When they returned to the headland, Fionn slipped the end of his grandfather’s candle from his pocket. ‘I’m going to burn this to sneak back inside.’
‘There’s no one there,’ said Sam, who had stalked ahead, to where the little cottage edged into view. ‘The garden’s empty.’
Fionn and Tara exchanged a suspicious glance.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Tara as she hurried to Sam’s side. ‘Oh.’
The garden at Tír na nÓg was indeed curiously absent of Soulstalkers, the deserted headland now smooth and glassy with a fresh layer of frost. It covered the cottage in a glistening blanket, trickling from the rooftop in dainty icicles. The scene was as pretty as a watercolour painting. In another time, Fionn might have hovered a moment longer, even taken a photo of it with his phone, if it weren’t for the ravens perched on the chimney, or the front door blown wide open.
‘Fionn,’ said Tara uneasily.
Sam ducked as a raven launched off the roof and swooped at his head, its hooked beak snapping at his ears. ‘Get off!’
Tara slapped another one away as they raced across the headland and through the open gate.
Ivan met them in the doorway. ‘Hello, children.’
Fionn skidded to a stop. Tara slammed into his shoulder, and the candle stub tumbled from his grasp. ‘Ooof!’
‘Found him!’ Ivan called over his shoulder, his eyes never leaving Fionn’s. ‘Where have you been, Storm Keeper? And how on earth did you manage to slip past so many of us?’
Tara turned on Sam and shoved him out of the gate. ‘Run!’ she told him. ‘Get help!’
Sam ran, and the birds followed, shrieking after him like banshees.
Ivan removed a candle from behind his back and dangled it before them. ‘I suppose this must be your little secret. I can practically taste the magic.’ With his grin fixed beneath his bright bushy beard, he snapped the candle with a crack! ‘It makes me sick.’
Tara gasped.
Ivan threw the broken candle over their heads and out on to the headland. ‘I suppose you won’t be needing them any more.’
Inside the cottage, Fionn’s mother screamed.
Tara darted around Fionn and threw herself at Ivan. ‘Move!’
‘Tara! Don’t!’ shouted Fionn.
Ivan batted her away. She went flying into a rose bush, her hands coming to her face as the thorns jabbed at her skin.
Ivan stalked towards Fionn. ‘How about you just come with me now?’ he said, as a chorus of shouts rang out from inside the cottage. ‘Save the islanders the shame of betraying you. Save your family the trouble of dying for you.’
‘How about you get your zombie Soulstalkers out of my house and off my island?’ Fionn backed away from Ivan. He pictured himself pushing off the ground and flying into the sky. Ripping a tree from the earth and skewering Ivan’s heart. Scooping him up in the wind and throwing him over the cliffs. In those precious few seconds, he imagined some thousand-and-one things he would do, though none of them came to pass. ‘I’m not going anywhere with you.’
‘You’re out of time, Storm Keeper. Leaders make armies, not wax. Even your islanders have lost faith in you.’ He swept his hand around at the glassy planes of winter, at the island dying underneath his feet. ‘You can’t even use your own magic.’
‘W-what?’ Fionn spluttered. ‘Of course I can.’
Ivan laughed. ‘Then why are your family killing themselves to protect you right now? If you weren’t so useless you’d fight back, but you haven’t made a single attempt to hurt me, despite the sound of your own mother’s screams behind me.’
‘If I’m so powerless, come and get me.’ Fionn held Ivan’s gaze – the Soulstalker’s eyes like dark tunnels in his narrow face – as his sister untangled herself from the rose bush and crept inside the cottage. ‘Shouldn’t it be easy for you?’
Ivan marched towards him. ‘All these months of tireless searching for my people, through endless winters and lost villages, forgotten towns and faraway countries, have led me back here, to this moment, and you really think I won’t finish what I started? She will rise when the Storm Keeper bleeds for her. You’re my final puzzle piece, boy.’
Fionn moved his hands behind his back. ‘What if I don’t feel like bleeding for you?’
‘Then I’ll cut down every man, woman and child on this little island, until you do feel like it,’ he said nonchalantly. ‘Don’t you understand the power of my influence? Don’t you see how every single Soulstalker does exactly what I say?’
‘I was wondering about that,’ said Fionn, deftly reaching under his coat. ‘Why do all the other Soulstalkers seem to listen to you?’
‘Because Morrigan speaks to me,’ said Ivan. ‘She speaks through me.’
Moving as little as possible, Fionn worked the shell free from his waistband. ‘So you’re her favourite. It must be slim pickings.’
‘Not quite.’ Ivan’s smile was saccharine, stretched wide with the closeness of a secret. ‘I’m her brother.’
