“Why did you leave Wales?”

“I was called.”

Her sigh, long and derisive, said everything about being thirteen and dealing with an adult.

“If I ask who called you, you’re just going to say ‘you’ll learn.’ ”

“And you will. I was young, like you, and like you I wondered why such hard things were asked of me. Know I understand what it is to leave home and family.”

“Do you have kids?”

“I’ve never been given that gift.”

“You brought me the teddy bear.”

“It was kind of you to give it to your young brother, to leave that piece of yourself in his care.”

She shoved that aside, as it brought Ethan and his tears to her mind.

“You brought me the candle and the crystal ball. They’re not toys like the bear. Only I can light the candle. Sometimes I do. It never melts away.”

“It was made for you.”

“Did you make it?”

“Yes.”

“My mother said I’d be the only one to see into the crystal, but I’ve never seen anything when I look.”

“You will.”

“Where did you get it?”

“I made it for you. The bear I bought for you before even your mother knew you existed. The woman at the shop told me it was a happy gift for a baby girl.”

It occurred to her, as they rode, that she’d never had a longer conversation with anyone outside of family. While it didn’t make her feel any warmer toward him, she did find it interesting.

“What are you going to teach me?” she demanded. “For two years? My father taught me how to shoot—a gun and a bow. He taught me hand-to-hand. He was a soldier. He was a captain in the army. And my mother taught me about magicks. She’s a witch, a powerful witch.”

“Then you have a good foundation for more.”

She stopped her horse. “Do you hear that?”

“Yes.”

“It’s engines. More than one.”

“There’s a road, not far, and some travel on it. So we make our route through the trees, over the hills. You’re not yet ready for battle.”

The sounds receded, until only the forest spoke.

“Who taught you?”

“His name was Bran. A difficult taskmaster.”

“Will I meet him?”

“He’s no longer with us.”

“Did he die in the Doom?”

His duty was to teach, to train, he thought, and he would fulfill it. But who could know the girl had so many questions in her?

“No, he passed from this world to the next long before. But while I was with him he taught me many things. I traveled to many lands with him.”

Because she could, Fallon took Grace for a little jump over a fallen tree. “Before the Doom people traveled all over the world, in planes. I’ve seen two planes and a chopper—the smaller plane with blades on the top. My mother put a shield over the farm in case people in planes were the ones looking for Uncannys to lock them away. Or worse, Dark Uncannys. So we could see the planes, but they couldn’t see us. Have you ever flown in a plane?”

“I have, and I didn’t enjoy it.”

“I think it would be wonderful.” She tipped her head up, looked at the pieces of sky through the canopy of burnished leaves. “I’d like to see other lands. Some have beaches of white sand and blue water, and others are covered in ice. And the great cities with buildings tall as mountains, and mountains taller than the tallest building, and deserts and oceans and jungles.”

“The world has many wonders.”

He turned his horse through an opening in the trees and into a small clearing. A cabin sat sheltered under trees with a slope-roofed lean-to attached.

“You said a day’s ride.”

“And so it will be. We stop here only for the night.”

“We’ve still got more than an hour before dusk.”

“The horses need rest, to be tended and fed. And so do I.”

Mallick dismounted, led his horse to the lean-to. Reluctantly, Fallon followed suit. She noted the shelter had fresh bedding, grooming supplies, a tub of grain. Mallick handed her a bucket.

“There’s a creek just to the east. The horses need to be watered.”

“What is this place?”

“A place to break our journey.” When she said nothing, simply stood, he loosened the cinches, hefted off his saddle.

“A hunting cabin, what would have been a weekend or holiday sort of place. It belonged to a man who worked as a plumber and enjoyed coming here with his friends. He was immune, so survived the Doom only to be taken in one of the sweeps and confined to a government facility, where he died.”

“You knew him?”

“No, but there was enough of his energy left here, where he had many happy times, for me to know of him. The horses need water.”

She took the bucket, walked no more than ten yards east to a bright and cheerfully winding creek. For a moment, she studied the woods—this new place. The hemlock and oak, the old pines and young poplars. For all she knew, Mallick would ask her how many trees in the stupid forest. Or how many rapid taps from the woodpecker, how many feathers on the cardinal.

She filled the bucket, walked back to dump water in the trough. It took another two trips, and by then Mallick had removed both saddles and was toweling off his gelding.

“What’s his name?” she asked as she got a clean towel to rub down her own horse.

“He’s Gwydion, named for a powerful wizard and warrior.”

“She’s Grace, for the pirate queen. The lean-to is much newer than the cabin.”

“I built it only a few months ago.”

“It looks sound,” she said, picking out Grace’s hooves.

With the horses fed and watered, Mallick took up his own light pack. Fallon shouldered her heavier duffel and the food her mother had packed.

The cabin, a square and squat structure, included a narrow front porch up one short step.

Beside the step, in a pool of pebbles, stood a rough stone figure. Female, Fallon judged.

Mallick paused to open his water flask, and trickled some water over the pebbles.

“In tribute and respect for the goddess.”

“Does she protect or bless?”

“She may do both, at her whim. She is Ernmas.” He sighed a little when Fallon only frowned. “She is a mother goddess, she is of the Tuatha de Danann, as you are. You are of her blood and bone, Fallon Swift. Do you know nothing of your ancestors?”

“We had some books on mythology, mostly like the Romans and Greeks. You don’t seriously expect me to believe I’m related to some goddess? Because, you know, mythology.”

“Your ignorance does you no credit.” He walked onto the porch, flicked a hand at the door. It opened with a rush of wind. “Do you think power—the light, the dark—has no source? Has no history or purpose? You owe what you are to all who came before you. To their bounty and their battles, their cruelty and their compassion.” He shook his head. “That the fate of the world rests with a girl who knows so little.”

As he walked inside, Fallon rolled her eyes behind his back. She looked down at the goddess. “How am I supposed to know what I don’t know?”

Insulted—she was not ignorant—she stomped in behind Mallick.

Inside, the main area consisted of one open room with a fireplace on the north wall and a kitchen in the back—windows east, she noted, to overlook the creek, and catch the sunrise.

A big—and ugly to her eye—couch in some sort of black-and-brown plaid faced the TV over the fireplace. They had a TV at the farm, and once a week they had movie night with the DVDs.

She loved DVDs almost as much as maps, as both took you to other places, other worlds.

Two chairs, that same plaid, a table with a lamp with a black bear climbing a black tree for a base, an overhead light fashioned from some sort of cart or wagon wheel and a round wooden table with four wooden chairs filled the space in what she considered a really ugly way.

She took the food pack to the counter covered in a muddled gray over white, set it down.