Nessa has always intended to survive her Call, regardless of what anybody else thinks. But now, lying on her back with the silver spirals above her head, and air that burns worse than the smoke she just left behind, she knows she is going to die.

In three minutes and four seconds, flames will be eating the bed that was protecting her from the burning ceiling. The floor will char with heat intense enough to cook her in the time it takes to blink. Here or there, she is dead. Her parents will sink from fear of loss into its certainty, and Anto … Anto will have nobody to leave secrets beneath his pillow; to drag him to Donegal and garden with him in the shadow of Mount Errigal.

Nessa is not given to self-pity, but now it threatens to smother her, and not even the sound of a hunting horn can shift it.

She finds herself lying on a small flat area at the top of a slope so steep that in parts it resembles a cliff. A stream runs down the face of it, leaving acidic muck in its wake all the way down to the bottom. Nessa ignores it. She also ignores the wrist-thick worms with human faces that emerge from the mud to taste her skin. Is she edible? they wonder nervously. Is she bait to trap them?

The horn sounds again, closer now, and Nessa struggles with herself until the part that never surrenders finally gains dominance. She’s already thinking of standing up when the footsteps come pounding toward her and, in a heartbeat, a gang of Sídhe stands about her in a semicircle.

“Why doesn’t it run?” one asks.

“Its legs,” a woman says. She wears a cloak of human skin, decorated with startling patterns of bone. “We should fix them for her. Make them like an ostrich’s and she would give us more sport than this!”

The woman bends down, and only now does the girl remember that avoiding the Sídhe is more than just a matter of life or death: It’s about agony too; about the outrages they work on human flesh and bone before sending the remains home as a souvenir for the friends and parents. Far better to face the fire than whatever they have planned for her!

But before the hands can touch her, another Sídhe arrives, out of breath and laughing.

“No, my friends!” he cries. “Not this one! This one is not ours to kill! We have made a promise to one of the thieves that only he may end her life. Not us! He will do so with bare hands and we shall make him king of all the Milesians!”

Nessa sits up. “Who is this? Who are you talking about? Conor? You have made a deal with … ”

The newcomer is the most handsome man she has ever seen. His face is kind and full of humor as he kicks her in the side hard enough to knock her over onto her stomach. He laughs, and the huge worms slither away in terror.

Now Nessa has a view of the swamp at the bottom of the hill. Beyond it lie thousands and thousands of tents. Grey banners fly over them while hordes of tiny figures mill around the one spot of color she can see: a vibrant green blob that shines and sparkles.

“We can’t kill her,” the newcomer says, “but we can play, yes? We can twist her any shape we like so long as she can live an hour in the Many-Colored Land. Let us make her a spider! The thief king can break her legs off one by one!”

“No!” a woman insists. “Her legs should be plaited into her arms. We can bend her spine so that she makes a perfect ring! We will bring her with us on the invasion. It will raise morale when we roll her among the tents.”

Nessa’s limbs turn liquid with terror. Oh, Crom! Far, far better to find her own death! So, with one hard jerk of her arms, she shoots herself forward and over the lip of the slope. She expects to tumble down that sheer hill, breaking bones all the way, but there is far too much muck for that, and instead she slides over the water-slicked surface faster than an Olympic tobogganist, while cries of joy and applause and the sounding of hunting horns ring out behind her.

A mass of hungry spider trees lie in wait at the bottom of the slope. They like rivers and other marshy areas, but they enjoy human flesh more. They snatch at her as she hurtles past, each attempt scratching her skin and slowing her down. By the time she comes to a stop, three separate plants grip at one limb each, tightening and squeezing like pythons.

“Crom take you all!” she cries. “Lugh curse you! Dagda reject you!”

She rips at the nearest with her teeth. The sap tastes like blood, but the thought of what the Sídhe have planned for her, and Conor after them, keeps her snarling and snapping until she can rip an arm free.

The horn is sounding and her enemies, who have tumbled bravely after her, are no more than a hundred paces behind.

And yet, when at last Nessa finds her feet, she must pause. The camp of the Sídhe army lies only a few hundred strides away and it’s huge. There are baggage “animals” and lumbering war monsters of tortured human flesh. But it is the glowing spot of color she saw from the top of the slope that draws her eyes. It hangs in the air above the army and its shape is that of a door—the same door she saw in the Fairy Fort in the forest. The exact same.

