Chapter Nineteen: Broken
I surrendered to the madness totally and completely.
Light bloomed in the center of my chest and spread to the tips of my fingers; my head felt squeezed and my thoughts began to run together, coming so quickly that one could not be distinguished from the next. I felt the hands on my arms, heard the breathing all around me, and suddenly the shadows took on shape and size. My fear was pushed away and I knew that these were mortal creatures that were holding me, not phantoms.
Acting on instinct, I sagged in their arms, and they cried out in surprise. My bare feet hit the ground, and I immediately rebounded, pushing myself off the grass with all the power I could bring to bear.
I shot upward, breaking the grip of those who held me, and felt my knee connect with a solid chin. I heard curses, and then there were hands in my hair again, trying to hold me by it. I twisted my head around and struck out in all directions, moving as Robin had shown me, letting the madness direct me.
I couldn’t see at all, but I could smell and hear and feel, and the madness made each of those senses count for double. I spun and kicked and punched and hit; I was grabbed up off the ground and I heard shouts for help, and then I felt flesh between my teeth and I was ripping through it, tearing skin and hair and muscle, tasting blood. I was dropped again, and this time I rolled. A boot landed inches from my face, whipping me with the wind of its passage. I curled and threw my body behind my feet and smashed them into the creature above me, knocking it away as it cried in pain.
I scrambled up. There were trumpets and drums in my ear, and shouting and jeering, and the crowd backed away. I felt the absence of them, and then the presence of someone in front of me.
Gwyn ap Nudd.
The madness told me to move and I did, dodging something heavy that slammed through the air above me, and then I struck out wildly and felt my closed fist smash into the underside of his chin and snap his head back. He stumbled away and I followed, the madness directing me, all rational thought long since gone. I threw my hand out with an open fisted strike and my palm smashed the bridge of his nose. I felt blood spray out over me and heard it patter onto the ground, where I could smell it burning in the grass.
Hands grabbed me from behind. I fought them off, breaking a wrist, twisting out of a grab – but there were too many of them this time. My arms were wrenched back behind me and my head was pulled back by my hair, exposing my throat.
I couldn’t see in front of me, but I could smell him coming. I imagined I could even smell his anger – his hatred at this girl who had struck him, the King of the Night.
Gwyn’s hand ripped across my face as he struck me, and I felt his nails break the skin of my cheek and burn as they slashed through the top layer of muscle. I rolled with the blow as much as I could, but the shadowed hunters holding me kept me in their solid grip and I couldn’t escape.
Through the madness I heard the sprayed beads of my blood hit the ground next to his, the droplets breaking open like popped bubbles as they were impaled on the long stalks of grass. I knew vaguely, in a very distant way, that this was the end. Gwyn ruled this night, and any who were caught out in it became part of the Hunt, servants to the Hunter and his men. The madness ebbed as time seemed to slow. This was the end.
And then a wave of sickness washed over me.
I heard cries from all around, on every side, and the hands on my arms loosened. I heard choking and retching, and then felt another wave of the sickness, and then another still stronger. I heard the sounds of sickness and smelled the acrid stink of vomit, and then found myself on all fours, choking and spitting up blood as I tried to breathe.
The world exploded.
The sky above me ripped down the center like a torn piece of parchment, and half of it fell away to reveal a bright blue sky. The stars came back, popping into existence, but then they seemed to tilt and fall, and then an orb appeared in the sky opposite them, an orb in the patch of blue sky that continued to grow brighter and brighter, beaming down golden light on the world –
“AHHH!”
The Hunters were screaming in pain as the exposed places of their hands and face burned and blistered before my eyes. I caught sight of Gwyn ap Nudd and saw that half the skin of his face had been pulled away in bloody furrows and I could only stare in horror at what I’d done. He was shouting to his men, throwing out a hand toward the Bower, telling them to make for the Hall. Those who were still under the part of the field bathed in starlight ran for their lives, while those on the border – a place that made no sense, a place split by a clean line that cleaved the world into the night of the Bower and the intruding day of some other world – were only able to stagger after them, doing their best to move despite terrible burns. I stumbled back with them, looking down at my hands. Blood coated them and there was flesh beneath my nails. The smell of burning skin and hair filled the air around me, coating my throat and nose, as those who’d been caught fully in the sunlight fell to the ground screaming, only yards in front of me. Horror and revulsion rose up inside me, and it was only my grip on the strange chaotic-clarity of the madness that kept me moving.
