 
Lenna and the Last Dragon

by James Comins

Smashwords Edition

Published on Smashwords by James Comins

Lenna and the Last Dragon

Copyright 2012 by James Comins

Cover photograph by Tina Negus. Used with kind permission.

Thank you for downloading this eBook. This book is the sole property of the author. It may be excerpted or reproduced for non-commercial purposes. Your support and respect for the property of this author is appreciated.

This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead, places, events or locales is purely coincidental.

Also by the author: Where the Cloud Meets the Mountain and the Mountain Disappears

**Table of Contents**

Prologue

Chapter One: Pigs

Chapter Two: Remembering Airplane-Land

Chapter Three: Dragon and Empress

Chapter Four: The Pit of Old Magic

Chapter Five: A Meeting

Chapter Six: A Secret

Chapter Seven: Waking

Chapter Eight: Another Visit

Chapter Nine: Gone Missing

Chapter Ten: Höfn

Chapter Eleven: Kells

Chapter Twelve: Ham Sandwich and Dinner

Chapter Thirteen: Druids and Stones

Chapter Fourteen: Annie

Chapter Fifteen: A Story About Icebergs

Chapter Sixteen: Mo Bagohn

Chapter Seventeen: Wicklow

Chapter Eighteen: The Cathedral in the Cliff

Chapter Nineteen: The Story of the Coming of Bres

Chapter Twenty: The Story of Brendan

Chapter Twenty-One: Revelations

Chapter Twenty-Two: Unicorns

Chapter Twenty-Three: Into the Liffey

Chapter Twenty-Four: Barrows For the Dead

Chapter Twenty-Five: The Voice of Manannan

Chapter Twenty-Six: Darkness

Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Story of Sigfuss

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Mrs. Bres' Mom

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Lord of Stone

Chapter Thirty: Introductions

Chapter Thirty-One: Fimbulsummer

Acknowlogies and Apoledgements

About the Author

**Prologue**

The infant was bundled in swaddling like a mummy's wrappings, keeping the fiery cold away. Her face was bright red in the howling wind. The messenger stepped out of the tomb and leaned into a snow-flecked torrent of air. Pressing the bundle to his chest, he made his way across the short rocky promontory, around the buttress of rock that hid the tomb from sight, and out onto the sparkling white slope of the frozen island mountain.

The baby wailed. He bobbled her gently. As he did so, the ice under his feet broke apart. He fell onto the bare face of the slope and twisted to keep from crushing the baby. Together they slid half a mile down the desert of ice. The messenger plummeted headfirst on his back, his arms tight around the tiny bundle, sliding. He received a painful knock as they flew over the barrier rocks and spun out onto the solid frozen sea, wheeling flatly across the blue-white expanse. They finally came to a dizzying stop on the ice. The baby sneezed and began crying again. Groaning, the man lifted her over his head and bounced her up and down again until she calmed. Digging his boots into the slick ice, he pushed himself gradually upright and looked around.

The Irish Sea slopped at the crust of ice he stood on. Looking over his shoulder, he saw that the mountain was probably unscalable now without an ice pick and pitons; there was no going back up into the tomb. The shraww and screee of gulls sounded above the peak. The man arched his aching back and sighed as the baby began to wail again.

Placing one boot after the other on the treacherous ice, the messenger crept back over the rocks to the land. It was time to bring the child to the Lady for safekeeping. First he lay her in a bundle on the ground. From his fanny pack he took out a still-twitching orange salamander tail, a pinch of saltpeter and a pinch of powdered cinnabar and rubbed them all together. His hand glowed hot red as the materials connected. Wincing as heat built up, he breathed steadily, trusting his training to keep the magic from burning him. His broiling hand touched the ice. He sighed as it melted, hissss, revealing the weatherworn soil beneath. The minerals flamed out suddenly and his hand faded back to cool pink. As the last of the ice vaporized to steam, he returned the slightly shriveled salamander tail to his fanny pack and took out new ingredients.

Turmeric for precision.

Duck eggshell for distance.

Powdered plum pit for height.

And a living yellow snapdragon on a ball of mud.

Checking a pocket compass, he set the snapdragon on the melted-clean turf and adjusted the direction of the flower to match the compass heading. He rubbed the other three items together in his palm and sprinkled them on the little flower.

Then he breathed on it.

Erupting, the snapdragon's stem flexed and heaved as it thickened. The flower grew until it was as tall as a person, as tall as a house, as tall as the island's peak. The lemon-colored flower at the top groaned as it blossomed into a sleigh.

The man slung the baby to his chest. Stretching his thick arms, he began to climb.

As they rose toward the top, the air was sharper and thinner. The wind wailed and rasped like angry spirits. The child was wailing, too, but he couldn't stop to tend to her. Any moment now, the spell would end and they would fall. Feeling every twitch and bend of the great stem as a warning, feeling the seconds tick away, feeling the weight of his calculations bearing down on him, the man found the draped yellow petal in his hand at last. He pulled himself up and over into the flower and sat on one of the furled petals, clutching the shrieking bundle. Leaning over the precarious side, he began screwing a heavy-duty steel clamp over the snap-jaws at the base of the flower. The icy ground below was dizzying. With each turn of the vise he felt the sleigh-mouth widen, felt the sepals compress and the tension rise. He lay back in the sleigh as the jaws opened, twirling the handle of the vise with a fingertip until the spring-loaded flower was shaking from the pressure of the powerful forces.

One more turn.

And one more after that.

And one--

The connection between the flower and its stem snapped. The pressure was unsprung. Flung.

And they flew.

Accelerating with enough force to billow the messenger's eyelids open and his nostrils apart, the yellow snapdragon sleigh was catapulted up into the clouds, above the clouds, into the lower atmosphere. His legs were tucked into the petals, his hands on the swaddling tied around him. The baby had stopped crying, and the man was able to relax a little and trust his calculations:

The height of the plant.

The angle it would grow, calculated from magnetic north.

The size of the snapdragon blossom.

The pressure that the flower's torsion-spring could sustain until it released its kinetic energy.

The distance from Avalon to Iceland.

**Chapter One**

Pigs

or, Sleep Light This Night

The roof of the barn creaked under the weight of the endlessly-falling snow. Lenna's feet burrowed into the yellow prongs of the straw pile, trying to keep warm. The dragonscale comforter clinked as she turned over and over. Wool blankets bunched around her skinny legs. On the far end of the dark loft lay the other servant girl, Binnan Darnan, who smacked her lips and snurfled into her pillow. Wind rose up outside, whistling through the gears of the heavy barn doors below. Chill tendrils of wind trailed in and climbed the ladder to the loft. Lenna shivered in the moonless early spring, waiting for the thaw. She finally slept, dreaming of a perfect world where no one ever hit her.

* * *

In the morning, the lemon-yellow chanticleer dragon woke her, squawking from the top of the dragon tower. When the squawking started, the day began. The farm in the inland of Iceland was stretching its arms, and Lenna stretched along with it. She washed her wet-straw-colored hair in the rain basin and opened the dragonproof barn doors.

The start of every day was a slow trudge through deep snow. Making the first footprints in the open white canvas, Lenna trod up the low hill to the servant's entrance behind the farmhouse and opened the top half of the Dutch doors. The hairy arm of Kaldi the cook hefted the leftovers bucket and handed it down to her. She carried the bucket with both hands toward the tarpaulin canopy over the pigpen. Her feet slid down into the chill, flaky snow as she went.

At her call, the piglets came running, crowding around her. Resting the rim of the slop bucket on the wooden trough, she got her fingers under the bottom of the bucket and lifted. The remains of Kaldi's cooking slid messily into the wooden V. There were potato skins, meat nubbins, and mushy stalks of green things like peppers and parsley. The piglets made a wagging line and dove at the food as soon as the bucket was out of the way. The sows watched from a distance, waiting for the piglets to finish.

Uh oh. That awful marauding boar was out again. A trail was dredged out through the snow from the back of the pen toward the little ecological-study forest. If that sneaky old boar wasn't home by nightfall she'd have to go looking for him. Ugh. Usually he came back by himself, though.

An hour of scrubbing and shovelling later and the pen was sort of clean. Returning the tin wash-bucket to its hook, she went to watch Binnan Darnan.

The stone dragon tower was on a hill aways from the farm's big house. The tower was a circle of gray above the treetops, surrounded by roots and low-hanging fir branches. Lenna jumped root-to-root and rock-to-rock, balancing carefully when a rush of wind took the trees aside.

Binnan Darnan was running in a circle just inside the low, square entrance. Lenna ducked to get inside. They built the doorway very low, since the draglets wouldn't walk anywhere they could fly. The older girl was always smiling when she was playing with the draglets. Her pointy nose was draped by floofy black hair. She was shorter than Lenna, very short, tiny-short, even though she was older by a year or two. Her black hair streamed as she ran and collapsed as she slowed. Her orange plastic following-stick led the flapping draglets in a bobbing line around the inside of the tower. The four draglets always followed her. They thought she was their mother.

Lenna sat on the flagstones just inside the threshold. Circling and weaving above her were four draglets: two smoky gray, the greenish-black and the salamander-orange. The stubby crosseyed Icelandic breed had flared nostrils and short snouts. Down the top edge of their wings hung quills, and little vestigial arms were folded like praying mantis arms at their chests. Binnan Darnan skipped and leaped and clucked at them, holding the stick high, high above her head. Always smiling.

Lenna was _so_ envious.

After a few minutes of circling the floor, Binnan Darnan gave the beasts a last, fast fly around the tower and tossed the orange stick into the air. Diving after it were four bundles of wonder. They argued over the stick in their croaking voices, pecking and clawing, trying not to let it drop. Binnan Darnan sat cross-legged on the hard floor beside Lenna.

"The boar's out again," Lenna began.

"Kaldi would help you look for it if you helped out in the kitchens," the black-haired girl replied.

Lenna picked a fallen green primer scale apart with her thumbnail. "I don't need any help, Binnan Darnan. I was only complaining."

"Ohhhhh. Lenna, you don't need to be this way. I told you how lucky you are. When they took me from _my_ home, I was--"

"You were sleeping on a hard floor and cooking potatoes-on-a-stick every night over a trash fire. You told me this before." Some days Lenna liked hearing Binnan Darnan's pretendy tales, and some days not.

"You still don't believe me." Binnan Darnan strung her fingers along her black hair like a harp. "But it's all true. My parents were the worst."

Lenna hugged herself. "You remember them," she said.

"Yes, I do," Binnan Darnan replied. "They were bad parents. I'm glad the Lady took me away from them. They beat me a hundred times worse than Brugda ever hit you. I had to dig up potatoes with my bare hands. This life is like a dream compared to them."

A gust of wind flew through the low doorway. "You get to play with dragons. I never will," said Lenna, glaring at the flapping gray twins above her. They had the stick clamped in their beaks, flying like synchronized swimmers.

"It's a small enough gift, Lenna. Leave it be."

The orange following-stick clattered to the ground. The draglets began to fight. Binnan Darnan picked up the plastic stick, waved it in a circle, clucked and began to walk. Lenna uncurled herself and returned to the pigpen.

By the afternoon, the sows had had a rubdown, Kaldi had brought the girls some lunch in a pail, and the boar was still missing. Time to go looking. Lenna took a spare sweater from the oak dresser in the barn and began prowling the grounds to the edge of the forest. The trail that had been dredged through the snow was a straight line from the canopied pen to the triangular woods. The boar had surely gone in, but the forest was thick with undergrowth and pricklies. Maybe the boar was just around the ... no.

And she was _not_ going to ask for any help, no sir.

There was a break in the poky wall of juniper shrubs and pine, a little path leading to a secret place that only Lenna knew about. It was somewhere to start. She went in. Winter needles blanketed the ground, crunch, and Lenna had to keep her head ducked under looming snowladen branches.

"Heyy-ip! Heyy-ip! Boar!" she called, gently at first, then louder. The sun cut across the treetops in gold. The wrapped leather tied Viking-style to her legs held steady on the rough path. A fawn bounded, bounded away. Gusts shook more orange needles down. The boar was nowhere around.

"Heyy-ip! Heyy-ip!"

Normally it would be rooting out morels and mushrooms at the edge of things, but it had gone this deep into the forest before. There was no reason to panic.

"Heyy-ip. Boar?" Rustle. No, it was only a mota, patchy fur and bright orange teeth on little legs. She watched, fascinated, as the mota dug up a root, alarming a mouse and sending one scurrying after the other. Lenna walked on.

There was her special tree stump, a nice place to sit and think. Here was the burrow where foxes would sneak around like red ghosts. She stepped past the familiar tree shaped like a troll. Around the corner ... there was the secret place ... and there was the boar! A stripy bundle of trouble. It was laying on its side, probably sleeping, the silly boy. She ran up and pushed aside a bendy tree limb, ducked under the hanging bark of a rotting tree and stopped short.

The world spun. There was Brugda, the nasty old woman who ran the farm. She was kneeling over the boar, her balding red hair hidden under a white bonnet. A huddled hunch of shawls bent over a striped brown back. They were in Lenna's secret glen.

Rags in rainbow colors lay scattered on the ground. A circle was scraped clear in the dirt and snow around the boar. The handle of one of Kaldi's kitchen knives stuck upright out of the back of the boar's head. A terrible lolling tongue lay motionless along the dirt, sticking out from the boar's open mouth. Brugda had killed it. She had killed the boar and was chanting over it.

Lenna wanted to scream at her. Instead she stood frozen, helpless, and watched. As the low chanting continued, a filmy pillar like water rose up from the circle, enclosing Brugda and the boar.

The colors of the rags drained to gray like an optical illusion. A rainbow of cellophane colors spun upwards into the air in ribbons. From these ribbons, bright pictures wove themselves into being above Brugda's head. Brugda stared up at the images, concentrating. Lenna watched as swimmy visions appeared, one after the other:

She saw a canvas bag, knotted loosely at the top, washing astream in the old runoff brook in the wood.

She saw fire from a distance, burning orange and hot white.

She saw a huge dark dragon the color of charcoal swooping down to the big house.

Lastly she saw herself, standing just outside the secret place in the wood.

Gulping, she watched herself step across the rippling boundary of the circle. Brugda saw it, too.

Would she run away, now that the old woman knew she was there?

No. She was braver than that.

The colored pictures faded from the air.

"Try that trick, Little Len," Brugda said without turning.

So she did. Lenna took a step, took another. Taking a big breath, she stepped up to the very edge of the shimmering boundary. There was a smell of pressed apples and blood.

Like sticking her fingers into bathwater, Lenna felt the cold border of the magic circle pass around her, from warm to cold to warm again. Then she was a foot away from a dead animal and five feet from old Brugda, who smiled grimly and looked up at her.

"Sharply done," said the old woman. "Only a few could cross my circle. That wasn't a hand-me-down magic."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Lenna shouted. "I don't know what you did or what those pictures were. All I know is I look after the pigs and you've killed my boar and now there won't be any more piglets for the dragons to eat."

Twelve years of suppressed anger came rushing out: "And I hate that you did it. And I hate living here. And I hate that I get hit when I do wrong. And I hate you and everything. I even hate the pigs."

"Bravely said to your keeper," said Brugda in a measured voice.

"Why? Why the boar? Why did it deserve this?" Lenna asked, pointing.

"Terrible times call for terrible deeds, child." Brugda rose and pulled the knife from the boar's head with a sickening slurp. With flicks of her wrist, she dabbled red slime along the dirt toward the scratched circle. Lenna felt a flutter in her stomach as a drop of blood hissed and slid along the edge. The watery pillar dropped away.

"Are those pictures held in mind?" asked Brugda. "The dragon? The fire? The bag?"

Lenna nodded dumbly.

"All will be, near in time." Brugda dropped the knife, wiped her hands on her linen skirt and took the girl's hand. "Come."

They returned along the darkening path in silence. Lenna's mind whirled, but she was too scared to ask any questions. Breaking into the open expanse of the outer fields, she sighed to see the intact buildings. All was the same as it had been.

All was the same except the boar.

"I trust the swine have eaten?" said Brugda.

Lenna nodded.

"Sleep light this night." The woman strode off to the farmhouse. Lenna ran to find Binnan Darnan.

**Chapter Two**

Remembering Airplane-land

or, Will You Be My Daughter?

"You expect me to believe your stupid story when you never believe mine?" snapped Binnan Darnan, kneeling on the oval rug inside the barn. "Has old Brugda turned into a witch now? Next you'll be telling me there's a ghost living in the big house attic. Listen, Lenna. You fell asleep and had a funny dream."

"Then where's the boar?" Lenna whimpered, sitting on her butt with her elbows up on her knobby knees.

"You didn't finish looking for it," said Binnan Darnan. "It's still missing, I believe. You shouldn't have given up."

"I didn't give up!" snapped Lenna. "You think you're the only one who works hard, Binnan Darnan? I see something strange and now I'm lazy and a dreamer? Is this it?"

"That's not what it is at all," the black-haired girl replied. "You look for reasons to hate Brugda. That's why you had this dream."

"It wasn't a dream," Lenna said sulkily. "I know it wasn't. My dreams are always of a nice world where there's no Brugda. That's my dream. Always my dream."

Binnan Darnan sighed and folded her arms together, hunch. "What do you want me to do if I say I believe you?"

"I don't know what'll happen now, Binnan Darnan," said Lenna. "The boar's dead. Lady Joukka Pelata will have to buy herself a new one. But look. If that black dragon comes tonight, it'll be bad. I know it will. I saw it tear down the big house."

"Lenna, I have the dragonvoice. If there's a dragon, I'll talk to it. It'll listen to me. I can make it go."

Gripping the colorless wool rug with a hand, Lenna scrumpled it and let it go again. She stood.

"Sleep light for me tonight, would you?"

"For you." Binnan Darnan nodded, took Lenna's hand and led her out through the footprints in the snow toward the kitchens. The sun had fallen past the horizon already, and a dull dusklight gripped the farm. A sliver of moon plucked dark green out of the treetops.

Kaldi stood framed in the light of the doorway. In his big hands were a saucepan and a pair of bowls, stacked. He was tall, wide-shouldered, with a thin brown beard. Usually nothing could take the smile away from him, but tonight he looked concerned.

"Don't run off when you've eaten, okay?" he told them.

Each girl took a bowl, and he poured out stew. They took spoons from the hook and sat on their cushions in the corner. Kaldi sat beside them. "Brugda told me what happened, Lenna. She wants to talk to you about it."

Eyes wide, Binnan Darnan tossed glances between them, wiping her chin with a hanging napkin.

"What d'you think she'll tell me?" asked Lenna, her spoon halfway to her mouth.

"The truth, I imagine," Kaldi replied, "or part of it. Run in to the sitting room and you'll know for certain what she'll say."

"The sitting room of the big house?" That was the special guest room, where everything had to look perfect and there weren't any stains on the white carpet and you couldn't ever touch anything.

"I didn't know you'd invented another sitting room in the barn, silly. Now scoot." He turned to Binnan Darnan. "Brugda says you should stay inside by the door, just in case."

As Lenna hurried off down the hall, she could hear the little girl begging for the story. Ha.

The sitting room was bay windows, tall white walls, white furniture with floral prints, a few silver sconces fitted with tall white candles, and a high ceiling that took up the whole front of the house. Brugda sat on an understuffed floral sofa across from Lady Joukka Pelata. The Lady sipped tea primly in a matching chair. She was the owner of the farm. She came down from her room a few times a week. In Lenna's memory she had never left the house. This evening she wore a simple white frock with petticoats. Lenna thought her frock was a little too simple for such an important person. Joukka Pelata set her teacup in a small saucer.

"Lenna," said the Lady.

The girl curtsied low to her.

"Here, child," said Brugda, gesturing.

Lenna sat obediently on the floor where Brugda had pointed, just between the sitting-room chairs.

"Your lady has a story for you," the old woman said. "You'll listen well, for a time of change creeps over us."

"Lenna." Joukka Pelata's voice had a far-away sound, soft and careful. It sounded as if the words were flowing down from some eternal drifting cloud to her small mouth. "There is much to say this evening. Where to begin? You weren't brought into my household to look after pigs."

She let down a pale hand limply. It was cold and thin-boned. Lenna took it and looked up at her, wondering.

"Nor are you here because your parents are dead. You are here for the same reason that my daughter Brugda is here."

She smiled at the girl, who frowned, suspicious. Brugda was the Lady's daughter? But Brugda was a nasty old woman.

"Do I seem too young, child?" Joukka Pelata went on dreamily. "To be mother to a matron?"

Lenna shrugged, nodded.

"I'm not too young," the Lady said. "I'm older than I seem. Other than I seem. Many Powers of Magic dwell in our world, child, and I am one of the greatest."

Powers of Magic?

Joukka Pelata held up her palm. A pale, hazily moving picture appeared above it. It was the same type of picture that Brugda's colored rags had made. But the picture was different and wonderful. It showed Lenna in a dragonneer's red jodhpurs, riding a dragon through the clouds. The girl's eyes lit up. Dragons. Dragons talking to her, following her, letting her ride them. To touch the sky, to swoop and dive through the air on the back of a dragon ...

"For a few minutes tonight, I may alter the world as I choose," said Joukka Pelata. "I can give you what you want most in the world. I watch you, Lenna. I know how much you want to have the dragonvoice. To be a dragonneer. I can make it happen."

"Do it! Do it!" Lenna shrieked.

"But there's a cost to such a transformation." The Lady looked down at her. "If you say no, I can tell you the story of who you are. I can tell you many things worth hearing. And perhaps you'll become the great woman I see you to be," Joukka Pelata said. "Or perhaps not."

"You're letting me _choose_?" Lenna asked. Nobody had ever let her choose anything before.

"That's it," chimed Brugda. She scrutinized the girl, frowning her eyebrows as if her eyesight had gone bad. "If you choose to be a dragonneer, you'll still be hit when you do wrong. You might have an unhappy marriage to a servant from another farm. And Binnan Darnan would be your pig-girl."

Joukka Pelata gave Brugda a hard look from the corner of her eye. "You play reckless with the girl's future, my daughter. Let her choose to stay or go."

The balding woman only smiled.

"But a dragon will come and tear down the big house. I saw it."

"Yes, we'd lose the house," the Lady said, airily, dismissively, twirling a hand, "and then the future would begin. Which would you prefer? The house? ... or the future?"

"I don't want the dragon to burn down the house," said Lenna. "I don't want bad things. But I still want to know." She peeked out from under her hair and glared a little. Nobody ever told her anything worth hearing. "Will you tell me everything I ask about? Everything? Will you even tell me about my parents?"

Brugda and Joukka Pelata shared a look. "We'll say what we may say," said the Lady.

Lenna thought. Dragons dragons dragons filled her eyes as she sat. She would get new baby dragons every year. Pretty, spinning, happy dragons. She could lead them around the tower, and when they were big enough you could ride them and talk to them and understand what they were saying.

And then she would never know all the things that she wanted to know. She might never find out about her parents.

Her parents. She always felt them lurking around in secret places inside of her, places she kept shut, except for those brief, painful moments when her youngest memories leaked out and drowned her. Lenna hadn't been able to ask about them, hadn't been able to talk about them, not ever, except sometimes to Binnan Darnan, and she was meddlesome and made up stories. Parents was a locked room inside of her.

Dragons ...

"I choose the story and the truth and the future. Are you sure you'd let your beautiful house get torn up just for me?"

The two seated women said _yes_ together.

"Then I will."

"Good," said Brugda.

"Here, then, is your story," said Joukka Pelata. She let the pastel picture fade from her hand in a puff of color. "First I will speak of magic. The Powers of Magic are great wizards. We wait in our sanctuaries around the Earth, stockpiling any magic the world can spare. We are collectors, storing the antiquities of the Earth. In our storerooms are all the different flavors of magic. We maintain the excess steam engine steam, the wasted electricity, the unspoken words, the feral dragons, the forgotten crystals.

"When one of us has gathered up enough magic," Joukka Pelata went on, "we can spend some of it to transform the world according to our desires. This transformation is called a Change. A Change is a time when the old magic drains away into the Earth, replaced by the new flavor of magic we've collected. Changes happen at regular intervals throughout history. Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison were the Powers of electricity magic. They fought each other to bring their competing styles of electricity into the world in the 1880s. Electricity magic replaced the steam magic that Queen Victoria had maintained for so long from her engineering lab beneath her palace. When electricity magic took over, all the steam drained away until there was barely enough to fill a teapot. Sometimes two magics exist side by side. My sister Nokinaata Pelata brought spoken-word magic into the world from her home in Nokia, Finland in 1991. Her telephones transformed electricity magic into spoken-word magic."

The Lady took a sip of tea from a white china cup. "More rarely, several Changes happen in a row. This world of dragons has only lasted for a decade, and already I've completed preparations to Change it, making it the shortest flavor of magic the world has seen since the French Reign of Terror."

"You're going to get rid of all the dragons?" Lenna shrieked. It was the worst idea in the world.

"When a Change falls," the Lady went on, ignoring her, "ordinary people forget the old ways and learn the new ones without realizing anything has happened. Most people are dim and blind and forgetful. They fall asleep in a world of steam-power magic, they wake up in a world of electricity, and they forget what it is to live in a steam world. Only a few can remember."

"Like you?" Lenna asked her.

"Like you," Joukka Pelata replied, "and like Brugda. You both have the rare capacity to look beneath the illusion of magic to the thin world beneath. That circle she drew in the wood? It was a small cut in the fabric of magic, bringing the future to her eyes for a moment. If Kaldi or Talvi had stood beside you, they would have seen nothing but a dead pig. But you saw the magic, and you walked through it."

_It wasn't just a dead pig_ , Lenna fumed inside her head. _It was_ my _pig_.

Brugda poked her chin up. "We suspected your hands could move magic since we found you," she said. "Now we know it."

"Hm. Okay. But why was I taken from my parents? From where?" she asked, rubbing her hand over the yarny white carpet.

Joukka Pelata held forth her hand again, and colors emerged once again. The moving picture that appeared was unsettling. "Do you know what this is?" the Lady asked her.

Hm. It was white and smooth and flying, sliding through a cloud bank. The word _flybe_ was written in blue on the crooked tail.

"It looks really familiar," said Lenna, and it did.

"Called an airplane," said Brugda.

Lenna frowned. "Airplane? I've heard this word." As she watched, peering in at the faces in the tiny oval windows, the airplane faded away. There she was, a tiny splotch of yellow hair, much much younger, seated on the upper deck of a dragon's howdah. The pavilion stretched from the dragon's shoulders to halfway down its tail, strapped around its midsection by powerful buckles locked onto the dragon's chest spikes. Flowing satin airshields directed wind away from the powerful sweeps of the dragon's wings. The tasselled gold platform was lined with narrow upholstered seats. Tired people sat, flipping magazines, sipping cups of juice or beer, squeezing their knees together uncomfortably. The passengers drifted through the sky on the back of a liny silver dragon, one of the armor-scaled Belgian breeds.

Looking closer at herself in the image, Lenna saw a colorful plastic geometric toy in her waggling little hands and a smile on her infant face. A man and woman in seats beside her were too small to see clearly, no matter how hard she squinted.

Lenna shivered. "I forgot. Are those my parents?"

"Mm," said Joukka Pelata. "We watched the Change to dragon magic and brought to our house all the children who could see it. There were only two in the entire world."

Lenna thumped the carpet with a fist. "Binnan Darnan can do magic as well?"

"When the Change from electricity magic to dragon magic came," Joukka Pelata said, seeming to ignore the question, "airplane pilots became dragonneers overnight. They all discovered the dragonvoice instantly. All except Binnan Darnan. She could speak the dragonvoice in airplane-land, before there were dragons at all."

"But can she use magic?" Lenna demanded, frowning frowning. "Walk through spells and magic circles? Like me?"

"Not all who see a thing can manage its ins and outs. Kaldi is no carpenter. Talvi is no cook," said Brugda.

"So I'm the only one in the world who has real magic?" said Lenna. "You should have said there was a present for me. This would have been better." She nodded to herself.

"Magic isn't always such a gift, child. There are costs. There are always costs," sighed Joukka Pelata. "Your magic means that all the Powers will want you as their own."

"Why?"

"Times of Change make Powers blind," said Brugda. "Only through us, we who see across the tapestry into the thin world, can the Powers of Magic remember what has gone before. Everyone forgets. Even the Powers themselves." The old woman scooted forward on the sofa and leaned over Lenna. "They want eyes," she whispered. "Yours are very good, as are mine. When the Change falls tonight, you and I will see everything, and we will remember. Binnan Darnan may remember somewhat. The others, nothing."

Joukka Pelata leapt suddenly from her chair and looked around. White wax streaked down the silver candlesticks. Flickering circles of light illuminated the shuttered sitting room. "Time is short," she said. "A thing must be done. Will you be my daughter, Lenna?"

Lenna blinked, startled. "Huh? Why?" She stretched her fingers out to her toes and sat up.

"So you will always be my blood, even if you're taught the magic of another." Joukka Pelata's voice fell. "All of them will be after you now, to make you theirs. And you must be my daughter, or you'll get lost along the way."

"What about Binnan Darnan? Will she be your daughter, too?" Lenna asked.

"I don't have enough magic to spare for the both of you," Joukka Pelata replied.

As romantic as it was, being an orphan, Lenna wanted a mother. The decision was easy. "I'll be your daughter, Lady Joukka Pelata," she said.

The thin woman's arms reached outward. Memories flooded into Lenna's mind like snowflakes:

Spending time with Joukka Pelata, the lady of the house. Momma.

Life in small luxury. Having a room of her own, a bed, toys.

Thinking less of the servants.

Alone in her room, playing games with paper dolls.

Picking out a new ribbon for her hair every day.

Sneaking into Momma's room, trying on the simple grown-up clothes.

Wondering at the delicate crystals spinning on the table within.

Visiting the dragon tower and watching the dance led by Binnan Darnan.

Falling intoxicated under a love of dragons.

Her mind filled with doublevision. For every second of her life, there were two memories: life as the pig-girl and life as a princess. She had a parent now. She wasn't an orphan, but she used to be. Brugda was her big sister, now. Everything was confusing.

The room moved, jerk! She wasn't sitting on the floor anymore, but on the stiff sofa beside Brugda. Her brown servant's dress redrew itself in better colors. Ruffles ruffled themselves around her shoulders, tickling. The sitting room was no longer unfamiliar. She had a big real bed in the attic now, and she never even had to touch prickly old straw. She could do anything she wanted. Brugda could only hit her if Momma gave her permission to, instead of hitting all the time, the way it used to be.

As she sat, dazzled and perplexed, the big house smashed, as loud as screaming angels. Adrenaline shot through her forehead. The far white wall and its ceiling-high cabinet of fancy porcelain things tilted ponderously. The glass doors fell open. Fancy things crashed onto the wood floor and broke. Brugda scooped her up with muscles and carried her out through the servants' quarters.

When she looked back, Joukka Pelata was gone.

* * *

Kaldi stood in the night wind beside a wild-eyed whirl of black hair. Binnan Darnan was uttering grinding shriek sounds. The sounds cut through the wind and echoed across the barrens, louder and more terrible than her tiny frame should be able to produce.

The dragon was black like charcoal. Its face was long, arrowheaded, with sunken cheeks and solid black bird-eyes. Its scales clattered unnaturally. It was much taller than the house. Its tail was longer than the whole farm, trailing away out of sight. It crouched over the roof, tearing into the attic with a half-wheel of claws. So, so many claws on each hand. It didn't respond to Binnan Darnan's commands at all, but tore relentlessly at the shingles of the roof.

"It isn't stopping," barked Kaldi over the noise. "It isn't listening."

"Did Momma's magic take the dragon's hearing away?" shouted Lenna from Brugda's strong arms. "Or change the dragonvoice?"

"Not one nor the other," Brugda said, tossing her onto the snow and sweeping her toward the fringe of dark trees. "A working's been set upon its back."

Two servants emerged from the kitchen and ran toward the woods. One was a tall, dour-looking man with a mass of curly reddish-dark hair and a thin beard. That was Talvi the handyman. His wife Aitta was the housekeeper. She was shorter, with spiky bleach-frosted black hair, freckles and mascara around her small Icelandic eyes. The dragon lashed its tail, and Aitta tripped as the ground shook. Talvi brought her back to her feet, and together they flew across the downs.

"Can you release the spell?" Kaldi asked Brugda. He looked back at Binnan Darnan, who stood apart, fiery, facing the beast and calling to it in its terrible language.

"The Change is falling," Brugda muttered.

"Then how do we stop the dragon?" said Kaldi.

"Stop it? No. We look for the bag." Brugda shooed Lenna over the snow toward the forest, then turned back and shouted to Kaldi: "Bring the dragon girl. Carry her if she won't end the yap."

**Chapter Three**

Dragon and Empress

or, Where One Gift Lies, Another May Arise

It was a night full of rushed running and tripping on tough juniper branches in the dark. Brugda began to call out quick orders, her reedy voice slung up and away by the howling winds. She sent the servants off to find the runoff creek. Lenna and Binnan Darnan stayed beneath the flabby embrace of her shawled arms. Watching through branches, they saw the dragon breathe streams of white fire into the melting windows of the big house, saw the white fire turn orange as curtains and furniture came alight, saw walls and shelves fly apart beneath skinny flexing claws. A flash of deja vu. It was, Lenna realized, the exact sight she had seen in Brugda's magic circle. It was also the end of all her paper dolls, all her toys, her bed, her sheets, her private world. Burnt. The sound of destruction rang through the ground itself, unbearable and scratchy and constant.

Aitta found the bag. Lenna and Binnan Darnan followed the housekeeper's soprano voice through the dark. They called out for direction, stumbling along the shallow creek, toeing the almost-familiar stones and ice-crusted rushes and slippy water that bubbled beneath their quick footsteps. It was a tense, slow game of Marco Polo as they followed Aitta's calls. Lenna reached the housekeeper's slim silhouette and stood beside her.

A canvas bag, knotted loosely at the top, had washed astream in the old runoff brook in the wood.

" _Au_ , Brugda," she gasped. "This is the vision I saw! Exactly it!"

"That's nice. Now take the bag."

Inside was a heavy pile of black dragon scales.

"He wants them back," observed Kaldi, creeping up behind them. Lenna eeped.

Brugda sniffed the scales. "The working is clear. Touch them, child."

When Lenna picked up one of the one-pound muddy-black scales, she felt her mind fizz. A picture appeared. A maniacal Joukka Pelata was stealing into a dragon cave with a pair of pliers. "I think Momma tore them off the dragon," she murmured. "But why would she do that?"

"Set it down," Brugda instructed.

_Thwink_.

Lenna's mind cleared instantly.

"And if Mother did not?" Brugda went on.

"A spell to confuse," said Lenna, staring at the starlit pile of enchanted clinky things. "The dragon was only shown an illusion. But why?"

"Someone sent the creature to stop Mother from spending her magic on a Change," Brugda explained. "They are come too late. By bringing you into the family, Mother spent the last of her magic and hastened the Change. If there was time now, we could bring the beast its scales and reclaim its friendship. Instead," she said, sighing at the purple and green zigzags of the aurora sky, "we wait awhile till midnight. Stay awake and you'll see the Change. A rare thing."

The moon had a scoop taken away. Stars twinkled one by one through clouds. Trees hung blue around them. Lenna shivered.

The Change fell just when she found a comfortable place to sit. Like ice on a griddle, the world shillyshallied and dripped away. Her vision went soft. Birch trees melted into the ground. In their places were faint wisps like the armatures of unfinished sculptures. The moon fell out of the sky like a wristwatch's reflection on a wall. The sky tumbled after it. The darkness dropped away, leaving behind glaring blinding white. The world became black and white. Thin.

A splash of new darkness grew out of the light. Lenna's new ruffled dress tickled as it got replaced for the second time today. It became a strappy-shouldered leather dress with a cloth sash cinched around her waist. The fancy elkhide boots Momma Joukka Pelata had bought her became tall green leather boots buckled up her calves.

Eyelets and frills grew out of the servants' pajamas. Brugda's bonnet went from white to pink, and her shawls grew bangles. Spectacles crawled out of Kaldi's temples, thick and octagonal. Talvi acquired brass epaulets, like an admiral, and Aitta spun with twinkles.

The wisps of trees solidified slowly. The new tree trunks were thin like insect legs and were polished into skinny walking-sticks. Each trunk was capped with a complex brass hinge mechanism which hooked into adjustable, spring-loaded branches. The stick-thin limbs fractured into more and more branches, each of them a straight, polished arm socketed to a flexing brass mechanism.

The sky regrew itself into blue origami paper. The night became simple patterns in bright flat colors. Clouds were white spirals sliding across the painted navy blue sky. Around Lenna's feet, twisty cedars sprouted, short red hexagonal branches. The cedars were tufted with loose-hanging, tasselled paper lanterns. The moon grew back, a spinning disc of ivory and shadow in the painted sky. Along its sides were rings of carved scrimshaw. Half of it was scooped out, and the scoop turned out of sight and back into sight as the moon spun.

Lenna blinked, staring, dazzled.

"Will the empress follow us here?" whispered Aitta, dressed in her blue glittering nightrobe.

"Empress?" said Binnan Darnan suspiciously. She wore a black Victorian dress layered with black lace and ribbons. Lenna wondered how much of the old dragony world she would remember.

"Should we bring it the bag now?" Kaldi asked Brugda.

"The dragon's an empress?" interrupted Binnan Darnan.

"Dragon?" said Talvi, puzzled. "No, the empress is an empress."

In a worried voice, Binnan Darnan said, "But I don't speak empress. I don't raise empresses." Puzzled, she went on: "I've never even seen one."

"Binnan Darnan," said Brugda sorrowfully, embracing the elfin girl, stroking her feathery black tangled hair, catching a ribbon as it came loose. The little girl shooed the hand away.

"I remember having a voice," Binnan Darnan blurted. "But that's gone now. I had--I had found something. But I've lost it. Brugda, I hurt so much. I hurt all over." Shaking, she looked up into the sympathetic eyes of the pink-bonneted woman above her. "What have I lost, Brugda? I can't even remember."

