Free The Radiant Road by Katherine Catmull Page A

of her eye—it was hard to look closely and keep up the movements—or was the nook she sat before beginning to shimmer? She sped up.)
    â€œAnd from inside side side side side,
    It pulled its bride bride bride bride bride”
    (The stone definitely seemed to be thinning and softening, becoming more mist than stone, and beyond the mist, Clare could almost see . . .)
    â€œWe danced a ring ring ring ring ring ring
    Till we could—”
    Clare stopped. In a blink, the stone had become stone again, and the air had gone ice-cold, and the Strange of the place had turned dark and poisonous. She spun around, rising to her knees.
    Just inside the vine-curtained doorway stood a man in a black suit. To Clare on her knees, he seemed enormously tall—tall and broad, with shaggy black eyebrows and eyes beneath them like wet black ink. He was smiling, but not a nice smile: it was the smile of a cat who sees a bird with a broken wing. Or it was a smile painted on like a mask, like a clown’s face, and if you peeled it off, the sight would be hideous and unbearable.
    One of his deep black eyes was staring and fixed, and that eye gleamed with something like fire.
    Her umbrella dangled from his curled finger.
    Clare screamed.

    Finn came running, of course, flute put away in his pocket now. But by the time he arrived, the man had vanished. Clare, furious with herself, kept saying, “It’s nothing, only he startled me, I’m being an idiot, whatever, he’s gone.” But “Describe him,” said Finn, and when Clare got to the part about the fixed, unmoving eye, he looked distressed.
    â€œI fear a thing,” he said, “and I must go home to say. Ah, it is a shame, I was going to show you a beautiful making I made in your changing world, I did want you to see it. Another day, soon, we will.”
    â€œI think I almost had it,” said Clare. “The key, I mean. I could see a sort of door opening, it went all misty and . . . anyway I think I found the key, I really do.”
    â€œThis surprises me not at all,” said Finn. “I only wish I could have seen the making, Clare.” He hesitated. “Listen: this needs not, I am sure, but I want to give you something.”
    He held her hand, palm up, and Clare felt herself go perfectly still at the touch. Into her palm he placed a flat black rock, square and glossy as a mirror. His hand was cool, and the rock was cool. “Keep this by you,” he said. “It’s a bit of shield. Not a big bit, but a bit enough. You may need it.”
    â€œWhy—”
    â€œMeet me in-between, just before twilight. I will take you to meet one you must meet.”

    It had been difficult to get into the tree unnoticed after dinner. But Clare announced with awkward untruthfulness that she was going to bed early. “Jet lag,” her father had said, and then: “Clare—I thought perhaps tomorrow morning, we’d decide about your mother’s ashes. What do you think?” She had nodded yes.
    She had watched from her loft till her father stepped outside to get something from the car, then slipped down and into the tree. Now she sat in the in-between, watching blue foxfire throb along a vein of the tree, until she felt the familiar arm against her arm. Finn’s voice in her ear said, “Come with me, to meet someone.”
    â€œWho?” she said, to stall. She liked it here, the only-Finn-and-Clare place.
    â€œHer of the Cliffs.”
    Clare was not sure that sounded like a person she wanted to meet. “Is she one of your people? Is she nice?”
    Finn snorted. “One of my people, yes. She is our Hunter—our leader, you would say. Nice, howsomever: no. But I believe you must meet with her, and she agrees.”
    Clare did not want to go. The air of the tree felt familiar and comforting already, so starry and still, faintly scented with wood and herbs. “But is