The Feral Child (14 page)

She didn’t need to turn her head to see what they meant. She could smell the elven mounts and hear the chink of their bridles. The scucca hounds growled and snapped and the Winter Court chattered and laughed, no doubt in high excitement at the thought of killing Maddy. There was a soft thud in the snow and then she heard that slow, dragging step.

She bent her head.

It was over.

Chapter Twenty-Three

“How did you ever think you could go home,
child?” asked Liadan. Maddy didn’t answer and turned her head away, refusing to lift her eyes to meet that dead white gaze. Liadan bent her head until her mouth was a few inches from Maddy’s ear. Her breath froze the delicate hairs on Maddy’s face, encasing them in tiny slivers of ice.

“The same rules apply going back as going out,” she said. “If you cannot see it or believe it, then you can’t step into it. For tonight, this is faerie soil, and home is a wish.”

She pointed at Danny and Roisin. “Now, your companions there, they didn’t have to think about it too hard,” she continued. “They saw they were home, and they ran straight into it. The little one could do it even as he slept. But you?” Liadan sighed and crouched
down next to Maddy, her ivory dress fanning around her. “Your people have a saying: ‘Home is where the heart is.’ And your heart is gone.”

Anger flared in Maddy’s chest. “What do you mean?” she asked.

“Your parents taught you that Ireland was home, didn’t they? But you don’t feel at home here. And you don’t feel at home in that great gray city either because your parents didn’t. So home was where your parents were. And now they’re dead, leaving you an unwanted, unloved child, with no place to go in the world. You would have been better off dead too.”

“So kill me then,” said Maddy bitterly. “Isn’t that what you want?”

“Actually, no,” said Liadan. “It was amusing to chase you, but I have bigger plans for you.”

“So you lied,” said Maddy. “You broke the rules.”

“No, I meant it when I said I wanted to hunt you, but I didn’t say I wanted to kill you, did I?” asked Liadan, her head cocked to one side. “
You
are the one who broke the rules. You made a bargain, and then you broke it. Silly, silly girl.”

“So what do you want?” asked Maddy.

“Let me show you something,” said Liadan. She made a gesture with one hand, and a moving image hung in the air between herself and Maddy.

Maddy cried out in fear and scrambled back when she looked at it and realized she was staring at a cloaked and hooded figure wielding a scythe.

Liadan laughed. “How you humans start at this sight!” she smiled. “You always think it is your death coming for you. But this isn’t death, although your race once probably thought it was.”

“What is it then?” rasped Maddy.

“Not what, but who,” said Liadan. “This is a member of the Coranied, a race of warlocks who ruled the Celts through fear. Now, ironically enough, they are slave masters for the Morrighan.”

“How?”

“Dark faeries, who are mostly my subjects, get their strength from chaos and disorder,” said Liadan. “All the darkest, ugliest emotions and thoughts that humans and faeries can have—that’s what my court feeds on. War in particular provides us with an opportunity to gorge ourselves. But the Coranied have a unique talent. They can gather up all those bad feelings, all those nightmarish places we go to in our heads, and they can store them, control them. Which means they can control us. They can keep us weak by rationing all those emotions, and the Morrighan can keep her pathetic peace.

“If I can cross into this world with my court, there’s no Coranied to stop us,” she continued. “We can feed on all the bad stuff going on in your world right now, and we don’t even have to start a war. And I’ll be strong as a Tuatha, and I’ll be able to bear the weight of this crown. And you are the key to all of this.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Maddy.

“You are a rare jewel, Maddy—a child who desires to die,” said Liadan. “You are so full of rage and grief and hate. As pathetic as humans are, the will to live is the strongest urge, the last light to be snuffed out, and children cling to it hardest of all. Do you realize the power you create when you reverse that? The chaos? I’ve been trying to create that chaos with the children I’ve taken over the years, tried to torture them to the brink of death, but they all resisted. But with you I didn’t have to do a thing.”

“You’re lying,” said Maddy.

“No, I’m not,” said Liadan. “Stephen was never the child we wanted, Maddy. It was always you. You’re an agent of destruction, a walking curse, and we’ve been feeding off you ever since you set foot in our world. It is you who gave us the strength to get this far, to make it to the place between the worlds. Now you can help us step across.”

“How can I do that?” asked Maddy. “I can’t get across myself.”

“I just need you to hand your mind over to me and let me unleash that chaos. I’ll do the rest.”