"A gift. You've lost a gift," Brugda replied. "Where one gift lies, another may arise." She smiled. "You only need find it." Kissing Binnan Darnan on the top of her head, Brugda picked up the knotted bag. "Come along. Let's comfort the empress. Perhaps you'll find something as well."

The walk through the wood was towering strange. Lenna looked in every direction at the new world around her. She took Binnan Darnan's hand and followed the grown-ups across scrunchy snow that felt nothing like snow, beneath trees so thin they looked like they might snap in half, through wind that blew glittery rectangles and sparkling twinkling shapes through the air. Puffballs landed coldly on her bare shoulders.

The big house came into view. She could see it had once been a pyramid of glass balanced on the tip of a larger pyramid of glass. A tangle of spiral staircases had been strung between them. Now it was torn down and smashed and melted by fire.

Fire was different, too. It was a throbbing web of triangles, flickering orange and white, hot from afar, smokeless, bright in the night farmyard.

She looked around the expanse of the ruined farm. The barn was a three-story stack of red glass pyramids. The tarpaulin roof of the pigpen was gone. The pigpen itself was gone, too. A mechanism of metal stood in its place. Beyond, through the skinny leafless trees, the dragon tower was wondrous, like a magnificent tinker's shop. All the walls were see-through colored glass, and everything was mystery.

The empress, Lenna saw, was a wooden machine shaped like a rhinoceros beetle. It was painted brightly in reds and blues and golds, the paint flaking like an old-fashioned child's toy. Glowing chunks of crystal were socketed to its forehead, humming, protected by a red railing. Its enormous back was lined with seats that flapped like movie theater seats as it moved. A stylized flower was painted on the back of each banging seat. Doilies folded and unfolded but never slid. Three thin jointed pairs of metal legs moved in pairs like beetle legs. Two telescoping arms zigzagged from under the front portico.

Brugda led the way up to the edge of the triangular firelight. She stood quietly behind the wagging thorax of the creature. Piston-fingers rummaged in the remains of the big house, picking through shattered walls. Up close, the fire looked like stained glass dancing. It curled the glass like butterfly wings and scattered it puffily onto the snow. The frame blackened, leaving a checkerboard of ash.

The snow wasn't melting. Mystified, Lenna bent down and picked up a handful of freezing cotton balls. Pinching the dense white fibers, squeech squeech, she dropped them in a tumble as her hand got cold. She brushed the cotton away from the top of the ground to reveal taupe silk grass. The dead cloth grass was hemmed neatly, brown at the tips and starch-stiff, woven over the ground in plentiful blades. Tugging, she drew out a brown root. It was a single nubbin of fabric, the color of winter straw on one side and a scraggly brown root on the other.

Brugda took Binnan Darnan's hand and led her up the hill to the scrabbling empress. She gave the canvas bag to the girl, who clutched the thick drawstring nervously with two lace-cuffed hands. "Go on," said Brugda. "Give an unhappy creature some peace."

Clearing her throat, the tiny girl held the bag up. "Mister empress? I have--" She dipped a hand in and pulled out "a spring! I have your lost springs, mister empress!"

Clunking wooden gears brought the huge segmented thing face to face with her. The crystal eyes behind the red picket fence goggled at the metal widget. A look of recognition. Excitedly the machine stomped the vegetable garden flat and clicked its crabclaws in anticipation. Collapsing its legs and sinking to the ground with a bump, it flung open a small pair of ornamental doors at the top of three steps.

Binnan Darnan set her feet on the first step timidly. "You want me to fix you?" she asked. The empress nodded its great body, tossing the girl askew. She climbed up and began threading a spring into a rickety wooden seat. "It must have hurt so much, running with your seats banging," she said to it. The empress clicked its piston-pincers.

Lenna spotted her attic bedroom. Everything she knew had burnt away to ash. Brugda laid a hand on the criscrossing green straps of her dress. "Nothing of importance remains," the old woman whispered to her.

In quiet they stood. The rhythmic crackling of the new fire burned castle walls out of the glass walls. The silk of the new grass bubbled and melted, giving off the scent of burnt sage. Kaldi and Talvi and Aitta flanked Brugda, held back by her proud arms. They all waited, listening to the squeak of springs being wound into the wood hinges of the empress' movie-theater seats.

After some time, Binnan Darnan finished threading the springs and climbed down the steps. Each seat now stood upright and kept still as the wooden empress wiggled its thorax, testing. Deferentially, the machine faced the lacy blackhaired girl, spread its multijointed arms and bowed. Binnan Darnan curtsied back.

Binnan Darnan returned to Brugda elated. "I'm mechanically inclined!" she beamed.

The old woman appraised her. "With such ease you find your gifts," she murmured tonelessly. "I wonder what you could do in airplane-land." She winked at Lenna. "Perhaps this beast would bear us?" she asked.

"Where are we going?" Binnan Darnan replied.

"One of the rival Powers attacked us. I would know who. A wondering-well lies to the East."

Kaldi frowned, thinking. "The Pit of Old Magic isn't the same as it was, Brugda."

"Where would you rather go, potscraper?" she barked. To Binnan Darnan, she said sweetly, "Ask the thing if it will carry us there."

Binnan Darnan asked the empress, and it lined alongside the household, thudding on the snow-cotton.

"Wait," said Lenna. "What about the pigs? Who'll feed them?"

"What pigs?" said Talvi.

"See," said Brugda, pointing out across the delivery road.

Lenna ran down the hill, squinting across to where her pigsty used to be. There was no pigsty. In its place, a considerable mirror was pointed toward the dragon tower, balanced on a complex gear system. A gyroscope and a heavy flywheel spun relentlessly in its guts.

Returning, she asked, "What's in the tower now?"

"The refractory? Crystals, like always," said Talvi. "They'll wait for us."

"Then what's Binnan Darnan been doing all this time?" Lenna asked.

"I weave the crystals in the refractory," the girl answered. "Look at your waist, silly. Have you really ignored me this whole time?"

Lenna's green dress was circled by a chartreuse sash. It was secured at its loop by a woven crystal, like the ones that had spun on tables in Joukka Pelata's room. It shimmered in the moonlight.

"Child," Brugda said, "come sit beside me. You and I will talk as we travel. " She climbed the steps of the empress. The household shuffled after her. The plank floor of the animal's back clumped under shoes and slippers. A spring-loaded seat in the back row whined satisfyingly as Lenna unfolded it and sat. Brugda joined her.

"To the Pit of Old Magic," Binnan Darnan said to the empress, leaning over the railing in front. The beast stood and ran. Its scuttling strides were as smooth as a flying dragon.

"May I ask you things, Brugda?" Lenna began, resting in the back beside the old woman.

"Ask."

"What happened to my parents?"

"I don't know. I don't know who they were. Adrift. Lost or found," Brugda answered.

Stupid Brugda always made everything sound so mysterious. It was annoying. Lenna wished the woman would answer questions properly.

"How about _your_ parents, Brugda? I bet you aren't Momma's real daughter, either."

"No," she said.

"How old were you when Momma took you?"

Brugda watched the pattern that was painted across the sky. "Grown. Quite grown. She needed eyes like mine, and I needed a place to live."

So the old woman hadn't been a little kid when she became Joukka Pelata's daughter. Maybe she'd even chosen to live on the farm. But Lenna had only been a toddler. She wondered how Momma had gotten her away from ... whoever her other parents were. The ones on the _flybe_ airplane. Had they given Lenna away, or had the Lady stolen her? Were they looking for her? She stopped that line of thought. It hurt.

"Did you have to look after the pigs when you were a girl?" she asked Brugda.

"It was sheep, then," said the old woman. "The pigs came with the dragons."

Hm. She wondered whether there were pigs at all in the world before the dragons came, or whether they were invented for the dragons to eat. The way the Changes worked was still confusing.

"Did you forget anything when you became Joukka Pelata's daughter?"

"Not then," sighed Brugda, "but I've forgotten enough in my time."

"Did Momma ever have kids of her own? You know. Real kids."

From the row ahead of them, Kaldi whispered back: "I don't think they can."

"Oh. Um. Brugda, did you really always think I was magic?"

"Oh yes," Brugda replied. "We thought, and we hoped, and we waited."

"Hm. I don't hate you anymore," Lenna sighed. "Maybe I never did. I hate not knowing, Brugda."

"As you should. Sleep, Little Len."

And she did.

**Chapter Four**

The Pit of Old Magic

or, Let Go of My Ankle

Sunlight streamed from the turning halo-wheel of the new sun. Shielding her face with a hand, Lenna looked around to see the new Iceland by day. A series of staircases ran up domed hills, one staircase after another, connected in arches across the expanse by delicate fairy-bridges held up by fluted white columns. The empress was still scurrying delightedly across the cottony flats. Blinking in the morningness, Lenna saw that Brugda was studying her.

"What?" Lenna mumbled, yawning.

"Name the flavor of this world."

"Shiny?" She pushed her arms out and arched her back. The strappy green dress felt strange, but it wasn't grimy or sticky the way it ought to be after a night.

"What makes it so?" Brugda probed.

The world around them flew by in glorious colors. "Everything's a little bit perfect," said Lenna.

"Our mother likes things _orderly_ ," Brugda said cryptically. Lenna tried scraping sleepy-seeds from her eyes, but she didn't find any.

"What's the Pit of Old Magic?" she asked.

"Patience holds that answer."

So Lenna took the hint, shut up and observed the world.

Diamond water flowed uphill to the tops of cliffs and fell back down into the shining pools that fed them below.

Fields of spiral grain stood, the last of the winter harvest.

A distant village had polished silver pagodas for roofs.

Red floating balloons carried travelers.

The liquid branches of a stand of mercury trees draped upwards, as if reaching for the sun. Lenna watched her reflection in the metal trees bend and shift as they swayed in the brushing brushing wind.

"Look," said Talvi, pointing. "There's a sight. It seems closer than it is."

Lenna struggled to focus her eyes. The flat snowy plain of central Iceland had a smudge. It was a black pit surrounded by a circle of vibrantly green grass. The pit had something sticking out of the middle.

As they got closer, she could better see the thing sticking out of the pit. It was a brown column, plunging up into the sky from inside the circular darkness. Two, no, three branches or roots or arms stuck out upward from the top of the column. The arms were like antlers, or maybe the points of a crown, dangling out over the circular maw of the pit. The pit was vast, acres and acres around, fringed at the top with a ring of fresh green silk. It wasn't perfect or shiny like the rest of the world. Was it a tree, an old-fashioned tree from dragon-land, planted upside down in a giant hollow in the world? Were those arm things the scraggly roots? It was the size of a castle, whatever it was. Two birds circled the thermals above it.

"Ah," sighed Brugda. "A steady pace brings far things near. Will the creature stay put as we look into the matter, child?"

Binnan Darnan's pointy nose poked above her seat. "Oh, I 'spect so. It likes having a family to carry around. Get me an oilcan for it and it'll fly us to the stars."

The empress slowed as it reached the green edge. Ahead, the silk field dropped off into darkness.

"How exactly does the Pit of Old Magic work, Brugda?" asked Kaldi.

"Once upon a yesterday, it was a proper stone well, the sort you draw water from. Small as you please, and you climbed down a chain," she explained. "At the bottom, where water should be, there was a bright box and you asked a question by pressing letter-tablets. A computer."

Something hopped into Lenna's mind. "From airplane-land," she said.

"Mm. Now it's a tree." Brugda stood as the empress halted.

"This isn't like any tree I've seen," said Talvi.

Lenna looked up at the handyman. Below his curly mass of auburn hair was a look of growing apprehension.

Aitta saw, too. She pressed close to her husband and took his hand, squeezing his fingers, one two three four. "Gently," she whispered. "The way of the world." Talvi looked at her and blinked uncomfortably with a look of recognition, as if a secret code had been revealed to him. Lenna watched the two, then looked back at the pit.

"There was a chain leading down the middle of the well?" Lenna said.

"That's right," Brugda replied.

"Then it must be the tree that we climb down, Brugda. Instead of the chain."

Everyone looked out across the swallowing gap into darkness between the land and the far top of the upside-down tree.

"Then we're sunk," said Brugda, and sat.

Binnan Darnan climbed to the front of the empress and gripped the red taffrail. "Across, empress! We have faith in your legs!"

"No." Brugda clutched the seat in front of her.

"Jump! I know you can do it!" Thrill zinged onto Binnan Darnan's face. Her black hair was blown back as the huge wooden creature bent its knees at the lip of the pit and sprang. "Whee!" She held her arms up. The force of acceleration threw everyone back in their seats. The leap lasted seconds that felt like hours. The sun drew nearer. Lenna huddled, holding her arms against her eyes and holding her feet up off the floor. Landing jostled her. She found Brugda's hand gripping her upper arm.

Binnan Darnan beamed. "Here we are, mistress! Don't you see what a beautiful creature we've found?"

"Beauty is the greatest danger," growled Brugda. "Well, we're here. Get out and we'll look."

They walked down the steps onto the brown surface of the upended tree. It was irregular and wavy, but firm. Lenna tiptoed to the edge, kneeled and peered over the side. Bark began a few feet down. "Binnan Darnan, can an empress climb?" she asked.

The vehicle backed away a few steps. "I don't think it likes that idea," said Binnan Darnan. "Much weight for thin arms."

"Kaldi?" said Brugda. "You'll go down with Lenna."

"Don't much relish the idea either," he replied, stretching his arms across his chest and leaning out to examine the sheer drop. "Is it safe?"

"Of course it's not safe," Brugda snapped. "Now start climbing or think of another way."

"I hope the bark is strong," Kaldi said as he folded his octagonal glasses onto his collar and swung over the edge. "It is," he called. "It's rough, easy to climb. Come, Lenna!"

"Wait." Brugda's voice was abrupt. "No. Binnan Darnan goes."

"Why me? Why do I have to do everything?" she asked.

"Decide quick! Hard for me to stay put if we plan on climbing back!" yelled Kaldi.

"Binnan Darnan. You go."

"Okay." Black lace bounced as she shrugged. She sat and scooted to the edge, where Kaldi held to a massive piece of stringy tree bark. "How do I get down?" she asked him. "Can you carry me?"

"Take my hand, then grab ahold. No, oof, ahold of the bark. There. Reach with your foot, lower yourself down. There, and again. I'm right beside you. And ... down."

From what Lenna could see, Binnan Darnan was moving slower than a snail. Why couldn't they hurry? They were going to fall. She knew they were. If they hurried ... if they hurried, they'd be safe. Kaldi was holding back. She could see it. Binnan Darnan was climbing too slow. She should have gotten down and climbed back to safety already. How hard could it be?

In the slanted light of the polar sun, she couldn't see a floor beneath the pit. However, farther into the shadowed gloom, she could see branches and maybe leaves as well. Brugda retreated to the center of the tree and sat with crossed arms and closed eyes. Aitta sat down beside her and held her hand. Lenna and Talvi leaned over the side like kittens watching a fish.

Down and down and on they crept. Kaldi whispered encouraging things to Binnan Darnan, who moved even slower than before.

When the giant red squirrel jumped out from the bole, Binnan Darnan let go. Kaldi was too slow to catch her. There were no branches to grab hold of. She fell, letting out the roar of a dragon.

Lenna screamed.

Binnan Darnan roared.

A flurry of colors and the smell of magic. The floofy black dress transformed again and again, from black lace to servants' brown to a T-shirt and jeans to a blouse and breeches to a puff of pink petticoats.

Then, far below, she stopped shrieking and floated.

"Brugda! What's happening to me?" she called up.

In an instant the thin red-gold hair and pink bonnet stared down at her.

"I can see the top of the tree, but I'm not getting any closer," Binnan Darnan shouted.

"You've crossed the barrier to the old magic, child! Reach the bark and climb!" Brugda shouted back.

"It's too far away!"

Binnan Darnan floated in midair in Victorian petticoats and high-heeled pink shoes, ten or twenty feet out from the tree and far below the level of the green land around the pit. Swimming didn't help; she flapped and wiggled but didn't get anywhere. Kaldi looked stricken and rushed down the bark toward her. The giant squirrel chattered and zipped around to the far side of the trunk. Then the shaking began.

Shuddering ran through the tree, sending everyone at the edge scrambling back to safety. Kaldi desperately gripped a shaggy piece of bark, but it was tearing away. Lenna held to Brugda's ankle as the tree tipped.

A roar boomed like a stopper pulled from a genie's bottle, schraaaaank. And another roar, schriiiiiink. The second sound was familiar. Lenna's thoughts cleared above the fear. "There's a dragon in the tree!" she shouted. "She's talking to it!"

"Yes," replied Brugda. "Let go of my ankle."

More dragonvoice echoed up. The tree was wobbling only gingerly now. Lenna planted her feet and put out her hands for balance. She tottered to the edge and lowered herself, lowered herself down to look over the side.

Binnan Darnan sat crosslegged on the massive scaled palm of a yellow-green dragon. Its arm stretched out from a newly-made hole in the trunk. Kaldi waited nearby, clutching a piece of bark. The little girl and the secret dragon chatted in terrible shrieks. Far above them, Lenna leaned closer, wishing wishing wishing she understood.

"Brugda!" said Lenna. "They're coming up!"

"Stand beside me, then. I'll teach you a kiss-me-quick. Fill your mind with a vision. See them reaching safety. Their feet there, beside you. Faces here. Make the sight as clear as you can. Hold the vision, tight tight. Clasp your hands. Say:

Kast minn baen

Ad himnariki

Tak hugmynd hedan

Lenna repeated it. When they unclasped their hands, the world became briefly touched, as if a hot day was fizzling the air above a stovetop. A ripple spread outward to the edge of sight.

"Now what?"

"Patience," said Brugda. "Even magic won't bring them to the top instantly."

When she reached the top, Binnan Darnan's dress had returned to black lace. The little girl ran over to Lenna. They were both smiling. "I haven't lost my voice, Lenna! I only misplaced it." She turned. "Brugda, have you heard?"

"Oh, I heard," sighed Brugda.

"I have both gifts!" said Binnan Darnan. "Now I can't wait for another shift and another gift!"

"Patience, child. I don't suppose you thought to ask the creature which Power sent the black dragon to attack our house?"

"Yes, of course," Binnan Darnan replied. "Only it sounded like it was in a different language. The dragon said, 'byo go joe, hall a weer, keer noo yashkar, shay is kay.' What does it mean?"

An expression appeared on Brugda's face, one that Lenna had never seen before. She wasn't sure what kind of expression it was.

"A riddle," said Brugda in an odd tone of voice to match her odd expression. She repeated it:

Beo go deo

Thall an Mhuir

Cuir na Iascaire

Sé fhios cé.

"It's in the language of Ireland. It means, 'Alive forever beyond the sea. Ask the fisherman, he knows who.' Ask the fisherman. Mm. Trust no dragon for a useful answer."

"Who's the fisherman?" asked Lenna.

"I have no idea. That's a dragon for you. Worse than cats. Repeat it again."

Binnan Darnan sounded out the strange words. Wind spun around her as she recited them.

"Remember them," said Brugda. "They will prove themselves before the end."

**Chapter Five**

A Meeting

or, How Can the Cloud Know?

"What now?" asked Kaldi, sitting heavily on the brown waves of the tree's underside and rubbing his rubbery arms. The origami paper sky went white with spirals, and a strange picture of a Japanese landscape painted on a fan slid by beneath the thickening clouds.

"We find the fisherman, obviously," said Brugda. "I would ask Joukka Pelata, and I will want silence. Lenna, beside me."

Brugda reached into the big front pocket of her pale yellow sequined dress. She took out a sharp black stake made of obsidian with a rough chiseled point on the end. Together they gripped the stake and awkwardly pressed the tip into the flesh of the wood. They pulling it skiddingly, uncomfortably through the base of the giant tree. A strip of white wood peeled up like ribbon. It felt nasty, like spraying graffiti. The tree seemed to vibrate and hum under the stone needle.

"Will the tree heal? Later?" whispered Lenna.

"No."

They made a triangle, a few feet across, and sat at two of the three points. Lenna frowned at the sliced wood.

"I don't like hurting the tree."

"I don't like a torn-down home," Brugda answered. She chanted:

Fær hana fyrr

Andi madur uppi

three times.

"Do you know many workings, Brugda?" whispered Lenna.

Brugda added the words _hush, child_ to the words of the chant. At the end of the spell, when nothing happened, the old woman nodded meaningfully to Lenna. It took a few promptings to say all the words in the right order. A ripple took her, and Joukka Pelata was there. Not an image, but the woman herself, wearing the same simple frock and petticoats as before. She sat at the third point of the triangle.

"How did the chant bring you here?" asked Lenna, staring.

"The chant asks. The tree answers," said Brugda, sideways. Joukka Pelata merely smiled.

"Hello, my daughters. You asked well," the Lady began, smiling matter-of-factly at Lenna.

"Thank you, Momma," Lenna said.

"Ireland," grunted Brugda. It was a question, but not quite.

"Oh," the Lady replied.

"A fisherman."

"Hum."

"Do you have friends there?" Brugda asked.

"Few."

"Reliable?"

"Mo Bagohn, in Kells."

"Bagohn."

"A witch in a wagon."

"Yes."

Lenna's head dodged back and forth to follow the whiplash conversation.

"The empress can't swim," shouted Binnan Darnan from afar.

"We'll manage," said Brugda without turning.

A look of unplaced alarm broke onto Joukka Pelata's placid face. The Lady's eyes rotated straight up until only the whites showed. Her head tilted back like a camera on a loose tripod. It looked inhuman, somehow. Robotic. Her body began to pixellate. Squares of color blanked out. "You shouldn't have called me," she gurgled, and vanished.

Brugda stood quickly and braced a hand against her stiff back. Wild and uncertain, she turned her face to the sky. She looked over the edge of the pit to the hungry void. She looked over the side to where the dragon's hand had withdrawn. "Something's up." Turning to every direction, she hurried everyone aboard the wooden monster.

It was already too late. A spiralling cloud condensed into the wallpaper sky above them, a heaving white swastika-shaped maelstrom, four crooked arms cutting across the Japanese origami designs. It flattened against the sun. A bird screamed. The light fell.

"Hurry, empress!" called Binnan Darnan at the front. "Go! Go! Go!"

As heavy gears led the empress backwards, a perfect blinding line dropped from the cloud and shattered into silver centipede-legs. It was lightning, striking with a sound like breaking glass. Where it hit, fifty feet of green land tore away from the surface of Iceland and sank into the swallowing black pit. Crumble.

The empress turned, but another lightning bolt took away another arc of land, ripping the soil out and pushing it into the blackness in a throat-shaking landslide. The empress turned, and another bolt struck, and again, always where the machine faced.

"How can the cloud know?" asked Binnan Darnan in horror.

"There are eyes on us," said Brugda sharply. "There always will be."

The empress galloped to the edge of the tree, wouldn't jump, wouldn't jump. Lenna started to cry. Binnan Darnan quailed. All around them they had no land to jump to. The lightning tore the land away, dripping swaths of dirt into the pit. The circle of the pit spread and sank and squandered to fallen ramps with a deep sound.

"Will the lightning hit us?" whimpered Aitta.

"If it does, we're dead for sure," mumbled Talvi with his arms around her.

"Can't hit the old magic," Brugda said decisively. "That doesn't help us, though."

"Use magic," suggested Kaldi.

"Try the kiss-me-quick, Little Len."

Huddling far down, Lenna closed her eyes and carefully spoke the chant to bring a wish to life.

Kast minn baen

Ad himnariki

Tak hugmynd hedan

she said, her hands clenched, her mind holding tightly to a vision of the empress landing softly on the land below.

The shimmer of magic reached a few feet away from her and became a prismatic sphere, which plinked and vanished.

"Have we used up all magic?" she asked desperately.

"No," Brugda coughed. "One spell against another, nothing more. A child against a Power of Magic."

After the first round of lightning had torn away all the land around them, the swastika cloud widened and began to strike again. The empress tried climbing out along the longest root but lost its grip and almost dropped everyone. It veered desperately, twisting its thorax, digging into the meat of the root with its footplates. Lenna held the seat in front of her with both hands, her head down, not even looking not even looking. It began to rain, big splashes and rapid sound in the gloom.

"What do we do?" asked Lenna into her huddled elbows.

"I don't know, " muttered Brugda.

She gripped Brugda's arm. "What happens?"

"Silence, child. I'm thinking."

"Brugda!"

The old hand cracked into her cheek, plak! She flew off the doily and sprawled onto the wooden floor, hugging herself and the ache in her jaw. Her tongue was bleeding a little. She closed her eyes to the taste and shivered violently.

Kaldi cast a dolorous eye but said nothing.

In the front, Binnan Darnan began to hyperventilate. "There's nothing," she whispered over and over to herself.

"Can we climb down into the pit and up the other side?" asked Aitta tremulously.

"I saw no bottom to the pit below the tree," said Kaldi.

A terrible sound struck the air. It was Binnan Darnan, who called for the dragon. And as sure as stars are turning, the secret dragon answered.

"It can't help us," snapped Brugda, covering her ears, but Binnan Darnan called again. The top of the tree broke open, splitting into three wedges from the points of the obsidian-scratched triangle.

"No!" Brugda screamed.

Kindling tore, cracked, split, and a yellow tail uncurled beneath them like an endless waking snake. The tree broke to pieces as the dragon spread its spiked, veined wings in a burst of wild freedom. Flicking its tail, it sent the empress and its family soaring, soaring beyond the reach of the cloud, beyond the Pit of Old Magic, out toward the barrens of Iceland. Wings sent wind like hurricanes after them as the dragon flapped up, up, up towards freedom.

Shivering and angry, Lenna clutched her bruised jaw. Her lower face was swelling up. Scootching away from Brugda, she looked back over the railing of the empress. She was just in time to watch as the rising dragon crossed some invisible boundary. With a crushing ripple, it transformed into a second wooden empress. Metal pincers and legs flailed as the wingless yellow-painted machine fell helplessly back towards the darkness of the pit. Flying debris from the split tree thudded up into the yellow empress and cracked it in half. A hail of splintering wood. A silver bolt of lightning from the terrible cloud set the flailing creature aflame. When the second empress fell across the barrier of old magic far below, Lenna heard, now far away, the dying sound of the last dragon.

**Chapter Six**

A Secret

or, You Can Be Our Preacher

Sliding horizontally across the sky, past the reach of the cloud, past the torn-away land to the snowy expanse of glacial ice and snow, the household's empress flew. After a crunched, painful landing, the empress ran its momentum away and slowed to a stop on the cotton-covered field.

"Move!" barked Brugda from the back. "Child, make your pet move!"

Binnan Darnan caught Lenna's eye. Their eyebrows were both lowered in frowns. Holding Lenna's gaze, Binnan Darnan decided something. "This empress has done enough. Surely it has broken something in the fall. You've told it what to do and what to do, and it did everything you asked. Now it's injured its foot. Would you have survived that far a fall, Brugda?"

The old woman glared. "My legs hurt. Almost died. I want to sleep." Brugda crossed her arms.

"If we aren't in danger ..." Kaldi began.

"Of course we're in danger, we're always in danger. Nothing's stopping that cloud from following us. Nothing's keeping us safe except Mother Joukka Pelata and she's just given up all her magic to create the world around us. We have to travel to another country. We haven't even a place to sleep tonight and now our only way to get from this glacier to an airport wants to stop in the face of unknown death and danger the size of mountains because it's hurt its foot. I'm angry and I have nothing in my hands that I can do. All right, Kaldi?"

He lowered his eyes, let out a breath. "We passed a village made of silver on the way here, Binnan Darnan. If the empress will walk us there, we'll repair it and rest."

The empress traveled slowly, drearily, creaking forward with a limp. Lenna cried to herself against the low wooden railing. Binnan Darnan defiantly leaned over the front of the wooden portico, whispering comforts to the red and blue machine.

They reached the edge of the mercury forest. The color-reflecting boughs were a mess of upside-down icicles. The flowing branches bent away from the troubled, crystal-eyed face of the empress as it passed. At last they came into sight of the village. Crinkled gingerbread eaves made of tarnished silver appeared through the pointed branches, a crowd of bright buildings shining in the late afternoon. People wearing buckles and ruffles and gowns and patterned tunics walked the narrow corridors of tamped-down snow and black sand that passed for streets. Beside the metal forest and past the village limits was a breathless expanse of ice and black sand, a dreamlike field studded with white-tufted brown hills rising like primal tombs from under the scrinchy layers of dry cottonballs that had fallen in the night. The cotton had disappeared all along the southern faces where the risen crystal glass sun shone. Beyond the wide hilly field rose a massive line of vertical black hexagonal pillars standing like a mountain range.

The empress crept out of the forest into the field and sat amid the silk hills, arching its segmented back as if eager to free itself of its burden. The household filed down the steps, landing shin-deep in chilly cottonballs.

Exhausted, Kaldi wiped a hill clean of snow and lay on the brown embroidered grass, scrubbing his eyes under his octagonal spectacles with a knuckle. Binnan Darnan walked around the empress and began gently lifting each metal footplate.

"Ahh, here's one," she muttered. "The carriage bolt has bent. Pity you don't have a toolkit. They must've taken that from you when they stole your springs, oh you poor empress. Only rest and we'll find you new bolts."

Brugda and Aitta went to find an inn. Talvi took Binnan Darnan's order to the town mechanist.

Lenna paced and sulked. It still hurt, being hit. It made her feel worthless and bad and small and very very angry. None of the new memories of life in the big house, none of these magical Changes had changed Brugda. She was a hitter, and Lenna was done with that part of her life. Glimpses of spankings and switchings she had received as a servant girl rose up inside of her. She tried to lay a hand on the mercury trees, wanted to touch them, to feel the realness of the polished metal, to run a finger around her reflection on the branches, but the tree bent away from her as she reached out to it, recoiled, as if she wasn't wanted. She caught some cold cottonballs that fell as the narrow tree limbs moved, squeaked them and dropped them gently on the cottondrifts below.

They were sisters, weren't they, she and Brugda? Was this what it felt like to be sisters?

Sisters without blood or love or kindness. Momma had picked two strangers from the whole whole world, two very different people, and had made them both her daughters. She needed their eyes, she said. Lenna wondered whether she and Brugda would grow up to be like Momma Joukka Pelata, turn into quiet pale people, or whether they were completely different from her and completely different from each other and always would be. She wanted to be nothing like Brugda, wanted to push her away, wanted to keep all of Brugda's badness and meanness out of her life.

Frowning as she paced through the metal forest, Lenna promised herself that she would never say any of the magic spells Brugda had taught her. Promised. It felt dirty and rotten that magic was something Brugda touched, something the old woman knew about. Magic ought to be special, ought to be wonderful, but if Brugda could do magic then it wasn't worth the trouble.

Fine, she thought. So she was the only other person in the world who Momma Joukka Pelata could find who could see magic. Okay. Maybe that was true, but it wasn't good enough. Not anymore.

Brugda's magic killed animals, hurt trees, and when all that hurting wasn't good enough, when all her magic couldn't fix things, Brugda hurt Lenna instead. The old woman was ashamed that she was no good at magic. Ha. That was surely it.

A hand landed on her shoulder. It cut into her feelings, jolting her, making her set her thoughts aside unfinished.

"Mistress?" Binnan Darnan said.

"She's back?" mumbled Lenna.

"Huh?" The tiny girl took Lenna's hand in both of her own. "Would you speak to me, Mistress?"

What? She was calling _her_ Mistress? Something garbagy caught itself in Lenna's belly, a twisting feeling. "Don't call me this. Binnan Darnan, promise you won't ever call me this again."

The hands dropped. "Sorry." Binnan Darnan waited. Lenna scowled at her. "Fine! I'll never call you anything ever again," she shouted, running back to the empress, sulking in silence.

Talvi had left. Kaldi slept. Aitta and Brugda were away. Lenna was alone.

Where would she run away to? There was nothing in the whole world she wanted except a place away from here. She'd rather live in a nutshell. The more she talked about it with herself, the worse she felt. Brugda was someone she wanted nothing to do with, not ever again.

She wandered out of the trees and back across the icy field to the mound of grassy earth where Kaldi lay snoring. And past him, out to the pointed hills that led toward the vast black Icelandic plain. She wandered past mound after mound till she came to the last one, furthest from the village, her boots squeaking on the veneer of cotton balls covering last year's brown silk grass. A little wooden door was set in the hill facing the hexagonal basalt columns, the place furthest away from everything. Like the empress, its paint was flaking off the wood. The door was brown, trimmed in white, with a cross above. She realized with a start that the wood wasn't the polished wood of crystal-land. Something hidden inside had protected this little hillside church from the Change. There was something old in here, something strange, waiting, a secret crouching in the darkness. She could feel it. She could almost smell it, a magical smell like toasted bread and clouds.

Why resist?

The door didn't creak as she opened it, although it looked worn and didn't quite align. She slipped in through a foot of shadow onto a stuttered cobblestone floor. When she drew the door closed behind her, the darkness was nearly complete.

Her first impulse was to hide from Brugda, to hide from everybody, to wait on the wall behind the door and listen until she was sure everyone had forgotten about her.

No.

She was brave.

The floor was big cobblestones, bulging, almost round and spaced wide. Balancing balancing in her green boots, she went stone-by-stone, just like she had outside Binnan Darnan's dragon tower. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she found light whispering around the edge of the door frame, a skinny bright rectangle in the dark. A few triangles of light caught the floating dust, the tiny foxfire of the church. Outlines of unadorned pews, simple carved planks of wood, revealed themselves. A partition separated the pulpit of the church from the pews. All was the familiar blue and gold paint and bare wood of Iceland. A plank in front was the altar.

Step, step, silence. Every cobblestone was alike, round and dusty. The Change in the world hadn't even polished them.

Vacant, barely aware, Lenna stood behind the altar. This was where a preacher had stood, long and long ago. He had talked to the people of the town, recited to them, given out stories. Maybe someone still did. This was what preachers do. But here was an empty little hall.

Lenna spread her arms above her head the same way Joukka Pelata had done in the big house. She imagined a townful of people staring at her. For a tender moment, she felt dozens of pairs of eyes, but it didn't last.

Magic was here. She could feel it, waiting.

She giggled and pointed with two hands to a blocky, carved candleholder on the wall.

"I command you to light up the room," she whispered.

A flame appeared, as silent as if it had always flickered there, casting little carven-shaped shadows. A spark, just a dot of orange, jumped improbably to the matching candleholder on the other side of the room. A second flame mirrored the first.

Lenna lit up, too, with a secret smile on her face. Here was something only she could do. No one taught her this. She hurt nothing, no pigs, no trees. The candles lit anyways.

"I'm a preacher," she whispered to the candles.

From the two opposing flames jumped two opposing figures.

One frowned. One smiled.

They were both young men dressed in sweeping, asymmetric gray robes.

One swept left. One swept right.

Like the flames, the two men were a little brighter than the room around them.

The smiling man crossed his arms. Quietly he spoke, and his voice shook Lenna's guts and fluttered her head, as if she were only a dream he was having.

"My name is Ljos," the smiling figure giggled. "This is Indaell, my twin. You can be our preacher."

The frowning figure's face was prematurely lined, with furrows in his brow and a Roman nose. He turned his stony countenance to his brother. It seemed to take hours, as if the force of his gaze could pull the world to a stop.

"Child," spoke the serious, frowning figure, his voice echoing and pushing, resonating between Lenna's eyes. "Child. You must never listen to my brother. He loves nothing. And he lies."

The words "What does he lie about?" swam out of Lenna's mouth like colors in a dream.

"He is not Ljos," the morose figure intoned. "I am Ljos of light. This is Indaell, my twin. You will preach for only me."

Across the room the smiling man bent sideways, grinning like a jack-in-the-box. "Bad brother. Naughty brother. Such lies he tells," the man called Indaell said.

Rapidly both brothers drew flaming swords from their sides. Lenna didn't remember seeing sheaths. The swords collided between them with a painful clang and disappeared. A shower of sparks lay on the faintly illuminated floor, just for a moment, then faded.

"Who are you?" tipped out of Lenna's lips.

"Angels," spoke the frowning figure solemnly. "I am angel of light. We may teach you. I will teach you how to fear my master and to hate liars."

"I will teach you how to love my master," said the grinning angel. "I will teach you a trick to know a liar. I will teach you a song to turn a flower into butterflies. You need only ask."

"I'd like to know a liar," Lenna said crisply to grinning Indaell.

His smile widened thinly, stretching eerily up to his ears. "Will you let me look out of your eye when I choose?" he whispered. Beside him, Ljos' mouth crackled with the new Changed fire, triangles held like orange snakes behind his teeth.

It was almost impossible to think in the presence of the angels. It felt as if the weight of sick sleep were hanging down inside her head. Strange, twisted emotions bubbled up inside of her.

"I will let you look out of my sister's eye," she said.

As the two figures faded back into the candles, she caught a last glimpse of the smiling man whom she had made a promise with. He was a liar.

**Chapter Seven**

Waking

or, You Never Knew My Husband

Light was filmy and sound was plush and muted as Lenna opened her eyes. A few crusted tracks of tears stuck to her nose, and her mouth tasted bitter and sour. Lifting her numb hand to her face, she scrubbed gunk from her cheeks and smacked her lips. Aches chewed at her arms and shoulders. She blinked cracklily and looked around.

The hard, round surface of a cobblestone formed her horizon. She was on the floor, sprawled. Kaldi knelt beside her, tending her, sturdy and close and worried. The only light came from the door, which Brugda held open. No one spoke. They were waiting for her.

She pushed her fingers outward, stretching them, and her hands shook involuntarily. A faint darkness covered her vision, a smoky haze which was not at all natural.

"Mm." Lenna felt like going to sleep. "Izzere an inn? Did you get a room?"

She addressed Kaldi vaguely, pushing herself up to a sea lion position and pulling her knees underneath her.

"Yes, of course." His little brown beard and kind eyes both pointed to Lenna with concern. He laid a hand along her elbow, drew her up and steadied her as she stumbled out the crooked wooden door. She hugged Brugda's waist blindly and bumbled over, over, over until they reached the settlement, then up three gemstone steps, over, over, up some more, along a shiny silver handrail, up, up, through, and into a silver bed with fluffy blood-red sheets.

