Tania knifed down into water that was so cold it tore the breath out of her lungs. She floundered, her head under the surface, her dress billowing up around her. She could still feel Rathina’s hand in hers, the nails digging into her skin.

She kicked out, her lungs already hurting. Her face burst up into dark air. She sucked in a lungful of air and sank again, swallowing water. Panicking, she lost her grip on her sister. She struggled upward again. She was aware of her dress tenting up. It helped keep her afloat, but it made it hard to swim, great wet swaths of cloth rising like the mantle of a jellyfish all around her. Tania knew the thick material would soon become waterlogged and heavy. But at least they were not also wearing their cloaks—that added weight might have sent them both to the bottom.

She heard splashing and coughing close by.

“Rathina?”

“Yes. Is Connor with you?”

“No!” Tania cried, staring desperately around. The fog was gone and the stars were pinpoints in a black void far above the fretful waves. His hand had been ripped out of hers just as she was passing between the worlds. He must still be on the black ship. “I lost him.”

“Tania!” Rathina’s voice was shocked.

“I couldn’t help it.” Tania coughed, spitting out water. “We have to go back for him. I have to get back!”

“No, that were madness!” Rathina gasped.

Now that the water was out of her eyes, Tania could see her sister only a few feet away, her dress doming up on the surging sea.

“We can’t just leave him there,” Tania said.

“If you returned, how would you scale the sides of the ship?” called Rathina. “How would you save him? And what if you entered Faerie where the ship now lies? ’Twould be the death of you, for sure!” She fought down her dress and swam closer.

Tania had not thought of that. What would happen to her if she materialized in Faerie in exactly the same space as some other object? The image of herself emerging halfway through the hull of the ship was a terrifying one.

Tania kicked hard and turned, looking for land across the rise and fall of the bitter, oily waves. “We should get ashore,” she called. “Try to find him then . . .”

“Indeed we should,” said Rathina, “and with utmost dispatch, Tania—ere our strength fades. Spirits of grace but I’d fare better without the encumbrance of this dress!”

Tania knew exactly what she meant—and the sea was deathly cold. They would need all their strength and endurance to survive.

A fluke of icy water splashed in her face; Rathina was swimming toward the low-lying dark spit of land, her arms cutting through the water, her feet kicking froth. Tania leaned forward, squashing down the plump of her dress, working to swim with her.

Soon they were swimming side-by-side—and in the distance Tania could see a mass of lights. A town! A seaside town lit by electricity!

She swam on with renewed energy.

“I’d shed this dress,” she heard Rathina say, panting, “but I’d not make my entrance . . . in the Mortal World . . . dressed in nought . . . but my shift. . . . ”

Tania’s dress was now dragging at her, too, slowing her down, trying to drown her.

But the light-strewn shore was coming closer with every stroke. The long waves were higher now, crested with white foam, pressing inward, lifting them and throwing them forward. They would make it before their strength gave out.

Tania felt something hard under her foot. A rock. She pressed down, hoping for a firm hold, but her foot slipped away and her head went under for a moment. She came up spluttering and spitting brine.

Now the swell and roll of the sea began to work against them. There were white breakers all around, and Tania’s ears were filled with the smash of waves crashing onto a shoreline of great shining black rocks.

We’ll never get ashore. We’re going to die here.

She heard Rathina shouting in fury as she fought against a beating wave. Black water leaped sky-ward, resembling a snow-capped mountain. For a few moments her sister vanished into the turbulent night.

“Rathina!”

But as the wave broke and churned, Tania felt herself caught in its undertow. Her knee struck rock. She gasped with the pain, and her mouth filled with water. Her dress pulled at her, trying to keep her head under the surface. Trying to drown her.

Feet slipping on rock.

Fingers on a hard slimy surface.

Torn away.

Battling to keep afloat.

The crash and batter of surf.

And then a sloping surface that came punching up into her stomach from the depths. Foam all around her. Coughing and choking. She managed to keep a grip on the rock. Managed to find a toehold.

The waves were smashing and sucking, her clothes clinging to her body. Panting for breath, blinded by foam, she crawled over the rock with the ocean hissing in her ears.

She was ashore, on her hands and knees.

Rathina!

She heard breathless laughter from close by. The wild laughter of someone who has stood between the jaws of death and leaped clear.

Tania got to her knees. Rathina was lying on her back not two yards away, with her arms spread out and her feet in the foam. Her face was veiled by black ribbons of hair, her chest rising and falling as she gasped.

Tania crawled over to her and knelt, pulling the thick strands of Rathina’s hair off her face. Their eyes met, and Tania threw her arms around her sister and held her while the sea churned below them.

