Drink Down the Moon (14 page)

. He kept rubbing the little fiddle with his thumb, only now his thoughts turned to Tom.

It was hard to believe the old fellow was gone. That didn’t seem real either— never mind his being so sick this past while. The world didn’t seem the same anymore, knowing Tom wasn’t in it.

Sitting there in the sunlight, this was the first time Johnny had thought of his grandfather without wanting to cry. The sadness was still there— the empty place inside him hadn’t been filled, or gone away— but it was different now. He found himself remembering good times— long nights spent talking. Times when they played tunes, the two fiddles singing in unison until Tom suddenly went into the perfect harmony, underlying the original tune with a resonating depth that made it sound like far more than a simple two-or three-part fiddle tune. There were times when the music bridged something between them and some mystery that lay just beyond their reach.

Tom had talked about it a few times. Johnny wondered now if what his grandfather had been talking about was Faerie. Was that where he’d gone? Was Tom some ghostly fiddler in a fairy hill now? Johnny’s fingers yearned for the instrument that wasn’t in his hands. If he played a tune now, would it reach to Tom in that otherworld?

Johnny turned once more and, using the bone fiddle, rapped on the stone again.

Twice, pause, another rap.

Nothing.

“Goddamn you!” he cried. “Just give me back my fiddle! Give it back, or I swear I’ll come back with a shovel and dig you out

.”

His voice trailed off as he sensed someone behind him. He looked up from the stone. In the meadow between the bike path and where he sat stood a skinny man in shorts, T-shirt and running shoes, watching him. The curiosity in his eyes turned to guilt when he realized that Johnny had caught him staring. He began to back away, then simply vanished.

“Oh, Christ,” Johnny muttered. “Let’s not start this disappearing shit again.”

“It’s not him,” a familiar voice said from higher up the slope. “It’s you that’s been moved into Faerie.”

She was crouched above him, something feral in her stance and in the look in her eyes, her pink hair standing up at all angles from her head. She was wearing calf-length trousers and a tunic-like shirt, both tattered and of an old-fashioned cut. Their greens and browns gave a first impression that she was wearing clothes made from twigs and leaves. Her face was washed out and pale without its makeup.

Beside her, its head on a level with hers as she crouched, was what Johnny first took to be a dog. Then he realized it was a small wolf.

“Listen,” he began.

He wanted to just grab her and shake her, but he found his anger had just drained away again. Instead, he felt close to something rare, something wondrous, and he didn’t want to lose it. He wanted to comfort the hurt he saw lying behind the fierce look in her eyes. He wanted to run away from her and never see her again.

“I know you mean well,” Jemi said. “And we’ve given you nothing but grief.”

“It’s just

I don’t

I’m not sure what’s real.”

Jemi moved suddenly, scuttling down the slope towards him. The dog, or wolf, turned and loped off into the trees. Johnny watched it go, then looked at Jemi. Her face was very close to his.

“Oh, we’re very real,” she said.

She lifted her hand to touch his cheek in that curious gesture that both she and her sister had.

“Your sister,” Johnny said.

Her eyes went bleak.

“I just wanted to say I’m sorry about what happened to her. I know how you’re feeling

.”

Jemi looked away, past his shoulder, into unseen distances.

“I won’t let them get away with it,” she said. “Whoever killed her— they’ll pay.” Her gaze went to him, the feral light fierce in her eyes. “Will you help me, Johnny Faw? I want to call the sidhe. I want to ride on Kinrowan. Something in Kinrowan killed my sister, and not just her alone. The Seelie Court has to pay for what they’ve done.”

“What can I do?”

Here I go again, Johnny thought as he spoke. Believing it all again. But it was impossible not to— not with her sitting so close to him, radiating her otherworldiness.

“Be my strength,” she said. “I’ve never called a rade— never led the fiaina. But I’m all that’s left with Jenna gone. I’m the Pook now.”

“But what would I do?”

“There’s power in music, Johnny. We both know that. We’ve both made people smile, made them dance. Now we must gather my people from all their hidden places. Summon them with skilly tunes. Lead them against our foe.”

She was using words that made no sense to Johnny. Rade and Kinrowan and skilly.

“How will you find this— foe?” he asked.

