Some had only ever existed in books, in fairy tales, not truth, but I was part human, and I had been educated in human schools. I had never seen many of the creatures of legend, so I could not wish them into being. It was as if my imagination was being mined for shapes. Some of the forms were beautiful, some were horrific. Never had I regretted more some of the horror-movie marathons that I'd had with friends in college, because they were there too. But some of the darkest shapes gave me eyes filled with compassion before they spilled away into the night. Some of the most heartrendingly beautiful shapes gave me eyes that were pitiless, like the eyes of a tiger that you'd hand-reared until the day you realize that it was never tame, and you are just food.
Then we were inside the sluaghs' mound with the last shining remnants of the wild magic, and the sluagh themselves turning to fight us.
Sholto yelled, "We need a healer!"
Most of them hesitated, staring at us as if struck deaf and dumb. Nightflyers peeled themselves from the ceiling and flew down one of the dark tunnels. I hoped they had gone to do as their king bid, but the rest of the surprised sluagh still seemed uncertain what to do.
The shining circle around us knelt if they had legs to kneel with, and I knew what they wanted. They wanted guidance. Guidance to pick what they would be.
I realized that we were in the great central hall. There was the throne of bones and silk at the center of the main table. This was where the court ate, and when there was an audience or important visitors the big tables were moved away. Throne rooms often doubled as the formal eating area in castles, in or outside faerie.
I spoke to the assembled sluagh. "This is wild magic; it waits to be given form. Come and touch them, and they will become what you need, or want."
A tall hooded figure said, "The wild magic only forms to the touch of the sidhe."
"Once magic was for all of faerie. Some of you remember that time."
It was a nightflyer clinging to the wall who spoke, in their slightly hissing manner. "You are not old enough to remember what you speak of."
Sholto said, "The Goddess moves in her, Dervil." And the name let me know that it was a female nightflyer, though a glance could not have told me.
The shining, kneeling circle was beginning to fade. "Would you lose this chance to show the sidhe that the oldest magic knows the hand of the sluagh?" I asked. "Come, touch it before it fades. Call back what you have lost. I was the dark Goddess this night." I raised my still-bleeding hand. "The wild magic tasted my blood. It shines with white light, but so does the moon, and is that not the light in all your night skies?"
Someone stepped forward. It was Gethin, in a loud Hawaiian shirt and shorts, though he'd left his hat behind somewhere, so that his long, donkeylike ears draped bare to his shoulders. He smiled at me, showing that his humanlike face was full of sharp, pointy teeth. He had been one of the ones who had come to Los Angeles when Sholto first approached me. He was not one of the most powerful of the sluagh, but he was bold, and we needed bold tonight.
He put his small hand on one of the shining forms, and it was as if his touch were black ink poured into shining water. As the dark color hit the shining light, the form began to change. The light and darkness mingled, and for a moment I couldn't see, as if some magical veil had come down to hide part of the process. When it was clear to the eye again, it was a small black pony.
Gethin gave a cackling, delighted laugh. He threw his arms around the shaky neck, and the pony nickered happily at him. The happy noise showed that the pony had teeth as sharp as Gethin's, but bigger. The pony rolled its eyes up at me, and there was a flash of red.
"Kelpie," I whispered.
Gethin heard me, because, smiling, he said, "Nay, Princess, 'tis an Each Uisge. It's the water horse of the Highlands, and nothin' is meaner than the Highland folk, unless maybe the Border folk." He hugged the pony again, and it nickered at him again like a long-lost pet.
Others came forward then, with eager hands. There were hairy brown creatures that were not quite horses, but not quite anything else. They looked unfinished, but the sluagh cried gladly at the sight of them. There was a huge black boar with tentacles on either side of its snout. There were black hounds, huge and fierce, with eyes that were too large for their faces, like the hounds in the old Hans Christian Andersen story about dogs with eyes as big as plates. Their huge round eyes were red and glowing, and their mouths were too wide, and seemed unable to close, so that their tongues lolled out around pointed teeth.
A huge tentacle the width of a man dangled from the ceiling. I looked up to find that it covered the ceiling. I'd seen the tentacles at the hospital and in Los Angeles, but I'd never seen more than the tentacles. Now I gazed up at the entire creature. It took up the entire upper dome of the huge ceiling. It clung to the surface much as the nightflyers did, but its tentacles didn't help it cling. They were turned outward, and dangled like fleshy stalactites. Two huge eyes gazed down at us, and the moment I saw the eyes I thought, "It's like some kind of humongous octopus," but no octopus ever had so many arms, so much flesh.
That long tentacle touched the last glowing shreds of the magic, and suddenly there was a man-sized version of the tentacled creature. All the other things that had formed from the magic had been animals: dogs, horses, pigs. But this was obviously a baby of what clung to the ceiling.
The tentacles on the ceiling gave a glad cry, which echoed in the hall and made some flinch, but most smile. The huge tentacle picked up the smaller version, and lifted it to the ceiling. The tentacled creature that I had no name for clung to the larger tentacle and made small happy sounds.
Sholto turned a tearstained face to me. "She has been alone so very long. The Goddess does still love us."
I put an arm around him, a hand on Mistral. "The Goddess loves us all, Sholto."
"The Queen has been the face of the Goddess for so long, Meredith, and she has no love of anyone."
In my head, I thought, "She loves Cel, her son." Out loud I said only, "I love."
He kissed me on the forehead, ever so gently. "I'd forgotten what it was to be loved."
I did the only thing I could. I went up on tiptoe and kissed him. "I will remind you." I gave him all that he needed to see in my face as I gazed up at him, but part of me was wondering where the healer was. I was going to be queen, and that meant that no one person was so dear as all of them.