Larkspur (36 page)

“
I wouldn’t
mind . . .” Sam started, and gloves appeared on his
hands. He picked up his sledgehammer.

James held out his hands and gloves
appeared.

“
Gas masks?” Delphie
pointed to the masks.

They had to put down their sledgehammers and
take off their gloves to put on their masks.

Delphie set her cup down, pulled on her
mask, and stepped forward. She felt as if she’d run into a kind of
membrane or bubble. For a moment, she was stuck, and then she
pressed through. She was going to say something to Sam when she
realized Sam wasn’t with her. She turned around.

Sam, Valerie, and James couldn’t get through
the membrane. They were hitting the energetic membrane with their
sledgehammers trying to let her out. The little leaf fairy was
jumping up and down on her side of the membrane.

“
What . . .
what happened?” Delphie whispered.

Delphie tried not to panic.

“
They can’t get through,”
the leaf fairy said.

“
Why?” Delphie said. She
put her hand over her heart to try to quell her rising
panic.

“
The magic is set against
them,” the leaf fairy said.

“
Why did
I . . .?” Delphie asked.

“
You weren’t expected,”
the leaf fairy said. “I mean, really, who would expect a true human
Oracle?

“
Expected?”

“
We’re learning that the
fairy who made the prophecy left a few things out. We think he did
it on purpose to give us an advantage.”

“
Expected?” Delphie
repeated.

“
The book?” The leaf fairy
shook his head. “It’s a prophecy.”

Delphie nodded. She looked across the
membrane at Valerie and Sam. Valerie was pummeling the membrane
with her sledgehammer. Sam’s face was cut with despair. He stood
with his palms against the membrane.

“
You have to do this,” the
leaf fairy said.

“
Me?” Delphie
asked.

Delphie looked at the ground for a moment.
She nodded to herself and stepped out of the membrane. Valerie
threw herself onto Delphie. Sam touched her back, and James gave
her a worried look. Delphie pulled off her gas mask.

“
It has to be me,” Delphie
said. “The leaf fairy says the book is a prophecy like we thought.
But they see now that the prophesier left things out to give us an
advantage.”

“
Who made the prophecy?”
James’s voice rose with anger. He turned in place and shouted at
the trees. “Whose prophecy is it?”

Brigid appeared in front of her son.

“
It was Machaoi,” Brigid
said. “He made this prophecy while he was being tortured by that
Patrick.”

“
The guy we’re going up
against made this prophecy?” James asked. “When were you going to
tell us?”

“
When were you going to
ask?” Brigid stated her question as if it were an adequate
reply.

“
Goddamned fairies.
Everything has a twist.” James stomped off to calm down.

“
What is this about?” Sam
asked. He put his arm around Delphie’s shoulder. “I will not allow
Delphie to attempt this task until you tell us
everything.”

“
No.” Delphie shook her
head. “We don’t have time. I have to do this.”

Delphie held Valerie close and then took
Valerie’s arms from her neck. Still crying, Valerie hugged
herself.

“
Katy’s life is in the
balance here,” Delphie said. “It doesn’t matter why. You taught me
that, Sam. Act first, figure out why later when you have time.
That’s your motto, Sam.”

“
But . . .”
Sam said.

“
Jake said this was a
family feud,” Delphie said. “It clearly is
our
family feud, because it involves
our Katy.”

Delphie turned to Brigid.

“
You will tell us
everything,” Delphie said.

“
Of course,” Brigid said.
“It’s never been a secret. You never asked.”

“
We didn’t.” Delphie
nodded. “Get ready. You’ll still need your masks when the membrane
breaks. We have to destroy the cross and reduce the power he has
over Katy and Paddie.”

Delphie smiled and kissed Sam’s lips. He
grabbed her and lifted her off the ground. They whispered back and
forth. He kissed her forehead and set her down. She hugged Valerie.
She walked over to where James was standing and hugged him. She
kissed his cheek.

