Read Chapter 20: The Border Stone

The morning light was the wrong color here. Grey and flat, like watered milk, and it made everything look tired—the hedgerows, the stones, the sky itself. Maeve hadn't realized how used she'd become to the too-bright shimmer of fairy air until she stood in it again, mortal air thick with damp and the smell of turned earth.

Ciarán walked beside her, silent. He'd been silent since they'd crossed through the steward's hidden path, a narrow wound in the hillside that had spat them out into a cow pasture two miles from the border stone. The fairy had told her the stone would be visible from the churchyard, but he hadn't told her what she'd find there.

She saw the figure first. A man, bent over, working the ground with a spade. His coat was familiar—the same worn tweed her father had worn every winter since she was a child. Maeve stopped so abruptly that Ciarán nearly collided with her.

"Da?" The word came out small.

The man straightened. Sean O'Connell's face was weathered, lined deeper than she remembered, and his eyes went wide when he saw her. The spade dropped from his hand. "Maeve. Maeve, is that you?"

She was running before she knew it, crossing the wet grass, throwing herself into his arms. He smelled of pipe smoke and sweat and the particular mustiness of the pub that clung to him no matter how much he washed. He held her tight, so tight she could feel his ribs through his shirt.

"Where's Mam?" Maeve asked, pulling back to look at his face. "Da, where is she?"

His jaw tightened. "She's gone, lass. Said she couldn't stay. Packed a bag and walked out the door three weeks ago and never came back."

"You know that's not true." Maeve's hands curled into fists at her sides. "You know what took her. I've been in the fairy realm, Da. I've seen what they do. They took Conor when he was a bairn and they took her too, didn't they?"

Sean looked past her, at the tall dark-haired figure waiting at the edge of the field. His expression shuttered. "Who's that?"

"He's—" Maeve hesitated. "He's a friend. He helped me get back."

"A friend." Her father's voice was flat. "He's one of them, isn't he? Fair folk can't walk the mortal land without changing. I can see it in him—the way he holds himself, too still, too patient."

Ciarán stepped forward. "I am bound to your daughter by a debt of honor. I mean her no harm."

Sean's laugh was bitter. "The fair folk always mean no harm, right up until they take everything you love."

"Da, please." Maeve caught his arm. "I need to know about Mam. The fairies took her because of me, didn't they? Because of the contract I made with them when I was a girl to save Conor?"

Her father's face crumpled. For a moment he looked old, older than his years, a man who had carried a secret so heavy it had worn him hollow. "You remember the contract."

"I've seen it. I know about the terms. Seven years of my life in exchange for Conor's health, and if I break it before the mortal year turns, he'll age seven years overnight." Maeve's voice cracked. "I've been trying to find a loophole. I went to the queen's chapel, I found the original covenant, and I still don't know how to break it without blood sacrifice."

Sean turned away, picking up the spade. For a long moment he said nothing, just stared at the hole he'd been digging. A young sapling lay on the grass beside it, its roots wrapped in burlap. A rowan, she realized. A protection tree.

"Why did you plant a rowan, Da?" Maeve asked slowly. "You never planted rowan before. You always said it was for superstitious folk and we'd no truck with such things."

Her father's shoulders slumped. "Because I'm a coward, Maeve. That's why." He set the spade aside and knelt, untying the burlap from the sapling's roots. "Your mother didn't leave. You're right. They took her while I was at the pub. I came home and she was gone, and there was a letter on the table in her hand—her writing, but I knew it wasn't from her. It said she'd met someone else and gone to Dublin. That she was sorry."

"But you didn't believe it."

"I knew better. I've always known better." Sean's hands worked the soil, patting it around the sapling's roots. "I've known about the fair folk since I was a lad. My grandmother was a wise woman. She knew their ways, their bargains. She's the one who told me what to do when you were born with the mark of the fairy on you."

Maeve's breath caught. "What mark?"

