The Braeroddach Loch stood silent and majestic under the early morning sun. If summer hadn’t turned out to be so cold this year, someone might have been practicing some sport or even fishing, but as it was, only the calm waters greeted Lily when she arrived.
After finishing the bread bun, Lily had packed her offering, her newly found notebook, a jacket, and some money into a knapsack and had set out well before sunrise. The lake was just a few miles northwest from her house and she could navigate the distance. It was better not to try to get a lift or hop onto a bus headed in that general direction because that would call too much attention and she would rather do without it. Especially when it was so easy to just hike.
Lily took only a moment to appreciate the lonely sight and another to orient herself, and then she began to make her way around the shore to the small promontory where she knew she would find her destination. Initially, when Troy had turned his back on her and she had realized she would have to find the cave on her own, she had panicked, but at some point while she kneaded the dough, she had known where she had to go.
There was a legend about Braeroddach Loch. Not very important, of course; it was nothing in comparison to Ness Loch. Still. The tales said there was a hole that was, in truth, a gate to the underworld. It was deep and gaping, and people said that sometimes, on the right day and at the right time, you could hear a sad song drifting up from the core of the earth. No one had ever descended the hole, either. When reminded of the legend, people scoffed and said that it had not been explored because it was nothing but a deep hole, so there was nothing to explore. That the sounds coming up were nothing but the wind, a trick like a giant seashell. Those were normal explanations, born from rational people.
It wasn’t the truth.
And when Lily stood over the open maws of the hole, she could see why they would come up with those theories. There was something clinging to the place, a thin veneer that made it seem like it belonged to another world altogether.
It probably did belong to another world. Most likely it was an opening of a path, bigger and thus clearer for her senses than the ones she had traversed before.
But what will I find on the other side? Am I even supposed to cross myself before I know the cuelebre is dead?
She would rather not, but she had only one chance to pull this off and she couldn’t leave it to blind luck. She had to go herself and make sure it worked. Drying her sweaty hands on her pants, she took out the bun and stood at the lip of the hole.
She let herself slip.
The transition between one world and the one hidden beside it was different this time. Either because of fear or because she was crossing over alone and uninvited, her stomach jerked and she felt an awkward pull in her limbs as if each part of her wanted to go their own direction.
She landed with a thud when the feeling reached just this side of painful and the impact took all air from her lungs.
Somehow, her offering stayed in her grasp.
Lily forced herself to breathe and look around. Nothing had jumped on her when she had landed and she took it to be a good sign, but still, she needed to have her wits about her. This would be treacherous ground and she was ill-suited to it, just as she had proved by being roped into the bargain.
The cave was nothing like Troy’s hideout, not even like Glaistig’s. Their areas of the hidden world were humid and cool, saturated with water. This was dry, so much so that the air seemed to suck even the moisture from one’s skin. It hadn’t been formed by constant dripping or by subterranean currents as many other beautiful caves were. Here there was only the pressure of the earth itself compressing and packing and breaking. While there was no clear source of light, Lily could see just fine. The rough stone walls were ocher and massive without so much as a fissure. The floor felt warm under her feet.
She swallowed.
“Cuelebre,” she said, trying to sound as if she knew what she was doing. She was proud when her voice only wobbled a little. “I come to you bearing an offering.”
“You have trespassed,” said a rumbling voice. “No mortal may cross my boundaries without permission.”
Then, the cuelebre appeared. One moment the cave was a closed, empty vault, and the next there were stairs leading out to a huge corridor. In the opening, curled over itself, laid the serpent-like guardian, staring at her with an amber, ancient eye. The creature must have been at least eighty feet long and its jaws were proportionate with the rest of the body. Seeing its sheer size, appreciating its teeth and the scales that plated its whole body, Lily understood what Troy had meant about impossible fights.
She wished she had better prepared for this part of the encounter.
“Please, forgive my mistake.” She tried to sound formal, respectful. She tried to talk like Troy did. “It was caused by my eagerness to show my appreciation.”
There was a sound of stones breaking and crumbling under infinite force and Lily realized with a start that the cuelebre had snorted a laugh.
She felt cold sweat pooling in the small of her back and she shivered.
“I’ve prepared an offering following in the ancient ways and didn’t dare to risk a… misplacement.”
“I see.” It stirred and uncoiled and, in spite of its looks, its languid movement reminded Lily more of a cat than a cold-blooded snake. That was something. Cats were supposed to be cute, weren’t they? “The ancient ways, you say? Tell me then, little mortal, who are you?”
