The Unicorn Hunter Read online

  ‘I still don’t get it,’ said Maddy.

  The banshee sighed. ‘Have you ever been to a funeral when no one turns up to mourn the departed?’ she asked.

  ‘I really don’t hang out at that many funerals,’ said Maddy.

  ‘Trust me, it’s grim,’ said the banshee.

  ‘So are you my family’s banshee?’ Maddy asked. The little faerie nodded while inspecting the creases of the crisp packet for stray crumbs. ‘Did you mourn for my mother?’ Maddy asked quietly.

  The banshee went still and threw a quick look at Maddy, her eyes filling with tears. She nodded, crumpling the crisp packet in her hand.

  ‘What …?’ Maddy swallowed the hard lump in her throat. ‘Was she …?’

  ‘She was still breathing when I got to the car, but her eyes were far away,’ said the banshee softly. ‘Your father died instantly, but I was there for her. She wasn’t alone at the end.’

  Maddy bent forward, hot tears pouring silently down her face as she cupped her eyes with her palms. ‘I held her hand,’ continued the banshee. ‘I stroked it and I crooned to her until the light died in her eyes. She wasn’t frightened, a chuisle, my darling, not one little bit. She didn’t see this world at all at the end, she didn’t know what had happened. She was looking at something I couldn’t see, and then she died as easily as sleeping. It was a good death.’

  The banshee bent down and squeezed Maddy’s arm. ‘Then I keened for her,’ she said fiercely. ‘The whole country heard me mourn your mother.’

  Maddy looked up at her and nodded, wiping tears and snot away with the back of her hand.

  ‘I don’t want to be the Hound,’ she whispered.

  ‘And yet you are,’ said the banshee kindly, patting Maddy’s hand. ‘Your blood sings with the joy of being the Hound, it calls out to every faerie close by. Tír na nÓg trembles from its song!’

  ‘I don’t believe in fate or destiny,’ said Maddy.

  ‘Child, you can refuse to believe in a runaway horse, but it will still knock you down and trample you if you stand in its way,’ said the faerie.

  ‘So you’re saying I have to go and find this unicorn hunter?’

  ‘How can you not? We stand on the brink of war and famine. Countless lives will be lost and still more souls will live and suffer at the end of days. All you and I love, in this world and in among faerie kind, will be no more. You could stand aside, let this be another’s task –’ the banshee cocked her head and smiled – ‘but I don’t think it’s in you to do that. If it was, you could never be the Hound.’

  ‘Meabh said the Hound is nothing more than an empty title, that it doesn’t mean anything,’ said Maddy.

  The little banshee wrinkled her nose with contempt, which did nothing to improve her looks. ‘She would, the devious auld witch!’

  ‘Is she right?’

  ‘She is and she isn’t,’ said the banshee. ‘It’s true it’s just a title. But it is bestowed only on the Sighted that are the strongest and the bravest, and it changes them.’

  ‘How can it do that?’ asked Maddy.

  ‘Kings are flesh and blood and no different than the men they rule,’ said the banshee. ‘But call a man a king and he walks taller, feels stronger, and he no longer tries to act like a man; he strives to behave like a king. It’s the same when you call one of the Sighted a Hound. They grow into the title and they are stronger for it – they become real heroes. That’s what Meabh fears, girl, that you will get stronger and braver every day and block the Tuatha – block her – at every turn, just like Cú Chulainn. Nor does she want the rest of the Sighted to start feeling brave because they have a Hound again. There is power in words, and don’t you forget it.’

  ‘What about “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me?”’ asked Maddy.

  ‘Did you ever wonder why the old magic took the form of a pair of unicorns in the first place?’ asked the banshee.

  ‘No, why?’

  ‘Earth magic is everywhere, but we can only see small bits at a time. We could not and cannot grasp how big nature is, so we condensed it down to a single pair of mythical creatures, whose image spread to every country in the world. Because human and faerie believed in them so much, the word was made flesh. So never mock the power of words.’

  ‘If the unicorns are earth and nature itself, why did the magic take a form that could be attacked, that could sicken and die?’ asked Maddy.

