'You're jealous, Cat.'
'Jealous! She is kin to you, this woman, and older.'
'So she is.' But unbidden in his mind came a picture of Rose in the river, with the sunlit water cascading from her naked shoulders.
THERE WAS NO music when they left the Howe, no glory of yellow light or ring of voices. The earth opened in a widening circle before them to let in a night breeze full of the smell of rain and clay. The trees were thrashing and rushing in a high wind and the milling air seemed full of spray. Michael screwed up his eyes against it. Fancy was standing patiently at the foot of the Howe, ears back to the rain and her bundles strapped to the saddle. He felt a surge of guilt, and ran out to her with the wind and water beating about his head, but found she was hardly damp. She nosed his new clothing with interest.
'How long have we been in there?' Michael yelled at Mirkady.
The creature was closing the door to the Howe. Even as he watched, the opening with its light narrowed and drew shut like a curtain. There was a brief twinkle of the silver music, a final blade of light that struck out through the trees, and then they were alone with the trees and the gale-bitten night.
'A moment or two, no more. In my kingdom we can give you all the time you want!' His grin was diabolical, black skin as slick as wet ebony in the rain.
'Yeah, sure,' Michael muttered.
He and Cat were dressed in close-fitting hide tunics that came down to mid-thigh. They seemed to be a coarse kind of suede, but the raindrops rolled off them like marbles. Deep hoods hung from the shoulders— Cat had hers drawn up over her head—and strings drew them shut at the neck. The fit was perfect. Part of Mirkady's boon. Cat bore a long, wicked-looking knife of black stone in a scabbard at her hip and a skin bag of unknown weight was slung on her back. She looked medieval. The picture was completed by an unstrung shortbow and a leather quiver that bristled with black-fletched arrows, each over two feet long. Michael had handled them and had been shocked by the cruel barbed flint of their heads, the runes and symbols that were incised upon the shafts. At his own waist was a broad-bladed bronze dagger, the hilt cast all of a piece with the blade, and a leather thong wrapped around the grip. It was a heavy, ungainly thing, the nicks in the greening blade testimony to much usage. He had asked Mirkady about it and the little goblin had been amused. A corpse's shaving knife, he had called it, which made Michael handle it more gingerly than ever.
He felt suddenly lost, adrift, and a pang of homesickness smote him as he stood there in the dripping dark of the forest with his not-quite-human companions. He thought of his bed at home, the range in the kitchen with the tea brewing on its top plate, his grandparents. Mullan. There was a tightness in his throat which he fought away by drawing his hood up over his head and knuckling the rain out of his eyes. The path had forked; he had chosen one way, and could never go back and re-find the other.
He was thirteen years old.
THEY WALKED THROUGHOUT the night. When Michael asked, quite reasonably he thought, where they were going, he was ignored. So he plodded along leading the mare by the bridle whilst his legs became soaked by the wet vegetation of the forest floor. It was almost impossible to see or hear anything. The wind abated after a while, but there was still the rush of the rain on the canopy overhead. Soon Michael was cursing to himself, tripping over invisible obstacles, plucking at the back of Cat's tunic to avoid being separated. She and Mirkady seemed to be able to see in the dark. When the goblin looked back at him Michael could see the glow of his eyes green and feral in the darkness. And Cat's seemed to shine also. Their light transformed her face into that of an animal, something unguessed and wild.
Dawn seeped into the air like a cold liquid, filtering down through the trees and distinguishing shadow from object, imagination from reality. Unseen birds sang in the treetops and the rain ceased, water continuing to stream and drip and trickle everywhere, runnelling round their feet. Michael was stiff and tired. He had to lean against the horse or he would have swayed where he stood.
Cat and Mirkady seemed to be in conference. She was stooped over him with her ear close to his mouth and her hood thrown back, looking for all the world like Maid Marian taking advice from a leprechaun. Michael chuckled aloud at the thought, intensely glad that the night was over. What next? he was wondering.
'A mount,' Mirkady told him when they were sitting chewing fairy bread (more wholesome than it sounded) and slugging deep red wine from the mouth of a skin, relishing the alcoholic buzz and warmth. Behind them Fancy was discovering fairy barley, and from the sound of things finding it as filling as the bread.
'We've got a mount,' Michael said with his mouth full.