Swallowing Darkness

I put my hands with the bracelets of tentacles on top of Gran's thin chest. Tears bit at my eyes, and I had to blink them away to keep my vision clear. My skin flared to life, moonlight glow. I called my power. I called all of it. If ever I were truly queen of faerie, princess of the blood, let it be this night, this moment. Give me all of it, Goddess. I ask this in your name.

My hair glowed so brightly I could see the burning garnet of it from the corners of my eyes, see it flow down the front of my gown, like red fire. My eyes cast green and gold shadows. The nightflyers that touched me glowed white, and that glow slid around the circle of them, so that their flesh glowed like sidhe flesh, white and moonlight bright.

Sholto's body began to glow, as white and pure as our own. His hair ran with yellow and white light, like the first glow of dawn in a winter's sky. I heard his first breath, a rattling sound, the sound of death living in a gasp.

His eyes opened, wide and already full of yellow and gold fire. He stared up at me. "Merry," he whispered.

"My king," I said.

His gaze went to the nightflyers glowing around us. They burned as brightly as any sidhe had ever burned. Sholto said, "My queen."

"On the life of my grandmother, I swear vengeance this night. I call kin slayer against Cair."

He put his hand over mine, and the glowing tentacles of the nightflyers flowed over his hand and mine, binding them together. "We hear you," the nightflyers said, almost with one voice.

"Merry," Galen yelled, "don't do this!"

But I understood something I had not before. When Sholto had called the wild hunt into being inside faerie, I had not been with him. I had already begun to run. I would not run tonight. We had called the power together with our bodies, and it was with our bodies that we would ride it.

"Get the humans out," I said, in a voice echoing with power, as if we knelt in a vast cavern instead of a small room.

Rhys didn't wait to ask questions; he forced Galen to help him. I heard Rhys say, "They will go mad if they see more. Help me get them out!"

I leaned in to Sholto, with our hands laced together by the nightflyers, glowing flesh on top of glowing flesh, so that when our lips touched, the flare of light was blinding even to me.

Out of that light, that pure, Seelie light, the far wall with its broken window began to melt. To melt in the light, but it did not melt away. Out of the white, cool light, shapes formed. Shapes with tentacles, and teeth, and more limbs than seemed necessary. But whereas the last time they had spilled out of darkness and an unlight, now they poured out of light and whiteness. Their skin was as white as any sidhe, but their forms were what the wild hunt of the sluagh was meant to be. They were formed to strike terror into the heart of any who saw them, and drive mad those who were weak.

Sholto, the nightflyers, and I turned as one being toward the spill of shining nightmares. All I could see tonight was the glow of eyes, the alabaster shine of skin, the white, sharp shine of teeth. They were a thing of terrible beauty, as hard and fine as marble brought to life, with a lace of tentacles and many legs, so that the eye tried to make of them one great shape. It was only by staring that you realized it was a mass of shapes, all different, all wondrously formed with muscles and strength enough to do their work.

The ceiling melted away, and larger forms slid down toward us. The nightflyers released my hand enough for me to touch one of the tentacles' shapes, what had been a mass of shape, so confusing, so antediluvian that even with power riding me, my mind could not make form of it. The magic protected me, or my mind might have broken, trying to see what dangled from the ceiling. But the moment I touched that first shining form, it changed.

A horse flowed out of the mass of shapes. A great white horse, with eyes that glowed with red fire, and steam puffing from its nostrils with every breath. Its great hooves struck green sparks from the floor.

Sholto sat, with the small body in his arms. Gran looked so small there, like a child. His arms, his chest, were covered with her blood as he held her out to me. There were other men in my life who would not have offered me the choice. They would have already decided what they would do, but Sholto seemed to understand that it had to be my decision.

I touched the neck of the horse, and it was real, and warm, and pulsing with life. I leaned against its shoulder, for it was too tall for me to mount without aid. It nuzzled my hair, and I felt something there. I reached my hand up and found leaves. Leaves and berries in my hair, woven in among the garnet glow.

Sholto looked at me, eyes a little wide, still holding the body of the woman I had loved above all other women. "Mistletoe," he whispered, "entwined in your hair."

