Drink Down the Moon (18 page)

Gwi regarded him for a moment, then shrugged. “All right. But you two,” she added to Kate and Jacky. “You keep those bogan shapes on until we’re somewhere safe. That droichan will have your scents and it won’t be more than a moment’s work to track you down if you take off your disguises.”

“Droichan?” Jacky asked.

“I’ll explain it all to you later,” Kate said.

“I feel like I’ve come in at the middle of a movie.”

“You’re not far off.”

Finn had already set off and they all hurried along behind him— three bogans chasing a hob.

“I’m glad you’re safe,” Kate told Jacky between breaths. “We were just about to storm the Tower, looking for you. That’s why we’re wearing these disguises.”

Jacky wrinkled her nose. “I hope Finn can stitch us something not so smelly when he’s got a chance.”

“There’s gratitude.”

“Thank you, thank you,” Jacky replied. “Don’t mind me— I’m just a little stunned from it all.”

Kate glanced at her. “How did you pop in out of nowhere like that?”

“That’s my long story that I’ll tell you later.”

They conserved their breath then to keep up with Finn and the forester. As she trotted along, Jacky went back over the last few moments after she’d jumped out of the window. It seemed that the gruagagh had inadvertently showed her yet another of the Tower’s magics— one that made sense, too. If all of Kinrowan was in one’s responsibility, one would want to be able to reach any part of it as quickly as possible in case of an emergency. By that reckoning, she wondered, there should also be a quick way back. So how did that work?

“Beam me up, Scotry,” she muttered.

“What?” Kate asked.

Jacky shook her head. “I’m just thinking about teleportation,” she said.

“Oh, is that all? I thought it was something more humdrum, like reliving old episodes of Star Trek in a moment of danger.”

Jacky grinned. “It’s good to see you again, too, Kate.”

They slowed down once they were out of the park and a few blocks north of the Tower, but Gwi would let no one remove their disguise. She kept her own on as well.

“He’ll be looking for you, too,” Gwi said when Kate complained. “And besides, we don’t have it so bad as Finn. He’s got to both smell and look at us.”

It was an hour or so later that Finn brought their roundabout journey to a halt in the shadows under the MacKenzie King Bridge. He knocked on the stone wall, a sharp rap, rap, rap,

“Who lives here?” Jacky asked.

“My friend Gump,” Finn said.

As he spoke, Gump’s bulk stepped out of the stones and peered down at them. Jacky and Kate took quick steps back until they were up against the railing by the canal.

“He’s a trow,” Finn added unnecessarily.

“Now, here’s a strange sight,” Gump boomed. “Dunrobin Finn in the company of three bogans.”

“They’re not what they seem,” Finn said.

The trow nodded. “Nothing ever is.” He waved to the stones. “Come along inside. I know there’s a tale behind what I see here, and I’d rather hear it in comfort than stand out here with the mist curling up at my toes.”

Jacky and Kate regarded the stone wall with misgivings, but Finn waved them through. To their surprise, they didn’t run smack up against the stones, but passed right through them. Finn and Gwi followed— Gwi removing her disguise— and Gump brought up the rear.

“I hope I can get the bogan smell out again,” the trow muttered to himself.

Then he remembered that he was playing host. He put a smile on his face and led the way down the tunnel to the big hollowed-out room that was his home. Everything was oversized— the chairs around the big table, the hearth with its cookware hanging from its stone mantel, the worktable along one wall where Gump pursued his hobby of making mechanical birds, the bookcases which held hundreds of his creations as well as a small library of bird books, and his big four-poster bed.

“Who’d like tea?” he asked.

A chorus of yesses sent him to the water barrel. He lifted its lid, dipped in a kettle, and set it hanging above the coals in the hearth. Drops of water hissed and spat as they fell from the kettle. Kate and Jacky seated themselves on the edge of his bed. Gwi climbed onto a chair. Finn remained standing, looking up at his friend.

“This is very kind of you,” Kate said.

“Mmmmm,” Gump replied.

He studied the pair of them on his bed and wrinkled his nose.

“If you’re wearing those shapes as a means of disguising your essence as well as your looks,” he said, “there’s no need in here. A trows home is always shielded against magic.”

