Drink Down the Moon (2 page)

“How can you miss them?” Loireag asked. “Set a pair of them down any place and quicker than you can blink, you’ll be up to your ears in them. They breed like rabbits.”

“They are a lusty race,” Jenna said with a smile.

Loireag snorted. “Give me a hob any day. At least they last the whole night.”

She grinned at Tuir, who was puffing up his chest at her words.

“When they’re not too old, that is,” she added.

The little man lost his breath, chest sagging, and scowled at her.

“If he comes again,” he said, turning to Jenna, “will you answer his call?”

She shook her head. “I won’t be here to answer any calls. I gave him the charm, the same one Old Tom had before him, only Tom returned it to me. Johnny Faw can either follow where it will lead him, or not— it’s his to choose.”

“You’re still going, then?” Loireag asked.

“Someone has to— if there’s to be a rade at all this year.”

All three of them were quiet then, thinking of how long it had been since the fiaina had gathered for the luck rade.

The fiaina sidhe were solitary faerie, not aligned with either the Seelie or Unseelie Courts, and got their luck in ways different from those of their gentrified cousins. They gathered, once a moon, to ride a long and winding way through the land, following old straight tracks and other moonroads in single file. This was how they got their luck. There was something in the long winding file of faerie, following those roads with the full moon shining above them

. Some combination of it all made the luck grow strong in them, recharging them like batteries.

Without it, they diminished. Their magics weakened. They faded.

Last autumn there had been a struggle between the two Courts, a struggle that the Seelie faerie won. The Wild Hunt had been freed from centuries of bondage, the Gruagagh of Kinrowan had given his Tower to a Jack, and the Unseelie Court was cast to the winds— many of them slain. The weeks following that time, from Samhaine into Midwinter, had been a period of change. The Seelie Court settled back into its old familiar ways, the Wild Hunt was gone— Arn knew where— and the Unseelie Court slowly began to regroup and gather into new alliances.

The fiaina sidhe, never ones to join either Court, had stood back and watched it all.

The closest they came to a communal effort was their rade, for solitary or not, all faerie followed the Moonmother Arn and she had imbued even the fiaina with a certain sociability— even if it was only realized once every four weeks when Arn turned a new face to the world below. So they had gone about their own ways until they realized that something was taking advantage of the upset in the balance between the two faerie Courts to make inroads into the Borderlands that the fiaina claimed for their own.

Old haunts were found deserted of their inhabitants. Here a hob was found slain, stripped of his blue coat and stitcheries. There a derrie-down was taken from her river holt, lying stretched out and dead on the shore. And the rade was disrupted, time and again.

When they gathered for their rade, a foul wind with the smell of old graves would rise to hang about them. Clouds would cloak the moon’s face. Whisperings and ugly mutterings could be heard all around them, but nothing was seen. And Jenna Pook, the Pook of Puxill who led the rade, who alone knew the twists and turns of the old tracks and moonroads, would find her mind fogged and clouded until she was too confused to take a step.

As their luck faded, many of the fiaina sidhe fell back from their old haunts in the Borderlands, faring deeper into their secret territories to come no more to the gatherings. Where the Courts would band together in a time of crisis, the fiaina withdrew as though it was a disease that beset them and they might catch it if they came too close to each other.

Too proud to go to their cousins for help, and unwilling to pay what that help would cost them, there were still a few fiaina who were determined to stand up to whatever it was that threatened them. Foremost of them was the Pook who led the rade.

As though sensing that she was its greatest danger, the enemy concentrated on her. More nights than one she’d spent fleeing

something. She had no clear picture of what it was that chased her. Sometimes she thought it was a black dog, other times a black horse. Sometimes it came upon her so quickly that she barely escaped. Other times it merely crept up on her like a mist, or a tainted smell. It was only constant vigilance that kept her free of its clutches.

So it was that she made her decision to look for help— not from the Courts, for like all the fiaina, she wouldn’t pay their price. The Laird of the Seelie Court would demand allegiance in return for his help, and the fiaina would never give up their independence. As for the Unseelie Court, no one knew if they had a new chief to approach in the first place, and if the Laird’s folk would demand allegiance, the Host of the Unseelie Court would take their souls.