“
You’re a good man,
Jimmy,” Delphie said. He smiled.

She walked back to the edge of the
clearing.

“
I
need . . .” Delphie said.

Lambskin gloves appeared on her hands and a
small sledgehammer at her feet.

“
Use your knees,” Sam
said.

“
It’s funny, you know,”
Delphie said. “I never get to be the hero in our adventures. I
guess it’s my turn to be brave.”

Delphie put on her mask, picked up her
sledgehammer, and stepped through the membrane. She walked with
purpose to the white quartz Celtic cross. Using her knees, she
lifted the sledgehammer and slammed it down on the cross.

In her mind’s ear, she heard a man’s voice
below her say, “I’m coming to kill you.”

She lifted the sledgehammer again and
slammed it down. A tiny crack appeared in the cross. Delphie
slammed the sledgehammer on the fissure again and again. She could
hear the man moving toward her underground, and she smiled.

She hefted the sledgehammer one last time,
and the white quartz cross cracked in half with a mighty pop. The
membrane around the field broke. Sam fell forward into the clearing
and ran to her side. He smashed one half of the white quartz Celtic
cross with his sledgehammer. Valerie and James worked on the other
piece. Delphie took a chunk at the top. In a matter of minutes,
they had crushed the cross to bits. The ground began to shake.

“
Wait!” James
yelled.

They stopped hammering and waited for the
ground to stop shaking. A white quartz stairwell appeared. Sam
gestured down the stairwell. James looked at him and started down
the stairs. Valerie followed close behind. Delphie looked at Sam
and pulled off her mask. Sam did the same.

“
I can’t convince you
to . . .” Sam started.

“
Not a chance,” Delphie
said.

