Free The Radiant Road by Katherine Catmull

Dream awake. Make a making to please the gate.”
    As she thought about this, Clare stood up on the wall again, stepping one foot in front of the other, careful with the balancing. She tried to turn to face Finn again without moving her feet, just turning on the balls. As she completed the turn, with a bit of arm-waving to balance, Finn’s amused expression provoked a flash of memory. She saw another grinning Finn, smaller and softer, swinging his legs on that wall. “Finn! We played here once. Did we? When we were little? I think we did.”
    He looked unutterably pleased.
    Another thought. “But you said there were no fairy babies.”
    A half smile.
    â€œAnd you said there was no change where you’re from, everything stays the same.”
    A nod, smile fading.
    â€œBut what about you? You were a baby, with me. And you changed, since then, you’ve grown up, like me.”
    His face closed up. “I’m different,” he said. “I’m not—Clare, that’s a tale too long for telling now. No, don’t make such a face, it is no matter.” Finn swung himself off the wall, hung precariously by his fingers, dropped to his feet. She couldn’t see his face till he turned, but then it was clear again. “Let’s do what we came for. Are you ready to begin?”
    Surprisingly, Clare thought she was. “Though if I’m supposed to . . . I mean I didn’t bring anything—drawing pencils or paints or anything.”
    â€œNot necessary,” he said. He sat on a low stone and looked at her expectantly. “Make, my girl.”
    Clare flushed. “Uh, right. Not in front of you.”
    Finn opened his hands. “But, Clare, that’s madness, don’t you know I’ve seen—”
    â€œDon’t care what you’ve seen. Go to another part of the castle, go behind some walls until I call you. And don’t listen. Say you won’t.”
    He threw his hands in the air and walked through a crumbling aperture in the wall.
    â€œSAY YOU WON’T!” called Clare.
    â€œAs you wish, mad Clare,” said a faint voice, followed by a little flute trill.
    Clare stood for a moment, as if listening—perhaps to see that Finn was really gone, perhaps for something else. Children playing. Well, it had been a while, but she would try.
    She put out one leg, long and straight, drawing a toe in the dirt, then dropped lightly onto that foot; did the same with the other, then again: point-step; point-step. In this idle, half-dancing way she progressed around the perimeter of this large castle room. She stopped to pick a strawberry, but made the rule that she had to continue her point-step dance while balancing the strawberry on her tongue.
    Part of her watched in astonishment, that she could remember so well, after all these years, how to play. Perhaps that fresh memory of small Clare playing here with small Finn had brought childhood close again. Or perhaps it was part of the magic of this place, to make it easy.
    She made it halfway around the walls before the strawberry tipped so dangerously that she had to eat it. At that place, following her rule, she stopped and sat down. She was within arm’s length ofa crumbling gray wall with a low, shallow indentation, as if a small statue had once stood there.
    Cross-legged Clare thought for a moment, and then began.
    â€œThe other day, day, day,” she began. As she chanted, she lightly slapped her knees, then clapped her hands, then pressed her hands against the wall.
    â€œThe other day, day, day
    I met a fae, fae, fae” (she thought you could call them that)
    â€œIt ran away, way, way
    I cried all day, day, day.”
    Now she speeded up, and added some tricky every-other-time crossed-arm movements.
    â€œBut it came back back back back back,
    And brought a sack sack sack sack sack—”
    (Clare had no idea where this rhyme was going. And wait, was it a trick