The Summer King (28 page)

When he offered the jug to Laurel she declined, but she was less angry now. Though she hated to admit it, she was beginning to see his side of the story.

“But how could you expect me to carry out the mission with the wrong information?”

“All the better,” he said. “It made you an innocent. Humans can boldly go where fairies can’t, and innocent humans can go even further. Doors unlock. Hearts open. And those who have stayed silent may find their tongue.”

“Laheen,” she murmured.

She saw him start.

“Ah,” he said, and he sounded pleased. “I was thinkin’ of the
boctogaí
meself, but that’s even better. They say he has not come out of his eyrie since the day she died. We dared not hope. Has he told ye where the king is, then?”

“Yes.”

The cluricaun waited for her to say more, but she didn’t.

They had left Keel behind and were on the straight and narrow road that led to Slievemore. Though they appeared to be sauntering along, the donkey was covering the distance with incredible speed.

Laurel tried to look nonchalant as they approached the Great Mountain. The cluricaun was watching her closely out of the corner of his eye.

“The car’s up here, is it?” he said, slyly. “And what were ye doin’ at the Deserted Village, I’m wondrin’?”

“Picking mushrooms,” she snapped.

“Now,
girseach
, we’ve got to pull and pull together. Amn’t I here to help and not to hinder ye?”

Laurel frowned. Did she trust the cluricaun? Not for a minute. There were only two people she was prepared to put her faith in—herself and Grace O’Malley. Between them they would get the job done.

“I don’t need your help,” she said. “I know what I’m doing.”

The cluricaun was so surprised he nearly fell off the cart. He took another slug from the jug, a rather long guzzle, till his face grew red as a beetroot.

“I’ll ask ye only one thing,” he said, when he finally put the jug down. “Do ye mean to do battle?”

She didn’t want to say, but felt somehow she should.

“Yes,” she said quietly.

His red face darkened.

“Then ye’ve agreed to the extinction of the Fir-Fia-Caw?”

“What?”

Her stomach churned.

“Ye know the truth of it. They’ll fight to the bitter end and won’t yield up the king till every last one of them is dead.”

His words stabbed at her heart. The one great flaw in her plan. She would have to kill an enemy who were not evil, who were simply doing their duty, and for the right reasons at that. She didn’t reply to his charge. How could she?

“Well if it has to be, it has to be,” the little man said with a fatalistic nod. He reached again for the jug. “The end justifies the means, I suppose.”

“It does not!” she retorted miserably. “It cannot! But what choice do I have?”

“Ye can let me help.”

By the time they drew up at the Deserted Village, Laurel had let the cluricaun into her confidence and changed her plans to include him. She felt that trusting him was the lesser of two evils.

There was a moment before she got into her car, when she wavered. Her glance settled on Ian’s motorcycle. Tears pricked her eyes. She looked upward to the dark summit of Slievemore. Was he imprisoned there? Was she wrong to leave him? Then she forced herself into the Triumph and drove off.

The sun had already set when she arrived at the cottage. The house was dark and cold. The stove had gone out. She didn’t try to light it. There were groceries on the kitchen counter, things Ian had bought. She put them away. She wouldn’t eat that night. The place was dreary without him. Her thoughts began to circle again. Was he still alive? Shouldn’t she go back and find him? Was she doing the right thing?

She grabbed her cell phone and ran outside. The reception was bad, but she persisted. The moment her father came on the line, she gulped back her tears. Assured him she was fine. “I just wanted to hear your voice,” she said. Then her mother was there. It was the first time since Honor’s death that she had reached out to them.

“I love you,” she said softly. “I love you.”

“We love you,” they kept saying back.

Then she phoned her grandparents.

“Thank God, pet. Your Granda and I … every minute … all right? … home soon?”

Nannaflor’s voice was as good as a hug.

Then Granda came on the line. His anxiety was palpable.

“Any trouble there? You’re not in danger, are you?”

“Of course not,” she said, keeping her voice neutral. “How could I be? Everything’s fine.”

Back inside the house, she didn’t intend to go through his things but they were strewn over the couch. A leather bag contained his shaving gear. She inhaled the familiar scent. There were several shirts and T-shirts. She folded them neatly. Then she picked up his books one by one.
The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke
. Emily Brontë’s
Wuthering Heights
. An odd blue-covered volume with an even odder title.
The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light.
She shook her head. He was such a strange boy, so different from any she had ever met.

She got a jolt when she found it, the strip of photographs. They were from the previous year, in Dublin. The two them horsing around in a photo booth. As she looked at the pictures, she saw it so clearly. The first flush. How happy they were, laughing, sticking out their tongues, giving each other rabbit’s ears. There was even one of them kissing.

In her bedroom, Laurel undressed and crawled under the quilt. She slipped the photo strip under her pillow, beside the picture of Honor. She felt as if she were drowning, falling through the darkness of a bottomless sea. Tomorrow was the last day. Her one and only chance to save Honor, Ian, and the land of Faerie. She folded her arms across her chest, holding herself tightly, and she fell asleep whispering.

I believe.

he next morning, Laurel woke with an overwhelming sense that something wonderful had happened. Birds were singing outside her window. She felt like singing herself. The air in her room seemed crisp and magical. Like a child waking to Christmas Day, she knew in her heart the world had changed.

