Ballad: A Gathering of Faerie (Books of Faerie 2)

All I could think was, if he’d come earlier, we could’ve danced.

James

It was so early that the daylight seemed fragile, like if you breathed too hard the light at the horizon would blow away and dissipate into the darkness. It was in this freezing cold half-light that I found Nuala on the steepest of the hills behind the school. My brown hoodie was nothing against the cold, and I’d only been kneeling beside her for a few minutes before I was shivering.

“Nuala,” I said again, because I didn’t know what else to say.

I was so used to her being powerful, kick-ass, all hard edges, that I couldn’t stop looking at her in the grass. She looked like one of those police-body-chalk things, her arms sprawled out above her and her long, bare legs tangled together. She really was just a girl. Just a fragile body after all, looking a little like she was dressing up in someone else’s clothes to look older.

Why won’t you wake up? Her breaths were so slow, like it wouldn’t take any effort at all for her just to skip one, and then the next one, and the next one.

I gritted my teeth, steeling myself against the cold, and then I pulled off my sweatshirt and lay it across her legs. I cupped one arm beneath her knees—God, her skin was frigid—and one beneath her neck, and I pulled her into my lap and held her against my body.

Goose bumps rippled across my skin, but not from her. From real cold. I cradled her head next to my chest, feeling how icy the skin of her cheek was through my T-shirt, and leaned down close to her. Her breath came out across my face and it didn’t smell like anything at all. No flowers. Nothing.

“What’s wrong with you?” I asked.

I couldn’t feel sad, or angry, because I couldn’t imagine why she wouldn’t open her eyes. All I could think about was that I was sitting here in the middle of a field with a dying girl in my arms and my brain couldn’t process anything but the shape her hair made on her face and the colorless dawn grass and the little bit of unraveling brown thread on the arm of my sweatshirt.

Suddenly, I became aware that there was someone else crouching in front of me—and it scared the crap out of me, because I couldn’t think how they’d gotten there and I couldn’t think how long they’d been there.

“Sentimentality is such a dangerous thing,” said the other someone, and I realized, horribly, that I knew them.

“How do you figure?” I asked, pulling my arm out from under Nuala’s legs so that my iron bracelet was visible.

“Oh, don’t worry, piper,” said Eleanor. “I’m not here to kill you this time. I merely saw your distress and wished to see if I could be of service to one of my dying subjects.”

She was terribly beautiful, in a sort of sweet, savage way that made my throat hurt. Kneeling in front of me, she reached her long fingers toward Nuala’s forehead, but stopped short of touching her. “I really don’t see how she could tolerate that iron, poor dear. How ironic that in the end, it’ll be a human that kills her.”

“How do you figure that?”

Eleanor sat back, her pale green dress spreading out around her like flower petals on the grass. “Well, she’s a leanan sidhe, piper. Surely you know how it is she stays alive?”

She was right. I did. I just hadn’t let myself think about it. “Life, right? Human life.”

“Years, piper. She takes years off the life of those she graces with her inspiration. And she did not take any from you, did she?” Eleanor folded her hands gently in her lap and looked at them fondly, as if the arrangement of her fingers twined together pleased her greatly. “As I said, sentimentality is such a dangerous thing. So very human, too.”

I shook, both with the frigid air and the proximity to Eleanor. Everything in me screamed that she was an old, wild creature, and that I needed to get away. It took everything in me to not lift Nuala and get the hell out of there. “How much does she need?”

Eleanor lifted her face to me and smiled an awfully lovely row of pearly teeth, and I realized that she had been hoping I’d ask. But I didn’t care. I just wanted to know.

“I think two years would last her until Halloween,” Eleanor said, and now she smiled again at her hands, a small, secret smile that made the grass shiver around us. “She must burn, you know. Her body only lasts sixteen years, even if she doesn’t deprive herself of human life. That’s why she goes willingly to burn every sixteen years. Poor creature realizes that if she doesn’t toast herself”—Eleanor shrugged—“she’ll die for good. Of course, she’s probably going to die now anyway.”

I closed my eyes for just the briefest of moments. I wanted to close them for longer, to think, but the idea of not watching Eleanor every second she was close seemed like one of the more terrible concepts ever invented. “How do I do it?”

Eleanor regarded me with a gentle gaze. “Do what, piper?”

I bit back a snarl with great effort. “Give her two of my years.” Two years wasn’t long. When I became an old codger, I wouldn’t care if I died two years early. Anything to warm Nuala’s clammy skin and put color back into her lips.

“But you know she’ll only forget you after she burns.” Eleanor’s mouth was pursed now, like a lovely rose, but her eyes glimmered. She was like a little kid, bursting with a secret that she was begging to share.

“That’s what I thought, before,” I said. “But I’m guessing you can tell me a way that she won’t.”

