Drink Down the Moon (11 page)

Gump grumbled a bit more, but he was obviously pleased.

“And what I’m wondering,” Finn continued, “is whether you’ve seen a new gruagagh in Kinrowan— one who might have a black dog for his familiar, or perhaps one who wears the shape of a black dog himself.”

Gump thought about that for a moment.

“There’s been a thing,” he said at last, “that has taken on the task of disrupting the fiaina’s rade— you know of that?”

Finn shook his head. Like most Seelie faerie, he had little commerce with the fiaina sidhe.

“Don’t know what it is,” Gump said, “but I’ve heard them talk of it. A black dog was mentioned.”

“Then that’s what killed the Pook earlier this night.”

“Jenna’s dead?” Gump asked. “Oh, that makes me want to hit something, Finn. She was a good Pook.”

“Why would anyone want to disrupt the fiaina’s rade?” Finn wondered aloud.

“It’s their luck,” Gump said.

Now Finn understood. If the Pook’s killer was the same one who was disrupting the fiaina’s rade, it didn’t take a great deal of cleverness to know that it would soon be turning its attention to the heart of Kinrowan— the Jack’s Tower, where Kinrowan’s luck was stored. The evening’s premonitions grew stronger.

“Oh, damn! I’m off, Gump, to the Jack’s Tower. Keep an eye out for me, would you, and pass on anything you learn?”

“Which eye?” The trow’s face split with a great gap-toothed grin, then he looked serious again. “I’ll watch for you, Finn. Spike him once for me when you catch him. I liked Jenna.”

“I’ll do that,” Finn said.

It was best to talk brave around a trow— they understood things like bravery and jokes. It wouldn’t do to have Gump know that he was shaking in his hob-stitched shoes.

Gump faded back into the stone wall, for the dawn was coming and while he might hide in stone, he didn’t particularly care to become stone, which is what would happen if the dawn’s light caught him. When he was gone, Finn set off for the Tower at a run.

This was the problem, he thought, with knowing important people like gruagaghs and Jacks. Trouble was drawn to them like a magnet and it didn’t stop to differentiate between the important folk and the odd hob who might just be standing around them.

But I don’t stand around anymore, do I? Finn thought.

Not since he’d gone up against the Unseelie Court with Jacky and the others and lived to tell the tale. No, he’d become a doer now as well. But why was it that being a doer only felt good afterwards, when you could sit around and chat about it, maybe boast a little? Why couldn’t you feel all brave and sure of what you were doing while you were doing it?

He wondered if the answer to that was in one of Bhruic’s books.

Kate spent the remainder of the night poring over books.

She made a quick foray into her own room, gathering up all the fairy tale books she’d kept since she was a child, and then went into Jacky’s room. Jacky had never been one for fairy tale collections when she was young, but ever since the events of last autumn, she’d taken to collecting them with a vengeance.

With her arms full, Kate returned to the third floor, wincing at every creak of the wooden stairs going up. Once there, she dropped her tottering load beside her reading chair. The area was already filled with piles of books she’d taken down from Bhruic’s shelves. Slumping in the chair, she picked up a book.

The first reference she’d run across in one of Bhruic’s books when she had started to read had a footnote directing her to human literature. In the thematic indexes of folklore, what she was looking for was listed under Tale Type 302— “The Ogre or Devil’s Heart in an Egg.” There were over two hundred and sixty versions of the story, collected from around the world— Irish, Indian, African, Native American. That was what had sent her down to the second floor for the fairy tale collections. Now she went through the books, searching for the stories in question. She was looking for hints— for the “understanding” of her foe that Caraid had told her she’d need to deal with the gruagagh Cumin.

Most of the versions she found were similar to the Scandinavian story. “The Giant Who Had No Heart in His Body.” In that one, the giant’s heart was hidden far away from the giant’s castle. In a lake there was an island, on the island a church, in the church a well, in the well swam a duck, in the duck was an egg, and in that egg was his heart.

Lovely, she thought as she put it aside. In other words, Cumin’s heart could be just about anywhere.

After a thorough search, she found only two more versions of the story in the books she had on hand. One was Russian— called “Kostchi the Deathless”— the other was Italo Calvino’s Italian version, “Body Without Soul.” She read them both through, then turned to the faerie books she’d pulled from Bhruic’s shelves.