  The banshee shrugged. ‘Perhaps because nature itself, for all its magic, can sicken and die. Nothing can last forever.’

  Maddy sighed. ‘Why can’t we just wake the Morrighan and let her sort all this out?’

  The banshee frowned. ‘Let the Morrighan dream, girl. We’re all safer for it. She has powerful magic and would be a dangerous weapon to wield. Let her sleep until you have no choice but to wake her.’

  Maddy sighed and rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand. ‘What’s your name?’ she asked the banshee.

  ‘Una,’ the little faerie woman replied.

  ‘OK, Una, I need you to do me a favour – there’s another packet of crisps in it for you,’ said Maddy. ‘I want you to find Seamus, Cernunnos, whatever he’s manifesting himself as at the moment, and tell him, he wins. I’ll find this unicorn hunter for him and I’ll deliver it up to him and the four courts for judgement. But I want the mound open when I get there. I’m walking straight into Tír na nÓg, no messing about.’

  Una cocked her head and smiled. ‘And who will I say the message is from?’ she asked.

  ‘The Hound,’ said Maddy grimly, standing up and casting a shadow over the banshee. ‘You can tell him it’s from the Hound.’

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Maddy crept back through the house to her room to change into street clothes. As she tiptoed past Granda she paused to look into his face. It was slack and soft from sleep and age and she felt a dull hurt in the pit of her stomach as she looked at him.

  Why did you wait? she thought. Why didn’t you surround me with iron as soon as you knew?

  But there was no one to blame for this mess. As much as she denied it, she was beginning to believe in fate. Too many coincidences had brought her to this point.

  She crept to the kitchen and stuffed food for herself into a rucksack. She had no idea if it was true that eating faerie food trapped you in Tír na nÓg forever, but she wasn’t taking any chances. She was planning on getting to the end of the search alive and in one piece.

  ‘You’re going then?’ said a soft voice behind her. She whirled around to see Granda standing in the kitchen doorway, his face sagging with sadness.

  ‘I have to,’ she said. ‘They’re not going to stop, they’re not going to leave me alone – and people will die.’

  ‘Two worlds will end if you don’t go, eh?’ said Granda, a sad smile twitching at his lips. ‘Who knew our little Madeline would be so important?’

  She smiled back at him, tears beginning to prick her eyes.

  He sighed. ‘I should stop you.’

  ‘You should,’ said Maddy. She grinned at him. ‘But like Dr Malloy said, you have loads of other grandchildren to drive you mad.’ She was horrified as Granda finally broke down and began to sob. She ran over to him and hugged him tight, pressing her face against his crumpled shirt. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, her tears wetting his chest. ‘That was a really bad joke.’

  Granda wrapped his arms around her and squeezed the breath from her body. He kissed the top of her head. ‘You’re the child of my heart, Maddy, don’t you ever forget that.’ He pushed her away from him. ‘Now go,’ he said, his voice breaking. ‘Go, before I keep you here and send us all to hell.’ She opened the back door and stumbled out into the frosty garden, her vision blurred with tears, and closed the door gently on the sound of Granda’s weeping.

  But she wouldn’t be completely alone. The last year had taught Maddy that there was one friend she could trust and rely on absolutely and there was no way she was heading into Tír na nÓg w
ithout him. She slipped George’s lead from its hook by the back door and crunched down the gravel path to his kennel. The smell of dog blasted her in the face when she bent down to peer in, and George didn’t help the aroma when he opened his mouth wide to yawn and added dog breath to the mix. He was warm and sleepy as she pulled him from his kennel and not best pleased to be going for a walk in the middle of the night. He licked Maddy’s face half-heartedly as she tied his little red collar around his neck, the chrome identity tag winking in the moonlight. He huffed and yawned and dragged his feet as she pulled him toward the back gate, the collar riding up to his ears and pushing his face into a mass of wrinkles.

  Maddy squatted in front of him and he looked up at her and wagged his tail unenthusiastically.

