Like a great golden scarab, the Company of Seven inched across the plain, shielded by the carapace of Dana’s light. But though they were protected from black magic and spells, they still came under attack. The fairy forces thronged to their side to increase the guard, but the outer circle was soon overwhelmed by a ferocious onslaught. The news had spread through enemy lines. The key has entered the field. As a groundswell of animosity seethed against the phalanx, the Company was pressed on all sides.
Dana’s guard fought tooth and nail to hold their places around her. There was no time to think or feel. All acted on instinct; the will to survive. The din of battle was deafening. The fog of war was red. Their swords and spears flashed in the dimness.
With all her strength, Dana upheld the shield of light. She could feel the other force that strove to break it: a relentless malice that emanated from the firewall.
Slowly but steadily, the shining Company cut a swath across the plain. Grim-faced and silent, they beat back the waves of murder and mayhem that broke against them. After what seemed an interminable span of time, they reached the rampart.
Immediately their spirits flagged. The flames gave off a deadly cold as well as intense heat. The cruel extremes worked to disturb and disarm. The golden shield wavered.
And then collapsed.
The moment their defenses fell, the guard were struck full force by an overpowering enmity. They couldn’t hold ranks. Falling apart, they staggered under the weight. Every effort was spent just keeping on their feet.
“Go!” Dana ordered them. “We’ll meet again when the Kingdom is restored.”
Her hands were shaking, but she made enough light to surround herself.
The others backed away from the wall. It was impossible to stay close. Neither dark nor light forces could bear to be near it.
“The light will keep you safe, right?” her aunt Yvonne cried.
Dana didn’t answer.
Gwen and Findabhair were crying openly. Laurel and Finvarra looked ashen.
“Isn’t she safe?” demanded Dee.
There was no point in lying when one battled for the truth.
“The light may protect her,” Laurel said. “That’s our hope. But we can’t know for sure.”
“We should go with her!” cried Yvonne. “We’re her guard!”
Finvarra moved quickly to block her path, even as the others stopped Dee.
“She’s only a kid!” screamed Deirdre, struggling against them. “She can’t go alone!”
“We can’t help her! We don’t have the power!” Gwen shouted. Her voice rang hollow with despair.
“Don’t you think we would if we could?” Laurel said in the same tone.
The aunts had no choice but to accept what was happening. The die had been cast, the decision made. Only one could go into the fire. There was no time to protest. No time to grieve. Weeping out loud, they were in the thick of battle, fighting for their lives.
• • •
There was a brief moment when Dana glanced back at her guards. And wished she hadn’t. A series of terrible sights assailed her. Her aunts, standing back to back, were surrounded on all sides by hideous creatures. Laurel, seized by the Black Annis, was being dragged deep into enemy lines. Gwen raced after her, sword slashing and hewing. Finvarra fell to the ground as an arrow pierced his chest. Findabhair cried out his name as she ran to defend him.
Dana turned away. She had no choice. The sense of urgency was overwhelming. There was only one way she could hope to save the others. From the moment she had stepped onto the battlefield, she had sensed who lurked inside the flames. The time had come. To do what she had dreaded for so long. She had to confront her enemy. Alone.
She licked her lips. They felt dry and cracked. But she forced herself to speak.
“Are you hiding?”
Her legs were shaky, threatening to buckle, but the words rang out, encouraging her to say more.
“Playing it safe in the back while your soldiers die? I see you couldn’t touch the portal.”
For there, just beyond the firewall, on an island of green grass, stood the gateway. Pristine and intact.
Without stopping to think, Dana stepped into the flames.
• • •
As soon as Dana entered the firewall, Crowley’s face appeared. It leered at her from the flames with grotesque glee. As the first stabs of pain pierced her armor of light, she sensed his triumph; his belief that he had won even as he was killing her.
His voice hissed around her.
“Idiot! What good is a door without a key? Once I have destroyed you, the portal can stand here forever, sealed and useless. The Earthworld on one side, Faerie on the other. Never the two shall meet and both will perish alone.”
His words rang out like a funeral knell. The flames seared her skin. As her immortal self struggled to contain the pain, Dana acknowledged the truth. Her light might keep her fairy self safe, but her human body could not withstand the fire.
