An Artificial Night

The eyes of the Ride kept feeding me images, showing the parade of children and Riders quailing from the fury of our mad god. I saw myself falling in the arms of a green-robed figure while smaller shapes held the reins of my horse, fighting her as she bucked to get free. Other children were falling, pulled down by figures of their own who dragged them into the light and wouldn’t let them go.

And I could see the woman standing at the circle’s edge, hands held in front of her, palms turned downward. She wasn’t tall, but something about her made her seem almost as vast as Blind Michael. Her hair fell in dark curls, like the waves of an angry sea; her eyes were white as foam, and she wore a gray robe stitched with patterns of mingled white and black that made the shared eyes of the Ride turn away. Only Acacia didn’t look away: she knew her, named her and showed her to me with a delight that was close to rejoicing. The Luidaeg.

Something woke in me that remembered how to hope, because I recognized her as soon as I knew her name—the sea witch, Blind Michael’s sister, who sent me to him in the first place. There were figures in the darkness behind her, but none of them mattered; the Luidaeg would save me if anyone could. I owed her, after all. She needed me alive to pay my debts.

I landed on my captor, shivering as the pain faded. The woman beneath me must have had an easier trip through the light than I did, because she was already stirring. Bully for her. She flipped me over as soon as I was breathing again, keeping her arms around my waist and pinning my legs with her knees.

“Sorry,” she said, in an almost familiar voice, “but I’m not letting you go.”

“That’s okay,” I managed. “I don’t think you’re supposed to.” The scene was still playing out behind my closed eyes, and I didn’t know who I wanted to win. I wanted to be free, but Blind Michael’s spell was strong. He still had my loyalty.

“What is the meaning of this?” demanded Blind Michael. The remaining procession shuddered behind him. Someone in the back whimpered and was silenced. All eyes were on their lord, and on his sister.

“Tonight is All Hallows’ Eve, and the faerie-folk Ride,” the Luidaeg said. “The Ride has rules, little brother. Did you forget? You can ignore them, but you can’t unmake them.”

“You have no right,” he snarled, and every word was like a knife in my heart. I threw back my head and screamed. I wasn’t the only one: all the children that had been pulled from their horses were screaming with me.

“Shhh,” hissed the woman above me. “Get past the pain. Grit your teeth and get past it. You can do it—I know you can.”

The Luidaeg waited for the screaming to stop before she said, “I have every right, little brother. Every right in both the worlds.”

“You aren’t allowed to interfere!”

“Not within your realm. We set those rules when we came here, and I’ve abided by them, even when it hurt to obey them, even when I saw you destroying everything you’d ever loved. I followed the rules. But you’re not in your realm now, little brother. You’re in mine.”

“My passage is allowed! I took nothing of yours!” This time his words were blows, not daggers. I whimpered.

“Didn’t you?” The Luidaeg’s voice was soothing, smoothing away the bruises her brother left behind. “You bargained for one you knew was under my protection; you couldn’t even wait for her candle to burn down. You took her while she still belonged to me.”

“All children are mine! The children are always mine.”

“Amandine’s daughter wasn’t a child when you took her. She’s not yours.”

“Mine!” he screamed. This time it wasn’t just the fallen that cried out: all the children writhed in pain, some of them falling off their horses as they tried to make it stop.

It hurt enough to fracture the spell that bound me, giving me control of my own body, but not my mind. It couldn’t destroy the urge to return to my lord and master. I was too pinned to move, and so I sobbed, beating my fists against my captor’s shoulders. I wasn’t escaping that easily, and secretly, I was glad.