She put her feet up on a stack of books, the spines facing towards her. Gwyn Jones’s Scandinavian Legends and Folktales. Books by Stith Thompson, Jane Yolen and William Mayne. The Giant Book, by de Regniers. Asbjornsen and Jorgen’s East of the Sun and West of the Moon and Other Tales. Even classic nontraditional books that collected stories by Oscar Wilde and William Dunthorn and contemporary titles like Christy Riddle’s How to Make the Wind Blow.

I could be at this forever, she wrote in Caraid.

Understanding is like wisdom, the book replied. Not easily acquired, but the endeavor is nevertheless worthwhile.

“Easy for you to say,” Kate said aloud, and picked up another of Bhruic’s books.

The faerie versions of the same stories tended to be either much plainer or wildly exaggerated. In one, an evil gruagagh carried his heart in a pouch at his belt. In another, it had been reduced to the size of a pea and hidden in a gem that the ogre wore dangling from his ear. Then there were complicated ones that echoed “The Giant Who Had No Heart” story that she’d read a little earlier. But there were few facts that were prevalent in the histories of Faerie that the human books hadn’t touched on.

The branch of faerie magic that beings such as Cumin followed was far different from that usually followed by Seelie gruagaghs or skillyfolk.

Whereas the luck gathered from the moonroads that a gruagagh tended in a Seelie Court, or called up by the rade of the fiaina sidhe, was more a borrowing of the Moon’s luck, the droichan— as such beings were called— stole their luck. Borrowed luck returned to Arn, where she rode the night sky in her moon house; stolen luck was gone forever. Borrowed luck returned the gift of its giving, twice and threefold, making a circular pattern so that both giver and gifted were strengthened and sustained; stolen luck pierced the fabric of Faerie like a disease and left only sickness and death in its wake.

It was because droichan were more often human that the various tales of the diminishing of Faerie came to be. The less luck there was— it took a very long time for Arn to make new luck to replace that which had been stolen— the fewer faerie could exist. So it wasn’t so much a lack of belief in faerie by humans that diminished them, as the amount stolen by droichan.

Droichan were next to impossible to kill— naturally enough, Kate thought with a heavy sigh. You had to find their heart first, and the mystery of their hiding places would tax the greatest of riddlemasters. The only hope that the books could offer was that a droichan had to repeat a spell over his heart once every three months, in the same phase of the moon that he had worked the spell to set his heart free from his body in the first place. This was invariably on the darkest night of the new moon.

Kate sighed again and set aside the last book. It was almost dawn and her eyes were bleary from too much reading and a lack of sleep. As she leaned back in her chair, she was suddenly aware of how quiet the Tower was.

Had Jacky and the gruagagh gone to sleep? Did she dare tiptoe to whatever room the gruagagh was sleeping in and try to find his heart before he woke up?

She shivered and hugged herself. She wasn’t feeling that brave right now— not by a long shot.

She’d better not do anything, she decided— not until she’d had a chance to talk to Jacky. And if not her, then perhaps someone like Finn. They’d left a message at the Court for him to come to the Tower. How long would it take him? Oh, why couldn’t things have stayed the way they were— just a day or so ago?

I’m finished for tonight, she wrote in her book Goodnight, Caraid.

Wear a sprig of rowan, the book replied.

What for?

To protect you against the gruagagh’s spells. Wear it under your jacket— close to your heart.

Does it matter how big a piece it is? Kate asked.

She glanced at the top shelf above Bhruic’s worktable where a number of cylindrical containers held bunches of twigs. Rowan. Birch. Yew. Oak. Ash. There were dozens of them.

Rowan, lamer, and red threid, Pits witches to their speed, the book replied.

What’s lamer? Kate wrote.

An old word for amber. They are all reddish, you see— Like a hob’s cap. The size doesn’t matter. Goodnight, Kate.

Kate went over to the worktable. She had to get right up onto it to reach the containers. Once she’d chosen her piece of rowan wood, she searched about for a safety pin to fasten it to her jacket, then realized that the iron in the pin might negate the rowan’s protection. Many faerie had acquired an immunity to iron, living in cities as they did, but iron still undid many faerie enchantments and glamours. She found a needle and a piece of red thread instead, and sewed the little twig to the inside of her jacket.

