The Raven Queen (5 page)

Last Halloween Maddy had found out that she was the new Hound of Ireland, destined to follow in the footsteps of Cú Chulainn, an ancient Irish hero, the only mortal Maddy knew of who had taken on the faeries and won. It was up to Maddy now to be as strong as him, and to keep the mortal world safe. She had no idea how she was supposed to do that, and Meabh had laughed at her for even thinking she could try, but the Autumn Queen had been very keen to put a collar around Maddy's neck and bring her into her court.

‘Anyone sort of relieved this has happened?' asked Danny.

‘Are you mad?' said Maddy.

‘Sometimes I think I am,' said Danny. ‘I don't sleep too well at night, I have screaming nightmares when I do, I jump at every shadow and I can't tell anyone else about any of this, and even if I could, who would believe me?'

‘Cassandra syndrome,' said Roisin.

‘What?' said Danny.

‘It's what everyone has got in that home, including Aunt Kitty,' said Roisin. ‘They know what's going on, but when they tell people, no one believes them and either
they get locked up for being mentally ill or the fear of what's coming sends them mad anyway.'

‘Who's Cassandra?' asked Maddy.

‘She was the daughter of King Priam of Troy,' said Roisin. ‘She was cursed to have the gift of prophecy but never to be believed. She knew Troy was going to burn, she saw all those people dying in her dreams long before it happened, but no one listened.'

‘Yeah, that sounds about right,' Danny muttered.

They sat in silence for a while, lost in their own thoughts, when Roisin said, ‘I want this to be over.'

She carried on talking while Maddy and Danny stared at her.

‘I'm getting the screaming nightmares too, and so are you, Maddy. We share a room; it's pointless trying to hide it. But the nightmares don't go away, even when I'm awake. I keep seeing them, beneath the mound, under my feet, staring up with those pale faces, just waiting to break through and kill everyone around them while they set themselves up as kings and queens again.'

‘I'm not sure that they are technically under our feet …' said Maddy.

‘I don't care about the physics of it!' said Roisin. ‘They're there and they want to kill us all, or at least enough of us so we don't ever think about fighting back again, ever, and I can't just forget that. I can't go to
school and live my life and put it to one side that they are constantly probing the barrier, trying to find a way through, that a war in Ireland, if not another world war, is possible. And the Sighted are the only ones that know about it and the only ones that can see it coming.'

She sighed and rubbed her forehead with her fingertips. ‘I just want to be able to sleep again, you know? Have a proper sleep. You keep saying you just want life to go back to normal, Maddy, but it won't. I'm tired of waiting for them to come and get us. We have to finish this.'

‘How are we supposed to do that?' asked Maddy.

‘I don't know,' said Roisin. ‘But it starts with you, so it has to finish with you.'

‘You're the one who draws them, Maddy,' said Danny. ‘Even Granda said he had never seen so many faeries about the place until you came.'

Maddy looked at her cousins. It was true – their faces were pale and tired and marked by worry. She probably didn't look much better herself. Danny's clothes hung from his frame and it wasn't just because he was growing so fast. Roisin, who had always been teased for being fat, was also looking a lot more slender. Her broad cheekbones were standing out in sharp relief below her shadow-smudged eyes. Her eyes were huge in her face, twin pools of melting chocolate, while her red
curls fizzed against her pallid skin. Maddy had thought her cousin's face had simply been changing as she grew up, – now she realized Roisin was stressed almost beyond endurance. She had been so wrapped up in her own misery she hadn't noticed that her cousins, just like her, were still carrying around the events of last year in their minds, playing them out in their dreams, their tongues locked inside their mouths.

‘You know we could die?' she asked.

‘Meh.' Danny shrugged. ‘What's new?'

‘At least I'd sleep,' said Roisin. She smiled, as if it was supposed to be funny. But they all knew it wasn't.

‘So where do we start?' asked Danny.

‘We have to get to Blarney and find Nero,' said Maddy. ‘He loses all power of speech this side of the barrier, but we have to get him back to Tír na nÓg. He must be looking for us.'

Roisin nodded in agreement. ‘We have to get all four of us back through the mound, and then we can find out what is going on, what drove him here.'

‘And then we'll have a good reason to pick a fight,' said Danny.

