Danu's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Danu left Hozier at the base of the tower and walked back toward the water. She could feel it before she saw it. The fairy had drained the shadow-horse dry and left the husk in the reeds, and now a black slick was crawling out of that spilled corruption. It moved slow but sure, downhill, toward the deep pool she had chosen for the birth. If it touched those waters first, her child would come up wrong. She had cleaned the poison from above. She had not planned for the poison below. She looked at the slick and knew she could not simply burn it. It was old fire, her fire, curdled. Fighting it would only splash it further. It had to be taken in and held by something that could carry it without breaking. She needed the bog man. And she needed the one who kept him standing. She found the cottage past the cherry trees, its roof green with living moss, a weather-vane raven turning on the spire. Hozier was already at the door, pale hand raised to knock. He had come on his own. He always knew when he was needed. The door opened before he touched it. The tall man inside wore a dark feathered wrap and held a yew-wood bass by the neck. Alex was Hozier's soul friend, the steady beat under the storm, the reason Hozier had not come apart on the first night out of the peat. He looked at Danu once and stepped aside. "Mother," Alex said. "I need him to take the sickness into himself," Danu said. "All of it. Before it reaches the pool." Alex's jaw tightened. "That will hurt him." "Yes." Hozier spoke from the doorway. "I'll do it." "You don't know what she's asking," Alex said. "I know the bog," Hozier said. "It kept me. I owe it." Alex looked at him a long moment. Then he lifted the bass. "I'll hold you to the ground. Don't drift." They walked out together. Danu led them to the slick's leading edge. Hozier stepped into it barefoot. The black climbed his shins like ink up cloth. He did not flinch. Alex sat on a stone at the bank and set his thumb to the low string. One note. Then another. The hum went into the peat and stayed. Hozier waded deeper. The slick chased him now, pulled toward him, hungry for a body that could hold it. His skin darkened. Moss on his jaw went black. He kept walking until the last of the corruption left the ground and was inside him. The birthing pool ran clear. Hozier turned to look at Danu. His brown eyes had gone gold at the edges, like the shadow-horse's had been. He smiled once, small, to show her he was still himself. For now.