The Radiant Road (23 page)

In her dream, she wandered through a burnt, black, and smoking house. It was the magic hour, and the clear half-light came through the ruined roof, making every corner sharp and clear. She remembered this house, she almost remembered, it was her house but it wasn't, and her father might be here somewhere, and she was looking for her father.

At the end of a charred and smoky hall, she opened a door to a smoke-filled bedroom, blue-flowered wallpaper peeling from the walls. Inside the room was a huge white horse. It stepped toward her, muscles sliding under its hot, damp skin. This was her horse, of course it was—how could she forget the horse she had left in this room? How thankful she felt that the horse was all right, had not starved from her neglect. She almost wept with relief to see it. Its mane was long and tangled, matted, and she picked it apart with her busy fingers.

Now they were outside, Clare and her horse, in a long pasture that ended in a dark evergreen woods. Still she picked and untangled the mane.

The horse's eye rolled in its head. Oh: it had been in the room too long, of course—it needed to run. She stood on a low, cap-shaped stone and mounted the horse bareback. In the dream, she knew she was good at riding. She straddled the broad back, her legs hugging muscle and bone. And the horse leaped forward, from a canter to a rolling, flying gallop. Together, Clare and her white horse flew into the forest.

Behind her—or beside her?—was a heavy, galloping tread, was a wet, hoarse, heavy breathing, and it was a terrible beast, she knew it was, had known that beast all her life. Clare and her horse were chasing the beast, that's right, of course it was ahead of them, and they had to catch that evil thing, the thing that threatened her mother—no, her father—yes, her father. Fear and rage rose up in her. She had to kill it. Of course, that was why she had a bow in her hands, and an arrow in a quiver slung over her shoulder. She had forgotten how good she was, how brilliant with bow and arrow. The horse moved from gallop to run, its spine from head to tail one long line. Clare held tight with her legs, at one with her mount, bow and arrow in her hand. Warrior, warrior. She will be the hero, she will kill the beast, she will save herself and her father. She rode through the clear, saturated twilight, every unreal color of it.

In the dream, Clare felt driven to hunt this monster.
Driven
is a good word. She believed she was in control, but she was only a
passenger in this vehicle, no more driving herself than when as a toddler in her parents' car she turned her toy steering wheel this way and that, beeped her toy horn, and laughed.

Someone else was driving, someone not her friend.

Crouched over her leaping, flying horse, the beat of its heart beneath her calves, her breath panting with its breath, now Clare hears another breath. The breath of the beast, the running beast ahead of them.
In dreams, beware the beast.
They are almost there. She selects an arrow and fits it to the string. She sees the flash of white and flash of hooves ahead. Her fear and her rage twist together into a new, terrible power. The horse beneath her, the strength of her arm, her
righteousness
, her
certainty
that she can fly an arrow through a grove of trees and kill the beast within it.

She has become the teeth of the wolf.

She draws the bow. She closes her eyes, she is that sure. She lets the arrow fly. She strikes like lightning, like a bolt of lightning from a screaming mouth, she strikes like one for whom the kill is pleasure and righteous joy.

Clare awoke, standing in pine-scented woods, in the unreal colors of the magic hour.

The horse was gone.

But at her feet stretched a strange figure—man or beast?—oh,
both: a boy, but with white horns twining complicated from his head, horns that were dissolving now, as his hooves transmuted to human hands and feet.

In one of his eyes, an arrow stood quivering.

In one of Finn's eyes.

In one of Finn's eyes.

It was Finn, it was Finn, it was Finn.

He wasn't dead. In the war between human and Strange that was Finn, the Strange won out this time, and the wound did not kill him. But his left eye was gone. He sat stiffly in the hall made of tall, bending trees where Clare had come that first night. Her of the Cliffs sat beside him, in a new, terrible form. Her hair was unbound now and wild, and her face was deep red, red as blood or flames, and her eyebrows black and pointed with fury.

And now the smiling people were gathering again, but they were not smiling, and looked at her hard.

Clare stood a yard or two away, unable to approach closer, fixed by the twin nails of grief and guilt. “I'm sorry, I'm so sorry,” said Clare, a hundred times, two hundred times, to whoever was near. But the hard looks did not change, and the gathering continued, until fairies surrounded her on all sides, colors and feathers and fur and teeth and cold, hard eyes.
The Good Folk
, thought Clare, her heart hammering inside her.
Good dog, good dog.

“You have become the teeth of the wolf,” said a hoarse voice from the crowd.

“You
allowed yourself
to become teeth of the wolf,” said another voice, high and dangerous.

“I didn't mean to,” said Clare. She jammed her hands in her pockets, felt the commonplace book there, hard and useless. A line from the book she had read so many times came into her mind, something about your heart being “like a cup / That somebody had drunk dry.” That was how her heart felt: drained dry as bone.