Tania clambered over the huge rocks. A concrete wall cut across the night—high but not too high to scale. And beyond the wall? She had no idea. A town, she assumed—the town whose lights she had seen from the sea.

Rathina was at her side, laboring over the knuckled boulders. Despite the burden of their saturated clothing they managed to climb the wall without too much trouble.

Tania stood on top of the wall, her arms around her body, shivering in the chilly night, the wet folds of her dress glued to her back and legs. Directly ahead of them was a curving white path that circled an area of bare earth. Beyond that she could see a patch of mowed grass and a soccer field. Beyond those a large white building blazing with lights—and behind the building a town.

A soccer field. How strange and how ordinary. How . . . Mortal.

“Do you know this place, Tania?” asked Rathina, her shoulders hunched to her ears as she peered into the distance.

“No—I’ve never been to Ireland.” She frowned. “I’m assuming this is Ireland, of course.” They were definitely back in the Mortal World but where in the Mortal World? She stepped down off the wall and held her arm out to her sister, her heart aching that she had to return to Faerie so quickly. “Take my hand; we have to get back and find out what happened to Connor.”

Rathina stood at her side and they laced fingers.

Tania concentrated and took the forward side step—into a lightless world. They found themselves standing on a sandy beach, under the Faerie stars.

Tania could hear the waves roaring and crashing at her back. She could faintly see the swelling ocean, and she was aware of a rugged coastline stretching bleakly in either direction.

There were no buildings. No glimmer of earthly light. No trace of living beings.

There was a cold, biting wind.

“So, sister?” Rathina muttered. “Whither now?”

“Welsh mentioned a fortress. . . .” Tania racked her memory. “Dorcha Tur, he called it. They’ll take Connor there.”

“And how do we find this place?” asked Rathina. Tania frowned at her: Rathina’s voice was uncharacteristically flat and lifeless. “We walk till we come to a village . . . or a farmhouse . . . or whatever,” she said. “Then we ask.”

Rathina looked at her. “ ’Tis madness to wander the night thus. And what if the folk we encounter are as hospitable as Master Welsh? With a sword in my hand I’ll face up to any brigand or marauder, but we are weaponless on a strange shore and I would fain seek a place to spend a warm night before we essay an assault on a fortress.” She paused. “I feel sore in need of rest, Tania. I am weary to the bone—more weary than I can well explain.”

Tania nodded. “I know; I can feel it, too. I think part of it is the Gildensleep: It’s draining us all the time. I could crash out right this moment if someone put a bed in front of me.”

“Then why not . . . crash out?” Rathina suggested. “Take us back to the Mortal World, Tania. We have no foes there, nothing to fear. Let us seek a warm fire and a downy bed for the night. Do they not have inns? Do they not welcome wretched travelers?”

“Wretched travelers with credit cards, maybe,” Tania said. She stared into the night till her eyes ached. “What about Connor?” she muttered.

“He is a resourceful and keen-witted lad,” Rathina said reassuringly. “We’d be of little help to him tonight, weak as we are. We will fare better in the morning, and if he is not dead, I have faith that we will find him!”

Tania gave Rathina a horrified look. “Dead?”

“I do not say he is dead, and I do not think it,” Rathina said calmly. “On the morrow we shall return to Alba and seek Dorcha Tur by the light of the sun. And we shall effect such a daring rescue that the heads of his guards will spin like tops while we leap away from them o’er the hills to Tirnanog!”

Tania smiled wearily. “Yes,” she said. “You’re right. Of course you are. We should go back. Money’s going to be a problem—but I’m sure someone will take pity on us.”

Tania took Rathina’s cold hand once more and sidestepped them back into the Mortal World.

Here the sea sounded less fierce and somehow the stars seemed to be farther away—smaller, dimmer, less radiant. Less bewitching.

They headed out across the cropped grass toward the big white building. Tania hoped it might be a hotel. They would have a telephone. Surely she would be able to convince the people to let her phone home—reverse the charges, whatever. Then she could speak to her mother and find out how her dad was doing. And her mum could give the people her credit card number so the two of them could have a meal and a room for the night.

Yes. That was a plan. That was a good plan.

They had crossed the green and were skirting the soccer field prior to crossing the road to the hotel, when a man appeared in front of them, stepping out from the darkness.

“Well, now,” he said with a broad white smile. “Is it two selkies I see, come dripping from the ocean?” The smile widened. “It’s lucky for you that I chose this place to kick my heels tonight, for you could’ve come ashore anywhere from Dun Laoghaire to Bray Head, and then I’d have had the devil of a job tracking you down!”