Wormwood Gate (13 page)

She was quite grateful when the shoes finally stopped, in among a cluster of thatched houses arranged around a market square that did, indeed, look Viking. Much to her surprise, there were people walking around, talking, working, moving from place to place; the rest of the City had felt more or less deserted, and the relief she felt now made her realise that that emptiness had been making her edgy and nervous ever since she had arrived. Though the people walking around looked as much like museum exhibits as people: rosy-cheeked men and women with long, braided hair the colour of wheat-stalks, the men sporting vast moustaches, all of them wearing belted tunics made of handspun wool, the market they were trading in the kind with open barrows of pigs' heads and apples rather than home-baked muffins and hygienically arranged tubs of olives and artichoke hearts.

Julie grabbed the arm of the first friendly-looking person who passed nearby her, a woman carrying a bucket full of some kind of fish. ‘Hey,' she said, ‘do you know Molly Red?'

The woman looked at her with a puzzled expression, said something Swedish-sounding that Julie couldn't understand, and pulled her arm away, sidestepping her neatly and walking on.

Julie sighed and let her head sink. Of course: they didn't speak English. Not in Viking times. The Vikings would speak … she wasn't sure, Old Norse or something, probably, but the Irish …

Her head snapped up, and she turned around, calling out to the woman, ‘
Gabh mo leithscéal, an féidir leat cabhrú liom?
' She needed help, and there was no harm in being polite about it.

The woman turned around, looking even more puzzled than before. ‘
B' fhéidir
,' she said. (Her accent was strange, but Julie had heard worse in the Junior Cert aural exams.) ‘
An bhfuil tú ar strae
?'

That was a tricky one. Was she lost? Yes, of course; and no, not really. ‘
Níl, níl. Tá mé ceart go leor. Ach tá mé ag, ag
–' Damn, now she couldn't remember how to say ‘looking for'. Did it begin with a C? No, an L – ‘
ag lorg bean arbh ainm di Molly Red. An bhfuil aithne agat uirthi?
'

‘
Ó, tá!'
said the woman with a nod. ‘
Fan nóiméad, a chailín
.'

Julie smiled to show she was happy to wait, and the woman bustled away, neglecting her bucket a little in her haste. A fish slipped out of it, and a white cat squirmed out from under a market-trader's barrow and pounced on it, attacking the fish's eyes with such gusto that Julie felt her stomach churning again. And yet, now that she looked around, the market seemed a bit sanitised. The butcher's stall was close enough that she should have been able to smell the meat – there was certainly enough of it – and yet all she could smell was a sweetish scent of hay, wholesome and pleasant. The people too seemed a trifle too photogenic to be real. She couldn't tell whether any of them had black teeth, but none of them looked pox-ridden or malnourished, and they all had well-tended hair and very good skin, which wasn't even normal in the twenty-first century, much less the tenth.

It's like a film set
, she thought.
This isn't the real Viking Dublin. It's the PG version. The theme-park version. I bet somewhere in their houses, all these men have helmets with horns on, even though that's been proved to be a myth. It makes a pretty picture, and that's what people remember. And this place must be all made out of memories
.

‘
A chailín?
'

She spun round, smiling, and followed the fish-woman into a cottage with a low door and no windows. The interior was dim, lit only by a turf fire and a few chinks in the thatched roof. It took Julie's eyes a moment to adjust, and when they did, she wasn't sure she was seeing what she thought she was seeing: a woman sitting by the fire, wrapped up in a deer's hide, who had the exact same face as the queen. Not the same hair – this woman's hair was long, hanging in thick shiny locks down her back and on either side of her face – and her features were softened by an expression much kinder and gentler than the queen had had for the short time Julie had seen her.

Julie cleared her throat. ‘Are you Molly Red?' she said.

The woman frowned, and Julie shivered a little, though the cottage was, if anything, too warm. When she frowned, this woman looked almost exactly like the queen.

‘No,' said the woman, ‘I am not Molly Red, though she's served me in the past and no doubt will do again. I suppose you're a friend of the pigeons? She'll be around soon, don't worry.'

The woman looked away from Julie then, staring into the fire as if it held the secrets to all of life's mysteries. Julie sat down opposite her, cross-legged, and said a little tentatively, ‘If you don't mind my asking, who are you?'

‘Who do I look like?' said the woman, not shifting her gaze from the fire.

‘You look like the queen. But you're not her. She's only got one eye, and she's in the Tower.'