"The one on your back. The small dark spot, like a bruise that never fades. She said you'd been claimed before you were fully yours—that the fair folk had seen you in your mother's womb and decided you'd do for a trade someday." Sean wouldn't meet her eyes. "She gave me a charm to protect you, to draw the attention of a fairy who might guard you instead of claim you. I wore it for years, and it worked. The fairy that came to you when Conor was sick—he wasn't one of the queen's, was he? He was a separate one, one that the charm called."

Maeve remembered suddenly—Ciarán, the first time she'd truly seen him as more than a whisper of movement in the corner of her eye. He'd been there the night Conor got sick. He'd been there her whole childhood, she realized now. A shadow at the edge of the playground, a flicker by the school gate. She'd always thought she was imagining things.

"Where's the charm now?" she asked.

Sean reached into his pocket. His hand came out closed, and when he opened it, a thin silver chain lay across his palm. On it hung a whistle—small, bone-white, exactly like the one around her own neck. But this one was whole, not cracked into two halves. It was the second half, she realized. The other piece of the key that Ciarán had given her, disguised as a pendant on a chain.

"You took it," Maeve whispered. "The other half. You had it all along."

"I didn't know it was the other half." Sean's voice was rough. "Your grandmother gave it to me the night before she died. She said to keep it safe, that someday you'd come back asking for it, and I was to give it to you then—no matter what. No matter what I wanted." He looked up at her, and there was grief in his eyes. "I didn't want you to go back, Maeve. I've already lost your mother. I couldn't lose you too."

"You lied to me, Da. You let me think I'd have to find the other half in fairy land. You let me think I was running out of time when you had it in your pocket the whole time."

"I was protecting you." His voice cracked. "The fair folk can't take what you can't offer. If they'd known I had a piece of the whistle, they'd have come for me. They'd have taken me instead of your mother. But I thought—maybe if you didn't know where it was, you'd stay away. You'd stop looking. You'd be safe."

"Safe?" Maeve's laugh was hollow. "Da, my brother is going to age seven years in a month if I don't break this contract. My mother is a hostage because of a bargain I made when I was a girl. And you've been sitting here in the mortal world, pretending you couldn't help."

Silence stretched between them. Ciarán shifted, and Sean's eyes flicked to him, then back to Maeve.

"I thought you'd be safe," Sean repeated, quieter now. "I didn't know the queen had made it a war. I didn't know your mother was taken until it was too late, and by then—" He shook his head. "I've been trying to find her. I've been planting rowan all over the property, trying to build a barrier so they can't take you too. It's the only thing your grandmother told me that might keep them out."

Maeve stared at her father. The man who'd raised her. Who'd taught her how to pull a proper pint and how to wrestle a stubborn keg and how to tell a customer's story from their drink order. He'd been holding a piece of the answer all along, and he'd been too afraid to give it to her.

She took the chain from his hand. The whistle was warm, heavier than she expected, and when she held it up to the light, she could see faint carvings along its length—the same knotwork that decorated the half around her neck.

"I'm not safe, Da." She tucked the whistle into her pocket, next to her own cracked half. "Neither is Conor. Neither is Mam. And I'm going to get them all back."

"Ciarán." She turned to the fairy, who had been watching the exchange with an unreadable expression. "I have both halves now. What happens next?"

Ciarán's dark eyes were troubled. "Now we find the child," he said. "And we hope that the queen's war doesn't reach this border before we can."

From somewhere in the distance, a bell rang—the church bells of the village, calling the faithful to morning prayer. Maeve turned to look at the spire rising above the trees, then back at the hole her father had dug. The rowan sapling stood crooked, its leaves already beginning to curl.

"Will she be okay?" Maeve asked suddenly. "Mam. While she's with them."

Ciarán's silence was answer enough.

Sean made a sound low in his throat and turned back to the sapling, adjusting it, pressing the soil firm around its base. "I'll keep planting," he said quietly. "I'll do what I can here. And you—you find a way to break that contract, girl. You find a way to bring your mother home."

Maeve watched her father work for a long moment. The rowan was a protection tree, her grandmother would have said. A shield against the fair folk and their mischief. She reached out and touched one of the leaves, soft and green and fragile against her calloused finger.

Then she turned away and started walking toward the border stone.

She didn't look back.