Drink Down the Moon (16 page)

“Ah

” Johnny mumbled.

He really wasn’t ready for this kind of thing yet. Maybe he never would be. Jemi he could take, Faerie in small doses, but the rest of the denizens of the Middle Kingdom still left him with the feeling that he was tripping out.

“Mactire’s a skinwalker,” Jemi explained.

“Right.”

“He’s a friend, Johnny.”

Johnny nodded. “How do you do?” he said lamely to the small wild boy.

“Not good,” Mactire replied gruffly.

His voice was deeper than Johnny had expected it to be, coming as it did from that slender frame. The wild boy met Johnny’s gaze steadily for a long heartbeat, then turned to Jemi.

“Are you calling up a rade?” he asked.

Jemi shook her head. “It’s the wrong time of the Moon, Mac. I’m calling up an army.”

The wild boy grinned, baring two rows of sharp, pointed wolf’s teeth.

“Oh, that’s good,” he said. “It’s time we showed the night that we can bite back.”

Looking at those teeth, Johnny didn’t have any doubt about that. The wolf boy looked at his fiddle case.

“Can you play that thing?” he asked.

Johnny nodded. That, at least, was something of which he was sure.

Mactire grinned again. “That’s good,” he said, looking at Jemi once more. “He’s not a Fiddle Wit, but they’ll follow him all the same.”

“I know they will,” Jemi replied. “Pipe and fiddle and Arn’s own luck— they’ll have to follow. And he might make a Wit yet.”

“What are you talking about?” Johnny asked.

“Remember what I told you before?” Jemi asked. “That a mortal leads us best? Don’t ask me why, but that’s the way it is.”

“A brief flicker in the night,” Mactire said. “Gone quick, but oh, they burn so bright.”

That was almost poetry, Johnny thought, giving Mactire a considering look.

“And what’s this about a Fiddle Wit?” he asked.

“It’s just a name,” Mactire explained. “See, the thing that binds us is music— music and the rade when we catch our luck. We can’t have one without the other, and the luck’s never so strong as when a tune calls it down. A Fiddle Wit is like a Jack— do you understand? Clever. A skilly sort of a person. Like our own Pook here, but all the way mortal. Not tied to any Court. No allegiances but to the Moonmother Arn, whatever shape she takes. It’s a good name, Johnny Faw.”

Johnny didn’t even bother to ask how the wolf boy knew his name.

“It’s time now,” Jemi said, and then that unspoken question faded from Johnny’s mind as well.

He cracked open his fiddle case and took his grandfather’s gift from it. Plucking the strings, he found them still in tune. He put the fiddle under his chin, then reached into the case for his bow. Tightening the frog, he gave the bow a quick shake to loosen the hairs. When he was ready, he gave Jemi a nod.

She had taken a wooden flute-like instrument from her pocket and she was sitting by the stones, watching him. Her instrument had reeds at one end, finger holes along its length, and a bell shape at the other end. Resembling a bombard, it played more softly with a sweet tone that was like a cross between an oboe and a Northumbrian pipe chanter. When he nodded, she brought the reed end to her mouth and blew softly.

Watching her play, Johnny felt a closeness to her once more. She made such an incongruous picture with the mottled greens and browns of her shirt and tunic, her black piper’s jacket with its tarnished brass buttons, and the pink hair standing straight up in a wild thatch. For a long moment he forgot to play, then he remembered why they were here and set his bow to the fiddle’s strings.

The tune they played was “Brian Boru’s March”— an old harp tune, supposedly composed in commemoration of the Battle of Clontarf, when the Irish under Brian Boru repelled an invasion of Vikings in 1014. But the tune was only a borrowed one, Jemi had told him that afternoon, and dated far earlier than that.

“It’s the ‘Bri’ in Brian that’s as close to the original title as your people can remember now,” she had explained, “and that’s an old word that the Gaels borrowed from the people of the hills. It means the female force, you see— the earth, the moon, growth and growing things. Like the luck we need to keep us hale. They found Brigit’s name in that word, and many another word besides, but the old bri was more than just the Bride— it was every face that she ever wore. ‘Briall Ort’ is what we call this tune, and the closest I can tell you to what that means is ‘cheer up.’ Be happy. Persevere. Rise from your sorrow.”