Maddy laughed. “Why on earth would I do that?”

Liadan leaned closer. “Because I can give you what you crave most . . . in any world. I can give you your parents back.”

Maddy stared at her, open-mouthed. The snow whirled gently down to coat their heads. “No, you really are lying now,” she whispered hoarsely. “You can’t raise the dead.”

“Watch,” said Liadan.

Blackness covered Maddy’s eyes. She cried out, her eyes straining in their sockets, and then she smelled her mother’s perfume. She felt a hand settle on her shoulder and another smooth her hair back from her face and tuck it behind one ear, just the way her mother used to do. Sounds and smells rushed toward her, and her head was flooded with a bright light.

She was standing in the kitchen of their house in London. Her father was cooking dinner, and her mother was sitting at the table reading out loud from the newspaper. They were discussing the article, smiles hovering around their lips. Maddy stood and watched them, tears pouring down her face. Her mother glanced up and saw her and put the newspaper down on the table, her face full of concern. Her father broke off in midsentence and turned to face her, frowning. “Maddy, darling, what’s wrong?” he asked.

Maddy just cried harder, but a smile spread across her face at the same time. She was about to run forward and throw herself into his arms when the scene in front of her began to dissolve and recede, like water disappearing down a plughole. Just before her fingertips brushed the soft cotton of her father’s T-shirt, she was left alone in the darkness again.

“NO!” she screamed. She bent double, her face pressed against the wet grass of the mound. “Give them back, give them back . . .” Sobs wracked her body. The pain from her wound spread down and out and sapped her strength.

“I will, Maddy. Of course I will,” soothed Liadan. “All you have to do is hand yourself over to me. Let your mind be my bridge into the mortal world, and you can live your life here, between them. You will never be apart from your parents again. You’ll never get any older, and they will never die. Isn’t that what you want?”

“What will happen to everyone here?” Maddy asked.

Liadan waved her hand, a look of contempt on her face. “What do you care? Nothing will ever touch you again. You’ll never have to hear another human voice, apart from your parents.”

Maddy looked down at the frozen ground and bit her lip until hot salty blood ran down her chin. She thought of Granny sewing by the fire, Mr. and Mrs. Forest and that house full of tumbling, loud, laughing boys and the smells of good things to eat. She thought of George and the way he smelled after they walked in the rain, his rough warm tongue on her face. She thought of Stephen’s hot hand sliding into hers on a summer day, sticky with ice cream. She thought of Fionn’s silvery fingers falling on snow. She thought of her parents again, and fresh tears poured down her face. Granda was pressed against the faerie barrier, his eyes locked on to hers.

Whatever a faerie promises you, whatever they try to tempt you with, it’s not real,
said his voice in her head.
You have to trust your heart, not your eyes, and turn your feet for home.

“Maddy, look at me,” said Liadan, her voice as soft as a snake’s hiss. “Look into my eyes, and I can give you your life back.”

Maddy shifted off one knee and got her foot underneath her body. She looked at Liadan.

“Shove it,” she wheezed.

“What did you say?” said Liadan, her eyes narrowing in rage.

“I said shove it, Tinkerbell,” said Maddy. “You’re full of it, and if you think I’m letting you run around my head, then your lift isn’t reaching the top floor.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth Maddy lunged forward.

It almost worked. The barrier shivered as her shoulder pierced it, and for a brief moment she felt the wet drumming of rain on the back of her head, before a piercing cold enveloped her and she was yanked back on to the mound. Liadan leaned over her and gripped her ribs in her hands, ice rippling from her fingertips to coat Maddy’s chest. Maddy screamed in agony, and her body jerked like a fish on a line. Liadan sat up, panting with rage, while Maddy moaned, half unconscious with pain. The rest of the Winter Court was coming toward her now. She heard the whisper of a blade being drawn from a scabbard. Fachtna.

“You vicious, feral child,” snarled Liadan. “I show you your heart’s desire, and you spit in my face? You have been offered more than any mortal ever has, and you insult me?!”

Soft white boots crunched through the snow to stop by Maddy’s head. A silver blade hovered just by her ear. Liadan leaned down and placed her hand over Maddy’s heart. Maddy almost blacked out. She listened to her own screams as if from a distance. Her heart withered in her chest, the ice sending shock after shock through it. Liadan pulled her hand away, and Maddy retched.