But drained dry or not, she was a coward not to face Finn. “Excuse me,” she murmured, pushing through the crowd. “I'm sorry.” She made her way closer to Finn and Her of the Cliffs. The fairies followed close; she felt the chill of their bodies at her back.

“I'm sorry,” she said, and her voice was not much more than a whisper. She could not bear to look at Finn; even Her of the Cliffs's dreadful new face was better than that, so she turned toward her and said, “Please, I am so sorry. What can I do, is there some way I can help, or make it right?”

“What matters your
sorry, so sorry
,” said Her of the Cliffs, lifting her terrible face, “when
sorry
comes only when it is too late?” Her low, hard voice was far more dreadful than a shout. “You lied to me, and disobeyed me, and thought too highly of your half-learned power. You may have saved your father—I say may, only—but at what cost? How can Finn shoot now? All his life he has trained for
this time, to destroy Balor, to save the roads. How can he shoot with one eye?”

And now the voices came from all over, came so fast that Clare could never see where any voice was coming from, only heard the orchestra of anger.

“His eye, his eye.”

“He cannot shoot with one eye.”

“She is the teeth of the wolf.”

Desperate, Clare said, “But some people shut one eye when they shoot.” She still could not force herself to look at Finn's ruined face, although every nerve felt his presence a few feet away, felt it like fire.

Her of the Cliffs looked away, as if the contempt she felt for Clare were too much. “We are not like you. We look with one eye of our own, and one eye of our beast's. You have blinded his beast.”

“I'm sorry. God, I'm so sorry,” said Clare. “I did . . . I mean I know this doesn't make up for anything, but I did figure out where the flag is. I understand now what my father meant. That's something. I can go get the flag.”

But now Her of the Cliffs rounded on her in a rage: “Ah—can you indeed? Can you, Clare? I doubt you can. For while you wasted time, Balor learned how to use the key you carelessly left. He has blocked the tree. It is cut off now, not its thinnest root can touch
another root, nor touch the ocean it is rooted beside, nor anything at all. That gate is locked to us now.”

Clare felt nailed to the ground. To think of her yew alone, caught in Balor's cage, unable to touch any other tree, its gorgeous, tender spirit caught in some hideous, totem-made trap—she almost fell to the ground at the force of it.

Her of the Cliffs was not finished. “I feel now what the other fairies feel. Look what your human
change
has done to me.” She turned to Finn, and her hard face cracked into misery. “Look what your
love
has done to me. What good is it? What good is it? Ah, the human world brings us nothing but grief and ruin. Close the gates, for all I care! Destroy the roads! Cut the connection forever. I will not hunt at Midsummer.” She strode out of the leafy hall, disappearing into the woods.

Finn stood unsteadily, stumbling after her, calling, “No, I beg you, wait!”

Clare saw that in one single day she had destroyed Finn, had lost the faith and help of Her of the Cliffs, and had failed her own lovely yew. It was not possible, it was too much, it could not be.

“No,” she said.

The low chatter of the fairies ceased.

“No,” said Clare again. She felt that the word was branded on her heart: NO. “There has to be something I can do.”

No response.

“Someone tell me what I can do.”

A long pause. Then a dry voice from the crowd said, “The tree's guardian can unblock it. Possibly, possibly.”

“How? Tell me how!”

“By going underneath, of course,” said the dry man, emerging from the crowd. His skin was dark, his cheekbones high, and his smile as dry as his voice. Although he looked young and strong, his hair was starry white. “Underneath into your own roots, where you and the tree are connected.”

“But Balor . . . ” a quavering voice called.

The young white-haired man overrode him. “Balor cannot block that connection, not that deep one, no matter his magic.”

“I will do it,” said Clare, without hesitation. “I will go now, just tell me how to begin.” Adrenaline raged through her veins.
Just let me go, just let me act, just get me away from all this horror and failure.

“But the beast,” someone murmured, and the chorus took up the phrase, murmuring, “the beast, the beast.”

“That's where your beast lives, too, they mean,” the dry man said. “At your deepest root. You'll have to face your beast and conquer it, before you reach the tree.” He said this as if he were giving her directions to a grocery store; then he turned his back and disappeared into the crowd.

Icy anxiety cooled the heat in Clare's blood. “Wait, though, but . . . what if it conquers me?”

A long whisper ran through the crowd of Strange, like wind through pines. Then a voice separated out: “I believe that's what happened to Balor.”

Clare tightened her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering.

“She will fail,” said another voice, louder.

“She will die. Humans who try, die.”

“She is too young.”

“Trying to keep her father safe, she destroyed our Finn.”

“I thought I could keep both of them safe,” cried Clare.