The Feral Child Read online

  “We all agreed to it, Danny,” said Roisin. “We couldn’t just keep wandering around in here. We had to do something.”

  George lay down, put his head on his paws, and sighed.

  “Anyway, you didn’t sign up for anything,” said Maddy. “You’re here because you just had to follow us and make fun of us. It serves you right.”

  Danny stepped closer to her and glared at her, nose to nose. “At least I’ve been watching what’s been going on around us since we started walking again,” he hissed through clenched teeth.

  Maddy narrowed her eyes at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “This.” Suddenly, Danny bounded to one side and ran into the undergrowth after a fleeing white shadow that was running away from the path from tree to tree. There was scuffling, and Danny came back, struggling with a creature that kicked and clawed. Panting, he threw it down at Maddy’s feet. “That little sneak has been following us for ages,” he panted.

  “What are you doing?” Maddy challenged him, as she bent to help the creature up. “You picked on a girl half your size!”

  A pale dryad got slowly to her feet, her whole body trembling. Standing straight, she was still a head smaller than Maddy and very slight. Her eyes were jet black in her heart-shaped face, and long, thick silver hair reached to her heels. Her silver skin was covered in fine traces of emerald-green moss, and her lips and nose were smooth and polished. The hands that reached up to brush the dirt from her hair were long and delicate, as were her feet. She was very beautiful and very, very naked. Maddy hoped her thick hair didn’t move too easily.

  Roisin rushed over to her. “I am so sorry. Are you hurt?”

  The dryad gave her a sleepy smile. “No.”

  George was sniffing at her, and Maddy pushed him away with her foot in case he decided she was more tree than girl and cocked his leg.

  “What are you apologizing for, dimwit?” said Danny. “She was following us—she could be Liadan, for all you know.”

  The dryad broke into tinkling laughter while the girls rolled their eyes. “Didn’t you listen to what they were saying back there?” said Roisin. “Liadan is an elf, and this girl is obviously a dryad . . . dimwit.”

  “That still doesn’t explain why she was following us, and you had better find out before you decide to be bestest friends,” said Danny. “She could be working for Fachtna.”

  “Fachtna no friend of mine,” said the dryad, wrinkling her little nose. “But I help you till the trees are no more, bring you to the White Tower. And you make Winter go away.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Before she would answer any questions, the dryad urged them to leave the path. “Stay hidden,” she urged, with a finger to her lips. “Like little, little mice in the forest. No one must see.”

  She led them to a hollow beneath the roots of an ancient oak. “But first, I need heat. Snow everywhere; my tree is tired,” she said. “I get too cold, I fall asleep, and you will be all alone.”

  Maddy and Roisin curled around the dryad, who sighed and snuffled with pleasure as their body heat warmed her, sending a faint green blush through her skin. Danny refused to snuggle down with them, and he squatted between the iron-hard roots that arched above his head. “No offense, but I don’t want any body contact with my sister and my cousin. That’s just too gross.”

  “Sorry Danny got a bit rough with you, but why are you helping us?” Maddy said to the dryad.

  The silvery faerie hid her face in her hair. “It means talking about bad things,” she said. “Bad, bad things. I doesn’t like it.”

  “I’m sorry, but we don’t know what’s happening here—you have to tell us,” said Maddy.

  The creature sighed and her breath sounded like leaves rustling in the wind. She was so still and quiet Maddy wondered if she had gone to sleep. She was about to lift the thick locks of hair that covered the dryad’s face to see if she was awake when the faerie started speaking in a small voice.

  “Cernunnos and the Morrighan were the first of the Tuatha de Dannan to come to Ireland,” she began. “He took the forests and the mountains to rule; she took the skies and the water. Their tribe followed them, and the Tuatha lived in your world when it was young, and mortals and faerie people worshipped them. They were so powerful, so strong. They could make the rain fall, the sun shine, the winds howl. But the Tuatha do not have many children, while men do. The tribes of men grew bigger and bigger, and when the cross came and other men told them it was wrong to worship the Tuatha, they turned against them and drove the Tuatha into the mounds and under the earth. They were gods no more to mortals. The Tuatha wept to be shut away from the mortal world, so the Morrighan slept and created a world of dreams for them, safe from the touch of mortals, where they would be forever young.” The dryad sobbed and fell silent.