“I will give you one more chance before I hand you over to Fachtna,” said Liadan. “It’s a very simple choice to make: give me what I want, and I will give you your heart’s desire; refuse me, and you die.”

Maddy’s hand went to her side, and she felt something in her jacket pocket shift beneath her fingertips.

“I can have anything I want?” she asked, her voice small and trembling.

“Anything you want,” said Liadan, her face almost softening, but a glint of triumph flashing cold in her gaze.

Slowly Maddy unzipped her jacket pocket and slid her hand inside. “Do you know what I really want?” she said.

“Tell me, child,” said Liadan, leaning closer, “and I will make it so.”

Maddy turned her head so she could whisper into the faerie’s curled ear.

“Shelves.”

Liadan stared at her, her eyes wide with disbelief, just as Maddy lifted her hand to her mouth and swallowed a fistful of iron filings. Flat on her back on the
mound, Maddy could feel the vibrations of lingering magic. She concentrated on the hot rage that bubbled up from the pit of her stomach and flooded her throat, melting the iron filings, turning them to a liquid that flooded her veins, pushing back the cold and the pain.

“What have you done?” said Liadan, as she scrambled away from her. “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?”

Maddy lifted her hand and watched the iron turn her veins gray. Her skin pulsed as the iron leached out of her pores, and even her eyes changed as a gray film covered her pupils and tainted everything she looked at.

She sat up and laughed, a hollow sound that rang like a bell in her chest. Then she dug her fingers through the snow and hooked them into the soil beneath her, which softened before the heat of her touch. The faerie mound heaved and cracked as it tried to spit out her taste. All around, the faeries were in chaos, trying to stay in control of panicking mounts, who reared as the iron poison licked at their feet from the polluted earth. The fir dorocha were beating a hasty retreat, the hounds fleeing ahead of them. Liadan was climbing on to her own mount, an animal cloaked in silver to protect it from her cold. The terrified animal tried to spin away, but she yanked its head around viciously to face Maddy as the rest of her Winter Court stampeded for the opening in the mound. Blood foamed from its mouth and dripped on to its white chest. The only faerie who wasn’t running in panic was Fachtna,
who stood and stared at Maddy with a frown on her face. Maddy thought she saw a flicker of fear in the faerie’s eyes. She grinned and got to her feet.

“Not so tough now, are you?” she said.

Liadan pointed a trembling finger at Maddy and screamed, “Kill her! Kill her now!”

Maddy laughed. She flexed her arms as the molten iron melted the last of the cold in her body and swallowed the pain. “Come on then!” she yelled. “Come and have a go, if you think you’re hard enough!”

She barely had time to raise her arm to protect herself as Fachtna’s sword came crashing down.

She grunted with surprise and staggered back, sparks flying as the blade scraped against her skin. Fachtna came at Maddy, swinging and stabbing and driving her back toward the mound opening. Maddy couldn’t stand under the force of the faerie’s blows, and she began to crumble to her knees. Fachtna raised her sword as if to strike down, and as Maddy raised her arm to ward her off again, the faerie kicked her hard, throwing her on to her back. She planted a foot on Maddy’s chest and raised her sword.

The lightening from Maddy’s world lit up Fachtna’s face as she gripped the pommel with both hands. She bared her triangular teeth, her wings stiff and quivering behind her as her muscles bunched to drive the blade into Maddy’s throat.

“You can’t kill me!” screamed Maddy. “Not with the iron in me!”

“Let’s find out,” said Fachtna as she hurled the blade downward. Maddy caught it in her hands and tried to hang on, the metal screaming and her skin sparking as Fachtna forced it through her palms. As Maddy’s gray hands slid up toward the hilt, she lunged forward, letting the point of the sword bend against her skin, and she grabbed Fachtna’s wrist.

The effect was electrifying. The sword slid from Fachtna’s frozen fingers and toppled from Maddy’s one-handed grip. The faerie began to scream, a high-pitched noise like a rabbit in a trap. Where Maddy’s iron fingers grasped her, the skin turned black and began to blister and bubble. Fachtna collapsed on to the earth and twisted and kicked in an attempt to shake Maddy off.

One booted foot caught Maddy a sharp blow in the ribs, and she grunted and lost her grip on Fachtna’s wrist. The faerie spun round to face her, panting. She went for one of the knives strapped across her chest, but when Maddy shouted, “Stop!” Fachtna paused, her breath hissing through her filed teeth.