A Place Beyond The Map Page 4

  “Don’t be bashful,” Periwinkle chided. “It was really rather clever, that. And I do so like clever – it has so many uses. Why do you think I’ve troubled myself to return to this world not once, but twice? And in one week? Unheard of!”

  Still uncertain, Phinnegan remained silent.

  “I’ve given you back your father’s pipe as well, haven’t I?,” the Faë announced. “Besides,” he said while digging in his pocket. “I wanted to show you something.”

  With a flourish of his wrist, Periwinkle produced a small white stone. It looked like a marble, only the substance of which it was made appeared more akin to true stone rather than glass.

  “What is it? It looks like a marble.”

  The Faë’s face suddenly became solemn, and Phinnegan could not tell if he was really serious or if it was again some sort of mockery. But Periwinkle seemed very serious indeed when he spoke.

  “A marble? A marble? Have you never heard of a wishing stone?”

  When Phinnegan shook his head, the Faë looked dismayed.

  “Honestly, with all the reading you do, you’ve never heard of a wishing stone? What nonsense are you filling that little head of yours with?”

  Phinnegan, who may not have ever heard of a wishing stone, was still sharp of wit and caught something the Faë might not have meant for him to catch. His eyes narrowed.

  “How do you know I do a lot of reading?”

  A look of fear flashed over the Faë’s face. Phinnegan saw he had indeed said more than he intended, but he recovered quickly.

  “How do I know? Because I use logic, mate. Here you are on a beautiful sunny afternoon, and what are you doing? You’re out here alone, at the edge of the forest, where no one could find you, reading. Tells a pretty grim tale of your social life.”

  Phinnegan’s heart sank a little. He did not have any real friends. Perhaps that was why, even though the Faë had been nothing but trouble, Phinnegan was drawn to him. What better way to make up for not having any friends than to have one who was magical? This thought drew his eyes back to the stone.

  What was a wishing stone?

  “What does it do?” Phinnegan breathed as he took the stone from the Faë’s outstretched hand. “Does it give me three wishes?”

  The Faë regarded him with a flat stare.

  “You definitely read too much. This three wish nonsense is another one of your human concoctions. What good are only three wishes? No, no. Wishing stones are unlimited!”

  “So I can make a wish for whatever I want, and this stone will give it to me?” Phinnegan inquired, his face brightening. He looked eagerly at the Faë, a smile creeping across his face.

  “Well, not exactly. You see, this one is rather small. It has a limited capacity for what it can do. Got a spot of school work you don’t want to do? It can take care of it. Need to sweep up a bit? No problem. But it can’t give you a pile of gold or anything like that, if that’s what you’re after.”

  The smile on Phinnegan’s face faded.

  “That’s disappointing, isn’t it? It can do my chores and my homework? I can do that myself. Not much of a wishing stone.”

  “Well, it does have other uses,” the Faë remarked with a sly smile.

  “Like what?”

  Periwinkle reached into Phinnegan’s hand and took the stone back. Waving a hand to silence Phinnegan’s protest, the Faë took the stone and rolled it between his two palms. A few moments passed.

  And then Phinnegan heard the melody. His eyes widened and he stared at the Faë’s palms.

  “You hear it I see,” the Faë whispered as he continued to roll the marble in his hands.

  “Yes,” Phinnegan whispered in return. “I’ve heard it before. The night you stole into my house. When I followed you down the stairs and through the house, the sound grew louder. And then when you fell-“

  “You mean when you nearly made me snuff it,” the Faë interjected in a sharp whisper.

  “When you fell,” Phinnegan continued, “the melody stopped. And I haven’t heard it since. It was coming from that little marble?”

  The Faë nodded and opened his hands wider, letting more sound escape.

  “It’s beautiful,” Phinnegan breathed. “What is it?”

  “It’s –“ the Faë began, but never finished, for the sound coming from the stone became a shriek. Phinnegan pressed his hands to his ears to try and muffle the sound, but to little effect. The look on Periwinkle’s face was one of pure dismay.