She dreamed of a perfect world without Brugda.

Lenna woke immobile, caught in a tight red tomb dangling near the floor. She was cradled alongside the bed in a mummified wrap of twisted sheets. Her legs were squished together and her arm was pinned behind her. It felt like she had been caught by a colorful spider. Untangling herself, she landed on the floor, flump, and stood.

The light was dark. The world was dim. Over the blue-bright sunlight filtering through the shutters was a darkness blotting the world out a little, like a funeral veil drawn over her eyes. The hotel room was hidden under a dark haze. It felt like someone was watching her.

It was a chilly, stiff-legged morning. She felt drained, like the servants' rain-powered washbasin after it had been cleaned, emptied, and had just begun to refill. She had fallen asleep fully dressed. Binnan Darnan's woven crystal was jabbing into her side, buried in the twisted-up yellow cummerbund. She untwisted it; the sash hadn't creased or wrinkled. She also found she could wipe the soft stamped leather of her dress clean with a brush of her hand. Under it, her slip was as clean and soft as the day before yesterday. No crusties, no soggies, no BO. She liked this world a little.

Pacing the hotel room, trying out all the fancy indoor plumbing, poking the roses in the ceramic vase to see if they were real (no), staring at a splotchily painted picture of some Italian porch covered with climbing flowers, she managed to keep herself from thinking about the, the two people in her creepy dream, managed to ignore the eerie layer of darkness that had spread over her vision, shadowing the world around her like evil sunglasses. And that feeling, like someone was standing right behind her--she spun, and the room was empty.

Taking off the dress and laying it on the bed, she stood beside it in her slip and examined the new green dress that had appeared on her during the Change. It was the color of tourmaline, a bluey green color that was not from the ocean or the grass or the sky. It was the color of crystals. Four criscrossing straps went around each shoulder; there was a little U in the front; and it came down just above her knees. The sash that went around her waist was canary-colored, hemmed with gold edging. The red and purple crystal that Binnan Darnan had apparently made for her hung down from the hip of the cummerbund from a yellow loop. It was all very pretty, but it occurred to her that she would have only, only this dress until they bought her another one. Maybe she would get tired of the colors. Hm. But half-memories of wearing servants' crummy brown lingered in her mind. Maybe she would ask for a new stripy ribbon to tie her hair.

She washed her face in the sink, splashing water, looking over her shoulder at the empty room around her. After a long shower, the feeling of being watched passed, but the darkness remained.

A knocking at the door arrived as she was using the facilities. "Hold on," she called.

When she finally dressed and opened the door, it was Kaldi.

"I thought we could talk about what happened," he said.

" 'Kay."

He came in and sat on the edge of the bed. "You've been gone for three days."

She took a step back. Three days with those angel people?

" _What_? It was only afternoon."

"Afternoon, Tuesday. Lenna. Tell me what happened." Kaldi folded a foot over his knee and rested his hands on the foot. She pushed herself up onto the rumpled red covers to sit beside him.

"Um um I just fell asleep." The words were soaked in shiny black as she said them, and everything in the world dimmed further, as if she had put on extra sunglasses.

"We've been looking for you all across Nupsstaður."

"I just found a church and went in."

"You were on the ground behind the altar. Cold as ice. I couldn't wake you up." He exhaled, and she looked up at him and saw that he was scared. She didn't like scared grown-ups.

"I was dreaming, Kaldi."

"What did you dream about?" he asked seriously.

Lenna's lip wiggled. "I dreamed of a perfect world without Brugda," she blurted. She looked down and knew she was a liar. Darker went the world. "That's what I dream every night."

"Oh." He thought for a moment, slid off the bed, paced. "There's breakfast downstairs. Golden raisin bread and fresh _skyr_ , with strawberry _safi_. Yum?"

Lenna pushed herself to the floor and headed down ahead of him. She felt ashamed.

Talvi and Aitta were talking, but they looked up when Lenna came down to the dark wooden booths of the inn's restaurant. The central room was tall, spacious, with windows showing the slowly-melting snow covering the black plains to the west. The windows would have been bright if the world hadn't gotten dimmed by the creepy darkness that surrounded Lenna's eyes. She went to the window. The giant jokull-glacier was a white-blue line strung with fairy bridges on the distant horizon. The sight of the frozen cottonballs made the roaring heat of the fireplace feel even warmer. Everything was rosewood in this restaurant room: the roof beams, the walls, the floor. It was like a log cabin in America, maybe. The inn was busy with the last of the winter tourists. In one woman's arms a baby in a polka-dot parka was screaming. Lenna patted the baby's head. It hushed, then began screaming again.

Lenna hugged Talvi, who smelled like his pipe, like mincemeat pie. She hugged Aitta, who smelled like powdery makeup. The raisin bread was hot and fresh on a sideboard nearby. She took the big, blunt knife on the table and pressed it deep into the bread. A wisp trailed up from the division, allspice and nutmeg. The _skyr_ was a white circle on a blue and white porcelain dish decorated with a blue Staffordshire picture of the new Eiffel tower, French curves and trailing balconies beneath a spiral spire. Lenna stuck the knife into the thick skyr and squished the white yogurt across the raisin bread, which crumbed and flaked butterily.

Binnan Darnan came in. There was something around her head, something thin and dark, like a bad halo. Without catching Lenna's eye she poured some safi out from its big crystal pitcher into a cup and sipped it. The little girl had a hard look, but she didn't leave as Lenna stood beside her with her plate and bit into the bread.

After a time, Lenna set the plate down and kissed Binnan Darnan on the cheek. "I'm sorry that we fought, Binnan Darnan," she said. "I'm sorry I yelled at you. You may call me anything you want. Just Lenna is best, though. And I will always talk to you about everything, if I can." She wiped her eye with a fist and took a jagged breath. "Is this okay?"

Binnan Darnan set down the juice and put her hands decisively on Lenna's shoulders. "Yes it is. Sometimes I forget you're little. I believe you have once been old. Like me!" Binnan Darnan poked her pointy nose into Lenna's.

"I'll tell you things," said Lenna. "But later, okay?"

"Okay. Oh!" Binnan Darnan removed her hands, shocked. "I put axle grease on you!"

Her mouth open, Lenna wiped her shoulder and received a few slimy splotches of yellow. She grabbed Binnan Darnan's lace, grinning impishly. Lowering her eyebrows, the blackhaired girl smeared Lenna's arm, then ran out through the door of the inn. Lenna sprinted after. Talvi smiled and suggested finding the antiseptic now, rather than later. Kaldi simply leaned his head past the stairwell to watch over them.

* * *

The girls had been running around the newly-repaired empress for fifteen minutes, sliming each other and shrieking, when Lenna noticed someone in a pink bonnet sitting in a heap alongside the inn. Lenna halted, receiving a bit of axle grease in her hair. She pointed. Binnan Darnan followed the finger to the swollen red eyes of Brugda. The eyes were hollowed by the shadow of the roof's overhang. The old woman tucked something into the big pocket of her skirt.

"Do you think ...?" Binnan Darnan began.

"Hm?"

"Should we go to her?"

Lenna shrugged and ran over to Brugda, who sighed in a broken way.

"Brugda Brugda. Oh, Brugda," she called. "Don't feel so bad. I didn't mean to run away for so long."

The old woman leaned her shoulder into the unpolished alley wall, dug a heel into the packed ground and skidded upright. Lenna frowned. The old woman wasn't herself. She had been crying, too, which was deeply weird. Puffy eyes and foreboding clouded Brugda's face.

Lenna hugged her. "I really did only sleep, Brugda." The matron draped a floppy arm over the girl and patted her. "Don't cry for what happened, Brugda. This isn't worth crying over. It's all done with now!" She raised her arms to the sky, then hugged Brugda some more.

With an unsteady hand the old woman pulled her baby bonnet off and pushed her fingers through her thin red hair. A few strands came out in her hand. When she spoke, her voice was husky and dark. "You never knew my husband."

Lenna just stared. Binnan Darnan stood apart, at the corner of the alley, looking in.

"Kaldi's father. Talvi's father. Bear of a man. Beautiful." Something heavy wagged in Brugda's pocket as she staggered. She put a hand out to the slick silver. "Told me not to hit the kids. But damn."

Lenna frowned. "Kaldi and Talvi have the same father?" she whispered, but Brugda maybe didn't hear her.

"And anyway." Brugda stifled a belch. "Anyway. They're good boys. Proves something. Run along, child."

Bewildered, Binnan Darnan led Lenna away. Her eyes stayed on the woman, whose thin red hair flew and flared, untamed and unbonneted.

**Chapter Eight**

Another Visit

or, There is Puffin?

Solemnly they went back into the inn's restaurant. The nice lady who ran the inn took them into a tidy brown walk-in cupboard and sprayed them with a glass atomizer full of aerosol chemicals and wiped their sleeves and arms and hair clean of grease. Thanking her, they went back out, all clean somehow.

Talvi still sat with his wife in the wooden booth, sipping coffee with one hand and bracing his long, skinny pipe in the other. A spiral of smoke trailed up from the narrow bowl. Kaldi sat across from him.

In her ramblings, Brugda had said Kaldi and Talvi had the same father. Maybe this made them brothers? Lenna wondered. And was Brugda their mother? She didn't feel like asking yet. She wondered why they hadn't ever called Brugda "Mother," and never talked about their father, either, whoever he was. But then again, Talvi was gloomy and quiet and hardly ever talked at all, while Kaldi mostly made up funny stories for the girls. Neither of them ever really talked about themselves. They were just Kaldi and Talvi, the cook and the handyman.

Kaldi pushed his gold-embroidered green sleeve up his arm and patted the bench in the booth, and the girls scooted beside him. He had a smile, but it was not a smile of happiness.

"I wish you hadn't seen Brugda when she's like this," he said.

"Why?"

"She goes through these times. When she's troubled, she wants to hide."

"Why?"

Kaldi focused on Lenna's eyes. "She wishes she was different. Young again. She wishes she hadn't chosen some things. She's unhappy with who she is, and she won't change. We want her to let go of the past, but she loves the past so much. So, so much." He took his gold-rimmed octagonal glasses off and kneaded his forehead with a knuckle.

This was uncomfortable. Kaldi was supposed to be happy and funny. His job was to make things better. Instead, he was making Brugda seem more complicated.

"When do we leave for Reykjavik?" Lenna said, trying to change the subject.

Kaldi deflated. "I have _never_ understood girls. I talk about feelings and you talk about things." Aitta chuckled as Kaldi huffed awkwardly. "Brugda thinks the city may be dangerous for us, so we'll travel to Höfn and hire a daedelus to cross the ocean to Kells, where this Mo Bagohn woman lives."

"Then we'll lose the empress!" said Binnan Darnan indignantly. "We'll have to leave him behind. He won't like the daedelus. Couldn't we just take a boat to Ireland instead?"

"It would take days instead of hours," said Kaldi.

"Perhaps the empress will wait for us," said Talvi gently. Aitta nodded at this and dimple-smiled in the irritating way she had.

"Who knows how long we'll be gone?" the black-haired girl grumbled. "Someone will steal him!" She looked down. "The empress is my friend."

"We'll find somewhere for it to stay," Talvi soothed. "That's what we can do."

"Okay." Binnan Darnan sounded suspicious. "But nobody better hurt my empress."

"I'll find a good person to look after it. I promise." Talvi put his pipe to his lips and sucked smelly smoke. For a moment, no one said anything. They listened to the low rumble of other voices in the restaurant.

"What will Ireland be like?" Lenna asked Kaldi.

"Green," he answered. "Warmer, this time of year. The people will probably be very nice, but they won't speak Islenska."

"Then ..."

"English, of course."

"Hm." Lenna was unimpressed. English was complicated, and the words were long, and there were letters that weren't supposed to be there, and there were entire words that weren't male or female, but were just _things_. That was highly suspect.

"Why don't you and Binnan Darnan spend the day practicing your English?" suggested Talvi. "We'll leave for Höfn in the morning."

So she and Binnan Darnan walked into the village of Nupsstaður and sat on the edge of a slowly rotating ice fountain, beneath a spreading sparkle of poised crystalline ice, talking in English about angels and churches and dreams. English was such a nuisance.

"Are you certain she was not a dream at all?" Binnan Darnan said in the blurty choppy words.

"When I slept again, she was the old dream without Brugda. He is ugliest of languages." Lenna growled like a tiger: rrrr. "She was a working. A new type of spell."

"Show me." Binnan Darnan had an intense expression. The tiny girl's dark brown eyes were dim beneath the liar's halo that surrounded her, keeping the noon light out of her face.

Lenna shook no. "The angel was so, so dangery, Binnan Darnan. Know you don't!"

"Don't what?" she answered.

"He is stupidest of all languages that ever are! You don't know how dangery the angel is!" Lenna started kicking the side of the fountain. "He's stupidest stupidest! RrrrrRR!"

"In Islenska, then."

"It's dangerous!" Lenna shrieked.

"I'll be here," said Binnan Darnan. "You'll be safe with me."

"Brugda said other people can't see the kind of magic that I can do. Maybe you'll only see me collapse onto the ground. Then what will you do? I thought it took ten minutes to talk to the angels, but it was days. And there's another thing. I'm not certain I should say it, but ..."

"Yes?" said Binnan Darnan.

"I made a deal with them. Before I knew the angels were dangerous."

"Yes?" she said again.

Lenna looked away and spoke rapidly. "I let the dark angel look out from Brugda's eyes, and in exchange, the angel showed me how to know lies and liars."

"You can do this now?" said Binnan Darnan sharply. "You can see lies?"

Lenna looked down through the haze of darkness. "Lies are ... a different flavor, and liars have a shiny black halo around their heads. The woman with the baby had a liar's halo, as if something tore the lights out around her. I'm worried. I think I did something terrible to Brugda."

The little girl leaned against a fistful of her hair. "Why don't you tell her?" she said.

Lenna stared. "Of course I can't tell her. Absolutely I can't tell. She would never forgive me."

"Maybe she can fix it with magic," said Binnan Darnan.

"What if she can't? What if it's forever? What if she's always watched? Don't you remember the cloud?"

"Yes, Lenna. Of course." She folded her arms lacily.

"She was so, so afraid. Now she'll be _more_ afraid. Isn't this true?" asked Lenna.

A crinkle of ice melted above her and broke like bells on the stone fountain rim. They both flinched. Binnan Darnan looked hard at her. "You're the one who knows when things are true."

"It's true for _certain_."

Binnan Darnan stretched her lace opera gloves. "Can I ask you something, Lenna?"

"Mm-hm." Lenna brushed her wet-straw-colored hair behind an ear.

"Do I have a shiny black halo around me?"

"No, Binnan Darnan," said Lenna, skritching the stone fountain with her fingernail. "I believe you've always told me the truth."

The darkness around Lenna grew even deeper.

Binnan Darnan wiggled her foot and gulped a breath, then let it out again. "Do you want to explore the village with me?" she asked, looking up.

"I tried exploring already. Remember? That's why we're not in Höfn yet."

"Hmp." The little girl looked away, itching the lace that clung to her arms. She smiled snarlily. "Then I'll just go by myself." Binnan Darnan stood and walked toward an alley in the ring of tall silver townhouses, crossing her arms smugly.

"But but but."

"Tell them I'll be at the inn by bedtime," Binnan Darnan called back.

"Don't do things just to hurt me!" shouted Lenna. "You're being mean!"

Binnan Darnan's mouth dropped open. "You got to go exploring, and you got into super trouble. But I won't." She walked on, head up, extra slow.

Boiling angry, Lenna ran back to the inn and stomped upstairs to her room. She unlocked the door with a tap of an inscribed key crystal that Kaldi had given her the day before. It was barely past noon, but she dove under the covers and thought furious thoughts about Binnan Darnan and Brugda and stupid everybody.

Seconds passed. Minutes slowly passed. More minutes passed. She sank deeper into her biting biting mind, coming up with new things she would've liked to say to rotten old Binnan Darnan. She hadn't been nearly mean enough. Definitely not. She could have said she was the boss and Binnan Darnan couldn't go, or she could have said that she _would_ go exploring after all, or that she didn't associate with little servant girls, or that she'd had better adventures already, or ...

She brought a skinny pillow into her hidden bed-world and stuck her head inside the red pillowcase, pushing her nose into the snuffly white pillow, where she could cry a little without anyone ever finding out. Hours passed in sullen misery, surrounded by blood-colored sheets. She folded the top of the bedclothes over her head, her hot angry face hidden and cowering, her legs curled up in the depths of the bed. The flat red nest was a wrinkly fortress keeping the world out. She waited for the next day to arrive. Kaldi knocked for lunch, then dinner, and asked where Binnan Darnan was. Lenna informed him she would not be having dinner, thank you, and added exactly how she felt about that little crystal servant.

"And only this morning ..."

"Shut up!" Lenna yelled through the door frame.

"I'll save a piece of puffin for you."

"There is puffin?"

Puffin. Joukka Pelata had asked Kaldi to serve it once. Roasts on a big platter under a dome. The bright birds were a common sight but harder to catch than a runaway piglet. Every year men went out to the islands with long nets, spooking the big-nosed waterfowl and swooping to catch them as they took off. The meat was very expensive. Kaldi had made the fancy fancy meal only that one time, for a very special guest, a man in a broad hat and robe that Momma had introduced Lenna to. He had carried a big tusk like a walrus tooth with him. In retrospect, he was probably some sort of magician, and Lady Joukka Pelata had treated him as if he was a visiting prince. They had even brought Binnan Darnan in from the barn to meet him. He hadn't given his name, but Momma seemed to know him very well, and held him in high esteem.

Kaldi had sent the homestead-dragon out days earlier with boys from a neighboring farm to catch puffins and bring them back for him to cook. The smell of the birds had filled the house, buttery and wild-scented. Kaldi had called it a "taste of Iceland." Ha, such a joke. They had eaten it never, before then.

It had been amazing. The puffin.

Lenna lay in bed, staring at the door and smelling what she hoped was merely the scent of au gratin potatoes and not the delicious, buttery, juicy birds. Binnan Darnan was so rotten. Everything was.

In time, she fell asleep.

Another knock. She mmmfed awake. Stars were visible through the half-open wooden shutters. "I'm sleeping!" she called. But the knock only repeated. "Who is it?"

"It's me," called Aitta.

"Oh." Hm. "What do you want?"

"Just to talk."

She threw aside the covers, feeling that snuggly feeling of escaping bed when you plan on returning. She opened the door, standing in her slip.

Aitta was shorter than her husband, but then, Talvi was particularly tall. Her hair was shiny black with bleach-frosted tips, sticking out stylishly in short hedgehog prongs that could probably slice through a hat. She had exchanged her glittering blue nightdress for a onesie-jumper with pastel squares, orange and pink and purple, framed with black lines. She always dressed extra stylish, as if she planned on going to a Hollywood movie premier. Her blue eyes were dark with mascara. There was a fuzzy gray halo around her head.

"Lenna, Binnan Darnan came by earlier and told me you weren't truthful with Kaldi. She told me some troubling things."

"Binnan Darnan _told_ you what I said?" She couldn't believe it. That lying fink. How could she just blurt everything out?

"You made an evil bargain, Lenna. Have you heard of Faust?" Aitta's stylish dark bangs hung over her forehead in a swoosh, making her small Icelandic eyes look ominous.

Faust? Lenna shook her head.

"When you make a bargain with angels, you must always choose the angel of good. But you didn't, did you?" Aitta was angry, upset, disappointed in her. Those weren't feelings that Lenna wanted to look at right now. She wanted to be alone in a place where she could be angry at Binnan Darnan. "You chose a bad bargain," Aitta went on, "and someday the devils will come for you. They will take you to a world worse than any you could imagine. This is what always happens."

Lenna had to lie. She had to lie to get away from those feelings.

"You believe I talked to angels just because I said this to Binnan Darnan? It was a dream, Aitta. I was asleep. If you believe otherwise then you're gullible. And anyway I know for certain that Binnan Darnan is a fibber."

She gasped and covered her mouth. Aitta had an unpleasant, satisfied look that didn't suit her.

"A gift from the Bad Old Man? Has it helped you reach heaven so far? Has it given you happiness?" She leaned in further, too close. "Well?"

"What should I do?" said Lenna, who really, really didn't want to deal with this right now.

"Come with me to the church. We'll face the angels together."

"Now?" She looked out the window at the depths of the Icelandic spring darkness. "So late?"

"Now. We cannot lose time. Your soul is at stake. It can be taken from you more easily the longer you wait."

Uneasily, she pull her green dress over her slip, secured the yellow sash, changed her mind and took the sash and stupid Binnan Darnan's woven crystal off. Finally she let Aitta take her hand. Tiptoe, tiptoe they left the hotel, easing the squeaking door shut. The crisp frost outside was cerulean blue etched across the cotton, skrinking as Lenna's boots broke through the frozen surface. Along the broad, flat plain they walked. The empress snuffed and wiggled on the snowy field, adjusting itself in its sleep. For a sudden moment it dug into the frozen ground with all of its legs and pushed: a dream of running.

The church door was silent. Just inside the entrance, Aitta clapped twice, and instead of pitch dark, a warm glow came from a clot of orange poles spun together like teepee supports. Lenna asked what the glowing thing was.

"A lamp," Aitta said unhelpfully. "Anyway. Bring the angels back. We'll see what we can do."

Lenna pursed her lips. "Why don't you do it? One of them belongs here anyway, yes? So ask for him," she said.

Aitta stood near the little painted-blue table of the altar and held Lenna's reluctant hand. Tracing a big cross on the surface with a finger, she said, "Behold. Satan hath desired to have us, that he may sift us like wheat. Ye are they which have continued with us in our temptations. We go unto you from the dead, and will repent. For what are we advantaged, if we gain the whole world, but lose ourselves? So come in your glory, and in your Father's, ye holy angels!"

The strange glowing crystal lamp in the corner stood, divided in two and stepped as if through snow with its four legs, altering as it went, becoming four shrouded footprints billowing.

"They know you, Ljos," the smiling angel hissed. "Aren't they _wonderful_. Will you sing to them?"

"They know you, Indaell," the angel of light gloamed. "I'll sell your voice to the dark places. For it I'll buy you a tomb in the desert of Dudael, under the sharp rocks."

Once again, with a sudden rush like the torrent of a shattering glacier, they drew flaming swords, which swam helplessly together, struck and collapsed into bright powder. Through the open door, Lenna saw the dawn burst. The stream of light bent like a speeding sundial.

"I command time to stop," she said.

Like a running spider the light froze in place. Neither Aitta beside her nor the angels stopped, however.

Aitta glanced her way, then faced the two strange angels.

"By the name of the Four Letters, by the three great forces of good, by all light I bind thee, Indaell of all darkness," she said. "You may not, O dark angel, take this child with you to the place of perdition, the low place, the place of peril below all else! Release her and return alone to Hell!"

Indaell's head spun on his cowled neck around his nose. His head was upside-down. His sinister grin was a slim red frown where the eyes should be. Ponderously he leaned in until he was inches from Aitta's determined expression. For a moment they remained.

Suddenly the angel's eyes flew open. "Wwwwwwoogie woogie woogie!"

Aitta collapsed backwards in a heap. Indaell's mouth laughed from his forehead. Lenna blinked, and his head was right-side-up.

Ljos turned, turned. "You are childish, brother. More childish than children of men."

"I could teach them secrets that would make them adults of men," hissed Indaell, his little eyes going narrow again.

Lenna put her hands on the altar. "I command you to trade me back Brugda's eyes for the ability to see lies and liars."

Aitta, still blundered on her back, nodded.

Smiling Indaell twisted gangily to face her. "You'll trade her eyes? She'll be blind," he whispered. "I'll tear them out and keep them in the folds of my robe."

"No!" Lenna shouted.

"The girl is no lawyer," Aitta told him. "She asks--no, she commands--that you reverse the only deal you've made with her." She nodded to Lenna.

"I command you to reverse the only deal you've made with me."

Indaell laughed like a lunatic hyena. Across the small room, beside the gingerbreaded wooden partition, Ljos grimaced.

"You fail to understand, and I may not teach such secrets," the angel of light said.

Indaell stared nastily. "I can teach her the secrets."

"Ljos?" Lenna was very small and worried. She kept her hands on the altar, as if it might rise up against her.

Led by his eyes, the angel of light turned his head to her and waited.

"What should I do, Ljos?" she asked.

The question lay upon the air. The angel stood majestic, his back straight as a soldier's, his gray-beige cowl like a Corinthian column. Ljos closed his eyes, slow, slow as if in pain.

"Go with those who will take you. Learn what is well to learn. Live with your new curse. And hate my brother." The words seemed to flow out, wash over her, one or two at a time, like the tolling of a long row of faraway bells.

"That's not helpful," fell from Lenna's mouth as she thought it.

Indaell snickered. "Help yourself," he said, and the angels faded.

**Chapter Nine**

Gone Missing

or, Don't Ask Me, Dear, Ask the Icebox!

Blinking, Lenna somehow missed the moment when the lamp went back to its corner, returning all the light and shadow to their wash from the other end of the church. The gray halo around Aitta's head cut through the illumination. It was still dawn.

Aitta stumbled to the front pew and sat heavily. "That's all I know how to do." She pressed her face into the meat of her palms and pulled her cheeks down. "They didn't offer a way out. Nothing."

"Aitta? May I ask you something that I truly, truly shouldn't ask?"

"Yes." Aitta nodded into her hands.

"So. So Binnan Darnan told you how I can see liars? That they have a black halo around their heads?" said Lenna.

"Yes," she answered.

"But I've only seen a few people with a liar's halo, Aitta. I thought there would be more. You don't have a black halo. Not even a thin one. Instead you've got a gray halo. What is it?"

Aitta wrapped her fingers around her spiny dyed hair. "I keep faith, Lenna. This is the hardest thing anyone can do. I read the Book before bed every night. Every time, it's a battle to believe the words I read. Some days I know I read the truth, and other days I read things that seem to be lies. I doubt. Do you see?" she finished.

"If you believed perfectly, would you have a perfect white halo?"

"You're thinking too much, Lenna. Come along. We should walk back now."

With a heavy little breath, the girl took her hands off the comfortable blue altar and fit them around her own elbows protectively. Thinking, thinking. Thinking thoughts and worries in flurries, she followed Aitta out into the crispy-fresh and almost-warm dawn.

Aitta had a selfish smile of wonder. Hadn't she seen angels before?

Back across the frozen ground of the downs they marched. Patient. It was a morning for blusters of white snow buntings, a morning for the sound of a wren landing beside others on a thin polished branch, whose brass spring-joint collapsed in a huge flutter of wings. The wrens followed the buntings, and together they were the sounds of the morning.

They pushed the door of the hotel open. The woman who ran the place was shuffling things out from the back room for breakfast.

"Um, is there a piece of puffin for me?" Lenna asked.

"Don't ask me, dear," she said in not-quite-the-right tone of voice. "Ask the icebox!"

What was an icebox? It was a little irritating, not knowing how the world worked.

Feeling silly, Lenna rounded a corner to a chest of old oak drawers beneath a glass bubble with a chunk of blue glacial ice in it. A line of woven crystals thrummed in a panel below the ice. Faint memories made her wonder if these were crystals that Binnan Darnan had woven herself and sold, or if there were other crystal weavers in Iceland.

Now. Ask it?

"Do you have puffin for me, icebox?" she said aloud.

A clunking flipping followed, and a wooden drawer slid out. A dinner plate wrapped in copper foil sat inside the box of the wooden drawer.

Lenna brought the chilly plate to the dining room and sat beside Aitta in a booth. The front room was empty except for the innkeeper lady. It was too early for breakfast. "Would you like some?" Lenna asked Aitta. She unwrapped the foil and took forks from the inn's service.

"Ok."

They sat and ate cold puffin as the sun wheeled streaks into the room. Time was normal again, hooray. A painting of a wooden skeleton, dog-paddling itself through the waves, caught Lenna's eye. The swimming skeleton was set against a reef of rocks and breakers booming. On the thing's curving plank spine was a small flat platform, and on it stood maybe twenty sailors. One had a helmet with spiral antlers. Another wore a jacket of blue fur. They stood proudly, triumphantly, on the swimming horror, their hands resting on the hilts of swords, like conquerors.

"Is this a daedelus?" she asked Aitta, pointing to the painting.

She shook. "Boat," she mumbled through a forkful.

Waiting, waiting. Lenna began to hum. When Kaldi and Talvi burst in through the front door and hugged Lenna with tears of relief, she and Aitta were both too startled to say anything.

"Oh, thank them all. Thank your God, too," Kaldi said to Aitta. "Where did you find her?" Kaldi clung to Lenna as if she was the Holy Grail, his big arms and warmness around her and his shaggy hair against hers. His gold glasses smooshed a little against her forehead. Breath heaved from him.

"Em." Aitta cleared her throat, embarrassed. "We tried to fix things with prayer. Binnan Darnan suggested that ..."

"You've seen her?" said Talvi quickly. "Binnan Darnan? You know where she is?"

"Not since yesterday afternoon. Is she missing?"

Kaldi nodded, breathless. Still overcome, he asked Lenna, "Do you know?"

"We had a fight," she replied. "Then I came back to the inn."

"Lenna, is there more to it than this?"

"She wanted to explore. She thought--" Lenna let her anger sieve away before she finished. "She thought she wouldn't get into super trouble." To smile or not? Not. "And she asked me to come along. But I didn't."

"All?" asked Kaldi seriously.

"All."

"Come with me."

They all went out to the ice fountain. Brugda sat, looking like someone who had been lost at sea and had floated back to land. As Lenna approached, Brugda jumped off her seat and hobbled up to the girl for a smothering hug. Lenna found that her hatred of the old matron had sunk to a grumble.

"Time for a working," the bonneted woman declared. Deliberately her hands came together, clap, matter-of-fact. Brugda smelled of old linen and powder. Above her, a few silver and black filigree branches dusted with newfallen cotton swayed. The skinny trees dotted the perimeter of the square, their branches looking like clarinets.

"What spell will we do?" asked Lenna.

"Another summoning, child," said Brugda. She took out her sharp piece of obsidian and scraped a triangle into the stone surface of the fountain rim. She chanted the whispery words,

Fær hana fyrr

Andi madur uppi

and waited while Lenna grudgingly followed. She had promised herself that she wouldn't. Really promised. And she kept promises. But in the flurry of all the news, she had become more worried about Binnan Darnan than about keeping this promise. The words were quick, and even quicker was the prismatic shimmer that puffed away, pringinging! fliphth almost immediately.

"There must be a spell that's keeping the magic from working," said Lenna.

Brugda's head sank into her hands.

"Can I try something?" Lenna asked.

"Anything," wheezed Brugda, her shoulders bent to breaking.

Lenna spread her arms. "I command Binnan Darnan to be here."

The air wiggled. A gray wisp sprang from the triangle they had scratched into the fountain and planted itself between the sisters. Binnan Darnan's face squirmed out of the slate and filled the wisp, gray-blue and puzzled.

"What's happening?" she said in an airy voice. "I'm dreaming." Her half-visible eyes struck gold. "This is one of those dreams where anything can happen! Lenna becomes a dragon and I'll teach her a new dance ..."

Lenna frowned. "Binnan Darnan, this is no dream." She screwed up her face in frustration. "It's never a dream! Binnan Darnan, you're missing. Where are you?"

"This isn't a dream?" the voice asked.

"No. Where have you gone? We're looking for you."

"I was looking over the side of a daedelus a second ago."

"Oh, child." Brugda's voice shook with tears.

"Who took you?" Lenna demanded.

"They're monsters and have no shape," Binnan Darnan replied. "But they have such claws. If this isn't a dream then I ought to be scared. Am I not in bed?"

"Talvi!" shouted Brugda in a collapsing voice. "Don't--don't you ever, ohhh, tell them to go off on their own. This, you ..."

"I'm sorry," he said.

"Binnan Darnan. We're coming for you. We'll find you," said Lenna.

"I was really kidnapped by monsters, Lenna?" the slate-colored face asked.

Lenna nodded. "Can you tell us who or where?"

"They spoke the language of the dragon's riddle. Irish, I guess. Will I see you again?"

Brugda's face reddened and her jaw shuddered as she held tears back.

"Of course you will, Binnan Darnan," said Lenna. "We'll find you in no time. That's what we'll do."

"I don't want to be here. I am scared after all." The wisp began to scumble away to nothing. "I hope this is a dream," she murmured. As she faded, a sound not quite like words erupted around her, like the dying sound of a bird.

This time, the almost-straight lines of the triangle that Brugda had scratched into the fountain scrubbed themselves away, erasing as if they had been chalk, leaving the granite smooth.

Brugda stood. "We leave for Ireland now, now, now. Talvi, get the empress. We'll take it as far as the airport. Kaldi, bring what you can. Lenna," she sighed. "Lenna."

**Chapter Ten**

Höfn

or, It Was 1999

The empress sprinted sprinted. Hexagonal black basalt pillars rose up before them like a giant's walkway, blocking the path darkly. The empress jumped up from the sand field onto the flat shapes at the top of the pillars and kept running. From this precarious vantage point along the pillartops the empress followed the coast, all day and into the night. Everyone got a long day and a bad night's sleep with only crusty slices of a loaf of bread with meat and skyr baked into it for all their meals. There was nothing but hexagonal volcanic rocks, spread wide between the rocky spine of the hills and the brown tufts of silk and seaweed at the coast.

Höfn hugged an inlet. The town was flat and set beneath a mountain range. Green glass pyramids socketed with gold dotted wide streets twisting around the placid bay. An enormous walnut-yellow wooden skeleton treaded water in the harbor. It held on at the dock, carrying a backpack the size of a house, full of flapping cod. On the skeleton's head was a crown of socketed crystals, glowing faintly.

Along the docks, heaps of blunt, gem-shaped fish like flopping decanter-stoppers lay on blue tarps. Bearded men sorted long squids whose hoods and arms were decorated with floral and paisley prints. Pairs of automatic gyroscopic wheels rolled people to and from their jobs.

The empress scented the daedelus and wouldn't approach the city limits, so at the outer edge of the black pillars, Talvi had everyone climb down the empress' steps while he tethered the empress to a post. It didn't seem to like being tethered, scrabbling and straining against the rope and examining the tether with its pincers.

"Should we really just leave it here?" Lenna asked Talvi.

"There's no time, Lenna. The beast doesn't eat. If someone steals it, we get another. Yes?"

"But you promised. You promised her, Talvi. You said you'd give the empress to someone who'd look after it."

"Lenna. If it was you, would you rather be rescued or have some old promise kept?" he asked.

So the five of them walked along Höfn's long, spiralling central avenue beneath the patterned sky. Lenna looked behind her, over and over, until they passed out of sight of the sad waiting empress. They headed toward the daedelus pen on the ridge at the far end of the city. Around some people's heads were thin black halos, and Lenna glimpsed one gray halo sitting in a restaurant. Kaldi led the household down the sloping oceanfront road past a wheeled thing dealership, past shipping lots full of giant skeleton-boat-sized backpacks, past oval warehouses made of colored glass, and down to the piers. The beach was splattered with stringy seaweed and snot-colored pods. Red kelp, hard and dry and crunchy, caught at Lenna's boots. The sand had a new texture, dinging like sleighbells. Puzzled, she picked up a handful of sand and peered at it. It was made of tiny seashells, each of them whole and unbroken, conchs and abalones and mussels and spirals, each of them as small as a grain of sand. She let them spill.

The beach faded to dirt and wended up, turning to an uneven boardwalk of pool-cue branches sliced lengthwise, leading to the upper reel of Iceland's Ring Road.

Here was the daedelus in a pen on the ridge. Its body was a glass house, the blue of the ocean and as vast as a Viking longhouse. It paced on a thousand strange clawed fins which scurried beneath it like hermit crab feet. At the front was mounted a colossal carved wooden head like a dog-faced dragon, tapering to a snub snout, its teeth biting its own leg. The name _Oseborg_ was painted on the leg. The glass body of the creature housed a zillion upholstered seats. An enormous blue propeller was the creature's tail. Banks of crystals glowed beneath its forehead, shining faintly through the painted wood. Three handlers looked after it as it scuttled around its zoo pen. Beyond the paling was an open-air entryway with a security tunnel, and in front of that, a low formica desk and a lobby with benches.

Brugda went to the desk to arrange the flight. Everyone else crowded the edge of the enclosure to admire the daedelus. Lenna climbed up Kaldi's back and sat on his shoulders to see over the fence. The daedelus seemed like a fierce, angry beast, a lion or a bear kept caged in a pen. Of course, its face was carved that way. It couldn't ever change its expression.

A noise dropped out of the sky, slashing, shrieking. It must be another evil cloud, a horrible swastika following them, coming after them to blast them with spidery lightning, here where they weren't protected. Everyone heard it coming. Aitta buried her face in Talvi's broad chest. In line behind a Scottish couple, Brugda clutched her hands together. The sound was like a plague of locusts filling the air. Lenna grabbed Kaldi's hair and squeezed her fists, burrowing her face against his head.

A violet shape bowed over them, sunlight-deflecting and sky-filling. Lenna started crying.

The daedelus keepers laughed at her.

A second daedelus circled and descended into the pen. A woman in a red sequin suit waved it down with an orange plastic semaphore stick like Binnan Darnan's following-stick. The creature landed with a bump and a scuttle.

"That wasn't funny," Lenna grumped to no one in particular as the purple daedelus' propeller shut down and silence returned.

Brugda took out her credit crystal, tapped it on the resonance pad and put it back in her pocket crossly. A young woman read out some terrifying security rules.

"Have you flown recently?" a janitor asked Kaldi.

"Years ago," he answered.

"You'd better get your shoes off, even for a charter."

Kaldi, bemused, began taking his shoes off.

"I think he was joking," said Aitta.

"No, really, ma'am. Since 9/11 and all ..." The janitor trailed away. "Speeds things up."