There was a beat of pure silence. The world stopped turning. Even the wind seemed to pause and listen.
Fionn’s fingers lost their purchase. ‘Her brother?’ He could barely say the word.
‘Oh yes.’ Ivan tilted his head. ‘Morrigan murdered my father – he was always a threat to her, you see.’ Behind him, a scream rose up and a Soulstalker was hurled out of the cottage. She landed in a heap on the garden path, clutching her head in her hands. ‘But my brothers and I, we were useful. We had our father’s power but not his … ambition. Our magic could be tamed.’
‘There are more of you?’ said Fionn.
The grass crunched under Ivan’s footsteps.
‘Your legends are wrong, Keeper. Morrigan killed every single magic-born human on her way to Dagda. Save for three. She left us alive, but bound us to her. We led her army with more cunning and bloodthirstiness than the world had ever seen. We were the reason for her success. The Three Stags, the old world called us. The Brutal, the Cunning and the Silent.’ Another step. ‘We were the pyramid upon which she ruled. And we will be so again. When my sister is raised, our full strength will be returned to us once more. Our magic finally restored to our veins.’
Fionn was nearing the edge of the headland. The water roared far below, like it was trying to tell him something. ‘Black point rock,’ he gasped. With sudden, sickening clarity, he understood what those sea shards really were. ‘You broke out of your tomb.’
Ivan laughed. ‘It never sealed me in.’
Another scream from across the headland. Tara. There was no sign of her in the garden, just the dark whip of her ponytail as she leapt past the open door, a candle burning in her fist. Then another Soulstalker tumbled through the air.
Fionn held Ivan’s stare, keeping a firm grip on his attention. ‘But how?’
‘Aldric, Bredon and I belonged to the earth, just as Morrigan did – tied to her by our blood, we shared the same fate, but when the island reached out to claim us, I was quick,’ he said, smiling at his own ingenuity. ‘Cunning. I escaped.’ He looked past Fionn, to the wild Atlantic Ocean, and Fionn knew what he was picturing in his mind: those three black shards tucked around the back of the island. His brothers, waiting to be freed.
Fionn shuddered at the thought of it. There wasn’t a second to waste now – even if Ivan threw him off this cliff and he plummeted to a watery death, he owed it to the island to make sure those brothers never saw the light of day. That Morrigan was never freed from that Sea Cave.
‘You abandoned your family,’ said Fionn, holding the Tide Summoner tight behind his back.
Ivan’s left eye twitched. ‘I came back for them.’
‘Oh, I know,’ said Fionn, leading him further down the headland. ‘I saw you all those years ago, quivering on the deck of The Evorsio. I watched my ancestor destroy your fleet with his bare hands, and then I watched you scrabbling up the mast, like a beetle. Climbing for your life.’
Ivan’s smile faltered.
‘You were so afraid back then,’ Fionn went on. ‘But the Merrows are quite terrifying, aren’t they? They can eat an entire Soulstalker in one bite. I know because I’ve seen it. But then again, so have you.’
‘You weren’t there,’ said Ivan, a note of uncertainty creeping into his voice.
‘I’ve been everywhere,’ said Fionn. ‘Didn’t you know that?’
There was another cry from inside the cottage. This time the front window shattered and a Soulstalker’s face appeared in the frame, the broken glass cutting lines on his cheeks. There were five more piled in the front garden.
‘Shouldn’t you go and check on that?’ said Fionn.
Ivan lunged at him.
Fionn jumped backwards, teetering on the edge of the headland, as he raised the Tide Summoner to his lips.
Ivan grappled at thin air. ‘NO!’
Fionn blew into the shell.
One heartbeat … five heartbeats …
Nothing.
Ivan’s lip curled.
Fionn blew again, his cheeks swelling as he pushed his breath through the mouthpiece. He felt it disappear into the shell, but no noise came, no eerie echo hanging in the air.
Fionn shook the last vestiges of seaweed from it, desperation flooding his body as he blew again. Harder this time. He could feel Dagda’s magic throbbing inside the shell, felt the same magic wide awake in his chest. Watching. Waiting.
No sound.
Nothing.
Ivan laughed. ‘Quick like your ancestor, but not as smart. It’s not bound to you, is it, Keeper?’
Fionn stared at the shell.
Lay worthy hands upon the shell,
And breath becomes the ocean’s knell.
The merrow had told him, but he didn’t listen. Not properly. The hands that found it were certainly worthy, but they hadn’t been his.
The bond that takes a touch to make
Will not before a lifetime break.
The Tide Summoner wasn’t tied to him.
It was tied to Shelby.
