The Solstice Cup (3 page)

Mackenzie's skin had started to tingle unpleasantly. She stepped back as her sister came up the bank again. “I don't know, Breanne. I have a weird feeling about this. I think you should let it go.”

“What do you mean, let it go?” said Breanne. “No way!”

Mackenzie took another step away from the edge of the streambed. “Please, Breanne. Toss it, and let's get out of here!”

“Not this time!”

Breanne had almost reached the top, but at the last second she slipped and had to catch herself. She swore as the ring fell from her hand and bounced down toward the water.

“Leave it,” Mackenzie pleaded.

Breanne scrambled backward. “Don't be stupid,” she said as she crouched by the edge of the water again. “I let you throw away one ring—I'm not losing this one too.” She let out another curse as the ring slipped from her fingers a second time. This time it bounced into the stream.

Before Mackenzie could do anything to stop her, Breanne had removed her jacket and pushed up the sleeves of her sweater. She leaned forward, and her right arm disappeared past her elbow in the water. “Got it. What the—,” she yelped.

From where Mackenzie stood, it looked as if something was tugging on her sister's arm. As she watched helplessly, Breanne lost her balance and tumbled forward into the water.

“Breanne!” Mackenzie yelled, sliding down the bank.

The stream was deeper and stronger than it appeared from above. The fast-moving water had already carried Breanne to the edge of the tunnel by the time Mackenzie reached the water's edge. Breanne had managed to grab hold of a small bush that grew next to the opening, but the earth that held the bush was crumbling away.

“Hold on, I'm coming!” Mackenzie cried.

She lunged for her sister a second before the bush came free from the bank. She tried to brace herself as she clung to Breanne's arm, but the force of the water was too much. With nothing to anchor her to the shore, Mackenzie was pulled into the water after her sister.

In an instant, she lost all sense of time, all sense of direction. She couldn't breathe. The icy water was everywhere: in her eyes, in her nose, in her lungs. She tried to fight the current, but it was too strong.

Her body grew heavier as the underground river swept her farther and farther from the light. Her mind went as black as the water.

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S
omething hard rapped against Mackenzie's shoulder. “Wake up. Come on, you're a wee bit wet, but you're not drowned.”

Mackenzie's eyes fluttered open. Her brain struggled to make sense of the words she had just heard.

“There, you see? You're not dead yet.”

Two pale gray eyes in an ancient wrinkled face came into focus a few feet above Mackenzie's head. “What happened—where am I?” she said as she tried to sit up.

An arm descended to help pull Mackenzie up from the shallow water that lapped around her body. “Gently now. 'Tisn't an easy passage you've just made.”

Mackenzie staggered to her feet and looked around, trying to get her bearings in the weak light. She was ankle-deep in brackish water at the edge of a small reed-covered island. Bulrushes and more reedy islands radiated out in every direction, until they disappeared in the mist.

Mackenzie's focus returned to the tiny, white-haired woman standing beside her. “Poor, waterlogged
bairn
,” the old woman said. She removed her cloak and reached up to arrange it around Mackenzie's shivering body. “'Twill have to do until we can get you something dry of your own.”

Mackenzie felt more than a little disoriented as she stared back at her rescuer. The old woman was a head shorter than Mackenzie. She was dressed in the most primitive-looking clothes Mackenzie had ever seen outside of a movie or a museum. Her gray tunic was coarsely woven, and the wool cloak she'd spread over Mackenzie's shoulders had been patched so many times that it was almost impossible to see the original fabric. Beneath the water, the woman's feet were bare. In her left hand she gripped a long wooden staff.

“Breanne!” Mackenzie said with a start as her memory returned. “Where's my sister?”

The old woman looked surprised. “There is another one of you?”

“I was trying to pull Breanne out when I fell into the water,” said Mackenzie as she looked around anxiously. “She went under just before I did.”

The old woman grunted. “Saving your kin is what brought you here, is it? We'd best find her then, before she's found by someone else.”

“What do you mean, found by someone else?” Mackenzie asked in alarm. “Where are we?”