  ‘I know you think this is unfair, but I really can’t do this all by myself,’ she whispered. George cocked his head at her and whined. She put her arms around his shoulders and hugged him to her. The old terrier began to squirm with delight as she scratched him on the tickly spot at the base of his tail. He jumped up and butted her cheek with his teeth and began to skip around her as the cold night air woke him up. Maddy giggled. ‘That’s a bit more like it,’ she said.

  They ran as quietly as they could through the sleeping village. The gap in the fence to the castle grounds was still there and they slipped through, slowing to a walk once they were inside the castle grounds. Maddy took deep breaths to calm herself down. Her footsteps were slow now. She didn’t want to get to where she was going too soon.

  There was little light to see by. The moon rode on a bank of charcoal clouds and every now and then one would drift across its surface. Maddy walked cautiously, feeling rather than seeing the path that took her over the darkly rushing river and into the open meadow that ran to the foot of the castle, free of the evergreens that guarded the first half of the path and weakly illuminated by the struggling moon.

  She walked through the tunnel that led her into the landscaped gardens that the mound brooded in, George bumping against her calf. It was like another world on the other side of the tunnel. It was an artificial one, created to look as mysterious and faerie-like as possible, but it was still ethereal beneath the wan moonlight. Maddy picked her way through artfully piled rocks and nodding ferns until she came to the mound.

  Normally the faerie mound looked exactly like you’d expect – a mound of grass covered with earth. But tonight it yawned wide, a shaft punched through its innards, the wound kept open with a stone doorway. Burning torches guttered in iron brackets bolted into the supports on either side of the doorway and smoked greasily in the breeze.

  Tonight Seamus had transformed into Cernunnos. Tonight he was a Tuatha. He stood by the doorway, radiating a dark light that pulsed and shifted like an imploding star. The spread of antlers that arced around his head was huge and looked too heavy for his neck to support. His tall frame was cloaked from neck to feet in a cloak stitched from a patchwork of animal fur. But his face was wreathed in a shadow that the lights of the torches could not penetrate – only his eyes gleamed, silver points that followed every step Maddy and George took toward the mound. In his true Tuatha form he was a thing apart, different from the other Tuatha. His body hummed with a raw power and he looked feral and pagan, something much, much closer to nature than the courtly beauty of the monarchs of the four courts.

  Maddy swallowed and felt her legs start to go rubbery as she walked toward the Tuatha. She could see now why the ancient Celts had worshipped him. Cernunnos, the Green Man, the Horned God – it was all there in the form of this Tuatha who had named himself Lord of the Forest in Tír na nÓg. It was like walking up to a smouldering volcano. But she squared her shoulders. I’m the Hound, she thought. I am the Hound.

  She stopped a foot away from him and stared into his black hole of a face, locking her green eyes on to the silver stars that floated in his eye sockets. Once it had been moons. What did it mean tonight, that he had picked something so cold and distant to reflect his mood?

  ‘The Hound comes at last,’ he said, his voice a deep vibration that rang in her ears and rippled through her body. ‘That was a petty trick you played, girl.’

  ‘Yeah, but I bet I had you tied up in knots for a little while,’ said Maddy. ‘And just thinking about that gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling inside.’

  ‘Careful, child,’ warned Cernunnos, bending his head toward her so the blast of cold from the light of his eyes could chill her lips to white. ‘You don’t know what you are dealing with.’

  ‘I do know,’ said Maddy, hatred and rage bubbling up and thawing her numbed mouth. ‘I know exactly what I’m dealing with – I have the scars to remind me.’

  ‘But you are a bound mortal now, bound by an oath of fealty to the Autumn Court and the Witch Queen,’ said Cernunnos. ‘You do our work now.’

  ‘I have a few conditions I need you to agree to first,’ said Maddy.

  Cernunnos threw back his head and roared with laughter, the sound booming around them and trailing away in a rumble of thunder. ‘What an arrogant pup you are!’ he declared. ‘You would impose conditions on your service to me, a being before whom you should bend the knee?’

  ‘I would,’ said Maddy.

  ‘What gives you the right to demand such a thing?’ asked Cernunnos.

  ‘You need me,’ said Maddy, the memory of Meabh’s smile at the back of her mind. ‘You need me to walk through that tunnel right now. That gives me leverage.’

