Chapter Twenty-Six
Emer hadn’t watched a horse race in years. Honestly, she couldn’t remember the last one she’d seen. Gráinne’s family had invited her out of kindness, but she genuinely looked forward to spending the afternoon with them.
Teague had informed them over dinner that the horses raced along the eastern edge of Cruachan Aí—a more challenging course with its hills, ravines, and thick forest—and the races started at midday.
Just as the sun closed the distance to its zenith, Emer and Alannah arrived at the starting line of the race. Hundreds of onlookers stood nearby. Some sat on blankets eating their midday meal. Others held small children on their shoulders so they could see over the growing crowd.
“I see them.” Alannah bumped Emer’s shoulder with her own, pointing toward the tree line. “I don’t see Gráinne, though.”
Emer couldn’t see a thing over the wall of people in front of her. When they came within her limited sight, Emer noted two things: First, she really needed to learn their names, as she’d somehow never managed it yesterday. And second, they looked upset.
“Is everything alright?” Emer asked, hurrying to meet them.
“Gráinne’s gone.” A darkness fell upon the man’s face. “We’ve been searching all morning. We can’t find her anywhere.”
A strangled sob escaped the woman, her hands covering her face as she stumbled toward Emer. Emer gave the woman’s shoulders a reassuring squeeze.
“When did you last see her?” Alannah asked, getting straight to the point as usual.
“In our tent last night. We all laid down for bed, and when we woke she was gone.” Her father managed to keep himself composed enough to answer.
Her mother could do naught but cry, and Emer couldn’t blame her a bit for it. She’d be doing just the same were it her daughter.
A pang wrenched her chest at that thought. It was unbearable knowing that Broccan had gone through something much like this.
“Maybe she got up early and got turned around in the crowd,” Emer offered. “Even I get confused with so many folk in one place.”
The man shook his head once. The woman buried her face in her arms, collapsing deeper into Emer. “She’d never wander like that. We had a good long talk before coming here, and she’s a good girl. She listens.”
“Where’s your tent?” Alannah asked. “Maybe we can look around for a clue.”
The man turned on his heels, motioning for them to follow. He walked all the way through the enormous crowd, continuing toward the dark tree line.
A shiver rolled down Emer’s spine. “You camped near the forest?”
“Emer,” Alannah’s voice held a note of warning. “Not now.”
He turned toward Emer. “We know everyone says it’s haunted.
We’ve heard the tales, same as everyone else.
I didn’t put much stock in such things until this morning.
She just vanished. No screaming, not a thing out of place.
Her cloak was missing, too, like she’d gone on purpose.
” His brown eyes were as wild as the seas.
Emer bit her lower lip. She had a very bad feeling about this. “Let’s go have a look, then.” She chanced a glance at Alannah and found an all-too-familiar expression on her sister’s face.
It was the same one Alannah wore when she snuck away from the farm as a child to practice swords with their brothers. Or when she’d decided they were selling the farm. Or when she charged Oran to defend Emer. It was a look of pure determination.
And on Alannah, it was a dangerous thing.
Her father had spoken true. Not a single thing was out of place in the small tent they all shared. After they finished searching the inside of the tent, Alannah cornered Emer behind it.
“You know she wasn’t taken by ghosts, right?” she whispered.
Emer narrowed her eyes at her skeptic of a sister. “It certainly sounds that way to me.”
“Really?” Alannah hissed. “Because it sounds to me like a young girl wandered off in the middle of the night to relieve herself and got lost.”
“If that’s the case, then why didn’t she reply when they were yelling for her?” Emer challenged.
Alannah shrugged. “Maybe she fell. Maybe she was injured and couldn’t call out in response. Maybe she wandered farther than they expected. Maybe she was hiding and asleep somewhere. It could be any of a hundred reasons.”
Emer frowned at her. “What are you getting after?” Alannah never made such a fuss for no reason, and Emer suspected she was not going to like where this was headed one bit.
“There’s a twelve-year-old girl wandering—lost, alone, and possibly hurt—through thousands of acres of forest.”
“It’s terrible,” Emer agreed, “but we’re doing everything we can to help find her.”
“Are we?”
Emer sucked in a breath. “Alannah, no.” She shook her head, steeling herself for battle. “We are absolutely not trekking through the forest to find her. I’m certain we can find someone else who’s far more capable. Teague’s guards, perhaps?”
Alannah leveled her a look dripping with skepticism. “They were up drinking all night. They’re in no shape to go tromping through the woods for a sennight, even if Teague agreed to let them leave for that long. But I am both able and willing.”
“No.” Emer pretended she was dealing with Broccan that first day, digging deep down for some much-needed boldness. “What would Conan say? Or Broccan? I promised him I’d be careful. Safe.”
