
~Bardán~
As they make their way to Longwater, he hears his mother’s voice, singing: Feather bright and feather fine, none shall harm this child of mine. And here is his child, safe. Walking beside him. Returned to him. His girl, his own Brígh. On her face he sees his wife’s sweet smile. In her voice he hears his wife’s kindness. But his daughter is strong, too; as strong as a fine young oak. He remembers her half-hidden in a dapple of green leaves and golden light. How could he not have known her instantly?
The world is so full of wonder. Sorrow has blinded him to that, but now he sees clear. The sun on still water. A baby’s tiny hands, a miracle. The flight of a bird. A friend’s touch in the dark. Kind words and gentleness. Truth, and a pathway forward. He is mended. His child has come home, and he is whole again.
46
~Grim~
Too much to think about. Bardán and his daughter. Gormán going off into the woods like that. Like he wasn’t ever coming back. That eats at me. Wish I could go after him, find him before he does himself some mischief. Tell him that even if good men do bad things sometimes, there’s a way back. But that forest’s big and he knows it inside out. If he wants to lose himself, nobody’s ever going to find him.
And Blackthorn, riding beside me now wrapped up in her own thoughts. Blackthorn choosing not to go to this hearing. Can’t get my head around that. Got the chance to face up to Mathuin in a proper council at last, and she said no to it. That’s the only thing she’s cared about since we got out of that place. Vengeance for her family. Justice for all the folk Mathuin’s hurt over the years. It’s been the only thing keeping her going. And this time it would’ve been easy. No need to ride all the way to Laois. Guards to go with her, everything arranged. But she said no. Because of me.
Don’t know what to think about that. Don’t know where to start. So I think about Conmael instead, what might bring him when we need him. What might’ve held him back from coming. I think about it all the way down to Dreamer’s Wood and home.
‘Got an idea,’ I say to Blackthorn. Cúan’s looking after the horses, Cionnaola’s drawing water from the well. They’ve said we can still go with them to this place, even though it’s too late for Blackthorn to speak. Place is so secret nobody’ll say where it is, only it’s a couple of days’ ride. I’m tired. Head hurts. Other bits of me not doing so well either, after being cramped up so long. Long soak in a hot bath, then rest, that’s what I want. Don’t say so, though.
‘What?’ says Blackthorn.
‘When you think of Conmael, what do you think of?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Pretend I’ve never seen him. Paint a picture for me.’
‘Tall, pale, dark-haired, noble-looking. Obviously fey. Usually wearing a sweeping cloak and a lot of silver rings. Looks forbidding. Arrogant. Most of the time.’
She’s said what I expected her to say. ‘I think that might be the trouble,’ I tell her. ‘I think you might have hurt his feelings.’
‘The fey don’t have feelings to hurt,’ Blackthorn says. ‘Especially not him.’
‘Brought up by a human mother, wasn’t he? Some of that might have rubbed off on him. Made him different. Different from what he was born as.’
‘Then he’d be an outsider in his own world as well as the human world. That’s terrible. But now you say it, of course he has feelings. Or had them. The other children used to taunt him because he was odd-looking. Calling him changeling. He hated it. He shrank from it. Wouldn’t fight back. They kept on and on at it until I made them stop.’
‘Explains why he’s helped you. You were his protector. His friend. His only friend.’
‘He’s repaid any debt a hundred times over by saving us from Mathuin’s lockup. He owes me absolutely nothing.’
She still doesn’t understand. ‘Explains why he helped you, yes. And why he made you promise to follow his rules. He wanted you to be that old Blackthorn again. The one who stood up for what was right. The one who saw him as a real boy. The one who took time to listen.’
Blackthorn’s starting to look cross. ‘How does that help?’
‘Not sure. Don’t know much about charms and spells. You’re the wise woman. What we want is a spell to bring Conmael here. He can come here any time he wants: he’s fey. But he doesn’t come. He might be upset. He might’ve been waiting all this time for you to remember he’s Cully. Thinking you never will. Thinking that didn’t matter to you like it did to him. Being friends, that’s a big thing for some folk. One good friend can change your whole life. He might have given up coming to visit you because he’s . . . sad.’
‘Conmael?’ Blackthorn’s brows go up. ‘Hardly.’
‘Not Conmael, maybe. But Cully, yes. Lonely little boy, bullied by everyone, living on the outskirts, never had a friend to stick up for him. Then along you came. Brave. Sure of yourself. Strong. Ready to take on the world. He must’ve been . . . dazzled.’
‘Her hands are strong as a warrior’s,’ Blackthorn says. Gives a crooked smile, as if she doesn’t believe it.
My heart does a bit of a jump. ‘You saw that, then,’ I say. Feels like a long time since I wrote those words for her.
‘I copied it into my notebook. There are times when I need to remind myself I’m supposed to be brave.’ After a bit, she adds, ‘I liked what you wrote.’