Then the other bit of bad news dawned on Maddy. ‘Granda is on his way here, straight after dinner.'

‘Why?' said Danny.

‘Una told him about the dullahan, so now he's talking
about moving me somewhere safer,' said Maddy, while Roisin groaned and Danny swore.

‘That's it then, isn't it? We're finished!' said Roisin, punching her legs with frustration. ‘We can't just head out for Blarney now. Mam will never let us out of the house and Granda will be here before we can sneak away and then you'll be gone. Myself and Danny can't do this without you!'

‘I know,' said Maddy. ‘I don't know what to do.'

‘We need to stop him getting here, buy enough time so that we can sneak out tonight when everyone is asleep. Mam and Dad know nothing about Tír na nÓg or what's been going on; they won't be watching us in case we sneak out in the middle of the night. But Granda will – we've tried that trick too often. Once he's here, there'll be no getting away from him.'

‘How are we supposed to do that?' asked Maddy.

‘Meabh,' said Danny.

Roisin's head snapped back up and hope bloomed again in her eyes. ‘Yes, of course, why didn't I think of that?!' she said. ‘She's bound to help – she wants you back in Tír na nÓg, especially if there is going to be a fight.'

‘How am I supposed to ask her?'

‘Talk to the air,' said Roisin. ‘She's always listening, isn't she?'

‘But what can she do?' asked Maddy. ‘It's summer. I don't know how powerful she can be out of her season.'

‘She's a monarch and a witch,' said Danny. ‘She's pretty strong.'

‘This alliance of yours has got us into enough trouble,' said Roisin. ‘We might as well get something out of it for once.'

Maddy took a deep breath. ‘Fine,' she said. ‘I'll do it straight after …'

‘Dinner!' shrieked Aunt Fionnula from the bottom of the stairs.

The call for food was enough to send the monsters into a frenzy. They yanked their bedroom door back so hard the g-force nearly sucked Maddy into the room. She stood back and let them charge on ahead of her, whooping. Roisin rolled her eyes. ‘You'd swear they were never fed.'

The kitchen was unbearably hot and steamy. Aunt Fionnula was opening a window for a bit of relief as Maddy walked in. She noticed that although the room was as steamy as a sauna, it didn't wilt her aunt's helmet of hair, not even a tiny bit. Aunt Fionnula snapped orders at Sean, Ronan and Paul as they crowded around her while she tried to serve up the sausages, mash and beans.

‘DON'T touch the pot, it's hot, keep your hands out of the beans, you haven't even washed them, Sean, PUT THAT BREAD BACK, you do not need bread with your dinner!'

She nodded her head absent-mindedly while Roisin, Danny and the monsters talked to her. She slid Maddy's dinner over to her without so much as a look and Maddy silently picked up her fork and began to eat. She noticed Aunt Fionnula was preparing a tray for herself and Uncle Jack, which meant they were having a TV dinner.

‘Eat everything up now and rinse off your plates in the sink, I'm not chiselling mash off all night,' she said, before letting the kitchen door swing shut behind her as she tottered off down the hallway to the living room with the tray loaded with food and cutlery.

The monsters went deadly quiet, watching her retreating back with sparkling eyes, cocking their heads for the sound of the living-room door shutting and the volume on the TV rising. And then the entertainment started.

Ronan was first with a massive belch.

‘Stop it, that's disgusting!' said Roisin, while Danny tried to hide a smile behind his hand. The monsters howled with laughter and began to belch together like a demented bullfrog chorus.

‘Stop it right now or I am telling Mam!' said Roisin, her voice rising.

‘Look, Ro!' said Sean, opening his mouth and sticking out a tongue loaded with chewed-up food.

‘Sean, what has Mam said …' Ro paused. ‘WHAT is that smell? Oh, Paul, you haven't.'

‘I haven't!' he said, shoving a sausage into his mouth.

‘You have!' asked Roisin. ‘That's horrible. We're eating!'

‘The one who smelt it dealt it,' sang Sean.

‘The one who said the rhyme did the crime,' said Danny, which had the monsters roaring with laughter again, food and spit spraying across the table.

Roisin threw her fork down in disgust. ‘Honestly, it's like trying to eat with chimpanzees.'