Everyone sat on uncomfortable benches in their socks. Menacingly, the pretty young woman at the desk had a thick black halo, darker than any other Lenna had seen. Had she arranged Binnan Darnan's kidnapping?

Nothing reminded Lenna of how angry Binnan Darnan made her as much as not having her around. Pairs of memories showed up, one and the other, back and forth, as if her two lives with the little black-haired girl were flashing before her eyes:

Pretty draglets weaving above. The two of them sitting together in the dragon tower, watching the flappers bopping into each other and croaking.

At table with Momma, handling a fine bone teacup, looking out the summer window at the servants.

Sitting on the rug on the plank floor of the barn, side by side, squabbling and arguing about dumb stuff.

Sneaking upstairs to decorate her room with wild crepe paper colors, only to have Momma tear them down later when she wasn't around.

Running out together to watch the breeding dragon being unloaded from the delivery truck's back and having to listen to stupid Binnan Darnan talk to the pretty creature.

Staying inside most of the day, hoping Kaldi would finish cooking and tell her a story.

Singing to a badbad piglet after overhearing Binnan Darnan singing to some draglet she had named Vonska.

Alone in her plain white room, making up songs that all the animals could sing to each other, if she had had any animals.

The two sets of memories made her feel like two people: one person who had no one in the world except a friend under the snowy barn roof, and another person who thought the little black-haired servant was nothing but a nuisance.

Everyone in the airport was standing. They treaded, sock-on-tile, through a tunnel of floppy red cordons, through a humming crystal archway thing and around the tall wooden fence of the pen. A handler brought a carved stepladder and opened the big glass door of the daedelus. Wind swept up and was getting stronger.

Inside the daedelus' belly was nice seats and nice smells. They sat down and buckled in and waited and waited. The handler followed after some time and told everyone about the horrible things that would happen if there was a catastrophe. If the glass exploded, they would need help breathing. If they fell into the ocean, they would need lifevests to keep from drowning. To get lifevests they'd have to rip up their seats. If there was fire, there were chemicals, but more likely they would all burn and die. It was awful.

Lenna curled up and snuffled into the seat. Aitta buckled her in. Right away her arm started to fall asleep. Somehow the padded, snuggly-looking seats with headrests and built-in footstools were not as snuggly as they appeared, not even as comfy as the empress.

That poor, lost empress. Wouldn't Binnan Darnan be mad. Lenna felt good that she had defended it. But it reminded her that it wasn't dragons. There were no more dragons. Sigh.

Another awful sound was the daedelus' propeller starting. The scuttling feeling as the fins crept forward was sickening. The jolt as the daedelus pushed itself into the air made her insides feel twisty, like Höfn's streets.

During the flight, Lenna toyed with the seatbelt; worried; remembered things; compared the old and new memories; felt complicated; accepted a miniature cup of fruit juice, which spilled; grumbled to anyone who'd listen; and stewed relentlessly. Most of the beige and blue seats were empty, so she decided to stretch out. Then she discovered that the armrests didn't move. She caught herself picking at the paint sloughing off the seats and stopped, figuring the daedelus wouldn't like it. A lady invited her up front to see the crystals that gave the daedelus flight, but her ears hurt and she was not really in the mood. She began to ask Talvi when they would get there, and he didn't know the answer the third time she asked any more than the first.

Years passed. Months. Centuries. The lifetimes of ancient trees. Soooo slowly.

The lady announced they'd be landing forty-five minutes before they actually did. Foreverforeverforever.

They hit the ground hard, and a vicious screaming sound vibrated through the cabin as the daedelus slowed to a stop. They stood, waited, then sat back down as it became clear that the lady wasn't going to open the door yet. Finally Kaldi walked out into the aisle, keeping his head ducked under the low ceiling, and the rest of the house followed him. Lenna felt sleepy and fuzzy and numb as she stumbled out the door between Talvi and Aitta into rushing heat and wild, fresh smells. A man had brought over a spiral staircase on wheels, and they climbed down to the green ground.

It was hot, steaming hot, and Lenna was glad her dress was sleeveless. The airport runway stood alongside a verdant field. The tufty linen grass had begun to grow tall here already, somehow, even though it was still early spring. The grass was green and blond and dotted with satin-petaled bursts of yellow and pink. The sliding white and orange origami-wallpaper sky carried a network of fiery blue lines in a wrapping paper design. Crooked budding trees in unusual shapes bordered the quiltland of farms, whose crop of neon orange vines seemed tall enough to be a forest, and it was only April. The air was thick with life. In the distance, little polished walls of stacked gold bullion rose up no taller than Lenna's waist. She looked down at the hard green ground. Under her feet were perfect, clear emeralds.

**Chapter Eleven**

Kells

or, One of the Old 'Uns

A tired-looking man holding orange following-sticks led them into a stinky carpeted tunnel ramp, like a segmented series of shipping boxes, and out through a wedged-open door. They entered a small sleepy building of windows windows windows, through another security thing, and out at last through another pair of doors into the tiny lobby of the airport. There was a tacked-up paper sign above it reading WELCOME TO KELLS.

Brugda headed away at once. Everyone stumbled sleepily after her toward an information kiosk set into the yellow plastered wall of the mortared stone lobby.

"Do you know anybody who'd be called 'Iascaire' or 'the fisherman?'" Brugda asked somebody on the other side of the wall.

Lenna caught up with the old woman and located the wrinkly old man she was talking to. He was sitting behind the kiosk with his hairy bare feet up on a chair in the doorway, wearing a green embroidered tunic with a Chinese Mao collar and holding a floppy flat wool Ivy Leaguer in his hands. His gray hair had a monk's tonsure hairline on top, his arms were heavy, like a blacksmith's arms, and he wore the vacant smile of a man who sat behind a kiosk for most of the day. His eyes were blue like aquamarine. He was probably older than Brugda, drooping and plump and placid. A plaque in front of him read "Pol O'Donnell", and beneath that, "the Talker."

"Do I know a man who's called 'the fisherman?' " he repeated carefully in accented English, adjusting his hat. "Is it a trick question, then? Whar is it yud said yar from, my fair lady?"

"Iceland," said Brugda shortly.

"And wharbouts in Iceland?" Pol went on amiably.

"Why do you want to know?" barked Lenna from behind Brugda's leg. She peered up at the wrinkle-faced man.

"Woll, it's what friendly folk ask, innit? If I tell ye I'm Irish, it's a dandy thing to know, Missy. But it's hardly a conversation-starter."

Lenna retreated further behind Brugda.

The man simpered at her. "How old are we?"

"I'm twelve," muttered Lenna without sympathy.

"Twelve. So it's fishermen yur after, is it?" the man mumbled, rubbing the back of his neck with a rough hand.

"Even a legend," said Brugda.

"Plenty a legends in County Meath. That's whar legends come from. But a legend of a yashkar?" He puffed his lips out, shook his head, shook it again.

"How about--" Talvi broke in. He looked at Brugda, who nodded. "How about Mo Bagohn?"

Pol's eyes glittered. "Ahh, now thar's someone worth talkin' about. The ditty's an old one, and not long." He sat up a little straighter, adjusted his embroidered collar, cleared his throat.

Mo Bagohn lived all alone, she never kept a lover.

She dealt in spells in bonny Kells to help the ill recover.

A carriage wrapped in ivy-thorn would bring her to your door,

Drawn by Wicklow mare with braided hair the color of copper ore.

Of lion's eggs and serpent's legs she kept a few upon her,

And for the sick, she'd bring a pint of that old stout, O'Connor.

The man erupted in thick, wheezy laughter. "In't it a scream? Now," it sounded like new, "the legends of Mo Bagohn are plenty. Wouldja hear bout the time she look into King James VII's eye from afar, just afore the Battle of the Boyne, and hid from him the great ravine what kept the armies apart, so's no one could fight him in person? Or, or how she dressed as a man to help clear the tunnels of Knowth, so's she could slip in and take the Stone of Man to fulfill her sistar's quest for her true love, four hunnart years after the fella's grave was dug?"

A truck with inflated owls instead of wheels passed the airport lobby, thumping. He waited until it was quieter, then went on.

"It's said that never in her history was Ireland without her."

"An Old One," whispered Aitta.

Brugda shot her a sharp glance. "What do you you know?" she growled. Aitta didn't respond.

"An Old 'Un, indeed," said Pol, smiling brightly at Aitta. "This one--" he pointed to her--"she knows her legends aright. There's no story in Ireland worth telling, save them what have the Old Uns in."

Brugda fidgeted impatiently with her sleeves. "I want no stories. I need ..." She stopped, growled, stamped a foot, hitched her bag higher up on her shoulder. "Come along."

The man set his bare feet on the stone floor and leaned out to watch them go with a bit of a frown. Brugda ignored him and headed out the outer doors of the airport to the streets of the city.

"But--" said Lenna, looking at the old man.

"Follow," Brugda called back.

They threaded out along the quiet morning lane and walked. They walked past parking lots full of floating cars, past a series of low buildings stuck to one another, plastered and painted in blue and yellow and pastels. They came to the high street, which rapidly sprang with many more cars with fins and feet and hoverpads. Some of the buildings were very old, built of round gray mortared stones; they had peaked roofs or flat roofs and narrow chimneys with pots on top of them. The shops were each one snug against the other, as if it was all one long long building sliced into different shapes and heights, all painted with vertical stripes, yellow and brown and blue. Between the stoops, gold bullion was stacked into short walls interrupted by steps.

"We need to find a bank for euros," Brugda said to Kaldi as they stomped over clanging sidewalk grates and around caged trees set in the stone sidewalk.

Pol's voice drifted like mist: "Ye've a credit crystal fit to charter a daedelus."

Brugda spun, spun again. Pol was not there. Nervously she walked on, clutching her bag against her breast. Talvi and Aitta walked hand in hand, and Kaldi put Lenna on his shoulders, and she steered with his ears. She was almost too big for that now, but not quite.

They turned a corner and faced a roaring intersection. Lenna looked at the peculiar wheels of the cars, clopping to a stop before a gem stoplight: emerald, citrine, ruby, glowing one after the other. Some of the cars floated off the ground, vibrating uncomfortably as the long crystals that glowed from their undersides buzzed like mosquitos. Long trucks teetered on hoverpads, their loads groaning as powerful crystals dragged them forward. Trucks weren't new to her--she had seen delivery trucks pulled by pygmy dragons, seen them regularly out along the Ring Road, but those trucks were quiet, rolling along the paved road after dragons gliding on long hind legs, bright orange or gray, trotting in leather harnesses. In central Iceland trucks were always by themselves, just one for miles and smiles, sometimes passing the obsessive cyclists that would pedal past the jokulls in foolish-colored spandex outfits. Trucks were solitary creatures.

Not here. Here in Kells, trucks lined up one behind the other, topped with crystalstacks that belched out high-pitched vibrations. The ground shook with the exotic wheels of the vehicles.

With Lenna on his shoulders, Kaldi followed Brugda to the shops of the high street. From a gray stone building on the corner she heard:

"And ye're asking after legends of Old Ones as if you expect to find them around every carnar. And maybe ye will."

"Who are you?" said Talvi, spinning to find the voice. "Why are you following us?"

Pol leaned out of the decorated doorway of a mortarstone townhouse, glowering. He lifted his eyes. "Looks like rain. You'd best come in, says I." With a careless hand he turned the latch and the old door swung, banged, shuddered. Pol O'Donnell was gone up the stairwell.

They found him near the top. He led them through a door into the living room of a low-ceilinged flat.

"Meet the missus," Pol said, stepping inside.

"What in the world?"

A brown-haired woman came out from the kitchen. It took Lenna a few blinks to realize she only had one arm.

"Pol? Who're we?"

"Friends, Emily, unless my eyes are astray." He winked at Lenna.

Pol's wife Emily examined the newcomers, who stood uncomfortably just inside the door. Lenna unbuckled her green boots and set them on a mat.

"Well, come on in," said Emily. "Make yourselves at home. What are your names, then? I suppose it's a day for a feast, Pol."

"Knock yarself out, Em. Well, friends," he said, looking around the living room, eyeing the small sofa. "We'll have to bring in some chairs."

"That isn't ..."

"Andy! Out here sharpish, wouldja?" shouted Pol down the far corridor.

"Whuffor?" came a holler.

"Guests!"

Thumping and bonking; a boy with sharp, wideset eyes and short dark hair came bounding down the hall.

"And how do you do?" he said, bowing to them. "Andy O'Donnell, atcherservice."

"Kaldi."

"Talvi."

"Aitta."

"Brugda."

"I'm Lenna."

"Pleasure, all," said Andy.

"Chars, Andy?"

Andy brought in chairs two at a time by underarm from rooms down the hall.

"Now, my dear Icelanders," said Pol. "The story, if you will."

Lenna still felt sleepy and confused. There was nothing about the O'Donnells or their world that was safe or familiar. She sat beside Aitta in a high-backed chair with a woven seat and swung her legs. Brugda arranged herself and frowned as she considered how to begin.

"A girl is missing," said Talvi. "She was kidnapped. We believe she was taken to Ireland."

Pol frowned. His wife stared.

"Then what the hell are you doing here?" she exclaimed. "We need to getcha to the Icelandic embassy. That'll be Dublin. Andy'll look up where it is exactly on Google. Don't know if you'll all fit in the Opel, but the rest can stay until you get--" Emily said in a rush.

"Not that simple," interrupted Kaldi, holding up a hand. "If it was, we would have gone straight there."

"But arncha Icelandic citizens, then?" asked Emily.

Talvi's eyes flicked to Aitta. Brugda ground her palms into her face. "We should not have come here," she moaned.

"Hey, hey," said Pol gently. "This house here's a house for friends and naught else. We're all friends here. Only yull need to tell us all, my friends, and honest and true, or we can't help you any."

Lenna burst into tears. "We're only wasting time. We'll never find Binnan Darnan. Brugda, couldn't I call for Mo Bagohn and ask _her_ what to do?"

Emily squinted.

Pol looked at his son. "Andy, maybe the lass would find yar room worth seeing?"

Andy ducked his head, turned to Lenna, hissed, "Social graces. That's what me oul fella has, huh?" and smiled. "Let the old folk make the hard choices, lassie-o, while we make merry." Andy put his hand out. Lenna grasped it primly.

**Chapter Twelve**

Ham Sandwich and Dinner

or, It's the End of the Prayer

The hall was narrow, darkly carpeted, leading to a long, narrow room. Posters of bands and pictures of friends were stuck to the walls jauntily. On a desk was a crystal pyramid.

"Have you heard Ham Sandwich, then?"

Shake.

"Then you haven't really lived." He ran a finger along the crystal, tapped it, slid, tapped, and the crystal boomed out an ear-shattering blast. Lenna covered her ears.

"Oop, forgot to adjust the EQ ..."

From down the hall, Pol shouted, "Tairn that down!"

Properly adjusted, a ghostly woman's beautiful voice sang a hauntly song. Back at the big house Kaldi sometimes sang and hummed as he cooked, sometimes the two girls made up their little songy things, but this was different. It was Lenna's first music. Chills took her shoulders.

"Now, if you wanted something a little wilder, I've the Saw Doctors--"

"No," said Lenna quietly. "I would listen to this, sir Andy."

Andy leaned his head to the side. "Aren't we easily amused. Very well, Buttercup, as you wish."

So Lenna sat in an office chair with one clay foot and listened while Andy stretched out on the bed and fidgeted impatiently. He sat up, then sat down, then stretched, then flipped over, then sat up, then sat down, but the song kept going, washing over Lenna and thundering her feelings apart. When it was over, she stood up and stretched.

"Are they done talking yet?" she asked Andy. "It's hours past, hm?"

Andy grinned. "More like tree and a half minutes." Lenna's eyes became saucers and a new song began.

Four songs in, Andy took out an acoustic guitar with a scoop cut out of one side and played along.

As he played, a smell like candles and strawberry wine appeared. Magic. Looking around, Lenna saw that the music from the guitar was spinning into a thread of gold. Quickening like a cat's tail, the golden thread curled into a line across the air, and from the line came tiny, reflective pictures: faces and landscapes and desperate storms and tiny, tiny adventures winding in front of Lenna's eyes, all carved into the air out of the single bright gold line. At the end of the song, the gold thread became a woven knot, spilling into loops and whorls, criscrossing itself. Then it disappeared.

"Came out rather well, I thought," mused Andy, setting aside his guitar.

Lenna stared.

"How did you do this?" she whispered. The next Ham Sandwich song started. Andy tapped it off.

"Oh, well ... little practice is all. I could teach you a chord or two, if you're int'rested."

She nodded.

Andy had a spare guitar, flat and very heavy and blue. He took it and gave her the giant boxy one. She lifted it. It was light, and it slid to a stop in the crook of her arm.

He taught her how to hold it, how to carry her arm.

He taught her how to curl her fingers, what the pieces of metal were.

He taught her how to press the strings and where, how to pluck and how to strum with her not-too-long fingernails.

How to combine strings into chords. E. D. A. Gloria, by Them.

And she played Gloria, bent over the cello-sized instrument, and Andy sang the letters, until evening clung to the two dormer windows.

Golden threads danced.

Kaldi knocked. "Dinner."

"Say no more, my friend. We are there." Andy set the guitars on their rubbery metal stands and bounced out to the kitchen. Extra leaves had been added to the table and mismatched chairs surrounded it.

"Champ, fresh farl, stew, black pudding and there's stout, water or milk," said Emily.

"Just water for everyone, although Lenna might have milk," said Kaldi, giving Brugda a long, sad look. "And thank you, thank you for cooking for us, Mrs. O'Donnell," he added.

Brugda glanced back at Kaldi, expressionless, saying nothing.

"Aaah, gives Em a chance to show off." Pol kissed his wife. "Outdid yarself, mum."

Lenna cleared her throat, glaring around at all the grown-ups, none of whom were telling her what they had been talking about together all this time. Talvi sat. Kaldi waited beside his chair. She cleared her throat again.

"Lozenge, dear?" Mrs. O'Donnell asked.

Frowning, Lenna marched up to Brugda. "Well?" she demanded.

There was a moment of quiet. Pol clapped his hands. "Right chu are. Thar's a hungry lass, and no mistake." He lifted the platter of scallioned potatoes to the table.

"No. Brugda, tell me."

"Why don't you tell us about your music?" said Kaldi. "It sounded very nice."

"Brugda. What did you say about Binnan Darnan?"

The old woman sighed. "Dinner first, Little Len. Then talk. Then bed."

"Okay."

Pol bounced his eyebrows at Talvi good-naturedly. "Dinner indeed."

So everyone crowded into the assortment of chairs. Bumbly bad singing vibrated from the downstairs neighbors. The table was set with all sorts of forks and napkins and cork trivets. Platters of food were passed around, buttery and earthy and spicy-smelling. They filled up their plates.

Lenna and Talvi had both got a forkful of sharp-smelling potatoes halfway to their mouths when they noticed that nobody else had dug in yet.

A brief flicker brushed Pol's face. "So ye're Protestant, I suppose, God's good upon 'em all."

Talvi set his fork down and looked at his wife. She pursed her lips sullenly. Kaldi smiled.

"No, we're not, Pol." He thought a moment. "If you'd lead grace, we'd be delighted."

Lenna secretly ate the potatoes from the end of her fork before returning it. Andy winked.

"So, if yarn't Catholics ..." frumped Pol, one eye wrinkled shut.

"Pol!" scolded Emily.

"Let it go, dad," said Andy. "Jost say grace and let them eat."

Lenna itched in her seat. Darkness streamed in the windows, and the headlights of strange vehicles below splattered smudges across the walls. She felt squashed. There was so much that pressed down on her right now. The old man was the only thing that they had in this entire country to help them find Binnan Darnan and fix things.

She had to fix things.

"Um, may a good angel bless this food and this house, um, or the part of the house where Andy and Emily and Pol live, and I hope I hope I hope we will find Binnan Darnan soon," she said as loud as she dared.

"Amen," said Pol, smiling. Everyone followed suit.

"Huh?" said Lenna.

"It's the end of the prayer," whispered Aitta with a grin.

"Oh. Amen," finished Lenna.

And thunder was everywhere. The room went dark. A buzz of blue-white lightning seared a gooey hole in a window pane and ran into the room. The sparking line touched the food, swam through the flat, touched the O'Donnells one by one, then flung itself out of the hole in the window.

It did not happen quickly, but no one else noticed. Not even Brugda. Why didn't anyone notice?

Oh. Time had stopped again.

A second lightning bolt cut a tiny hole in the wall. At first it was hard to see, a thin white line like twitching wire. Lenna didn't notice it until just before it hit.

It was bad lightning.

It wound loosely around Brugda and dove into her mouth.

Brugda coughed. Her eyes darkened to solid shining black and her bonneted red hair spun outward and she laughed the horrible laugh of Indaell, her mouth unhingeing and stretching down like the jaw of a snake.

Then the second bolt left and Brugda's thin red hair settled back.

Her eyes got clearer, but not as clear as they ought to be.

The thin veneer of time unveiled the world. The light rose suddenly, ominously, and the dark retreated out the window. Talvi grinned at Lenna and said, "That was very good." Aitta nodded generously. Pol, as warm as he had been before dinner had started, chopped up his round slice of purple sausage, mixed it with a few odd carrots and stuffed them down with gusto. Andy might possibly have gotten food into himself first.

It took Lenna some time to remember how hungry she had been. She looked down at her bulging plate. As she reached for a thin slice of heavy bread, she kept her eyes on her dazed sister. The holes in the wall and window were still there, a touch of smoke escaping through both of them.

All throughout dinner her eyes flicked to Brugda and the wall. Brugda had an unplaceable expression but said nothing. Lenna ate uneasily.

**Chapter Thirteen**

Druids and Stones

or, Don't Know What Hit Me

Compliments burst out of the company at regular intervals. Emily beamed. When dinner was over, Brugda rose and took Lenna's hand at once.

"Thank you," she said abruptly to their hosts. "Is there somewhere private? To talk?"

"Woll make up the big bed for you, and the guest bed and Andy's. Till then, you might talk in the study."

"Pol! The study?"

"It's all right, Em."

Lenna peered down the hall toward this deeply suspicious study, wherever it was.

Andy directed Brugda down the hall to the far end. She took Lenna firmly by the hand and half-dragged her down the sloping hall. The door opened at her push into darkness, quickly filling with light.

Every surface, every shelf, tables, the floor, cedar chests, some old bamboo chairs, and a long workbench socketed to the far wall were covered with carefully placed stones. Building stones, cut stones, flat slate, spotted blue stones, river stones with a hole worn through them, gray stones with a marble-orange line down the middle ... Off to one side was a single brick and a lump of clay. None of these things even existed in the new, shifted world. They were the stones of dragon-land.

The room had its back to the end of the building. Instead of being walled up with plaster like the rest of the flat, the room had been lined with a spider's web of iron. One-inch spaces separated the threads of the web.

"Shouldn't touch the stones," said Andy before he ducked out. "They're Dad's."

Brugda nodded vaguely. Lenna faced her.

"What did you talk to them about?" said Lenna. "Did you tell them all about Binnan Darnan? Also, oh! I need new clothes. Maybe a new ribbon for my hair."

"Shut up, you," Brugda snapped.

"Omigoodness," very quietly. Threats bobbed around them, not at all in tune with these interesting rocks. Lenna's eyebrows fell to the bottom of her forehead. Brugda sat in a big red leather chair that was probably Pol's, the leather cracked in a few places, while Lenna defiantly stood in the only other place in the room not full of rocks.

"What did you do?" the woman snarled.

"Omigoodness."

"Say it," Brugda barked. "What did you do to me?"

Lenna pressed her lips tightly together and shook her head.

"You did something, girlie. I can see it in your face. You'll tell me," said Brugda.

Again Lenna shook her hair no.

"You know what it was. I don't." Brugda coughed, her eyes still dark. "Don't know what hit me."

"It wasn't me," Lenna lied.

"What wasn't?"

"I don't know."

"Tell me!" Brugda barked.

"No!"

Brugda lifted a big rock, flung it, and just missed Lenna's head. It happened too fast to notice. Lenna ducked, raising her elbow protectively, and the rock smacked into it painfully, throwing her backward onto her butt with the rock in her lap.

Instantly the world squiggled around her. The room wasn't there. She was gone.

* * *

It was a cricket-chirp night and blue sullen cold outdoors. A clearing. Pine trees and the sight of stars and haunting owls were arrayed in a circle above her. A low chant of men's voices shifted below the boughs. Rocks were set standing upright in a smaller circle on the moss of the clearing. Dark boots squashed the ferns between the stones, and in the boots were druids.

* * *

Pol's big hands pulled her up, and the druid circle melted. Brown, well-lit walls were covered with iron, and there was a room full of rocks again.

Brugda looked shocked at herself.

Pol was the angriest person Lenna had ever seen. His face was crimson. He pointed a thick old quavering finger at Brugda. "I remember you," he told her, weirdly. "I remember yar husband. It's been a long time, and far-well not long enough. Hoped I'd ne'er set eyes on ye or yar Godforsaken family again."

"What's happening?" said Lenna, turning away, hiding, huddling in her own arms, seeing mostly Andy, who stood frozen in the hallway. "Why is everyone angry?" She rubbed her elbow and peeked out behind her.

"You profane my house," Pol went on, focused murderously on Brugda. She darted her eyes away. "You insult my wairk. You eat my food, you waste my hospitality, you throw my koindness away. There was a time when I'd have sent ye and yer family out to the rain the minute I knew ye for yarself. Brigid." He pronounced the name like a curse.

Brigid?

Pol spoke quietly from the doorway. "How dare you come back? What have you done to deserve th' welcome of Ireland?"

"Dad." It was Andy, being brave. "Come away, Dad. _Dad_. That's enough." He turned. "Lenna." He pronounced it _Laina_. It sounded nice that way. "Let's have another sit in my room, for a time."

Lenna looked around at all the scared and angry people. She wasn't sure why she wasn't crying. Her elbow hurt. But she wasn't crying.

"Nobody ever tells me what's happening," she said.

"I'll tell you some things," said Andy. "Seems you're the most grown-up of any of us."

So she followed Andy. Behind them, Pol and Brugda--or Brigid?--waited for her to go before yelling. Andy pushed the door of his room open and closed it behind her. She saw Kaldi looking out of the master bedroom as the door shut, with hospital corners folding under his hand. She and Andy stood on the brown carpet for several long seconds, too electrified and upset to move.

Andy exhaled. "Seems yer gram and me dad are acquainted."

She didn't feel like saying _sister_.

"Thar's a lot of secrets with the oul man. I'm going to convey some of them to you. Don't care if he'd prefer I didn't." They sat cross-legged on his bed. "My dad's one of the Old Ones. He's over a t'ousand years old. I don't care if you don't believe it. It's true. Mum isn't his first wife. I'm not his first son. Every hundrit years he starts another family. He waits until his wife and kids are dead before he does it. I met his great-granddaughters wunst, but we didn't have much to say to one another, even though we're the same age. It's all stupid and confusing."

Words rushed out of him in a torrent. Lenna liked the way he said stupid.

"Pol O'Donnell's not his real name. I think he made it up. Otherwise it's the name of a dead man. I'm not sure. Anyway, his name in the old times was Dagda." Andy's voice dropped. " _The_ Dagda. He's a legend amongst the Old Ones." He had an unhappy smile. "He hasn't got a last name. Which means that I don't really either, I s'pose. Says 'O'Donnell' on the birth certificate, but that's a lot of nuthin'."

"Who are the Old Ones?" asked Lenna.

"They settled Ireland in prehist'ry. They were immortal druids. They've got real magic, the sort you find in fairytales. A druid rod could turn you into an animal, or a stone, or build a barrow over you so you couldn't get out. On the proper day of the month, in the proper season of the year, they'd tell you the future. Some of the druids were really particular about what sort of magic they did, like Etain, who went away with the Sidhe--" it sounded like _shee_ \--"the fairy folk, and learnt how to make herself and her husband invisible. They're still invisible, so's the legend goes. Then there was Morrigu, who became such a powerful death-druid that she stepped acrost to the Otherworld and became goddess of the times after war. They all had one magic or another they preferred. They called themselves the lords of magic, but I think that's just blather. Dad's druid of stone. He says all stones have memory, and he uses them to look after the memories of the old ways. Bit of an historian. Dad'll go on about the Old Ones when he's fluthered. But now only a few of Dad's people are left. There weren't all that many to begin with, really."

Fluthered. Hm. She suspected this meant angry or tired, but wasn't sure.

"What happened to them?"

"The Old Ones were driven out by Finn MacCool and his wild army. They fought wars against each other, and Finn won, cause he was a superhero who could have kicked Batman down the stairs. The druids who survived went into hiding, pretending to be reg'lar people, like Dad's doing. But they all live forever."

"Do you?"

Andy wabbled his heel against the floor like a jackhammer.

"I don't think so. Mum won't. Dad does. If I understood what he was yellin' at yer gram about, yer gram is one of the Old Ones as well. Unless ..." Andy frowned, thinking. "Dad wunst told me a story about the enemies of Ireland. Monsters from the sea. There was a name for them."

"Brugda's bad, but she's no monster," said Lenna protectively.

"No, no, not her," Andy mused. "If she's Brigid, then I've heard stories about her and her husband. Probably your granddad, hey?"

Lenna shook her hair. The ribbon came loose. She needed a new one.

"Anyway, her husband's name was Bres. He was half Old One and half monster."

Something sounded familiar.

"Did the monsters have a shape?"

Andy looked at her and blinked. "No, they were shapeshifters, or so the story goes. Now how did a little Icelandic princess as yerself guess at that?"

Lenna slammed her hands on the bedsheets. "They have Binnan Darnan!"

"What, the Fomor?" He blinked. "That's their name. The Fomor. The sea monsters. The people of the foam. Thank you, Lenna, you helped me remember."

"You're welcome, sir Andy."

"But they can't have your sister, silly. The Fomor have been gone since the Middle Ages."

"Then they're back. Binnan Darnan said."

"Then maybe we ought to tell the big people about it. If they're done guffin' at each other."

At that moment, Brugda tapped gently on the door. "Little Len. I'm sorry. May I come in?"

Lenna nodded decisively. "You can open it," she announced.

The door inched open.

"There is somewhere we must go," said Brugda. "Pol has someone for you to meet."

"But it's night out! And he said it's going to rain."

"Night is when we find her."

So away she and Andy and Brugda and Pol went, suddenly, secretly, tiptoeing out the creaky door to the stairwell as Kaldi and Talvi and Aitta were helping Emily make up the beds.

Lenna was sleepy and there were so many things to say, but no one was talking. The stairs clumped in the light of a few rocky yellow crystals on posts.

Through an alley behind the row houses was a giant pearl in a parking spot. Pol opened the door, a shimmering white shield topped with glass. Brugda sat on the smoothly carved-out front seat. Andy hopped in the back, rocking the pearl slightly. Lenna climbed dubiously sideways into the hard white seat beside him. She tapped the surface of the color-reflecting white seat with a fingernail. Pol started up the spherical old car. It floated a foot up from the pavement, blipping and whistling, vibrating just below Lenna's feet, and backed unsteadily out of the alley into the busy night streets. Pol said nothing. He kept a careless arm on the steering wheel and an angry eye on old Brugda, who folded her arms and watched out the window.

**Chapter Fourteen**

Annie

or, Doesn't Anybody Feed You?

When Lenna woke up, she was not in a perfect world without Brugda. She was slumped, her head leaning on Andy, and something had just screeched to a stop. Her eyelids drooped and it was dark and she wondered where the scratchy straw and wool blankets were. Then she remembered.

A thin line of bristly brass-hinged trees loomed over the open door of the Opel as she stepped out. Her feet crunched on emerald gravel, specks of green reflecting the starlight. It was too dark to see much more than the painted canvas of crystal stars and moonlit rainclouds above and the black silhouette of a hill below. They were on a slope.

Andy stood beside her, looking and looking. He turned to her and smiled, the sort of smile you give to someone else to cheer them up. All of a sudden Lenna realized that Andy was her friend. She took his big hand.

"Soylent, and follow," said Pol, walking ahead. Lenna wanted to ask questions again, but right now it was a spooky outdoors night and anyway Pol said to stay silent. They filed along crunchily through the dark till they came to the end of the green gravel road, and then it was squish squish squish up a muddy hill with no trees. Diamond stars were everywhere around them. The moon was see-through, frosted like antique-store glass. It spun above them. Crickets and buzzy things made the linen spring grass feel loud and alive.

Magic was approaching. Lenna could smell it, a smell of gunpowder and iron. Some kind of war magic, ghostly old and brimming with last words and final prayers and the cries of comrades. Lights like foxfire bobbed ahead of them as they walked toward the magic. As the four of them came nearer, they saw what the lights were. A wall of fireflies flew in a slow circle, surrounding a broad space on the flat crown of the hill, revolving around a great black shape in the center like a maypole or a circle dance. The circle was maybe half a mile wide, this twinkling parade of fireflies. Lenna was overcome by the joyful blinking dance.

One by one, the fireflies began to die.

They dropped out of the circle, their yellow flashing lights snuffed out, and piled up in a thin line on the damp linen grass, gone forever from the world. The sight caught somehow in Lenna's throat, and she squeezed Andy's hand.

"Jost in time," whispered Pol, and stepped across the threshold of the firefly corpses.

As Lenna crossed the boundary, she felt herself pass coldly through a magic circle. Everything changed from alive to dead. The life inside her body seemed to drain away, and she sweated sickly and shivered. Colors vanished, fading away to black and bone. The last remaining fireflies went from warm yellow to creepy-colored in an instant. Her hands were white in the rotating moonlight, and Andy was silver gray. The grass was dead and crackly. The world was cold and fallen on the top of the flat hill.

Something crouched in the darkness, a shadow against the sky, tall, angular and wicked. Pol stalked straight towards it.

"Och, 'tis a Jute," he called out, his baritone voice rattling weakly in the circle magic.

"Dad?" Andy hissed.

"Shh. Listen."

Above Lenna, the waning glass moon dripped to red, casting a bloody cast on the dead white. Four hot fires sprang up at the corners of the hill, triangle-patterned and flickering. The light was ghoulish.

The crouched figure unfolded.

"Yutah," came a very thin, hateful voice.

Pol laughed, boyish and free. "Well, Annie M'goo. Shame to call on you on such a soggy evening."

"What brings the Dagda to the Hill?" asked the hissing voice.

"Brigid's returned. She has a thing needs doing. If y'aren't too busy."

In the flickering firelight, Brugda stepped forward and growled: "Why _here_ , Morrigan?"

"Oh, can we all talk now?" asked Lenna.

"This is Tara!" Brugda declared. "The Hill of the King! My home."

"Nice to see you, too," said Annie or Magoo or Morrigan or whoever she was.

As the mysterious hissing woman rose into the red moonlight, Lenna gasped. Creeping chilly horrors ran up her arms and legs. The white face appearing from the shadows was sick and wrong and deformed. It had a Neanderthalic brow ridge like butterfly wings; a chin long and curved down and pointed like a hornet's stinger or a rhinoceros horn; blue eyes as dry as paper lanterns; ears shrivelled to the sides of her head; a nose square and jutting; and black lips. Her hair was black, too; long and strandy, like the hair on a Voodou doll. The dagger point of her chin had worn through the skin there, leaving a weeping patch of crusted blood.

As she rose, and rose, and rose from her crouch, Lenna thought she must be the tallest woman in the world. Her black rags clung to papery skin plastered over a skeleton. One leg stuck out from her dress without muscle or fat, and it might as well have been a bone.

"Doesn't anybody feed you?" shrieked Lenna. She rushed forward and hugged the deathly skinny woman. "You should have dinner with Emily and Pol! Emily is a very good cook." Lenna nodded into the ratty fabric.

The hand that clasped her shoulder was very very long and very very strong, full of knucklebones.

"Why eat? I don't die," said the woman.

"Are you Morrigu? Andy told me about the Morrigu."

"That's one of my names," she said. "I prefer Annie Morgan."

"Andy says--" Gulping, she realized that all the things Andy had told her were secrets, and that she _mustn't_ say any of them. "He said you were very nice," she lied. Darting back to Andy, Lenna hugged him and whispered, "sorry."

"It's okay," he replied.

The black shiny halo around her head got a little darker, and the world grew darker with it. Someday all the light would be gone, if she didn't stop lying. She was so stupid for making that stupid bargain.

"Brigid," said Annie in her horrible voice. The long, misshaped head of Annie Morgan bowed over the little woman, who faced her sourly, unimpressed.

"Morrigan," Brugda replied. "You've made a boneyard of Tara."

"I like boneyards," said Annie. "Look. There's no High King alive in Ireland, Brigid. No one lives over the hill. At least if it's a boneyard there's kings under it." The bonely woman frowned. "They're going to put a highway through Tara, I hear."

"There's a king," Brugda said hoarsely. "Always a king."

Pol took Lenna's hand and Andy's shoulder. "Miss Annie Morgan, may I introduce to ye Miss Lenna ..." Pol looked expectantly at her. "Miss Lenna ...?"

"Just Lenna."

"Aw, butcha've got to have a last name, doncha?" said Pol cheerfully.

"You don't," said Andy. He sounded like a new tornado was forming in his belly. "You haven't got a last name, Dad." His jaw tightened. "You're just the Dagda."

Pol twisted around in the red moonlight on the white world of the hill. A twinkle appeared, but he kept himself from smiling. "Is that such a small thing to be, then?" he said.

"Why are we here?" Andy asked his father sharply.

Annie took a mile-long step towards Andy with her crusted bare feet. "You're the son of the Dagda?" she said. Her face was a bleeding moon above him.

"Does me as much good as shoes on a snake. I'm Andy, Miss Morgan. Andrew." He was shaking a little, looking up at the terrible woman, but Lenna thought he was brave anyways.

"She's your namesake," whispered Pol with a conspiratorial grin.

Andy's hand was shaking Annie's when he shouted, " _What?_ " and took his hand back. "It's a _zombie_ I'm named after?"