  “Oh, bloody hell,” he exclaimed. “Now I’ve done it.”

  “Done what? What’s happening?”

  The Faë looked him in the eye and was for once completely serious.

  “They found me.”

  Phinnegan was at a loss.

  “Who found you? What is going on?”

  The Faë never answered. Instead a booming voice shook the very earth beneath their feet.

  PERIWINKLE LARK, YOU ARE HEREBY ORDERED TO APPEAR BEFORE THE HIGH COURT.

  Phinnegan watched in horror and listened to the booming voice declare Periwinkle a criminal. The stone was growing in size and becoming more translucent and fluid. Phinnegan could not understand what was happening, but he saw that Periwinkle appeared to be fading before his eyes. Without thinking, he reached out to grab the Faë’s hand.

  “No! Don’t!” Periwinkle shouted. But the warning came too late. Phinnegan had already reached across the shimmering orb of fluid translucence.

  Just as Phinnegan touched the Faë’s hand, he saw a bright flash and heard a crash like thunder.

  And then everything went black.

  CHAPTER 5

  Under the Mountain

  When Phinnegan opened his eyes, a black darkness surrounded him. Not the black of his bedroom on a moonless night, but a total and complete darkness of impenetrable depth. He held his hand up in front up his face, or at least he tried to, but as he saw nothing, he really couldn’t be sure that he had.

  The flash of light.

  Could he be blind? The flash had seemed bright and sudden enough to damage his eyes. Or could it be that the invisible force that grabbed him by the core and pulled him with some unnatural strength that damaged his eyes? Or worse, was he dead? People who had transcended the veil of death and returned to tell their tales did describe seeing a bright, white light.

  Just then, he heard a faint cough from his left.

  I can’t be dead. People don’t cough after they die.

  Still unable to see through the dense darkness, the strange cough unsettled him. The hair on his arms stood on end and he scrambled backwards across the rough floor until his back bumped against a wall. He heard the cough again, fainter than before.

  “Who…who’s there?” Phinnegan called out into the darkness.

  The only answer was another faint cough. He pushed himself up onto his hands and knees and felt his way forward.

  “Hello? Is anyone there?” he called out again.

  A familiar lilting voice replied, though weakened from coughing.

  “It’s only me, mate. Your favorite Faë.”

  Periwinkle’s voice was now closer. Phinnegan assumed that Periwinkle, too, was feeling his way through the darkness.

  “Where are we? What happened?” Phinnegan queried the darkness. “You were rubbing that stone and then there was a flash of light and a crash…are we dead?”

  “Not dead, mate. But close enough.”

  “And the voice…” Phinnegan whispered, his words trialing off as he recalled what the voice had said about the Faë. Could those things really all be true?

  “We are in a very dark place, mate. Figuratively and literally. So dark I can’t see my own bloody hand in front of my face. I know of only once place that would be this dark. Féradoon. A black place in more ways than one, I’ll promise you that.”

  “Féradoon?” Phinnegan asked. “What’s that?” He paused, remembering the booming voice. “That voice said it, right? Doesn’t sound like any place I’ve ever
heard of.”

  “You wouldn’t have heard of it, mate,” the Faë answered, his voice becoming stronger. It sounded like he was only a few feet away from Phinnegan now. “It’s not in your world. Even in mine it’s not a topic for polite conversation.”

  Phinnegan’s heart lurched at Periwinkle’s words, which he spoke so nonchalantly.

  “Do you mean we’re not in Ireland anymore?”

  The Faë barked a short laugh.

  “Ireland? Uh, no. No, we definitely are not in Ireland anymore. Nor England nor France nor the Americas. We’ve left your world all together. Welcome to the land of the Faë. Though this isn’t really a proper spot for a visit.”

  Phinnegan’s breath caught and his limbs quavered beneath him. He heard Periwinkle’s words, but his mind could not comprehend them. He struggled with the innate impossibility of somehow traversing into another world. But behind the fear that now gripped him, anger trickled forth. Phinnegan began to suspect the Faë was playing some cruel joke on him.