“We’ll ride on Kinrowan, and if the Court doesn’t deliver up the murderers, we’ll take up our quarrel with them. Will you help me?”

“I

“

Johnny looked away from her. It was hard to think with her sitting so close. She smelled like apples and nuts, freshly harvested. She radiated heat, presence.

He didn’t want to promise what he might not be able to deliver. He wanted to help her, wasn’t sure he could, wanted her

.

And that was another part of the problem. He was drawn to her, as surely as the two bone carvings were drawn to each other, and he was afraid of that. He was also afraid of it all turning around on him again. Of accepting that this was real, then finding himself alone once more. In a glade. Or on a riverbank. Without her. Thinking he’d imagined it all again. Thinking he was crazy.

He caught hold of her hand.

“They say that faerie can enchant mortals,” he said. “Is this

have you laid a”— he searched for the right word— “a glamour on me?”

Jemi shook her head. Her fingers tightened around his.

“I’ve felt it too,” she said. “With you. I might ask you the same question. But I didn’t spell you, Johnny. All I know is that together we can make a skilly music that’ll set our world a-right again. Heal its hurts. That can’t be wrong, can it?”

“No.”

He turned to her, lost himself in her eyes again, and had to look away. He remembered her anguish last night. The dead face of her sister, so like her own. The dislocation from reality that he’d been feeling ever since he’d escaped the crowd of faerie creatures that had been pressing around him

.

“I’ll help you,” he said. “Or at least I’ll try. Just don’t disappear on me again.”

For a long moment neither of them spoke. Then Jemi put a hand on either side of his face and turned his head until he was facing her once more. She rose slightly off her heels and kissed him once on each eye, her tongue licking the lids.

“Now I have enchanted you,” she said. “But only so you can see into Faerie on your own.”

She smiled. The sadness, the fierceness in her eyes, eased slightly. She kissed him on the lips, a brief, brushing contact, then rocked back onto her heels, hands on her knees.

“Just

just like that?” Johnny asked.

A simple nod was her only reply.

Johnny sighed. He wanted to reach for her.

Instead, he said, “I was in your room on Sweetland. I was looking for my fiddle.”

“It was a bad night,” Jemi said softly. “I’m sorry you were pushed from Faerie the way you were.”

“That’s okay. I just wanted to tell you. I wasn’t snooping, you see, but

” He opened his hand. The bone fiddle lay in his palm. “I saw a flute pendant that looked— no, that’s not right. It felt like a twin to this.”

Jemi looked down at the carving.

“I’d forgotten about the flute,” she said. “It was Jenna’s, but she gave it to me a long time ago. The Bucca gave them both to her. I think he got them from my mother, but he might well have given them to her in the first place.”

“Do they mean something?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe there is some glamour involved here after all, though it’s neither mine nor yours.”

“What do you mean?”

“We fiaina aren’t like the Courts, Johnny. We don’t get our luck in the same way they do. We need our rade. The Bucca led the rade until Jenna learned it well enough to take his place, and then he left. It’s always been a Pook or a Bucca or someone like that who leads the rade, but old tales say that a mortal leads it best. Man or woman, it doesn’t matter. It depends on the Pook at the time, I suppose.”

“What’s a Bucca?”

Jemi smiled. “An old and very wise being, Johnny. He’s been gone for a long time now. We’re a restless folk, we fiaina sidhe. Me, not so much— I think it’s my human blood— but the others, oh, how they like to wander

.”

“And the two carvings?” Johnny asked. “Where do they fit in?”

“They shape a bond between mortal and sidhe.”

“Is that why your sister gave it to me? So that I’d meet you? Not that I’m complaining or anything, but how could she know that we’d like each other?”

The sadness washed over Jemi again.

“I don’t suppose we’ll ever know,” she said.

Johnny reached for her and held her head against his shoulder, but she didn’t cry. She pressed against him, then slowly sat back.

“Evening will be coming on— sooner than we’d like,” she said. “Let’s go inside and see what skilly tune we both know that we can use to summon the sidhe.”

She slipped past him, into the hollow hill. Johnny stood at its sod entrance. He looked around the glade once more, trying to figure out why this was all happening to him. Then he shrugged and followed her inside.

“I see bogans,” Gwi said.

