Chapter 3
The rain went on all day, and Inkiri and I eventually made it from the kitchen to the living room.
It took up most of the rest of the first floor, not counting the conservatory.
The wooden rafters continued here, and several carpets spread out every which way to cover the nice hardwood floor.
A large shelf with a Bluetooth speaker, an old radio, and an even older TV narrowed the room before it opened up to the wide glass sliding doors into the conservatory.
Then there was a second set of doors that led outside, where I could see a nice big patio.
Rubber boots stood on a large metal plate just inside the door, while outside, puddles had already formed on the patio and the lawn beyond.
Inkiri decided to park us on Donna’s couch, and I promptly zoned out there, soothed by the sensation of Inkiri’s chest rising and falling evenly under my cheek.
He’d become my voluntary pillow and kept himself occupied with a book he’d picked out from Donna’s shelf.
It was a romance, and he’d sunk into the story, an expression of intense concentration on his light blue face.
We ended up falling asleep on the couch, or at least I did.
As soon as I drifted off, my awareness spread, and I somehow knew Donna was busy preserving apples in a shed outside.
Wilson had followed her, and the chicken stared up at Donna.
She knew humans could be mesmerized into doing all kinds of things for a chicken, such as dropping a few apple slices.
If that didn’t work, there were always the snails the rain brought.
Kinnek and Vergis actually weren’t around, or at least, they weren’t anywhere near the farm.
That made me jolt and groan in my half sleep, and Inkiri clicked softly and checked to make sure I was under the blanket and tugged snugly against him. Seriously, how did I deserve someone so caring and kind?
I found Kinnek and Vergis moments later when my awareness drifted farther out.
I’d started looking for them without even realizing it.
They had hopped through the veils, I was pretty sure.
Right now, they were at the Stone of Destiny.
The Hill of Tara was bathed in a red and golden sunset, the rain that had made the day look gray on our end not stretching that far to the east.
Kinnek and Vergis were both armed, their hands resting on the handles of the pistols holstered at their sides.
Kinnek looked at the ground and nudged something with his foot. “Spent cartridges, and plenty of them. It must’ve been quite a fight.”
Vergis let his sharp gaze wander over the Hill. “You have no idea. It was more like an ambush. They were coming from all sides. Inki’s group said they checked the area when they first got here though.”
“Vergis, he’s Inkiri to you.” Kinnek sounded stern, almost like he was ready to cut Vergis’s allowance on top of grounding him.
“Gee, sorry. Anyway, they said there wasn’t any sign of people here. And they’re good—they wouldn’t have missed that many humans hiding in the bushes.”
Kinnek gave a clipped nod. “Yes, I’m inclined to trust them on that as well, but I think we should check the wider area for more traces of magic, not just the Stone.”
Vergis nodded, and the two of them walked around the Hill. I wanted to leave them to it and sink into proper sleep, but it made me uneasy. What if there were more people lying in wait there to ambush them? What if they needed help?
With a pang, I realized that no one was close enough to get to them if that happened. That grain of panic rolled down the steep hills of my mind, gathering momentum and mass.
I am here, I heard—or felt—that foreign yet familiar presence say in my mind. They will be safe, Rory.
Would they? That opened up so many questions. I wanted to ask, but wasn’t even sure where to begin, especially since a part of me didn’t want to know.
What I did do was trust in the voice and allow myself to fall deeper into sleep. Inkiri brushed a finger over my cheek, and I smiled just before I drifted off.
Sleep came, but it was the magic-tinged kind I’d experienced right after the shootout at the Stone, only worse.
I was back on the Hill of Tara, or at least close enough to recognize the shape it cut against the horizon.
Everything looked different. The church was gone.
There were more trees. The vegetation I could see grew where earlier, Vergis and Kinnek had looked out over the sunset-tinged field. But it was the same place, I just knew.
The scene took a while to come fully into focus, like how your eyes needed a moment if you got woken from deep sleep, but when it did, I could see smoke rising in the distance and feel rain on my skin.
At the same time, I knew I wasn’t really there.
It was a suspended and unreal feeling, although I understood that all of it was real in some sense of the word.
