“Oweynagat.” I quelled a shudder at the name. There weresimilar places in the human realms—places said to lead to Donn’s dark realm. The few I had explored had been musty, dusty cracks in the ground. But this was Tír na nÓg. “Doesn’t that meanCave of the Cats?”
“It does.”
“Why?”
His expression twisted. “You should hope not to find out.”
Moments later, I heard them—near-silent footsteps in the dense underbrush. Low growls vibrating the dim. I peered into the shadows, which rippled as though alive. I swore I glimpsed eyes, glowing like molten gold. Fur dark as liquid shadows, sheeny in the faint light.
I pawed at my hips, where my skeans usually sat, but Irian motioned for me to be still.
“Bog cats,” he muttered. “They do not feed on flesh—be not alarmed.”
Easier said than done. Their huge, lithe bodies crouched low, ready to pounce. Each step the cats took was unnervingly quiet, their claws gliding over the forest floor without disturbing so much as a fallen leaf.
“Whatdothey feed on?”
“No one knows. Some say they feast on secrets, lapping truths like spilled cream. Others say they devour regrets, savoring the bitterness of what might have been.” Irian glanced over his shoulder. “I do not believe they will chase us, so long as we do not run.”
“Are you sure about that?” The bog cats drew steadily closer in the shadows, all sleek limbs and dark fur and glowing eyes. Fear trellised my spine like midnight roses, cloyingly dark and spiked with sharp wishes.
I wanted a blade. Preferably two. Armor. Another set of eyes mounted on the back of my head.
Dusk thickened toward night. The cats slunk ahead of us, spine-chillingly fast, then crouched low, their muscles coiling. Their slit pupils yawned as their tails lashed back and forth. A gutturalsnarl erupted from one of them; the others took up the sound in a chorus of menace. They bared their fangs—long and curved, glistening like ivory daggers. Their breath oozed like mist between their paws. Irian drew his sword, which sang out an eager note. My pulse ratcheted as my starshine kindled awake. Light and heat spilled from me in radiant pulses, discharging outward in a brilliant burst. I saw Irian shade his eyes in the moment before the world went blindingly white.
My vision returned slowly—little more than bright blotches dancing over blackness before I began to register shapes once more.
The bog cats had disappeared. And where they had crouched, snarling and staring, was a path, cloistered with silver-branched trees. Beyond them, I glimpsed a glen ringed in jewel-bright flowers. Flaxen leaves crowned trees swaying like sheaves of wheat.
“I have been here before.” My experiences in the Deep-Dream painted the inside of my mind. “I know this place.”
Irian wiped his eyes but did not sheathe his sword. If anything, his demeanor grew even more defensive: his jaw tightening, his mouth thinning, his shoulders bunching.
“Lead the way.”
We strode forward, caught between familiarity and strangeness. The glen was not quite the same as my dreams. In the waning light, the wildflowers were sparse, more weeds than wonder. The sky was no diorama of visions; stars pricked in the east as a half-moon lowered. The dilapidated house seated cantankerously in the center of the clearing was indeed thatched with birds’ wings—a thousand different shapes and hues. But instead of shimmering and lustrous, a cascade of colors spun from rainbows, the feathers were dingy, ragged, faded.
I swallowed something like disappointment. Memories of what I’d seen in the Deep-Dream layered over me—my father, sliding inside and barring the door behind him as Talah hammered at my defenses.Little deer, little deer.Finally, I managed to gird my courage and stride to the house. Irian loomed at my shoulder, clearly unwilling to stand farther away.
I lifted my fist.
The door opened of its own accord. The cottage’s occupant was not a faceless shadow, but a man. Ahumanman. Neither young nor old, but somewhere in between. Tall, but not towering. Handsome, in the grand, distant way of statues carved of kings, tempered by a tired kind of ordinariness that made him too human to be truly legendary. Dirty blond hair, gray at the temples, fell over his shoulders; piercing eyes an indeterminate shade between green and brown fixed on me.
“You are late, daughter of the forest.” His accent was strange—lilting and archaic. I glanced at Irian, unnerved. He was frowning, his stark brows slashing to shadow his silvering eyes. “What kept you?”
“Those were your bog cats, I presume?”
He snorted. “Feeding strays with what I produce in excess does not signify ownership.”
I remembered what Irian had said about secrets and regrets. I quashed sympathy for the stranger before me and said, “You have a familiarity with me I do not pretend to share. Who are you?”
He seemed as put off by my language as I was by his. His gaze slid to Irian looming at my shoulder. His eyes narrowed with deep distaste. “Go away, heir of feathers.”
If we had been anywhere else,withanyone else, Irian would have probably pierced the man’s throat with the Sky-Sword and never given him a second thought. Instead, with incredible restraint, Irian satisfied himself by folding sinewed, tattooed arms over his sculpted chest and saying, “No.”
The man pursed his lips, exhaled, then swung the door wide, wordlessly inviting us in. Inside, the walls were not plaster and whitewash, but a maze of parchment and vellum. Each scrap bore scrawled notes, sketched maps, and cryptic symbols. Thin cords of twine crisscrossed the room like the web of a maddened spider, pinning together faded letters, charred fragments of books, and smudged charcoal illustrations. In the rafters, birds roosted noisily—owls and crows and pigeons and nightingales, their feathers rustling likeleaves in the dark. The floor was littered with their waste, and the place stank of a henhouse.
I made no move to step inside. Irian was a statue at my shoulder.
