An Artificial Night

NINE

THE WORLD SEEMED TO KEEP SPINNING for the better part of forever. I stayed huddled on the ground, sobs fading into dry coughs. Disorientation actually rates somewhere below all-day court cases and shopping for shoes on my personal scale. You won’t catch me on many roller coasters.

I didn’t move until I was sure I could stand, and even then, it took a surprisingly long time for my equilibrium to return—I normally bounce back pretty fast, but my body was still reeling from whatever the Luidaeg had done to me. The taste of the Luidaeg’s potion coated the inside of my mouth, making it feel like something had died in there. One thing was sure; she wasn’t going to be giving Alton Brown a run for his money anytime soon.

The mist was gone, leaving the land around me visible. Looking around, I found myself almost missing the gray.

I was in the middle of a vast plain. Dry, cracked earth stretched out in all directions, studded with jagged rocks and snarls of hostile-looking brambles. Mountains cupped the plain on all sides, looming over the land, and the sky overhead was solid black without a star in sight. Only a few thin clouds broke the darkness, shoved along by a wind I couldn’t feel. The air on the ground was chilly but motionless.

Shivering, I wrapped my arms around myself. I don’t normally mind the dark. The fae aren’t fond of the sun, and the Summerlands exist in a state of near perpetual twilight. There are always shadows in Faerie. It’s just that they’re normally warm, open shadows, the kind that create a welcoming sort of darkness. This wasn’t a warm night. It was a night for endings, and for monsters.

There was something wrong with the perspective. The problem didn’t seem to be with the land around me, hostile as it seemed—it looked entirely proper when I didn’t try to think too hard about what I was seeing. There was something wrong with the way I was looking at things, like I was somehow out of proportion with the landscape. Something—

The candle blazed abruptly upward, forcing me to flinch to keep from setting my hair on fire. I wound up holding it at arm’s length, watching the blue flame burn higher and higher. The Luidaeg said the candle was my map; if it burned out, I might have problems a little more pressing than my slightly warped perspective. I tried blowing on it and shaking it, but there was no change. Finally, desperately, I said, “All right! I won’t think about it! Okay?”

The flame immediately dwindled to an ember. Whatever was wrong, the Luidaeg—or at least her candle—didn’t want me thinking about it. I glared at the candle. I hate riddles, and I hate them even more when I’m forced to play along. I’ve always preferred the direct method: hit the riddler upside the head until he gives you the answer. Maybe it’s more likely to get you hurt, but it’s also a lot less confusing. Still, if they wanted me to play, I’d play. It wasn’t like I had a choice.

I turned in a slow circle, studying the landscape. A forest stretched off toward the mountains some distance behind me, made up of the sort of tall, gnarled trees that act as a natural barrier against the world. It managed to look even less welcoming than the plains, and that meant it was probably where I needed to go. Sometimes dealing with fairy-tale clichés is even more annoying than dealing with fae manners. If I ever meet any descendants of the Brothers Grimm, I’m going to break their noses and possibly a few other convenient body parts.

Maybe I had to play along with this stupid scenario, but that didn’t mean I had to like it. “I am so tired of this gothic crap,” I muttered. “Just once, I want to meet the villain in a cheerful, brightly lit room. Possibly one with kittens.”

Blind Michael’s lands seemed unlikely to supply me with anything resembling an airy sitting room, and any cats I encountered would probably be of the four-hundred-pound, man-eating variety. I was willing to bet that a cat the size of a Sherman tank would bother even Tybalt. I shook my head, trying to make the image go away. Blind Michael’s realm was obviously in the Summerlands. It was probably an Islet, a bubble of space anchored between the Summerlands and one of the deeper, lost realms. Reality is malleable in the Islets. You can’t change it with a casual thought, but fears and phobias have a distressing tendency to come to life. If Blind Michael didn’t have giant attack-cats, I didn’t want to be the one who gave them to him.

The feeling of wrongness was still clamoring in the back of my mind. I didn’t know why, and the Luidaeg’s spell obviously didn’t want me to. I took a deep, slow breath. She didn’t do freebies. Whatever she’d done, it was probably intended to keep me alive, and if that hinged on not understanding, I could play dumb for a little while.