“Hello?” I heard myself speak over the sound of the rain falling, even if I shouldn’t have had a voice here that could carry.
I spun around. The Stone of Destiny wasn’t far away.
I could see it through the bushes and trees that now grew here.
Something moving on my other side made me peer harder through the rain.
There. People were coming this way, two of them, their hoods drawn over their faces while they pulled their cloaks tight around their shoulders to shield themselves against the weather.
One person was taller than the other, and when they looked up, I saw a woman with green eyes, her expression haunted. The other person turned their head to look over their shoulder. When they looked back, I saw that they were just a girl, wide-eyed and scared.
They spoke to one another, but the drumming rain carried the words away.
The two of them were holding hands, their steps quickening as they approached the Stone, first into a jog, then a run.
“Spergho,” I heard the taller one say, voice hushed, as she passed. There was a moment there where she looked up, and I could’ve sworn she locked eyes with me. But the moment passed, and she didn’t acknowledge me beyond it.
With nothing better to do and no reason I could see for a weird dream like this, I followed them. The girls’ clothing was rough and muddy, a thin, thorny piece of branch sticking to the hem of the younger girl’s coat. Their shoes were leather, sewn together and tied with rough string.
I had seen shoes just like those two years ago when Cat and Jacob and I had spent two days in Dublin.
While Cat and Jacob had made use of the hotel bed, I’d gone to the museum where a bog body’s clothes had been on display, and these shoes looked really similar to what I’d admired behind glass that day.
Sure, the weave of the bog body’s clothing had been pretty elaborate, and what they wore didn’t look like that, but… there was some connection there.
This was a dream, so I couldn’t sigh, but it was pretty unfair that I couldn’t dream about normal stuff, like standing naked on stage in front of a packed theater with my parents and friends sitting in the front row and gaping.
Back in the dream I was actually having, the taller of the girls took a step back when the two of them reached the Stone. She put her hands on the younger’s shoulders, and then she turned her head and looked straight at me again.
“Hey, can you see me?” I asked.
She tilted her head ever so slightly, so I knew she’d heard me. There was hesitation there, but then she shook her head, bent forward, and whispered something in the other girl’s ear.
All of this felt like it was really happening. Normal dreams didn’t have this level of realism to them. This was…unsettling, to say the least.
The smaller girl reached out with both hands to touch the Stone, a lot like I had done before the shooting had happened. Her palms connected, and she leaned forward toward the Stone as if she were waiting for something. Except nothing happened. The Stone didn’t sing for her.
The taller girl sighed and bowed her head in resignation.
Over the pelting rain, the panting and hoofbeats of horses echoed, and just a moment after I’d heard it, the girls looked up. Their green eyes went wide, and they bolted, running in the opposite direction at full speed.
I had no idea what the point was of me being here, or if there even was one.
This already felt uncomfortably like the damn commune, where all the girls had been afraid most of the time.
I didn’t want to be reminded of that. I didn’t want it to happen, not to anyone, and I didn't want the anger and helplessness that came with knowing it did. I was so effing aware of how privileged that way of thinking was, so I wasn’t even going to try to excuse it.
I ran with the girls. Maybe I could help them, distract the horses or something.
Maybe I’d died while I was asleep on Inkiri and I was a ghost now.
I hoped not, and it wouldn’t explain why the place looked older, felt older, but I was going to at least try all the ghost things I knew about from the movies.
As I ran, I watched two of the horses close in on the smaller girl. Everything happened so fast, and I was so slow. One of the riders bent low and picked her up out of her run. She started kicking and screaming. I did too until a flash of auburn hair from my other side caught my eye.
The taller girl was still running, and she took a sharp left and dropped to the ground, then rolled into a thicket of branches and thorns.
I slowed. The riders were screaming. I couldn’t understand what they were saying. The language was nothing I’d ever heard before, but there was something familiar about it, something in the cadence that made me think I could almost understand the words, just not quite.
The girl the rider had picked up was like a wild raccoon, and the rider who had her on his horse was hissing. She didn’t give a flying fuck and kicked him, hopefully where it hurt.