Kate undid her button and showed Jacky how to undo hers. Then she hopped off the bed and studied her face in the bottom of one of the trow’s shiny pots.

“Thank God for that,” she said. “I was beginning to feel the way I smelled.”

“A marked improvement now,” Gwi said with a smile.

“So what’s the to-do?” Gump asked.

He looked at Finn, but the hob shrugged.

“There’s more than one tale to tell before it’s all untangled,” Finn said. “I think Kate should start off, since she knows the most.”

Oh, no, Kate thought.

She shot Jacky a quick glance. Now she’d have to tell Jacky about using the wallystane. She touched Caraid in its bag at her side, gave Finn a withering look which he ignored, then started to tell what she knew.

Three times Henk managed to evade the kelpie’s flashing hooves. He scuttled backwards over the stones, scraping his fingers, not caring, just trying to get out of the way. But now the river was at his back and there was no place left to go.

The mist wreathed around his legs as he slowly rose into a kneeling position. The kelpie moved towards him, hooves clacking on the stones. Henk could smell the sweat of his own fear, clinging to him. He’d gone all the way through and past his terror into a place where only resignation was left.

The kelpie rose on her hind legs.

This was it, Henk realized. There was no escape, not with the river at his back, the kelpie in front of him. He was too tired to even stand— adrenaline having stolen all his strength in his earlier moments of panic.

But before the hooves could strike, a voice called out.

The kelpie hesitated, forelegs slashing the air close enough to Henk’s face that he could feel the air of their passing. She backed away, came down on all fours, then turned her head in the direction of the interruption, regaining human form as she did.

Henk stared numbly at the little man on his shaggy pony and couldn’t feel a thing.

I don’t want to be here, he thought, but he still couldn’t move to take advantage of the distraction and escape.

“Why do you deny me his life?” the kelpie asked Henk’s saviour.

Dohinney Tuir sighed. “Because it’s not yours to take, Loireag. He’s an innocent.”

“He’s a man,” Loireag replied. “That used to be reason enough. And he’s no innocent. He called the Pook’s name— and that of her consort as well.”

“You turned Jemi away from Kinrowan. If you killed this man, you would do as great an injustice as the Pook would have done had she led us against the Court.”

Loireag grimaced.

“I have to do something,” she said finally. “Jenna’s dead, Tuir. I can’t just leave it at that.”

“Now you know how Jemi feels— why she called the rade to go against the Court. Neither of you has the right of it.”

“The man is on my shore,” Loireag said. “He’s prying about my haunts. It’s my right to take him if I so choose.”

“When your anger is directed against another— not him?”

“Don’t, Tuir. Don’t confuse me.”

Henk listened and watched, still not moving. The woman was silent for a while now and the little man on the pony turned to him.

“This is a bad place for such as you,” Tuir told him. “On a night like this— and for many a night to come, I’ll warrant. Go. Now.”

As though the hob’s words were the catalyst to free him, Henk stumbled to his feet. He stared at the two figures, then, from his new vantage point, caught a metallic gleam by a tree nearby and knew it to be Johnny’s bike. As he thought of his friend, his mind began to work once more.

“Johnny,” he said. “Give me back my friend.”

I don’t believe I’m doing this, he thought. I’m talking to fairies in Vincent Massey Park, for Christ’s sake. I’m going as bonkers as Johnny.

Except it was all real.

“We don’t have him,” the hob said.

“And we don’t want him,” Loireag added.

“But—”

“Go!” Tuir cried. “This is not your place, man. Tonight it belongs to us.”

Henk fought down the impulse to argue any further. He edged his way around them to where Johnny’s bike was chained to the tree. With fumbling fingers, he worked over the combination lock, loosened the chain, and wound it around the bike’s seat post. The two faerie watched him, eyes not blinking, silent as statues.

Shivering, Henk got on the bike and turned it away from them. Fear cat-pawed up his spine as he turned his back on them. He aimed the bike in the direction of Billings Bridge and set off down the bike path. When he dared a quick glance back, the stony beach was empty.

He tried to fight down his fear, but it built up in him again and he pedaled for all he was worth until he reached the shopping mall near the bridge. Gasping with relief and lack of breath, he steered the bike into its lit parking lot. He was shaking as he chained the bike up to a lightpost and stuck his hands in his pockets as he entered the twenty-four-hour donut shop standing by itself across the parking lot from the plaza.

