Tyger Tyger (12 page)

Finn had his knife in his boot and his kit over his shoulder when they went back to the park. They stood together at the spot where the shadow men had appeared.

"Well," Finn said, "let's try it." There was no shimmering under the trees as they walked forward. Nothing looked out of place or odd. But as she passed under the trees, Teagan felt something brush her skin—and suddenly it felt as if a million tiny fingertips were touching her. She'd walked in this park a thousand times, and nothing like this had ever happened before.

"It's tickling me!" Aiden shouted.

Teagan gripped his hand and kept on walking. The tickling stopped as suddenly as it had begun, and Teagan blinked. The light around them changed. The sun was shining from a different direction; she was sure of it. The trees were still familiar, though. They were standing under the old willow. Behind it, the trees grew denser and darker.

"Where are we, Tea?" Aiden asked.

"I'm not sure." The air smelled wild and delicious, with none of the overtones of city exhaust or human refuse that always tinged the air of Chicago. There was no park fence in sight.

Teagan grabbed Aiden's arm and pulled him out of the way as a group of tiny, shaggy elephants walked out from under a bush.

They were the size of puppies, but they walked in a line like any respectable elephant herd, the smallest hurrying to keep up.

The bull paused, rooted through a pile of leaves with its proboscis, then blinked up at Teagan in nearsighted surprise. It lifted its trunk and made a squeaky trumpet sound. The whole herd bolted for the trees, but they didn't hide behind them as Teagan had expected. They walked straight up the rough bark of the trunks, apparently gripping it with their toes. Then they clung to the lower side of a branch far above her head and somehow folded themselves up until they looked like shaggy gray seedpods hanging from the tree.

"Did you see that, Finn?" Teagan asked. "Finn?" She was talking to thin air. Wherever they were, Finn hadn't come along.

"Look." Aiden pointed. A tree snake disturbed by the elephant herd launched itself into the air. It flattened its body, glided toward another tree, and wrapped itself safely around a branch.

"Where are we?" Teagan whispered.

"Someplace with elephant trees and flying snakes," Aiden said. "Where's Finn?"

The air shimmered even as he spoke, and Finn staggered into being, almost running into Teagan.

"There you are!" he said. "You had me worried, disappearing like that."

"What happened?" Teagan asked.

"It—whatever it is that let us in—wouldn't allow me to bring my knife," Finn explained. "I'd get halfway, and bounce back. Mamieo told me about this. No iron in Mag Mell. I had to hide the knife in the bushes before I could get through."

"Mag Mell?"

"The kingdom of Fear Doirich. Only one living soul has set foot here and come out to tell about it, and that's Mamieo herself." He didn't look happy.

"And?"

"We need to go quietly. Don't draw attention. Goblins walk here, and those that serve the wicked creatures."

I HEAR music," Aiden said. It was violin music, sweet and sad at the same time. They followed the sounds through a dark band of trees and into a clearing.

Teagan thought the fiddler was hidden behind a tree stump until she saw the stick-thin arms holding up the fiddle, and the rags hanging from what once must have been legs. The fiddler's hair, matted and full of twigs and bird droppings, hung almost to his knees. His ragged pants ended just below the hair. The soles of his bare feet were flat on the ground, but his toes were bent and dug into the dirt. They looked...
wrong.

"Hello?" Teagan said. The fiddler started, the bow scraping across the strings like a scream. He turned his face to them. His skin was turning to bark. It already covered one eye and all of his mouth. He brushed the hair out of his remaining eye with the back of the hand that held the bow, and blinked at them. The eye closed, and a tear squeezed between the lashes.

"Can we help you?" Teagan knelt by his feet and brushed the dirt away from his toes. They curled, rootlike and too long, into the dirt. She tried pulling on one, and the fiddle screeched.

"You can't help him that way, Tea," Finn said. "It's a spell that's holding him. Unless it's broken, he's not going anywhere."

Teagan stood up and used her sleeve to wipe the tear from the fiddler's cheek. "I'll find a way to help you, I pr—"

Finn clapped his hand over her mouth. "You don't make promises in Mag Mell. Not until you understand what it means. Things work differently here—that's what Mamieo says. You've got to think before you speak. It could get you killed, you understand?"

Teagan nodded, and he let her go.

