The Radiant Road (31 page)

Behind her, a car door opened.

Without another thought, Clare put her hand to the star at her throat, said, “Oh, Asterion,” and leaped out over the rocks.

She fell like a rock herself: graceless, plummeting, and hard. Then a wind caught her, just the way you catch your breath, and swept her into the sky.

A few seconds later, Clare's father ran to the edge of the cliff and looked down. Nothing there but rocks and churning foam. Confused, he murmured, “I'd have sworn I saw someone jump . . . ?” But all he saw now was a strange bird in the distant sky, a huge bird in autumn colors, heading out to sea.

The yew-girl had been right: to abandon safety, to ride the wind, was cold and wild and glorious. She rode the wind like a sloop rides wave after wave, up and down, up and down. Sometimes the surging sea below sent a spray of cold salt water into her face.

Perhaps because she was smaller than Finn, and unburdened by bow and quiver, she caught up to him quickly.

“You need me,” said Clare, breathlessly, and almost laughed at his expression as he turned to see her. “You can't do this alone. You know you can't.”

“Mad, mad, mad,” said Finn. The wind blew his words back and up.

“You need me,” she said, grabbing the edge of his shirt, pulling even with him, “you know you do. And I need to make up for what I did.”

Finn said nothing, only looked at her, rueful and admiring.

The low eastern sun cast handfuls of glitter across the waves as Balor galloped west on his froth-horse. Finn and Clare flew behind,
side by side, closing the gap. Birds fly faster than horses can run, especially horses made of froth and foam, and they gained on him quickly.

“Flying feels like dancing,” said Clare, giving herself to the air, letting it swing her up, down.

“It feels like making,” Finn said into the wind. “For how you trust your desire to know the way, and ride that desire and ride.”

Clare did not say, but thought to herself:
Flying feels like being with you, Finn. Throwing myself on my every fear and letting them carry me into the sky.

Already, they were within an arrow-shot's distance from Balor. “We're at your back,” Finn cried. “Turn and face me, Grandfather!”

And to Clare's surprise, Balor spun his foamy horse around. His face was a mask of fury and fear and—but how could this be right?—and
grief
, somehow: fury, and fear, and old grief.

“You killed her, boy,” Balor said to Finn. “You look like her. And you killed her.”

Clare felt Finn beside her hesitate, lose his ease in the air. He stalled for a moment, tumbled, almost losing his arrows, then found the air again and swung back around. From his quiver, he pulled a black-tipped arrow with a long red thread streaming from the shaft. The other end of the thread was fastened to his own belt.

Balor's face, seeing the arrow, went whiter than before. He
looked from right to left, as if to see where he could run. “It is her fault,” he cried, suddenly, “it need never have happened, if only the grandmother would have let me back in.” He pulled his horse around in a circle, he shouted to the sea: “Let me in!” He kicked at the water, he leaned down to beat it with his hands. “Grandmother!” he cried. “Let me in! Let me back into fairy! Let me be safe again!”

Clare felt what she had never expected to feel for Balor, a terrible pity, and more than pity: a kinship. She saw that even she and Balor were as tangled as roots are. She knew what it meant to want to return to safety and seed-husk again.

But you cannot get back into your seed-husk, once it is cracked open and no longer yours.

Balor turned his face to the sky and gave a roar of rage and sorrow. Finn hesitated, then re-aimed his arrow. Flying behind and above him, Clare could see that the aim was off.
The one-eyed Hunter.
“Wait!” she cried. She caught him from behind, riding lightly as a bird, put her face to his face against his moon-eye, and put her hands over his hands on the bow and string.

For an instant, they held poised on a current of air, like some strange, ancient seabird hovering over a fish.

Then Balor showed Finn his yellow teeth. “Your mother deserved to die,” he said, “she was a—”

The arrow struck him in his seeing eye.

Without its rider, the sea-foam horse rode on a few steps, then dissolved back into the sea, as Balor sank under the waves. The red string spun into the water after him. In a moment it would pull taut and yank Finn into the water behind his grandfather.