The woman stared at her, her eyes as sharp and steely as the eye of the queen in the Tower. ‘Indeed,' she said.

‘You can't be the Queen-that-was, either, because she's in a cage.'

‘That she is,' said the woman, nodding.

Julie felt her eyes going wide. ‘Then – you're the Queen-that-will-be?'

The woman smiled. ‘You are wise,' she said. ‘And you are searching for Molly Red? Beware: you shouldn't search for her unless you want her to find you.'

‘Oh, I want her to find me! As far as I can tell, she's my best bet to get home. I mean, she's supposed to be someone who can stand against the queen – I mean, the Queen-that-is. The one-eyed queen. I swore I'd leave the City with a better ruler than it had when I arrived, and it seems like Molly Red's the one to do that. So …'

Julie trailed off. The woman had a triumphant glint in her eyes. Julie shivered; now she looked exactly like the one-eyed queen.

‘Marvellous,' said the mysterious queen. ‘You and Molly Red have both done well.'

That was supposed to be praise, Julie knew, so it was strange that it felt more like a threat.

7

Before Aisling had even finished shaking Molly Red's hand, Molly Red was looking around them and gesturing that they should leave the alleyway. Aisling followed her out into the open streets, her heart pounding. ‘You didn't leave, then?' she said. ‘They said you left. I mean, Jo Maxi and his friends. They said you must have left for mortal lands.'

‘Don't believe everything you hear,' said Molly Red, ‘especially in the Realms Between. Even people who don't tell lies can make mistakes, and what you tell them may not be what they hear.'

‘But the horse – was that you?'

‘The white horse with the red mane?' Molly Red tugged at her hair and smiled ironically. ‘Of course it was me. And that means it's my fault you and your friend are here, and I'm sorry for that. I had the Queen-that-will-be on my back and the mad queen's hounds chasing me. Well, since I brought you here, I'll bring you back, or find you a way to go back by yourselves. Though that's easier said than done now that the gates are closed.'

She sniffed the air experimentally and then, without so much as a twitch for a warning, transformed into a white dog with red ears and a red tail. As a dog, she was large and bulky looking, the kind of dog that takes its owner for a walk rather than the other way around. She sniffed the air again, several times, then transformed back. ‘Yes, this is the place,' she said. ‘We need to obscure the scent. Do you have anything strong-smelling?'

‘Give me a minute.' Aisling fumbled in the pockets of her coat. It had a lot of pockets, which was one of the reasons why she loved it, and in those pockets she had tucked away a lot of things that might prove useful: lipbalm; tissues; a multitool that might actually have been illegal, since the longest blade was pretty long (though she figured if she didn't take it out in public she wouldn't get into trouble); a spare pair of headphones that were smaller than her usual pair and not as good; wet wipes; a tiny little pad with a pencil attached and a packet of clove cigarettes she had bought in Paris and brought back to show to Darren.

‘Here,' she said, proffering the packet. ‘These things stink. And they're even worse for you than normal cigarettes. They're a goth thing, you know, a sort of a … Not that I've ever smoked, I just got them out of curiosity, really, after I read they'd been banned in America because supposedly they encourage …'

She trailed off.
Oh, stop babbling
, she thought furiously at herself, watching Molly Red turn the packet over and over in her hand and lift it to her nose to sniff it. When she finally smiled, Aisling felt glorious relief.

‘Perfect,' said Molly Red. She took one cigarette from the packet and held it aloft, staring at it with a frown of concentration. The tip of the cigarette burst into flame, then died down to a steady smoulder. ‘Now, we need to obscure the trail of the gate and lay a false trail, or else the queen can find it and close it for good, and then we'll be in trouble.'

‘You mean the Wormwood Gate?' Aisling said, following her as she walked in the opposite direction from how she and Julie had travelled when they first arrived.

‘That's right,' said Molly Red.

‘Um.' Something was nagging at Aisling, though she couldn't figure out what. ‘Is it … why does the queen want the gates closed?'

‘Defence. Open gates means open travel, which means spies and enemies in the City that she can't control.'

That wasn't it.

‘And why are you against that? I mean, I guess if the Wormwood Gate is closed, me and Julie will be stuck here, but apart from that, what harm will it do to close the Wormwood Gate?'

Molly Red stopped dead in front of Aisling, so that Aisling almost bumped into her. She wheeled around, wafting a cloud of sickly-sweet smoke into Aisling's face. Aisling coughed but stood her ground.

