Chapter 16 #2
He smiled, and the fangs were gone. “This is the face that suits my current task.”
“It’s not a bad face.”
Angus smelled like cedar and fresh-cut wood. Something spicy with a hint of vanilla or chocolate. She was glad she hadn’t sat on the other end of the table.
Carys reached over and spooned some roasted vegetables onto her plate. “This looks great. I’m surprised there’s so many vegetables. Duncan’s table is usually way more meat and potatoes.”
“I do not eat flesh,” Angus said, “of any kind. The matron of the house has been accommodating.”
“Huh.” Somehow that didn’t surprise her. “You look like a hippie professor I had as an undergrad. Only more British.”
He was Pan. Puck. A nature god of some kind or other.
It was no wonder that Angus could put on an attractive face if he wanted to. Pan was notorious for attracting women to him like flies to honey.
“I am not British.” Angus raised his teacup. “Though I do like their tea. We are traveling to Sherwood Forest when the party has recovered.”
“Like Robin Hood of Sherwood Forest?”
“That’s one of my names, you know.” Angus winked at her. “They sometimes call me Robin here. But we are not going to see Robin; we are going to see a man you may call Jack.”
“Jack.”
Angus nodded. “He goes by many names and many faces, but in this world at this time, you may call him Jack.”
“And Jack is one of the druids I need to meet?”
Angus nodded. “He is.”
“Okay.” She was just going with this supernatural road trip. “A mystical druid named Jack. And what will the druids tell me? How to defeat the Morrígan?”
She’d already faced one challenge battling a sea monster. If myth was any guide, she had at least two more challenges to go.
Then again, myths in the Brightlands and the reality of the supernatural in the Shadowlands rarely lined up.
Angus flipped the paper around. “Did you see the headlines today?” He pointed at the top one. “‘Mystery Mound: Still No Answers on Geological Anomaly in Salisbury.’ Here’s another one.” He pointed farther down the page. “‘The Fairies Return? How to Keep Your Children Safe.’”
Carys leaned forward. “Holy shit.”
“Apparently there has been a rash of strange attacks on children in London parks. Bites that look like tiny teeth. Cuts and odd bruises that seem to come out of nowhere. The government is currently saying it’s an invasive insect from overseas, but I can assure you” —Angus leaned forward— “this pest is very, very native-born.”
“Okay, I get it.” The potatoes turned dry in her mouth. “Things are getting weirder.”
“Your task is not to defeat the Morrígan. That is impossible. But you must draw her back to the Shadowlands where her magic can be contained and keep her from rousing more of the old magic in this place.”
Duncan stormed into the room. “Did you see the online” —he glared and waved a hand in the air— “things?”
Carys pulled out her mobile phone. “You really do not use a lot of social media, do you?”
“Fuck no,” Duncan said. “Why would I choose to look at that depressing shite?”
Carys shrugged. “Funny duck videos?”
Angus said, “I like kittens.”
Carys almost asked, To eat? But she resisted. He’d just mentioned that he was vegetarian.
“Look at it.” Duncan pointed to her phone. “Mary was just showing me. She’s everywhere. Macha, I mean.”
Carys shot Angus a look as she pulled out her mobile phone and opened the first social app. She searched for the name Macha and was shocked but also not shocked to see a familiar nubile redhead dancing through a forest, wearing nearly nothing.
There were millions of views and the comments were…
“Wow.” Carys scanned the hundreds upon hundreds of comments left on the dancing video.
This is the kind of eco-warrior we need.
Hot.
When is she starting her OF?
Fire emojis and water droplets littered the screen.
Carys clicked on the profile, but the username was just macha.girl and didn’t seem to have any original content, just copy after copy after copy of pictures of the Morrígan, videos of the Morrígan dancing nearly naked through a forest. Another through a meadow.
The Morrígan lounging in the grass with a flower crown and a come-hither expression.
No clothes, just leaves covering the parts that would get an account banned.
Carys sighed. “Gee, I can’t understand why she’s so popular.”
“I told you,” Angus said. “Your world is ripe for her conquest.”
Carys looked back at Duncan. “First thing in the morning, we drive to see a druid named Jack.”
Sherwood Forest National Nature Reserve was a massive stand of old forest and contained the largest concentration of ancient trees in England.
It was nearly a six-hour drive from Duncan’s home in Scone, but since they’d started at the crack of dawn, the drive went quickly.
They arrived before noon only a day and a half after they’d returned from the Shadowlands.
Naida was smiling when they left the highway and headed for the trees. “I’ll be glad to be back in the forest.”
“There are several gates nearby,” Angus said. “I don’t know how they have fared with the magic rising, but it’s unlikely anything unfriendly or feral has leaked through in Jack’s territory.”
Laura was sitting next to Angus in the back of the van while Lachlan was brooding in the middle seat next to Naida, staring out the window of the van behind Cadell.
“Godrik would love this forest,” Laura said. “Any news from him?”
Cadell said, “I would not expect Godrik to be able to reach us for some time. I believe he had business in the Shadowlands to attend.”
“A wolf is not likely to send word at all.” Lachlan’s usually pleasant voice was acerbic. “He is not a child. It appears that Godrik has found something better to do than chase after a troublesome goddess. Good luck to him.”
“You’re in a foul mood.” Angus peered out the window, watching the trees. “You should shut up. It’s not our fault that your wife is beyond mortal reach.”
Carys spun around, and even Laura sucked in a breath.
“Angus,” Duncan said in a low voice. “Not helpful.”