  Cernunnos looked at her for a long moment. ‘Speak, Hound,’ he said at last.

  ‘A banshee called Una is watching my family,’ she said. ‘If they are in danger at any time, she’s to get all the help she needs to keep them safe. And she’s not to be touched by mortal or faerie.’

  ‘Done.’

  ‘When I find this hunter, I want justice,’ said Maddy. ‘I want the creature and any faerie it worked with to be punished. Even if that faerie – say, one who is married to you – only gave the order. She’s to be punished as hard as whoever struck the blow.’

  ‘Justice is a hard thing to ask for,’ said Cernunnos. ‘There is a difference between what is just and what is right.’

  ‘Not to me there isn’t,’ insisted Maddy. ‘I’m telling you now – if you want me to do a thorough job of sorting this mess out, then you have to promise me justice at the end of it all.’

  ‘You do not know what you ask for,’ said Cernunnos.

  ‘Yes, I do,’ said Maddy. ‘You’re just doing that typical faerie thing of confusing everything and not answering the question. Promise me that you will see justice done, even if it has to be done to Liadan, or I’m not setting foot in that mound.’

  ‘Then it is so,’ said Cernunnos. ‘Remember this moment, Hound, when you get what you ask for. Justice will be meted out to those who hunt the unicorns.’

  ‘That’s all I want,’ said Maddy.

  Cernunnos shook his head slowly. ‘You have asked for no small thing.’

  ‘I don’t want anyone playing favourites, that’s all,’ said Maddy. ‘Can I expect any help from you this time?’

  ‘You will have help, but for now I stay in the mortal world and guard the gateway,’ said Cernunnos.

  ‘Fair enough,’ said Maddy. She rubbed George’s lead between her fingers and looked down at him. ‘Ready for walkies?’ He grinned up at her, his tongue lolling from his yellowed teeth, and wagged his tail. Then she nodded a farewell to Cernunnos, squared her shoulders and stepped into the mound.

  The tunnel yawned ahead of her. The last time she had entered the mound she had been shoved in unconscious by a weakened Cernunnos and had woken in a desert of black sand, forced to find her own way to break through the veil of magic that kept Tír na nÓg separate from the mortal world. Not this time. This time she was going to walk straight in. The entrance was bending to her will, behaving like a regular burial mound. The tunnel opened up into a circular hall, plain and unadorned and lit with more burning torches. Maddy watched her shadow shudder in t
he torchlight over the packed earth walls and she stood up straighter. She wished she were just a little taller.

  ‘Maddy! Maddy, wait up!’

  She heard familiar voices behind her and turned, horrified, to see Roisin and Danny come panting up to her, grinning from ear to ear.

  ‘What are you two doing here?’ she asked.

  ‘We woke up, and when we realized you weren’t in the house we checked George’s kennel,’ said Danny, while Roisin leaned on a wall and tried to get her breath back. ‘It didn’t take a genius to figure out where you were going with him at four a.m.’

  ‘Did Granda just let you go?!’ she asked.

  ‘He was asleep; he didn’t see us leave,’ said Danny.

  ‘You can’t come with me, not this time,’ said Maddy. ‘You have to go home. It isn’t safe.’

  ‘Well, that’s gratitude for you,’ said Roisin.

  ‘If we hadn’t come with you last time, you would have been toast,’ said Danny. ‘You need us. I’m the brawn and Ro’s the brains.’

  ‘What does that make me?’

  ‘The trouble magnet.’ Roisin grinned. ‘If we hang around you for long enough, trouble will come and find us. Besides, it’s hardly safe at home any more, is it? If war and famine are coming, I’d rather be doing something than sitting around wondering when it’s going to happen and not even be able to warn people because they’ll never believe me.’

  Maddy shook her head. ‘You don’t get it,’ she insisted. ‘Things are different this time. I’ve got protection but you two haven’t. You need to go home, right now.’

  Roisin frowned at her. ‘Yeah, we didn’t get a chance to talk about that conversation between yourself and Meabh. Care to explain?’