‘I'm just asking,' she said. ‘I'm a newbie; I don't know how this place works.'

Molly Red waved the cigarette in the air a little. ‘This place is in the Realms Between,' she said, as if that were an answer, and when Aisling shrugged in bafflement, went on, ‘which means that it's halfway between dreams and reality, between the kingdoms of Faerie and the lands of mortals. It's neither one thing nor the other, and it won't survive if it's cut off from either the paths that lead to Faerie lands or the gates that lead to mortal lands. It's like … a hammock, hanging between two trees. Cut down either of the ropes holding it up and it won't be anyone's bed any more. Just a sad little scrap of cloth.'

‘I see,' said Aisling, and she thought she did, for once. ‘But why does the queen want to close the Wormwood Gate if that'll kill the City? Doesn't she realise how dangerous that would be?'

Molly Red gave her a look – a long, assessing sort of look. Aisling felt the urge to fidget or strike a pose; she resisted.

‘There are those who would rather die than be conquered,' Molly Red said at last. ‘And then there are those who would rather bleed to death than admit that making a gown out of knives was a foolish plan.'

‘Pride?' said Aisling. ‘That's all?'

‘It's enough,' said Molly Red.

She pivoted again and strode away, and Aisling had let her go a dozen strides, wrapped up in her thoughts, before she called out, ‘Wait! I've remembered something.' Molly Red turned and raised her eyebrows. ‘I have to leave a message for my friend,' said Aisling. ‘I promised I'd leave one in the place where we first came into the City, which is where the Wormwood Gate opened for us.'

‘All right,' said Molly Red, trotting over to join her, ‘but be quick about it.'

Aisling took out her pad and pencil and started scribbling a note.

Dear Julie
,

It turns out the rabbit who rescued me was Molly Red all along! I wish I could say I wasn't surprised, but I'm not that used to this place yet. I keep expecting it to make sense and it never does. It always …

Aisling stopped writing and shook her head. No. Too rambly. She tore out the page and started again.

Dear Julie
,

The rabbit who broke me out of our cell was Molly Red in disguise. Yes, turns out those three guys were misinformed: she's alive and in the City, and trying to thwart the queen. I'm going with her to help muffle the trail of the Wormwood Gate. I don't really understand what's going on, but I figure the enemy of our enemy is our friend, more or less, and the queen is definitely our enemy
.

I hope you're all right. If you're reading this I suppose you must be. I wish you were here. I really liked being with you and I wish …

She stopped. Too mushy. Another page.

Julie
,

The rabbit was Molly Red. She's alive and in the City and I'm helping her, for now, because she's trying to thwart the queen and the queen is obviously evil. If you can smell clove cigarettes, follow that smell; that's where we've been. I'm all right, and I hope you are too. Good luck. See you soon
.

Aisling

She hesitated and looked around. There wasn't really anywhere prominent to put the message. She could stuff it into a crack between two bricks or cobblestones, but Julie probably wouldn't see it unless she searched the whole street, and that would waste a lot of time.

Molly Red was shifting from foot to foot, swinging her arms; it was such an ostentatious display of impatience that Aisling suspected she wasn't really
that
impatient, and so she took her time to think of a way of making the message stand out. Eventually, she took out her multitool, prised out the longest blade, and slid it across the cobblestones in a sweeping capital J, three feet long, followed by a U, an L, an I and an E. She folded the message, emptied the packet of tissues, put the message into the packet, stuffed the packet into a crack between two stones underneath the big JULIE, and carved arrows pointing towards the correct crack.

‘There,' she said to Molly Red, after waiting another few seconds, just to be contrary. ‘Now we can go.'

Molly Red said nothing, only nodded and took off in a slightly different direction than they'd gone before.

They had been walking in total silence (Molly Red taking out a new cigarette each time the old one had nearly burned down to the filter) for what felt like five minutes when Aisling finally said, ‘What are you going to do next? I mean, once we've muffled the trail. What's the next step?'

Molly Red picked up the cigarette and started walking again. ‘I can't tell you that,' she said.

‘Oh,
what
?' said Aisling, but she didn't stop walking, though she wanted to. ‘Why not?'

‘You've heard it said that walls have ears?'

Aisling nodded.

‘Well, in the City of the Three Castles, the sky has ears too.'

She tipped her head back as she spoke, and Aisling followed her eyes to see seagulls wheeling overhead.

‘I see,' she said, looking down unhappily. ‘Then I suppose it's not your fault.'