He ordered coffee and managed to take it to a stool by the window without spilling it. As he sipped, his nerves slowly grew less jangled. He stared out the window then, into the almost empty parking lot.

It was a Wednesday night. Sensible people were at home, watching TV, maybe reading a book, doing normal things— not tripping through a park looking for a friend who’d gotten himself kidnaped by goblins.

Faerie.

We don’t have him, the little man had said.

Then who did?

And we don’t want him, his nightmare had added.

But I still want him, Henk thought. Only I don’t know how to get to him.

The kelpie had called Johnny the Pook’s consort and what the hell did that mean? He took another sip of his coffee and continued to study the parking lot. He wanted to do something, but didn’t know what. In the end, he just sat there, trying to convince himself that none of it had really happened, knowing all the while that it had.

After a while, he got a second cup of coffee, then a third, but by the time he’d finished them as well as some donuts, he was still no closer to an answer. At length he returned to the bike and started to pedal back to Johnny’s apartment.

Twelve

His true name was Colorc Angadal and though he’d passed through Lochbuie once, it was not a place that he could call home.

There was no place he called home. A droichan could have no home. They stole their sustenance from the Moon and, sooner or later, if they remained in one place too long, the Moon would see that a price was paid. So the droichan took what they wanted, from here, from there, moving on before the local faerie grew aware of what it was that threatened them and banded against the enemy, or the Moon found some other method of payment.

It was heroes, usually, that the Moon called up. Sometimes skillyfolk, like a Pook. Sometimes it was a combination of the two and Colorc hated them the most: the Jacks. Too clever. Too brave. The Moon sained them too well, and filled them with luck in the bargain.

When Kinrowan’s Jack disappeared through the third floor window of her Tower, his anger at her kind burst forth in a long shrieking wail of rage. Then he regained control of himself, went downstairs, and sent them out— those of the Host who’d come under his banner in their twos and threes, eager to feed on the luck he gave them and always eager to bring chaos to Seelie folk. He sent them out to hunt that Jack— bogans and sluagh, little twig-thin gullywudes and toothy hags, trolls, and other Unseelie creatures. He sent as well the shadow from his own back that could take the dark shape of a kelpie and the winged shape of a crow, but mostly ran free as a black hound.

They would find her and bring her back. If not the Host, then surely his shadow, for his shadow had her scent.

He watched them go, then returned to that room on the third floor that stank of Bhruic Dearg’s magic. The Jack had played him for a fool, but she’d had it right. The Gruagagh of Kinrowan had left a strong spell to protect his Tower and especially its heart— this room. He’d tied it to intent, no doubt of that, and there was no way that Colorc could hide his intent from its spell.

He frowned, walking about the room. He stood where the Jack had lifted a book from a worktable, but there was nothing for him to feel there. He looked out the window and saw only the street outside, not what the Jack had seen. Not what she had escaped to.

“Too clever by far,” he muttered.

Both the Jack and he himself had been too clever, but she’d won out, while he was left with only the ashes of her trick tasting dry in his mouth.

He had heard of Kinrowan, of its troubles and how this Jack had put an end to them. By luck, the tale went as it journeyed through the Middle Kingdom. Shining with luck was Kinrowan’s Jack. And then he heard the rumour that Bhruic was gone, leaving this new Jack— lucky, yes, but largely untried— in his stead.

Colorc hated Bhruic. Colorc had known the Gruagagh before becoming a droichan; more than once in those early years Bhruic had stood against him. It was Bhruic who convinced Yaarn not to take him on as an apprentice. Bhruic who had kept him from the sea wisdoms that the merfolk had been willing to teach him. Bhruic who spoke against him in the owl’s parliament.

“He has no compassion,” was the Gruagagh’s explanation for his persecution. “He has no heart.”

No heart? If that was what they thought, then let it be true. And he turned to the forbidden knowledges of the droichan.

He kept a wide berth of Kinrowan, for he was unwilling to confront Bhruic Dearg until he was sure of his victory. But he’d kept an eye on the realm. And when he learned of Bhruic’s departure