I'd had it happen once before inside faerie, but never outside. I looked past the nightflyers, still glowing, and found Rhys and Galen the only ones still in the room. Galen was shielding his eyes, as the rest of us had done in that night that had brought power back to the sluagh. The night that Doyle had said, "Don't look, Merry, don't look." I had a moment to think of him, carried away from me. He was somewhere in this hospital, maybe fighting for his life. I started to lose my purpose, then I looked up at the writhing nightmares. I remembered that even a glimpse of what had boiled in the ceiling of the cavern had been madness. Tonight I could look into the center of that shining, writhing mass, and understand that it was raw magic. It was only a nightmare if that was what you thought it would be. Raw magic forms in the mind before it forms to the touch.

I stared into it, and knew that until I finished this hunt there was no way to do anything else. It was like starting an avalanche — you have to ride it to its end. Only then could I embrace my Darkness once more. I prayed the Goddess would keep him safe for me until the magic freed me of its power.

Rhys gazed at it all with wonder in his face. He saw what I saw: beauty. But then he had been a god of bloodshed and war, and before that a deity of death. Galen, my sweet Galen, would never be anything so harsh. This was not a magic for the faint of heart. My heart wasn't faint; it felt as if my heart were missing. Whatever it was that allowed me to feel was gone. I looked at Gran's body, and there was a roaring emptiness inside me. I felt nothing but vengeance, as if vengeance could be its own emotion cut free of hate, anger, or sorrow. Vengeance as if it were a force of its own, something, almost, alive.

Rhys walked to the circle of nightflyers, gazing up into the writhing mass of white light and shifting shapes. He stopped at the glowing edge of the circle. He looked at me now. "Let me go with you."

It was Sholto who answered. "She has her huntsman for tonight."

Galen spoke, still staring at the floor. "Where is Merry going?" He still didn't understand. He was too young. The thought came to me that he was older than I, by decades, but the Goddess whispered through my head, "I am older than all." I understood; in this moment I was she, and that made me old enough.

"Take care of her, Galen," I said.

He glanced up at me, and saw the horse with its flashing eyes and white skin. For a moment, he wasn't afraid, he was simply amazed. He, like me, was too young to remember when the sidhe still had their shining horses. We had only had stories before this moment.

The circle of nightflyers parted and Rhys and Galen both reached upward, as if it were pla

Rhys's hand also brought a white horse, but it was like an illusion, or a trick of the eye. One moment white and solid and very real, the next skeletal, like the proverbial steed of death.

Rhys spoke quietly and happily as he rubbed its nose. He spoke in Welsh, but a dialect I could barely follow. I could understand that he was happy to see the horse, and that it had been too long.

Galen touched his horse, as if he were certain that it would vanish, but it didn't. It butted him gently in the shoulder, and made a high, happy whi

Sholto held Gran's body out to Galen, and he took her gently in his arms. His smile was gone, and there was nothing but sorrow. I let him have the sorrow, let him grieve for me, because my own grief could wait; tonight there would be blood.

A shape from above touched Sholto's shoulder, as if it could not wait for him to touch it, like an overeager lover. The moment it touched him, it formed into something white and shining, but it was not exactly a horse. It was as if the great white steed had mingled with a nightflyer, so that there were more legs than any horse would have, though one graceful head rose from strong shoulders. Its eyes were the empty black of the nightflyers that had begun to sing around us. Yes, sing, in high, almost childlike voices, as if bats could sing as they flew above your head. I knew in that moment that my power had changed what this hunt would be. I was not sluagh, nor pure Unseelie, and though we would be terrible and we would bring vengeance, we would come on the songs of the nightflyers. We would come shining from the sky, and until the vengeance was done nothing could stand against us. The mistake last time had been not giving the hunt a purpose, but that mistake would not be made tonight. I knew who we hunted, and I had spoken her crime. Until she was hunted to ground, no power in faerie or mortal lands could withstand us.

Sholto lifted me to sit on the horse with its red, glowing eyes. He mounted his own many-legged steed. The nightflyers' song became a chant of words so ancient that I could feel more of the building fall away just from the sound of it. Reality tore around us, and I spoke the words, "We ride."

Sholto said, "We hunt."

I nodded, wrapping my fingers in the horse's thick mane. "We fly," I said, and kicked my bare heels into her flanks. She leaped forward into the empty night beyond. I should have been afraid. I should have doubted that a horse without wings could fly, but I didn't. I knew she would fly. I knew what we were, and the wild hunt, hunts from the air.