Annie smiled like a skull wrapped in threads of black hair. "You don't need to worry about zombies. The dead don't walk. Well, not usually."

"I haven't got a last name, and now it's a corpse is my first name? Dad. Tell me I've got a name by rights. That's all I want." Andy pounded past the goddess to face his father. "Tell me. I need to have a name that's _mine_."

The corners of Pol's mouth twitched upwards. There was something impish in his crow's-footed eyes. Lenna thought he was mean for smiling.

"It's been long I've waited to give you this," said Pol.

"What?" shouted Andy to his father. "What, what, what?"

"You can say no, if you'd like to," Pol replied.

The wind flickered the four tall fires into the shapes of huge animals. Thunder rattled in the distance.

"I can say no to what?" Andy answered. "What is it you're giving me?"

"A name, Andy. It won't be you was the first to have it. But you'll be the only one left. It's a name means something. Only if you want it."

Lenna watched Andy fight his anger down. He was so brave, she thought.

"Yeah, Dad. Okay. Give me ... whatever you'll give me."

Pol took something shiny from behind his ear. He muttered something and shook it. Out it folded like a Japanese fan into a silver triangle. From the triangle grew a spider's web of strings, attaching themselves to opposite corners like inchworms stretching out.

"This was my brother's harp. You'll have it and his name. There's more to it than that, though."

Andy softened. "Your brother?"

"He's buried under the hill." Pol tapped the crunching cloth grass with a wingtip shoe.

"How's your brother going to feel, your giving away his name and his magic whatsit like this?" asked Andy.

"I think he'd be proud."

Lenna drew back to give Pol and Andy more room. So did Annie. Brugda stood her ground silently.

Pol cleared his throat. "By the life of my father Lir, by wood and stone and iron, I Dagda give you the name of Manannan the Harper, the Storyteller, the Bard. This is the harp of Manannan. He was fifteen years younger than I am. And you are fifteen years old, Andrew Manannan O'Donnell. Here, take it."

Andy strummed the crosshatched strings. The notes were a music box opening. He seemed to understand it naturally, and began plucking the same tune Lenna had heard him play on the guitar, the Ham Sandwich tune. A thread of gold wove upwards and trailed away from the sound.

"And how's that, Andy Manannan?" asked Pol.

"Heavier than a U2 album." Andy hugged his dad.

"Excuse me," said Lenna. "Miss Morgan? Um, do you know where Mo Bagohn is? Or the Fomor? Or or or my friend Binnan Darnan?"

"Yes," said Annie. "Some of them. Call me Annie."

"You know!"

Andy grinned at Lenna, who grinned back.

"Who's Binnan Darnan?" Annie asked her.

"Binnan Darnan has a black dress and a pointy nose and floofy black hair," Lenna replied.

"Very sensible fashion sense."

"She's been kidnapped by the Fomor!"

Brugda hobbled forward. "Morrigan," she said. "A reason brought us here. I need a deep favor."

"Then ask," said Annie, shrugging with her shoulderblades.

"This child. I've kept her as well as I could, as a favor to someone. My time is over. Take her from me, Morrigan, and be her guardian. I can't carry her longer."

"I have to go away?" said Lenna. She turned, shocked, and looked at Brugda. The horrible old woman had always been the grown-up who had looked after her. Not a parent, exactly. Momma Joukka Pelata was her parents. But Momma Joukka Pelata hardly even noticed her, and Kaldi and Talvi had done whatever they were told to do. Brugda had always been there, a lighthouse in the storm of life, even if she had been an awful and mean and nasty lighthouse. She was a lot more like a mother than a sister, Lenna thought. Or an evil stepmother. Or, not evil, but ...

"Yes," Brugda rasped. "You have to go away."

"Without saying goodbye to to Kaldi and and and everyone?"

"Yes."

"You're not coming with me to find Binnan Darnan?" Lenna asked.

"No."

"You're just giving me away, Brugda?"

She shouldn't have said it, but she did say it.

"Yes," said Brugda, wheezing.

Annie Morgan spread her flapping black sleeves and they became wings, thick and wide above her impossibly tall head. She was a crow in the hot wind of the fires. Dark songs whistled in the air around her. The stars faded to pure black, but the sliced-diamond moon stayed red as blood. Annie smiled. "Climb onto my back, Lenna. We'll find your friend."

Lenna's wrist got caught by Brugda's arm as she tried to go to Annie.

"Wait." Brugda blinked. "Things to say."

"Well, say them," Annie said in her throat-scratch voice.

Brugda bent to see Lenna's eyes. "I'm sorry," she told the girl.

"I did do something," Lenna told her, looking down. "I hope it isn't too bad. Watch out for angels, Brugda." She faced Andy. "Andy, you shouldn't hate someone just because they're a zombie." She went and hugged him. "I'm glad you have a name, Mr. the Manannan." She turned to Pol. "Tell Emily thank you for dinner! And tell Talvi and Kaldi and Aitta goodbye until I'm back." She thought for a moment. "And then tell them hello!"

She ran across the drum of Tara, climbed onto Annie's thin back and flew away.

**Chapter Fifteen**

A Story About Icebergs

or, Weapons Aren't Beautiful

It was early morning. Feathers and bones. Lenna had somehow slept, perched between the ragged wings of Annie Morgan. The world sweeping below them was a springy green, but as Lenna blinked and stretched, expecting the sunlight to be blinding in the rushing open air, she found that the darkness of her lies covered everything, blotting the sun to an evening dimness. She'd go blind soon. She could feel it. The dark halo was all around her, and she could feel someone watching, peering at her, invisible and dangerous. Shaking herself, clinging to the skeletous neck of Annie, she breathed in, breathed in, and felt the paranoia pass.

Looking over Annie's side, she saw a landscape of a thousand different greens. Ireland was divided by gold walls, irregular boxes dotted by chimneyed houses and white walking clouds. The clouds were probably sheep. Something strange was happening. Wherever Annie's eagle-shaped midnight shadow caught the ground, everything living died, turned brown and began rotting. It sprang back to life when the shadow passed.

"Why're you a bird, Miss Morgan?" Lenna asked.

"I'm the goddess of after-battle, Lenna. After a battle are the crows. They are the carrion eaters, the flesh-rippers. It's the birds who mark the end of a battle. Nothing on Earth tastes like the skin of the fallen." Annie sighed birdily. "Only there haven't been any battles since the Troubles, so I'm only a bird when it's needful. I can take on wings when I want, but when there's a battle, I'm taken there in a second. I follow the battles."

"Are we going to see Mo Bagohn?" Lenna asked.

"Yes," said Annie.

"I like you, Miss Morgan."

"I'm glad. I like you too."

They flew higher, bursting through one of the two-dimensional honeycomb-patterned clouds in a puff of wet cotton. Lenna reached out to touch it, but her hand passed through the cotton cloud as if it were nothing at all. As they rose above it, she saw the impossibly thin cloud shrivel to a mangy black rainstorm and rain itself away.

"Why does this happen?" asked Lenna. "The clouds and the sheeps and everything dying when you go by."

"My arrival brings the shadow of war. There is always ash after a battle. The water is always blackened. The ground falls sick from blood. There are always dead things. And the living never have food."

"Do you watch _every_ battle?"

"Every battle in Ireland," Annie said proudly.

"Who are the Fomor?"

"I'm no good at telling stories, Lenna. It was the sons of Lir who were the storytellers. You should ask Pol. He'd tell the story right."

"Aww. Isn't there a battle in the story? I want to hear it."

"I can't ..."

"Pleeeease?"

"Oh, all right. It won't be a good story, though. So. The Fomor are these iceberg people. I mean, they were people who lived in an iceberg. Lots of icebergs. They supposedly had a magic iceberg-castle. They weren't really people, either. They were these ... ghosts. Sort of. I'm really not very good at telling stories."

"It's okay, Miss Morgan. I like the story. Will you tell me more, please?"

A tiny bird-growl came from the huge crow's throat.

"So Brigid's husband Bres came to Ireland from this iceberg palace. Before they were married, I mean. He came over and everyone said he was the most beautiful man in the world," Annie went on.

"How can a man be beautiful?" said Lenna. "They're supposed to be handsome, not beautiful."

"It was mostly about the eyes."

"Oh. Say handsome."

"So handsome Bres arrived in Ireland and everyone said he was the most handsome. Before too long he was married to the most beautiful woman."

"Who was she? Was she a princess?"

"She was Brigid, or Brugda, your old stepmother," said Annie.

" _What?_ "

"Yup. Brigid married Bres. Together they had a son named Taillvin. There was this other boy, Caoilte, who showed up uninvited and was allowed to stay, only nobody knew who he was. And Bres and Brigid raised the two of them."

"You mean Talvi and Kaldi?" Lenna asked.

"Dunno. Probably," said Annie. "Where was I? Kids. Queen. Um. Storystorystory, um, right. King. So there was a rule among the Irish. It said that to be the High King, you couldn't be injured or crippled or stupid or lacking in any way. And when Bres arrived, the old High King had just got his arm cut off in battle, and he couldn't be king any longer. And everyone looked over at handsome Bres and his beautiful wife Brigid and said they ought to be the new king and queen."

"Brugda was queen of Ireland?" Lenna asked.

"Yes, she was. The two of them were the new king and queen. Only beautiful King--sorry, handsome King Bres loved the sea where he grew up and the iceberg people who lived there more than he loved Ireland or the land people. So he made a decree."

"What's that mean?"

"Um," said Annie. "A proclamation."

"What's that mean?"

"A new rule that everyone has to follow."

"Oh. Okay."

"The rule was that everyone had to take the most beautiful cows and the most beautiful weapons and the most beautiful people and throw them into the sea, where the iceberg people could have them."

Lenna frowned. "Weapons aren't beautiful," she said.

"Yes they are," said Annie, looking over her shoulder with her paper-dry eyes. "Don't argue with me about this. Weapons are the most beautiful thing ever." Her wings banked north in the blue. "Norse saxes, two-handled Craisech spears, leaf-shaped claymors with gold and coral in the hilts ..." She sighed happily at the thought.

Lenna thought. "I guess you couldn't have a battle without weapons. I think."

"Not a good battle, anyway. So right. Bres. Swords. Um. Oh, cows! Yes. The people of Ireland really hated throwing all their best cows and their best stuff and their best friends into the sea, just because the handsome king told them to."

"Couldn't their friends swim back to shore?" asked Lenna.

"Not if you threw them off a cliff. And anyway, they weren't allowed to."

"Wait." Lenna thought and thought. "Why didn't they throw King Bres off the cliff, if he was the most beautiful?"

"Handsome," said Annie. "We're calling him handsome today."

"Why not throw _him_ off the cliff, Miss Morgan?"

"Nobody throws the king off a cliff. But they did get angry at him. After, like, the second time they had to push all their best cows off a cliff, they sent Bres away."

"I don't like people who hurt animals." Lenna hugged the neck of the giant crow who was Annie.

"Well, the cows wouldn't just sink and drown or anything," said Annie. "The Fomor would become sharks and drag the cows back to their nests."

"Sharks don't have nests."

"They might," said Annie, looking over her shoulder with her creepy human face.

"Don't argue with me about sharks. I'm from Iceland, Miss Morgan, and do not tell me sharks have nests. And anyway, it was only ghosts or, or monsters dressed as sharks."

"I don't know anything about sharks. Right, so back to their icebergs for a feast. But the druids got together and kicked out Bres. He got angry at them for taking away his kingship, so he got an army of the iceberg people together and they attacked Ireland dressed as a horde of unicorns."

"Unicorns?" Lenna's eyes sparkled.

"Some people call them rhinoceroses."

"Oh." That wasn't the same thing at all.

"The druids saw the Fomor army coming. They cast spells that hid the people and hid the sea and made the unicorns run in a circle forever. The Fomor didn't understand magic, so they couldn't find the way through the spell."

"Why not change into druids? Then they could see through the spell." Lenna nodded to herself sensibly.

"But they still wouldn't know the magic words," Annie replied.

"Hm. So what happened to them?"

"Nothing. People say they're still there, running in a great circle across Ireland, and they always will be."

"... Unless they have someone who can see through magic!" shouted Lenna. She thumped a wing in excitement.

"Ow."

"Sorry. But but if they're trapped, how did they get to Binnan Darnan? How did they get onto a daedelus? And how did they get to Iceland?"

"Dunno. Someone helped them, I guess."

"Who?"

"Dunno. Hopefully Mo Bagohn does. Here we are."

**Chapter Sixteen**

Mo Bagohn

or, I Could Use a Spare Pair of Elbows

Annie zzzwooped in a flutter of wild feathers, landing beside a green shining road cutting through an open field. Golden sawblades on stalks were some new style of sunflower. Distant trees were wooden puzzle-boxes, twisting themselves into new geometric shapes along universal joints, pistons pumping silently inside their trunks. The day was warm, even though it was April, when Iceland would still be frozen in. The sun was high. Lenna slid off Annie Morgan's back, and the goddess was a tall, thin bundle of ribs and rags again.

Before them was a giant yellow and green acorn squash set on orange pumpkin wheels, balanced on the little crunchy emeralds of the road. It was coupled by an iron harness to a mechanical horse painted pale green, pawing and stamping in front. Lenna peered at the wooden horse. Its eyes were lit sapphires, and it had the word WICKLOW painted in small yellow letters on one leg.

"Binnan Darnan would love this," she said.

"Once we find her, we can show her," replied Annie.

"Where are we?"

"The Hill of the Witch," said Annie.

The squash lurched squishily, then settled and went silent. From inside the now-motionless giant vegetable came a voice: "Who's making all the frumping rumpus out there? It isn't noon yet, by the sundial of my eye, and I don't see patients before noon! It isn't proper! Don't care how lonesome you are, love cordials are an afternoon activity!

Measles by one,

Weasels at two,

Runaway piglets and steer-herds by three,

I'll blow through the door of the sickhouse by four,

If you're barely alive, I'll see you at five,

I'm in Navan at six and Carrick at seven,

If your monthly is late, I'll see you at eight,

Don't come by at nine, for that hour is mine,

But call me at ten and I'll do it all then

the voice shouted. "But," and the squawky voice inhaled for a big yell, " _night until noon is the time of the moon and I haven't a moment to give up for you!_ " A door opened in the squash, just wide enough to slam, and Lenna glimpsed a little woman in red shawls as the door thumped shut again. "Waking up an old woman isn't proper," the little woman mumbled from behind the slammed door.

Lenna tugged on Annie's rags.

"Mm?" said Annie above her.

"Miss Morgan, I've had my shots."

"Huh?"

"So I won't get measles. What are the symptoms of weasels?"

Annie gave her a look. "Lack of mice, I think."

"I haven't got any mice," said Lenna.

"Pity. Maybe you have weasels."

The door banged open again.

"Annie Morrigan, how are you?" beamed the little woman in bright red shawls, who was surely Mo Bagohn. "And who's this you've brought?" Mo Bagohn peered at Lenna through wincey eyes. "You're Welsh."

"Icelandic," frowned Lenna.

"No. You're not," squawked Mo Bagohn decisively. "Anyhoo. An open door's the right door, is what I say, and this one's been walloped enough already. Have to fix the hinges." She carefully positioned the soggy yellow door of the squash halfway open. "Come in."

Annie, who was taller than the entire pumpkin-carriage, leaned down to the height of the door. "I can't fit, Mo. It will have to be outside."

"Why don't you change shape again?" Lenna asked her. A blue butterfly landed on her, and she gently shooed it away.

"I'm not Fomor, Lenna. All I can turn into is a crow."

"What?" squawked Mo Bagohn. "Fomor? Where's your mind at, talking about some old story? It isn't like you, Annie, talking about the lost. And who's Ladybird Jones here, anyways?"

"Lenna, ma'am." She curtsied in her green dress. Puzzled, she thought back and realized she had only needed to curtsy as a servant, never as Joukka Pelata's daughter.

"Lenna. Lehn uh. Hmp. No, that can't be it. If you don't have a proper Welsh name, then something's missing. Well, no matter. You'll have to be Lenna for now." Mo Bagohn sniffed the air. "Time for breakfast. Hang on for two trills of a thrush, I'll put a little something together."

Mo Bagohn rolled up her sleeves and rubbed her palms together. Then she kicked a cedar chest just inside the door and out burst a table, chairs, a painted awning on tent-poles, an orange tablecloth, and several steaming pots of food along with pitchers of juice, wobbling upright on the tablecloth. She frowned. "Got to get the plates and cups ourself, I suppose. You've caught me unprepared. Come along, Lenna, I could use a spare pair of elbows."

So Lenna helped Mo Bagohn cart plates, cups, forks, spoons and napkins to the picnic in the middle of the emerald road.

They sat down to eat. Annie was still six feet above the tabletop, curving over it. She set her chair back aways, because her shadow kept turning bits of food into maggots. Lenna put together a carrot-and-cucumber sandwich and dipped it into a bowl of soup. She lost a carrot slice and spent a minute poking at the surface of the hot soup.

"Well, my dears, what brings you to the Hill this fine morning?" asked Mo Bagohn brightly.

"The Fomor have kidnapped my servant!" Lenna exclaimed.

Both women blinked at her.

"Your servant?" Annie said blankly.

"My friend," said Lenna in a rush. "I don't want servants! She was my friend in the world that used to be. Only Joukka Pelata made the world different."

"Oh, you're Joukka Pelata's other girl, then," said Mo Bagohn. "Boy, haven't heard from her in years." She ate a bite of potato salad. "You're the angry one."

"I'm not the angry one!" shrieked Lenna. "Brugda is!"

"She means Brigid," added Annie Morgan. "She's here looking for the kidnapped girl, too."

"That's nice," said Mo Bagohn, and the words were striped in shiny black.

"Mm!" mm'd Lenna in frustration. "No one's helping me find Binnan Darnan!"

"Binnan Darnan?" Mo Bagohn put her index finger to her double chin. "Binnan Darnan's a name I recognize. Now what's all this about the Fomor?"

"When Brugda and I summoned her face with magic, she said she had been taken by monsters with no shape and that they spoke Irish," Lenna said.

"You can summon up her face? You've piqued my interest," said Mo Bagohn. "I haven't heard of that spell before."

Annie, who was trying to get a grape into her mouth without her shadow landing on it, nodded, which unfortunately turned half the grape into maggots. "Phooey," she muttered, setting the gooey thing down. It crept across the table and fell over the edge.

"Can we see it?" said Mo Bagohn, rubbing her hands together.

Lenna put her hands out, piano-style. "I command Binnan Darnan to be here with us."

The air wiggled. The potato salad grew into a mound of potato salad shaped like Binnan Darnan's head.

"Lenna!" the potato salad shouted. "They're coming for Brugda! Tell her quickly! They can follow her."

"Who?" said Lenna. "Is it the bad angel? Or is it the Fomor--the, the monsters with claws? I'm not with Brugda."

"Who are you talking to?" asked Annie.

"Quiet," hissed Mo Bagohn. "Young lady, where are you?"

"It's the coast," said Binnan Darnan. "There's cliffs and I'm in a cave beneath them."

"Do you see the sunrise or the sunset?" Mo Bagohn asked seriously.

"I don't know. It was night when we came. I saw islands on the way here. But tell Brugda! They'll take her."

"The girl's in County Clare, if there's cliffs and islands," said Mo Bagohn.

"Who are you talking to?" whispered Annie again.

"Don't worry, Miss Morgan," said Lenna quickly. "Binnan Darnan, why are they after Brugda?"

"They don't talk to me about anything. I miss you, mistr--I mean, Lenna," said the potato salad, drooping sadly. Then it disappeared back into the serving dish.

"Miss Morgan, don't worry that you can't see magic," Lenna said. "Brugda says she could find only me and Binnan Darnan in the whole whole world."

Annie gave her a look. "I _can so_ see magic. You were talking to the potato salad."

"That's where she was!"

"Well, my little Cardiff wren," said Mo Bagohn, "you do know your witchery. Let's have you hide behind a tree and tell your Brugda the news while I clean up."

"Why do you hate her?" asked Lenna.

Mo Bagohn twirled a finger. The plates of food sank into the table, which rolled into the door of the squash and jumped into the cedar chest.

"I don't hate her. Run like a bunny and tell her."

"You're lying!" Lenna shouted. "Why do you hate Brugda?"

Mo Bagohn leaned forward and squinted heavily into Lenna's face. The little woman had blue-gray eyes and white hair in a bunch under her red shawls.

"You're a little young for this, but I'll tell you."

"Okay."

"I was in love with Brugda's man," said Mo Bagohn. "I had a child with him, long before she married him. He took that child away when he left. Your Brugda raised my child. It gives me anger aplenty that she's here in Ireland, but I'm old and a woman of forgiveness. Do you see?"

Lenna nodded.

"I don't suppose you've met a Caoilte?" Mo Bagohn asked.

"You mean Kaldi? You're Kaldi's mother?"

Mo Bagohn caught her breath and touched her hands to her heart. "Then the blood of the Old Ones still flows. I--" Mo Bagohn was lost in thought. "Call up your Brugda. I can face her." She arranged her shawls and scooted around in her chair. "Call her up right out of the ground."

"I command Brugda to be here," Lenna said solemnly.

Now that the lunch and the table were packed away, the face that arose was made of sparkly emeralds. Brugda's green cheeks bent inward in a grimace. The sun glittered from a thousand tiny facets, but the glimmer was shrouded by the dark halo around Lenna's head.

"A fine toy, your summon-me spell," said Brugda. "Now say your say."

Lenna flicked her eye to Mo Bagohn, then back. "Binnan Darnan says that monsters are coming to look for you. They know where you are, always always. Brugda." Lenna burst into tears. "I told a bad angel that he could look out of your eyes! That's what happened. I cursed you. The bad angel knows where you are. He came in through the hole in the wall. But I think the good angel came in, too. Please don't be _too_ angry, Brugda."

The green face shook and its emerald hair twisted up out of its bonnet like a medusa's snakes. "Peeky-weeky!" screamed Indaell with Brugda's teeth. Instantly Brugda's face returned to normal. Lenna's hands flew to her mouth.

"Where's Binnan Darnan?" Brugda asked. She sounded weary.

"Uh uh uh Mo Bagohn says--oop." Mo Bagohn had come around the side of Brugda's floating green head and put her hand on Lenna's shoulder. "Omigoodness," she added.

"Hello, Brigid."

"Mo." Both of the old women had sharp, tense looks. Their eyes locked.

"I hear my boy's alive after all this time," Mo Bagohn said.

"Yours?" Brugda looked Mo Bagohn up and down. "So Kaldi's yours. Knew he was of the blood." Brugda coughed. "I've gotten old."

Mo Bagohn winced. "You didn't know Caoilte was mine?"

"No," said Brugda. "Where's Binnan Darnan?"

"County Clare, under the cliffs."

Brugda's emerald face nodded, then collapsed sloooop into the roadway.

Annie's eyebrows were halfway up her forehead. For a moment nobody said anything on the green road under the painted awning. Then Mo Bagohn lurched off her chair and danced and crowed with her hands in the air.

"Whoo-hoo-hoo, my boy's alive. Alivealivealive, my boy's ALIVE, woo woo!"

Lenna smiled. Annie giggled scratchily.

"Well, let's get moving," said Mo Bagohn after awhile. "If your servant--"

"My _friend_ ," said Lenna.

"Call things what they are, dear. There are always reasons. Miss Joukka Pelata isn't an Old One. She's one of the Powers. She chooses worlds instead of letting things happen of themself. I've always said it seems a strange way to live, but everyone's got a way. Now. Let's see. We need to be in County Clare. Getting to the West's a journey, and to start a journey you take a step out your front door. Even if the door's a little crooked."

"And what do we do when we arrive at Doolin Town, surrounded by enemies, some we know and others we obviously don't?" asked Annie Morgan.

"We let things happen of themself," said Mo Bagohn. "Don't you listen, dearie? Come along."

Mo Bagohn magicked the chairs and awning into the cedar chest, then ducked into the squash. Lenna followed, stepping up on the scooped-out yellowy doorframe and into the wobbly interior. The pale yellow-orange floor went _squanch squanch squanch_ under her feet. There was a bench of stringy dried squash meat carved into one side; a fold-down bed with white sheets, neatly folded; a little wrought iron table with a pack of long cards stacked together, decorated with gold designs on the back; pots, pans, wooden bowls, all clean; a collection of decorative spoons hanging on the wall; and a curry comb, with strands of green horsehair sticking out. None of it seemed cluttered. A tidy carriage.

"What about me?" asked Annie. Her towering height was bent in two as her pallid nose peered in the side window on the far side, the better to keep her shadow away from the carriage. "I could fly above you, or walk, I suppose. What about Brigid and the Dagda and everybody else I left behind at Tara? Should I fetch them?"

Mo Bagohn, who was carefully tapping the corners of the shut cedar chest, rose and examined the window. It opened at a snap of her fingers. The red-shawled woman leaned out through the windowframe.

"Can you be back in Tara by this afternoon?" she asked Annie through the open window.

"I think so. I'll have to flap hard. Why?" Annie replied.

"Lenna and I will start a battle in Doolin, and you can bring the battlers."

"Don't kill the unicorns, Miz Bagohn!" shouted Lenna. "Even if they're just rhinos."

"Oh, we'll not be killing anybody, dearie," Mo Bagohn assured her. "I suspect that it's a great secret we'll be walking in on, and it might take the lot of us to see it through. By the brim of my hat, we'll go and that's that. Will ye go, Annie Morrigan?"

"I suppose. Why does it have to be this afternoon?"

"That's when the battle will be," said Mo Bagohn.

Annie looked down at the horse and carriage, puzzled. "It's a hundred miles and more."

"Then we'll have to scurry," said Mo Bagohn. "See you above the cliffs."

"But--oh, fine. I don't like mysterious things," said Annie.

Mo Bagohn laughed, "ha-HA!" and waved as Annie took on feathers from her rags. Lenna got out and waved with both hands.

"I'll see you both soon," cawed Annie Morgan as she flapped into the sky. An elm tree sagged in two and sprang back as the long blackened shadow slid over it into the distance.

**Chapter Seventeen**

Wicklow

or, I Don't Want a Destiny!

"Miz Bagohn?" asked Lenna, still waving.

"Yes, my dear?"

"You don't have a hat."

Mo Bagohn pulled a bright red witch's hat out of thin air and set it on Lenna's head. The tip folded over beside her ear.

"Now, how best to get to the West Country in an hour?" Mo Bagohn said, snapping her fingers. "I know just the spell!" She opened the cedar trunk and started taking things out, naming them under her breath.

Rind of tomato,

Mealy potato,

String of a lute carved from old owlbone,

A bluebird's first singing,

A hornet's last sting

And a scrap of a wire from a rotary phone.

Down of a gander,

A river's meander,

Sound of a bell when the sky's pouring rain,

Sprigs of rosemary

From London and Derry

And a jewel from the crowns of the crowned heads of Spain.

"And," Mo Bagohn went on, stooping and scooping up green gravel from under the carriage's wheels, "some of my secret emerald rocket fuel!" She put everything in a brown paper bag, folded the top over and took it out to the wooden horse. Lenna followed her out and closed the door.

"This is Wicklow, the finest horse in the world. Aren't you, my darling dear? Take a bite of this, and she'll see how fast you are, you beauty you." To Lenna, she squawked, "Have a seat in the front and hold on!" Mo Bagohn fed the bag to the horse, bag and all. It chewed robotically, and its eyes lit up bright blue. The old woman lifted her skirts and ran to Lenna's side on the wooden board at the front of the carriage. "Put on your seatbelt. We're going to be flying! Giddyup!"

Wicklow dug his hooves into the road with a lurch. The giant iron coupling between the horse's harness and the carriage surged forward and the pumpkin wheels dug into the trail, spitting out emeralds behind them. For a moment Wicklow was merely galloping at maximum speed. Then his sapphire eyes lit the daylight up blue, and the green plains turned into feathery streaks as they shot into the landscape, leaping over low bullion walls and dodging around trees and hedges. Mo Bagohn put her arm around Lenna, whose guts felt like hovering hummingbirds.

"Now we're really moving!" shouted the old witch over the slapping rush of air. The clopping of Wicklow's hooves sounded like a drum roll. Then the sound stopped, and the whistle of wind was everything. " _There_ we are," she declared as they skidded across Ireland an inch above the ground. They were flying.

"We're like the Christmas lads. Or or St. Nicholas," shouted Lenna happily. Ahead of her, Wicklow's hooves were dancing on the air itself. Trees and fields zinged past at warp speed.

"Nah, St. Nick goes around the whole world in one night," shouted Mo Bagohn. "That's time magic. It'll take us at least an hour just to get across Ireland. I'd better tell you a tale to pass the time. It begins with your Brugda, and a man whose name I'd rather not say aloud."

"Bres?"

"Yes. Yes, that's the name of him. Anyway, there was once a castle made of ice, all a-floating upon the Great North Sea. And--"

"And Bres was made king and then they sent him away again and the Fomor unicorns were trapped and they still are," said Lenna.

"Oh," said Mo Bagohn, disappointed. "You've heard it."

"Annie told me the story, Miz Bagohn."

As they flew, a bumblebee zoomed straight into the carriage, zzzzzquit, and became a flat yellow smoosh with a stinger beside Lenna's head.

"Aaa!"

"Hold on, hold on," said Mo Bagohn. "That little bee died in the call of duty! Here's a pair of sunglasses, so's the next one won't take your eye away!" She took two pairs of sunglasses out. Lenna set hers on her nose, under the floppy pointed red hat.

Improbably, the smooshed bee detached itself from the side of the carriage and floated in front of Lenna, ignoring the rushing wind.

"Aaa! Go away bee!"

"I'll be waiting for you," Indaell's terrible voice squeaked from inside the dead floating bumblebee.

"Aaa!" Lenna gripped the sides of her sunglasses. Her red hat wiggled in the wind.

A blue butterfly dove across the whipping wind, landed on her nose and examined her sternly. It was the same one that she had shooed away earlier. It must have stowed away on the side of the carriage.

"This will only be the first battle," came Ljos' stern voice from the butterfly.

"I don't want a battle!" Lenna yelled. "I just want to find Binnan Darnan! Angels angels go away now!"

Lenna put out her hands for magic, but the angels didn't go away.

"Aaa!"

"What do you naughties want?" asked Mo Bagohn. "Don't pester. Tell us why you're here or leave the bugs be."

"There is a destiny upon this girl," moaned Ljos.

"I don't want a destiny!" shouted Lenna.

"There are two destinies upon this girl," snickered Indaell.

"I don't want either one!"

"Well, you bugs," said Mo Bagohn patiently, "make yourselves useful and tell us what they are."

"She will save the world, and bless it with life," said the butterfly.

"She will destroy the world, and curse it with death," said the squished bee.

The bee and the butterfly slammed into each other and turned into a puff of sticky yellow strands and shimmering flakes.

"Oh no!" said Lenna. "Miz Bagohn, they're telling the truth!"

Mo Bagohn looked down at her through her sunglasses. "They can't _both_ be telling the truth. Well, maybe."

An unexpected flash of light. The carriage screeched on the thin, rough turf under the pumpkin wheels. Mo Bagohn pushed herself to a standing position on the coachman's board. "Quick!" she yelled. "Jump out! Take your seatbelt off and tumble! JUMP!"

Before she had time to think, Lenna unbuckled herself and fell over the handrail of the unsteady carriage. Mo Bagohn was clambering up the tipping squash. Clopping and scrabbling sounds came from the ground ahead. The ground, the ground _oof_ and Lenna banged her elbow in the same place Brugda had hit it in Pol's study. Twisting, she got herself partially upright. A shrill shriek.

"Not Wicklow! Not Wicklow! Come back!" shouted the old woman, who was peering down at something. The carriage had disappeared.

It was the cliff. They had barrelled up to the cliff. The sky ended and the ground began just up ahead. A horizontal horizon of rock. All that remained above the sea was a yellow-haired girl and a bundle of red shawls, weeping.

**Chapter Eighteen**

The Cathedral in the Cliff

or, We Had the Same Eyes

"They've taken Wicklow from me."

There was a terrible sound, like a mechanical horse and a pumpkin-wheeled carriage plunging into the Atlantic Ocean. Then it was the slow wash of waves and an old woman's crying.

For a moment, Lenna lay back on the gravel and felt too many things. She took off her red witch's hat and sunglasses. They vanished.

Darkness took the sky; color went from the world. A shadow slid over the ground, and the sun was cold upon her. The grass shrivelled and the spring flowers turned brown and it felt like there was no warmth left.

Annie Morgan was impossibly huge, and on her back stood Pol, Emily, Andy, Brugda, Kaldi, Talvi and Aitta. Emily carried a massive hammer with a heavy gold brick at the end, held loosely from her one hand. Andy had his harp. As they passed overhead and circled, the deathly freeze left and spring returned.

"Did I miss the battle?" asked Annie, landing. "It felt like it ended before I could make it. I don't think I've ever--"

"Please don't talk for awhile," said Lenna.

Annie transformed, her spine snapping over and over beneath the ragged cloth. From her back the crowd came forward. They stood silent, trying to understand.

"The cart," said Annie at last. Lenna nodded up at her. Brugda kept away, bundled into an ill-fitting pink and white dress. Her sequined bonnet was strung tight around her thin-lipped jowls. Andy helped Lenna stand and hugged her when she hugged him.

"My Wicklow," Mo Bagohn said lostly.

"Mom?" came a voice.

"My only friend in the world."

Kaldi tentatively stepped forward. "Mother Bagohn?"

Creakily, the red shawls backed away from the rim of the cliffs. "Yes," she said at last. "But I'm not as Bagohn as I was a moment ago. They've taken my horse from me."

Kaldi knelt beside her, his blue-gray eyes examining the sniffling woman, his thinly-bearded mouth open in wonder. He put out his hand, and she looked down at the hand, then up to his face, which she touched gently with the tips of all her fingers, as if she were blind.

"Mother, I'll find you a new horse." Kaldi spoke in murmurs, leaning over the woman. "This I will do. I promise."

"It wouldn't be Wicklow." Mo Bagohn took her hand away and lay down, slid, sprawled, staring over the edge of the cliff at the ocean far below.

"No. It wouldn't."

"All my spells. My cards. All gone."

Kaldi took his mother in his arms. Lenna watched them. Mo Bagohn let him draw her away from the roaring seas. She faced Kaldi once again, looked up into his eyes, afraid, and rested her hand on his cheek.

"You have my eyes," she told him.

"People said they were my father's eyes," said Kaldi.

"We had the same eyes." She closed hers and shuddered. "When one door opens, one door opens. It is good. Yes. _Good_ to meet you. My son."

"You too, mom."

Lenna and Andy waited and watched as careless seagulls wheeled and called above them. The brown rock they stood on was a desert, and deserted. The air was clear with a touch of salty spray from far below. The world was new and timeless. The air was clear for miles, and in the middle distance were placid automobiles, distant voices, a few piston trees, a windy sigh lasting until all the sadness was spent. The sea growled and spit. A painting of a samurai slid faintly over the clouds.

Mo Bagohn hefted herself to her feet, leaning on Kaldi's arm. "By the arrows of my tongue, I pronounce a curse upon them that fooled my wits and took from me everything but these old rags. It is a hard day will be theirs. By its end, I'll take everything from them. I'll strike them."

Lenna whispered "eek" to herself.

"Let's go," said Mo Bagohn.

Brugda stopped her with a hand. They exchanged a long look, measuring one another. Brugda stooped and picked up a blue pebble with two fingers. Murmuring to it, the old woman flicked it into the air. It plinked forward.

"Hurry after it," said Brugda, huddling in the sleeves of her pink dress. "It's a lead-me-along."

It led the ten battlers along the cliffs to a line of stairs. The jagged stairs were hidden in a broken crevice at the top. They wound down the plummet of the Change-polished stone cliffs, and from there, across the face of the sheer wall. The pebble bounced down the small crooked steps in slow motion.

They followed the pebble in a tight line down the steps. The wind struck against the height of the cliffs, buffetting Lenna, pushing her toward the roaring void. Hunkering, she kept a hand on the perfect slick-smooth wall of the cliffs. The polished stone felt like a mirror. Andy walked backwards just ahead of her, ready to catch her if she fell. Each step was a sliding struggle of offset feet and hands. Many of the steps were slanted downward, and the polish of Joukka Pelata's crystal magic land had made them smooth and impossible to hold on to. Each step was a slide, and any skid would send her cascading off into the far sea. She felt her boots twist involuntarily on the surfaces of the narrow steps, and sometimes she had to quickly cross one foot over the other to balance herself.

Further down the winding stair, they reached a line where sea spray transformed the steps into dire, greased ice cubes, each one a different slanted shape. She felt herself sliding away, gliding off toward the water far below. She scrambled up against the wall of the cliff, but her feet pulled her down toward the edge, again and again. To make matters worse, a strange bell would toll infrequently. She wondered whether there was a giant clock inside the cliffs, tolling every minute. The bell shook the stone and distracted her. She kept both hands on the stone as she took each step forward. On one side of her, the sheer slimy polished cliffstone was covered with butterfly-symmetric orange lichens like paper snowflakes. There was an occasional clinging purple flower wagging in the wind. On the other side of her was a roaring grid of ocean cut with a few far-away snippets of island. As the stones got slipperier and slipperier, Lenna found that it was impossible to close her eyes without tipping. Even blinking made her wobble. Ahead of her, Andy kept his hands up like a ninja, watching over her. And the bell tolled again.

At last they descended within sight of the waterline itself. The water had Changed like everything else: it was perfectly flat like glass, smooth and waveless. It was vibrating like the ending of a struck gong, however, humming. Where the water met the bottom of the cliffs, a set of concentric standing waves grew stronger and stronger, throbbing up through the stone until the waves matched phase. Then the bell sounded, and a gust of spray broke through the glassy surface tension and slopped across the lower face of the cliff in a shower of diamonds. Lenna found herself trying to predict when the vibrating tension would break and flinching when it did.