  “Tír na nÓg,” breathed Roisin. “It means ‘Land of Eternal Youth.’”

  Maddy waited a little while as the dryad shook with misery. “What happened then?” she prompted.

  The little dryad sniffed and smiled sadly. “Without humans to rule, the Tuatha fought. Each thought they should rule. The other faerie peoples tried to live on in your world, hidden from mortal sight, but with the coming of the cross, the brownies, the trolls, the glaistigs, and all their kind fled to the Land of Eternal Youth and pledged allegiance again to the Tuatha de Dannan. Cernunnos and the Morrighan wanted peace so they made eight of their tribe the Kings and Queens of Summer, Autumn, Spring, and Winter and gave them equal power.”

  “Why do it by seasons?” asked Danny.

  “Because every season must come and go, so every court gets a turn at ruling, and none can be stronger than the other,” said Roisin. “Checkmate.”

  “Did it work?” asked Maddy.

  The little dryad shook her head. “No. They fought and fought but could not win out against each other. But something happened to the Winter monarchs, and the Summer Court gained the upper hand,” she said. “The Land was parched, and the forest burned. Chaos reigned, and the Morrighan struggled to bring the courts to peace.”

  The trees around them shuddered and snatched their branches a little higher, as if they could still remember the pain of the flames licking at their trunks.

  “How does Liadan fit in? Is she a Tuatha de Dannan?” asked Maddy.

  The dryad shook her head. “She is an elf, one of the faerie people from the cold northern countries. Liadan came to these shores with her kin on dragon-headed ships. They hunted and slashed and burned until the forest was nearly gone. The Morrighan and Cernunnos thought the elves were the answer. Liadan and her kind are strong—strong enough to take on the mantle of a Tuatha, or so the Morrighan thought. She offered the Winter Queen’s crown to Liadan, so that Winter would once again balance the power of the Summer Court, and Cernunnos offered himself as a husband, to bind Liadan to the forest and stop her hurting us. With a non-Tuatha reigning over Winter, the courts could not join against the Morrighan and bend her to their will. Liadan agreed. She was greedy for a crown, but she didn’t know what it would do to her.”

  “What did it do?” asked Roisin.

  “Each crown was forged with all the power of the season it rules. When Liadan took the Winter Queen’s crown, she had to take Winter’s cold as well,” said the dryad. She shook her head in despair. “Liadan is an old and powerful elf, but the Winter crown was meant to be worn by a Tuatha. The Morrighan was wrong—Liadan did not have the strength to bear Winter. The crown’s cold burns through her veins, twists her body, makes every step she takes, every tear of ice she cries, agony. The Morrighan’s gift has made Liadan’s mind as bent as her body. She has gathered dark faeries around her, and now the Winter Court is a bad place. With the Tuatha Winter Queen gone, her brethren have fled to other courts. No Tuatha will pay allegiance to Winter now; none of them will bend the knee to a crippled, foreign queen.”

  “Why don’t the other courts get rid of her, if she’s so bad?” asked Danny.

  T
he dryad smiled. “The Tuatha hoard their power, and they cannot bear to give it away, even to their own people. But someone must rule Winter. It’s easier to let Liadan wear the crown for now than for the Tuatha to agree on who should take it from her.”

  “Hobbs said she has had humans in her court?” asked Maddy.

  “Captives, all children,” said the dryad.

  Maddy felt her throat close with fear. “What does she do with them?”

  “I don’t know . . .”

  Maddy looked up at the forest canopy and blinked away the tears that gathered at the corners of her eyes. So this was the faerie who had Stephen. He’ll be so scared, she thought.

  “What does this have to do with Stephen?” asked Roisin.

  “Since she took the little one, Liadan has been stronger,” said the dryad. “Winter has come early, and the cold bites and gnaws us. The balance is gone, and the other courts will go to war to bring it back—or to gain power themselves. The old trees say it was like this last time the Tuatha fought—the hush before the storm. Everyone is scared; everyone hiding.”