“And I smell sluagh,” Finn added.

Kate nodded glumly, her gaze fixed on the Tower.

It was late afternoon now, the past hours spent in tracking down Gwi Kayleigh. The forester was a tall faerie, lean with angular features. There was troll blood in her, from a few generations back, Finn had explained to Kate before they found her, but before Kate asked how they had come about, they’d spied Gwi and the chance was gone. Gwi wore the mottled greens and browns preferred by most foresters, and carried a bow and quiver. Instead of a pony, she trusted her long legs to carry her through her patrol.

She had listened to Kate’s tale, added a curse or two to Finn’s, then returned with them to Learg Green, where they now spied on the Tower.

“A few bogans we can deal with,” she said, after studying the lay of the land, “and the sluagh won’t be a danger until nightfall.”

“That leaves the droichan,” Kate said,

Gwi looked at the small bundle of rowan twigs that Finn was carrying.

“Those won’t be enough,” she said. “Not if he’s all that the old tales make droichan to be.”

“I’m not leaving Jacky in there with him,” Kate said firmly.

“No one’s asking you to,” Gwi replied. “We just need more of a plan than catch-as-catch-can.”

Kate sighed. She didn’t like to admit it, but the forester was right. What Kate wanted to do was just rush in and get Jacky out of the gruagagh’s clutches. Never mind waiting and thinking and planning. Just get in and out with Jacky, and worry about the gruagagh later. But the gruagagh was the whole problem, as Finn had rightfully pointed out earlier, and if they just charged ahead, they’d all end up as his captives with no one left free to rescue any of them.

“What’re we going to do?” she asked.

Gwi plucked a stem of grass and put it between her lips.

“What we need,” she said, chewing thoughtfully, “is a skinwalker.”

“A shapechanger,” Finn explained at Kate’s puzzled look. “Like those with Lairdsblood who can take swan or seal shape.”

“But the Laird and the whole Court’s gone,” Kate said.

The only other person with Lairdsblood that she knew was Jacky’s sometimes beau, Eilian, the Laird of Dunlogan’s son, but he was too far away to reach quickly, having gone back north to his father’s Court at midsummer.

“There’s others that know a trick or two about changing their skins,” Gwi said.

“What good would a skinwalker even be?” Kate asked. “Just saying we could find one?”

“We need to get inside,” the forester explained. “Without raising an alarm. And what better way to do so than disguised as one of their own? Then, with a bit of luck and surprise on our side, I’d hope we could snatch the Jack and win free with our hides all still in one piece. Now’s not the time to confront the droichan. I’d rather wait until I have his hidden heart in my hand before I go face to face with him.”

“And with Jacky free,” Finn said, “we’ll be able to concentrate on finding that heart.”

“So where do we find a skinwalker?” Kate asked.

“In the borderlands,” Gwi said. “I know a sidhe or two that have the knack and might be persuaded to help.”

Finn shook his head. “No need to go that far.” Before either of the women could ask him what he meant, he took out a needle and a spool of thread. “I can stitch us the illusion of being a bogan or whatever you wish.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Gwi said. She pulled the grass stem from her mouth and pointed it at the hob. “How well would it hold?”

“Well enough for what you want. If we’re subjected to close scrutiny

” He shrugged. “But for something like this, it’ll do.”

“All right,” Gwi said. “I’m game. Kate?”

Kate blinked. She looked from the forester to the Tower, then back again. She wished she felt a little braver, or at least more competent. But there was Jacky to think of.

“I guess so,” she said.

Finn rubbed his palms together.

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll use buttons to start the spell. Strips of cloth for headbands to keep it firm

.”

He began to pull pieces of cloth from the small bag that held his bundle of rowan twigs and set to work.

“There’s nothing like stitcheries to enthuse a hob,” Gwi remarked dryly.

Finn didn’t look up, but he grinned.

Kate nodded and went back to studying the Tower. From time to time she’d see a bogan move across a window, or in the backyard.

We’re on our way, Jacky, she thought, wishing she could feel as enthused about bearding the gruagagh in the Tower as Finn was about stitching his spells.

What if Jacky wasn’t even alive anymore?

She remembered what Caraid had said earlier. That Jacky would be fine—