“Finn, you'll drown,” said Clare. Her voice sounded high, panicking to her own ear. “Let me cut it, give me an arrow, Finn—”

He turned to her with an unreadable expression: “Clare: you don't drown because you can't breathe,” he said. The red thread was spinning out and out, it was almost taut. “You don't drown because you can't breathe. You drown because you try to breathe what is not breathable. We'll be fine.”

We?

The thread tightened, and Finn disappeared into the green ocean.

And so did Clare: because at the last second, she grabbed for his hand.
We.

The morning sun cast another sparkling handful on the ocean, as water smoothed over the hole that Finn and Clare had made.

If you had looked, you would have thought nothing had happened there at all.

Clare didn't breathe. It was hard to remember—she closed her eyes and said it over and over in her mind:
don't breathe, don't breathe.
But
it was impossible, it was surely impossible, she had to draw a breath, and panic rose wild inside her.

But soon her body began to believe that it needed no breath. Slowly, then, she opened her eyes, and looked around.

Green and blackening water flowed past, colder and blacker the deeper they were pulled below. What would happen when they reached the bottom? She held Finn's hand tighter.

Below, through the murky, salt-stinging water, came a stream of color, like a liquid rainbow. But as the thread drew them closer, she saw it was the fairy host, driving through the ocean just as they had driven across the sky, as if air and water were the same to them.

The yew tree
, thought Clare—
The fairy road leads through the yew tree to the ocean itself.

Without warning, the thread slackened; now Finn and Clare floated gently down on their own, no longer dragged by the stone of Balor's body. Finn's hands were finding the bloodred thread that tied him to his grandfather, untying it, letting it loose.

The fairies had settled to the ocean floor; they were crowded together, working on something. The something was Balor. They bound him down with Finn's red thread—only the water slowed their busy hands, so that they seemed to be nursing him tenderly, as if they were dream-doctors, binding him as slowly and gently as you bind a wound.

Next, each of the fairies produced another thread, and Balor was bound in all of them. The colors wove together, at first like a tangle of many-colored grass, then even more closely, to make a brilliant cocoon, a kaleidoscopic shell, around Balor—whose empty eyes stood open still, whose mouth stood open, arrested in a cry.

Balor was bound to the ocean floor in blackness, and the creatures of light left him there, streaming away the way they came. Finn and Clare stayed. They bobbed gently in the green water as bubbles left by the departing host rose up around them. They watched as seaweed crept around Balor; as the sand washed over him; as he was covered up for a long, long sleep by the gentle, inevitable waters.

They watched until Balor's eyelids finally closed.

Then Finn and Clare rose up together, through water that warmed and lightened, until their heads broke free, gleaming and slick, and they blinked and spit the salt out, and took in air again.

When her own eyes cleared, as she floated and kicked in the salty water, Clare saw something that made her put her hand to her mouth in happiness. Finn's white eye had turned a pale and lovely green. It was no longer a cold moon, but the bud of a flower. The moon in the sky was growing again, and the moon-seed was growing in Finn's face.

“Oh, my grandmother,” Finn cried, treading water, spitting salt from his mouth. “You might send us home now.”

The water stirred a little near them. Slowly, a green and glowing road—a moonlight road—glowed up from the sea. How, with the moon outshone by the morning sun?

Then Clare saw: tiny luminous plants just beneath the surface had made a path, a path that spiraled outward like a seashell unfurling, like the road that uncurled for Dorothy, only instead of yellow brick, it was green and living light.

Clare and Finn both scrambled up until they were standing on the path of lights, the lights they knew so well from their in-between, now furling and unfurling across the waves.

She looked at wet and dripping Finn, and he at her, and they both laughed. Trusting the green path, but not trusting it to remain forever, they ran.

Soon they were out of sight, if there had been anyone on the wide and empty ocean to notice.

Those Lovely Ashes

When Finn's and Clare's feet found the rocky beach, and the glowing road disappeared behind them, she heard a voice, the best and most familiar voice, calling her name.

“Dad!” she cried, and ran slipping up the rocky cliff path. Then she stopped and turned to Finn.

He smiled, looking exhausted, pushing half-dried, salt-caked hair from his face. “We'll meet in the in-between,” he said.