“I’m a faerie doctor,” she said without hesitation.
“Are you now.” There was no question in its tone and it brought its great head closer, inspecting her.
Lily couldn’t afford to be closely inspected. The iron nails might be mistaken for the blood in her hands, hidden as they were under the smell of fresh bread and the sweet cloy of honey, and if there was a more mystic stench, it might be mitigated by the symbolism of the offering, but it would not last long and it would not hold against a real examination.
“In training,” she was forced to add. The hand holding the bun began to shake.
There was another rumble, the distant sound of upheaval produced maybe by an earthquake. “Ah,” it said, thunderous mirth invading its voice. “And what part of your training are you accomplishing today, pray tell?”
“None, I—”
“Tsk,” the cuelebre interrupted. “Nothing should turn a worthy soul from their goals. If it is training that you do, then you should train.”
The mere surrealism of a giant serpent scolding her as if she were a schoolgirl who had forgotten her homework was nearly enough to dispel the rising fear and allow Lily to think. She faced a guardian of the secrets of the earth who despised idleness and was quite vocal about it. Then, there was only one correct answer.
“I rest from my training today,” she said, “so tomorrow I may work on”—here she stuttered, only slightly, while her mind’s eye reviewed the many odd things she had seen in her grandmother’s attic—“on a stone mortar to help me prepare the brews.”
“And why would you not work today?”
“Because first I had to thank you for telling me which kind of stone would be better for that.”
There was another peal of that monstrous laughter, this time loud enough to make the floor vibrate under Lily.
“Clever little mortal,” the cuelebre said. “Well played. However, you still trespassed. I should ask an additional price for that.”
“Name it,” Lily said, knowing she would regret her words. She should haggle, twist the situation so she came up on top, make it seem like she had done the cuelebre a favor instead… but she had gambled much and won so far. She didn’t dare place any more bets.
The cuelebre narrowed its eyes and studied her for a long moment.
“You will take your mortar and leave your offering,” it said at length. “And one year and one precise day from now, you will return and bring me a lock of hair of whoever benefited of your using this mortar for the first time.”
Lily was sure that hair, nail clippings, and other such things were quite dangerous in the hands of a faerie, but she knew that one year and one day from that moment, either the cuelebre or herself would be dead. And even then, she didn’t plan on using the mortar—it had only been the first half-logical thing coming to mind. All in all, it looked like a good bargain and she tried very hard to keep a straight and somber face as she gave the cuelebre her assent.
“And it is done,” it said.
The cuelebre moved then, its great body unfolding to the sound of scales sliding against scales. There was a rumble and Lily’s vision trembled, the air undulating as if it were too hot, and when the gossamer veil of heated reality settled once more, the corridor leading to the heart of the cave was clear and a small translucent bowl stood at its mouth.
“Go on, claim your prize,” the cuelebre said, slithering around her.
The thought of walking farther into the cuelebre’s realm and putting the huge creature between herself and the opening of the path she had come through didn’t appeal to Lily, but she had come much too far to stand back now. She couldn’t begin to second-guess herself.
Trying to act with aplomb, she walked up the stairs to a mortar and pestle made of exquisite crystallized quartz, smooth as if the stone had been born in such a shape. When she knelt to pick up the cuelebre’s side of the bargain, she stole a look beyond the corridor. It was long, perhaps as long as the cuelebre itself, and on the far side, she could see some sort of dais raised low with a fist-sized stone atop. The chamber was lit by the same unnatural light that seemed to permeate the cuelebre’s domain and she thought she caught shadows pooling around the stone she was supposed to retrieve.
The vision struck her as odd and it made her fingers falter when she gripped the mortar. The quartz was still warm to the touch and she put it in her knapsack almost reverently because, whether she would use it or not, she had been given a gift fit for kings and she knew it. Then, she deposited her bun of iron bread in place, and as she stood again, she realized why the shadows in the inner chamber of the cave had caught her eye.
Nothing in this realm cast a shadow, nothing but that stone. Just as the diffused illumination had no source, so there were no dark counterpoints. Not even she cast a shade.
She glanced over again as she began to walk back toward the opening, trying to be subtle but unable to resist.
The shadow was gone. And so was the stone.
The surprise caused her breath to hitch. Had she been tricked? Had the stone even been there before? Had the cuelebre found her out and was only playing with her?
Please no. Please don’t let it know I tried to fool it.