So it was to their own that the fiaina must turn— a skillyman or wisewife of the sidhe. The first that had come to Jenna’s mind was the Bucca who’d taught her the way that the rade must follow, who’d untangled the skein of old tracks and moonroads and given her their proper pattern.

“A Fiddle Wit would help us,” Dohinney Tuir said after a while.

“If we had one,” Jenna said. “But Johnny Faw’s a tadpole, not a Fiddle Wit.”

“He could learn.”

“He could,” she agreed. “If he wanted to. He has the music— I won’t deny that. But wit takes more than music, more than luck and a few tricks as well. From what little I’ve seen of him, I don’t know if he has what’s needed.”

“It’s hard to learn something,” Tuir said, “when you don’t know it’s there to learn.”

“But if we led him every step of the way, it would mean nothing. He’d be no closer. The wit needs to be earned, not handed to any tadpole who looks likely— if it even was the sort of thing that could be handed out.”

“Still. You gave him the charm.”

“I did. I owed him that much— for Old Tom’s sake.”

“So you’ll go off, looking for the Bucca,” Tuir said, “while—”

“It’s not my fault the luck’s gone!”

“No. But only a Pook can lead the rade, and the closest we have after you is your sister, who—”

“Half-sister.”

“It doesn’t make that much difference. She had fiaina blood and—”

“Not to hear her tell it.”

“—she’s the closest to a Pook we’ll have if you don’t come back.”

“I’ll be back.”

“Yes, but—”

“Don’t forget,” Jenna said a little sharply. “We have no rade as it is— whether I go or I stay.”

“I think it’s the Gruagagh that’s to blame,” Loireag said firmly. “It’s always a gruagagh that’s to blame when there’s trouble in Faerie. A wizard never knows to leave well enough alone. They’re as bad as humans— always taking a thing apart to see how it works.”

“The only gruagagh we’ve had near here was Kinrowan’s,” Jenna said. “And he’s gone now.”

Loireag frowned. “It’s a new one then— one who hasn’t made himself known yet.”

“What I want to know,” Tuir said, “is this: Gruagagh or whatever, it has your scent. When you go, will it follow you, or will it chase down your sister, or some innocent like your tadpole whose only crime is that you gave him a charm with your scent upon it?”

“You’re too soft-hearted,” Loireag told the little man before Jenna could reply. “It’s just a human we’re talking about. Better the enemy goes sniffing after him than follows our Pook. At least she’s doing something to help us.”

“Johnny Faw will be in no danger,” Jenna said. “The charm will sain him from evil influences. And as for my half-sister, she goes her own way— as we all do.”

Tuir nodded and kicked at the turf with the pointed toe of his boot.

“I just wish you didn’t have to go,” he said.

“Or that you’d at least not go alone,” Loireag said.

“The Bucca will be hard enough to track down as it is,” Jenna said. “I’ll never find him with you in tow. He’s never been one for company— two’s a crowd, so far as he’s concerned. I don’t doubt he’s hiding away in an Otherworld of the manitous and I’ll have a stag’s own time chasing him down.”

There was nothing the other two could say. They’d been through this argument before— too many times since Jenna had announced her intentions to leave a few days ago.

“When do you go?” Tuir asked.

“Tonight. Now. Johnny Faw’s calling-on tune strikes me as a sign of sorts. Giving him the charm was like completing the last piece of unfinished business I had. So I’ll go now with my own calling-on tune

for the Bucca.”

Loireag nodded and stepped close to her, enfolding Jenna in a quick embrace.

“Luck,” she said gruffly, and stepped back.

Jenna found a smile, but Loireag had already turned and was making for her home in the river. Halfway between the water and where Jenna and Tuir still stood, the running figure of the ebony-skinned woman became a black-flanked horse. She reared at the edge of the river, hooves clattering on the flat stones, then the water closed over the kelpie’s head and she was lost from sight.

“Don’t worry so much,” Jenna said to her remaining companion. “I’ll be back before you know it, and then I’ll lead us all on such a rade as we’ve never seen before— high and low, we’ll follow more roads than a spider has threads in its web.”