The pebble bounced around a corner into a split in the cliff face. It danced into a sundered blackness with no ledge to stand on. As Lenna turned the corner after Andy, she found that there was only a narrow crumble of wet rock, a thin walkway along the cliff face. The walkway narrowed over a chasm of white water below. They edged with their full bodies pressed to the stone, edged and edged with their feet shuffling under them, a train of circus acrobats on opening night. The thin rock broke under Kaldi's boot, and he slipped and caught himself. Mo Bagohn's clothy form muttered imprecations as her son pulled himself back to safety.

The footholds tapered away and vanished. Luckily the opposite side of the rock was close. Stretching, they braced themselves hand and foot against the two sides, shimmying along. Below Lenna was empty air and shaking water. The gong-vibrations resonated through the stone, stronger and stronger on either side. She flinched and shut her eyes and pushed her hands and feet as hard as she could into the V of rock. She held her breath. The wave broke and saltwater spat. Breathing again at last, she discovered that she was still there, and continued onward.

At the junction of the V was a tunnel mouth leading into the stone. Thankfully it had a floor, and they swung like monkeys into the cave. The entrance stood just above the dark watermark of high tide. Around a dark corner they all arrived, above water and in one piece. The cave was hidden away from the froth by the wet lip of rock behind them, and they rested in the basin of the cave mouth, breathing hard. The pebble had vanished into the heart of the cave.

Kaldi led them into the dark, looking for the bouncing pebble. Inside, the air was still and cool. Lenna tripped on some stupid barnacles. Andy caught her arm and hauled her back up.

"At least ye waited till you got inside to fall down," he said.

"Mm-hm."

There was no light in the cave. Lenna wanted to magic up some light, but she was worried about asking for a flashlight and winding up with wild monsters. It wasn't fair: Brugda's magic never did anything creepy, other than kill a pig or scratch a tree. It just made things happen.

"Brugda?" she asked.

"Yes, Little Len?"

"Can you make the cave bright?"

"That's witch's magic," said Brugda.

"Why?"

"Ask a witch, child."

Lenna turned. "Can you light up the cave, Miz Bagohn?" she asked.

"Haven't--haven't got my--"

Mo Bagohn started to cry, and Kaldi held her. "Find me a glowworm, Annie," she sniffled.

A bare foot with talons stepped forward into the lightless cave. "Come with me, Lenna," the goddess said. "I can see in the dark, but I'll need someone to carry the worm back. I'll guide you. We can talk on the way. I'll tell you about magic, if you like."

"Okay," said Lenna. "But I thought you didn't know about magic."

"I do so!" Annie exclaimed. "It was the thing you did to the potato salad that I couldn't see. Come on. There's bound to be a glowworm here somewhere. Follow my voice."

The voice had already begun moving into the darkness.

"Watch your left side," said Annie. "There's a toe-stubbing rock." Lenna put her foot on it gingerly and turned a gloomy corner and then there was no more light at all. She closed her eyes and opened them again and couldn't tell the difference. Annie touched her hand, and she shrieked at the cold fingers. "Don't be afraid. This'll be easier," Annie said. "All right. So magic comes in lots of flavors. Duck."

"What's duck magic? OW." Her head cracked into a rock.

"Maybe this isn't going to work," said Annie.

"No no no no no no. Tell me."

"Turn left. It smells mustier there. Okay. So for instance, Mo's flavor of magic is nature magic. Living things are normally full of magic. But they only use a little of it at a time."

"So they don't run off cliffs?" said Lenna.

Annie stopped. "Um, yeah. Phroooo. You have this way of saying things, Lenna?"

"Sorry."

"Doesn't matter. Duck again."

Annie poked a huge forefinger onto the ribbon in Lenna's hair, and she crouched.

"Does duck mean hunch?" asked Lenna.

"Yes," said Annie. "Yes it does. Okay. So. Hush and let me explain. Um. Mo Bagohn's magic breaks through the limits of how much magic a living thing can use at once. So with her spells, living things become superpowered. They use up more of their life at once and grow really fast. Is this making sense? I don't think I'm very good at explaining things."

"I see. Tell me more please, Miss Morgan."

"Right. Watch your feet."

"I can't even see them. Woop!" There was a dip in the cave bottom, and her foot plunged into it. Annie provided an arm for Lenna to lift herself up with. She picked her leg back up and stepped around the dip. They walked on. Water dripped distantly, plink plink.

"That's why she can grow a squash the size of a carriage. She can cut through the barriers in its DNA that stop it from growing so big. Witch's magic can do crazy things with the right herb or tuft of hair or whatever she needs. The glowworm will probably glow as bright as the sun when she's cast her magic on it. But it definitely isn't healthy for living things to get pushed too far past their limits. I mean, if she's telling a sick person to heal faster, that's one thing. But the glowworm will probably die. Which is fine. Nature has a lot of dead stuff in it. You see a lot more dead foxes than living ones. Climb up this ledge."

This time she put her hand out and patted around in front of her until she found it.

It was a tall ledge, and Annie had to give her a boost. There was also soggy moss at the top.

"Ick ick _slime_!"

"It matches your boots."

She stood, and with a whoosh, Annie was on the ledge beside her. "What about Brugda's magic?" asked Lenna, wiping her slimed hands ineffectually on her leather dress. "She told me that the chant asks and, um, the magic answers," said Lenna. "I think. Or something."

"That's the dumbest explanation I've ever heard. Brigid's order magic is all about cutting things up. Everything in the world has a certain way it's supposed to look. Like, um, a frog. A frog has big eyes and four legs and it's green, right? That's the way it looks when it's full of order magic. When things are orderly, when they haven't been messed up or screwed around with, they look just right. Then, if you cut the frog open so it doesn't look right, the order magic leaks out of it and you can use it to do all sorts of bizarre things. A disorderly world lets you break through reality itself a little bit, based on how much damage you've done to reality, and also if you know the right words. Words have their own magic. Creep around this puddle."

"I have tall boots. I can walk right omigoodness."

"It's pretty deep," Annie said, pulling her out with a slosh. "I'm just guessing, of course."

Lenna shook her boot, but water had gotten inside. She had to stop, unbuckle it and pour the sludgy water out. "Miss Morgan, do you see the Changes?"

"The whats?" said Annie.

"Nevermind. Go on about Brugda's magic."

"Righty. So. Brigid's magic is all about screwing things up just enough to see the way things aren't."

" _What?_ "

"Hum. Okay. Let me try that again. So the world is made up of secrets. They're hidden below the surface of things. Brigid cuts things open to find out the secrets. She can find out the future by killing let's say a frog, but she couldn't make the frog hop unless it was already planning on it. She could choose a future where the frog wanted to hop, though, by killing a second frog--nevermind. I'm starting to confuse myself."

"She can choose the future? Could she choose a future where we find a glowworm?"

There was a blue glimmer.

"Oh. Here's one. Let's go back." Lenna picked up the wiggly blue bug.

"Okay. Other side of the puddle this time," said Annie.

"Tell me about church magic, Miss Morgan."

"Mmmm. Right. Church magic. Hm. So church magic is about good decisions and bad decisions. The trouble is, they're equally powerful. Only, if you make good decisions, good things happen to you afterwards. And if you make bad decisions, bad things happen to you."

"Uh oh. What if you made a really, really bad decision?"

"Do you want to talk about it?" asked Annie, crunching across a patch of gravel in her crusted bare feet.

"I cursed Brugda in a church. Because I was mad at her."

"And magic happened while you were there?"

Lenna nodded above the blue bug. Annie seemed to see her in the darkness.

"You'll get paid back for the magic. Always," Annie explained. "The good and the bad return to you, no matter what sort of church you do the magic in."

"But nothing bad happened to me! It's Binnan Darnan and Mo Bagohn and Brugda and all my friends that bad things are happening to!"

"How does that make you feel?"

"Awful," Lenna whispered.

"That's how you get paid back. Jump down."

She landed on the ground below the slime ledge.

"Oh. So why couldn't you see _my_ magic?"

"Dunno. Maybe it's a secret kind of magic. Here we are."

They could see peopley shadows in the light of the cave mouth. Lenna waved the wiggly blue bug. Mo Bagohn took it and shook it and filled the cave with light. A gaping chasm of stalagmites and matching stalactites shone blue.

"On," the red-shawled witch breathed. And on they went, in the shady blue light of the bewitched bug.

**Chapter Nineteen**

The Story of the Coming of Bres

or, A Swift Kick in the Shins

They walked along the smooth, damp floor of the cave in a long line. Sometimes the yawning space was a ballroom hung with wet stalactites. Other times it was a rumpled alley too narrow to pass without turning sideways. The floor was full of deep, round puddles connected together by narrow water bridges, smooth and mathematical. Plinking plinked constantly in the walls. The further in they went, the further from daylight they were, and the more trapped Lenna felt. Andy, however, was being brave again. He darted ahead of Kaldi and Talvi with his harp crooked above an elbow. Itching with worry, Lenna went to walk beside him.

On and on and on and darker and narrow and _plink_ on her nose and on and on. The bug shone at the front between Mo Bagohn's finger and thumb. They were far inside the stone of Ireland now. Still there was nothing.

"Here," said Brugda, turning. Mo Bagohn brought the light back to the side of a cavern chamber. The two old women examined the brown mottled wall where Brugda's lead-me-along pebble bounced sideways. "Need a way through the stone," Brugda said.

"I've a way," said Emily, stepping forward. She hefted the sledgehammer with the gold brick on the end, motioned everyone back, faced the wall, drew the sledgehammer over her head with her one hand and swung it against the smooth stone. With a _frooon_ of whistling air, the hammer's haft fell through the wall as if it were nothing. Emily flew forward with it, landing halfway through the stone. The mallet hit the ground, _thwaaaang_. Only her legs were visible, as if the wall had landed on her. Pol helped her up.

"An illusion, was it?" she said, dazed.

"Woll, it's surely a way t'rough the stone, mum," Pol said, kissing her on the brow. She smiled and winced.

"A problem-solver, me oul wan," Andy told Lenna. She smiled and nodded at him.

Kaldi and Talvi went in first. They walked through the illusionary wall, pulling a puff of clammy air through the cavern behind them, leaving no trace in sight or sound. Andy swapped his harp to his other hand and Lenna took the free hand. Together they lifted their fingertips to the blue-lit brown surface. It was cold like Brugda's magic circle, and Lenna could feel the ancient magic that made the illusion. She could taste it, really. It was old and gooey and crusted and lacking flavor, like a chocolate chip cookie that had been left out for too long. They stepped through. The imaginary stone felt empty around her, bitter and damp-scented and chilly, like passing by a drafty door in an old house. Solid stone engulfed her like mist, giving way to light. Bright light. Golden metallic light. Brighter-than-sunlight light.

Somehow, the darkness of lies that shrouded Lenna's eyes vanished for just a moment, and the golden light blinded her. Then the sunglasses-darkness returned, and she could see.

She had emerged into an arch-ceilinged cathedral of pure gold. From every wall and chandelier and display case and golden pedestal shone the glint of finely wrought steel weapons clad in gold and silver hilts and studded with precious stones.

Binnan Darnan wasn't there. The Fomor weren't there.

Instead, there was a throne. Above the throne, bowed over it, white and terrible and spreading and spidered through with gold thread, was an arch.

It was white as bone, the arch. It was a scraggly, spined and gruesome thing, reaching out in all directions from above the low chair. The spines were polished white wood, stripped of bark. Gold thread had been threaded into every space of the arch, a messy gnarl of yellow strands like a tipped-over sewing basket. The great arch itself was built of huge limbs of driftwood. Wired to the limbs were branches and roots in a deathly tangle, the weathered wood pitted and separating from age, forming the termite-holes that the gold wire was woven into. The height of the arch was staggering and menacing, reaching far above them, an arch of triumph. The driftwood plank of the seat was studded with gems, the colors shocking against the blanched wood.

Flanking the throne on either side were the robed forms of Ljos and Indaell.

On the throne, majestic, was a man with flowing golden hair and eyes like the morning sky.

Brugda clutched her heart. Lenna's eyes swung from her to Mo Bagohn, whose accusing finger shook silently at the man; to Kaldi and Talvi, whose mouths were gaping; to Pol, who seemed unimpressed.

The beautiful man on the driftwood throne stood. He let an azure cape trimmed with white fur slide off his back and drip to the floor. "The Dagda." The man's voice was gentle, the wings of doves. "Long have I desired a son of Lir to visit my throne room. Welcome."

"Stuff it down yar pants, Bres. Long's it been since you had me throw me favorite spear into the sea. I'd rather have me spear back than a welcome, ye greedy lout."

"Why not both?" said Bres. Indaell followed his gesture to a gold cabinet and withdrew a narrow, rusted iron spear with a green tourmaline spike at the end. The bad angel presented the spear to Pol, sneering.

"A gift to the storyteller," said Bres. "Would you tell us a story in exchange?"

Pol took the spear with a look of avarice. For a moment, he ran his thumb along the sharpened green needle. Without shifting his gaze, he said, "Aye, I'll tell you a tale.

"There was a hero once," Pol began, crossing his heavy arms, "a man greater than all the others. His name was Bran, or Brand, or Brendan. A sailor he was, with a curragh fit for twenty-six men and a voyage to lands beyond the sea. He and twenty-five of his kin set sail from their home in Connacht and flew out upon the wind for places that no Irishman had set eyes upon afore.

"There was the Island of Dead Kings saw Brendan. He sent five men ashore, as was the custom. The five men were caught by the spirits and were bound to serve the High Kings of Old.

"There was the Island of the Sidhe, kept forever summer by the magic of the Fair Folk. Them five as went ashore would not leave for the wonder of it.

"Then Brendan found Iceland. He sent five strong men ashore to fight the Vikings who had stolen children from Ulster. But the Vikings were too many, and those five were slaughtered.

"South of there, Brendan found the Island of Women. It's said that five families of great-great-a thousand times-great-grandchildren live there still.

"So six there were came down to Uist, but that island is cursed, and a gale washed all but Brendan himself overboard. The rest that sailed past the bonny island are sitting forever beneath the sea, as the sad song goes.

"So it was Brendan was sailing alone when he found the Ice Palace of the Fomor. At the tallest tower lived a princess. What her name was, no man may say. Her father Balor was king of the Fomor. He had one eye, an eye so terrible that the eyelid could only be lifted with a ring of silver, and if he looked upon you with it, you would die.

"He'd been warned by a seer druid that if he ever got a grandson, the child would mean the death of him. He was so angered at the prophecy that he lifted his eyelid with a ring of silver, and the seer druid died under his terrible gaze. But he believed the truth of the prophecy. He was so afraid of the future that he locked his only daughter at the top of the tallest tower.

"When Brendan arrived at the ice palace, blind Balor welcomed him as a guest. They ate and drank. Brendan stayed for the night, then another night. The third night, the spirit of the dead seer druid led Brendan to the nameless girl's tower, for this was the Otherworld, where spirits dwell. So it was that the seer druid fulfilled his own prophecy. The daughter of Balor had a son by Brendan, and that boy was named Bres.

"When the boy was grown, he left that place and was named king of Ireland. He ruled for a time, angered the people, and was dethroned. It was Bres called upon his grandfather Balor for an army to reclaim the throne of Ireland. His grandfather brought an army of Fomor spirits from the Otherworld to Ireland in order to win back the kingship over the boy's subjects who had cast him out. The spirit army of Balor faced the druid army of the Old Ones. They fought the greatest battle ever fought, save for the last battle against Finn MacCool. But Bres ran the army astray and lost the battle. The druids bound the Fomor up with spells, then faced the terrible blind Balor, who stood alone. In the end, it was Manannan killed Balor with a druid rod, but as Balor lay dying, his eye opened and Manannan fell."

"Yes," said Bres. He knelt, picked up his robe and wrapped himself up in it, shivering, as if the room had grown cold. But it was warm.

Annie nodded. "That's how it was," she said quietly.

The Dagda went on: "At the end, young Bres was there at his grandfather's side. Balor knew it was the prophecy come upon him. He was angered at the weakness of his grandson. He was angered that his people, the Fomor, had been trapped by druid magic. He was angered that his great army had lost the battle for Ireland. He laid blame on Bres for being a poor king."

"Yes," Bres said again. His eyelids flickered and he bowed his head. Golden hair draped him, hiding his face.

"So he cursed Bres with his dying breath, the curse of Balor. He said that Bres would leave from Connacht on a curragh, as his father Brendan had done. And if ever Bres saw the green fields of Ireland again, he would turn to ash and blow away upon the wind," Pol finished.

"Yes." There was pain in Bres' voice.

"This story I name the Story of the Coming of Bres, and a true story it is. Now. Whar's the lass?"

Bres breathed like a dying man for a long moment, then lifted his head. "You've told me a tale, and the spear is yours. But there is much to talk about. Brigid." Bres stepped forward down the steps of his gilded throne and spread his arms. Brugda rushed to him, and Bres' great blue robe enfolded her. "My darling Brigid."

The old woman bent her wrinkled face up to look at him. Red hair covered her forehead, and tears filled her eyes. Her lip trembled.

"I'm old. Beautiful Bres, I'm old." A hand reached up to brush a lock of golden hair from his broad forehead. "There are no words left. Oh my sweet Bres."

She sank into his arms. Mo Bagohn turned away and closed her eyes. Kaldi put a hand around his mother's shoulder.

It was Ljos who broke the silence. Motionless, he spoke from beneath the vile arch of the throne, an ageless man in a gray robe.

"Time advances, Master," Ljos said.

"Master?" said Lenna, puzzled.

"That voice," gasped Mo Bagohn. "You're the ones."

Ljos raised a heavy hand. "This is not--"

"Don't you interrupt me, you murdering, you filthy murdering thing. By the red of my heart, I'll tear you apart. Both of you!" spat Mo Bagohn.

Bres spun to face the angel Ljos with his cloaked arm around Brugda.

"Murdering, Lés?"

"It was witch's magic, sire, and a machine only," said Ljos. "We did as you commanded."

"We'll speak later, Lés."

"We'll speak now," shouted Mo Bagohn. "What are these, these angels doing in your roost? You vicious creatures. You took my Wicklow from me."

Bres spun to face the other angel. "How, Intlás?"

Indaell took a step, took a step, grinning at the fury in the red bright shawls. "She wanted a battle, my master. She didn't have a battle. So we gave her one."

Mo Bagohn quivered.

"I didn't ask why, Intlás. I asked how." Bres snapped a finger, and Indaell screamed in pain.

"By falling off the cliff, sire," the bad angel whimpered.

"Ah," said Bres. "And Wicklow is a machine, _mo beagán_?"

"Yes," said Mo Bagohn carefully.

"The sea is fathoms deep, _mo beagán_. Who could journey there but the Fomor?"

Mo Bagohn's face clenched to a tight angry ball. Her white hair was a frizzy line between her crocheted red shawls and the ruddy crush of her face. She spat on the floor.

"You've done all this, you lying man. I can see it all over your face. You kidnapped the servant girl and left clues for your sons to find. You had your own servants put a curse on this Cardiff wren when she was too angry to know better. She followed Annie, and Annie followed me, and I followed you straight to your front door where you took everything from me. You take everything from everyone. And at last you offer it back at your own price. You hurt people until they tell you what you want to hear." Mo Bagohn wrapped her shawls tighter around her. "I want my Wicklow back. Name your price."

Brugda trembled at Bres' side. "No, my Bres. I won't have that be true. Tell me. Tell me it isn't true."

Bres surveyed the wide room and everyone in it. Standing on the steps of his vast throne, he looked down at the little red-headed woman at his chest, then out at his audience. He began to speak: "I have given you your spear for your story, Dagda. What will you give me for mine?"

"A swift kick in the shins," muttered Pol O'Donnell. "Ye might as well have stolen me spear, and I gave ye my tale far free."

"What will you give me?" repeated Bres.

"Name your price, and never speak again," Mo Bagohn snapped.

"Give me the silver harp of Manannan, and I will give you my story."

Andy pressed his lips together and clutched the harp. "This was a gift," he said. "Manannan wouldn't want me to give it up for a story."

"Woll, not for a crummy story, anyways," said Pol.

"Then this audience is ended. Lés. Intlás. Escort them out."

"Wait," said Emily. She looked sadly at the great heavy hammer she gripped with her one hand.

"Em, it isn't--don't just--"

"I give you the golden hammer of the Dagda. It has the power to turn stone to clay with the first strike, and clay to dust with the second. I give it as a gift. Would you answer all our questions, and will you tell us your story as well?"

Bres bowed magnanimously. "I will."

"Ochone, Em," whispered Pol sadly.

Indaell lifted a gold platter and brought it forward. Emily kissed the block of gold, then lay it on the platter and watched as it was set on a tall narrow pedestal.

"The story fairst," said Pol.

**Chapter Twenty**

The Story of Brendan

or, I Have Too Much to Lose

"In a palace of ice lived a woman with no name," Bres began. "Her father was a king, and her mother was long dead. She was a princess. With her was her husband Brendan, whom she loved more than the moon loves the stars. Brendan was the star of her world, and she was happy every moment they were together. With them was a boy. Their son. Brendan took him out to the harbor each day and taught him to fish with nets and to swim and to sail a curragh. As they sailed he would tell the boy stories of his home country, Ireland. Dream country. The woman with no name would sit on the end of the docks and sing as she watched father and son throw the nets and swim in the waves and sail their curragh. She was very happy.

"One day, Brendan her husband kissed her, kissed his son, and walked away toward the docks. When she ran to follow him, he hit her across the face. He climbed into a boat and sailed to lands beyond the sea."

For a moment, Lenna thought the story was finished. This didn't seem like a worthwhile trade for a magic hammer. But Bres went on:

"From then on, the boy grew up alone in the palace with his mother and grandfather. But his grandfather was blind, and all day sat in a chair in the middle of the palace and would not speak to the boy. So the boy would go down to the docks each day. He would take his nets to fish. He would dive into the sea to swim. He built himself a curragh, and he would sail it around the cove at the sweep of the coast. His mother would sit on the docks and sing, and her songs were songs of deepest sorrow.

"Soon the boy was a man. He asked his mother if he could sail away to lands beyond the sea. She asked her father the king, and the king said yes."

Again Bres stopped, then continued:

"In his curragh, the boy went all alone into the vast, empty ocean. For weeks there was only water, up to the circle of the horizon. Then a line of little islands appeared. As he reached the islands, the young man looked up and beyond them was a line of cliffs. It was surely the place where oceans ended, these cliffs. It was the end of all things.

"Of the people of the islands, he asked what were those cliffs that blotted out the sun in the morning? The people named the cliffs 'Ireland.'

"So the young man sailed up to the cliffs, climbed them with his bare hands, pulled himself over the rim and stood at the edge of the land of dreams.

"The grass that lay across the ground was sewn of the finest green linen. The roads were paved with perfectly cut emeralds. And the houses were thatched with gold.

"As the young man walked through this country, he came upon a village. There he asked after his father, Brendan. 'Oh, yes,' the people told him, 'he's up in Connacht, a priest who's to be made a saint.' So the boy went to Connacht and found his father."

Bres inhaled, and his breath shook.

"It was a church of gold where his father was, and there was a gathering of a thousand people to hear him speak. From the pulpit Brendan spoke of his journey to the islands of the north and how he brought religion to each of them. The young man listened to his father from the back of the crowd, and more and more it all seemed like lies to him. So he waited for mass to end and for the people to confess, and he went to his father inside the confession booth and asked him why he was going to be made a saint.

" 'Son,' Brendan told him, sequestered in the gloomy box, 'there's only one island I found in all my journeys. It was Iceland I went to, and I built a church in the side of a hill. All the time I spent with you and your mother was naught but my own dreaming.' Brendan looked at the young man through the grille of the booth. 'The people are given faith when they hear my stories, son. It helps them believe. That's why they chose me to be a saint. If they knew that I, a priest, had married a woman and had a son with her, they'd lose faith in my stories. So you must leave and tell no one who you are.

" 'But since you are my son, and since I am to be a saint, I'll give you two angels who will follow you in everything you tell them. Now get out and never come back. I have too much to lose.' "

Bres looked away. Brugda clutched him.

"There are more stories, of course, like the tale of how I came to be High King of Ireland, and what I did then. I haven't the heart to tell them, now."

Pol O'Donnell scrutinized Bres. "A fair story, and well told. Now. Questions. _All_ of them." He put his arm around Emily protectively.

"Ask," said Bres wearily.

"What will you trade to bring my Wicklow back?" snapped Mo Bagohn.

"The people of my mother, the Fomor, have been trapped in Ireland for a thousand years. It was my own foolishness that put this fate upon them."

"Oh, Bres," said Brugda breathily.

"It was, Brigid. I was young and angry. Too young to be king. Since I left you and the boys in Reykjavik and swam here, I've been looking for a way to set my people free."

"Thought you'd died. Oh, Bres, you left me? I thought you'd died."

Brugda retreated down the steps leading to the throne. Bres' cloak settled back around his shoulders as he stood before his throne in his golden chambers. His eyes fell, fell, fell.

"I change my face every day, when I wake."

Lenna gulped as Bres' face wrinkled, grew old and became a skull, then faded back to beauty. "You are not a shape-changer, Brigid. Your face cannot regain the beauty I once saw in it."

"Oh." Brugda's knees spilled her sideways, and she curled up in a bonneted ball and cried.

**Chapter Twenty-One**

Revelations

or, The Angels Told Me Your Name

"The question," Pol O'Donnell reminded Bres.

A scowl marred his graceful face. "Set the Fomor free and return them to the ocean. I'll command them to bring your horse and carriage to you, _mo beagán_ , my little one."

Mo Bagohn's jaw clenched at the words. "Don't ever call me that again."

"Very well," said Bres.

Talvi and Kaldi looked at each other. They were both angry.

Kaldi said: "You're our father? Truly? Talvi and I are half-brothers?"

"Yes, Caoilte," sighed Bres, throwing the edges of his cape out and settling himself back on the jeweled armrest of his terrible seat. "You two are both my sons."

"You thought _nothing_ of leaving us? You didn't even say goodbye," Kaldi replied.

"I stayed with you in Iceland, away from my beloved home, for two hundred years. Was it not enough?" Bres flicked his long hair and turned away. "Long have I waited here for you two to come looking for your father, even as I went looking for mine."

"Mother Brugda told us you were dead," Talvi broke in.

"Yes, I see that now, Taillvin. Even at seven hundred I was young and foolish. I misunderstood her, as I have always done."

Kaldi came forward. Lenna had never seen so much hurt and confusion on his face. "You never told me that Brugda wasn't my mother," he said to Bres. "You never introduced me to Mother Bagohn."

"No, I didn't."

"Why?" shouted Kaldi.

"You're my son. That's what's important."

Kaldi leapt high to the pedestal, picked up the gold hammer and threw it at Bres. Golden hair fell like water as the High King pushed himself backwards off the armrest of his throne and slid bodily backward to the floor beneath the arch. The spinning hammer hit the floor beside his head, and the floor changed to clay like a boot cracking open a frozen puddle.

"Should've told you," mumbled Brugda, huddled in her pink dress on the floor. Aitta sat with her; Talvi gripped Kaldi's shoulder.

"Where's Binnan Darnan?" Lenna demanded.

Bres' breath heaved in heaved out heaved in. "Time. Give me time." Gasping, he trained his eyes on Ljos and Indaell, who stood impassively at either side of the throne. Kaldi's face was red. He slumped, clenching his hands, clutch clutch, like claws. Indaell had a snarky smile. Bres lifted himself to his shaky feet and slipped sideways onto his golden-threaded throne.

"I will deal with you later, Caoilte. Lenna. You want to know where your friend is."

"Mm-hm," she said.

"I will make you a deal, Lenna. I have a thing you'll have to do for me if you want to see your friend again. But first--"

"Jost answer the damn question," Pol said sharply. "Where's the lass?"

"And--" Lenna added. She frowned. Something wasn't right. "And how did you know my name?"

"The angels told me your name," said Bres. "They've gone from church to church waiting for anyone who can see magic. Once they found you, I bade them bring you here."

"But but. Hm. Where's Binnan Darnan? You _must_ answer the question. You said."

"She's in the next room. Only I can let her out, and I'll make you a deal."

"No!" shouted Kaldi. "Let her go or I'll kill you!"

Annie Morgan nodded approvingly.

"If you kill me, she can never be released. She'll die in there."

Kaldi punched a gold something-or-other in frustration and hurt his hand.

"What deal do you want me to make, Mr. Bres?" Lenna held her head up, as brave as she could. It would be good if Andy saw her being brave.

"Go with, with her--" Bres pointed to Mo Bagohn--"and rescue my people from their fate. If you do, I will release your friend, Lenna. There's a second thing I desire as well. Intlás tells me you can summon the face of a faraway person?"

Lenna scowled. She didn't like being spied on. "Uh huh."

"After you free the Fomor, summon my mother and tell her what's happened. Tell her that you've freed her people from the curse of the Old Ones. Do this and I will release you and Brugda from Intlás' curse. Do you agree?"

"I don't like you--" Lenna began.

"It was _you_ laid the lightning on me!" Brugda shouted to Bres, wiping her tears away. "You who let the brute into my mind! You who sent the monster to tear the house away! You who sent the whirlwind!"

"What monster? What whirlwind? Lés? Intlás? Was this your foolery?"

Ljos and Indaell faced each other on either side of the driftwood throne, mirror-images in gray robes. For a long moment the two angels registered each line on each other's face.

"It was not us," said Ljos at last.

"It might have been," whispered Indaell.

"It was not," repeated Ljos. "My brother committed neither of those sins."

"Then there is still a Power against us," sighed Brugda. She glared at Bres. "You had them blight my eyes."

"I wanted to blight the girl's eyes," hissed Indaell. "She chose yours instead."

"MmmmmMMMm. I'm sorry! I thought the angels were God's angels. I thought they made everything okay. I thought I was inventing a new magic, Brugda. But they weren't God's angels, and they tricked me."

"Little Len. I've given you much to burn about." Brugda lifted herself up and embraced Lenna, who snuggled worriedly against the old woman's bonnetstraps.

From Brugda's shoulder, Lenna called, "I'll save the Fomor for you, Mr. Bres. But I do not like you, and if you've hurt Binnan Darnan--" She frowned. "Wait. Binnan Darnan said there were Fomors with her on the daedelus. But you said they're trapped! And, and you aren't lying. I'd know."

Ljos and Indaell dissolved into mist. From the mist came red, glowing ruby eyes and claws drenched in sticky blood.

"Aaa!"

Then they were solemn angels again, just as Lenna blinked.

"Ye're a cruel man, Bres," said Pol.

"I am who I am. Now go and do as I bid."

"One more asking," said Brugda. "A dragon told us to find a fisherman who knows the Power that struck us. Are you that fisherman?"

"No."

Annie Morgan and Mo Bagohn led everyone away, stepping through the illusionary panel into the dripping cavern.

"Andy," said Pol outside the hidden entrance. "Wouldja give yar harp a strum?"

Notes drifted from the silver strings as Andy plucked out a tune. Gold threads spun out and stuck onto the face of the illusionary panel. As the song ended, the threads vanished. A Celtic knot was burned into the phantom rock face like an ancient carving.

"Aye, that's it," said Pol. Andy had a strained smile.

The glowworm still glowed. Talvi and Aitta stayed close to Brugda. Pol held Emily's hand. Lenna walked beside Andy thoughtfully. She felt drenched, as if she had just run inside after a rainstorm. The idea of having to do what Bres told her to do was the most disgusting thing ever. It was worse than dripping honey down your dress. Yuckers.

They walked on. The journey out of the cave was slow, interminable, about to last forever until it suddenly ended at the cave mouth at high tide. It was night. Annie Morgan motioned everyone back and transformed into a crow as long as the empress. They stood carefully on her knobby back as she flapped great beats of air just above the hushed hiss of the tide. Lenna's feet wobbled on the thin bony bird spine, which bent and heaved inches above the water. Then they were flying. She put her hands on Andy's shoulders for balance. There was Aitta silent and close behind her and the fruit chemicals of Andy's hair gel ahead.

The night was warm, hot as an Iceland summer, really, and bursts of sea spray dabbled at her as the vibrating water broke and hit the rock. Below them was the awful crooked stair, dropping away. Somewhere far below that was poor Wicklow, whom she hoped would not get too rusty or waterlogged.

They rose above the cliffs and kept going. The shadow of eveningland stretching below them led to a town of primary colors, laced with blue and pink flowers.

Annie landed at the outskirts and they walked down the lane lined with gold.

"This is Doolin," Mo Bagohn said. "Morning's a better beginning, and that's when we'll begin this nonsense. Any disagreements?"

"Bagohn," husked Brugda. "I'd have your friendship, if you'll give it."

Mo Bagohn sized her up. "When I saw you scamper to that man like a baby chipmunk, I had my doubts about you. But since then you've shown at least a button's worth of good sense, and I'll give you that friendship free of charge."

"Thank you."

They found rooms at a bed and breakfast, and Lenna went to sleep in a giant wooden bed, listening to a bedside crystal that scuzzed white noise after Andy tapped it for her.

**Chapter Twenty-Two**

Unicorns

or, Any Ideas, You Old Cottontail?

That night she dreamed of the old barn and the pigs and the dragons and the ivy. Brugda was there in her dream, stomping through it, touching all of her private emotions with sloppy careless old hands, like a wild ram butting into a tea party. Rrr. Lenna woke in the big bed, staring at the hotel ceiling. Brugda had gotten into her dream. It felt dirty, as if all of her hidden thoughts were being tainted by that horrible old woman.

She realized that she had hoped, really hoped, that Brugda would be gone from her life forever. She had hoped, privately, that Annie Morgan was her new stepmother and that she would never never see Brugda again. But here she was, the next room over in the bed and breakfast. It was hard to return to sleep; for a little while, Lenna had a dream where the boar was snorting over and over, but it wasn't the boar. She opened her eyes and heard Brugda snoring through the thin walls of the hotel. The old woman had stuck her nose through the wall and stolen Lenna's dreams of a perfect world away forever. From now on, her dreams were ruined. She knew they were. Brugda might appear at any moment.

Lenna woke up feeling angry and sullied and intrusioned. Her slip was wrinkled, too, but on the other hand it was warm out and she was only a little nervous about having to do those things for Bres today. After a shower, she headed around and around the meandering hallways till she found the front of the building. Talvi cut her a dry square piece of terrible-tasting crumbly apricot-peach crumble with a shrug. The owners had made it for them, he told her. The chairs were carved round and comfortable to sit in, the table was an enormous green gem like the gems Momma Joukka Pelata had all over the big house, and warm sunlight rosed the room through panes of glass. Andy came in, tried the crumble and made a face. Lenna giggled. Brugda came in groggily and Lenna glared at her for messing up her dreams.

Annie tapped on a windowpane from the outside. She had roosted on the roof for the night. Lenna pushed the window up. "Good morning," said Annie, upside-down, her black hair dangling.

"Morning," said Lenna.

"Where do we begin?" Emily asked, marching down the staircase.

"May it be as simple as it seems. A summoning, Little Len," said Brugda.

"My way?" frowned Lenna.

Brugda nodded.

She stuck her hands out. "I command the Fomor to be here."

Brugda, Mo Bagohn and Lenna watched as the carpet rose up into a shape. With a cheekful of bad crumble, Andy squinted at the shape in the parlor. He bent one way, then the other, like a cobra following a flute.

The shape that appeared was

"Unicorns!"

There were a number of them, about a foot off the floor, running, stampeding, the color of bed-and-breakfast carpeting, but no matter how Lenna tried to count, she couldn't tell exactly how many. For a moment it was a herd of galloping fuzzy periwinkle-colored horses with curved periwinkle-colored horns, and then they fell back into the carpet.

"Like looking at one of those _Magic Eye_ books," said Andy.

"You saw!" Lenna jumped. Then she frowned at Annie in the window. "Miss Morgan, those aren't rhinoceroses at all. You should read a book about sharks and rhinos and unicorns so that you know about them."

Annie stuck out her tongue.

"Welllp. There they are," said Mo Bagohn. "Tulips and daisies, they're out there. Naturally we still don't know _where_. Any ideas, you old cottontail?" she asked Brugda.

"Fetch paper and draw me a map of the country."

"I'll do that," squawked Mo Bagohn. She shuffled away, a confident bushel of red crochet. She seemed to be in much better spirits than she had been yesterday.

Talvi looked across the smooth dark table at Kaldi, who was alone and sulking in the corner of the room, his back pressed to the wallpapered wall, his arms crossed hairily.

"It's over," said Talvi.

Kaldi banged a fist on a buffet. Glassware in a cupboard shook. "If I had killed Father, I would've killed Binnan Darnan."

"You didn't, though," said Aitta.

"I can't think ahead. I'm no good at it. Making dinner is all I want to do right now, and it's breakfast time, and breakfast is already made. Maybe I'll ask the innkeepers if they'll let me cook something for them. Gods know they need the help." Kaldi stomped off to look for them.

Mo Bagohn directed him toward the innkeepers as she made her way back through the hallways with a thin piece of bleached slate and a diamond on a stick. She sat at the IKEA gem table and scratched a map like a sandpapered number eight with the stylus. A few rough ovals at the edges were islands.

Brugda put a hand to it and murmured. The cusp of the eight on the right-hand side exploded outward with a pop, sending up a plume of gray slate dust. A neat round hole was cut into the stone paper. Brugda held it up.

"Dublin," said Pol.

**Chapter Twenty-Three**

Into the Liffey

or, Don't Call Me a Sissy!

"Do you think I could turn Berber into unicorns, too?" Andy asked Lenna loudly over the howl of wind.

"Try it! Try it!" Lenna clapped.

They all sat streaming through the upper air along Annie's stealth-bomber back, bracing themselves on the rocking feathers with their hands. The sky was a morning piece of origami paper with little black wind swirls printed across it. Annie's vast shadow was making herds of sheep turn to puddles of fluff. The bony puddles turned back to surprised-looking sheep, _pop_.

"Will Annie's feathers turn into carpeting, do you think?" He put out his hands vaguely, the way she had. "I command the Fomor to be here?" he asked tentatively. "Please?"

Nothing happened.