‘I liked what you wrote.’ I feel myself blushing. Fool of a man. ‘Didn’t copy it down. Got it in my head. Thought of it when Bardán and I were . . . in there.’
‘Good,’ Blackthorn says. She’s blushing too. ‘Now, Conmael. You’re saying think of him as he was back
then, a lonely little boy in need of a friend, and he might appear?’
‘Worth a try. What did the two of you do together? Play games? Tell stories?’
Cionnaola comes out of the cottage. ‘Fire’s lit, water’s heating,’ he says. ‘Cúan will get some food ready.’ He doesn’t need to say, It’s getting late and if we don’t go soon we’ll be riding in the dark.
‘Thank you,’ says Blackthorn. ‘Just one thing. I need some herbs from the wood, to wash Grim’s head wound. They grow not far in. Grim can come with me; no need for you or Cúan to trouble yourselves.’
I get to my feet. Try to look as if there’s nothing wrong with me. But Cionnaola’s an Island man. Doesn’t miss much. ‘Grim’s not fit to fight off a stray terrier right now,’ he says. ‘If you’re going out of sight of the cottage, you take one of us.’
Blackthorn swears under her breath. Know how she feels. What if she tries this and it works, and Conmael suddenly appears, and this fellow sticks a knife into him, thinking he’s an enemy?
‘Cionnaola,’ she says, keeping her voice calm, ‘you know I’m a wise woman. Sometimes we have to do things that are . . . a little unusual. If you insist on coming with us, you must respect a couple of rules. Don’t approach without my say-so, whatever happens. And don’t bring iron weaponry.’
Feel a bit sorry for the man. She’s made the two of them wait nearly a whole day, so they couldn’t carry out their mission, which was getting her to this council at the right time to say her bit. She’s got them heating bath water and cooking a meal. And now she’s saying they can’t protect her the way they’re supposed to do. ‘Should be all right,’ I say to Cionnaola. ‘Knows what she’s doing.’
We go into the wood. Right down to the spot where the bank of Dreamer’s Pool dips and flattens out. Weather’s cleared up. Sunlight creeping through the trees. Dragonflies busy over the water. Frogs having a talk. Blackthorn wanders around a bit, picking up stones and a few sticks. Then sits down cross-legged on the shore. Asks me to wait a short way off, in plain sight. Cionnaola’s on the high part of the bank, across the pool. He can see us, but folk passing by wouldn’t easily see him. Human folk, that is.
‘Right,’ says Blackthorn. ‘We used to play a game called Hop-the-Frog. I’ll try that. Cionnaola’s going to think I’ve gone mad. And if this works, he’s going to get the surprise of his life.’ She brushes her hand over the ground in front of her so there’s a patch of flat bare earth. Puts her stones in two piles, one in front of her, one where another player might sit, opposite. Sets two short sticks next to each pile. Then shuts her eyes and does nothing at all. That’s what it looks like, anyway. I wait. Maybe she’s calling him without speaking out loud. Maybe she’s just getting in the right mood.
‘I’ll go first, Cully,’ she says all of a sudden. Eyes open now, but not seeing me. Looking into the past. ‘Ready? Hop, frog, hop, frog, out of your den. Hop across the top of the pond and hop right back again.’ While she’s chanting the rhyme she’s flicking a stone out of her heap, not touching it but using the sticks. Flicks it once, flicks it again and the stone sails through the air and onto the other heap. Where it settles. But not for long. It wobbles, flicks itself down to the ground, then hurtles across the cleared space and lands on Blackthorn’s stones. Can’t see Cully, but it looks like he’s playing.
‘Your turn,’ says Blackthorn. Voice shaking a bit.
He’s there, sitting cross-legged opposite her. Reaches to flick a stone from his own pile to hers. Falls a bit short, half a handspan from Blackthorn’s heap. She gathers it in with her two sticks. ‘Mine to keep, Froggie weep,’ she says, and looks over at him.
Cionnaola’s seen him. Comes striding down the path. I put up a hand, palm out, and he stops where he is. Fair enough to be a bit alarmed. Not a little boy sitting there, but a tall man in a black cloak, dark hair tied back with a cord, silver rings glinting on his long fingers. Take one look at his face and you’d know he was fey. Even if you’d never seen one of them before. You can tell he’s different. You can tell he’s dangerous. Looks the way Blackthorn said, arrogant, forbidding. He’s always like that, even when he’s being helpful.
The two of them put their sticks down.
‘I was right, then,’ Blackthorn says. ‘About where we had met before and why you’ve helped me.’
‘I had thought the memory lost to you forever.’ His voice is like the cloak, dark and soft. Sort of voice that could draw a person in deep if they weren’t careful.
