The Raven Queen Read online

  ‘It sounds like a plan where nothing could go wrong, which really should tell us that it’s all going to go horribly wrong,’ said Roisin.

  ‘Do we have any other options?’ asked Maddy.

  ‘Do we ever?’ said Danny. Roisin sighed.

  ‘Are you coming with us, Nero?’ asked Maddy.

  ‘Are you joking? Anywhere near Fachtna is probably the safest place for me to be until this is all over,’ said the wolf. ‘Considering Liadan is the only one who ever welcomed us here, Fachtna might still be the safest faerie to be around when this is all over.’

  ‘Why does Fachtna need me so much anyway?’ asked Maddy as they scurried after the faeries.

  ‘Ritual sacrifice?’ suggested Danny. ‘OW!’ he yelled as Maddy and Roisin punched him on both arms.

  ‘That’s not funny,’ said Roisin.

  ‘No, it’s really not,’ said Maddy.

  ‘It’s also a really bad guess,’ called Nero over his shoulder as he loped ahead of them. ‘Part of the bargain was that Meabh gets Maddy back.’ He stopped for a second, his brow furrowing. ‘Mind you, she didn’t say whether or not you had to be alive.’

  ‘NERO!’ yelled Maddy.

  ‘I’m kidding, I’m kidding!’ said the wolf as he trotted off with his tail wagging.

  They jogged after Nero through the deathly quiet forest. Soon they left its ravaged boundaries to find themselves following Meabh, her Pooka and Fachtna to the river’s edge. Maddy shuddered when she saw who was waiting for them there. Meabh’s storm hags, her ladies-in-waiting, three hideous women in greasy grey rags, their scabbed scalps pocked with limp strands of hair, each with one eye gleaming with malevolence in her blue-black face. Two of them carried black bundles in their arms, while the third held a bow made of a pale wood.

  Meabh stopped by the river and looked down into the rushing water, dirty and soot-stained as it carried away the wounds of the forest. She reached into her plaid, pulled out a walnut and cracked it neatly in half along its seam.

  ‘You will need a boat, of course,’ she said. The half a walnut shell balanced on her open palm and she blew gently on it. It spiralled out of her hand and up into the air, out over the river, where it drifted down to the water. But instead of speeding away with the current, the little shell began to expand as soon as it touched the water and it grew in front of Maddy’s amazed eyes until it rocked gently on the water in front of her, a boat big enough for them all.

  ‘You will need fire and iron to hold the place you are going to,’ continued Meabh, holding out her hands to the storm hags. The one with the smallest bundle stepped forward first and gave it to her. She pulled away the dark cloth to reveal a lantern made of silver, housing a bright green flame.

  ‘This flame will never go out,’ warned Meabh as she handed it to Fachtna. ‘Never let it out of your sight and be careful where you set it down.’ She turned again to the storm hags and clicked her fingers. ‘Arrows with iron heads, coated with pitch. Be careful not to cut yourself.’ Maddy noticed she left the arrows covered in their thick black cloth, and that Fachtna shuddered as she took the bundle in her arms.

  ‘You keep iron?’ asked Maddy.

  ‘Yes,’ said Meabh.

  ‘Why on earth would you keep something so dangerous to yourself?’ asked Roisin.

  ‘Humans do the same thing,’ said Meabh. ‘You stockpile weapons, create new ones that kill long after they have been used. Why did humans create the atom bomb when they knew it could be a planet killer? And yet you created it, built it and mass-produced it, and enemies sold it to enemies. My keeping a bit of iron hardly compares, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘How do you know so much about us?’ asked Danny.

  ‘When other faeries cavort and hunt in the mortal world on Halloween night, I watch TV,’ said Meabh, shrugging.

  ‘Really?’ asked Roisin.

  ‘Yes. It’s quite interesting,’ said Meabh.

  ‘What’s your favourite programme?’ asked Danny.

  Roisin and Maddy stared at Danny in horror, while Meabh simply raised an eyebrow at him. One of the storm hags sniggered but was silenced with an elbow to the ribs by one of her sisters.