And it was that kind of tune, Johnny thought. It had always been one of his favorites. A tune that dripped age, was solemn as a saraband, yet sprightly too. Sadness and happiness mingled in its bittersweet turns, just as they did in one’s life.

That evening, with the grey twilight creeping over the hills, Jemi’s piping joining his fiddling as though they were meant only for each other, “Brian Boru’s March” made a music that lifted his heart the way a hymn cheered a devout Christian, but it kept his foot tapping at the same time. There was mystery in it, and a magic, and a calling on, too. For he could see now, as the twilight deepened, that they were no longer alone by Jenna’s cairn.

Like the previous night, the fiaina sidhe came by ones and twos. One moment there were just the three of them on the hilltop— piper, fiddler and listening wolf boy— and in the next, a crowd of faerie had gathered. But tonight they were different.

Last night they had come as the moment had found them— drawn from whatever task they were about when they first heard the call.

Tonight they came riding for war.

Hobs on their shaggy ponies and a big troll with a shield the size of a small car and a club like a sawed-off lightpost. Skinwalkers in their beast shapes: foxes and wolves, bears and snarling bobcats. Three kelpies in horse shape, their black flanks shining in the dying light. Tiny creatures armed with little bows and arrows, spiked armour on their backs and arms, making them look like oversized hedgehogs riding small spotted brown dogs. Narrow faces, broad faces, painted for war, like ancient Celts or Native Americans. Stout dwarves with knobby walking sticks spiked with sharp silver tips, and wearing leather helmets.

By the time the twilight gave way to night, there were over two hundred of them gathered on the hill. A bearded hob on a small pony rode forwards as Jemi and he finally set their instruments aside. He nodded briefly to Johnny, then turned his attention to the new Pook.

“Jenna was wrong,” Dohinney Tuir said, “and I was right, but I take no pleasure from it. She should have listened. She should never have gone. For now she’s dead, and we still have war on our hands— a war we cannot hope to win. Kinrowan is not our enemy, Jemi.”

“Jenna died in Kinrowan,” Jemi replied.

“And curse the creature that slew her— but it was not a member of the Seelie Court.”

A murmur rose from the gathered sidhe, but Johnny wasn’t sure if it meant that they were agreeing with the hob or not.

“Our enemy is in Kinrowan,” Jemi said. “They must deliver him to us.”

A black horse stepped forwards, shifting its shape, and then a kelpie stood at Tuir’s side.

“I want revenge as much as you do,” Loireag said, “but Tuir has the right of that much of it. Do you have the name of our enemy for us, Jemi?”

The new Pook shook her head.

“We can’t ride to war without a name,” Loireag said.

This time the murmur of the sidhe was in agreement— even Johnny could hear that much.

“This murderer—” Jemi began.

“Must be punished!” Loireag broke in fiercely. “But our quarrel isn’t with the Court in Kinrowan.”

“So we’re supposed to wait?” Jemi demanded. “Wait while more of us are slain or chased away? Wait without our rade until we’re so diminished that we’re not strong enough to even flee, little say fight? Look at us. We’ve lost a third of our number as it is. Kinrowan owes us the name of our enemy.”

“And if they don’t know it?” Tuir asked.

“They have troubles of their own,” a new voice said.

Deep and grumbling, it issued from the troll who stepped closer, towering over them all.

“There are bogans loose in Kinrowan again,” he went on, once he had their attention. “Bogans and sluagh and all the Host. The better part of the Court is gone south to the Harvest Fair and what’s left is just beginning to discover the troubles that they have. They can’t give us what they don’t have, Jemi Pook.”

“If we ride on Kinrowan with your demands,” Tuir added, “we might well make an enemy of the Seelie Court as well. We’re borderfolk, Jemi. We live at the sufferance of both Courts. Either of them could easily rise and finish us off— the Seelie Court, if we bring trouble to them, or the Host, if it can gather itself, for the sake of mischief alone. We can’t fight them both and this new enemy besides.”

Johnny could feel Jemi wilting at his side.

“Then what are we supposed to do?” he asked.

The weight of hundreds of sidhe gazes settled on him and he wished that he’d never spoken. There were feral lights in those eyes, and no love for humanity.

“Find the enemy’s name,” Tuir said wearily. “We will help. Each one of us will peep and pry, but until we know what we face, there must be no battle rade.” He shook his head slowly. “That such a thing should ever be. I don’t doubt that we could lose the Moon’s luck for all time, whether we win or lose.”