‘The memory wasn’t lost. Only . . . you’re so different now. It was hard to imagine the Cully of my childhood becoming . . . this.’ She goes quiet, thinking. ‘I have a favour to ask. A big one. Probably undeserved. Only I want to ask questions too. All kinds of questions. But there isn’t much time.’
‘I have been gone some while,’ Conmael says. Solemn as an owl. Not so haughty now. ‘I owe you a few answers.’
Blackthorn doesn’t ask, Where have you been? She doesn’t ask, Why didn’t you come when I called you? She doesn’t even tell him about Mathuin, at least not yet. ‘Back then, I never thought you might be a real changeling,’ she says. ‘I should have known.’
‘You were young. How could you have known?’
‘Does that mean . . .’ Blackthorn’s thinking twice about asking, I can see. ‘Does it mean a human child was left in the Otherworld? In your place? Raised among the fey? That’s what happens in the tales.’
‘It is sometimes so, yes.’ Conmael’s tone was cautious.
‘Only sometimes?’
‘To be raised, to be offered a different life – that is a gift of sorts. Not every human child taken by my kind meets such a benign fate. Some are simply . . . cast aside. Or worse. I will spare you the details. You already have sufficient material for a lifetime of bad dreams.’
‘So it’s not because someone in the fey world wants a human child for their own?’
‘That may occasionally be so. Your kind breeds easily; mine does not. But more often such an action is taken as a punishment.’
Blackthorn laid her stones in a neat circle, not looking at Conmael. ‘A punishment for whom?’ she asked.
‘For one of your kind who has offended one of mine. Torched an ancient site; cut down a hawthorn; walked where he or she should not. Or it might be a punishment for one of my kind.’
‘But how could – oh.’
The look in Blackthorn’s face tells me what she’s thinking. Everyone knows changeling tales. There’s the human mother who goes to the cradle and gets a nasty surprise. She’s settled her rosy, perfect little one to sleep, and now there’s a wizened thing like an old wrinkly turnip looking up at her. Crying a cry that could never come out of a human baby’s mouth. But that’s only half the picture.
‘Two mothers grieving,’ says Blackthorn. ‘Two fathers inconsolable. And two children, in effect, lost forever.’
Conmael bows his head. Meaning yes. But that isn’t right. He’s not lost, is he? Looks to be doing well for himself. Dresses like a nobleman, can move around by magic, got a few supporters we’ve seen over the years. Casts some pretty good spells, like the one that made the roof of Mathuin’s lockup fall in. Though he could have managed that better, not killed a bunch of folk doing it. One thing doesn’t fit: the way he interferes in Blackthorn’s business. In the tales, the fey don’t care about anyone. It’s not in their nature. But he cares about her.
‘You went back,’ Blackthorn says. ‘Did you . . . Did you find them?’
‘A tale for another day,’ says Conmael. Doesn’t want to talk about it, that’s plain as plain. Too painful. Would be, wouldn’t it? ‘Suffice it to say that cruelty and kindness exist in both worlds. There are folk who love unwisely; folk whose burning need for vengeance blinds them to common sense. Folk eaten up by jealousy, such as the woman who pronounced the curse you encountered at Bann. Folk with a mad lust for power, caring l
ittle who falls by the wayside. And folk who do their small best to mend, to heal, to make peace. Those, too, who have in us both good and bad. Who must work hard every day to keep our hearts steady and our minds in balance.’
Blackthorn doesn’t say anything. Just looks at him.
‘And in that, I have long believed we should help one another,’ says Conmael. ‘Did you mention a favour?’
Blackthorn takes a big breath. ‘The promise I made you,’ she begins. ‘The seven years. Is there a chance you might reconsider? There is an opportunity. Or there was. An opportunity to testify against Mathuin of Laois at a council of his peers. A secret council.’
‘Was,’ says Conmael. ‘Not is?’
She explains. About the attack on Flidais’s parents, and the king’s council at Cahercorcan, and the Swan Island men. About this meeting being so secret she had to go at the last moment, and how she ended up saying no. Conmael’s still as stone, listening. A bad thought comes into my head. If he says he’ll do it, if he turns back time so she can get there to testify, that’ll leave me trussed up in Tóla’s root cellar bleeding all over the floor. Waiting to be fed screamers and die. Hope she’s thought of that.
‘I tried to call you,’ Blackthorn says. ‘All different ways. Over and over. When they told me about this, I wanted to go with your blessing, not to break the rules.’
‘Not to risk my meddling with time? But is that not what you are about to ask for now?’
‘I’m hoping you will release me from my promise, Conmael. Not all of it, but the part about not seeking out Mathuin. He is coming north. Or more likely being brought north. I can’t tell you if the place is in Dalriada or over the border. But the hearing is properly organised, even if it’s not quite being done by the rules. The High King has given it his blessing.’ She’s keeping her voice down. Remembering she’s been told not to talk about it.