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The journey down the mountain into the river plains was pleasant, even if Violet insisted on riding nearly glued to my hip. She seemed unsettled, wary, and on high alert as if every blade of grass and sway of the branches would reach out and slice her throat. No one else seemed to be as disquieted as the little doll. Perhaps the others didn’t know this place as well as she did. Perhaps they were just better at hiding their fear.

Whatever the little doll had seen here, whatever her last impression of this place had been, had been horrific enough that even in the company of soldiers, an Ard Tiarna, an admittedly impotent Fae, and two of her other friends, she was not able to relax. Every hoofbeat seemed only to increase the tension within her.

Her porcelain fingers nearly left bruises along my arm when I finally dismounted and made for the bridge. It took nearly an hour of convincing from the cunning and silver-tongued courtier to get her to let me set a single foot on the bridge. By the time I made it to the midway point, she was pulling against Iron Thorn’s hold and struggling to run after me.

“She worries so.” The water to the left and right of me whispered. “Shall we comfort her? Her soul is too ancient to be at such odds with fate.”

A shiver ran down my spine, chilling the already cold sweat that had gathered there. “Yeah, that’s not creepy at all. Going to take a lot of getting used to.”

The faint sound of bubbles being blown into chocolate milk while a bored child kicked under a table filled the space between my friends and me.

“How would you comfort her?” I asked, turning my back on my friends and forging forward toward the slight hill that rose on the other side of the lake.

“We would embrace her. Show her there is nothing to fear beneath us. It is quiet. It is placid. Beneath our waves is the beating heart. Let her see it. Let her be unburdened.”

I frowned, though the disembodied voice sounded genuinely concerned and empathetic; what it was proposing was tantamount to drowning.

“Let us unburden her.”

“She’d drown.”

“What is drown?”

“It’s when you can’t breathe anymore, and you die.”

A long quiet fell between my unseen friend and me as I stepped onto the far shore. A low vibrating thump radiated through my feet into my bones, like the heartbeat of the land itself.

“She is not a child of magic. Dying is not good for her.” The voice was perplexed by this, as if it were new information it was truly unsure of, and was looking for my guidance to ensure it had read the situation correctly. It was almost sweet in its naivety.

“That’s correct. She is a human. She will not return to magic when she dies.”

The bubbling sound came again, filling up the quiet as I looked up to the hill, my own reluctance keeping me glued to the spot.

“You should make her a child. A child who is a child of magic. Yes. Do that. Then we will comfort her.” There was almost a youthful excitement in having found whatever my new friend thought was the perfect solution. It was pure. Clean. A simple solution to an unseen creature that didn’t understand the fundamentals of life.

“Maybe I will. Are you the one who whispered to me? Are you the keeper of these lands?”

The bubbling came again before the answer burbled up. “No, we are called Moirigh. We are behind you, above you, and below you. We are in you.”

“That . . . is not the least bit unsettling, Moirigh. Are you friend or foe?”

“Friend! Oh, friend! Friend, friend, friend! We will always be friend to the Mabh’s line! Friend, friend, friend!”

I chuckled; it was as if a golden retriever puppy had grown sentience and learned to talk. I looked back and frowned at Goose sitting on the opposite shore, watching me. He was just as reluctant to let me go as Violet had been and had decided to watch me every step of the way.

“Can you make sure my other friends are safe, Moirigh?”

There was no bubbling; instead, the sound of water dripping through stone filled my ears. “We will drown anyone who comes near them. Anyone. For the Mabh.”

“I’m not Mabh, Moirigh. I’m Cricket.”

Bubbles. “No. Not Cricket. Why does Mabh lie? Is Moirigh no longer loved by the Mabh?”

The Mabh. Curious. Moirigh seemed innocent, but they kept calling Mabh, the long-dead Ard Banríon of the Fae, The Mabh, as if it were a title. “I’m sure wherever Mabh is, she still loves you, Moirigh. But I’m not Mabh.”

“But you are the Mabh?” Again, the innocent consternation, as if it were a child trying to figure out a Rubik’s Cube.

“No, not the Mabh either. Just Cricket for now.”