"You can stay at my castle until you find another place," Maureen said. "Fiona told me there was lots of room around here, unclaimed land. Of course, she is Sean's sister. He was a champion liar, too."
Jo stared down at David, her face suddenly a mask. "I don't know."
She's waiting for something, Maureen thought. She wants him to tip the balance. What does he want to do?
"Jo," David whispered, "Jo, I like living with four seasons. Let's go home. Otherwise, every time I touch a leaf, I'll wonder if it's going to drink my blood, suck the marrow out of my bones, eat my soul. Even the dirt is hungry here. I feel it. You may be born to it. I'm not."
A faint smile eased Jo's face. "Thanks, dear. This land scares me." She hesitated. "No, I'm lying. I scare me. I'm afraid of the woman this land creates in me."
She finally looked across to Maureen. "You say you aren't crazy here? Well, I am. I don't like being crazy. I enjoyed killing that creep. I even did it twice, it was so much fun."
Maureen nodded. "I never belonged, back in Naskeag Falls. You don't belong in the Summer Country. We're not twins. We never were twins. We're some kind of mirror between the worlds. It reverses our souls, not our faces."
The orange tom had reappeared from wherever cats go. She caressed him, snuggling him under her filthy ski jacket and ruffling his fur. "Marmalade is walking between worlds, too. He and his harem seem to be moving in with me. Fiona wouldn't let them just be cats. Maybe you can ship us some cases of tuna or sardines."
She looked up at Jo again. "Come and visit. Both of you. I promise to make the forest behave itself."
A tiger-stripe butted Jo's hand, demanding attention, while a gray-and-white feline settled against David's side and started to wash her paw. The three cats purred in counterpoint harmony, almost loud enough to shake her bones.
Maureen heard voices and the thump of hooves. Brian, she thought, she hoped, she prayed. It had better not be strangers. The cats could put up a better fight than we could.
It was Brian, leading three horses and two women with food and wineskins. They hoisted their patients into saddles, funny little saddles without any horn to grab hold of, and Maureen had never sat on a horse since summer camp. They handed up three cats, to perch neatly in loaf-shapes crosswise behind the saddles as if they rode every day. Each walker took a set of reins and led the horses off through the woods.
All she had to do was keep her butt on the horse. Big as it was, the beast seemed placid enough, rocking along in a slow walk suitable for small children and fools and invalids, and she didn't have any reins to worry about so she concentrated on wine and cheese. Good wine. Good cheese.
Maureen looked up from a bite, and the skin along her spine prickled. A red-furred shape stood sentinel on a boulder beside the trail, underneath a huge oak tree. Maybe the forest had forgiven her threats of fire.
The fox didn't stir a hair as the parade ambled up, close enough to touch it. Maureen reached out for it with her thoughts.
Thank you. Thank both of you. How did you keep the forest from killing us?
{We told them that they could be ruled by you, or by the black-furred witch who tortures trees. Even briars can understand a choice as simple as that one.}
Maureen nodded to the fox, and the fox nodded back. They had a contract.
{Welcome home.}
It vanished into the bushes.
Excerpt from The Winter Oak
The Wildwood Series Book #2
Chapter One
David gritted his teeth and followed Jo's hand through the darkness. He assumed the rest of her was still attached. Damp, clammy nothings brushed past his face and hissed gibberish threats in his ears. Phantoms teased the corners of his eyes, shapes black against black, yellow against yellow, flowing through the ghost images his brain played to give substance to emptiness.
The touches, sounds, and shapes plucked at his fear like virtuosi on over-taut harp strings. The air smelled of sodden graveyards, thick and rank in his nose and against his skin as if he had to swim through it.
Under the Sidhe hill, he thought. Three steps between magic and reality. Magic with teeth and claws as long as his forearm, magic with vampire briars that had tried to suck his soul into the land and spread his life in a blood sacrifice to renew the perpetual summer of the Summer Country. Magic that Jo carried in her genes.
He felt cold sweat between his shoulder blades and trickling down his sides under his arms. This was taking far too long. When Brian had brought him to the Summer Country, it had been step, step, step, and they were there, sunshine and green grass and warm sweet breezes contrasting with the icy mess of winter in Maine. David hadn't even had time to be scared. That had happened later.
Jo's hand gripped his, tight enough that his bones creaked. It tugged, and he took another step and another. The darkness held firm. Hot breath chuckled in his left ear, and feathery fingers brushed across his eyes like someone testing ripe fruit in the market. He flinched.
Jo scared him, but not enough to give her up. The other Old Ones, Dougal and Sean and Fiona, they were a different can of worms. No wonder Irish tales painted the Sidhe as lacking heart and soul. Anything they could do, they would do.
Tunnels seemed to open to one side or the other in the black, wet air, felt or heard in receding echoes rather than seen. Despair flooded over him. They were lost.
And then orange light flickered in the corner of his eye, a rectangle barred by darkness. He blinked, his brain whirled and re-set, and he recognized the window in Jo's