She stowed Caraid away in its pouch. We should have got ourselves a book like this ages ago, she thought.

Leaving the mess behind, she headed downstairs, being as quiet as possible so as not to wake sleepers. But when she got downstairs to the kitchen, all set to make herself a cup of tea before going to bed herself, she found Jacky still sitting at the table in the nook.

“Morning, Jacky,” she said.

She went on to get the kettle, pausing only to turn back when there was no reply from her friend.

“Jacky?”

She walked back to the table. Jacky’s gaze had a glassy look about it. When Kate moved her hand up and down in front of her friend’s eyes, there was still no response. She shook Jacky’s shoulder. Nothing.

She’s been enchanted, Kate realized. The gruagagh’s gone and enchanted her.

She started to pull her rowan twig from her jacket, hoping that it could undo the spell Jacky was under with its touch, when she felt another presence in the kitchen. Turning, she saw Cumin standing in the doorway.

“I need her to show me a thing or two of Bhruic’s ways,” he said conversationally. “Unfortunately, the same doesn’t apply to you.”

It hurt Kate to do it, but she knew she had no choice. She had to leave Jacky behind.

Before the gruagagh could step into the kitchen, she grabbed the half-full teapot from the table and hurled it into his face. He lifted his arms to ward it off, stepping back into the hall. That was all the time that Kate needed to get to the back door. She heard the gruagagh shout something in a language she didn’t understand, and felt a tingle run all through her body, but whatever spell he’d tried didn’t take hold.

Kate didn’t look back. She just hauled the door open and bolted outside.

The sun was peeping over the horizon and everything was in a haze of early morning light and tendrils of mist that had drifted up from the river. Kate didn’t spare a moment to take in the eerie beauty of the sight. She ran headlong for the gate at the back of the yard that would let her out into the park beyond— glad that she was wearing her hob-stitched shoes that lent her their extra speed.

She reached the gate, jumped over, and ran smack into somebody. They fell in a tangle of limbs.

“Kate?” Finn asked, recovering first. “What’s the—”

But Kate’s attention was on the backyard where the gruagagh was coming after her.

“We’ve got to run!” she cried, and jumped to her feet.

She dragged Finn to his feet beside her and set off, pulling him along. It wasn’t until they’d crossed the park and were standing by the river, partly hidden by the trees there, that she dared to pause and look back. The gruagagh stood at the gate of the Tower’s backyard, staring at them across the trimmed lawn.

“Stag’s heart!” Finn complained. “What’s possessed you, Kate?”

Kate just pointed back across the park.

“He’s a droichan, Finn,” she said. “He’s got no heart. He’s captured Jacky and the Tower and we can’t kill him unless we find his heart.”

Finn stared numbly in the direction she was pointing. With a skillyman’s sight he could see the ghostly shape of a black dog that hung about the gruagagh like an aura.

“Oh, damn,” he said.

He’d come too late.

Nine

I can’t get her out of my mind,” Johnny said.

He picked at the mushroom and zucchini omelette that Henk had set before him. Disjointed images from the previous night were still floating through his mind, leaving him with the disconcerting feeling of coming down from the effects of a hallucinogenic drug.

Everything, from his familiar kitchen to Henk’s face across the table, had edges that were too sharp, then wavered when he moved his head. There was a curious metallic taste in his throat and his eyes stung. When he closed his eyes he saw, in amidst the swirl of strange creatures that his memory called up, Jemi Pook. Sometimes she was as she’d been in the South Garden, sitting across from him, putting away egg rolls like they were her first meal in a week. But mostly she was lifting her head from her dead sister’s body, screaming into the sky, neck muscles stretched taut, eyes closed to slits, her pain like a raw file rasping against his nerves.

That “wailing

.

He shoved the plate away. Henk pushed it back.

“Eat,” he said. “If you were fed some drug last night, you’re going to want something in your stomach. It’ll flush your system quicker.”

Henk had stayed over last night. He’d put Johnny to bed, wondering as he did if he shouldn’t have taken him to the hospital instead. But he didn’t think Johnny had been drugged. There was a bump on Johnny’s head and his lip “was split, but Henk didn’t think he had a concussion either.