‘I could find a use for it though.’ Ivan leapt at Fionn. The shell tumbled from his grasp as the Soulstalker grabbed him by the neck, dangling him over the roiling ocean. There was an awful stretch of nothingness – the wind roaring in Fionn’s ears, the sea air rippling up his back.
Ivan whipped him around by his collar and flung him across the headland. He landed with a hard thud, rolling over three times before coming to a stop nose first in the dirt. ‘Ooomph.’
Ivan twirled the Tide Summoner in his hands. ‘Perhaps we’ll see what our queen can do with Dagda’s craftwork. Perhaps she won’t need you at all.’
‘Give me that!’
Ivan slammed his foot down on his wrist. ‘Such powerful ancient magic, ripe for the taking,’ he said, with giddy amusement. ‘For the twisting. And what better night than the solstice to turn it dark?’
Fionn hadn’t stopped to consider what the Tide Summoner would do in the wrong hands. ‘Thief,’ he hissed. ‘That belongs to Dagda!’
‘Is he here to claim it?’ Ivan lifted the shell above his head and brought it crashing down like a hammer. Fionn rolled over, just in time to see it take a clump out of the frosty earth.
There was an almighty screech. Another Soulstalker pinwheeled through the air. Fionn’s grandfather appeared in the doorway, a candle burning in one hand, his other raised above him. ‘… AND STAY OUT!’
Fionn leapt to his feet, ducking, as his grandfather flung a ball of wind at Ivan, hitting him square between the eyes.
‘Run, lad! Hurry!’
Fionn sprinted back up the headland, vaulted over the pile of groaning Soulstalkers and skidded down the garden path. Inside, the cottage was in disarray, candles toppled from their perches and rolling around the wooden floors. So many had been split in two – the wax crushed along the floorboards, their wicks ripped out like innards.
The Christmas tree had been bashed in and the kitchen table lay toppled on its side. The candle on the mantelpiece pushed its dying flame into the chaos, but Fionn’s grandfather was already slumping against the door frame. The half-used candle was limp in his hand, exertion reddening his cheeks. Tara was doubled over on the floor, retching. There were fresh cuts across her face, and thorns tangled in her hair. Her hands were stained with different-coloured wax. ‘I can’t do any more magic, Fionny,’ she heaved. ‘I’m so tired, I can barely see.’
Ivan marched into the garden. He was the only Soulstalker still standing, but he paid no heed to the others as he passed them.
Fionn’s mother filled up the doorway, like a spectre. ‘Leave my family alone, you leery little creep!’ With a candle in her left hand and her free palm facing out, she ripped a rose bush clean out of the earth and sent it spiralling at Ivan.
He leapt backwards, bringing his hands to his face.
Fionn’s grandfather wheezed a chuckle. ‘Nice one, Evie.’
Fionn’s mother gritted her teeth as she grappled with another rose bush. The branches creaked and then went limp, their roots dug tightly in the frosty earth. She staggered backwards, the candle falling from her fist.
‘Let me guess,’ said Ivan, as he sauntered towards her. ‘Over your dead body, right?’
Fionn charged through the doorway and ran at Ivan. They went down hard on the grass, kicking and punching each other. Fionn tasted blood on his tongue and felt himself fill up with it. His teeth were chattering in his mouth, his magic thrumming hot inside his veins. He arched his back and tried to kick out at Ivan as he tightened his grip on Fionn’s throat.
The ground thumped, the island’s heartbeat as fast as his own. The earth vaulted upwards, like something was trying to burst out. Ivan was thrown skywards. He landed on his pile of Soulstalkers with a bone-cracking thud. He sat up, bleary-eyed, the Tide Summoner clutched to his chest.
The earth thumped as Fionn stalked towards him. Ivan struggled to his feet and backed away from Fionn, beckoning to his fallen comrades. ‘Get up, you fools. Move! Quick!’
There was fear clouding the Soulstalker’s eyes, not of Fionn but of what was coming up the headland behind him. Fionn glanced over his shoulder to find a small crowd marching up the hill. Sam was leading the way, swinging his flute like a battleaxe. Behind him, his father was carrying his illegal hunting rifle, and his mother was spinning what looked like a metal curtain pole. Niall Cannon had come too, carrying a battered hurling stick. Tom Rowan followed up the rear with his pitchfork.
It was by no means an army.
But it was enough to chase the worn-out Soulstalkers away.
They stumbled over each other in retreat. Ivan glared at Fionn over his shoulder, angry spittle foaming in his beard. ‘When the sun sets, this island is mine, Storm Keeper!’
With the Tide Summoner held hostage in his grasp, he turned on his heel and bolted.