Her eyes darted to the path out. Could she make a run for it? No, she couldn’t. While it traced a full circle of the entrance cave, the cuelebre’s tail had planted itself right between herself and escape. And where was “escape” anyway? She had found the opening of the path by jumping down a hole. She couldn’t very well jump up again and be out now.
The cuelebre slithered back to the opening of the corridor, its tail still trailing far behind its head and right where Lily wished to be. Its head rose over the offering and its opening jaws cast a gruesome shadow against the wall as the cuelebre’s head dove to claim its due. Part of Lily’s mind noted the lone shadow, noted the glimpse of darkness along with the size of the teeth and the glistening trail of saliva over the tongue.
Most of her could only chant the mantra—Eat it, eat it, eat it!
It did.
Lily breathed out a sigh of relief.
And then the cave exploded.
The bun of bread couldn’t have been very far down the cuelebre’s gullet when it reared its head, its long body tensing and convulsing, shaking Lily to the ground. It roared and the sound, beyond being reminiscent of an earthquake, set the cave itself to tremble.
“Treacherous mortal!” The agonized syllables collided like tectonic plates and the cave walls splintered, gravel and small stones raining down on Lily.
And then the cuelebre’s head darted at her, its eyes shining with immortal rage, its teeth and jaws strong enough to break her just as the guardian’s refuge was breaking all around and over and under her. She tried to scramble to her feet, but the cuelebre moved too fast and suddenly the shadow cast by that gaping death was upon her—
But the shadow moved faster than the creature itself and shoved her. She fell and skidded to the side and the cuelebre’s teeth gouged out the very stone floor where she had been but a moment before.
Cool water splattered over Lily’s face and a chilly hand pulled her up. And there, in place of the shadow that had flickered through the cave, stood Troy.
Lily felt safer.
“This way,” he said, diving toward the cuelebre’s trashing head.
She faltered, every instinct she had screaming for her to duck the other way. “Are you crazy? It’s going to eat us!”
“He will trap us otherwise!” Troy countered, sparing her a glance as he hauled her along.
He was right, Lily saw as they both rushed at the very jaws of the creature that wanted to kill them. The cuelebre might be in its death’s throes, but still it tried to circle them, creating a wall with its own trashing body.
Again, the massive head dove at them. Lily read Troy’s tension just a fraction of a second before he threw the both of them down, using their momentum to tumble under the cuelebre’s mouth. The scales of its throat were close enough to touch and the heat they radiated turned Troy’s skin warm against hers.
Then, they were clear. The cuelebre had to maneuver around to restart its pursuit and the convulsions that shook it would make that very, very difficult. Still, Troy got them both to their feet and kept running, the fear in his gaze not diminishing in the slightest. The floor kept roiling beneath their feet, and the cracks in the walls became wider.
“What’s going on?” Lily shouted over the falling stones.
“The cave is collapsing,” Troy said. “We must find a path out and do it now.”
“The entrance?”
“Already gone.”
They reached the corridor leading out of the cave and Lily looked back. The cuelebre wasn’t dead, but it was dying; the scales that should’ve protected it kept the iron inside its body as it burned and poisoned it. The cave itself seemed to contort, and indeed, the spot where Lily had first appeared was already covered by debris and rolling rocks.
“Do not stop!” Troy’s voice jerked her out of contemplating the destruction and she rushed after him.
“Where are we going?” The spasms from the main room grew and hit the corridor like a whiplash, lifting Lily from the ground. She rolled with the fall as best she could, feeling the jagged edges of crumbled walls and cracked floor piercing her skin and bruising her bones.
Troy didn’t reply. He stood beyond the dais where the stone she had been supposed to fetch had lain, studying the wall. His long fingers danced over the trembling stone, touching here and there, dragging almost gentle caresses over the surface even as it broke.
“Troy? What are you doing?” He ignored her and droplets of water glistened over the wall under his fingertips.
The corridor behind them collapsed. Lily threw herself up the dais, but the ripples caught her and she fell, the stone stairs biting her ribs and her cheek. She tasted blood.
She knew she had to keep running, but for a moment, she couldn’t remember why. She couldn’t tell which was up or down as the remains of the cuelebre’s cave twisted and shattered around her. She couldn’t hear the deafening noise of the earth burying them.
She tried to crawl forward, backward, somewhere, but strong arms held her and lifted her. Without thinking, she wrapped her own arms around Troy’s neck and clung to him for consciousness as he threw them both through the opening of a new path.
Before darkness claimed her, she thought she saw a woman over Troy’s shoulder. She was a beautiful creature of black hair and pale, glowing skin, and she stood under the falling stones. Laughing.