  Fachtna cleared her throat. ‘With respect, Queen Meabh, time is wasting. The Winter Court is preparing to march to war and will be ready any day now.’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ said Meabh, waving them away with a languid sweep of her long hand. They clambered awkwardly into the boat, which bobbed about on the spot without an anchor. Maddy thought it was going to capsize when Nero jumped in, it lurched so violently, but it managed to stay afloat. As soon as they were all in, it began to float downstream.

  ‘We’ve no oars!’ cried Roisin, peering over the rim of the walnut shell at Meabh.

  ‘They’re pointless when you don’t know where you are going,’ said Meabh as she began to walk away, covering her bright red hair and her plaid with a grey cloak. ‘Cheer up, Maddy,’ she called back over her shoulder. ‘Soon armies will clash, the Hound will run, and we will have a resolution to so many problems.’

  The storm hags cackled as they followed their queen. Only the Pooka was left on the riverbank, staring at Maddy with his glowing yellow eyes.

  Maddy watched Meabh stride away with the burnt, smouldering forest in the background, smoke obscuring everything but the devastation.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ‘“What’s your favourite programme?”!’ said Roisin to Danny. ‘You’re standing in front of the witch queen and that’s what you ask her? I’m amazed she didn’t turn you into a frog!’

  ‘I couldn’t help it!’ said Danny. ‘I mean, there she is, standing there looking all medieval, going on about the telly. You’re telling me you didn’t want to know? What if she said it was The X Factor?’

  They looked at each other and burst out laughing, with Nero wagging his tail and looking from face to face.

  ‘What’s The X Factor?’ he asked.

  ‘Trust me, you don’t want to know,’ said Roisin, giggling and draping an arm around him. He snuggled close to her.

  ‘I don’t think that was the right question though,’ said Maddy.

  ‘How do you mean?’ asked Danny.

  ‘You’ve got to be careful the questions you ask faeries,’ said Maddy. ‘They can’t lie, but that doesn’t mean they can’t avoid telling you the truth. You asked her what her favourite programme was – you should have asked her why she was watching telly.’

  Roisin’s smile slipped off her face and she frowned. ‘It’s a bit creepy, isn’t it?’

  Maddy nodded.

  ‘Why?’ said Danny. ‘TV is great – of course she’d be curious if she knew about it.’

  ‘But that’s just the thing, Danny,’ said Maddy. ‘The Tuatha are not curious about us; we’re nothing – “mud people” according to Cernunnos, remember? So why would Meabh watch TV?’

  ‘It doesn’t sound like she’s watching reality TV either,’ said Roisin. ‘From what she said, news programmes are more her kind of thing.’

  ‘So she’s learning about us,’ said Maddy. ‘How we are now.’

  Roisin shuddered.

  ‘So?’ said Danny.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Maddy. ‘I don’t know what it means, but with Meabh it’s never good.’

  They drifted along in silence for a while. The sides of the walnut shell were high and it was an effort to stand up and see out. As they bobbed and twirled and raced ever faster with the strengthening current, it felt too dangerous to try to stand. So they huddled in the bottom of the bowl and tried to get as comfortable as they could on the ridged, sloping surface.

  ‘So are we going to Hy Breasail then?’ Maddy asked Fachtna, who had huddled as far from them as she could, her long limbs folded around her. The war faerie was leaning back and looking up at the morning sky, her red eyes pale in the sunlight.

  ‘Yes, little Hound, we are going to find Hy Breasail,’ said Fachtna. ‘And we will wake the Morrighan.’

 
; ‘What’s Hy Breasail?’ asked Danny.

  ‘The floating island where the Morrighan sleeps,’ said Roisin. ‘We did these stories in school. Did you not pay attention?’

  ‘No, I was scared I might learn something,’ said Danny.

  Maddy ignored them and addressed Fachtna. ‘So why couldn’t you just say that to Meabh? Why all the talking in code?’ she asked.

  Fachtna sighed. ‘Why must you always answer with questions?’ she said wearily. ‘Why do you even have to ask questions in the first place? Is it not obvious?’

  ‘No,’ said Maddy stubbornly.

  ‘Fine,’ said Fachtna. She glared at them all and her blood-red eyes seemed to glow in the shade of the walnut shell. She looked more than a little demonic and Maddy swallowed and half wished she had kept her mouth shut.