  “Are you having a joke on me? You’ve said yourself that you Faë are a tricky lot. How do I know this isn’t some…some, illusion?”

  “Illusion? Look around you, mate, if you can that is. For me, it’s blacker than pitch. I don’t deny that I’ve had some fun at your expense with the sticky root and the like, but this is not my doing. We’re in a tight spot.”

  Phinnegan remained unconvinced.

  “But how do I know that this isn’t some magic trick? Maybe I’m blind-folded and you’re just standing there smirking at me while I look the fool. And another thing – “

  “Oh, stop your bleating,” Periwinkle interrupted, his tone exasperated. “I know more about magic than you can imagine and I can promise you this is no magic trick. Do you think I just shone a pretty light in your face and then pulled the wool over your eyes, is that it? No, mate. This is bad and this is real, or I’m Morgan le Fay.”

  “Well, if all you say is true,” Phinnegan whispered after several silent moments, “this does sound bad.”

  “Believe me now, do you,” the Faë sneered. “And oh yes, it is bad. Quite. The devil take me for being so careless.” Periwinkle continued speaking, but his voice dropped so and he assumed the Faë was talking to himself.

  “How could you be so stupid? Did you really think they wouldn’t notice?”

  “Notice what?” The question escaped Phinnegan’s lips before he could hold it back. Raised with manners as he had been, he thought it rude to listen in on another’s conversation, even when that conversation was with one’s self. But he couldn’t deny he wanted to know the answer to that question.

  The Faë became silent. As the moments passed, Phinnegan’s anger and frustration rose once again and they betrayed him in his voice when he spoke.

  “Would you just tell me what the bloody hell is going on?”

  Phinnegan’s demand was greeted with further silence. He could almost feel the harsh glare Periwinkle was undoubtedly casting in his direction.

  “What’s going on is we’ve been captured,” Periwinkle stated after a few moments.

  “Captured? By whom?”

  “Well if the stories are true, and I have no reason to believe they are not, then Féradoon is now sort of the unofficial headquarters for that favorite son of the Faë, Vermillion. He and his lot are our most likely captors. I told you, they’ve got a vice grip on this world now. And they’re squeezing her for all that they can. I never should’ve activated that stone.”

  “Activated the stone?” Phinnegan recalled the smooth, spherical wishing stone. “Is that what you were doing then, when you were making it sing?”

  Although he could not see Periwinkle, Phinnegan assumed the Faë must have been nodding his response out of habit, forgetting that they conversed in total darkness.

  “Err, yes. “When the wishing stones are activated, they open a sort of window between our worlds. Not anything you can travel through, not one that size anyway, but you can see and hear things. The stones are linked to the Faë that saved them.”

  He paused for a moment, then continued, his voice quiet.

  “They’ve been watching mine, no doubt, so I thought to trick them by using the stone of another. I was going to give it to you, if you remember. Evidently their tracking methods are better than I gave them credit for.”

  The Faë’s admission that he was likely being watched reminded Phinnegan of the deep, booming voice they had heard back in Ireland beneath the wych elm.

  “If they were watching you…does that mean that you did those things that the voice said? That you are a thief? A traitor?”

  “Well, mate, I don’t need to tell you that I am a bit of a thief. Your father’s pipe, if you recall. As to the traitor bit, if standing up to that lout labels me a traitor, then I wear it proudly.”

  Phinnegan pondered this answer. In his short life, he had heard of courageous rebels who resisted some unfair authority, even peacefully, and were labeled criminals and traitors. Of course, these people had all been written about in books, whether fictitious or historical, but the principle was the same.

  “What did you do?” Phinnegan swallowed the lump in his throat.

  “Did you kill someone?”

  Periwinkle chuckled in the darkness.

  “I may be a thief and a ‘traitor,’ if they want to call me that. But I assure you I am no murderer. I’ve only…well, shall we say disrupted…some of his plans. That’s all. I’m a bit of an instigator, you could say.”

  “What sorts of things have you done then?” Phinnegan asked, his curiosity piqued by this admission.