Lachlan’s eyes were hollow, and he stared into space. Naida reached across the seat and slipped her hand into his. “I don’t know if I ever expressed to you my clan’s sorrow, and my own, about the loss of Princess Seren. She was greatly beloved in Cymru.”
Lachlan looked down at Naida, and his expression softened. “Diolch o galon, Naida ferch Aled.”
They slipped into a soft conversation in Cymric that Carys couldn’t follow, and she was reminded again that Lachlan had this whole, massive life she barely understood.
If Seren had lived, he would have been the prince consort to the Cymric throne. Of course he could speak Cymric. Of course he knew fae lords and was familiar with wolf behavior.
“Hey,” Duncan whispered.
She turned to smile at him, resting her head on the headrest. “Hey.”
“He’ll be fine,” Duncan whispered.
It wasn’t the first time Lachlan had grieved for his wife.
What a fucked-up situation.
The van wound through a small rural village before the land opened up and two hedgerows guided them south toward a dense stand of dark trees in the distance.
The hedgerows fell away, and there was nothing but waving wheat fields on one side of the road and dense stands of white-skinned birch trees glowing in the morning light as drifting fog dampened their soft green foliage.
“There.” Angus slapped the window of the van. “On the left, idiot. Stop here. Don’t you see that clearing?”
“Yes, but that’s not a car park,” Duncan said. “Do you understand what it means to be towed?”
“You’ll stop here or you’ll have to wait for tomorrow morning to find him,” Angus said.
Grumbling, Duncan pulled the van over to the left side of the road. There was a wide spot on the grassy verge and a stile over a narrow fence where they could cross from the roadway into the forest.
“Why the hell do we have to stop here at this moment?” Duncan asked. “I swear to God, Angus, if this is one of your stubborn—”
“Girl.” Angus crawled over everyone and yanked the door open. “Come with me.”
Carys could only surmise that the “girl” that Angus was barking at was her. She rubbed her sleepy eyes and scrambled to follow him across the grass and over the fence.
“Hey!”
Angus’s shaggy grey head was already disappearing into the trees.
“Will you” —she panted— “wait for me?”
Carys heard the others running after them. Cadell first, then Lachlan and Duncan. Naida had somehow run ahead of Carys and was already perched in a birch tree as Angus stabbed his walking stick into the soft ground underneath the ever-deepening shade of soaring pines.
He turned in circles, keen eyes scanning the trees.
Carys stumbled over grassy patches and dry creeks that crisscrossed the forest floor before she nearly ran into Angus’s back. “Angus, what—”
“Hush.” He loped forward into a circle of pine trees, staring at something in the distance.
“Jack of the Woods,” Angus called. “Father of the Green!” He reached back, gripped Carys’s hand, and tugged her to his side.
The moment she stepped next to him, Carys felt the world change around them.
The ground beneath her feet was soft and mossy. The summer forest grew dark and dense, and ferns nodded their heads in the shade.
Carys heard a voice behind her. “What in all the worlds…”
She turned and saw Lachlan had come to a halt, staring down at the leather armor that suddenly covered his body. In his hand was a bronze sword, and it gleamed with low gold light.
Duncan was beside him, clad in similar armor, an axe in his hands, and Cadell wore his leather dragon-skin armor and stared into the trees, his golden eyes fixed on something in the distance as the red glow of fire burned at his throat.
Naida appeared to be curled up and sleeping, nestled in the roots of an oak tree that hadn’t been there a moment ago. Laura had her hands out, whispering to the air as the world around them grew green and verdant with violent speed.
“Youngling.” A deep voice sounded from the trees, and a cracking sound reached Carys’s ears. A heavy thunk. Then another thunk. “Little brother, you have come to visit.”
Carys blinked, rubbing her eyes with her right hand as Angus kept her left firmly in his grasp. “What’s happening?”
“Pocket world,” Angus whispered. “Father of the Green, I bring a hero to your forest.”
Thunk.
Creak.
Thunk.
The ground shook beneath her feet, and birds flew from the trees in a torrent of flapping wings.
Emerging from the trees was a creature as massive and as tall as Cadell, but unlike the sleek leather that covered her dragon in human form, this being was clad in leaves and vines.
His legs grew like thick pine trunks, and his body was covered in ivy.
His face was made of bark and flowers, and moss grew from his head, twisting with the vines that wound around his torso.
He was the Green Man, the Woodwose. A pagan folk figure.
Carys had little doubt this “Father of the Green” was far more than a druid. He was a deity and a very old one.
“Who comes to my woods?” The voice wasn’t angry, but it was low, rumbling, and curious. “I see a dragon, a knight, and a smith before me.”
“Jack of the Woods.” Angus took Carys’s hand and lifted it over her head. “Here stands a hero in need of your help.”
“A hero?” The creature turned his head from the three men and peered down at Carys with wide eyes as green as the leaves that sprouted from his shoulders. “This one does not look like a hero.”
Carys felt words catch in her throat. “I… I—”
“Maybe not,” Angus said. “But she is the one the horse goddess has chosen.”
“Oh… Very well,” His voice scraped over Carys like gravel over stone as he cocked his head and peered at her. “A hero must pass a test.”
The Green Man drew a stone sword from his body, and the next step he took, the ground shook again. “Face me, hero. If you best me in a duel, I will help you on your quest.”
Carys’s eyes went wide when she saw the sword, which had to be at least as tall as she was. “Angus, I can’t fight—”
“I will stand for her.” Lachlan stepped toward the Green Man. “I am her champion.”
The Green Man inclined his head and raised his sword. “Very well, Knight. We fight.”