I never wanted any of that, he thought. I only wanted my due, for the world to play me fair for once. Not that. Never that.
But it didn’t matter what he’d wanted before he picked up the mask, or what he wanted now. Regrets never solved anything. The Glasduine was born, brought into this world by his own small-minded arrogance, and it was up to him to set things right before the monster ravaged the world. If even one innocent was harmed, Donal knew he was damned forever.
But sweet Jaysus, where did he even begin to stop it?
Contacting that foul mind again was the last thing he wanted, but he knew he had no choice. He had to confront the Glasduine. So he followed after, steeling himself for what was to come. It would not be an easy struggle, he knew. The chances were bloody good that he wouldn’t survive it either. But that didn’t matter so much anymore. He didn’t matter at all. Only that the Glasduine was stopped.
Because perhaps the worst thing of all was that the Glasduine had also discarded parts of itself when it was born and these lay inside Donal’s spirit now, dormant, sleeping, never to waken. They were all the things the Glasduine could have been. Prosperity for the natural world. A presence in the wild that would rekindle the awe and wonder that mankind had once held for the forests and hills that had lain unclaimed and untamed beyond their farm lots and city walls. An old magic that Donal had quenched with the raw torrent of his angers and hatred.
Fergus and his cronies had lied, Donal realized. The Gentry, that hag in her cabin. All of them. What the Glasduine should have been wasn’t some chess piece to be moved about on a gaming board. It was an echo of the life spirit itself, of all that was good in the world. If it was to be reawoken, it would be to bring an echo of that grace back into the world. But just as he’d allowed rage to corrupt himself, he had corrupted that old magic. Others might have lied to him, but he had actually called it up and fed it with his despair and rage. He was the serpent in the garden and he had no one to blame but himself.
He could see the Glasduine ahead of him again, moving silent as a ghost through the trees, each of them covered with a frozen sheath of ice. The creature didn’t dislodge a single icicle or twig as it moved. Neither did Donal, though he would have given much to be able to do so. He’d rather turn back the clock, he’d rather be stumbling around in these frozen woods in his own body, risking hypothermia, with the Glasduine never woken. But wishes were shite.
He launched himself at the Glasduine, not clinging to its shoulder this time, but plunging deep into the morass that was its mind. And there they fought for control of Donal’s transformed body. The Glasduine had the advantage of the greater strength, but Donal had the stubbornness of a Gael. The more he was beaten and pushed away, the harder he clung, the deeper he burrowed into the miasma of the Glasduine’s mind.
Time lost any meaning. They might have struggled for only moments; they might have struggled to the edge of forever. Battered and numbed, Donal held firm, but he knew it was a losing battle. He simply didn’t have the strength. Unlike the Glasduine, he had no mystical reserves to call upon. He had only himself, and a weakened, subdued version of himself at that. He knew it was only a matter of time before the Glasduine dealt with him and the carnage would begin.
But then, just as he was losing all hope, he caught a flicker of motion from the corner of the Glasduine’s eye, saw with its vision shadow shapes flitting through the ice-bedecked trees. They were a long way off, more in the between, or even the otherworld, than the world of the here and now, but he marked them, recognized them, saw a use for them.
There, he told the Glasduine, directing the creature’s attention in their direction. There is the true enemy.
It had acquired his most powerful emotions and one of strongest among them was the resentment and hatred he’d felt towards the Gentry for the way they treated him like such a useless little shite. He wasn’t sure that the Glasduine would understand or care at this point, but it grunted when it recognized the shapes. With a roar, it set off in pursuit. Donal clung to the Glasduine’s mind, egging it on.
Finally there was a use for the buggers, he thought as the Gentry fled.
He just hoped they’d lead the Glasduine long and deep into the other-world, so far that it might never find a way back to this world where he’d so stupidly called it up.
13
They returned to the city in only a fraction of the time it had taken Tommy to drive them up to the rez the night before. Driving smoothly through the between, unencumbered by either the weather or poor driving conditions, they were soon coming down from the mountains and approaching the outskirts proper.
“Look,” Hunter said, his voice reflecting the awe he was obviously feeling. “There they go.”
Ellie leaned on the side of the truck bed and watched the manitou step away, moving deeper in amongst the ice-covered trees. They faded like deer or wolves, seen for a moment along the highway, then gone, but she knew they were so much more. An ache woke in her heart when they were gone.
What if I never see them again? she wondered.
Sunday touched her arm.
“You will,” she said, as though Ellie had spoken the words aloud. At Ellie’s surprised look, the older woman added with a smile, “You look just the way I felt the first time I saw them—like your best friend had disappeared. But don’t worry. Part of their mystery is that once you become aware of them, you will always be able to see them again.”
“I like the way you put that,” Hunter said. “They did feel like friends. A little scarier than the people I normally hang out with, mind you, but there was definitely some deep connection thing happening here.”
Ellie nodded, wondering if she’d be able to hold enough of them in her mind to sculpt them, though she had no idea how she would even begin to bring them to life. So much of them lay between the lines of what one saw. But if she could capture even a fraction of the feelings they’d woken in her, she’d have accomplished some remarkable work indeed.
Tommy pulled over to the side of the road then and she had to hold onto the side of the truck bed for balance. Looking in through the back window of the cab, she could see him arguing with Aunt Nancy. She rapped on the window and Tommy slid it open.
“What’s the problem?” she asked.
“Aunt Nancy wants us to drive straight up to Kellygnow.”
“But wasn’t that the plan?”
Tommy nodded. “Except we’re in the big wide world now. What’s going to happen when people see us cruising by, easy as you please, making time the way we are on roads that nobody else can use?”
“I don’t really see the problem.”
“Maybe not now. But some cop sees us, he’s going to wonder, take down my plate number, and then, when this is all over, I’m going to have to answer questions I don’t have answers for. I’m supposed to tell them about the between?”
“Why don’t we go by the manidò-aki?’” Sunday said.
“If you can find me a road in the otherworld, I’m game,” Tommy told her. “But this is no all-terrain vehicle. I’m guessing we’ll get about the length of a meadow.”
“What we need,” Zulema said from where she sat between Aunt Nancy and Tommy, “is for Nancy to put a charm on the truck, but—” She glanced to her right. “Someone considers that a waste of her juju.”
“Who cares what white people think?” Aunt Nancy asked. She glanced back at Ellie and Hunter and added, “No offense.”
“Tommy has to live here,” Sunday said. “I think we should respect his wishes.”