Sídhe soldiers, by the thousand, are building a mound of earth and stone. By the rate they’re going, it will be high enough to reach that glowing portal in less than a day.

But then fingers are pointing from the camp, and with cries of delight dozens of figures come running toward her. Meanwhile, behind her, her pursuers have freed themselves from their own spider bushes and those terrible hands can’t be more than a minute from taking her.

A massive rhododendron saves the lives of Aoife and Anto, despite a thick trunk at its heart that bounces them toward the sparser foliage on the edges.

The boy is coughing and weeping. “She’s gone,” he says. “Oh, God, she’s gone!” and Aoife hugs him like she wishes she was hugged when Emma was stolen.

Aoife is terribly aware of the mound off to the west. The feeling is stronger than it’s ever been, and for some strange reason the image of a huge door keeps appearing in her mind. It’s about to open, she thinks, and she wonders if that means her Call is imminent.

But she can’t think about that now, because they are in a terribly dangerous place. Fire spits from the windows above them and something strange is happening in the old parking lot. Hundreds of people are gathering there, adults and children alike. No! Not children. She shivers when she finally understands what she’s looking at. Belly-high Sídhe are herding the population of Boyle ahead of them and forcing them to kneel on the soaking, cracked concrete.

Before them all stands a tall, muscular human boy, proud and powerful: Conor.

Behind Nessa, the stream feeds into a small lake.

She staggers into the water as the Sídhe rush toward her. It stings every cut and bruise on her body, but despite her legs, Nessa is as strong a swimmer as any in her class, and she makes it to the far bank before the resident monster can do more than shout curses after her. It catches a few of the Sídhe though, forcing the rest of the hunters to run around the banks with spider trees slowing them all the way.

She has gained herself a few minutes. No more. And nowhere does she see any trees with branches thicker than a finger—not a single one. Nessa has always bet big on the ability to make crutches here, but instead her only chance now is to find a place to hide.

So she gets down on her hands and knees to stay out of the line of sight, and she clamps down hard on the urge to cough that grows stronger with every breath of the foul air.

In front of her lies a great flat bog of spider bushes and other grass-type plants. But a strange path runs through all of it, covered with thumb-high clumps of moss and nothing else.

Nessa wants to avoid such open ground, but before she can move a Sídhe girl comes running along it, her face full of laughter, her blonde hair and cloak of human skin flying out behind her. Nessa scrambles around for a rock—any kind of weapon at all!

She won’t need it. The Sídhe steps on one of the lumps of moss, and suddenly she’s gone, replaced by a hole in the ground. There’s the sound of a large splash and a scream. Silence returns to the bog.

Nessa crawls forward. She avoids all the other clumps of moss and comes right up to the lip of the hole. It stretches down, three times her own height, to a pool of bubbling liquid, probably acid because the body of the Sídhe below looks like it’s digesting.

Small lumps, or sticks maybe, line the inside walls of the pit—perfect handholds and footholds if she wants them. And of course she does! This could be the perfect hiding place!

She climbs in, gagging on the fetid stench of rotting flesh. The Sídhe might never see this hole in the vastness of the bog. But if they do, if they bring their “dogs” or whatever, and climb down to get her, she need only drop into the acid below to kill herself. It will be a horrible, horrible death, but she might not have to avail of it and it can’t be any worse than what the Sídhe will do to her, or the flames back home for that matter.

At least I’m fighting, she thinks, looking at the digesting mess below her. And I’ve caused this one’s death already.

The sticks in the walls of the pit turn out to be bone of some kind. It chafes at the soles of her feet. She ignores that pain and climbs all the way down until she is no more than a few steps above the dead Sídhe, so that a casual glance from above might not spot her.

The stench is beyond appalling, as the body beneath her continues to bubble and dissolve in the faint silver light of the Grey Land.

Beads of moisture are forming on the surfaces around her. Her hands become slick and, like her feet, they too are chafing. The sticks she thought of as bone more closely resemble teeth. And the shape of the wall is beginning to change, curving inward at the top, with the teeth up there now pointing down. Above her, the hole looks smaller.

“What?” she whispers to the monster whose throat she now occupies. “You don’t want me to leave?” It’s more like something Megan would have said.

Except Megan would never be this frightened.