While the monsters baited Roisin, Maddy looked at the glass in the kitchen door. The door to the living room stayed firmly closed and there was no sign of Aunt Fionnula or Uncle Jack coming to break up the party. Clearly her aunt and uncle were tired after working all day and in no mood to do any crowd control. It was now or never.

She put her fork down. ‘I'm going outside. The smell in here is awful,' she announced, getting up from her seat. She couldn't help but flick a glance at Roisin and Danny, who both looked at her and away again quickly. It was too obvious and the monsters picked up on it.

‘Why are you going outside?' asked Ronan, his eyes narrowed with suspicion. ‘What's so great about outside?'

‘None of your business,' said Maddy.

‘I'm telling Mammy you didn't eat your dinner,' said Paul.

‘Like I care,' said Maddy, heading for the back door.

‘I'm coming too,' said Ronan, getting up from his seat and launching himself at the door. Maddy lunged ahead of him and managed to get through the door before he did, but she wasn't quick enough to shut it on him. He jammed his body between the door and the kitchen wall, his fingers wrapped around the door frame and his arm up to stop Maddy from closing it on him.

‘C'mere to me, you,' said Danny as he walked up behind Ronan and grabbed him under the arms, wrenching him away from the door. Ronan gave a howl of rage and swung round, throwing a wild punch that missed Danny by a mile. ‘Let me go, or I'll burst ya!'

‘Push me and I'll beat you good-looking,' Maddy heard Danny say as he slammed the door shut. ‘And it would take me hours!'

Maddy sighed with relief as Danny blocked the doorway and the double glazing muffled the howls of rage from both boys. She walked across the tiny garden, its grass worn away by the monsters, littered with footballs, a mini-trampoline and a broken set of goalposts, and headed for the biggest piece of greenery around.

The house behind had a mature oak tree at the end of their garden that spread its branches over Aunt Fionnula's fence. Uncle Jack was constantly grumbling about it and telling the neighbours to cut it down, claiming it cast too much shade over his garden.

Maddy turned her face up to the tree, hearing its broad leaves rattle as a summer breeze stroked their tips. She closed her eyes and listened to the sounds of life all around her. Somewhere a dog was barking, a dull monotonous sound devoid of all passion. Children were playing in their gardens and some of the neighbours were indulging in the great Irish summer tradition of burnt barbecue. Danny and the monsters were still rioting in the kitchen behind her.

Maddy knew if Meabh was listening, a whisper would be loud enough for her voice to reach the witch queen's ears. When Maddy had given the Queen of Autumn her oath of fealty last year, she had choked it out as she was being dangled in the air by Fachtna, another homicidal Winter faerie. Meabh had heard all right, and as she had promised, she came straight to Maddy's aid. But the barrier between the two worlds had been failing then and the faeries had been finding it easy to slip between the worlds. Plus, it had been autumn, when Meabh was strongest. Now the barrier was strong again and it was summer, Queen Niamh's season to rule. Maddy didn't
know if Meabh would be able to hear her, much less do anything to help her.

She looked up at the oak tree, such a strong and majestic reminder of nature, here, in the middle of the city. Its whispering leaves spoke of green fields and tall grasses, deer stepping carefully through woodland and floating clouds.

‘My queen,' she said, talking directly to the tree, ‘help me. You wanted this fight and you wanted me in it. I can't escape this house without help, and once Granda is here I won't be going anywhere. If you want the Hound to run for you, then you need to make it happen. I can't get to Tír na nÓg on my own.'

The branches above her head dipped and the leaves rustled just a little more loudly.

Ask me nicely
, they whispered, and for a moment Maddy smelt rain. Startled, she searched the tree's foliage, looking for a flash of red hair, a gleam of gold jewellery or the sight of a bright green eye staring back at her from the fluttering leaves. Nothing.

She searched her mind for suitable phrases she had read in fantasy novels and took a deep breath.

‘I beseech you, my queen, aid your humble subject in her hour of need,' said Maddy, trying and not really succeeding in keeping the sting of sarcasm from her voice. The sound of thunder grumbled in the distance,
shocking everyone around her into momentary silence. Even the dog paused in its barking. Maddy shifted nervously from foot to foot. Perhaps she should have tried to sound a bit more sincere?