Finn turned to the fiddler. "Did Fear Doirich do this to you, then?"

The fiddle spoke a single note.

"He said yes." Aiden reached out and touched the filthy ropelike hair.

"We'll help you if we can," Finn said. "Come on, you two. Time to go."

"Finn," Teagan protested.

"There's nothing we can do for the man," Finn said. "We've got to find your da." He turned to walk into the dark woods.

The fiddler's eye grew wide when he saw Finn walking away. He turned to Teagan, and the bark where his mouth should have been stretched and caved in, as if that mouth had opened in a shout. Aiden's fingers were tangled in the rope hair, his own mouth open, tears on his cheeks.

"I'm sorry," Teagan said, pulling Aiden's hand away.

The fiddler shook his head wildly, pointing his bow back the way they had come.

"We can't," Teagan said. "We have to find my dad."

The fiddler put his fiddle to his chin and played savagely. He stopped and pointed back the way they had come once more.

Teagan shook her head.

Aiden put his hands over his ears as they walked away, and Teagan didn't blame him. The fiddle's warning had turned to sobs. They walked at least a mile before the sound of the music faded.

Aiden stopped. "It's wrong," he said.

"What's wrong?" Teagan asked.

"Our house is that way"—Aiden pointed over his shoulder—"but the fiddler is that way." He pointed ahead. "We'll be back to him soon."

"You're turned around, boyo," Finn said. "The sun's been at our back the whole time. We've been walking west." But they had gone only a few hundred more yards when they heard the sobbing of the fiddle again. It grew louder as they walked.

"I told you," Aiden said. "Everything's all twisty here."

"Let's turn around," Tea said. "We can follow our own tracks until we figure out where we went wrong. We won't find Dad walking in circles."

She took the lead, watching for footprints or broken vegetation where they had passed. The music faded behind them.

"We never came this way," Finn said.

"We did." Teagan pointed at a clear sneaker print and put her foot down beside it to make another. It was a perfect match, down to the gravel caught in the tread.

"All right," Finn said. "But none of this looks familiar."

They followed the tracks for ten more minutes, until they came to a sandy patch where the tracks clearly came up out of a deep green pool of water.

"That's not possible." Teagan pressed her foot in the sand. The print was still a perfect match. The tracks had to be hers.

"I told you it was all twisty here." Aiden pointed. "We should go that way."

"Then we'll follow you for a while, boyo," Finn said. "Everyone else has had a go." Aiden led them through bushes and marshy ground, but they never crossed their own tracks. When the trees thinned and grew taller, Teagan finally pulled him to a stop. "Where are we going?"

"Away from our house," Aiden said. "Because Dad isn't home."

"That actually makes sense," Finn said.

"Right." Teagan jumped and caught the lowest branch of the pine tree that towered above them. "I'm going to climb up and see if I can see the library. We have to have some idea which way we are really heading if we want to find our way back again." She scrambled onto the branch, then started to work her way higher.

"Do you see anything?" Aiden called.

"I'm not high enough yet," Teagan called back. A howl echoed through the woods. Teagan gripped the tree trunk as a chorus of howls answered. Something was moving through the brush on the far side of the clearing. It was coming too fast for her to get out of the tree and back to her brother.

'Aiden, Finn!" she called as loudly as she dared. "Hide. Hide now."

She didn't know if Finn heard her, or if the sounds themselves moved him, but he grabbed Aiden and dove for the thornbushes just as a doe burst into the clearing.

The young deer paused, her sides heaving, a bloody froth dripping from her nostrils. The doe's ears swiveled toward the baying. She shuddered, then leaped forward again, past Finn's hiding place, under the tree, and out the other side of the clearing.

The doe had barely disappeared when her pursuers exploded into sight. The leader was a massive creature with a man's body and the head of a dog. There were two or three like him in the pack, and others with the legs of elk and torsos of men. Two looked as human as the goblin that had taken her father away. They ran naked and dirty at the back of the pack. Teagan wrapped her arms around the tree and prayed as they passed beneath her—for herself, for Finn and Aiden ... for the monsters to go away.

One dog-headed man hesitated, his nose twitching as he turned toward Finn and Aiden's hiding place. He whined, licked his chops, then raced off after the pack. It took them only seconds to get through the clearing and disappear from sight, but Teagan had to force her hands to let go of the tree so she could scramble down.