Tuir nodded, blinking back tears. In his eyes, Jenna could see the same foreboding that had been in the kelpie’s. She watched him swallow uncomfortably, his Adam’s apple bobbing, as he obviously tried to think of something cheerful to say. Finally, he gave her a quick kiss and a tight hug, then hurried away, following the bicycle path that Johnny Faw had taken when he’d left earlier.

Alone now, Jenna stood for long moments, breathing the night air. Everything had a clarity about it in the moonlight, a sharpness of focus that kept her standing there, drinking in the sight of it, the smells, all the sparkle of the moment. Then she shook herself, like a person who’d caught herself dozing. Fetching a small journeysack from where she’d left it by Loireag’s river, she shouldered it and set off, crossing the river and heading north.

It was the quest itself that was as much to blame for what happened, as anything else.

After long weeks and months of fretting and danger, of losing the rade and its luck, of being hunted but not being able to strike back

to finally be doing something

Jenna let her guard down as she ran at a pace-eating lope that she could keep up for hours.

She was thinking of the road before her and the Bucca at its end, not about what had driven her to set off on this quest. Her heart felt lighter than it had for a very long time, for she’d always been a doer, not a thinker. She even hummed a tune to herself, a fiddle tune— not one of Johnny Faw’s, but one that Old Tom used to play in the old days.

A mile or so north of where she’d left her friends, after speeding through city streets to the landscaped lawns that the National Capital Commission kept neat and trim along the Parkway that followed the Ottawa River, the enemy found and caught her.

It came like a pack of dogs, spindly creatures, with triangular goblin faces, that ran on all fours, but could clutch and grab and tear with fore and hind legs. They made no sound as they came up from behind her, rapidly closing up the distance between them. When they struck, she never knew what hit her. She never had a chance.

Attacking, they were no longer silent. Snarls and high-pitched growls cut across the night as they circled her still body to slash, dance away, then slash again. By the time the brown-cloaked figure arrived to drive the pack from its prey, there was only a heartbeat of life left in her. The figure bent over Jenna, pushed back its hood to look into her eyes as her life drained from her. When the moment passed, the figure rose, its pale eyes gleaming as though it had stolen the Pook’s life force and taken it into itself.

Tugging its hood back into place, the figure stood and walked away, leaving the broken body where it lay. Of the pack that had taken Jenna down, there was now no trace, but the sharp sting of magic stayed thick in the air.

Two

Henk Van Roon was sitting on the stairs of Johnny’s porch when Johnny arrived home, the octagonal shape of his lacquered wood concertina case on a step by his knee. He was a few years older than Johnny, having just turned thirty the previous week— a tall, ruddy-cheeked Dutchman who seemed, at first glance, to be all lanky arms and legs. His long blonde hair was tied back at the nape of his neck with a leather thong and he was dressed in jeans and a Battlefield Band T-shirt, with a worn and elbow-patched tweed jacket overtop.

“How’re you holding out, Johnny?” he asked.

Johnny sighed and sat down beside him, laying his fiddle case on a lower step. “Like I’ve got a hole inside me— you know?”

“You want some company?”

Johnny didn’t answer. He looked across the street, thinking of how many times he’d sat on these steps with Tom, playing tunes sometimes, or talking, or sometimes just not doing anything, just being together. He turned slowly as Henk touched his shoulder and found a weak smile.

“Yeah,” he said. “I could use some company. C’mon in.”

Grabbing his fiddle, he led the way inside. The house was an old three-story brick building on Third Avenue of which he rented the bottom floor. He unlocked the door to his apartment and stood aside to let Henk go in first, closing the door behind them.

“You want something— coffee, tea?” he asked.

“You got a beer?”

“I think so.”

Johnny left his case by the door and went into the kitchen. Henk stood for a moment, then lowered his long frame into the beat-up old sofa that stood under the western window. There was a fake mantelpiece on the north wall, snugly set between built-in bookcases that took up the rest of the wall. The bookcases were filled with an uneven mixture of tune books and folklore collections, the remainder made up of paperbacks of every genre, from mysteries to historicals and best-sellers.

The mantel was covered with knickknacks, most having something to do with fiddlers or fiddling. There were wooden gnome fiddlers and ceramic ones; a Christmas rabbit complete with a red and green scarf and a pig standing on its hind legs, both with instruments in hand; pewter fiddles lying on their sides; even a grasshopper, playing its instrument like a cello.