They walked in silence for a few more steps before Molly Red said quietly, ‘You're not from around here. Can you keep a secret?'

‘Of course,' said Aisling.

Molly Red leaned close so that her lips were barely a centimetre away from Aisling's ear.

‘It
is
my fault,' she whispered. ‘All of this is my fault. That's why I'm trying to put things right.'

She pulled back, and Aisling stared at her. Her expression was bright and unconcerned; they might have been talking about the weather. ‘Well,' said Aisling, ‘I mean. Um. When you say –'

Behind them there was a clatter of hooves, and Aisling spun round, reaching into her pocket for the multitool. There was a huge chestnut mare with a shaggy mane and a wild look in her eyes barrelling towards them, and her rider seemed to be having trouble controlling her.

Aisling shifted the multitool to her left hand and reached forward with her right, walking slowly towards the horse.

‘Shh, now,' she said, and made a clicking noise with her tongue. ‘Easy. Easy.'

The horse reared up on her hind legs with a frightened-sounding whinny, but Aisling stood her ground, still clicking. ‘Easy, easy. It's all right, girl. Nothing to fear here. We're all friends now, hm?'

The horse turned around in a circle once, twice, three times, and shoved her head so close to Aisling's that Aisling could smell her breath. Then, finally, the horse shook her mane and seemed to calm down. Aisling patted the horse's nose with a cautious hand. ‘There, now,' she murmured, ‘nothing to worry about, see?'

‘You have a way with horses,' said the rider. Aisling had only registered at first that he was a tall man with long hair in a ponytail. Now that the horse was standing more or less still and she could get a better look, she could see that he had a beard and was wearing a fine white shirt with puffy sleeves and a waistcoat made of leather with an intricate lace-like pattern carved into it. No helmet (not that she would have expected a rider in this bizarre place to understand basic safety protocols), and the riding breeches and boots he wore looked easily two hundred years out of fashion.

He spoke with an odd accent too: sort of English sounding, but not quite. ‘I ride every weekend,' Aisling said, stroking the mare's head from between her ears to the tip of her nose. ‘If you'll forgive my bluntness, who might you be? There aren't many people out and about in the City, between one thing and another.'

The man looked at her, looked at Molly Red, then looked into the middle distance as if he were making some kind of calculation, and finally dismounted – rather elegantly, considering how huge his horse was. He handed the reins to Aisling and bowed to her and Molly Red.

‘I am Morgan de Meath,' he said, ‘Count Palatine of the Realms Between. I offer you my true name in token of the power bestowed upon me by the kings and queens of the Seven Free Kingdoms of the Fae. I care for the Realms on their behalf.'

Molly Red gave a loud and obviously fake cough. ‘And what might you be doing with yourself in this city?' she said.

‘I am on a mission from her majesty the Queen of Crows,' he said. ‘Please, I cannot offer you anything in exchange for your assistance, apart from my gratitude, but may I ask if either of you is known as Molly Red?'

Now it was Aisling's turn to cover up laughter with a fake cough. She looked at Molly Red, eyebrows raised, trying to ask without using words whether she could tell him that he'd found the person he was looking for; that, yes, as it turned out, the one called ‘Molly Red' was, in fact, the one with the bright scarlet hair, not the brunette in the leather coat.

Molly Red didn't seem to pick up her meaning. She grabbed the reins from Aisling's hand and yanked them, which the mare didn't like at all; she let out an indignant neigh and jerked her head back.

‘Don't say names so freely, your own or anyone else's!' she said. ‘And don't expect to find any help here. This is not a city of friends and allies – not any more; not since that one-eyed lunatic became queen.'

‘I followed the scent of cloves, as it was written in the letter,' said the count, not seeming to notice his horse's distress. ‘Was that a lying letter, then?'

‘That letter wasn't meant for you!' said Aisling. ‘Did you at least leave it behind for Julie?'

Abashed, the count shook his head. ‘I was sent on a mission of utmost urgency,' he said apologetically. ‘I have been here for many an hour, and I found no one to help me and no clue as to where I might find Molly Red, until I found that letter. I could wish I had not read it, were it not my only way of fulfilling my orders from the Queen of Crows.' He sighed and absent-mindedly reached out a hand to pat his horse's flank. The horse seemed to find his touch soothing, for she quieted down immediately. ‘She delights in giving me orders I cannot obey. I thought – I hoped I could at least find Molly Red and offer her the assistance the Queen of Crows wants me to give.'