"Who ... what were they?" she asked as Finn came out of the bushes.

"Shape shifters," Finn said. "The goblins have strange powers. Some can fully take the form of beasts. Others can only partially transform."

"They were scary," Aiden said.

"You saw them?" Teagan asked.

"Not all of them. I covered my eyes so the monsters couldn't see me."

The air was ripped apart by a scream, almost human in its agony.

"They got her," Teagan said.

"Her?" Aiden asked. "You mean that deer?"

"She was a yearling doe. I think one of the man-dogs ... smelled us."

"Let's get out of here," Finn said. "We need to talk to Mamieo."

"What about Dad?" Aiden whispered.

"We can't help him if we can't find him," Finn said. "Mamieo can help us do that."

"All right," Tea agreed. "Can you find the way out, Aiden?"

"I can find our house. It's that way." He pointed north—or what would have been north, if they had been walking west.

"You're sure?" Finn asked.

"I'm always sure."

Somewhere in the distance, a dog-headed man bayed. The sound sent shivers down Teagan's spine.

"They couldn't have finished their meal yet," she said. "A pack of hunting animals usually stays by the kill for a day or two. They wouldn't want to leave it."

"Maybe they don't hunt for the eating," Finn said. "Maybe they hunt for the killing."

The howl sounded again, and Finn glanced at her over Aiden's head. It was closer, and the pack answered with the same hungry sound it had when it was hunting the doe.

"You're sure we're headed toward home?" Teagan asked. Aiden nodded.

"Time for a piggyback, my man." Finn pulled Aiden up onto his back. "Tell me which way to go. Keep up, Tea." Finn set out at a steady trot, his long legs eating up the ground. He jumped logs and ducked under branches as if Aiden weighed nothing.

Teagan did her best to keep up. A dull ache started in her side, and she concentrated on breathing through it.

"How much farther do you think, Aiden?" Finn asked.

"I don't know how far," Aiden said. "I only know which way."

Tea glanced back over her shoulder. She couldn't see anything through the dense underbrush, but she could hear them coming.

"Don't look back, Tea," Finn said. "Just run. Keep up with me."

The pain in her side was stabbing, and Teagan thought her lungs would burst. She stumbled and looked back. She could see them. Human torsos and beast snouts alike were smeared with the blood of the doe they had just pulled down. They weren't running full out as they had been before. They were loping along, their tongues hanging out, enjoying the scent of fear.

"Teagan!" Finn shouted. "You have to keep up."

Teagan whirled and took off after him. Finn slowed, matching his pace to hers.

"Get Aiden out of here," she said, gasping.

"We're all getting out," he said. "Run faster." Aiden clung to Finn's back, his eyes closed. Teagan focused on her legs, willing her muscles to move faster, her steps to reach farther.

Suddenly, the air shimmered in front of her. She felt the tingle of a million tiny fingers on her skin, and she was fighting her way through honey-thick air. Something caught at her shirt ... and she tripped and fell face-first onto the ground under the ancient willow.

Finn dropped Aiden and jumped for the knife he'd hidden in the bushes. He came up with it in his hand, but nothing came through after them.

"Keep moving," Finn said. "You carry Aiden now. There's no telling why they didn't come through, or if they're on their way."

Teagan took Aiden's hand. "I need to go home. Just for a little while. I'll figure it out there. I need to go home, Finn."

"All right," Finn said. "Just move." He relaxed a little when they made it to the street without anything poofing into the park behind them.

"Your shirt's ripped, Tea," Aiden said.

"Let's see." Finn stepped behind her. "It's half gone. You've got some scratches there, too. You can't walk around like that. It'll draw attention." He took a T-shirt out of his kit. Teagan pulled it on over her torn shirt. It hung almost to her knees.

Aiden held her hand as they walked down the streets. Teagan wasn't sure whether he was protecting her, or needed protection. Either way, he wouldn't let go.

"Not good," Finn said when they turned the corner onto their street. There were two police cruisers parked in front of the house, and a crowd gathered outside. The goblin that had taken their father was talking to a police officer. There was another one with him, older and taller. They both wore suits and wraparound sunglasses.