Sam nodded and pulled his mask on, and
helped Delphie with hers. She started down the stairwell. Sam
looked around the clearing. He picked up the leaf fairy for good
luck and headed down into the catacombs.

~~~~~~~~

Jacob suddenly found himself in a dark
place. Gilfand tugged at his sleeve, but Jacob resisted.

“
I can’t see a thing,”
Jacob said.

“
Use your senses,” Gilfand
said. “Really, Jacob, you have tremendous power and almost no
skill. You know almost nothing about how to use your capacities.
How can you expect to save your daughter when you’ve never
practiced?”

Jacob gritted his teeth at the familiar
rant. Gilfand looked at his face and chuckled.

“
Delphie?” Gilfand
asked.

Jacob nodded.

“
We all hate practice,”
Gilfand said. “Do you meditate?”

Jacob raised his eyebrows.

“
Don’t quote me, but most
men don’t,” Gilfand said. “I will teach you what I can as we go.
Can you see now?”

“
Yes, thanks,” Jacob said.
He was standing in some kind of cave with two stone walls and two
dirt walls. He could hear the ocean roll against the walls of the
cave.

“
It’s this way,” Gilfand
said. He pointed down a thin dirt path. “You can always tell the
fairypath by the tiny glimmer.”

Gilfand pointed to the faint sparks along
the edge of the path.

“
Only fairy-kind can see
them,” Gilfand said.

“
What about this Kirk
Maughold?” Jacob asked.

“
He was fairy-kind,”
Gilfand said. “He should be able to see them.”

“
Can you hide them from
him?”

Gilfand looked at Jacob, and then gave a
thoughtful nod.

“
Where are we?” Jacob
asked.

“
We are under Castle
Rushen, inside the structure they created to house Manannán’s body.
My queen left her body here.”

“
We’re inside a
monolith?”

Jacob felt oddly excited. Gilfand looked at
him and shook his head.

“
Where I come from,
everything is new,” Jacob said. “The country is only a couple
hundred years old. The oldest thing on the continent is only a
thousand years old. There’s nothing like any of this. This
structure was created without machines or fuel or really much of
anything. And here we are, ten thousand years later, and it’s still
standing. Fabulous.”

Gilfand transformed into his gargoyle form
and flew ahead. Jacob followed close behind. They climbed down a
long dirt trail to the bottom of the monolith. Jacob smiled.

“
Hi, Mom,” Jacob said. “I
wondered where you went.”

“
I thought someone should
keep an eye on the bones,” Celia said.

“
Did you get everything?”
Liban, the queen’s sister, asked.

“
We believe so.” Gilfand
gave a little bow and stepped aside for Jacob.

Jacob walked into the pit, where a full
skeleton was laid out like a king. The skeleton had fragments of
ornate clothing and a thin gold crown around his skull. There were
gold, silver, and iron objects laid around him.

“
My sister’s human body
was here.” Liban pointed to the ground next to the king.

“
Can I just give them to
you and you can place them?”

“
No,” Liban said. “It’s a
human body. A human must lay it out. It is why we’ve never been
able to do this ourselves.”

“
You’re doing us an
enormous service, Jacob Marlowe.” Brigid, James’s mother, appeared
in front of him.

“
I’ll help,” Celia
said.

Jacob didn’t really care what he had to do,
he only cared about getting it done and saving his family. He moved
into the bottom of the pit. He was about to place the bones he was
carrying when he realized that if he let go of the bones, he let go
of his leverage over the fairies.

“
If I do this for you, you
will help me get my daughter back and help with the construction
site and help Jill have our sons,” Jacob said.

Liban appeared right in front of him. She
moved so fast that he startled.

“
If you do, we will owe
you a debt that cannot be repaid over one hundred human lifetimes,”
Liban said. “We will help you now, tomorrow, and any other day you
need us. Your name will be written in fairy history as one of the
greatest of our heroes.”

Jacob blushed and glanced at Gilfand.

“
She’s right,” he
said.

“
Mom, can fairies lie?”
Jacob asked.

“
No,” Celia said. “They
can bend words and situations to their own agenda, but they cannot
lie.”

Jacob looked around the space for the
largest section from their original find at the Viking ship. He
used his psychokinetic capacity to move her skull, spine,
shoulders, arms, and half of her rib cage next to the ornately
decorated male skeleton. He set the ribs he’d found at Cronk
Surmark next. As if they longed to be there, the cremated femurs,
taken from under the White Lady, fell into place. He dug around in
his front pockets for her knee caps. Jacob set her feet and ankles,
found in the white quartz box at Devil’s Elbow, into place and
stepped back.

He set out in front of him the hodge-podge
of bones he’d taken from under the white quartz Celtic cross. He
had her collarbone, the bones of her calves, a few vertebrae, and
her hands. He set the collarbone on the left side. Her tibias and
fibulas flew out of his hand and to their proper place between the
ankles and knees. The bones vibrated with the desire to be closer
to each other. He placed her hands on either side of her body.

“
The other way,” Celia
said.

Looking up at his mother, he noticed a crowd
of fairies watching him. The walls were filled with every kind of
fairy. All of fairydom had come to watch. He reversed the hands. He
placed the vertebrae, the sternum, and two small bones in the feet.
As far as he could tell, the skeleton was complete.

Nothing happened.

“
Check your pockets,
Jake,” Celia said. “You must have missed something.”

“
Can you tell what?” Jacob
asked.

Celia shook her head. He didn’t know if she
knew what was missing and couldn’t tell him, or if she simply
didn’t know. He thought for a moment and turned his pockets inside
out. No bones. He took off his shoes and found nothing. He shook
out his jacket and found nothing.

“
I must have left
something somewhere,” Jacob said.

“
You would have known,”
Celia said. “You have it.”

Jacob undid the top button of his jeans, and
a tiny toe bone fell out from between his work shirt and
undershirt. He fastened his jeans and placed the bone. The fairies
gave a collective sigh.

The bones began to vibrate. The skeleton
seemed surrounded by multicolored light. The skeleton wearing the
crown reached out for her and Queen Fand’s human skeleton nestled
up against him.