Pol leaned back from up ahead. "It's music you're after."

Andy took the silver harp from behind his ear and unfolded it carefully, holding tight in the sharp breeze under the gently spinning scrimshaw halo of the sun.

"Harp of me uncle, I'd like to see unicorns here, if you'd be so kind."

He played a made-up melody, plucking the small resonant strings with fingertips. A gold thread spun out, drawing a shining gold tapestry in the sky, a field of unicorns with a woven Celtic trim.

"Ooo."

"What's oo? Nothing's happened, silly."

"Look harder, sir Andy!" She followed the thread with a pointing pointing finger.

He squinted. "Thought it was a trick of the light I was seeing. Is it a picture of unicorns?"

Lenna nodded. The thread followed the picture around, unweaving and disappearing.

"Guess it's the harp that does it."

Lenna shook her head. "I saw it when you were playing guitar, too."

Andy's eyebrows rose. "S'pose it's me, then. Maybe there's something to being son of the Dagda after all. Wonder what else I can do?"

Pol winked. "Yull find it all out, I've no doubt of it."

"How about ... harp of me uncle, let's have us in Dublin right away? Pretty please with gumdrops?" He plucked a chord.

Annie shot forward in a blaze of gold sparks above the meadows, passed over roads full of cars and over the peaked roofs of row houses to the sprawled city of Dublin. She landed on the roof of a mammoth building that looked like a castle.

"Where are we?" Lenna asked.

"Dublin Castle," said Annie.

"Oh."

The tower Annie was perched on was circular and carved out of a single gray stone. Below was a bright lawn with a giant yellow flower the size of a fountain.

"Hang on," said Annie. She leapt off the tower, glided down and landed beside the flower. It was a fountain.

The castle was a jumble. Parts were painted colors and parts were gray. Mo Bagohn impatiently led them around the side of the castle to the sidewalk beyond. Around the building--

"Wow!" There were people everywhere, more people than Lenna had ever seen. Tourists and shoppers and windowgazers and a thousand thousand new faces and sights and sounds and smells, a buzzing hive of people and shops and strange buildings. There were flowers everywhere, up the walls and down the balconies. The buildings were huge and wrapped in sculptures and columns and pretty green swoopy lettering and all sorts of architecture things. Much of the city was green and gold, with some huge old buildings sitting nobly in white marble and others painted in sunny pastels.

There were people _everywhere_. The streets were lined with ladies pushing levitating strollers, skinny young men with crew cuts and enormous upturned collars, businessmen with wide faces and saggy pale jowls, children dodging into traffic and their parents following, old-timers in gold Nehru jackets and little hats, like Pol ... They turned the corner and found a band playing music on whistles and tiny guitars. Andy recognized the song. He grabbed Lenna's hand, led her over to the musicians, spun her off her feet and started singing:

I wish I was in Carrickfergus

Only for nights in Ballygran

I'd swim across the deepest ocean

The deepest ocean my love to find.

But the sea is wide and I can't swim over it

Neither have I wings to fly

I'd find me a handsome boatman

To ferry me o'er to my love and die.

Pol clapped to the music. Lenna danced. Someone flipped a big coin to Andy; he tossed it into one of the tiny guitar cases.

"That's aught Manannan would be proud of," Pol said, ruffling Andy's hair. Andy grinned sheepishly.

Lenna kept dancing a little, then stopped. "But why would the boatman die?" she asked.

"Cause he's too handsome. Wouldn't want a handsome boatman hanging around after he's ferried you o'er to your love," said Andy.

"Right. Hm."

They walked on. Restaurants and shops clustered around cathedrals and giant stone buildings. There were more people than there could ever be. It was a swirl.

"Ah, the Liffey," said Emily.

A river ran, lined by a fence of little columns and a strand of linen grass. Big trees with pairs of black robotic branches adjusted themselves automatically as the wind blew. The water was perfectly flat and as reflective as a mirror. There were no vibrating tides and no ripples, not even when a wooden turtle with a basket on its back paddled through the dark river water.

It was a peaceful peaceful place. Lenna sat on the bank and hummed the song to herself. Somewhere, somehow, in this wild noisy city was a stampede of unicorns. Binnan Darnan was still lost. Rotten Bres was making everybody do things that they wouldn't have to do if he would just give them Binnan Darnan. Wherever she was hidden she was probably frightened and crying. But sitting here under the thin shade of a clicking budding robo-tree beside the flat, running river in the sunny sunny day was the first relaxation Lenna had really had since the magical picnic with Mo Bagohn.

The mirror-water rippled. A series of glassy bubbles erupted. A circle sank into the river as if a plug had been pulled from under it. From this gap came a hand, then another, then another. A bald head like a boulder followed, fierce and dripping water.

"Eeeeeeeek."

"Lenna," said the monster man, folding his four muscular tree-trunk arms. "I am Baldur. I know why you're here." The voice was an avalanche beneath an iron mountain. Lenna looked around, checking to see whether all the Irish people could see him. Apparently the strangers on the street couldn't, but Brugda lifted her eyes to the monster, and Andy was pressed up against a robo-tree with his mouth open. Lenna turned back to Baldur the monster, who was leaning forward with his pink face casting a shadow across her.

"Omihaaah."

"Lenna. I am one of the old gods. I have heard of a sorrow in the world, and I need your help."

The river god was bare-chested and taller than the clicking trees beside her. He wore leggings sewn of sealskin, held up by a rope belt. No one walking through the streets behind her noticed him or turned their heads. Annie was standing behind Lenna protectively.

"I know your quest, Lenna," said the god Baldur. "I will show you the path to the Fomor. But there's a terror upon me."

"Uh uh uh why?" Lenna was happy that the river god was a friendly god.

"A raven came to me in my home in Breidablik." An Icelandic word. It meant _broad and shining_. "The raven told me that the Nidhagg, the last dragon on Earth, has escaped from the World Tree."

"Um, it died," said Lenna.

Trouble crossed Baldur's face. "Died? How do you know this?"

"We were there," she said.

Behind her, Brugda nodded once.

"This is grave. Do you understand what will happen now that the Old Magic is freed?"

Lenna shook her hair.

"All the Powers of Magic will have the strength to shift the world again and again and again. The time of Ragnarok, the world's descent into destruction, threatens us even now. I was going to ask for your help, Lenna, in stopping the murderous dragon Nidhagg, who was placed in the tree by my father, Odin the Wise. But if the Nidhagg is dead and the tree is broken, that's far worse. I'll tell you everything later. We have too little time. For now, I'll lead you to the Fomor. Your friend Binnan Darnan will be needed, too, before the end. After that, once she's free--" Baldur breathed heavily--"we will see."

Lenna looked behind her, up and down the street that ran along the Liffey. All of her friends and family seemed to see the river god, but none of the numerous strangers noticed him at all. They hadn't noticed Annie either, she realized, although Talvi had received the occasional curious look at his red beard and floppy hair.

She sat on her butt on the banks of the Liffey, looking up into the pink barrel chest and strongman-bald face of a real Norse god. His existence and the words he had said to her were such a jolt, so diagonal to everything that had happened, that she sat and blinked and thought about them. It was like she had to restart her brain to fit this enormous person into it.

So the dragon in the tree was a bad dragon who shouldn't have been let loose. But he was dead now. The upside-down tree was something important, something having to do with Odin, but it'd got blown up. And all the Powers that Momma Joukka Pelata had said were out looking for her would become super powerful now. And Ragnarok? A descent into destruction? She had heard stories about it, growing up. Ragnarok was the day the world would blow up.

But something else seemed more important to talk about.

"Why do I matter?" Her voice was very small. It _felt_ small. "Why were you looking for me?"

Baldur spread a pair of hands toward the crowd that stood behind her. "With you are many of the Old Ones. They are a people of magic." He pointed to people. "The Dagda, druid of stone. Manannan Reborn, druid of song." Andy's eyebrows rose. "Taillvin, druid of illusion. Caoilte, druid of strength. Mo Bagohn, lady of growth. Brigid, lady of order. Each follows only one sphere of magic." Baldur put his hands, all four of them, on the grass bank beside the fence and leaned close to Lenna. "You have magic too, Lenna, but you are not one of them. You are not tied to one magic. This is very strange, something no one has seen before in all the ages of the world. I have traveled up and down the Earth, and to places beyond the Earth. Nowhere is there another like you. You can see through all magic, and you can learn to use it. All of it. You are the Allnorn, the most important person in the world."

"Eek." She looked up at Annie, who looked across her at Baldur, puzzled.

"There's no limit to what you can learn to do. But this is for later. Come with me and fulfill your quest."

"Are you trying to trick me? Do you want to make a deal or, or curse me or--"

"No. I ask nothing for myself," said Baldur. "My responsibility is to the Liege-god, Honnur, who is too foolish to carry out his own responsibilities."

"But you wouldn't be helping people without asking for--"

"Lenna," whispered Andy beside her. "I think you've been worrying. Scary people like Bres are one in a million. It's okay to make a new friend."

"Oh. Okay. Mmmister Baldur? Andy says I should be your friend."

Baldur smiled. A giant hand reached down to her. Lenna shook the end of one of his fingernails.

"Follow me to the bottom. Dive in. Do not fear the river." Baldur plunged below the dark mirror-surface of the water, leaving behind a stretched tunnel of air.

Lenna examined the empty space dubiously.

"He said not to be afraid," said Andy. "I for one trust anybody who could squish me and chooses not to." He dove into the space in the River Liffey and disappeared down the chasm.

"Waitwaitwait." Lenna crouched at the bank, then let a green boot toe the channel of air where water should be. She squirmed. "Are you still alive?" she yelled into the void.

"Come on, sissy! It's fine." Andy's voice was tinny and far, far away.

"Don't call me a sissy!" She looked up at Brugda, who stood, dubious, with her arms crossed. "Should I?"

"If you would."

"Hm." She jumped.

**Chapter Twenty-Four**

Barrows For the Dead

or, I Believe You're Also the Brave One

A rabbit hole of water surrounded her. It faded quickly from dark to black below the morning light. She fell slowly. The air was wet as she breathed. It got into her nose and made her hair feel sticky. Above her was mist as heavy as a roof of wet slate. By the time her feet touched bottom, all the light was gone. The water tunnel stretched shut and filled in above her.

"Didn't anybody follow you down?" asked Andy.

She shook no. He looked up at the shut tunnel like he was having second thoughts.

"Don't be afraid," said Baldur. "Fewer is better. The creatures will be skittish."

"Oh. Right. Unicorns, isn't it?" said Andy. "Real unicorns?"

"Follow."

A bubble tunnel of air dug through the water at the river bottom, just in front of Baldur. Andy nervously unfolded his harp and began to pluck absently. Silver light filled the tunnel. He stopped playing, and the light dimmed and went dark.

"We wasted a glowworm!" Lenna said indignantly.

"That's okay," said Andy. "Bugs tend to make more of themselves. It isn't like we're running low on bugs." He continued to play the harp gently, and light shone dimly.

Their feet rested on the river bottom, translucent polished stones of all colors, and they followed Baldur toward the opposite bank. The round stones slid under Lenna's feet, and she went slowly, finding equilibrium for each slippy footstep. The round wall of water shimmered around them like tinsel and cellophane. A little trout hopped over the threshold and flopped around on the stones. Water leaked after it. Lenna picked it up and held it to the poised surface tension of the tunnel wall. It jumped out of her hand and swam away.

"Do you live down here, Mr. Baldur?"

"I am keeper of all water and caves and hidden places, Lenna. I protect creatures that live far from the Sun. I walk across the bottom of the world. I look after things. From here I can travel to the Nile or the Hudson or the Yangtze in a single step. You're here in the Liffey, looking for the fabled unicorns, so I have come here."

"Are they aquatic unicorns, then?" said Andy, plucking strings idly.

"They're hidden. Barrows for the dead were built by the Vikings in the time before memory, up and down the Liffey. That's where we're headed."

"That's good. Be a shame to get a bunch of unicorns soggy, hey? Barnacles on your hooves, fishes in your mane ..."

They reached the far bank. In the eerie waterlight, Lenna saw a square of rotting planks set into the sodden riverbank. With two right arms and a shoulder Baldur knocked the planks in. As he moved closer, water seeped away from the space, revealing a submerged tunnel mouth which emptied into the rest of the river. Lenna and Andy clambered up the squishy logs framing the barrow. They could stand upright, but only just. Baldur's eyes, nose and an ear peered in at them.

"I will be waiting here. Remember. They are easily frightened. And they are not invulnerable." Baldur withdrew his head.

Andy rubbed his hands over his face. "I'm standing in Viking ruins beside a Norse god and the savior of, of something, strumming a t'ousand-year-old magic harp, and I'm after looking for unicorns. A lesser man might be overwhelmed by such weirdness." He nodded vaguely to himself. "I wonder how Harry Potter would handle it?"

"I'm the savior of nothing except unicorns. And Binnan Darnan. Come along, sir Andy."

They began to walk up the tunnel.

"I'd been meaning to ask you. Why do you always call me that?" he said.

"Isn't this what I should say?" she replied. "English is the messiest language."

"Well, if it were me, I'd have said 'Andy, sir,' if I wanted to talk in a stuffy sort of way. But I _don't_ talk in a stuffy sort of way. Then again, you call Annie 'Miss Morgan,' so I--"

"Don't call me stuffy. Or sissy!"

"You're like James Dean."

"Huh?" she said.

"He _hated_ it when people called him chicken."

" 'Andy, sir,' sounds dumb," Lenna said.

"Sir Andy it is, then."

The square tunnel became a ramp upward. Around the walls, floor and ceiling was a clinging circle of water. Behind the wavy water, the sides of the stone passage had boxes cut into them. Lenna investigated as Andy talked and played his harp. Inside the boxes were soggy brown bones with their arms folded over their ribs.

"You were entirely right about Annie, by the way," Andy said. "She's a sweetie, and I was a jerk. Should I apologize, do you think? I probably ought to. If I forget, just clear your throat or elbow me or something, okay?"

"Okay."

"It's just that she's practically a skeleton with eyeballs. You know? And pale, and just, just scary. Isn't she scary?"

"Don't look in the walls, sir Andy."

"Why?" He froze. "Barrows for the dead, wasn't it? The walls've got a crowd of bones."

"Uh huh. Don't be scared, please don't."

"That's great craic, that is." His breath sped up and he stopped walking. "I can't move. I--I can't move. I need to get out." He put out his hands for balance. "Why'd they put unicorns in a graveyard? Couldn't it have been a meadow with fluffy rabbits in?"

"It's so people would be too scared to go looking for them."

"Right." Andy strummed the harp faster, dunkdunkdunkdunkdunk, and the light grew.

"Sir Andy, maybe you should come look at the bones. You'll see that they won't get up and walk around."

"You're not afraid of anything, are you?"

"Come on. It's not so bad." She pulled on his arm, and he took a step, took a step. "It's just bones," she added.

"From the guts of a Viking! A jillion of them. All around."

Lenna pulled him harder, and he came face to face with a crooked ratty brown thing.

"Oh man. Oh man. Ohhh man."

"What will it do? How will it hurt you? It's only bones."

"It's, it's real bones. It's not a replica. These were people. _Oh_ man."

"They don't move anymore," Lenna said primly.

"Man, I hope not," said Andy. He turned away and cupped his eyes with his hands.

"Better?"

He nodded. On they went. Andy's eyes twitched right and left, and he didn't talk for awhile. After half a slow mile, they emerged above the water level. At the end of the ramp was a massive ironclad wooden door framed by a musty stone arch.

"Open it," whispered Lenna.

"I'm not opening it! You open it. It's you who's the brave one."

"Sir Andy, I believe you're also the brave one."

They looked at each other.

"Right," said Andy at last. "Let's open it together."

A handle made from a pair of silver horseshoes was set into the door. Beside it, a paragraph of narrow marks was cut into the old, old wood.

"I've heard about this language," said Andy, brushing them gingerly with his fingertips. "It's called Ogham. You see it on Irish artifacts and things. But it couldn't have been Vikings who carved it, or it'd be runes. Wonder what it says. Probably 'do not enter,' hey?"

"Do you hear thumps?" asked Lenna.

Andy listened. "No. No I don't."

"Me neither. Maybe the unicorns are sleeping."

"Maybe. Here goes."

They gripped the horseshoes and pulled the door open. Something went snap. As the square of wood swung, splishing sounds splished behind them. Lenna shrieked.

"Tolja!" said Andy, wheeling around. "I totally called it. We're under a Viking curse now and the skeletons are coming to get us. They're the living dead and they won't rest until they've killed us and it'll be just like _Pirates of the Caribbean_. I knew it." A rotted brown hand broke the surface of the water. Andy screamed and ran inside the room, pulling Lenna and the door after him.

**Chapter Twenty-Five**

The Voice of Manannan

or, Finish the Curse, Please

The room was a vast round cylinder, like the empty interior of a drum. Stone blocks were set into the walls, holding up a slightly arched ceiling. It was completely empty. The stone wall had a narrow band of chiseled Ogham letters rounding it, struck vertical lines and sharp angles engraved into the blocks. A deep circular groove like an indoor moat had been dug into the stone floor, not quite as deep as a grave, but deep enough that Lenna had to jump down and pull herself back up the dusty trough with both hands. Aside from the Ogham writing and the moat, there was nothing there and no exits.

"We're trapped. It's all banjaxed. It's got to be a bad dream."

Lenna ran around and around the outer platform, brushing the walls, hoping there was another invisible illusionary passage leading to another room. There wasn't.

"Harp of me uncle, show us the way out of here!" Andy ran his fingers over the strings and followed a twirling golden thread back to the wooden door. "No! A different way out!" Nothing. "Where are the Fomor at?" he asked. The thread tapped on the door. "No! You can't be serious. They're the Fomor?"

The door began opening. He ran to it and fumbled at the edge of the creaking wood, trying desperately to pull it shut from the inside as fingerbones began to curl around it. The room faded into darkness as he stopped playing the harp, and he held it and plucked a string as he struggled with the door.

"Why isn't there a handle on this side? We can't hold the door shut."

"I don't think they made the room for hiding in."

"Okay. So we don't hide. Let's fight our way out. Harp of me uncle, kill these skeletons!" He plucked a chord.

Nothing happened.

"They're already dead, sir Andy."

"Right. Harp of me uncle, blow away these skeletons!"

The golden thread became a line drawing of the West Wind, a puffing face on a cloud. A gentle stream of air gusted around the doorframe. Toothless brown skeletons peered confusedly around the door.

"Not like that! Umm ... right. Running out of ideas, Lenna."

There had been a strange flavor in the air as they had entered. She had been too panicky when they had first pushed into the room to think about it, but now she realized that there had been a magic circle across the threshold.

"Let them in," she whispered, almost to herself.

" _What?_ "

"Open the door!" Lenna shouted. She shoved against the wood. The door swung inexorably on its ancient hinges, the old metal shrieking. There was another sound behind the door, too, a sound of bones crinking against sodden ligaments and tendons. In the tunnel beyond, the click and pop of innards and joints was unending.

"Now the skeletons can get in. Oh man. Lenna, they're moving. The skeletons. They're--"

Lenna ran across the room, leaping over the moat-gaps to the far wall. "There was a magic circle when we opened the door. I think it's the Ogham."

"They're almost in. They're--"

As the skeletons crossed the threshold of the door, they transformed into shining white unicorns and stampeded into the room. They dropped into the worn-down trough, galloping mindlessly, shying away from the back wall where Andy and Lenna huddled. Blue sparkles fell from them as they ran. Their iridescent horns were thin and curved like scimitars and their hooves were tufted with feathery white hair.

"Unicorns," breathed Lenna.

One of them cantered to a halt before them, sniffing the air cautiously. "Hello, Mr. Unicorn," Lenna said gently, taking a step towards it. "What's your name?" The unicorn whickered sneezily. "May I ride you?" She put a hand out. The beast shied, stepping backwards into the stampede, and the line of the herd flowed around it like water. The one unicorn stood impassively, warily. Lenna stamped a foot in disappointment.

"I want to be your friend, Mr. Fomor," she insisted.

Saying the word _Fomor_ seemed to interest the unicorn. It shook its head, white with a red patch on its nose, and a shower of sparkles fell from its mane. It waited, an eddy in the center of the stampede, motionless, heedless of the equine storm, and for a long moment neither Lenna nor Andy said anything. The thunder of hooves on stone was deafening.

"We want to free you from the curse, Mr. Fomor."

It trotted back up the ditch and put its broad white nose against her upraised hand. "You're so pretty." The eyes were old and dark and sorrowful. Lenna put her arms around the chin of the unicorn. Andy stayed pressed against the back wall.

"That thing used to be _Night of the Living Dead_." He kept playing his harp as he spoke. Any time he stopped, the room went pitch black.

"You've been here a long time, haven't you? Come along, Mr. Fomor. Me and Andy will get you out. Is it okay if I ride--Hm." She examined her green stamped-leather dress. "I wish I had jodhpurs. Maybe I'll just lead you out."

Looking at the sunken circle of powerful animals, she thought about how they had flowed around the one brave unicorn. These were unicorns. They must be the wisest and most wondrous animals in the whole world. They wouldn't hurt her, any more than they hurt each other. She trusted them.

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

She walked into the middle of the stampeding circle, down the trough and across and up the far side, feeling the heaving muscular bodies of the nervous animals around her, and motioned for Andy and the one unicorn to follow. The herd flowed around them, just as she thought they would. Across the empty middle of the room she walked, keeping her eyes closed, trusting that Andy and the unicorn leader were behind her. Down the other side of the circle toward the exit, and the sound of hooves was behind her. Lenna felt a woogly feeling as she stepped past the threshold of the wooden door, the border of the magic circle. She opened her eyes. Andy was there. The unicorn stopped at the edge of the round room.

"It's okay, Mr. Fomor. Just take a step." She demonstrated.

"Don't think it wants to, really," said Andy.

"Why not, Mr. Fomor? Come along and we'll lead you out!" She pointed with both hands to the drained-away oval of water further down the tunnel.

The unicorn lifted a front hoof, glittering with sparkles, and laid it on the threshold. The tip of its pointed hoof began to steam and sizzle with a smell like roast beef and sick. It drew back to the room.

"That," said Andy, "was really gross."

Lenna nodded. "How do we get rid of the curse, Mr. Fomor?"

The unicorn turned back and walked to the wall. Floop went Lenna's guts as she followed. The horn, reflecting brilliant blue and red, scraped across the carved path of Ogham words.

"It's the words that make the magic circle. I knew it was," said Lenna.

"Harp, let me read Ogham," Andy said as he strummed.

Nothing happened.

"Oookay. Harp, wouldja read the words for me, perhaps?" The room went dark. He began to play.

A voice arose, resonant, sonorous and warm:

I, Lugh of the Long Hand

Ildánach, the Master of All Arts

Carpenter, smith, champion, harper

And teller of tales

High Druid of Tara

Son of Taillvin son of Bres

And of Ethlinn the White Rose

With these words

Do place a geas upon my enemy

The army of the Fomor

From night until noon must they stay within these walls

From noon until night may they leave

At the time of the moon may they choose their own form

At the time of the sun must they wear my shape

The shape of Lugh

Thus says Bodb Dearg, the High King of Ireland

And thus sayeth I.

The voice that came from the silver harp was lilting and oddly familiar. The light returned as Andy kept strumming. He wore a face of sly delight.

"That was the voice of Manannan. I can tell." He smiled and let out a few heavy breaths.

She smiled at him, then turned to the walls and frowned at them. Hm. The words were carved into stone. What could ...

Oh.

"Andy Andy I know what to do now. But it might be rotten."

"What might?"

"We need your mom's hammer," she said.

"To get rid of the words? Say now, that's a pretty good idea. Only--"

"Yup. We'll have to deal with him again."

She put out her fingers. "I command Bres to be here."

The unicorn watched her carefully.

From the gray smooth stone floor came Bres' perfect face and long hair, gray and smooth and stone.

"What? What's happening?" he snapped, looking out through stone eyes at Lenna.

"Mr. Bres, the Fomor have been trapped by stone words. We need a hammer that can turn stone to dust."

"Intlás!" Bres called behind him. "Follow this working. Bring the hammer. Make sure you return it." He fizzled away.

"So much for fooling him into letting us keep it," said Andy.

The wall stretched. Indaell stepped out. "Aren't we lucky lucky. We get to hold Bres' magic hammer," the angel said.

"I'll take that." Andy took it in two hands, changed his mind and held it in one hand. The light in the chamber went down to nothing, and he rubbed a thumbnail over the harp with his left hand. The gold brick reflected the silver light. "Mum's strong." He whapped the first block of Ogham, and it was clay carved with Ogham. Another whap and a hail of dust billowed. Andy shielded his face. Indaell was gone.

The unicorns had stopped running. Slowly they lined up in a half circle around Andy and Lenna and bowed.

"Did the trick, that," Andy said, wheeling his way around to the next patch of words. He played one note over and over with his other hand, plunk plunk plunk.

Shaking came from the ceiling. The stones began crumbling from age and weight, bowed like the underside of a mattress. The floor jolted and the unicorns backed, backed, backed. A huge keystone dropped into the gap where the curse used to be.

"Run!" shouted Andy, moving toward the door. "It's all coming down!"

"Finish the curse, please," Lenna said.

"Are you bleeding mad? We're about to be buried."

Lenna grabbed her hands together and frowned. "I don't want to say Brugda's prayer ..."

"Jost say it! Lenna, the roof's coming down!"

She unclasped her hands and put her fingers out. "I command the roof to stay up."

A line of stones crept down and showered, _thud_ and _bash_ and _fall_ onto the stone floor.

"That clearly isn't cutting the mustard here, Lenna. I saw how Brigid did it. She can do real magic. She said some Icelandic words and summoned a blasted glowworm into your hand. I don't even think Ireland has glowworms." He inhaled and half-sneezed. "Lenna. You told me you knew how to choose the future. So choose a future where we see the Liffey from the top of it. Please?"

"I can't use Brugda's magic. I promised. I said I wouldn't ever use it again. She hurts me and hurts me and hurts me and I'll never say them."

" _Lenna_."

Another rock fell. A swath of loam followed after it. The _crack_ as the rock struck the floor made her knees hurt.

"No. I'm not. You go wait outside. Give me the hammer."

"It's mum's bleedin' hammer, pardon my Gaelic. I know what Brigid did. All right. I know. I saw her hit chu. But this seriously isn't the time. Hurry _up_ and say the words, Lenna."

"No. I'm not using Brugda's magic."

For a long moment of thundery sound, Andy looked at her. He looked at the unicorns.

"Listen up," he announced to the unicorns. "Get as close as you can to the door. When I've done with this, I don't know what's going to happen. It would be nice if none of you horsies got killed. When the curse is gone, get _out_." He put a hand between Lenna's shoulderblades and shoved her hard toward the tunnel. Then he turned to the walls and began hammering his way around the room.

As Lenna stumbled past the door into the outer tunnel, she felt the magic circle fall. The bulging roof collapsed in a single violent demolition. One moment, she was standing in front of a slanted pool of dark water, and the next moment the dim light gave way and everything in the world disappeared.

**Chapter Twenty-Six**

Darkness

or, Why Are _You_ Sorry?

There was no light. The last thing Lenna had seen, only for a moment, was a thousand ghostly clawed forms of mist seeping through the wreckage of the fallen room. Then the silver light was snuffed.

"Andy?" she whispered.

The only response was the continuing torrent of dirt and stone. "Andy! Andyandyandy I'm sorry!"

Her fingers interlocked and she said,

Kast minn baen

Ad himnariki

Tak hugmynd hedan

thinking of Andy brushing dirt away in the light of Manannan's harp. The thought rippled away from her like heat. She opened her eyes.

"Fomor Fomor! Andy's trapped and we've got to help him. Will you become motas or or foxes or or or earthworms and dig him out?" She bobbed up and down on her toes in the darkness. "Please?" she added.

The sound of moving dirt began. Should she help dig? She shuffled forward and got a faceful of dirt. "Plaa." She reached down and felt the floor around her in the darkness. She started shoving the accumulating dirt piles away, keeping her eyes closed tight, hoping it would help. As the Fomor progressed inward, her hands hit cold stone blocks wedged between the piles of dirt. Grubbiness and grittiness and sandy wormy old loam was everywhere in the blind black. Shuffling snuffling was constant. It went on and on. Lenna shielded her face and slid the dirt towards the water behind her. She found the wooden door in the disorienting dark. It was propped open by a mountain of earth, but its magic circle was spent. Digging and digging and digging. Lenna felt dirt sticking to her cheeks as well as her hands. She was crying.

"I said the spell," she told the shuffly darkness quietly. "I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry."

The digging went on. And on. At one point Lenna put her hand on something fuzzy. "Oop. Sorry." It scurried away.

"I'm here," groaned Andy off to the right.

"Andy!"

The shuffling shifted. A gleam of silver and a _plang_ crept out of the dirt as Andy fumbled the harp out of the soil, revealing an army of

"Giant bunnies?"

Andy got his arms free, heaved a chunk of ceiling off his legs, and climbed out towards the tunnel, playing the harp absently. His head was bleeding. Lenna thought she heard sirens above. The Fomor faded back into ghosts.

"Um, um, they're very good diggers," she said.

"I'm not talking to you."

"No! Andyandy, you _know_ how Brugda hurts people. She hurt me. I don't want anything to do with her or or her spells."

"Listen to me." Andy looked at her in the silver light, wiped his head, stared at the blood, then back at her. "That was a real, life-or-death situation. And you chose death. For me."

"I did not! I told you to give _me_ the hammer."

"Lenna. If I'd have given you the hammer you'd have been buried. Maybe you can magic up a future where I survive, but I haven't got that power. Okay? That was a real-life decision. This is the last time I talk to you, is that blindingly clear? Now come on. Let's get this over with."

The Fomor changed into people and said thank you or something, and they said a lot of solemn stuff in another language, and they led the way through the tunnel of tombs and water toward the Liffey, and she didn't care. In her heart, Lenna suspected she ought to be feeling proud or brave or something. But she wasn't. She hurt all over. The lilting harp music only made it worse.

Baldur was there at the river bottom, and he talked to her about something, and she didn't care. Andy was hurt and hated her and it was her fault. It was Brugda's fault, too, for sneaking into her dream and reminding her of her promise, but mostly it was Lenna's fault. It was always her fault. Maybe she needed more magic. Then she could've used one of her own spells. If Momma Joukka Pelata had taught her spells instead of ignoring her, she would've known what to do. She wished Pol had been there. He could have told her how to use the magic of stone. He could've kept the stones together. That would've worked. She knew it would've. Why hadn't anyone else come with them? Why was it her fault? If she hadn't had all these magical superpowers to begin with, then it wouldn't be her fault. Why did she have to do anything? Binnan Darnan didn't. Lenna wouldn't even be here if that little servant hadn't messed everything up. This was her fault.

Baldur lifted her to the surface with one of his enormous hands. The Fomor became fish, jumping into the water wall and swimming upstream to the banks of the Liffey. There they became a crowd of bearded men wearing bearskins and carrying bows and leather quivers.

"My oh my," said Mo Bagohn, clapping her hands. "You two are a pair of wonders. What a moment in the history of--eh? What's the matter?"

"I don't want to talk about it," said Andy with a brief glare, his hand compressing his forehead.

"It isn't my fault," said Lenna quickly, without looking. Mo Bagohn looked back and forth between them. So did Pol.

"Andrew, what happened to the two of ye? Has it got to do with the earthquake and the sirens?"

"Yes," said Andy. "Yes it has. Me and Lenna aren't friends anymore."

"Andy!" Emily exclaimed. "What happened?"

"She had a chance to save me life, but she was too busy being angry to bother."

Lenna hugged herself. "You were the one who wanted to be brave!"

"I wasn't after letting you risk your neck. Don't you get it? They couldn't get out without burning. All you had to do was keep the ceiling up, and we'd have been fine. We'd have been heroes. I hear there was an earthquake because of you. Wonder how many people--"

"Andrew Manannan O'Donnell. You shut it right now and leave the lass alone," barked Emily. "I don't give a damn what happened, she's a little girl and doesn't deserve it. Cut it out."

"Right."

Brugda stooped beside Lenna. "Little Len. Is it I who should pain?"

She didn't want Brugda there, didn't want the nasty old woman to invade her feelings, to steal them. She bit her lips together and felt her face turn ruddy. "Brugda Brugda. Please don't think this. It won't do you any good. But you shouldn't ask me to do your magic. Not ever."

Brugda kissed Lenna on the forehead. "I won't."

Lenna wiped her forehead off when the old woman wasn't looking.

"Yeah, well maybe you'd better have cleared that up earlier," Andy began, snarling. Pol grabbed him by the ear and hauled him aside and told him some things in sharp whispers. Emily sternly tied a handkerchief over the boy's forehead. It had stopped bleeding.

Lenna decided to ignore Andy and Brugda. She looked at the crowd of blinking men instead. They all seemed to be dazzled at the sunlight, basking in it, almost too overjoyed at the light itself to notice the cars and crystal skyscrapers and robot animal boats and gem stoplights that surrounded them. They all had bad posture, their heads slumped a little--maybe from being unicorns so much, she thought--but they carried proud faces with fuzzy wreaths of beard and long hair. Their bearskin robes were draped to their knees and braced with belts, and thick silver bracelets were clasped to their wrists and upper arms. Along the street, a crowd had gathered silently to watch the strange men. Everyone could see them.

Mo Bagohn spoke with them in the Irish language. They answered back in dignified tones. The most was said by a man in front with singed fingernails. Kaldi leaned down and told Lenna how good it was that she had succeeded and how proud they all were of her and other things that were supposed to make her feel better. They didn't. Her stomach hurt from feelings.

"Lenna," said Andy, returning from getting yelled at. "Look. I'm sorry I was angry atchu, okay?"

"Why are _you_ sorry? I was the one who killed you on purpose, because, because clearly that's what I was doing." She wiped at her eyes. "Right?"

"Oh, hell. Look." He looked up at the spinning spirals around the sun, at the careful honeycomb chessboard of thin cloud. "Look." He exhaled. "I said a lot of stupid things."

"Uh huh."

"I wish I hadn't of said them."

"I'm sorry you think I'm a murderer. I hope my earthquake didn't kill too many people." She stared at him with fire eyes until he turned red and went away.

The leader of the Fomor watched their conversation carefully. He approached Lenna and bowed. To Andy he repeated the gesture. Then he punched Andy hard in the shoulder, knocking him thock to the ground, and said something in Irish.

Mo Bagohn laughed. "Ha! That's the old life for ya. He said now you've really got something to cry about." Andy glared and rubbed his shoulder.

A passerby on the sidewalk asked, "Are you an historical re-enactment troupe, then?" Pol whispered to the Fomor. They smiled, went into a huddle, split in two and began staging a mock battle. The leader recited a speech in Old Irish. The two groups charged each other and threw punches. With a yell, the leader stopped them. He put a hand to his ear, nocked an arrow to his bow and shot the arrow at the sky. The arrow plummeted back with a live pigeon wriggling on the end of it. He snapped its neck and offered it to the passerby.

"Uh, no, no thanks." The passerby held up a hand, and his jowls wobbled. "You must practice a lot to get _that_ good."

The leader ripped the feathers off the pigeon, took a bite, offered it to the passerby again with pigeon blood on his lips. The stranger hurried along with a nervous smile. The rest of the Fomor laughed.

Annie Morgan leaned down and nudged Lenna. "See? The battle was silly until they used weapons. Then it was real."

"But he killed a pigeon! And you're a bird."

"Yeah, but now it's a dead thing, and I like dead things. Hey," Annie said more seriously. "Are you all right?"

"I think so. My hands hurt from digging so much."

"Digging? Yeah, you're both kind of filthy."

"Mm-hm. Maybe I should tell you what happened."

"I'd like that."

**Chapter Twenty-Seven**

The Story of Sigfuss

or, There's Only One Kind of Promise

She and Annie walked across the busy street. Passersby still didn't seem to see anyone except her. Maybe gods could only be seen by ... something. She didn't know how it worked. Talvi passed them furtively, heading the other way. Annie sat on the steps of a giant domed library. Lenna sat beside her. The green lichen beside them unraveled and faded where Annie's afternoon shadow lay over it. Annie amused herself by murdering a little snail over and over by moving her forefinger back and forth.

"So," she began, looking at Lenna from a mile above her. Lenna swung her feet, kicking the step below her with her heels.

"So we had to destroy these stone carvings," she said.

"Oh yes?"

"Uh huh. And the ceiling was falling. Andy said to cast a spell on it. But I didn't want to."

"Mmmwhy not?"

"Because it was Brugda's spell. Even when it doesn't hurt people or cut things up, it was still Brugda's spell."

"I thought you were getting along with her these days."

"That's not the point at all! I promised myself I wouldn't use her sort of magic. I don't like--" She kicked a pebble. "You shouldn't hurt the snail."

"I don't even think it has a brain."

"It doesn't like being melted. I can tell."

Annie leaned her elbows on her spindly knob-knees. "So you promised yourself not to use Brigid's magic. You can make exceptions."

"No you can't! Once you make a promise you must never break it. I've never ever broken a promise." Lenna frowned. The black halo dimmed the light around her. She was lying again. She used Brugda's magic at the ice fountain beside Nupsstaður, _and_ after the ceiling had collapsed. It had been so long since she had lied that she had almost forgotten about the darkness.

"Why can't you break promises?" Annie looked down at her sideways.

Lenna's eyebrows flew. "Because, because that's not the way the world should be! There must be no promise-breakers."

"Look at me. I promise to never kill the snail again." Annie waved a hand, and the snail deliquesced to an empty shell. Pop. It was a pair of poky stalks again as the shadow moved aside.

"You promised! And you said!"

"Yup. I broke my promise not to kill the snail," said Annie.

Lenna slapped the library steps. "Why?"

Annie shrugged. "I felt like it."

"Miss Morgan. That's _not_ good enough."

"Why are promises so important?" asked Annie.

"You can't trust anyone who breaks promises. Like you." Lenna stood and ran to the pedestrian crossing at the intersection.