It was the final irony of the quest. Before she had begun her journey, Dana would not have mourned this loss as deeply, for it was her humanity that always called her out of Faerie. Now there was so much to grieve as she left behind the new life she had only begun to live. In her mind she bade farewell to them all, her family, her new friends, and most of all, her beloved Jean. Heartsore, she lamented what she and he would lose, all the time they should have had together.
And even as her mortality slowly burned away, Dana’s fairy self moved inexorably toward the portal. The flames seemed to stretch for an eternity. A fiery plain to traverse. An endless gauntlet to run. It was important that Crowley believe this was her sole intent. He mustn’t know the part he himself would play. Not yet.
Drawing near to the heart of the matter, near to the malevolent heart of her adversary, she was confronted by a mindless will to destroy. This was nothing like the imaginary evil so often depicted in stories. Neither epic nor exciting, it was barren and monotonous and utterly dismal. The banality of evil. There was nothing lively or imaginative about it, for it sought only to kill liveliness and the imagination.
Knowing instinctively what she had to do, Dana reached out to grasp hold of Crowley. He wavered and changed in her grip, one minute reflecting the human body he had stolen, the next, a monstrous tentacled thing. Underneath the two was another presence, an oily form, darker than night. This was the one she concentrated on. The waspish buzzing exploded around her, now recognizable as the cries of the countless creatures he had killed. Despite her distress, Dana kept her grip. The immediate backlash was horrible. Like a malignant worm, her enemy burrowed into her mind. Worse than the physical revulsion was the mental anguish that came with the onslaught. She had to contain his malice without falling prey to the darkness itself.
Truth shall be thy shield and buckler.
The whisper fluttered through Dana’s thoughts like wings. It was time. Time to know the evil that had come to her.
A series of images appeared in the firewall. Some echoed secrets and rumors she had heard in Faerie. Others were entirely new and unknown, resonating with the mystery and significance of a dream.
From a lake of black water rears a monstrous serpent with thousands of eyes; he who curls around the Tree of Life that bears both Faerie and the human world like golden apples.
The same creature lies motionless on the shore of the lake, eye sockets gaping, blood trickling from its wounds. With sudden shudders and great spasms, it swallows its own tail. Then, rolling into the water, it sinks beneath the waves.
Finvarra, High King of Faerie, follows the Great Worm into the waters of death.
There on the sand is a dark stain. A skin of the Great Worm shed and forgotten. It begins to bubble like oil, seething with rage: a demon born of the shadow of the Destroyer of Worlds.
Shock waves strike Faerie at the loss of the First King. Power is needed to restore equilibrium. The Midsummer Fire must burn in the West.
The shadow of the Destroyer enters Faerie. Snaking through the cracks that rend the land, it lays down spells on every gateway. But one portal is sealed and beyond its reach.
Even as the shadow swells with rage, it smells the blood. The key to the last portal. The one it must kill.
As the Midsummer Fire is lit, waves of energy heal Faerie’s wounds. The demon is caught in the fiery light, yet it does not die.
Honor, the High Queen of Faerie, must find the one the demon seeks. Where is the light to bridge the darkness?
The demon enters a human body to pursue its prey, but by the time it catches its victim, she has discovered her power. The shadow of the Destroyer is cast into the sea.
Once again the demon survives. Even as it dissolves in the brine, it clings to life, feeding on the toxic water. Sinking into the depths, it captures an ancient creature that broods on the sea floor. Now a green and tentacled thing, the demon slowly, inexorably crawls across the ocean: toward the one it is destined to kill.
“Your task is done,” Dana whispered. “I’m dying.”
Reveling in his victory, Crowley was merciless. He bombarded her with more visions to feed her despair. She saw how evil ruled the Earthworld, how it triumphed continually in every corner, both big and small: the greed of the powerful who squandered their riches while so many starved; land and air polluted by industry; forests felled and waters poisoned; animals tortured for human gain; women and children enslaved; racism and murder; war and war and war. Everywhere she saw the face of the Destroyer, the murderous shadow that dogged mankind. Where there is no respect for life, there you will find evil.