“You see,” a Sídhe woman says, her head at Conor’s hip, “we have made you king of this place.” She waves at the locals, on hands and knees in the parking lot. “They all acknowledge it. All these thieves here pledge their loyalty to you.”

“On pain of death,” Conor says.

“Yes,” she agrees. “That is kingship. On pain of death, the weak kneel to the strong and proclaim their love. You have the right now to declare an end to the treaty in this tiny part of the Many-Colored Land.”

“And then what?” he asks. But he can’t keep the grin off his face, because it’s all happening now. Exactly as they promised. Ms. Breen, battered and bleeding, lies in front of him, having sworn an oath to serve him. Other teachers are here. Some of the instructors even, unable to resist the agony of a Sídhe hand sunk deep into their backs, caressing their organs and threatening to squeeze. He wishes he could do that. He wishes he had asked for that power, but it’s too late now. “You’ll go into the rest of Ireland, won’t you? You’ll make other kings?”

“We need no others,” she says. “The other tribes we destroyed were mere … training for us. This is where our exile will end! Here! When our army arrives, we will expand your kingdom. The Gate will open and those who pass through will not grow smaller, but may live and die here! That’s what the end of the unjust treaty means. And all the remaining thieves will be yours to rule so long as they bear no children.”

Conor thinks back to his Call. To when the Sídhe lord pinched off his arms and legs. The memory shudders through his body, but he also remembers the moments that followed it, and they are in a way the proudest of his life. For he overcame the pain to demand revenge.

“You promised,” he says now, “that I would be the one to kill Nessa. Give me that and I will revoke the treaty. Not before.”

“It must be revoked tonight,” she says.

“Then you’d better bring her by tonight. Otherwise the treaty stays.”

It’s the first time he’s ever seen one of the creatures lose their grin, and she’s no longer beautiful in its absence, for it has left deep, deep lines behind it in her cheeks and at the corners of her eyes. Like scars. “We cannot control what a thief will do. She may be in that burning hall above us. She may kill herself as so many do before we can play with them.”

Conor’s chest swells, enjoying her discomfort. “For your sake, she’d better be alive. An oath is an oath. I played my part. I killed the dogs and then strangled two of my friends with my own hands.” Liz Sweeney got away from him, but Bruggers … Sad to kill a friend. Nevertheless, Conor smiles in satisfaction over a job well done. He’ll strangle Nessa too, he thinks. Her white neck was all but designed for it.

He keeps imagining the look there’ll be on her face! He’ll make her apologize first. He’ll make her swear her love. And then he’ll do it anyway, yes, he will.

“Bring Nessa to me and I will revoke the treaty.”

Nessa is hanging on for her life. It may be a whole hour she’s been clinging here, but in the Grey Land who can say? Her arms, her powerful arms, wobble with exhaustion, and her hands are slick with blood, as the teeth slowly, slowly grind into them.

She has decided she doesn’t want to die like this, all alone. She wants to see Donegal one more time. She wants to apologize to her parents for how cold she has been with them. And for them to say sorry for their lack of faith in her chances.

They were right of course.

She longs to hug Anto. And she’s never seen Megan’s grave and wonders if anybody ever visits it with flowers. As for children, that would be nice. They could fill her little cottage while, outside, chickens Anto will never let her eat peck their way through the grain.

She wants all of it. All!

Instead, it’s to be acid if she can’t hold on, fire if she can. There won’t be enough of her left to fill a teacup and everyone will say how they knew she’d never make it, but wasn’t it sweet the way she kept trying anyway? Really, very touching.

She slips again, curses, spits at the walls in front of her. Prays to her mam’s God for her mam’s happiness, that she might find peace. Nessa is in almost total darkness now, for in the time she has hung here, the hole above has shrunk to the size of her hand.

“Masster!” a voice cries. “Masster!”

“Oh, good dog! Great dog!” And then a laugh and a shout. “The thief! My dog has found her!”

Feeble light pours in, and above Nessa three beautiful faces stare into the gloom. A resonant male voice calls, “The stomach will not free you, thief. The only reason it has not shaken you off the wall is that it still feeds on my dear, sweet friend. Come! She would want us to have our fun with you! We will drop you a rope! We will pull you free! And after we will take our companion’s remains to the Cauldron.”