We made it into the Hall, no one paying attention to me. The lesser hunters cleared away the tables, throwing them to the side to clear room, and the wounded men were thrown on the ground for examination. The hounds that they had brought were let loose to run where they would, and I saw that they were dead black with burning coals for eyes; but despite their fearsome appearance they ran straight for the far corner of the room and cowered there, tails between their legs.
I was stunned into inaction and found myself simply staring around the room, unable to understand what had happened. It had to do with Robin – Robin had done this all somehow. But what had he done?
I whirled back to look out at the field and saw that the daylight was still increasing in brightness. The sun was rising – the sun, when had I last seen the sun?! – over the tops of the towering trees, but its rays did not seem able to penetrate the thick barrier of shadows that still clung to the Bower, taking up the inner half of the clearing. I went to the opening of the Hall and looked up. The stars still spangled half the sky, but their light was almost nothing compared to the light of the sun.
Was this what Robin had planned all along?
I spun back to look at the Hunters, and my eyes caught the ones that were most burned, whole patches of their skin sloughing off as their fellows tried to help them, tried to bind what wounds they could.
Would this happen to the others?
Terrible dread filled me. I hadn’t wanted to destroy the Bower – I’d wanted to destroy Oberon. I’d thought that with him gone the others would simply leave – the Ilyn, the Urden, all the others, the Fae at large, would just go – but what if they couldn’t? What would happen if the sunlight touched them? Touched Gwen and Brandel and all the others?
“Mol?!”
The sound of the voice broke through my panic and I stopped all motion, mental and physical. How did I know that voice? How was it so familiar and yet so distant?
I turned toward where Gwyn and his Hunters had retreated, and saw one of the men detach themselves and move toward me. He stepped into the light of the brightening moonstone fires and I saw black hair, a leather gabardine, and hazel eyes that brought back memories of heat and stolen kisses –
“Faolan?!”
The shock was too much for me to understand. Suddenly it was like we’d never been separated. We ran for each other and grabbed each other’s faces like idiots, trying to confirm what we knew couldn’t be true –
“You’re dead!”
“What? You’re dead!”
“I’m – no I’m not –”
“What are you saying? Why would you think –?”
“But the night I changed,” Faolan gasped, staring at me with horror and wonder all wrapped up together, “the night I changed – I killed you! That’s where all the blood came from, that’s what happened when I was uncon
scious. The Puck told me that –”
“What?! You were dead! I came to meet you but Robin had already killed you – he did what Oberon told him to –”
“That’s – no, that’s not –!”
“SHUT UP, BOTH OF YOU!”
I spun around at the cracked and rusty voice, and saw that it was Gwyn ap Nudd who’d come up behind us. I immediately reached for the madness and felt it blaze up inside me.
“Faolan – stand back!”
“No, Mol, stop!”
Faolan moved from my side and went to Gwyn.
“Father – what’s happened?”
Another hollow note of impossibility rang through me and my vision swam.
Father?
Images flashed through my mind – Faolan up in the night staring at the moon, Faolan sobbing and smoking as if burned when he first went through the moonlight, Faolan covered in blood and dead at Robin’s feet –
“The Treaty is broken,” Gwyn was growling through his broken face. I hadn’t realized how much damage I’d truly done, but now that I could see him, I saw that I’d certainly broken his nose, and the left side of his face was torn and bloody.
“Treaty?” I asked numbly. There was too much happening – too much of my world had just been turned upside down.
“My father rules the night of the new moon,” Faolan said, speaking quickly, staring at me again as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. “Titania, the Queen, was part of it – she rules the daylight, Oberon rules the moonlight, and Gwyn rules the darkness.”
“Titania – how do you know about her?”
“How do you know about her?”
“That doesn’t matter! If the daylight is here,” Gwyn growled, his voice heavily tinged with pain, “then the Treaty is broken. It is the only way she can enter the Bower.”