“Come,” said the old woman. With a wave of her free hand, she started off around the edge of the island. Mackenzie followed her to a raft of crudely lashed boards that had been hidden behind a clump of rushes a few yards away. “We have the advantage,” the old woman assured Mackenzie as she motioned her onto the raft. “We know your sister's here.”

Mackenzie squatted down near the center of the raft, beside a collection of lidded baskets that smelled strongly of fish. “But where is ‘here'? How far did the water carry us?”

“There are some distances that can't be measured, lass.” The old woman pushed off from the island using the long staff in her hand. “Not in this world.”

“This world?”

“Shhh,” said the old woman. “Time for questions later. Be silent now and listen. If we're still, the marsh will tell us where your sister is.”

Mackenzie listened, but she heard nothing, not even the faintest breeze. The reeds around them remained motionless. Even the raft made no sound as it drifted through the murky water. Then, as her ears grew accustomed to the silence, she heard a muffled splash some distance ahead.

The old woman tilted her head in the direction of the sound and waited, the end of her staff suspended just above the water. When a second faint splash reached Mackenzie's ears, the old woman nodded and began silently poling the raft toward the source of the distant noise.

Mackenzie peered forward anxiously as the old woman steered the raft around one clump of bulrushes after another. The splashing sounds grew louder and more frequent, and then abruptly they stopped altogether.

“They feel us coming,” said the old woman, breaking the silence.

“
Who
feels us coming?” Mackenzie whispered.

“Just the fishies, lass. They're curious creatures. 'Tis the fishies we heard leaping and splashing. They wanted a closer look at the girl lying half in, half above, their world. And there she is,” the old woman said as the raft rounded another tiny island.

“Breanne!” Mackenzie called, rising to her feet in relief.

The raft bobbed across the water toward a still figure lying at the base of a clump of reeds. Mackenzie jumped into the shallow water while the raft was still moving forward. She knelt beside her sister and shook her shoulders. “Wake up, Breanne. Come on, wake up!”

Breanne's body twitched and she mumbled something, but her eyes remained closed.

“Open your eyes,” said Mackenzie. “We survived— we made it out of the river. Come on, Breanne, wake up!”

“There's some that sleep deeper than others after that journey,” said the old woman from behind Mackenzie's shoulder. “Here, crumble a bit of this under her nose.”

Mackenzie accepted a skinny bundle of withered-looking leaves. She passed it under her own nose and grimaced.

“It won't hurt her,” said the old woman. “They're birthing herbs, but they'll work just as well here. We need to bring her all the way through. Her body's here—it's just her mind that's stuck.”

“Stuck where?” Mackenzie asked as she tore off the first leaf and crushed it gingerly under her sister's nose.

“In between,” the old woman said. “There, she's found her way.”

Mackenzie saw Breanne's nostrils flare, and then her eyes flew open. “What?”

“Oh, thank God,” said Mackenzie. “You scared me to death, Breanne!”

“W-what happened?” Breanne asked between chattering teeth as Mackenzie helped her out of the water. “Where are we?”

Mackenzie spread part of the old woman's cloak around her sister's trembling shoulders. “I'm not sure.”

“The ring!” her sister said suddenly, dropping down again to feel around in the water by her feet. “I had it in my hand!”

“You won't find it here, that's for certain,” said the old woman. “The trap's been sprung; its task is done.”

Breanne looked up in surprise. “Who are you?” she demanded.

The old woman cocked her head to the side, like a bird. She made a rapid clicking sound. “That's what they call me here.”

“Come again?” said Breanne.

The old woman grinned. “In the common tongue, Maigret of the Marshes.”

“Common tongue?” Breanne stood up again with some effort. “What's she talking about, Mackenzie? Where the hell did we end up?”

Mackenzie shrugged. “I told you, I don't know. I've been asking, but the answers don't make any sense.”

Breanne turned back to the old woman and spoke slowly, as if she were questioning a young child. “Do you know Joan and Eamon MacHugh? How far are we from their farm?”

Maigret shook her head.

“All right, how about Cushendun? How far are we from Cushendun?”