She looks up, to see him above her. The Sídhe all look alike to her, with their glittering skin and large eyes; with their elegance and beauty. Even their hair is all the same color in the pallid grey light. But this one wears a circlet of bone at his forehead and he is much less delicate than the rest: a Hercules with a strange rippling costume that emphasizes the hugeness of his torso.

“Crom take you all!” Nessa spits. “I’d rather die here than at your hands.”

“I swear,” he says. “I swear we will not kill you.”

“Oh! Oh, that’s right. You have promised that pleasure to Conor.”

“Exactly!” He beams. “Come, take the rope. We will make you truly beautiful, so that your people will gasp to see you.”

Nessa ignores the kind offers of help that grow ever more insistent. Her hands and the soles of her feet are in agony, constantly shifting position in search of a comfort that isn’t there. Below her, the Sídhe woman is a horror of bubbling bones.

But the presence of the enemy has filled the girl with defiance. She loves their obvious discomfort over the fact that they must break their word to that traitor Conor. She loves it! As time passes, as every joint in her body feels like it’s popping out of its socket, as her feet shred, as the foul air savages her throat, she grins a grin every bit as vicious and joyful as theirs.

“You’ll never last,” the hero pleads with her. “Hours remain!”

“Oh, I’ll last!” she cries. “I’ll last! And nobody will know it, because I was Called from a burning room and the flames will take me the moment I return! But they were wrong about me. Everybody was, for I will have survived the Grey Land, and Crom take the polio and the doubters! Crom twist you all!”

“A fire?” the man says. His great brow creases, and Nessa laughs.

“No matter what happens,” she says, “you have broken your word. You are liars, no different to us Irish. You are liars and oath-breakers.”

A terrible wail breaks out among them, and it sounds as though there are hundreds of them there now, crowding around the pit.

“You must come out,” says the man. He leans dangerously forward. “You cannot do this. Do you understand? This cannot be!”

His hands are on the edge of the pit. The sleeves around his wrists are each formed from a human mouth, breathing in distress.

“It doesn’t matter.” In spite of her pain, Nessa relishes the words. If she must die, nothing can be better than causing these monsters such anguish. “It’s not like you can stop me going back to where I came from.”

“No,” he agrees, “we cannot keep you from the fire. But we can change you! We can change you just enough to prevent it harming you.”

Nessa is near the ends of her strength. Ready almost to drop. To let the acid take her while they cry despair over a stupid broken oath. But the princeling above has stirred her interest.

“You can make me”—there is no Sídhe word for this, so she has to invent one—“fireproof? You could do that? Of course you can!” She grins. “But I think I’ll just wait here. I’m tired. I’m letting go.”

“No!” he shouts. “I beg you, no!”

“You will just twist me anyway.”

“Twisting?! Why do you say such a thing? We will make you beautiful! You will be a jewel in living flesh!”

Nessa has had enough. She’s so weary, in such pain, that the acid mess below her has come to resemble the softest mattress in the world. She struggles to speak.

“Fireproof me then,” she says. “And promise you will do me no further harm.”

“We never harm! What we do is—”

“Oh, for Crom’s sake! You will do nothing that I consider harm. Understand me? Do you understand?”

The smile of the hero slips, but he nods solemnly and Nessa knows he will keep his promise. They’re so famous for it she wonders why nobody has ever taken advantage of it before. And why do they care so much anyway?

A rope dangles in front of her face, made, she doesn’t doubt, of human skin. It doesn’t stop her pushing torn hands into the loops they have tied in it so they can lift her up and out. It is only when the Sídhe have taken hold of her arms that she realizes she could have asked for more than just fire protection. She could have demanded health. Strong legs! Anything! But it’s too late.

The enemy are standing all around her, hundreds of them and their “dogs.” In the distance, the door in the sky is still glowing green. It is brighter than ever now, and the mound they were building is high enough to reach it. A great host fills the plain around it, and she recognizes it for what it is: an invasion force.

“That’s right,” says the Sídhe hero. “I, Dagda, thank you! For if you had killed yourself below, we would never be able to return to our country, and your people might have survived. By saving yourself, thief, you have killed them. All we need now is for your king to renounce the treaty, and why would he break his promise to us if we have kept ours?”

“I … I don’t understand,” she says.

His grin is back, more powerful than ever. All of the Sídhe are laughing at her.

“I will prepare you for the fire,” he says now. “And the pain will be memorable.”

He’s not wrong.