“But—” Johnny began.

“Watch where you step, tadpole,” Loireag said. “Some might have use for your kind, but there’s few of them among our number.”

Jemi drew herself up at that.

“Do you forget it all so soon?” she asked. “Who can lead a rade better than a mortal?”

“It needs a mortal with some wit,” Loireag replied immediately. “And that tadpole has none. He might find it, given time, but time we do not have.”

Jemi laid her pipe down by Johnny’s knee and stood up to face them, arms akimbo.

“Fine,” she told them. “Go! we’ll seek out the enemy. And maybe we’ll find him and be able to deal with him, and maybe we won’t, but I’ll tell you this— you, Loireag, and you, Tuir, and you, Garth.” She held their gazes with her own, that of kelpie, hob, and troll, and other in that number. “When all’s said and done, you’ll not have a rade led by this Pook, nor by any mortal that I can put a name to. I’ll do what needs doing for Jenna’s sake, but after that you can lead your own rades.”

“You know we can’t,” Tuir said. “We need—”

“Don’t tell me what you need,” Jemi said. “I’ve given you my need, and you’ve thrown it back at me. Don’t you ever tell me what you need.”

Loireag took a step towards her, but backed down from the fierce glare in the Pook’s eyes.

“Jemi,” she tried softly. “Listen to reason—”

“Go!”

The word hung in the still night air, for one long moment, for another, and then slowly they began to disperse. Once moving, they were quickly gone. Johnny watched them, but they faded too fast for him to make them all out in the dark.

The last to go were the kelpie and hob. Tuir looked as if he might speak again, but then he shook his head, turned his pony, and walked it slowly away into the trees. Loireag followed him a moment later. When Johnny turned to Jemi, they were all gone, even the wolf boy, Mactire.

“If the Bucca was here, they’d follow him,” Jemi said. “If it was Jenna asking them, they’d follow her. But not me.” Her gaze met Johnny’s. “This is what I get for straying, Johnny. I’ve walked among men for so long that their blood must run stronger in me now than my Pook blood does.”

Johnny shook his head.

“You chased them away,” he said.

“Please. Don’t you start.”

“No. Listen to me. I don’t know everything— about the Courts and where you people stand with them— but what your friends were saying made sense.”

“They’re not my friends.”

“Whatever. But think about what they said. Why take it out on Kinrowan? You don’t think that the Seelie Court is behind this, do you?”

Jemi didn’t answer for a long time. She stared off into the distance, looking for something. When she returned her gaze to Johnny, he could see that, whatever she’d sought, she hadn’t found it.

“No,” she said softly. “I guess I don’t really think they are. But surely they must know our enemy’s name? How can such an evil thing live in their realm and they not know?”

“Maybe we should just go talk to them.”

“I suppose.”

Johnny put away his fiddle and bow, then picked up Jemi’s pipe.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s see what they have to say.”

Jemi let herself be led along.

“It’s just that they know it all,” she said. “Do you know what I mean? Loireag and Tuir and the rest. Even when they don’t know, they still act like they know it all. A show of force wouldn’t hurt. It’d prove that we mean business. I wasn’t trying to start a war.”

“You came off sounding like you did.”

“I just want Jenna’s killer to pay for what he’s done.”

“We’ll find him,” Johnny said.

He just hoped that they’d be able to deal with him when they did find him. The sidhe had seemed like as tough a bunch as he’d ever want to run up against, but he’d sensed a genuine fear in them. And if they were scared

He tried to put that out of his mind for the moment, concentrating instead on getting them both back to the entrance of Jemi’s hollowed hill without either of them breaking their necks in the darkness. Jemi might be able to see like a cat in the dark, but she wasn’t being much help right now, and whether he could see into Faerie or not, once they left the relative brightness of the hilltop, he was lost in the shadows.

“I shouldn’t have gotten so mad,” Jemi said. “That always happens to me with them. I always get mad. That’s the real reason I don’t live with them.”

“Why do you get mad?” Johnny asked.

Jemi’s shoulder moved up and down under his arm in an invisible shrug. “I don’t know. I wish I could tell you, just so I’d know.”

It was because she tried to be too hard around them, Johnny thought. Too tough. He’d seen her doing it when she was arguing with them, seen it while she was getting ready to call them up this afternoon, but he didn’t think this was the time or place to bring it up.