So she flew up the path to her father. He had arrived home to find the door swung open, and the totem shattered to splinters on the floor, and the yew with pieces hacked from it, and Clare nowhere to be found. He had walked all along the beach and the forest, calling for her, calling and calling.

“I'd been calling your phone to no answer on the drive here, and calling Jo the same, and was about to call the police, had the phone in my hand to call, when I saw you. And you were in the water? Tell me you weren't swimming, you mad girl, it's far too cold, and look at you, salty and damp as—”

“Dad,” said Clare, and then her arms around his neck made it hard for him to talk, so they just laughed and slightly cried.

He was thinner and paler. He made light of his time underground, and told her a funny story about how the men decided who should go up first, when the rescue came. But his hands shook more than a little. Soon they were walking into their house, arms around each other.

“It's your birthday,” he said. “Well, it's the second one, anyway. I didn't miss them both, at least, though I'm sorry I have no gift.”

“You're
here
,” said Clare as they emerged from the passageway. But when she saw the yew, her face fell. She ran to kneel beside the tree and put her hand to its wounds. “Do you think . . . Will the tree be all right?” she asked.

Her father joined her, squatting down, picking up a chunk of yew. “I think so, in fact,” he said. “It's an ancient tree and a strong one. I believe it will heal. But we'll have an arborist around to see what we can do to help it heal.”

Clare remembered the upside-down girl, her maddening stubbornness about the story, and almost laughed to herself. As if an axe could make a serious dent in that ancient, lovely willfulness.

“Clare?” Her father rested a hand on her shoulder. “How did this happen? Tell me your adventures, now.” His face looked anxious, though he said it lightly.

Clare sat back against the tree, unsure what she could tell him, or how to start. She was quiet for a while, feeling stuck every time
she thought to begin. “There's a crack in the yew tree that makes a place between human and Timeless, and everything made of light visits there”—no. “Our home is on a fairy road”—no. “There was a terrible man named Balor, and he tried to hurt us, but he's tied with threads at the bottom of the ocean now.” None of these seemed like things she could actually say.

But then Clare remembered her father's dream. She began tentatively: “Dad.”

“Yes, love.”

“Do you remember . . . do you remember, that you dreamed about me one time? When you dreamed of digging?”

He stopped stirring eggs in the pan, and turned to look at her. “I do, girl,” he said. “I do remember. So, but . . . that was you indeed? I thought . . .” But he did not finish the sentence.

“Yeah, it was me,” Clare said. “You said . . . Well, in the dream you said Mam could do that, too?”

He smiled as if some happy memory was hurting him. “Did I say that? Ah, well. She could. She could indeed. She would visit me in a dream, of a time.” He smiled again, a better smile, then threw back his head and laughed. “She was a trickster, in a dream sometimes. She did love a joke.” He looked at Clare in a new way.

Clare saw she could ask him something she thought she would never know. “You didn't see me as myself at first,” she said. “Do you
remember? When you fell in the pit, in the dream? You saw me as some other thing. What was I?”

He smiled, remembering. “You seemed like a calf to me,” he said. “A white calf, with red ears, bellowing at me in the rain, licking the mud from my face. But then suddenly and out of the blue—and it was quite a startle, I can tell you—the calf spoke to me in my daughter's voice.”

They both laughed; the laugh became a shy silence. Clare took a deep breath: “Do you remember, in that dream . . . Do you remember saying something about ‘the people of the tree'?”

Her father did not turn to look at her, but he stopped stirring eggs in the pan, and straightened a little. “No,” he said. “I don't remember saying that. But I know that phrase. I do know about that, at least . . . Your mother told me some, about the people of the tree.” Now he did turn to look at her. “She didn't call them that. That was my word for them. What do you know about that, Clare?”

So Clare told him a little of what had happened—not everything, but more than most parents would believe—and then, because he only listened, and never said, “I don't believe you, sweet,” she told him even more.

But when she told him about Balor, his face crumpled into something wrong, and he said, “Love, will you ever forgive me for leaving you here alone?” And Clare, who had never thought of it as
her father's fault, or even thought to think that—who, in fact, had thought he might be angry with her, for running away—threw her arms around him and said all of those things, until his face looked more itself.