“Oh, very far, very far,” said the old woman.

“Well, we have to get back somehow,” said Breanne as her speech returned to its normal pace. “Is there a bus we can catch? A water taxi?”

“Oh no, lass, you can't go back,” said Maigret. “The ways are closed for seven days. Longer if you aren't wary.”

Breanne shook her head in exasperation. “We can't stay here for a week.”

“No, you can't stay here,” the old woman agreed. “There's no place to keep hidden out here on the edges. Come. Come,” she said, motioning to the raft. “I'll take you to shelter.”

Breanne raised her hands. “Hold on. I'm not going anywhere until you tell us exactly where we are.”

“Breanne, can I talk to you for a minute?” Mackenzie pulled her sister out of earshot of the old woman.

“This is insane!” Breanne hissed. “We're in the middle of a bog, who knows how many miles away from where we should be, with some whacked old woman who wants to make us her houseguests for a week. It's like something out of some twisted horror movie!”

Mackenzie took a deep breath before whispering, “I know what you're going to say, but I am
not
crazy. Breanne, I don't believe we're in Ireland anymore. At least the Ireland we know. I think when you went after that ring, we were transported somewhere else.”

“Somewhere else?” Breanne's eyebrows disappeared under her bangs. “You can't be serious, Mackenzie. You think we're in Faeryland!”

“I don't know where we are exactly,” Mackenzie said defensively. “But you heard what the old woman— what Maigret—said. The ring was a trap. We were lured here. It all makes sense.”

“What do you mean, we were lured here? We fell into a river and it carried us to this bog! End of story— until Swamp Woman came along.”

“You didn't just fall into the river,” said Mackenzie. “I was watching. You were pulled in.”

“I wasn't pulled in. I slipped!”

“It's not just that,” said Mackenzie. “Maigret said the river was some kind of passage—”

“Mackenzie, look at her. Just
smell
her and you can tell she's nuts. She probably escaped from some institution years ago. That's why she's hiding out in this marsh.”

“But what if she's not crazy? What if she's telling the truth?”

“Did you hit your head?” Breanne demanded.

“No, I didn't hit my head,” Mackenzie said angrily. “Why do I even bother talking to you?”

“Listen,” said Breanne. “Here's what we're going to do. We're going back and we're getting on the raft, but only because we don't know any other way out of this swamp. As soon as we get to dry land, we take off and look for a road. We can hitch our way back.”

“Fine.” Mackenzie crossed her arms. “But in the meantime, let's be nice to Maigret. She's giving us a ride. Besides, we don't know for sure who she is yet.”

“She's a crazy woman, Mackenzie,” Breanne said. “Not a banshee, not a faery, not a shape-shifter with mystical powers. Just a crazy woman.”

Mackenzie followed her sister back to the water's edge. “We'll see,” she said under her breath.

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M
ackenzie huddled closer to Breanne under the borrowed cloak. They were crouched together in the center of Maigret's raft. The old woman had been silently poling them through the marsh for what seemed like hours. It was impossible to tell how much distance they'd covered. In the dim light, every clump of rushes looked the same.

“For all we know, she's just taking us in circles,” Breanne whispered.

“Shhh,” said the old woman. “We're getting close now. Best pull that cloak over your heads and keep still until I tell you it's safe.”

Mackenzie ignored her sister's protests and pulled the cloak over top of them. “Tell me off later,” she whispered as she clamped a hand over her sister's mouth. “But let's just do what she says for now, okay?”

She had to suppress a squeal when Breanne pinched the delicate skin of her forearm. “I'll play along for now,” Breanne whispered as soon as her mouth was free. “But I'm calling the police on this crackpot as soon as I get the chance.”

Time passed even more slowly in the darkness under the heavy cloak. Mackenzie had created a small opening just beneath their faces, but the air was still thick and stale. She was about to shift her legs, when she heard the old woman begin to sing in a foreign language. There was something in Maigret's voice that told Mackenzie the song was meant as a warning to her and her sister. Even Breanne seemed to feel it. Her body grew tense beside Mackenzie, and she had almost stopped breathing.