Authors: Jennifer Fallon
‘Are you shitting me?’
Namito seemed unnaturally accepting of the situation. ‘Only another
mahou tsukai no sensei
may challenge the
Konketsu
,’ the young lord told him. ‘We have none.’
Enough of this bullshit.
He was one of the Undivided. That must count for
something
, even in this reality where they’d never heard of Druids. ‘You do now,’ Ren announced, sounding full of bravado, even to himself.
Before he could question exactly how he was going to save the day, Ren turned to face Chishihero, stepping through the cluster of waiting samurai until he was standing on the edge of the wall — another bit of foolish posturing, he realised a little too late.
Another one of her concussion blasts and he’d be off the wall, on the wrong side, at Chishihero’s mercy.
A third flare exploded overhead. Ren stepped forward, trying to look menacing as he feverishly trawled through the jumble of his brother’s memories for something magical that might save
these people. Unfortunately, as Darragh had warned him several times, the
Comhroinn
had shared their memories, not given him the experience needed to bring any sort of finesse to his magical ability. At his appearance, the Tanabe suddenly stiffened, sitting taller in their saddles.
Hayato unsheathed his
katana
.
Chishihero stopped folding her next bomb and looked up at him. Although the light was fading fast, she looked … frightened.
‘Leave now,’ Ren announced loudly, in what he hoped was a commanding tone, ‘and I will spare you!’
‘You dare challenge us,
Youkai
?’ Hayato called back. ‘Surrender yourself now! As the law commands!’
‘Your law,’ Ren shouted back, opening his palm and extending his left hand. ‘Not mine.’
Ren closed his eyes for a moment, calling on the easiest trick he thought he could manage. Fire.
Almost as soon as he thought of it, flames danced across his palm painlessly, as if the triskalion branded into his hand was alight. Everyone around him gasped. He didn’t think it was an impressive trick, but he’d done it without folding anything, which is probably why they were so awestruck. Ren was fascinated by it too, and had to remind himself to keep focussed on the problem at hand.
Chishihero wasn’t impressed. She looked up at his paltry flame and laughed scornfully, her fear fading at the realisation that she was facing an inferior foe. ‘Is that all you can do,
Youkai
? Make a little fire?’
‘It’s all I need to do, lady,’ he called back.
‘I can blow these walls to dust,’ she shouted up at him.
‘I can burn your forest down.’
His words brought a gasp, even from the Ikushima.
Another flare shot up into the sky, showering the night with sparks, lighting the worried faces of the Tanabe. Ren glanced up
at the white flare, thinking their precious
kozo
forest was in far more danger from a random spark from one of their fireworks than his untested powers.
‘You would not dare burn the Empresses’ forest,’ Chishihero called up to him after a long pause.
‘Try me,’ he called back.
Hayato and Chishihero consulted for a few moments and then the
Konketsu
held up her half-folded magical bomb and symbolically crushed the paper with one hand.
‘It is done,
Youkai
,’ she called up to him through gritted teeth. ‘But this is not the end of it. The Empresses will hear of your threat to destroy their forest — and the treason of the Ikushima.’ She turned her attention to Namito, adding, ‘Enjoy your brief victory,
Daimyo.
It will not last long. You will be killed, your sisters sold into slavery, your grandmother turned out into the winter to roam the roads as an outcast, your warriors disgraced and
Shin Bungo
destroyed. Trust me when I tell you … no power that this
yabangin Youkai
you’re harbouring owns can save you from the wrath of the Empresses now.’
With that, she gathered up her reins as Hayato gave the order to withdraw and the Tanabe turned for home, leaving Ren surrounded by the accusing stares of the people he’d just saved and the sickening realisation that his foolish attempt at heroism may well have sentenced everybody in
Shin Bungo
to death.
It took Trása two exhausting and worrying days, but finally she found the entrance to this reality’s
Tír Na nÓg
. She’d spent so long searching for some remnant of the
Youkai
in this realm, she was half-expecting it not to exist at all.
She was considering abandoning her search for
Tír Na nÓg
to find Rónán when she stumbled over it. Trása was so excited to discover an entrance into the Otherworld, when she finally spied it she almost flew straight into it without stopping to wonder why it lay open and untended by even the smallest of the
sídhe
creatures normally posted to guard such things.
Trása could travel in and out of
Tír Na nÓg
in her own reality with impunity. She was known there, and had never been challenged or prevented from entering or leaving. Had a
sídhe
from another reality arrived at the veil seeking entrance, however, they would have attracted all sorts of attention.
Trása stepped through the veil to a world full of magic and little else. Although the trees grew abundantly and the air hummed with magic, just like the world outside this
Tír Na nÓg
, it seemed empty of all her kind.
Trása wept.
She was tired and hungry and hadn’t been able to find Rónán. For all she knew he was dead — and Darragh with him in a
matter of days, wherever he was — murdered by the same people who’d tried to murder her.
They were probably the same people who had murdered all the other
sídhe
.
Exhausted by her searching and two days on the wing with nothing but crabs and small fish to eat, Trása finally cried herself to sleep, curled into an abandoned bower that had once been home to someone like her — lost, alone and lonely.
Trása woke some time later, feeling a tickle on her nose. Sitting up abruptly, she caught sight of something out of the corner of her eye. It vanished into thin air at the very top of the branch where she’d been sleeping. She jumped to her feet and ran to the edge of the wide branch. The leaves shimmered as she moved, but it was the only movement she could see now she was fully awake.
‘Wait!’ she called out. ‘Come back! I won’t hurt you!’
Silence greeted her plea. Whatever lesser
sídhe
was out there, it was too frightened to show itself. Or it might have waned away to somewhere safe, miles from here, and she was calling out to no one.