At least her spell had been kind enough to trade my cut-down dress for jeans and a bulky green sweater. It made a certain sense; she wanted me to get back alive, and jeans were more useful than a skirt while crossing the wasteland. A thin leather strap secured my knife to the belt, and a similar leather strap was holding my hair away from my face. If I screwed up, it wouldn’t be due to interference from my wardrobe.

Finally, lacking any better options, I started for the forest.

The plains were wider than they looked. I had barely covered half the distance to the trees when my legs informed me that I needed to take a break, now, and that if I didn’t find something to sit on, they’d be fine with dumping me on my ass. Choosing rest over close contact with the treacherous surface of the plain, I walked to the nearest rock and sat. My candle was burning steadily. That was good. The spell that brought me to Blind Michael’s lands was tied to the candle, and I probably wouldn’t survive for long if the candle went out. If I was lucky, losing it would kill me quickly. If I wasn’t …

The Luidaeg called Blind Michael a child’s terror. He wasn’t likely to be happy with an adult intrusion into his lands. “Great,” I muttered. “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.” It helped to hear my own voice, but something was wrong with it. I stood, trying to make sense of the conflicting messages my senses were delivering. The candle blazed again, illuminating the land around me as the Luidaeg whispered on the edge of my hearing, Don’t think about it, don’t stop, just keep moving keep on keep going keep—

Hunting horns blared in the distance as the flame turned orange and dwindled to a pinprick. I took a step backward, confusion forgotten in the face of panic. I knew what those horns meant; there was only one thing they could mean. Blind Michael’s Hunt was riding.

Taking another step back, I started to run.

My breath was harsh and loud as I ran, but nowhere near as loud as the horns sounding on the other side of the horizon. They were coming and there was nothing I could do to stop them. A thought struck me as the horns sounded again, a thought that seemed almost brilliant in its clarity. If I stopped, they might listen to reason. They’d take me to Blind Michael, and he’d understand; he’d return my children without complaint. He was a good man at heart. He—

The candle flared, splashing wax down the length of my arm. The pain was stunning, knocking me out of a haze I hadn’t even felt coming down. The bastards were blowing enchanted horns. Of course they wouldn’t listen! Blind Michael’s Hunt has never had a reputation for mercy. I’d die if I stopped. I might die anyway, but at least if I ran, I had a chance.

Even without their suggestive power, the horns were getting louder. I wasn’t going to reach the forest before the Hunt reached me. Still running, I started scanning for a place that I could hide.

There was a tangle of brambles up ahead that looked promising. I ran toward it, grimacing as I saw the length of the thorns. They didn’t look like pleasant bedmates. I was considering looking for another place to hide when the horns sounded again, closer now than ever. Right. Gritting my teeth, I dropped to my knees and began squirming into the shelter of the thorns.

I stopped once there was a concealing wall of brambles between myself and the plains, tucking my candle down behind my knees to hide its light. I could hear hooves pounding the earth as well as the trumpet of the horns; they were getting closer. I scooted backward, heedless of the thorns. A little blood was a small price to pay for staying alive.

Holding my breath, I waited for the Hunters.

They didn’t appear. A girl ran into view instead, crying as she raced for the woods. Her dress hung in bloody tatters, and more blood matted her curly brown hair. I opened my mouth slightly, breathing in the balance of her heritage. Hob half-blood, probably no more than fourteen. She was barefoot, but she ran over the stony ground without stopping. Something worse than death was following her, and she knew it. She was clutching a half-grown Abyssinian cat against her chest. A thin haze of magic surrounded the cat, rebounding randomly off the shadows around them and shattering them without doing anything productive. Cait Sidhe almost certainly; they specialize in moving through shadows, opening portals to take them from here to there. But the shadows here were Blind Michael’s, and the poor kid wasn’t getting a foothold.

The girl closed her eyes, finding a last burst of terrified speed as the horns sounded again. The cat in her arms went still, eyes fixed on the forest’s edge. The Cait Sidhe tend to be realists, and that cat knew as well as I did that they’d never get there in time. I stayed where I was, biting my lip. I wanted to tell them to hide while they had the chance, and I couldn’t. The Riders were too close. There was nothing I could do but watch, and remember, and take whatever I saw home to tell their parents.

