‘Stop, please stop!’ she shouted, trying to run, but no one was listening to her, and the wet sand underfoot grabbed at her, refusing anything other than a fast walk. From the side of the road, tendrils crept out and wound around her ankles; grinning faces appeared on the buds and flowers of plants she could not identify. She shook them off, tearing at their leaves desperately as she tried to run.
By the time Faye had reached the headland and gone on to the gates to the labyrinth, Rav and the kelpie had disappeared.
35
Gasping for breath, she looked expectantly at the same two bearded gnomes that had let her in the first time.
‘I need to enter the labyrinth,’ she said, her breath ragged. ‘My…my friend…has been taken,’ she panted.
‘She didn’t say the magic word, did she?’ the gnome on the left said to the one on the right.
‘Nope,’ said the gnome on the right. He looked up at her expectantly.
‘Password,’ he said seriously.
‘I don’t have a password,’ Faye snapped. ‘I amsidhe-leth, half fae. I don’t need one. Let me in. I command it!’ she said, feeling the now-familiar lassitude of being in Finn’s kingdom, but she fought against it and held on to her panic at Rav’s abduction into faerie.
‘Ooh. She commands us!’ The gnome on the left smirked.
‘Password,’ the other gnome said again. ‘Orders from Up High. Even half humans got to give the password or be locked out.’
‘Well, I don’t know the password!’ Faye shouted. ‘Just let me in! There must have been some mistake.’
‘No need to shout,’ said the gnome on the right, looking affronted.
‘But…Please.’ She knelt down in front of them and looked beseechingly at them both, but they avoided her gaze. ‘Please. I’ll…I’ll see you’re richly rewarded.’
Faye had no idea what she was saying or indeed how she would be able to reward anything in the faerie kingdom, but she was desperate. The gnomes conferred between each other and the one on the left pointed to the silver pentagram ring she wore on her right hand; it had been Moddie’s.
‘We’ll have that. Give us that and you can come in,’ he said, stroking his beard. ‘But you can’t tell anyone we let you in. Say it was an accident. You just woke up in the labyrinth. They believe that sometimes.’
‘It was my mother’s,’ Faye appealed to the gnomes.
The gnome on the left pursed his lips. ‘We want it, or you don’t come in,’ he repeated.
‘Fine. Yes. Have it!’ She pulled the silver ring off with some difficulty – she hadn’t taken it off for years – and threw it on the ground between the gnomes.
The gnomes pushed the gates, and they creaked open slowly. Faye barged through. Yet, this time the labyrinth loomed dark in front of her, reaching away into blackness. Faye stopped in her tracks.
‘I can’t see anything!’ She turned to the gnomes, who were shutting the gates behind her; the last shards of the strange golden light of the entry to faerie narrowed to a crack, threatening to plunge her into oblivion. ‘Please! Stop!’ She ran back, putting her hands in the crack of the gate as it closed, trying to hold them apart. ‘I can’t see! I need light! Please, I’ll be trapped in here!’ she cried, but the doors closed and she had to pull her fingers out to avoid them being crushed. Faye heardthe gnomes chuckling as the lock turned, and complete quiet and darkness suffocated her.
‘No light for traitors, miss,’ one of their voices called. ‘King’s orders.’
Before, the labyrinth had opened to her like a rose; now, it clutched at her with branches and tendrils and refused to let her go.
Faye groped ahead of her in the dark, following only by instinct. Dead silence accompanied her concentration; the only sounds were her jagged breath and occasional cries of frustration as she met one dead end and then another. The stream of faeries that had swarmed around her before, treading on her toes, singing, dancing, rolling and fighting, was gone. It was as though she was alone in the world.
‘Help! Please, someone, help me!’ she called out, but there was no reply. ‘Finn! Finn, I command you to hear me!’ she called in vain, but she knew there would be no answer. He had taken Rav, of that she was certain, and abandoned her here to the labyrinth; locked her in like any mortal woman. As a punishment to stop her coming after Rav.
But she wassidhe-leth.
If I could come through before, then the only thing stopping me now is Finn, she thought.So there’s no point calling on him for help. He’s angry…because Rav kissed me. Jealous.
Faye stopped running and stood still in the labyrinth, gathering her thoughts and steadying her breathing. There was no point panicking.
She plunged both hands into her pockets while she thought, and her fingers closed around the crystal in her pocket. She brought it out and held it up to her face; it still held a tiny amount of luminescence from the Crystal Castle, but it made little difference to the dark. Yet, she felt it held a power that she could use to help her, if only she knew how. She racked herbrain, trying to remember the crystalline singing that seemed to have come from the walls of the seven-pointed faerie castle.
She could remember the words, though she didn’t know what they meant. She began to sing the words softly, and then louder as she gained confidence. She tried to replicate how it had sounded.