It didn’t matter. The important thing was that she had spied a lesser
sídhe
, and where there was one, there would be more. How many more, she didn’t dare hope.
Trása sat down, dangling her legs over the edge of the branch, as she tried to puzzle it out. She was sure she was still in Eire, but the landscape was different — the topography of her homeland was the same, and she’d identified enough landmarks that not even a completely different human history could erase, and she had found
Tír Na nÓg
.
This was Eire, and it had been colonised by the Japanese.
For some reason, they had killed all the
Tuatha Dé Danann
, and yet maintained the magic. Or perhaps they had not killed all of them — there were still a few lesser
sídhe
around, but they
were so frightened they were not even willing to answer the summons of a
Daoine sídhe.
The only way to talk to one of the wee folk, she decided, was to trap one.
It was easy to bait a trap for a lesser
sídhe
. Human children in every reality she had ever visited did it all the time. They would set up a basket or a box, bait the trap with something shiny, and wait. More often than not, helpful parents would trip the trap while the child slept, leaving behind a treat, which entertained everyone except the
sídhe
, who considered the practice barbaric, demeaning and misleading.
There was only one way to truly catch a
Leipreachán
— summon him by his real name to a trap baited with bacon.
That presented Trása with another problem. Finding bacon would be easy enough. Seagulls were scavengers. Nobody would remark on one scratching through a midden heap in search of a scrap of meat. The problem came from knowing the
Leipreachán’s
name.
Trása knew the true name of only one
Leipreachán —
told to her by her uncle, Marcroy Tarth, before she stepped into the reality where Rónán had been thrown, in her search for the missing Undivided twin. Marcroy had given her Plunkett O’Bannon’s true name, because without it, he wouldn’t have done a thing she wanted while they were away.
That meant the only
Leipreachán
in this reality who could fall into her trap was Plunkett’s
eileféin
.
Assuming he had one.
The idea of having only that annoying
Leipreachán
for company in this abandoned place depressed Trása even more than the thought of being alone. It would be just like being in Rónán’s reality again, only without the benefit of television.
But she couldn’t see any other way. She couldn’t open a rift. There was magic aplenty to allow a rift to be opened, and a stone
circle to focus the magic, but she had no jewel. Without the help of a
Leipreachán
, it might take her years to find one.
She had to find a way to open a rift. She needed to know if Rónán and Darragh lived. She wanted to be released from the curse that in her own reality kept her trapped as a barn owl. But first, Trása had to find a way to get home.
And she was running out of time, because if Rónán still lived, then so did Darragh. In only twelve days, back in the reality where they all belonged, the Druids would transfer the Undivided power to the new heirs and that would kill them both.
In twelve days, Trása knew, if she ever hoped to return to her own reality in human form, she had to stop the power transfer happening. In twelve days, RónánDarragh must return to their own realm united in order to remain the Undivided and keep their powers.
Only then could they free her from Marcroy’s curse.
By the following evening, Trása’s
Leipreachán
trap was almost complete. She’d seen a human settlement not far from the entrance to
Tír Na nÓg
, further along the coast. She had fought off a local flock of gulls to secure, from the local butcher’s midden heap, three scraps of bacon that hadn’t quite turned. She’d carefully flown them back here to
Tír Na nÓg
, all the way fighting off the urge to swallow them. She’d spent the rest of the morning weaving a loose basket from twigs and long stalks of grass.
When she was done, she examined her handiwork with a frown. The basket was too flimsy, the bacon too meagre. Would it be enough? Would Plunkett’s
eileféin
even have the same true name in this reality?
‘Only one way to find out,’ she said aloud, her voice sounding hollow and strange in this magical place which should have been filled with music and laughter. She looked around at the silent
majestic trees, wondering if they felt the loss of their magical occupants as much as she did.
Trása’s next task was to fashion a sling for the trap so she could carry it to the one place she was certain there were
Leipreachán
lurking in this realm. If they were there, she would find them. Once that was done, she changed back into bird form. This time, however, she changed into a speckled hawk. Stretching her wings to check she had the dimensions right, Trása picked the sling up with her beak and took to the air, off to catch herself a
Leipreachán.
Trása burst through the veil carrying her baited trap and turned for
CuanMó
, surprised to discover it was already dark. In
Tír Na nÓg
, time never moved at quite the same pace. She thought she’d been gone a few hours but a whole day had passed. That posed a real problem for Trása.
Tír Na nÓg
was the safest place in this realm to hide, but in her own realm, being half-
Beansídhe
meant she was immune to the Faerie kingdom’s time effects.
In this realm, where she didn’t really belong, she
was
affected. She would have to be careful about how much time she spent in that
Tír Na nÓg
. Days, even months or years, might slip by unnoticed if she wasn’t careful.
The realisation only increased the urgency of her mission. She needed to find a way home. Soon. If things weren’t quite the same in this realm, who knew what other differences there were and how they might affect her? Or her magical abilities?
Trása was pondering that, beating her powerful wings occasionally to stay aloft with her burden, when the sky suddenly exploded with light. The shock forced a cry of pain from her as the light seared her retinas, causing her to drop her bundle.
Screeching with frustration, white spots dancing before her eyes, she swooped down to search for it as another explosion rent the darkness. She scanned the forest beneath her, realising
she had little chance of finding her precious
Leipreachán
trap in the dark.
Another explosion. Now she changed direction and saw it was fireworks to the south.
That meant humans, she realised. Not the poor fisher-folk she’d found in their rude little village further to the north in her quest for bacon for her
Leipreachán
trap. Fireworks meant civilisation. People. Perhaps magicians with knowledge of how to escape this realm. Perhaps people who knew what had happened to Rónán.
Perhaps people like the woman in the kimono and her samurai, who’d tried to kill her.