“You’re not coming with me,” Alannah countered. “So you would be.”
Emer’s hands landed on her hips in tight fists.
“Oh, no you don’t. I’m so sick and tired of being the weak one.
The useless one. The burden. If you’re capable of going in search of Gráinne, then so am I.
So if you go, do it knowing that you’ll be the one to explain to Broccan why you dragged the pair of us into the depths of Tethba. ”
She didn’t say it, but she didn’t trust Alannah to make reasonable choices on the journey, either. Alannah was brave and strong, but a touch impulsive. Emer was always the one to temper her bad ideas, and if she couldn’t stop this one entirely, she would at least tag along to mitigate the damage.
Alannah pursed her lips, but didn’t argue.
“If there really are no ghosts or Fair Folk,” Emer pushed her advantage, “if it really is just a case of a girl lost in the woods, then it shouldn’t be dangerous anyway. And if it is ghosts, I will never let you forget that I was right.”
A mischievous half smile cracked one corner of Alannah’s mouth. “You’re such an arse, you know that? Challenging me to trick me into agreeing.”
“And?” It wasn’t the first time Emer had done it, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. “Did it work?”
“Unbelievably, yes,” Alannah sighed. “I’m more prideful than I realized.
And I really am worried about Gráinne. Imagine if it were me or you, how worried we’d be.
Even with your reluctance for adventure, I know you’d come looking for me in a heartbeat.
This little girl deserves the same, even though she hasn’t her own sister to do it for her. ”
“We’re going to be methodical about this,” Emer told her.
“We make a plan to search the woods in the most efficient way. We stay together. And we return in a sennight whether we’ve found her or not.
” Though the thought sent a bolt of pain straight through her heart, Emer knew that if the girl was missing that long, she probably wouldn’t be found, at least not alive.
Alannah’s eyes burned like chalcedony embers. “I’ll go tell her parents. We leave in an hour.”
It took an entire day to walk the path through the forest that led to Cluain Lis Becc from Ath Luain, and the forest spread far wider than the length of that path. And they weren’t in Ath Luain.
From their starting point at Cruachan Aí, they had days of travel eastward and a river to ford.
If they were to search the entire forest, it would take over a week, possibly a fortnight.
They spread out within easy sight of one another, sweeping back and forth through the thick trees.
By sundown on the first day of searching, they’d made it about a quarter of the way along the path, with no sign of Gráinne.
Emer served them the waybread and hard, sharp cheese she’d packed, along with some apples and smoked salmon.
They sat without a fire in the warm summer evening, the silence of defeat looming far too near.
Emer didn’t know whether she believed they’d find Gráinne, but she’d certainly hoped.
They still had three more days, maybe more depending on how deep into the forest they ventured.
But she couldn’t shake the feeling of failure that settled on her shoulders as she chewed the salty fish.
“We’ll go deeper tomorrow,” Alannah said quietly, as though reading Emer’s thoughts. “We made good time today. We’ll take longer tomorrow.”
Emer nodded, swallowing hard and praying harder. After their brief meal, the four travelers laid out their blankets along the side of the road in as close to a circle as they could with the brush that covered the forest floor. Emer’s mind fought hard, but she eventually fell into an uneasy sleep.
She awoke. Wide awake sometime in the night, Emer sat up, looking around. Listening.
Nothing was out of place, yet the hairs on her neck and arms stood on end. The night birds sang. The wind whistled through the leaves above. Alannah slept a few feet away peacefully. Unable to determine what had woken her, Emer started to lie back down.
Then she heard it.
Crying.
Her heart pounded so loud she felt it in her shoulders. Someone was close. “Gráinne?”
“Help.” It was a whimper, so quiet that Emer strained to make it out as a word.
“Stay right there,” she ordered, grabbing her cloak. “I’m coming to help you.”
There were no ghosts. There were no ghosts. She repeated Alannah’s words over and over as she stepped westward into the forest. It was just a lost girl who needed finding. The ghosts were all made up.
The crying continued, growing louder as Emer neared. “Gráinne?” she called again, squinting in the dark. The moon was little help in the thick cover of the trees. “I’m almost to you.”
A few more steps and she’d be right around the source of the crying.
Something flew across her field of vision, a blur of movement ten feet ahead of her.
A panicked gasp escaped her. It wasn’t a ghost. There were no ghosts. “Gráinne, don’t run,” she hissed. She wasn’t about to turn away, not when she’d finally found the poor thing.
Emer rounded a massive oak, old as the world itself, and found a shivering girl in a tattered dress. It was Gráinne. Tears carved through the mud on her face. She looked up at Emer with pained brown eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
Before Emer could assure her she had nothing to be sorry for, a hand clasped over Emer’s mouth, stifling her startled scream.