  “Most of it boils down to a bit of thieving. But with a Faë like that, stealing some trophy ruins the whole conquest for him. But I’ve done a bit of vandalism as well. Once, a few years back at the beginning of this mess, when Vermillion first proclaimed himself as some sort of prince-in-waiting, he commissioned a statute to be made in our capital city of himself.” The Faë chuckled. “When it is was all finished, I made a few improvements.”

  “Well? What did you do?”

  “I’m getting to it. Let’s just say that Vermillion didn’t like the looks of himself in a dress.”

  Phinnegan smiled to himself in the darkness and a small giggle escaped his lips.

  “You painted a dress on the statue?” Phinnegan tried to imagine the statue of a tyrant, painted over with a dress

  “Oh, I did more than paint, mate. It was a real dress. Bit of an evening gown, really, some shimmer and some sheer. Quite lovely, actually, on the right person. Of course Vermillion didn’t quite see it that way, as you might expect.”

  While Phinnegan found the story quite funny, he thought it was a stretch to call such an act of defiance, while humiliating for Vermillion, treason. He sensed there was more to the Faë’s “criminal” activities than Periwinkle let on.

  “But are you sure that’s all you have done, then? Stealing a few treasures and dressing up a statute is enough to be labeled a traitor? I don’t know if I like the sound of your world. Sounds a bit…mean.”

  Though Periwinkle did not speak, Phinnegan could feel him shuffling in the darkness. He assumed that the Faë did not want to speak about anything else that may have happened. When he did speak, his voice was hollow and empty.

  “There is one other thing that Vermillion holds against me.” He sighed. “And I hold it against him as well, rotten oaf that he is. Emerald Wren.”

  “Emerald Wren? What – er, who’s that? Is that another Faë? A girl?”

  “A girl yes, but not just another Faë. The most beautiful Faë that I’ve ever seen. We loved each other.”

  Loved?

  “Is she all right?”

  “All right?” Periwinkle repeated. “Yes, she’s all right. At least I think she is. She’s Vermillion’s daughter, and I don’t know what he has done with her. He doesn’t approve of us, never has. Not even when we were young and just innocent friends catching starflies together.” The Faë again became sile
nt. Before Phinnegan could prod further, Periwinkle continued.

  “He forbade us to be together or even see one another. I ignored him, of course. And now she is gone and I am a traitor.”

  Phinnegan, who understood little about love - other than what he read about in his books - could not comprehend the Faë’s situation, but he could hear the sadness in Periwinkle’s voice.

  “I’m…uh… I’m sorry. Do you know where she is now? Surely Vermillion would not have harmed his own daughter, right?”

  “Well there’s a bit of the difficulty, mate. I have no way to know what he has done with her. I haven’t a clue. After I took her away-“

  “Wait,” Phinnegan interjected. “You took her away? You mean you kidnapped her?”

  “You could say that. She was willing, of course. As I said, we loved each other.”

  “Well, I guess that’s all right then,” Phinnegan mused. “If she went with you willingly I guess it wasn’t really kidnapping.” But one thing still puzzled him. “Why do you keep saying ‘loved’? Don’t you still love her?”

  “Of course I do!” Periwinkle cried, his voice filling with emotion for a moment. When he continued though, he again sounded flat and hollow.

  “I just figure it’s easier to think of her as in the past. Makes the loss easier to swallow, you know?”

  “You mean you are giving up on her? Just like that?”

  “I’m not giving up on anything,” Periwinkle retorted. “I’m just being realistic.”

  “Maybe if you just talked to him –“

  “Have you not been listening?” the Faë interrupted. “He bloody well owns this world and he has no fond feelings towards me.”

  “Well, if a way existed that you could be with her, would you do it?”

  “Of course!”

  “Well then, we just have to find out what that way is,” Phinnegan replied with a tone of finality.

  “We?”

  Phinnegan nodded, although the Faë could not see him in the darkness, of course.

  “Yes, we. I’ll do all I can to help.” Phinnegan turned around in the darkness. “If you can get us out of here, that is.”