In the rising dawn, her mouth spread into a wide line of pleasure that evoked memories of butterflies, flowers, sunshine, death, rot. “Truly,” she breathed, “Don’t let it be said that I am not a benevolent queen to my subjects. If she trusts you enough to give you her true name, piper, her true name that will grant you control over her, like the faerie that she is, you can save her memories. You must watch her burn from beginning to end, and while she does, you must say her true name seven times, uninterrupted, and when she rises from the ashes … she’ll remember everything.”

Suspicion prickled along my skin, but what Eleanor said had the ring of truth. Still, I had to ask. “Why do you want to help her?”

Eleanor spread out her hands, as if she were opening a book, and shrugged delicately. “Generosity of spirit. Now, you’d better hurry and kiss her, piper. Breathe two years into her, if you will.” She stood and brushed her knees off with pale, pale hands. “Ta, ta.”

And with a shuddering of the air around her and a tug through my limbs, she was gone. And the sun was rising and Nuala was setting.

I brushed her light hair away from her freckled face and lightly pressed my lips to her mouth. It didn’t feel like kissing Nuala. It felt like kissing a corpse. Nothing was happening. I was kissing a dying girl and nothing was happening.

Two years, Nuala. It’s not that long. I want to give it to you. Just take it. I kissed her again, and breathed into her mouth.

It didn’t feel like anything was happening. Hell. Shouldn’t she jump to life if it was working? I tried again—three times is the charm, right?—and tried to visualize my life flowing into her. I didn’t care if she took two years. I didn’t care if she took ten years. Her head rolled back and her skin covered with goose bumps. It looked dead and cold, like a frozen chicken.

“Damn it, Nuala!” My hands were shaking; every so often, my whole body shuddered. I shoved my fingers into my pocket and retrieved my cell phone. Flipping it open one-handed, I shut my eyes, trying to remember the shape of the numbers in my head. I imagined them drawn on my skin and then I had them. I hit send.

The phone rang twice, and Sullivan’s voice, thick with sleep, answered, “Hello?” He added, dutifully, “This is Patrick Sullivan of Thornking-Ash.”

“I need you,” I said. “I need your help.”

The thick voice was a lot more awake all of a sudden. “James? What’s going on?”

I didn’t know what to say to that. There’s a girl dying in my arms. Because of me. “I’m—is anyone else up? I need to bring someone in. I need your help.” I realized I was repeating myself and shut up.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, but I’m unlocking the back door. Assuming you didn’t already.”

“I’ll be there in a few minutes,” I said. Sullivan was still talking when I snapped the phone shut and shoved it back in my pocket. I clumsily got my arm under Nuala’s armpit and around her knees. “C’mon, babe.” I staggered to my feet. My sweatshirt dropped to the ground. Whatever. I’d get it later. I waded through the waist-high grass until I got to the edge of the school grounds, and then I skirted around the back of the dorm.

Sullivan was waiting by the back door in sweat pants. He silently held the door open for me as I maneuvered Nuala and myself through the doorway.

All he said was, “My door’s open.”

His room was still scented with cinnamon candle and daisies, though neither was in evidence, and there were papers inexplicably scattered all over the floor. Sullivan pointed to his bed, which was neatly made and illuminated by a square of cold sunlight from the window.

I should’ve laid her down carefully on the bed, but my arms were killing me and I sort of half-laid, half-dropped her.

Sullivan hung at my shoulder. “Is she a student?”

“No.” I brushed her hair out of her face. “Fix her.”

He laughed, a little helplessly. “You have such faith in me. What’s wrong with her?”

“I don’t know. I think it’s me.” I didn’t look at him. “She’s a faerie. She’s the muse.”

“Jesus Christ, James!” Sullivan grabbed my upper arm and spun me toward him. “You told me you didn’t make a deal with her! What the hell is she doing on my bed?”

I stood there, his fingers gripped on my arm, staring at him, still shaking and hating that I was. “I didn’t make a deal. That’s why she’s here. She hasn’t taken anything from me and I think she’s dying. Sullivan, please.”

He stared back at me.

“Please.”

My voice sounded strange to me. Thin. Desperate.

Sullivan let out a breath and released me. He rubbed his hand into his face for a long moment before he joined me again at the bed. “James, you’ve got to be wrong. The leanan sidhe fades when she’s going without. She can’t stay visible. This faerie—this girl—this is a human reaction.”

“She’s not human.”

Sullivan lay a hand on Nuala’s forehead; his eyes roamed over her body. “She’s very thin,” he observed. “When was the last time she’s eaten?”

“What? I don’t know. She doesn’t eat food.” But even as I said it, I remembered the grain of rice on her lip.

“Let’s humor me. Cover her up. She’s freezing.”

He disappeared into the kitchen area and I heard the little fridge opening. I eased a blanket from under Nuala’s legs and pulled it up around her. I ran a finger over her cold cheekbones; they did seem more prominent than when we’d first met. I traced the dark hollows under her closed eyes. Some sort of weird, miserable emotion made me want to curl up next to her and close my eyes too.