Whatever happened would be my responsibility, because I didn’t save them. Sometimes doing nothing is the hardest thing of all.

The horns sounded a final time, and Blind Michael’s Hunt poured over the hill. There were at least a dozen of them, dressed in mismatched armor and mounted on vast horses whose hooves ripped the earth as they ran. They looked like they’d been snatched from different armies and thrown together by an indifferent general, one who only cared that his soldiers be menacing. Their weapons were as mixed as their armor, but that didn’t matter; all that mattered was that each of them was well-equipped to kill.

The girl must have heard them, because she did something that surprised me so much that I nearly threw myself out of the bushes to shield her: no one that brave should have to die. She tripped and fell in what was obviously a staged maneuver, “accidentally” flinging the Cait Sidhe away. It twisted in midair, landing a few feet from my hiding place.

That was my chance. Praying I wouldn’t be seen, I scooted forward and snatched the cat, yanking it back into the brambles. It writhed, sinking its teeth into my arm. I’ve lived with cats for a long time. I didn’t scream or let go, but shifted my grip to the scruff of its neck, giving it a solid shake before whispering, “Tybalt sent me.” It stopped struggling. Trusting it not to attack, I gathered it against my chest and turned back to the scene outside.

The Hunters hadn’t noticed me. I wasn’t counting on that to last once they realized the Cait Sidhe was missing, but for the moment, they were focused on the girl. Weapons drawn, they formed a circle around her. She didn’t even try to rise as the nearest Huntsman prodded her with his spear, saying something I couldn’t make out. The kitten understood, because it flattened its ears, growling almost silently. Two more Riders dismounted, picking her up and sliding her onto the back of the nearest horse. A Rider mounted behind her, turning the horse back the way they’d come. Through it all, she never made a sound.

The other Riders stayed behind, fanning out in an obvious search pattern. I held my breath, but none of them approached our hiding place. They circled farther and farther away, looking behind stones and through the sparse underbrush. I clutched the kitten to my chest, trying to come up with a way out. The forest was less than a hundred yards ahead of us. If the Riders went far enough, we’d have a chance.

In the end, we didn’t need it. The horns began to sound, and the remaining Riders turned as one, galloping out of sight. The sound of hooves faded before the horns did, but eventually even they were gone. I pulled out my candle and was reassured to see that the flame had gone back to a steady blue, flickering upward. I relaxed, assuming that meant we were as close to safe as we were likely to get.

The cat squirmed loose and ran to the edge of the briar, where it stopped and eyed me suspiciously. I didn’t try to stop it. If it wanted to run away, it could take care of itself. “Go ahead,” I said. It flattened its ears and hissed. I sighed. “Okay, whatever.”

Bracing my elbows in the dirt, I crab-walked my way back into the open and stood, holding up the candle and beginning to pick thorns out of my knees with my free hand. The cat crept out after me. I watched it out of the corner of my eye while continuing to remove the thorns from my jeans.

After sniffing warily at the ground, the cat stretched and reared up onto its hind legs. The air crackled with the smell of pepper and burning paper, and the cat was gone, replaced by a gangly teenage boy with bruises covering the left side of his face. He looked like a small fourteen, dark-skinned, with glass green eyes and hair that was the same russet red as his fur. His pupils were thin black slits, and his ears were more feline than human, tipped with fringes of black fur. Cait Sidhe pureblood. “Who are you?” he demanded.

“October Daye,” I said, tucking the thorns I’d collected into my pocket. You never know what you might need later. “Yourself?”

He narrowed his eyes, looking at me disdainfully. I recognized that look; I got it from Tybalt all the time. “My name is Raj. I am—”

“You’re the local Prince of Cats,” I said, cutting him off. “Yeah, I know.”

He wasn’t expecting that. His eyes widened, wariness returning. “How did you know?”

I sighed. I didn’t have the heart to tease him—not after seeing his companion taken. “Like I said, Tybalt sent me. He’s …” How could I describe my relationship with the King of Cats? I finally settled for saying, “A friend of mine.”

Raj frowned, eyes narrowing again. “That’s not possible.”

I frowned back. I was too tired to put up with adolescent royalty. “So we’re not friends as much as we’re enemies who haven’t killed each other yet. Does it matter? He sent me to save you.”

