by Mary Watson
Mom and Dad are not from here. She’s from South Africa, and Dad was too, kind of, but he grew up in Australia. They met when he was visiting relatives, and he swept her off her feet. They settled in Dublin before we were born, when Dad got a job at the university. Mom’s never fully made peace with what she’d left behind. And now she wants to go back, to her real home, and I won’t let that happen.
This village was supposed to be our new beginning, not a place of endings. Last June, living in the city suburbs, Adam was in a dark place. Then Laila was caught with a mind-altering drug, and Dad with Lindy from Human Resources in an underground car park. We weren’t supposed to know about Dad and Lindy from HR but of course we did. Mostly because she wasn’t the first Lindy.
Mom had been furious. She’d had enough. It was the line in the sand, she’d said in a cold, detached voice. We were leaving. She was taking the three of us and starting over in a place I’d only visited a handful of times. Without him.
Adam and I were dead set against it, we didn’t want to be so massively uprooted in our last years of school. Laila pretended not to care, mostly because turning eighteen, she could stay if she had a mind to work.
Dad begged for a second chance, arguing that Laila and Adam needed stability more than moving away or a hellish custody battle. We all piled in, resistant.
Fearful of our family splitting up, Mom was defeated and agreed to start over. One last chance. With an ironclad condition: that we move. Away from the city and its temptations. Her practice partner would buy her out, Dad would negotiate remote office days and we would focus on rebuilding our family.
We sold up and moved to this new build in a sweet village at the far edge of the commuter belt. Kilshamble. When Mom had said quiet, I hadn’t realised that she meant the village at the end of world.
We barely see Dad, who commutes to the city with no remote office days. Mom tried doctoring part-time and baking bread in the afternoons. After two weeks of hard, tasteless loaves she was clamouring for more hours at Dr Kelly’s practice.
And I’m half left behind, pining for my friends and a boy called Nathan. We moved to Kilshamble for a new beginning. Now Laila is dead, and Mom is hell-bent on finding proof that she died because of drugs. Mom blames herself. That if she hadn’t given Dad another chance, we’d be far away and Laila would be alive.
‘Leave this,’ I say. Mom’s hunched over the bright plastic accessories, utterly miserable.
She wraps Laila’s charm bracelet around my wrist and I recoil. I don’t want it.
‘Will you wear this?’ She pulls the hook on the clasp. ‘For Laila?’
I’m frozen. I don’t want the bracelet.
‘She’d want you to have it.’ Mom frowns at the crow as she clasps the bracelet around my wrist. ‘Remove that one. I don’t like it.’
Which makes me decide to keep the crow. I will wear the bracelet the way Laila did.
Looking down at Mom, her red-rimmed eyes and quiet desperation, I understand. She needs to know it’s not her fault. That she didn’t let Laila down.
You can’t say sorry to ashes.
‘I’m going to Cape Town.’ She doesn’t look at me as she puts Laila’s things away. ‘Next month. For a week. I need to do this alone.’
Which means she’s going to investigate. To see how she could move us there.
If Mom keeps blaming herself, I’ll be made to move far away no matter how much I resist.
It’s not Mom’s fault that Laila died. And it’s not Mom who Laila reached out to that night. Who let Laila down.
It’s not Mom who should be trying to atone, to fix things with Laila.
It’s me.
TWO
The spying
David
There are monsters in these woods. Dangerous creatures wait and watch. The villagers warn of fearsome tree people, with bark-covered skin and thick roping muscle. Beautiful and deadly, they lure boys and girls into the deepest parts of the forest. The victims fall in love with these exquisite monsters, and this is what destroys them. Every kiss is a feed, every touch a drain, until they are nothing more than shells. Or dead.
I’d rather be dead than a shell.
But these are stories. There are no tree people haunting the woods. Real monsters have ordinary faces.
You wouldn’t know if you see them in the supermarket. You wouldn’t know that this one, with his gang of friends, hurt an older woman and tried to force her into his van. Or that one betrayed his granddaughter in the most brutal way.
Here’s the thing about the monsters in my world: they’re normal people living at a knife’s edge, poised between decent and depraved.
Raising my binoculars, I peer through the bifurcated trunk. Beyond the low hedge, thick with growth, is a bungalow with a small backyard.
This is the house where my favourite monsters live.
The yard is bare and barren. Just crumbled cement where barely a weed survives. Inside, the woman with wild curly hair is alone in her kitchen. Maeve, the worst of them all.
She looks up, like she can sense me hiding behind the tree. She peers out, eyes hard.
For Maeve, for those like her, I am monster.
She turns away. I guess the augurs don’t expect anyone out here in this isolated part of the village. Maybe they believe their magic will alert them if the enemy is close. But their magic is weak, a dull glow fading in and out. Fortune tellers reading jumbled futures in the lines of a hand, half guessing, usually wrong. Dad says however much we’ve lost, they’re worse off. That augur magic was never as strong as ours, even in the before times.
Through the window, Maeve dries dishes. This woman is shrewd, cunning and ruthless, beneath her apple-cheeked facade.
Without warning, she hurls the pan across the room. Her hands fly up to her eyes and press against them.
She’s upset.
Good.
It’s been more than two months since I started my watch. Since we discovered that augurs live here in the village, even though Kilshamble is our territory.
The door opens and I sink lower. Maeve rushes outside and for a second I think she’s seen me through the exuberant summer growth. Her face is turned up to the sky, furious.