  ‘Meabh can’t lie, as you have already pointed out,’ she said. ‘But it seems to suit her that the Morrighan is woken. However, it might not suit all her fellow monarchs and they might be angry if they knew she had a hand in helping me. If we didn’t have a conversation about it, then she can deny ever talking about it with me. She can say, with all honesty, that I never told her what I was going to do and she never thought to ask. It makes it harder for Spring or Summer to hold her responsible for whatever happens next.’

  ‘What will happen next?’ asked Roisin.

  ‘A quick start to this war, and a swift end to it as well,’ said Fachtna. ‘If we can get the Morrighan to move against Liadan, the Winter Court will be crushed. And instead of enduring years of petty battles while the other Tuatha squabble over Winter’s crown, the Morrighan can award it to whoever she thinks fit to wear it.’

  ‘That’s why you want to wake the Morrighan!’ said Roisin. ‘You want to be the next Winter Queen.’

  They stared at her in disbelief, while Fachtna’s wings rattled with anger.

  ‘Are you mad?’ asked Danny.

  ‘I think I have already explained that I am not,’ said Fachtna, her voice icy.

  ‘Doesn’t mean you’re right,’ said Danny.

  ‘I wouldn’t argue with the one who has all the weapons,’ said Fachtna.

  ‘He has a point, Fachtna,’ said Maddy. ‘You’re not a Tuatha.’

  ‘Nor is Liadan,’ said Fachtna.

  ‘Exactly. Look at what the Winter crown has done to her,’ said Maddy. ‘You know if you become the Winter monarch you have to wear Winter’s cold all the time, even if you take the crown off. Only the Tuatha are strong enough to do that – Liadan thought she was old enough and powerful enough to do what they do, but instead it’s warped her body and her mind.’ Maddy shuddered as she thought of Liadan’s white eyes, that had been boiled with the cold inside her until only a smudge of colour remained, a thumbprint of grey as a reminder of what once had been blue. ‘She’s insane, Fachtna. Do you really want that to be your fate?’

  ‘No one says it has to be,’ said Fachtna.

  Maddy opened her mouth to carry on arguing but Fachtna lost her patience. ‘Enough!’

  They were all quiet for a moment until Danny piped up, ‘So how can we find Hy Breasail if we don’t know where it is?’

  Fachtna roared with impatience. ‘This is the last question I will answer and then we will play the no-talking game,’ she said. ‘The rules are: the next person to speak before I do loses their tongue and I get to keep it! Understood?’

  They nodded at her dumbly.

  ‘The island of Hy Breasail is not anchored to anything,’ she explained. ‘It drifts on the surface of the sea. We cannot find it if we search for it – it is a thing that can only be seen from the corner of one’s eye. So we drift that we may happen upon it, and when we do, we can secure it with fire and iron, hence the lantern and the iron-tipped arrows. But do not be under any illusions that we are waking a sleeping beauty. Your people worshipped her as the triple-faced goddess: the maiden, the mother and the hag. But she was also known as the Scauld Crow, because she took such an interest in war. It’s the Morrighan who can decide who wins or loses a battle, who wears the crown or who loses their head. Now be quiet or I will behead the lot of you!’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Cowed by Fachtna’s fierce glares, and the way she started twirling a knife between her long fingers, Maddy decided to keep quiet and ask no more questions. She huddled with Danny, Roisin and Nero as far away from the faerie as they could get, and rummaged through the rucksacks for food.

  Danny certainly had not been thinking about a balanced diet when he packed. The food consisted of chocolate, crisps and biscuits. Still, it was food and they shared what they had with Nero, who gobbled everything down so fast it looked as if it didn’t even touch the sides. Exhausted from a long night, they were rocked to sleep by the waves, bathed in the warm rays of the summer sun.

  It was almost dark when Maddy woke up and it took her a second to register where she was. It took another second for her to notice the thick fog drifting around the boat. She jerked upright in a panic, forgetting where she was. Fachtna clamped a hand over her mouth to stifle her scream and held her steady.

  ‘Be easy,’ she hissed. ‘It’s a sea fog, nothing more. We’re a long way from the Shadowlands now.’