I thought back to what Robin had said – that we would break the power of Oberon forever. My mind kept churning as I tried to piece together what had happened: Robin had trained me, Robin had told me I had a purpose; told me that he needed me in order to destroy the King, destroy the one who had killed Faolan –
But Faolan was alive.
“How?” I gasped, turning back to him. It was the final question that kept everything from being clear, the final impossibility. I’d seen him die, I’d seen it! All that had happened, all that I’d done, had been predicated on Faolan’s death. The knowledge that Oberon had killed him – that Oberon killed the changelings that didn’t come out the way he wanted them to – that was what had been driving me forward, that was what had propelled me here. But if that first assumption was wrong, if Faolan hadn’t been killed …
I felt the blood drain from my face.
“Faolan, you’re dead, you’re supposed to be dead –”
“I told you, Robin found me – I was waiting for you, and someone came – the moon was out and I – the madness –”
“You went through the madness?”
The whole patchwork of my mind, the whole sewn-together quilt of suppositions and half-truths that had formed my understanding of the past two months came apart at the seams.
“All with Gwyn’s blood go through the madness,” Faolan said. “When the full moon comes, that’s when it happens –”
“Robin was there – you were there – you were dead! I saw you – he was standing over you –”
“I attacked someone,” Faolan said just as quickly. “That’s all I remember – I attacked someone, and all I remember after that is waking up covered in blood, and Robin was standing over me with blood all over him, and he pointed to the side –”
“Rob-Robin?”
Faolan was reeling as badly as I was. He was convulsively clutching at my forearms, just squeezing them over and over again, so hard it hurt.
“It was you,” he continued, his hazel eyes wider than I’d ever seen them. “He told me that I’d killed you, that you were there when I – and then he said I had to run, that if I didn’t Oberon would kill me for killing a changeling – he told me the only place I could go was to the Hunt with my father –”
His voice broke and he cut off, but my mind kept the story going, kept the scene rolling in my head, unfolding it in its natural progression.
Robin in the fields when Faolan turned – Robin there to stop Faolan – Robin standing over him covered in the blood of their fight when I came – Robin telling me he’d killed Faolan – me leaving with Robin – Faolan waking up – Robin retuning to tell him that the blood he was covered in came from me, that Faolan had killed me – Robin telling Faolan to run, knowing Gwyn would find him – Robin coming back to me –
“He told us both the same lie,” I gasped.
“Why?” Faolan was looking between both my eyes, his thoughts racing alongside mine, both of us rushing toward the final picture.
“He made me hate Oberon,” I said. I heard movement from Gwyn, saw him stir, and realized he was following us very closely now, listening to everything I said, but I was too focused on Faolan, too focused on the story we were piecing together.
“He made me hate him too.” Faolan glanced over at his father – by the blood, he’s the son of Gwyn ap Nudd! – and began breathing heavily. “He told me who my true father was and told me to go to him – he sent me out of the Bower that same night, saying Oberon would kill me if he found me, that Oberon had waited too long and it was his fault that I’d killed you in the madness.”
Sound came in through the Bower opening behind us and I knew that everything was happening too quickly.
I grabbed the madness and let myself go, drowning myself in its current, letting it pull me where it would. I swayed and distantly felt Faolan grab me and shout something in my ear, then heard the accompanying voice of Gwyn ap Nudd growling something back to him followed by a stunned silence and Faolan releasing my arms. I stumbled backward, almost crashing to the ground, but I didn’t care. My mind was racing in the way that Robin had taught me, the way he’d trained me.
He trained me – why did he train me?
He said he needed me in the field – he said he needed me there to break Oberon – he said that he would come for me long before the night truly fell – set both Faolan and I against Oberon – Oberon who wanted nothing but to save us – Oberon who had kept us here in the Bower for our own safety – Oberon who held Robin here as well –
It all came together, and in a rush I came back to myself, blinking hard in the bright moonlight that lit the Bower Hall.
“Robin is working with Titania,” I said. “He was all along.”
“Took you long enough,” said the voice of the Puck from behind me. I whirled and heard Faolan and Gwyn both snarl with voices that were somehow inhuman. Robin Goodfellow had draped himself over Oberon’s throne, his legs over one arm and his body leaned back casually against the other as he fondled something in his hands.
A silver-leafed crown.