"Hey! C'mon!" called Annie. Lenna darted across the busy street toward the Liffey. "Watch for cars!"

On the other side of the lane Kaldi scooped Lenna up. She hugged his neck. "Tell me," he said.

"Annie Morgan breaks promises."

Kaldi set Lenna on her feet and tipped his head sideways. "What kind of promises?"

"There's only one kind of promise. The, the kind that you _make_!"

Kaldi had a faraway look. "I understand promises, Lenna. I've been thinking about them myself. Would you talk to me about them?"

She nodded.

"Listen. Long ago, I promised that I would always look after Mother. It was a promise I swore on a sacred ring, on a sacred altar, in a sacred grove. I told no one." His broad chest heaved. "Now I find she isn't even my real mother. What should I do, Lenna? Do I abandon Brugda? It was a promise based on a lie."

"But no one should--" Lenna looked up at the baleful sadness in Kaldi's eyes. "What does Talvi say?"

"He tells me I should abandon Brugda. He tells me she can manage. He even offered to look after her with Aitta if I stay in Ireland with Mother Bagohn. I tell him there's an oath, and he says I have to let it go. How?"

Lenna heard a buzzing sound. It was Annie and some fruitflies, scowling down at her with her arms crossed. Kaldi lifted his head to the goddess.

"How do you break a sacred oath?"

"You asking me?" she asked.

He nodded.

"You stop caring."

" _Miss_ Morgan!" said Lenna indignantly.

"That's hard advice," said Kaldi. "I'm certain I'll never stop caring. But it's advice well-taken."

"I mean, will anything happen to you if you break your oath?" Annie asked.

Kaldi rubbed the lenses of his octagonal brass glasses on his sleeve and shoved them back on his bridge. "It's said there was a scholar named Sigfuss," he said. "Wandering the world for truth, he came to a castle owned by three wise kings. He told the gatekeeper that he longed for knowledge and asked whether the kings would part with their secret wisdom. The gatekeeper made him swear an oath on a magic ring that he would share none of the things that he might learn inside--for the three kings knew many secrets. Sigfuss swore the oath on the gatekeeper's ring and was led inside.

"The first floor of the great hall held a throne of bronze. The king on the bronze throne told Sigfuss the secrets of the making of the world. He told the story of Ymir, the giant who emerged from the vast, still ocean that waited between the heat of Chaos and the cold Void. He told the story of Audhumla, the mother-cow whose rivers of milk nourished Ymir. The story of the parent-gods Buri and Börr, who grew out of the giant's armpits and who in turn begot the gods."

Armpits. Lenna snickered. Kaldi smiled.

"These were great and terrible secrets, but the gatekeeper said they were the least of them all," he went on. "Sigfuss was led to a second floor. He knelt before a throne of iron, and the king there told him secrets of the Æsir gods and the Vanar nature-spirits and the frozen-yet-walking Yotun and all the creatures they met in their adventures. It is said that Sigfuss wept at the truth and power of the secret stories of the gods. But the gatekeeper said these were not yet the most important."

Talvi and Pol had migrated over and stood on the grass beside the sidewalk, listening.

"At the third level, the king was sitting on the floor. Sigfuss asked why this was so. The king said his throne had not yet been built. As Sigfuss sat beside him on the cold stone, the third king whispered the secrets of magic. He spoke of how the world Changes. He said that there would come a day when all magic would end forever and the world would stop Changing. This was Ragnarok, the day of the destruction of the world.

"The gatekeeper led Sigfuss down the flights of stairs. He held the scholar's arm as he climbed, since the man's knees were shaking. The gatekeeper reminded Sigfuss of his oath and sent him on his way.

"When Sigfuss looked back, the castle had vanished. So the scholar, satisfied in the completeness of his knowledge, went home and raised a family. For twenty years he told no one what he had heard. But when his son Sæmund had become a man, Sigfuss sat him down and told him all the secrets he had learned. He didn't stop until he had spilled out all the stories he had been holding back all those years. The moment Sigfuss finished telling the story, he forgot everything in his head--and not just the secrets. He forgot his family and his own name. They found him later in Paris, pretending to be a grand duke."

"Sounds like a good reason not to break your oath. Right?" said Annie.

Lenna thought. "But that isn't _awful_. He got to tell the stories and be a grand duke."

"Yes, but he forgot his own family."

"Is this church magic?" asked Lenna suspiciously.

"Yes," Kaldi answered firmly.

"So what would happen if you break your promise?"

"If I abandon Brugda? People would abandon me."

Lenna hugged him. "We won't _abandon_ you. Not ever."

Kaldi smiled. "Let's rescue Binnan Darnan."

"Okay!"

Baldur waded to the bank beside them. "I can bring you there in a single step, four at a time."

**Chapter Twenty-Eight**

Mrs. Bres' Mom

or, Hcccccckkkkkrrrrrrhhm

"They are free," Talvi announced.

Talvi, Kaldi, Lenna and Brugda stood before the white driftwood throne in the golden palace. Bres' chin was up, sharp, smug, and the two angels stood to either side.

"Yes," said Bres. "Yes, you've done well for me."

"Where's Binnan Darnan?" Kaldi demanded.

"Have you spoken to my mother in the palace of ice?" said Bres.

"The girl first," Kaldi said.

"No, I don't think so."

"It's okay, Kaldi," Lenna interrupted. "I command Bres' mom to be here."

From the stone floor wriggled a thin face. Impossibly thin. Thinner than Annie's face. It coughed and moaned.

"Mrs. Bres' mom?"

"Glllrrrhh. Cough."

"Mrs. Bres' mom, um um the Fomor are freed from their curse!"

Lenna faced the crippled, sick-looking woman expectantly. The head lolled on its spine.

From behind her, Brugda leaned over her shoulder and spoke some words in Irish.

"Hcccccckkkkkrrrrrrhhm." The thin face hacked and hacked and coughed, her throat sounding like sandpaper across gravel.

"What does that mean?" said Lenna.

"Nothing," said Brugda. She said some more things in Irish. "She lost her talk."

"Who are you talking to?" asked Bres, putting his feet up on the pale armrest of his throne.

"Your mom!" said Lenna. "She's right here!"

"I see nothing."

"But she is! She's here! What would you like to say to her?"

"I don't believe you've summoned her."

"But, but I have. Mr. Bres. She's right here! Mrs. Bres' mom, what would you like to say to your son?"

Brugda spoke in Irish. The eyes of Bres' mother were crusted together with a thick crust of sleepy-gunk; she wrenched her eyes open, and her eyelashes came off in a clump. Lenna winced. The arms of the woman were pasty with muscleless skin, and when she tried to lift a hand to her throat, a tendon snapped and her arm hung useless in her lap.

"Pb. Pbbbfff. Kkllllllllhhhhhhhhh."

"Please, Mrs. Bres' mom, tell us something Bres would know!"

Brugda repeated this.

"Hhhhhhhhhhhkknnnnnnnnccccchpppbhpppppbhppppppptthhhhhbbbbb." She disappeared back into the floor.

"Ono."

"Alone for ten centuries and more. Little wonder," Brugda murmured.

"An amusing little theater. How long did you rehearse this deception?" asked Bres, swinging his feet haughtily to the floor and crossing his arms beneath his robe.

"Bres," said Brugda fiercely. "Believe me, as once you did."

"Cunning was ever your crutch, Brigid," the High King spat.

"Bres. Believe."

"Lenna, since you refuse to faithfully obey what I have instructed you to do--"

"But I did!"

"I have no choice but to refuse you the blessing I considered bestowing. You will always be cursed. This I decree."

"Where's Binnan Darnan?" roared Kaldi, pounding up the steps of the throne. "You've hurt this child, but I won't allow you to hurt anyone else!"

Bres held his son's fierce gaze. "I'd like my mother to know the good fortune of my people. Since this whelp refuses to tell her--"

"But I did!"

"Then you'll have to do it for her, Caoilte. Swim, son, to the palace of your grandmother and tell her the good news."

"I can't swim that far. No one could."

Brugda bent a shady eye to Kaldi. "There is one," she mouthed, nodding toward the cave mouth.

"Very well, Father," said Kaldi sourly. "I'll travel there for you."

As he stormed out of the chamber, Mo Bagohn, Emily, Andy and Aitta arrived, delivered by Baldur.

"Annie said she'd fly," said Emily. "What's wrong, Kaldi?"

"Many things," he snarled, his shoes echoing as he stalked out.

The four newcomers wandered into the bright space, threading between the golden pedestals, coming to stand before the throne. Andy stayed away from Lenna. She ignored him too, sniffily.

"Where's this girl we've heard so much about?" Emily asked Bres. She wore a dark long-sleeved dress with a white lace choker and kept her one hand on Pol's arm.

"We are waiting for many things," the golden-maned king answered her.

"But wasn't that the deal? One of the deals? For my hammer?" she replied.

"You gave me the hammer out of fealty to the High King of Ireland," said Bres. "Any kindness I've shown you is for my own amusement. Intlás. Go and watch over my eldest son as he swims across the North Sea, would you?"

"Whatever you say, Master," said the angel.

Lenna looked at Indaell, who bowed until his head hit the floor, bonk, then vanished. There was something about the way he talked to Bres that wasn't normal. The two angels behaved very differently here than they had in the Nupsstaður church. Time didn't seem to be going nearly so fast. They didn't act as if they were in charge anymore, either, and their words didn't seem to shake up her brain as much. They didn't seem dangerous, or at least, only as dangerous as a caged animal. Indaell acted like a court jester, and Ljos stood like an angry statue, flicking his eyes repeatedly to Bres.

They _hated_ Bres.

This was very important.

Waiting, waiting. Pol arrived and stood quietly. Waiting. Bres smiled, sitting in his big chair. Everyone else stood. They waited.

"So we wait?" asked Talvi.

"Oh, Intlás will tell us when--"

As he spoke, Indaell rose secretly out of the ground behind the throne, stretched and bent like a gray hook around Bres. The High King gasped.

"He's told your mummy, Master. And then he killed her."

Bres went still as the dead. His jaw went tight with violence, then slackened. He seemed to push the second half of Indaell's announcement out of his mind. "How?" said Bres. "How could he swim across the North Sea in a moment? You tell me how."

"You're in big trouble," Indaell giggled. "Oh, such troubles you have."

Bres turned away from the bad angel and leaned across the splintery armrest toward Ljos. "What is this? Lés, what does he mean?"

"For once," and Ljos' voice was dripping with hidden meanings and bitterness, "for once, my brother speaks the truth."

"Terrible trouble." Indaell's eyes were small and his teeth were long. "That's what you're in."

"Why?" shouted Bres. "What, what, what is this?"

"You are no longer the greatest power in Ireland," stated Ljos. Lenna wondered what he meant.

The man with the pure blue eyes stood, majestic. "I am the High King. There are no powers greater than that."

"There are gods," Ljos said simply. "And there is God."

From beside Lenna, from the back of the crowd of people, Talvi stepped forward, shuffling past Andy and Emily clumsily. "Father, why did you send my brother into the ocean?" he asked, sidling uncomfortably into the center of the golden chamber.

Bres twisted back and forth between the angels and Talvi. "Mother had to be told," he snapped at the man. "You are both part Fomor. You can change into a fish, if you choose."

"Why not send the angels?" asked Talvi.

"Don't you dare question me!"

"Father, we've completed all the tasks," said Talvi in his quiet voice.

Bres eyed Indaell, who was still curled like a gourd over his shoulder. "Yes, I suppose you have. However--"

"Father," said Talvi. "We had a deal."

"However," and Bres leaned into the word, "I don't feel that you've done enough to--or maybe you've done too much--"

"Father," said Talvi. The tall man seemed dwarfed by the throne, and by his father. His ruddy hair hung just above his shoulders, shaggy and loose. He wore a foolish puffy orange-and-tan jacket with big pockets. His narrow face was shy under his five o'clock red beard. "May I ask you a question? For free?" he asked Bres.

Eyeing Indaell uncertainly, the High King said: "Ask."

"Are you proud of me, Father?"

Bres blinked. "This is not the time."

"It is the time. Father, are you proud of me and Kaldi?"

"Why must you ask this now? My servants are warning me of some strange danger, and you ask your father this childish question?"

"Answer it. Please answer it." Talvi flapped his fingers nervously, like butterfly wings.

"If you cannot hold your peace when a father demands it, Taillvin, then I couldn't say I'm proud."

"Okay," said Talvi gently. "Father--"

"Silence, Taillvin."

"Let the girl go."

Bres swept down the steps of his throne and looked his younger son in the eye. "I will open the door to her chamber if it will buy your silence."

Talvi nodded. Bres snapped his fingers. Indaell went to the far wall and traced a doorway along the back wall with his skinny fingertip. The tracing glowed and a doorway appeared.

Lenna ran past Talvi and Bres and the angels. The doorway was narrow and shadowy. The chamber inside was musty and unlit. From behind her, she heard "Lenna, no!"

Binnan Darnan was not inside. The doorway vanished behind her.

**Chapter Twenty-Nine**

Lord of Stone

or, When It Opens, Ron

What a stupid thing to do. Oooooh. She should never have trusted Bres, not for one second. Now both she and Binnan Darnan were in super trouble.

"Binnan Darnan?" Her voice echoed. Nothing answered.

Lenna banged on the rock walls with her fists until her knuckles hurt. She punched and punched and kicked, listening to the clopping sound as her fists knocked into solid rock. Finally she stopped and rubbed her fists. Pressing her back to the wall, she slid down to her butt and hugged her knees.

The rock whispered to her in the darkness.

"Lenna," the rock said.

"Mr. the Dagda?" she hissed.

"Yep. Listen. In a moment I'll open a wall--"

"How?"

"Not now, blast it. I've a plan. How quiet can ye be?"

Lenna said nothing. Then she leaned into the rock and whispered, " _That_ quiet."

"Lovely. I'll open the wall to yar left. Grab the othar lass and woll getcha both out of thar. Got it?"

"Got it. How did you know--"

"Later. Wairk yar way left and tap a fingernail on the wall between the two rooms."

The room was full of clunky heavy trip-you things, but there was no way to see them. She walked her fingers along the floor, scooting around clangy metal plates and cups. Probably more of Bres' stupid gold. The floor was chilly. She tapped the side wall as quietly as she could. It flowed away from her hand like water.

Pol's voice swam through the rock: "Find the gairl."

Lenna nodded to the rock in the dark, which was stupid, but nevermind. The second room was the same as the first. Clunky metal things here and there. She scooted around with her hands on the floor and bumped into something floofy.

"Binnan Darnan!" hissed Lenna. She found a hand, which was ice cold and clammy. "You better not be dead, stoop." She dug one hand under Binnan Darnan's back and one under her knees and picked her up over her shoulder like a sack of feed. There was wispy hair and lace everywhere.

"Mr. the Dagda. I've got her."

"When it opens, Ron."

"Who's--"

The wall exploded outward and light streamed in. Oh. Lenna considered bonking Binnan Darnan's head on something as she hopped over gold stuff and exploded rubble, but decided not to.

"Intlás! Lés! Stop them!"

"Whatever you say, Master." Indaell grabbed Pol and Emily by the shoulder. Ljos put a hand against Kaldi and Talvi.

"Not--" Bres put his tall, beautiful forehead miserably on one hand. "Not like that."

Indaell giggled.

"Taillvin son of Bres," intoned Ljos. "You have the power to end this game."

"I know," Talvi said sadly.

"How?" asked Emily.

Lenna saw Talvi dip a hand into the tan pocket of his orange jacket and withdraw it again.

"Wake Binnan Darnan," Talvi told his father.

Bres was furious, like a cornered badger. "What will you give me?"

Talvi had his hand on his pocket, nervously, uncertainly. "I'll give you Ireland."

"It's already mine."

"Ireland above," said Talvi.

"You don't have that power. No one can stop the curse of my father. Or--or have you found a way?"

"Yes. I've found a way. Free Binnan Darnan and I'll free you from the curse."

"You have a way? A way for me to look upon the hills and fields once more?"

"Yes," said Talvi. He gripped Aitta's hand tightly, keeping the other hand on his pocket. He looked to the gray figure of Ljos, who nodded.

Stunned, Bres sat back against the shaking branches of his glowering throne. His blue eyes shone in the gold light, dazzled and needy. "Very well. Very well. Yes. Lés. Wake the child."

Binnan Darnan shivered in Lenna's arms. She set her down gently. Black-gloved hands stretched and Binnan Darnan yawned.

"You did so get in super trouble," whispered Lenna. Binnan Darnan blinked and stuck out her tongue.

"Ljos? Indaell?" said Talvi. "Remove the curse on Brugda and Lenna."

Ljos faced his brother. "Do it," he hissed.

Indaell's head and hands stretched across the room like snakes. He stuck a finger up Lenna's nose. "There it is!" he squealed. He pulled out a shiny black strand, which burst into soap bubbles and went away.

"Eew. So gross. Hey! I can't see lies. I'm an idiot ..."

"Uh huh," said Binnan Darnan.

"Shut up. It's gone!" The room was bright, blindingly, gloriously bright, and the evil shadow of lies was nowhere.

Talvi nodded. "Father. It's time."

"Yes. Yes! Release me." The beautiful man rose again, his blue cape flowing, his hair falling across it in a waterfall of blonde, blonder than Lenna's straw-colored hair, a spill of gold.

Talvi stepped forward and embraced his father, who awkwardly patted him. Then he stepped back. He pulled a scrap of something from his pocket and turned it in his hand, holding it up to the gold-tinted light.

"So beautiful," said Bres. He caught fire and burned away to a pillar of ash. A gust of wind ran through the caves. Lenna smelled flowers and cut grass as Bres blew away along the wind. The blue cape settled like a lake before the throne.

"What was it?" asked Emily.

"A postcard."

**Chapter Thirty**

Introductions

or, Have You Met Your Parents?

Kaldi stood in the illusionary entryway for a moment, then ran to Binnan Darnan and clutched her, kneeling at her side. Everyone crowded around them. Kaldi was shivering; washed-away brown blood matted the hair on the backs of his hands. Binnan Darnan squirmed away from his icy grasp.

"Who is everyone? What happened?" she asked the crowded room, looking from face to face.

"So many things," gasped Kaldi. "So many things." Tears filled his eyes as he saw the last of his father's ashes. "Who--?"

"Me," said Talvi.

"That's right," said Brugda. There was a haggard look about her. She looked like she had just woken up after a coma.

"Is anyone going to introduce everyone?" shouted Binnan Darnan. "Pleeeeze?"

Lenna stepped forward. "This is Pol the Dagda O'Donnell. Um, he's the one who controls all the rocks."

"Huh?"

"Don't think about it too hard. Look! He blew up the wall to rescue you."

Binnan Darnan curtsied to Pol.

"And, and this is Emily O'Donnell. She's the other best cook other than Kaldi. You missed the feast! She gave up her magic hammer to um, um, I don't remember why."

Binnan Darnan curtsied to Emily, who had retrieved her hammer determinationfully from its pedestal.

"This is Andy Manannan O'Donnell. He's the best musician in the world, and very brave when he's not being _mad_ at me."

Binnan Darnan curtsied to Andy. He skritched his hair awkwardly.

"This is Mo Bagohn. She's--" Lenna looked at Mo Bagohn and put her hands in the air. "We should go get Wicklow!"

Mo Bagohn squinted at Binnan Darnan. "So you're the cause of the hullabaloo. Thought you'd be taller."

"Brugda says I'll get my growth spurt soon," said Binnan Darnan, curtsying again.

"Me too! Me too!" shouted Lenna.

"You're really two of a kind, aren't you? Before we do anything, I have a sinister matter to settle. You." Mo Bagohn faced the two angels. "I know you can just drift away to heaven now or wherever angels go. But it was your drattable squabbling that got my Wicklow lost. Could you make sure he's all right? It'd be the least you could do, by the head of a pin."

Ljos' face turned to the floor tragically. "The horse of legend was brought to Doolin. The crystals that gave it life are lost."

"Dead? Can't they find those sapphires? They're hard to miss."

"Lost to the sea."

"Miz Bagohn, we should ask Baldur," said Lenna. "He looks after the sea floor."

"Suppose so. Well, let's not wait around like standing stones, get to it! Come along." She pulled two red witch's hats out of the air, stuck them onto Lenna and Binnan Darnan's heads, then waddled out into the passageway.

"So what did I miss?" Binnan Darnan asked as they returned through the drippy caves by the silver light of Andy's harp.

"You haven't met Annie Morgan yet. She's a mile tall and she melts snails."

"Huh?"

"Her shadow. You've got to see it. You'll probably like her. I do."

"Why does she melt snails?"

"Not on purpose!" said Lenna indignantly. "Well, usually. It's her shadow."

"Who's Wicklow?"

Lenna inhaled. "Binnan Darnan Binnan Darnan. You mustn't be mad at me or Talvi or anyone but we left the empress in Höfn! I told them you wouldn't want us to, only--"

Binnan Darnan crossed her arms. "Lenna. You should answer the question that you're asked and not make up new questions for yourself."

"Who is telling who what to do?" Lenna set her fists on her hips. "Are you?"

"Just because you're Miss Joukka Pelata's daughter doesn't mean you're the boss of me."

"Does so! I'm also taller."

"Wouldja keep walking as ye argue?" Pol grumped. They hurried up.

"Lenna. I'm older. I know more things. You should listen to the things I say."

Lenna burst into tears. "Binnan Darnan. I lied when I said that you always told the truth."

Binnan Darnan looked down. She didn't seem surprised at all. "I know. Lenna, I do make up stories. Lenna, you shouldn't _ever_ believe me. Lenna, do you _hate_ me?"

Lenna stopped again, glared at Pol, then took her gloved hand. "Binnan Darnan. Have you met your parents?"

Black hair swung back and forth.

"You only made them up?"

Binnan Darnan nodded heartbreakingly.

"And the potatoes-on-a-stick?"

The girl's mouth was shut with dimples of despair. She shook no. The silver light and plunky music meandered farther down the corridor.

"Binnan Darnan. Do you remember when I was an orphan?"

"Lenna, you've _never_ been an orphan. You _know_ your mother. You've always known her!"

"Do you remember the Change, when you lost your dragons?"

"Of course."

"Binnan Darnan, before the Change I also didn't know my parents."

"You're just making fun of me!" The little girl ran down the narrow cave, away from the light. Lenna ran after her into the darkness, caught up and grabbed her hair.

"You're making things up," Binnan Darnan said.

Lenna shook her head over and over and over.

"I don't believe you!" shouted Binnan Darnan.

"It's okay," said Lenna. She took Binnan Darnan's hand and everything was better and they walked on through the cave.

The little black-haired girl breathed heavily with anger and running. "Who's Wicklow?" she asked finally.

"A magic mechanical horse."

"Wow!"

"Binnan Darnan. You can't ask what I saw in the Viking tombs."

"Why not?"

"Because, because it's too wonderful," said Lenna.

"What if I say I'll believe you?"

"Binnan Darnan. You shouldn't ask."

"Tell me."

"Binnan Darnan, you mustn't ask."

"Tell me!"

"I shouldn't tell."

"Tell me, mistress."

"Don't call me this."

"Tell me what you saw or I'll call you this!"

"Hey! Who's in charge?"

"Mistress! Mistress! Mistress!"

"Don't call me this!"

"Then tell me."

"Unicorns," whispered Lenna.

" _What?_ No!"

"Told you you shouldn't ask about it."

"I don't believe you!"

"But you said!"

Ahead of them, people were waiting at the cave mouth.

"Oh no! Now we'll have to climb those rotten rotten stairs again."

"Parhaps ye won't," said Pol behind them.

"Huh?"

He shooed them forward with wobbling fingers.

"You fixed it!" said Lenna when she got outside. Instead of a narrow, perilous pile of carved-out wet blocks, the cliff face had been transformed, shifted and scooped out into a grand staircase wide enough for an emperor's parade. The steps were marble with roughed-up strips to provide traction.

"Thought I'd tidy it up, since I'm here," Pol said, rubbing his hands together. "Far the tourists."

**Chapter Thirty-One**

Fimbulsummer

or, Sorry For Calling You a Zombie

At the edge of the waterline, Brugda held up a hand and sniffed the air. "A Change is coming," she announced.

"What will it be?" asked Lenna.

"Bad. Up the stair."

It was easy to climb. The steps were white with black lines and felt scratchy and slick under Lenna's boots. Little flowers still clung to the cliff face. At the top was a field of nylon grass and bits of loose scree. All of a sudden it was glazed yellow with a spear-like bolt from the sky. Startled, Lenna looked around for the source.

"It's only the sun," Binnan Darnan told Lenna. She nodded.

"Another Change?" Aitta repeated.

Nodding, Brugda hunted the air with her nose like a fox. "It's gone now, but it will be back."

A hollow boom shook the ground.

"Eep."

"Eep!"

It was Baldur, who had jumped up the face of the cliff and landed at the top.

"I had a horse, powered by sapphires," Mo Bagohn told him with her hands clasped. "The angels say they've found the horse but lost the jewels. Would it be a lot to ask for you to find them for me?"

Baldur opened a ham-sized hand and thousands of blue stones poured onto the ground.

"Even in the hall of Asgard we have heard of your horse. After all, it was from Asgard he came. But every stone below the ocean is a sapphire."

"Then which--"

"I can fix it!" shouted Binnan Darnan. She picked up some sapphires and held them up to glitter in the late afternoon sun. "I can weave them into perfect perfect horsepowering sapphires. But I'll need a lot of power. The refractory back home won't be big enough. Is there one around here I could use?"

Baldur thought. "None capable of forging jewels worthy of the gods."

"The gods?" Binnan Darnan repeated.

"Yes," said Baldur. "Wicklow was built for the gods by the dwarves of Svart Alpha, in a competition to find the greatest smith--I'll tell you that story another time.

"Instead, let me explain what must happen now," the bare-chested god went on. "When the world goes through a Change, the old magic seeps down into the well of Niflheim. The Pit of Old Magic and the World Tree were barriers, holding back the flood of magic that's built up from all the Changes. Now that the tree is destroyed, the flood has been released. We enter a time known as Fimbulsummer. It's our responsibility to return the magic to its vault below the World Tree and to find some way to cap it.

"The problem is that all the Powers will be able to gather the magic out from under us and use it to cause new Changes. Fimbulsummer is a race to recapture all magic. At the end of the race, we will either have restored the World Tree and the Pit of Old Magic, or we will see Ragnarok, the destruction of the world.

"I've heard about this day," said Lenna. "Kaldi told me about it."

"The day of legend," said Baldur. "There are two ways the world can end: in fire or in ice. If the flood of magic smothers too much of the Earth, we will never be able to stop the Changes. They will burn the world away again and again until all life drowns in magic.

"At the same time, we must protect the fulcrums and axes around which the world turns. If these ideas snap, the world will stop turning."

"Ideas?" asked Binnan Darnan.

"Happiness is a fulcrum, for example," said Baldur. "Without the idea of happiness, there's no reason for humans to live their lives. But happiness isn't a magic itself, just a fulcrum. If an agent of the Power of Chaos convinced humanity that happiness was impossible, or that travel was impossible, or that knowledge was impossible, then magic would drain away to nothing. Without these big ideas, the world would freeze in place, ticking down to lifelessness. Everything would stop, and the magic would cool down until it became impossible to start again. This nearly happened during the Dark Ages, when Id, the Power of Chaos, spread plague and war and ignorance across Europe and much of Asia until the world was frozen and helpless. It was only the monasteries, with their knowledge of Aristotle and the Greek plays, that kept the world turning.

"When magic began flowing into the world once again, it flowed too fast," Baldur went on. "In the Renaissance, it took a doubling of the world, spreading Europe's magic across to America, to slow the outpouring. These are the two ways the world can end: the Ragnarok of Fire or the Ragnarok of Ice. And the Powers are afoot again. We have no time."

"What must I do, Mr. Baldur?"

"We must get you to Asgard. The gods must be gathered to a great meeting, the All Thing. We'll need all the allies we can find to see this through. Will you cross the rainbow bridge of Bifrost with me and speak before the Council of the All Thing, Lenna?"

"Yup," she said.

Baldur smiled. "Then come. There is a refractory for you to use as well, Binnan Darnan, although the world of crystals may become something else by the time we reach Asgard."

"I can use the something else, too," said Binnan Darnan happily.

The sun was pulling shadows out of everyone. Pink and yellow burst across the sky behind the spiderweb of sliding wallpaper. Baldur raised three hands and snapped his fingers in a strange rhythm. Out of the clouds fell a shining rainbow, landing at his feet.

"Brugda?" asked Kaldi. "There's something I must ask."

Brugda went to him and lifted her veined hands to his bearded cheeks. "It has been a gift, being your stepmother, Caoilte. Go well. Look after your mother. Marry somebody, if you would. Someone nice." She kissed his forehead. "For you are High King over Ireland now. May you rule it best."

"Thank you." He took a moist breath. "I'm staying in Ireland, Baldur."

The vast head nodded.

Kaldi faced Talvi and his wife. "Look after the girls, would you?"

Talvi embraced him heavily. "I will, brother."

Pol cleared his throat. "Looks like it's goodbye." He shook Lenna's hand. "Wo'll look after yar King Kaldi for ye. It's been a joy to know ye, lass."

"You too," she said.

Andy stepped forward. "Look. Lenna. I'm sorry about--"

"Not _now_. Sir Andy, you're always my friend," Lenna told him.

"I'm glad."

Just as she was deciding whether she was ready to hug him, he took her hand and knelt and kissed it as if she were a royal lady.

The Fomor came above the ridge. Most walked as men, one as an elephant, and on the elephant's back rode an enormous tortoise. On the tortoise's flat back was blind green Wicklow and a few chunks of squash. Mo Bagohn drew a breath and rushed to the horse's side. The elephant shrank to the size of a housecat and the tortoise stepped off. It shrank in turn to the size of a walnut. Wicklow lay motionless on the spring grass. Binnan Darnan went to admire it.

The Fomor leader with the burnt fingernails said something in Irish. Mo Bagohn nodded to him. The leader spoke to his men.

They became swans. With a flap and a honk, the Fomor flew away.

The swans were letter M's in the sunset when Annie landed on the clifftop in a black flutter. Lenna hugged the goddess and felt her hands become clicky tendons in the late afternoon shadows. She hugged anyway.

Lenna looked at Andy. "Ahem," she said loudly to him.

"Oh. Right. So Annie. Miss Morgan, that is. I thought maybe I ought to apologize for calling you a zombie."

Annie smiled. "And ... ?"

"Sorry for calling you a zombie." Andy breathed out. Then he smiled. "Wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be, really. Apologizing."

"Don't worry. It's been fun," said Annie.

"Miss Morgan," said Lenna, pointing, "meet Binnan Darnan."

The little girl looked up up up. "Eek."

"Hello," said Annie.

"Miss Morgan, we're going away now," said Lenna.

"Then goodbye, Lenna."

Lenna hugged her again. "I'll see you soon I _hope_."

"Me, too," said Annie.

Brugda paced into the middle of things. "I've something to say." Her eyes filled with old wet. "I'm going back to the big house. I can't look after you, Lenna. Maybe I never should have tried."

Lenna went to her and hugged her tears away.

"Why don't you stay with us?" Mo Bagohn said.

"No," said Brugda over Lenna's shoulder with a cough. "Not this time. Look for the fisherman, Little Len. The fisherman holds the answers. You'll find him by the end. But I won't be there."

Lenna held on for as long as she could. Then she let go.

Emily hugged Lenna, Talvi shook Pol's hand, Andy shook Talvi's hand, Aitta hugged Emily, then Andy, Mo Bagohn hugged Lenna and Binnan Darnan, Kaldi hugged Talvi again, then Aitta, and then he hugged Brugda.

Kaldi knelt before the two girls. "I am always with you. I will always think of you. You are both the best of us all. You will always find yourselves where you belong. This is my first decree." He put his arms around both their shoulders, squeezed, then stood.

Mo Bagohn leaned over to look Lenna in the eye. "There's a lot of things you haven't found out about yourself, my little Cardiff wren." She winked. "Hope you'll come by to visit me when the world is saved."

"I will."

"I will too, as soon as I make Wicklow-powering sapphires," said Binnan Darnan, nodding.

"Glad to hear it. You'll know where to find me. The Hill of the Witch, the hearth of my soul." She tapped a finger on the two red hats, and they vanished.

As Lenna, Binnan Darnan, Talvi and Aitta followed Baldur up the glittering rainbow, Andy said:

May you always gather friendship

May your sorrows not last long

May your tears be matched by smiles

And your voices fill with song.

Pol joined in:

May yar footsteps gain ye mountaintops

And may yar eyes be bright

May the sun shine down upon ye

And moonshine fill th' night.

He laughed. Emily finished the blessing:

May your hearts be ever joyful

May you always find the way

May the road rise up to meet you

And may laughter fill each day.

**Acknowlogies and Apoledgements**

Special thanks to Bob Spiller and Avi for moral support. Extra special thanks to Michael Scott for good advices and for checking my Irish.

When I go back and look at the stories I read as a kid, I can spot where my own ideas had their acorns. I figure, every time I write a book inspired by other people's stories, I'll try to share my inspirations, so you can go read them and get inspired, too.

Some Notes About Names

Most of the Icelandic names in this book come from Daisy Neijmann's _Colloquial Icelandic_. "Brugda" is the Icelandic word for hitting. "Kaldi" is a light breeze. "Talvi" is a sort-of-invented word that comes from _talvon_ , which means illusion. "Aitta" is adapted from _aiti_ , meaning mother. Joukka Pelata (YOO-kuh pah-LOTTA) is adapted from Finnish words meaning "afraid of people."

The Irish names mostly come from a wonderful book of Irish stories called _Gods and Fighting Men_ by Lady Gregory. It's hard to find and written in a complicated dialect, but the adventures are great for all ages. The stories about Bres come from that book, as well as the characters of the Dagda, the Manannan, the Old Ones, Brigid and the Morrigan. I messed around with some of the details to make them fit together better.

Lenna's name is a shortening of a longer name which shows up in Book Two. I'll talk about the origins of the name there.

Binnan Darnan was going to be named Bindargan, some sort of version of Pendragon. I changed it. I don't know why. In Welsh, Bynnan Darnen means "little crumb." In the Manx language, from the Island of Man, "Binn Donnan" means "the wretch in the corner," while "Bineen Dhornane" means "rain on a sword hilt," which I like very much. In Scots Gaelic, "Binnean Tàirneanach" means "thunder in the mountains." But most importantly, in Old English, "Binnan Dyrnan" means "a secret kept inside," and that's probably what Binnan Darnan's name really means.

Mo Bagohn is a character I met years ago, when I wrote the poem that Pol recites. She was mostly inspired by Biddy Early, the wise woman of Clare, who you can read more about in Nancy Willard's great poetry book, _The Ballad of Biddy Early_. Mo was influenced by Tom Bombadil as well. Mo Bagohn's name as Bres pronounces it, _mo beagán_ , is Irish for "my little one," only I made up the name before I knew any Irish at all, and it's mispronounced anyways.

Indaell means "delight" in Icelandic. Intlás means "delight" in Irish. Ljos ("LEE-ohs") means "light" in Icelandic. Lés means "light" in Irish. This is probably not a coincidence.

Caoilte and Tailltin are both real characters from Irish mythology. I only figured that out after I realized that my characters Kaldi and Talvi and Brigid and Bres were all relatives. Note that Caoilte is pronounced "keel-chee," and the name of the original Irish character was Taill _tin_ , not Taill _vin_. But close enough.

Some Notes About Inspiration

So those are the names. As for the story, it was inspired by a very vivid dream I had about the changing flavors of magic in the world and the wizards who control it. The dream, in turn, was probably inspired by a tabletop roleplaying game called _Mage: the Ascension_. I've never played it, but I've _read_ about it, and sometimes that's all you need to do. I had been reading steampunk and thinking about the historical American shift from steam power to electricity, too.

The idea of a kid suddenly learning that he or she is a special magic wizard person is, you might be surprised to find out, not my original idea. I got it from Susan Cooper's _The Dark is Rising_ , one of my favorite books. Also I'd like to thank J. K. Rowling for her excellent version of the trope. The idea of an orphan on a pig farm is from Chretien de Troyes' _Percival_ , which I was reading just as I started writing. The lost pig is from Lloyd Alexander's lovely _Prydain Chronicles_. Why is it an Icelandic pig farm and not Welsh? Because Barnes & Noble didn't have a book on the Welsh language, but they did have one on Icelandic, and I thought maybe that would be okay instead.

My dragons are stranger than traditional dragons for a couple of reasons. Ruth Chrisman Gannett's illustrations for _My Father's Dragon_ is one of the reasons. Rankin-Bass' _The Flight of Dragons_ movie is another. I think traditional anything is kind of boring. The unicorns and skeletons were largely inspired by Peter S. Beagle's _The Last Unicorn_ and the cartoon adaptation.

The Irish dialogue was developed through a combination of reading rude Irish slang handbooks and watching many, many Tommy Tiernan comedy clips on YouTube. He swears a lot and is very funny.

A movie called _The Secret of Kells_ was announced just as I was finishing the book, set in a different Kells and featuring a different Saint Brendan. I was worried when I heard about it, but then I saw it and I love the movie to pieces. You should see it.

To find out more about Baldur, Ragnarok and the World Tree, you should read Padraic Colum's book _The Children of Odin_ and Neil Gaiman's _Odd and the Frost Giants_. The next Lenna book will have more Norse myths in it.

Thanks for reading my story. Maybe soon you'll have stories of your own to tell!

**About the Uther Author**

James Comins is a tiny frog balanced on the nose of a dreadful wolf monster. _Maybe_. He is frumpy, Jewish, wild-eyed, crooked and foolish. He grows kale and spicy peppers, sings old show tunes, punches all the bad guys and doesn't like writing about himself in the third person. He lives in Denver. Contact him or listen to him tweeting. Read his other books at his Smashwords page: www.smashwords.com/profile/view/jamescomins. Thanks for reading!