She threw on her clothes and ran out of the cottage. There it was. Out on the water, beyond Keel Strand, like a shining creature that had surfaced in the night. The enchanted isle of
Hy Brasil.

Though it seemed faraway, like a cloudbank on the ocean, all its features were visible. White cliffs rose above a silver strand. Hills and valleys were cloaked with green woods. Bright rivers splashed into fountains and waterfalls. Above elegant dwellings rose a palace of amethyst, its spires jutting upward like living crystals. And rising again, above the palace, the crown of the island. The radiant peak of Purple Mountain.

The beauty of Hy Brasil was astonishing to see, yet Laurel’s view was shadowed. It was hard to believe such a glorious place belonged to someone like the Summer King. A thought whispered through her mind, though she couldn’t remember where it came from:
a bright thing can nurse a dark heart, even as light may lie hidden inside a dark creature.

Too nervous and excited to eat, she put a few things together before setting out. She pulled on the sweater that Ian bought her, as a kind of armor, then stuffed what charms she could in the pockets of her anorak, mainly white stones and the last of the salt. She had lost her knapsack and everything in it in the bog pool on Slievemore, but she still had the golden feather. She borrowed a brass compass and an old-fashioned flashlight from the dresser drawer. She was traveling light. Courage was the best shield for what lay ahead. Her time had come.
For Honor. For Ian. For Faerie.

Driving down the road to Keel, her anxiety increased when she saw the flocks of birds everywhere. Many were crowded onto telephone wires, walls, and the roofs of houses. Many more crossed the sky in squadrons. There were those she could name such as swans, mallards, hawks, crows, swifts, swallows, seagulls, ravens—a huge number of ravens—and others she couldn’t. It was as if all the birds of Ireland were descending on Achill. The more she saw, the more worried she grew. She wanted to believe they had come with Hy Brasil, but she knew that couldn’t be. No bird would sing in the realm of the king who killed their queen. They were obviously there for a more ominous reason: to swell the ranks of the Fir-Fia-Caw. Clan Egli was preparing for battle. She stopped at the shop in Keel to buy more salt. In the checkout line, she was surprised to hear an old man and a little girl chatting about the island.

“It’s so pretty, Granddad. I wish we could go there for a visit! “

“The time will come when we will, my pet. Did ye see the wee house up on the hill to the right? The one with daisies growing in the thatch and a
súgán
chair outside the door?”

The child nodded eagerly. She was five or six years old, and clasped her grandfather’s hand as she gazed up at him.

“Now listen to me,
a leanbh
. There’ll come a day when I am gone and they’ll tell ye I won’t be comin’ back. Well, that’s where I’ll be. Ye just look over when the island comes and I’ll wave to ye. Have ye got that now?”

“Yes, Granddad.”

The others in the queue laughed. The woman at the cash register chided him gently.

“You and your stories, Michael Keane. Filling the child’s head with fancies.”

The little girl looked surprised, then puzzled.

“Can’t they see?” she asked her grandfather.

“Not a bit of it,” he said, with a sigh. “They’ve gone all mod’rn.”

When Laurel left the shop, she almost bumped into a blind woman who stood stock-still on the sidewalk, gripping her cane.

Aware of Laurel, the woman spoke aloud. Her voice trembled.

“It’s there, isn’t it? The blessed isle. ’Tis the seventh year. I can’t see her, but I can smell her. Sweet wood-smoke and the perfume of flowers beyond compare.”

“Yes,” Laurel said softly. “It’s there.”

Across the road, a silver Mercedes pulled up and a businessman jumped out of his car. He had binoculars in his hand and he trained them over the water. Now he let out a whoop and started waving at the island.

Nearby, a housewife came out to her yard to hang up the washing. She looked tired and worn out. When she shaded her eyes to look out at sea, her face lit up. Then she resumed her work, humming an old tune.

I have been to Hy Brasil,
And the Land of Youth have seen,
Much laughter have I heard there,
And birds among the green.

Laurel drove the Triumph to Kildavnet. There were more birds on the pier, strutting along the stone walls and circling the fishing boats. Tension crackled in the air, like that before a thunderstorm. She touched the feather in her pocket.

With relief, she spotted
The Lady of Doona
making its way into harbor. When the boat docked, Gracie jumped ashore and greeted her with a clap on the back. Exuding health and high spirits, the skipper wore faded jeans and an old shirt rolled up at the sleeves. A baseball cap was clamped down on her curls.

“I’ve earned enough this morning to take the week off!” she declared, looking pleased with herself. “Am I right in thinkin’ you need me today?”

“I do,” said Laurel, bemused.

It was hard to know whom she was talking to, the present-day skipper or the infamous sea queen.

“Where’s the boyfriend?” asked Gracie, looking over at the car.

“He’s … I … I think he’s inside Slievemore.”

Her distress was evident in her voice.

“Fret not, my foreign girleen,” said Grace, with a glint in her eye. “We’ll do this together, you and I.”

The indomitable will of the sea queen rang in her voice. For the first time that day, Laurel believed the plan might work.

“I want you to take the boat to the cove below Dirk,” she explained to Grace. “I’ll meet you there with Ian and another passenger. I don’t know how long it will take, but you’ve got to get us before sunset to …” she hesitated a moment, “the isle of Hy Brasil.”

Gracie didn’t even blink.

“Fair enough. But let me add, my friend, if you don’t arrive well before twilight, I’ll come looking for you, under hill and under mountain.”