Through the Door (15 page)

Eden was dragging her feet, so Nuala led them to the top of a small hill, where they sat on the grass, facing the sunset.

“Why couldn’t we stay in New York City?” Eden asked. “I liked that tall lady.”

Nuala pulled a chocolate bar out of her bag and handed it to Eden. “Because I told you, we need to go see the mermaids.”

“Mermaids aren’t real,” Eden said, but she sounded uncertain.

“They are, and I’ll prove it to you,” Nuala said. “It’s too late to go see them now. It’s hard enough to find them in the daytime, let alone at night. But first thing in the morning, we’ll go down to the coast and I’ll introduce you to one: the Mermaid Queen.” She gave Eden a playful nudge. “And then maybe you’ll believe me when I say you’re a fairy princess.”

Eden didn’t answer, her mouth full of chocolate and caramel.

Nuala lay down on her back and crossed her hands behind her head. This was the land her ancestors had conquered millennia ago, the land where so many of them had died in battle with other ancient races and, eventually, humans. She closed her eyes and tried to feel their power seeping up through the ground.
Why did you think this place was worth fighting for?
she asked them. There was no answer.

She glanced over at Eden, who had mimicked her and was now lying on her back and looking at the sky. This child was the key to her escape, she was sure of it. She remembered Lorcan’s edict during the waning days of the war.

Bring the child to me, alive, and you will be richly rewarded. All will be forgiven. Just bring me the child.

Eden was not the child he had meant, but she was a worthy substitute. It would be enough, and Nuala was desperate to return home. All would be forgiven, and the power and status she had once taken for granted would be returned to her at last.

The sooner they got there, the better. She stood up and brushed the grass off her legs. “Let’s go,” she said. “There’s a village down the road where we can stay the night. Then it’s off to see the mermaids.”

Nuala had to drag Eden out of bed the next morning. The child seemed more and more exhausted as time went on, and Nuala wondered if opening and closing the sidhe sapped her strength. Eden had created several over the past couple of days, as Nuala strived to keep herself and the girl away from the others while she gathered information and planned what to do next. Fortunately, Eden’s ability made it rather easy to stay one step ahead of the others, who must have noticed her absence by now and put two and two together.

Nuala and Eden headed back up the same dusty road they had walked the night before, but then veered off onto a small track that looked as though it had been made by animals, not people. The track led through a sparse and rocky field, dotted with the occasional scraggly bush. At last, they came to an outcropping of rock. In front of them stretched the ocean as far as the eye could see, still black and ominous in the early morning light. “Stay away from the edge,” she warned Eden.

Nuala peered down. About fifty yards directly below them, a rocky beach ran along the coastline for a couple hundred yards before meeting the vertical sides of the cliff. A woman dressed in a sheer white gown walked along the beach. She was pacing back and forth, from one end of the beach to the other, moaning such a mournful tone that Nuala felt the hair on her arms rise. On a small island of rock several yards from
shore was a battered old hut, big enough for two men, at most, to move around in. Nuala had heard the stories. Long ago, an aging fisherman had struck up a friendship with one of the Merrow, and this hut is where they would meet and get drunk together. There were no such friendships now, not since the Merrow queen had been betrayed by a human lover. Now the Merrow hid themselves from humans, all past affections forgotten.

Nuala swore as she saw Eden leaning over the cliff’s edge to get a better look. She yanked her back by her belt. “Are you stupid?” she said. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

Eden looked at Nuala in surprise, her face crumpling.

“Oh, don’t start crying,” Nuala snapped. “I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Is that the mermaid?” Eden sniffed. “Where’s her tail?”

“How the hell am I supposed to know?” Nuala said with a scowl. “I suppose we’ll have to go down and find out. And Eden, whatever I say to Deardra, just go along with it, okay? We need her to help us so you can get to your father, but I might need to make some things up. So it’s best you don’t say anything. Got it?”

Eden nodded, and Nuala hoped the kid would keep her mouth shut. She was nervous about meeting Deardra. The Merrows’ minds were not susceptible to Danann abilities such as hers, and there was bad blood between the races. Nuala knew she would have to resort to old-fashioned diplomacy, something that had never been her forte.

“I don’t want to go down there!” wailed Eden.

“Don’t worry. Brighid said there’s a rope here somewhere that should carry us down.” Nuala groped around until her eyes fell on a single golden thread that seemed to grow out
of the rock. She grabbed it and spoke the words Brighid had taught her.

“I mean no harm to the sea, or to those who dwell therein. I seek only to find, and not to take. If my words prove false, may I be buried forthwith beneath the waves, never to taste the air again.”

When she finished speaking, the rope grew thicker and sturdier in her hands. She told Eden to climb onto her back and wrap her hands around her neck. Clinging to the rope, she backed up and took a tentative step off the edge of the cliff, looking for a foothold. Eden screamed as all of a sudden they started dropping. But it was a controlled drop, and Nuala realized there was no need to climb down. The golden rope was dangling them out away from the rocks and gently lowering them to the beach below. When their feet touched the rocks, the rope receded to the top of the cliff. Nuala set Eden on the ground and turned to find the white woman standing only a foot away. Eden stared at her, eyes and mouth wide open. The woman’s gown was made out of sheer white fabric that clung to her wasted body as if she had just emerged from the ocean. Her skin was even paler than the dress, and tinged slightly with green. Her eyes were bloodshot, so much so that the whites were almost completely red, and her hair was the color of the deep purple sky Nuala and Eden had reclined beneath the previous night. It fell in a series of tangles and knots down the length of her back.