  The dryad sat up and curled her tiny hands into fists, her little face flushing a deeper green with anger. “When the Tuatha de Dannan go to war, us all suffer. Us dryads are our tree’s spirit made flesh,” she said. “My tree is sick. Winter has been too long. Liadan will make the other courts angry if she does not give way, and who knows what war will bring? I don’t want to die.” She looked at Maddy. “The child makes Liadan strong. You take him, Winter goes away, war goes away.”

  “How can he do that?” asked Maddy. “He’s still a baby.”

  “Don’t know,” said the dryad, shaking her head. “But it must be him—we felt the change when he came.”

  “Are we not forgetting one small but very important detail here?” said Danny. “The deal is we get to the tower without any help. If you help us, the contract is broken.”

  “Won’t get there without me,” insisted the dryad.

  “But the contract says that no faerie can harm or help us,” said Roisin.

  “No faerie, no,” chuckled the dryad. “But there is more than faeries in the forest. There are lots of ways for the unwary to come to harm and not by a faerie’s hand.”

  So there’s the catch, Maddy thought.

  “Fachtna said she would come after us with her scucca hounds,” said Danny. “What does that mean?”

  “‘Scucca’ means ‘demon’ in the old tongue,” said the dryad. She went pale again and looked at Maddy. “You made a bad, bad bargain. The scucca don’t stop, don’t rest. The fir dorocha, the dark men, faeries that breed fear and hatred, drive them on, and terror travels before them.”

  Maddy looked at Danny and Roisin and could see the fear in their eyes.

  “Fachtna called this place a ‘paradise,’” said Roisin sadly. “It doesn’t sound much like paradise to me.”

  “It can be,” said the dryad softly.

  “What’s your name?” said Maddy.

  The dryad smiled. “Fionnghuala. It means ‘White Shoulders.’ Call me Fionn.”

  It was hard keeping up with Fionn. She wanted them to get to the tower as fast as possible, and they all stumbled after her as she glided from tree to tree as quick as a bird. As Maddy tripped over roots and twisted her ankle on rocks, she looked longingly at the smooth path to her left. But shortly after they started, they had to take cover as seven elves went running by. Fionn curled up into a tight little ball until they were gone and had to be coaxed into unbending long after they had disappeared from sight. It took even longer for the little dryad to stop shaking with fear.

  Maddy felt as if they had been walking for hours. Her watch had stopped working, her feet were numb in her sneakers, and she had to suck her fingers to warm them up. Every now and then they stopped and huddled close to Fionn to warm her and keep her moving when she became sluggish and sleepy. Danny was horrified at being asked to press close to a naked female, but he compromised by standing back to back with Fionn, while Maddy and Roisin opened their jackets and held her close. Fionn refused to let them try and light a fire with Danny’s lighter—the forest would be angry, she warned, even if they only burned dead wood and leaf litter.

  Maddy fervently wished she had brought something more substantial than jam sandwiches. She had shared them with Danny and Roisin, and now all they had left were biscuits.

  Now and then, Fionn would ask them to wait while she went on ahead. They heard the great trees groaning and saw them thrashing their branches, before all was still and Fionn came back to lead them on again.

  “Why do the trees behave like that?” asked Roisin as they stopped for what must have been the sixth time to watch the old trees groan and bend their creaking trunks slowly as Fionn talked to them.

  “When tree and dryad become very old, they grows into each other,” said Fionn. “The ancient trees in this forest can see and hear you. The young trees need their dryad to do that. But you can’t talk to the old ones—they would lead you in circles until you died of hunger and thirst. The old ones don’t like you, but they listens to me.”

  They looked nervously at the trees around them and shuffled closer to Fionn.

  “I don’t understand why dryads get such a hard time here,” said Danny. “You all seem pretty scary to me.”

  Fionn scowled. “Because we’re not borned from faeries—we grow with our elements, and have no magic—other faeries thinks they are better than us. And the Tuatha de Dannan don’t even notice us.”