“You? Save us?” He laughed bitterly. No child should ever laugh like that. “Come back when you’re older.”

“What?” The disorientation rushed back, trying to keep me from putting the pieces together. Unfortunately, ignorance was becoming a luxury I couldn’t afford. Fighting the impulse to ignore what Raj had said, I looked down, already nearly sure of what I’d see.

Just once, it would be nice to be surprised.

Most people know the shape of their own body. They may have little illusions about it—how thin they are, how fat, how good they look in that black velvet dress—but the essential topography is ingrained. The length of a hand, the texture of skin, the slope of a breast; it’s all there, and when it changes, it usually does it slowly enough that your mental map changes with it. I’ve lived with myself for a long time now, and the years I spent as a fish just made me more aware of the shape I’m supposed to be. I lost myself once, and that made me pay a lot more attention when I got myself back.

The body I was wearing wasn’t mine—or rather, it wasn’t mine anymore and hadn’t been for a very long time. I’d been whittled down, curves smoothed away. I turned to the hand that held the candle, finally really looking at it. The fingers were too short, and the nails were too broad. Not an adult’s hands. Reaching up, I felt the outlines of my face, still round with the remains of baby fat, and pulled the band from my hair. The strands that promptly fell across my eyes were an indeterminate ashy blonde, the color my hair had been until the time I was about twelve. Putting what I could see and feel together, I’d have guessed my age at somewhere between eight and ten, probably on the higher end of the scale. It was hard to tell. Changelings age oddly; I was a child for a long time.

Raj’s eyes remained narrowed as he watched my slow self-examination. He was frightened but hiding it well; I hoped my own fear was as well concealed. I doubted it.

“Oberon’s balls,” I muttered, and flinched from the sound of my own thin, too-high voice. How did I miss that before? Easy: the Luidaeg made me. “Luidaeg, what did you do?” The answer to that was pretty easy, too. I just didn’t want to think about it.

Blind Michael was a child’s terror. The Luidaeg said that there were three ways to reach him, that one would kill me and that one was hidden … but the third way had to be open to children of all races and types, or he wouldn’t be able to take them. She’d done what I asked. She’d found a way to get me into Blind Michael’s lands. It just didn’t come with full disclosure. Silently, I resolved to kick her ass after I got home and she’d given me back my real body. Assuming I made it home in the first place.

Raj’s eyes widened and he looked around wildly, like he expected the Luidaeg to appear and make things worse than they already were. “Why are you calling her?” The royalty was gone; suddenly, he was just a frightened teenage boy with no way home.

“Because she’s the one who did this to me. I think she thought she was helping. ‘You can get there and back by the light of a candle.’”I kept talking, too angry to stop. “Why don’t people ever say things the way they mean them? ‘You can get there, but if you lose that candle you’re screwed, and by the way, you’re going to have to be nine. Hope that’s not a problem.’ ”

“What?”

“Hang on … sorry.” I sighed, forcing myself to calm down. “Let’s try this again. Tybalt really did send me. I’m here to rescue you. The Luidaeg turned me into a kid so I could get on the road, but if you’ll just trust me, I—”

He stared at me. “You’re insane! You’re working for Him!” It was clear from his tone of voice that he wasn’t talking about Tybalt.

“No, I’m not! It’s just that—”

“They took Helen, and you didn’t stop them!” His voice was getting louder. I glanced around, wondering how far sound carried on the plains. “You’re already His! You want to take me back! Well you can’t! I won’t go!” He turned toward the forest and took off running.

“Raj, wait!” I bolted after him, and I might have caught him—panic is a great motivation—but he had an advantage I didn’t. The air shimmered around him, and I was suddenly chasing a half-grown Abyssinian. Four feet are more stable than two and faster over short distances. His lead was increasing rapidly.

And far behind us, the hunting horns began to sound.

Raj reached the edge of the wood and leaped, vanishing into the trees. I followed him without a pause. Better the forest than the Hunt. The day had started badly and kept getting worse, and now here I was, nine years old and alone in a dark forest with Huntsmen on one side and the unknown on the other, and nothing but a candle to light my way.

Some days it really doesn’t pay to get out of bed.