Nuala was unsure of the proper protocol, so she simply asked, “Deardra, Queen of the Merrow?”

The woman looked at them both. Then she spoke in a rasping voice that grated against Nuala’s nerves like a steel block being dragged across a cement floor. “It has been many
years since the Tuatha Dé Danann have deigned to visit these shores.”

“Yes, it has been,” Nuala said uncertainly. “I bring greetings from my people. I am Fionnghuala. This child is Eden. As you know, many of our people have been exiled from our home, and we seek a way to return. This child has the ability to take us there, but first she must see where we are going. Therefore, I have come to you on behalf of my people to request that you show this child the painting of Tír na nÓg that was given to you by our Elder, Brighid. We do not wish to take it, only to look at it. You will have our gratitude.”

“The gratitude of the Tuatha Dé Danann is worth as much to me as their excrement,” rasped the woman. Nuala struggled to keep her expression passive, while inside she seethed at the insult.

“There is, however, something I desire that has much more value to me than your gratitude,” Deardra continued.

“And what is that?”

“The closed-mindedness of your race has probably not prevented you from noticing that I stand here on this shore instead of in my rightful place in the waters.”

Nuala pursed her lips together, and Deardra continued. “I am not too proud to admit that I was a fool,” she said. “You are no doubt aware that I once took a human as my lover, and have paid dearly for it.” The look on Deardra’s face was murderous. “This man stole from me the cohuleen druith, and without it I cannot enter the water. Return it to me, and I will do as you ask.”

“I share your distaste for humans,” Nuala said. “I am sorry that you were so betrayed, but not surprised. Tell me where
I can find this man, and I will see to it that he pays for his betrayal.”

“There is a village two leagues to the northeast, called Doonacuirp. He’ll be an old man by now, and I would slit his throat myself if I could leave this cursed shore.”

“Why can’t you leave?” It was Eden who spoke, and Nuala hissed at her to be silent. Deardra squatted to face the girl, who stepped closer to Nuala.

Deardra reached out a long green nail and lifted a lock of Eden’s brown hair, then let it fall. “Because, little one, if I leave these shores for any reason the Merrow will choose a new queen, and then I will be at her mercy. And Deardra is at no one’s mercy.”

She stood up and came so close that Nuala could see the hundreds of red veins crisscrossing the queen’s eyes. “So it seems we can make some use of each other. His name is Seamus Kilpatrick. Bring me back the cohuleen druith stained with his blood, and I will show you your homeland.” Then she turned and, wringing her hands and moaning, walked away toward the other end of the rocky shore.

Nuala was strong, stronger than any human, but even she was growing weary of carrying a fifty-pound child as she trudged for miles through the Irish countryside. Perhaps it was the incessant whining that was taxing her strength, not the weight.

“Are we there yet?” Eden grumbled for the umpteenth time.

“I thought I told you to shut up,” Nuala said. The cheerful, pacifying facade she had tried to maintain over the past
couple of days had completely unraveled. “Do you want me to make you walk?”

“No,” Eden muttered against her back. Nuala wished she could just dump the child somewhere while she dealt with Deardra’s ex-lover, but Eden had started complaining about how long this was taking, and asking about her father, and crying for her mother. Nuala didn’t want to let her out of her sight in case she found a door somewhere and decided it was time to go home.

At last, they arrived at Doonacuirp. Eden slid down off Nuala’s back. “I’m hungry,” she whined.

“We’ll get food later,” Nuala said. “First we have to find this cohuleen druith.”

“What is it?” Eden asked.

“Didn’t your useless mother teach you anything?” Nuala said. When Eden’s bottom lip started to poke out, she quickly added, “If I tell you, will you stop whining?”

Eden nodded, and Nuala rolled her eyes and said, “Yeah, right. I suppose you would call it a hat of sorts.”

“Is that why her hair is so messy? Because she lost her hat?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Nuala replied tersely. “It’s important to them. It’s a part of their bodies, like wings are for birds. Taking away a Merrow’s cohuleen druith removes her tail and leaves her stranded on dry ground. I can’t believe Deardra was stupid enough to get so close to a human that he could take it from her.”

“Why’d he take it?” Eden asked.

“I don’t know and I don’t care,” Nuala said. “Stop asking questions.”

She picked up the pace, dragging Eden behind her. She was confident the task wouldn’t take long. There was nothing
stopping her from bewitching the whole village if she had to. They walked along the main road until they came to a small general store. Nuala pushed the door open, and the young man at the counter looked up. His jaw was slack as he stared openly at her.
Pathetic,
she thought.

“Tell me where I can find Seamus Kilpatrick,” she said, not wasting time on pleasantries.

The young man’s eyes glazed over and he said, “Old Stumpy? You’ll be finding him down at the pub, I reckon, havin’ his lunch. Eats there every day, so he does.”

“Where’s the pub?” Nuala asked.

“Just down the road,” the man said, pointing.

She spun on her heel and left the store, dragging Eden by the hand. “Can we get some lunch too?” Eden asked. “I’m starving!”

“I said, later!” Nuala hissed. She saw the sign for the Slug and Lettuce up ahead. She could hear Eden sniffling as she trailed along behind her, but ignored it.