  Last year Maddy had been forced to journey into the Shadowlands, the stronghold of a race of warlocks called the Coranied. Hated by humans and faerie folk alike, they were granted sanctuary by the Morrighan because they had a unique gift. The Coranied were able to harvest all the dreams and emotions of human beings and channel them to the Morrighan. They were the ones who provided her with the building blocks to create Tír na nÓg and they helped her control it. The Morrighan kept a tight hold on Tír na nÓg. She wanted peace, and each of the four Tuatha courts was a balance, a block to the others’ bid for power. But war could disrupt that balance and break the Morrighan’s grip. The last war between the Tuatha had been sparked by the disappearance of the previous Winter Queen. Liadan, escaping the mortal world’s cold north with her band of elves, had used the chaos to grab the Winter crown for herself. So far, no Tuatha monarch trusted any of the others enough to try to unite to overthrow Liadan, and Liadan herself would not communicate with the other courts. So again the Morrighan kept her balance and peace was restored.

  The Shadowlands were permanently covered by a mist of dreams. All human dreams, hopes, fears, the darkest desires, the most frightening nightmares seeped into Tír na nÓg like a pollution, distilled down by the Coranied in their cauldrons as food for the faeries. And there were things living in that mist. Maddy shuddered at the memory. When a mortal has a near-death experience in Tír na nÓg, they leave a bit of themselves behind. They seem to hold on to a sense of themselves and they gather in the mist, listening to the Coranied at their work and to the whispers of humankind in the cauldrons. The mist had been full of the tortured splinters of human souls, cut off from the mortal world and the humans they belonged to, doomed to wander forever in the limbo of the Shadowlands. Maddy woke up at night, screaming and twisting in sweat-soaked sheets as she remembered the hatred and the anger, the longing and the desperation in those split souls in that mist.

  And how they hated Maddy! She remembered a tortured, wizened thing screaming at her as it clawed her arm. What good is a Hound that leaves us to suffer? What good is a hero that doesn’t come to the rescue?

  Even faerie kind were terrified of the mist of dreams. Only Meabh would walk in the lands of the Coranied.

  ‘It’s only sea fog,’ repeated Fachtna as she lowered her glowing red orbs to Maddy’s wide and terrified eyes. ‘Only sea fog,’ she said again, her voice gentle.

  Surprised at her tone, Maddy stared back at her and gradually her heart stopped racing, her breathing slowed and she relaxed.

  Fachtna nodded her approval. ‘Good. I don’t want you capsizing this thing and drowning us all.’

  But Maddy stiffened as a new sensation caused her skin to tingle. Fachtna’s head snapped up as she sniffed at the air, and Roisin, Danny and Nero jerked awake.


  ‘What is that?’ asked Danny as Nero began to yip in excitement.

  It was as if they had drifted close to a massive battery. Maddy still couldn’t see anything in the pillowy fog, but there was a throbbing noise at the edge of her senses as if from an engine miles underground. Her hair lifted and curled in a haze of static and her mouth tasted of metal.

  ‘Hy Breasail!’ said Fachtna. ‘The source of power. Hand me those arrows!’ she barked at Maddy, pointing to the bundle on the floor of the boat. Maddy bent carefully to avoid rocking the shell too much and untied the bundle with shaking fingers. Fachtna unwrapped the lantern of green witch-fire and held her hand out. Maddy noticed her fingers jerked back ever so slightly as Maddy placed the smooth wooden shaft of an arrow in her palm – her instincts were probably telling her to shy away from the metal that could poison her. She held the arrowhead in the lantern until the pitch coating the iron caught fire, notched the arrow to her bow and let loose.

  The brightly burning arrow flared in the mist but was quickly lost to sight. Maddy could hear the splash and sizzle as it fell into the sea, the sounds amplified by the fog until it seemed as if the arrow had fallen only a few inches away. A second later, something big bumped against the bottom of the shell.

  ‘What was that?’ asked Roisin, her voice trembling with fear as Nero began to bark.

  ‘Keep quiet, you stupid animal!’ said Fachtna. ‘Another,’ she said to Maddy, and Maddy wordlessly passed her a second arrow. Again Fachtna lit the tip and again she fired it into the mist. Again the arrow fell sizzling into the sea. Maddy held her breath.

  This time, whatever was beneath the boat hit it hard enough to make it tip. Roisin screamed as water slopped over the sides and Nero started up a volley of barking.

  ‘Be quiet or I’ll throw you overboard!’ Fachtna roared. ‘Arrow!’