In a lightning flash, she saw the true nature of the war being waged in humanity’s history. The battle fought on the Plain of the Great Heart was the battle fought in the hearts of all men and women. The monstrous forces pitted against the Land of Dreams were shadows and projections, misshapen creations of the human mind; fairy-tale versions of the real evil in the world that came from humanity, not gods or spirits.
“We are the enemy,” Dana whispered, “and we are the battlefield.”
Weighed down by hopelessness, Dana searched in her heart for something bright to offset the dark. Deep in her mind a faint image flickered. As she strained to see it, the vision grew stronger. A beautiful woman, tall and pale and as luminous as the stars. She rode a white horse that trod upon shining waters, and she carried a spear. Dana knew who she was, though she had never met her. You belong to that tribe who herd the stars across the heavens, who have light in their veins, who are descended from the White Lady of the Waters. The Lady was her forebear, her fairy ancestress. But though Dana was inspired by the vision, it wasn’t enough. Drowning in the darkness that was human despair, she needed more than a distant ideal to cling to. She needed something real.
The image of the Lady wavered and changed. Another woman emerged.
There before her stood Gran Gowan, steady as a rock, a staunch Protestant who had married a Catholic for love. With the raw courage of the pioneers that ran in her veins, a true descendant of the intrepid Thomas, she had walked a broader path than many. Dana could see the lines in her grandmother’s face, and the hardship she had suffered, left to rear her children when her husband died young. Despite adversity she had lived undefeated, a woman proud of her life. As she smiled at Dana with infinite love, she wielded her rolling pin like a weapon. Pastry dough can tell if you’re afraid of it. You’re a Gowan. Stand strong!
The image was so bizarre, so contrary to what was happening that Dana burst out laughing.
And the laugh echoed like music, like freedom, like light.
• • •
As the cool clear laughter washed over the flames, Crowley shrank back in shock. Only now did he glimpse the depth of his failure. The ruin of his mission. With the first stab of doubt came tremors of fear, even as Dana spoke the words that marked his doom.
• • •
“I am the gift. I am the sacrifice. I am the key to the door.”
• • •
Though he raged and screamed against it, the shadow of the Destroyer was slowly dispelled. By accepting Dana’s death, he had appeased the betrayal from which he was birthed. He had restored the balance. For here was a deeper truth that could not be denied. Evil is but a small and passing thing. He was part of a whole much bigger than himself. A strand of story in a Great Tale.
• • •
As the struggle with Crowley ended and the shadow faded away, Dana collapsed. The flames still burned around her as she clung to her light, but everything was different. Like perfume in the air, she caught the scent of promise.
Vague figures moved in the firewall. She sensed they were real, not visions. Some looked human, others appeared to be animals, and there were those who seemed a mixture of both. Human heads on animal bodies. Animal heads on human bodies. More and more arrived. They were a shining assembly, multitudinous, living, glorious. They were speaking among themselves. The murmurous sound was like that of an ocean. They were discussing her quest. For a moment Dana shared the same experience as her enemy, as she caught sight of her own small part in the immensity of a Grand Design.
With a rush of joy, she felt the goodwill directed toward her and the promise that was made. They would come. They would help. She had defeated the demon, but the hellfire was beyond her power; for she was in her death throes.
Everything was fading around her. The sounds of battle on the plain receded like the tide. Now a howl echoed on the wind. One last time, Dana glanced back into the red night of war. High in the air, the spirit boat flew past the full moon. Grandfather and Roy paddled the canoe. Two wolves sat between them. They had come in the last hour for one reason only. They had come for Dana.
She heard Jean’s cry inside the wolf call. Heard also the fear and despair that echoed through that howl.
Stay alive. I love you.
• • •
The ground trembled underfoot. The beat of drums sounded over the plain. Deep and loud, reverberating through the air, the pounding drowned the din of war.
O for a voice like thunder, and a tongue
To drown the throat of War!
The drumming quickened like a thousand heartbeats, call-notes throbbing, pulsing louder and louder. Then came the Voices. Singing a song that was carried by the wind.
O Siem
We are all family.