In the soupy blackness of his mind, Fionn could hear chanting. The words were distorted, garbled by the faraway rush of water. A droplet landed on his cheek and slithered into his hair.
Tick-tock, watch the clock.
Tick-tock, crumbling rock.
His thoughts flitted by like moths, the wings crushed to dust before he could catch hold of them.
Where am I?
Fionn twitched. He was lying on something cold and soft. Sand, slicked with mist. There was water nearby; waves that spat the scent of seaweed into the air and blew froth up his nose. Slowly he became aware of his body – his arms half crushed beneath him, his legs bent away from each other.
‘Wakey-wakey, Storm Keeper!’ came Ivan’s voice. He kicked him sharply in the ribs. ‘Get up!’
Fionn raised his face from the sand, and found himself in the middle of a cove. The sun had long surrendered to the horizon, and in its place a moon was rising. It was the only beacon of light in a starless sky. Up above, the craggy cliffs peered over him, straining for their reflections in the waves. Fionn groaned as he turned, his neck creaking with the effort. Everywhere he looked, hungry eyes peered back at him. A colosseum of Soulstalkers come to watch him bleed.
‘Look alive, Keeper.’ Ivan dragged Fionn to his feet by the scruff of his neck, and pulled him along behind him. ‘The solstice is upon us.’
Fionn’s eyes adjusted quickly, first to the darkening night … and then to the three onyx shards glistening in the distance. Black Point Rock. They were in Hughie Rua’s Cove. On one end of the crescent-shaped bay, a mound of sea-slimed rocks climbed up towards the cliffs, and on the other end, much too close for comfort, the Sea Cave lay buried inside the rock.
The Soulstalkers streamed around him, filling every inch of Hughie’s little cove. Some carried big hulking rocks with them, stacking them on top of each other to make a rudimentary parapet, while two burly men dragged a cauldron across the sand. It was wide and thick, and hewn from stone – over half Fionn’s size and certainly twice as heavy. They heaved it up on to their makeshift altar, settling it with a thud that sent something dark sloshing over the rim. Fionn tasted the sudden tang of copper in the air.
They paused at the base of the parapet. ‘The tide is still out,’ said Ivan, turning to leer at him. ‘Even the sea is afraid of us.’
It was then that Fionn noticed the Tide Summoner hanging from his neck.
Ivan crooked his finger and Fionn was shoved up on to the rocks. The Soulstalker climbed up after him, curling his fingers around the back of his neck. ‘Beautiful solstice,’ he crooned. ‘A night to die. A night to live.’
Before Fionn could form a proper thought, let alone a plan, he was bent roughly over the cauldron’s rim. Smoke shot up his nose and into his mouth, and he retched. The liquid rippled, plumes of grey turning cloudy white, as a man’s face appeared in the centre. It was long and thin and made of angles. He looked, disconcertingly, like Ivan, only he was much older. Under a slim red beard, he had that same, sloping mouth. His keen eyes were swollen with pupils. They blinked at Fionn, growing bigger as he loomed closer.
The tang of copper grew stronger. Fionn’s head was spinning so fast, he couldn’t see straight. The cauldron had its own strange brand of magic. Just like Cowan’s Lake, it had recorded its memories, only these ones were full of dark magic. It was making him sick.
The man turned sharply to something over his shoulder, and then everything turned red, the icy planes of his face disappearing in rivers of blood. The cauldron hiccoughed and a young woman appeared. She was pale and wan, with wide grey eyes. Fionn knew them too well – darkened and empty, they had bored into him once before on an ancient beach.
Fionn was so entranced by the strangeness of Morrigan trapped inside the cauldron that he forgot the Soulstalker looming over him. Ivan reached over his shoulder and dangled the Tide Summoner by its rim. ‘Let’s start with this, shall we? Seeing as you won’t be needing it.’
‘NO!’ Fionn choked on his scream as the shell tumbled into the cauldron. The liquid hissed, soupy rivers of black rising up to claim it. And all the while Ivan held him still, his fingers like a vice around his neck.
The Tide Summoner disappeared slowly into the cauldron until there was nothing but blood-black oil bubbling below him. Ivan withdrew a knife from his pocket. It glinted in the corner of Fionn’s eye as he brought it to the back of his neck. Fionn squirmed against the lip of the cauldron. He tried to reach into the hole in his chest, to hook a tendril of that weeping magic and call it up from the depths of him.
Please, he implored.
Don’t let this be the end.
Please.
Ivan brought his lips to his ear. ‘Try not to squirm too much.’
There was nothing now but the taste of smoke on the back of his tongue, the glug-glugging of the cauldron as it began to lick Dagda’s magic from the Tide Summoner.
Dagda help me.
I beg you.
Fionn felt the blade press against his neck, a half-second before the world exploded.
Ivan screamed as the ground was ripped out from under them. They were flung backwards into a spray of shale and sand and falling rock. Fionn freewheeled through the air, thrown out towards the sea where he landed in the shallows with a heavy splat! He pressed his cheek to the sand, narrowly avoiding the metal cauldron as it whooshed over his head and landed with an almighty crash!
Amidst the chaos, a familiar voice rang out. ‘Happy solstice, you bloody monsters! Who’s got my grandson?’
Fionn raised his head from the froth, and blinked into the shifting moonlight. The dust was clearing. His grandfather marched right through it.
‘Let me impart this precious kernel of wisdom in what will surely be your final moments in this world.’ He raised his hand to the quivering earth. ‘Hell hath no fury like a grandad scorned.’
The second blast ripped the cliffs apart.