Page 42 of The Shadow Path
The black shadowsof the fae gate were just as dense as Carys remembered, and Branwen clutched her hand as they walked, hissing in surprise a few times but never releasing her.
It could have been minutes. It might have been an hour.
Carys followed the narrow corridor and the blue lights of the wisps where they led her, ducking around corners and stepping over obstacles that seemed to reach up from the ground below.
She felt a tugging in her belly, a pull of knowing in her gut as the pressure in the air eased and the whispering in the shadows eased away. When Carys saw a low light gleaming from the end of the passageway under the shop on Knightsbridge Road, she blinked in surprise.
Not only had she led the Crow Mother to the Brightlands, but the sun was shining in London.
Branwen was whispering under her breath, and her fingers dug into Carys’s wrist. “We’re there. We’re nearly there now.”
The rabid excitement in her voice made Carys want to wrest her arm away and run back to the Shadowlands, but she couldn’t get away from the old fae if she tried.
This is your promise.
Do this and you’ll be free.
The wisps pressed around her, high and hissing voices that sighed and tickled her ears. They were speaking in hushed tonesso fast that the mass of their voices crowded into Carys’s mind, and she felt the beginnings of a headache starting to grow in her temples.
Under her feet, she felt the change from smooth earth to wooden floor, and moments later, her toe hit the first low step.
“Ouch!” she whispered. “I don’t know why I’m whispering.” Carys turned and started up the stairs but turned when she didn’t hear anyone behind her. “Are you there?”
“Am I welcome then?” The Crow Mother looked up, and her eyes were luminous. “Am I welcome in the light?”
“Come on.” Carys gave her a hurry-up gesture and kept climbing. “This is what you traded for, remember?”
“Not far now.” Dru kept his voice mild. “Up you go, old mother, into the land that’s forgotten who you are.”
The Crow Mother sang, “But they’ll remember me again.”
Carys glanced over her shoulder to see the woman’s dark eyes had faded to the color of a winter sky, and her cheeks were pink. She looked… surprisingly human. Her magic was draining, and she was becoming mundane.
They climbed a half flight of stairs, and Carys pushed open the leather-padded red door that swung into…
A bustling restaurant with a crush of early-morning diners. Silver carts sped by, laden with stacked trays of dim sum as servers shouted orders across the room.
Branwen blinked, and then a huge smile spread across her face. “Children of light.”
Someone rushed toward them, speaking in rapid Chinese, and Dru answered them in kind as the Crow Mother dragged Carys toward the door.
They burst through the glass-fronted door and onto a bustling street crowded with cars, pedestrians, scooters, and bikes.
“What is this wonder?” The Crow Mother spun in place, turning her face up to the morning sun as she spread her arms and whispered something under her breath. “This decay and this dirt?”
Decay and dirt? Well, that was one way to look at the human world.
“Okay.” Carys watched her carefully, but in the morning sunshine, the Crow Mother looked like a completely ordinary human woman even if she was preternaturally pale and more than a little morbid. “Well, here you are. The sun is beautiful, right?”
Itwasgorgeous, and so bright Carys wanted to strip off her wool tunic and bathe in the light. She took a deep breath of air that… Well, it wasn’t fresh. But it also didn’t smell of magic or trolls or river monsters, so there was that.
Dru walked onto the sidewalk behind them, dodging a green scooter that sped by. “There you are, old mother. Is the sun as you remember it, or are you waiting for the moon?”
The Crow Mother’s head swung back and forth so quickly, Carys worried it was going to twist off completely.
Dru snapped, “Badb.”
The Crow Mother turned her pale grey eyes toward Dru, and the corner of her mouth turned up in the hint of a smile. “I’ll be going now, Mo Diarmuid. I trust you won’t tell anyone what’s happened here.”