Clare met Finn in the in-between that night and many nights thereafter. The yew-tree's axe wound healed a little more every day, much faster than any ordinary tree could heal.

Over the next two weeks, as the moon in the sky grew fat, Finn's moon-seed eye blossomed into a white flower, one that was half closed in the day, and open at night. “I can see through my eye again,” he said with pleasure and relief, “for all I see through a flower.” Clare was visiting Timeless and was curled up beside Asterion.

“It's a moonflower,” said Her of the Cliffs. She had a new face now, still fierce, but also tender.

“Your face is kinder now,” said Clare, shy, stroking Asterion's fingers. “You're not wearing the angry mask.”

“I have always had the same face,” said Her of the Cliffs, “and, my girl, I never hated you. Indeed, I felt at fault, for letting you go into danger before you were ready. It's the story you told yourself that changed my face. It's your story that made the mask.”

“How did my story make a mask on your face?”

“Seeing is making, whether you see with your mind or your true
self. Try to see with your self, your self and your beast together, and not your busy, frightened mind.”

“When I see with my self, do I see your real face, your true face?”

“Ah: the true face. Someday you may see that. Someday, we may all see each other's true faces. But for now, this is close enough.”

Later that night, Clare thought about faces and masks. She remembered the moon over the castle that turned its face away.
I think the moon wears a lot of masks
, she thought sleepily.
Maybe Her of the Cliffs is one of the masks of the moon. And the moon in my mouth, that was the moon. And Finn's eye, Finn's eye. That's the most beautiful moonflower of all.

One morning, Clare's father took her to the hospital to visit Jo. They found her sitting up in bed among a nest of tubes and wires.

“Ah, she's fine now, just looking for your pity, such a layabout she is,” said the nurse, and Clare knew this was a joke and meant the opposite of that, but that the joke meant that Jo would be all right.

Jo said, “So it's herself. But I believe I already saw you, quite
late
one night, in fact
asleep
, one night. Is that possible, girl?”

“Yes,” said Clare, shy. But the nurse was paying no mind as she fussed over a needle in Jo's arm.

“Did you hear what I said, that night?”

“I did,” said Clare, remembering the stream of cheerful bad
language from the dream-Jo hung in a tree. “But I won't repeat it, ma'am.”

Jo laughed out loud. “Good girl yourself,” she said, smiling from her white bed, and Clare knew she would be fine.

Over the two weeks that followed, as the full moon died into darkness, the petals of Finn's moonflower eye dropped away, revealing what had been hidden at their center: Finn's new eye. But it never looked like his other blue-gray eye; ever afterward, it was as brilliant green as new grass, and ran with thick, sweet sap instead of salty tears.

One night, Clare found Finn in the in-between in a strange excitement. “Come with me,” he said, and would say no more.

He took her to a green place, a mountain meadow with sweet, thin air. Young grass swept across the meadow, soft and lemony-gold at the tips. White flowers crowded above the grass, each a cluster of white bells hanging from a long green stalk. A slushy stream slipped slowly across one corner, and along the edges of the meadow stood forest firs, dark and tall, like night closing in. The meadow looked like young spring, but the air was cold, and the sky was heavy and white-gray.

“This is somewhere in my world—” Clare began, but Finn put a finger to his lips—quiet, quiet. He pointed to one of the white
flowers. Clare wrapped her arms around her thin white pajama sleeves and looked closer. From the bending stem of the flower hung a small dark packet, like a little Chinese temple. Straightening up, she saw that almost every flower dangled the same small, dark temple from its stem.

The wind was high and low: the tops of the trees bent and sighed, and the dark packets trembled from the stems. The sound of wind was like breathing, and the slow stream hummed underneath it like a child.

Then the wind stopped, and the water stopped, and the world went silent. The silence was like the lights that darken before a movie, or the
tap-tap-tap
of the conductor before the symphony begins. The silence was the frame around a painting. But what was the painting? Clare's heart opened up in readiness. This was a fairy-making, Finn-made, she could tell.