  Maddy looked at the brooding forest that surrounded them. That could be a mistake, she thought.

  But it wasn’t all fear and danger. As they scrambled down a rocky incline and steeled themselves to splash through an icy stream tumbling over slippery rocks, Fionn hustled them behind a tree and told them to hush.

  “Not a word!” she hissed. “Remember, like little mice.”

  Maddy scooped George up and felt her stomach clench in dread as she wondered if the wolves had finally caught up with them. She was squeezed between Roisin and Danny, and she could feel the same tension in their bodies. Then she heard, or rather felt, a sound that throbbed through her whole body. Noise like whale music drifted upstream, and the birds in the forest hushed. Even the trees leaned forward to catch the notes, and suddenly there appeared two unicorns, cantering through the stream, water spraying up from their legs and bursting into iridescent light as it caught the sun. The mare paused to drink, and the stallion stood over her, gazing into the forest. She lifted her dripping muzzle and lipped at his neck, while he tossed his head and entwined his neck with hers, caressing her and calling out his throbbing song. The air around them shimmered, and the outline of their white bodies burned blue. Rearing up, the mare bounded away, and the stallion chased after her until they were lost from sight.

  The forest kept its hush for a moment after the pair were gone, the haunting melody of their cries trailing off into the distance. Then the birds burst into song, their breasts swelling as they fought to sing louder, more joyously than their neighbors. Maddy found her cheeks were wet with tears. George wriggled happily in her arms and licked the tears away.

  “Unicorns,” breathed Roisin, her eyes shining feverishly. “They do exist!”

  Fionn was grinning from ear to ear and looked more awake than they had seen her yet. “They are old magic, created from the bones of the earth,” she said.

  “We tell stories about them at home, but I never thought they existed,” said Roisin.

  “You chooses not to believe in them, and so you don’t see them,” said Fionn, shrugging.

  “It’s that simple?” said Danny.

  Fionn looked back at him and grinned. “Yes, that simple.”

  “How do we see them now?” asked Maddy.

  “You believe in faeries now?” said Fionn.

  “Good point,” said Maddy.

  Just at that moment Danny’s feet slipped on the moss-covered roots of a massive oak, and he tumbled face first into
a puddle, covering himself in mud and black-brown leaf mulch. They all stared at him as he blinked in surprise, and before Maddy knew it, she and Roisin were bent double with laughter. George tried to lick Danny’s face clean, his tail wagging at a million miles an hour, while Fionn rushed to help him up.

  Furious, Danny pushed her helping hand away. “Why the hell are we doing this anyway?” he snarled.

  “What?” said Roisin.

  “Why is it up to us to run to Stephen’s rescue?” he demanded.

  “You’re not suggesting we just leave him?” snapped Maddy, her cheeks flushing red with anger.

  “No, what I’m saying is, there are plenty of other people better able to rescue him than us. Like Cernunnos and the Morrighan. Where they hell are they?” He made a show of thinking for a second. “Oh, wait, we know where Cernunnos is—he’s in Blarney, on holiday.”

  “What are you on about?” asked Maddy.

  “Think about it. Seamus Hegarty happens to amble along just after you put blood on the mound, and before we all blacked out, I could have sworn he was wearing a massive pair of antlers. Then a stag lets us in here—anyone else joining the dots?”

  “Seamus Hegarty is Cernunnos?!” said Roisin. “If that’s true, why is he in our world, and why has he sent us to do his dirty work?”

  “In our world he is a white stag in the Winter, returning to animal form so he can be closer to the old magic while it sleeps with the earth. It is an ancient rite, but it makes him less powerful,” said Fionn. “The longer Winter lasts, the stronger Liadan grows and the weaker Cernunnos becomes. I don’t know why he is in your world too.”

  “Well, I say we head back to Blarney and get Seamus, Cernunnos, whatever it is he calls himself, to sort this out,” said Danny.

  “But I just told you, in our world he is a stag for the Winter,” said Fionn. “He can’t help us.”

  “Fine,” said Danny, through gritted teeth. “Then we go to plan B and get the Morrighan to help.”