I feel a little nudge in my head. There’s a word that’s teasing, but it stays out of reach. It’s making me antsy, this word I can’t get a hold on.
‘Mam?’ The dark-haired girl, Sibéal, appears at the kitchen door.
Maeve wipes a hard hand over her eyes before turning to her daughter. I’m irritated. I’m not here for the tender moments or old lady breakdowns.
I’m here to find out what they’re planning next. Dad thinks we’ve nothing to worry about, that the augurs played their hand and have now retreated. He thinks that stealing or damaging the sacred places that fuel our magic, our nemeta, is the only threat the augurs pose.
I don’t believe it for a minute.
The augurs are up to something. It’s there in their faces. It’s there in the tight way they hold themselves, tension stiffening their shoulders, hunching their backs. In the cars that pull up in their drive, the meetings with other grove members that run late into the night as they lean over charts on Maeve’s kitchen table. In the way that Maeve talks to Sibéal just now, with big arm gestures, her voice carrying across the yard. There’s nothing of interest, until—
‘We’ve looked everywhere.’
‘Then we look again,’ Sibéal says stiffly. ‘We’ll find it.’
Find what?
Sibéal is angry. I can imagine her narrative: we deprived them of nemeta, making them weak. We persecuted them. When, centuries ago, it was the augurs who initiated Sunder, where augurs, bards and judges went separate ways.
They rebelled against our laws, claiming they were corrupt. They refused to share their divinations, nursing their bitterness until it became a weapon.
The augurs brought ruin on themselves. But they won’t hear that.
‘This time, they’ll get
what they deserve.’ Sibéal is making a vow to the trees, to the scrappy weeds, to the sky. It feels like her words have power, and I don’t like it. I lean closer to listen to the now quieter conversation, to find out what it is they’re searching for.
‘Mam?’ she says hesitantly.
Maeve has wandered over to the edge of the yard. If she looked through the summer growth she’d see me. But she’s searching the sky. Above are light wispy clouds. Her fists are clenched and her jaw locked. Her body begins to shake, a light jerking. If it were my mam, I’d be getting the pills.
‘What is it?’ Sibéal is unfazed.
‘The girl.’ Maeve’s voice is a gasp. ‘The girl.’
I’m trying to figure out what I’m witnessing. Is this augur magic? Trembling and gasping and muttering? Not gonna lie, I’ve seen better. And what girl? Could Maeve be more unspecific?
‘We know that.’ Sibéal is unimpressed.
‘No,’ Maeve says. She’s bracing her hands on her knees like she’s done a six-minute mile. ‘Not that …’
But her words are lost to me. I sense him before I see him, someone approaching from behind. I turn fast, hand on my knife. But it’s only Cill, and I sheathe the knife, giving him a small smile. I signal to stay back, get behind a tree. Cill holds up his hands and backs up, rolling his eyes. It’s time to head anyway, we’re due at HH in less than an hour. Cassa is announcing the War Scythe contenders at the Rose summer party and I can’t be late for that.
Only Cill knows I’ve been coming here, all the way to the other side of the village, and watching the augurs with a dedication that borders on obsessive. He’s always laughed at my single-mindedness, my black-and-white vision of the world. But there’s no room for grey, no room for uncertainty, not when you’re a soldier in a world that could tip to war at any time.
Moving backwards, Cill steps on a loose stone. He teeters for a moment before catching himself, but it’s too late. The stone falls, clattering down.
‘What’s that?’
‘Who’s there?’
The cries ring through the evening air as augurs stream out of the house.
‘Run.’ I don’t have to say it. Cill is skedaddling, jumping over stones and thick roots.
My hood up, I leap up a boulder. Behind me, Sibéal is at the hedge. Their grover friend, Simon, is over it and gaining. He’s slowed down by the boulder, but not enough.
Cill and I split up. I’m sprinting towards the thickest part of the forest, Simon on my heels and others trailing after him. I do take a moment to appreciate the irony of being chased through the woods by augurs.
We’re deep between the trees before I lose Simon by jumping from a ridge to the riverbank below. Dad is going to be raging that I went and poked the hornet’s nest. Moving along the river, slow and silent, I see the figure lumbering above. Simon.
We have our centuries-old warrior method, where battle is art. Judge boys are trained from young, then sent to Birchwood for formal schooling in the art of battle. And augurs have grovers: heavy guys and vicious women with ski masks who’ll rake concealed, rusted nails down your face while you’re carrying your groceries to the car. Guys like Simon. Their attacks are small, dirty and unfortunately effective. I should know, I’ve experienced more of them than I care to count.
Pressed against the muddy embankment, I wait as he jogs down the slope. He’s looking around, not sure which way I’ve gone. He doesn’t see me until I grab him, going for a sleeper hold. But he’s strong and fights me, and then we’re hitting ground. My feet are in the river, boots soaked, but I have him, blade to skin.
‘What’s Maeve looking for?’
The silver of the knife at his neck. The green of the trees. Wet rocks and black boughs. My head is whooshing. That word I’ve been sensing hovers close. And then it’s not.
‘Nothing that concerns you.’ If Simon’s afraid, he doesn’t show it.
I’m struggling. Suddenly, I can’t feel any urgency to this. I can’t make myself grip harder, push the blade down.
‘What is Maeve looking for?’ I repeat.
Simon senses my lack of conviction. That I’ve no heart in this. That I want it over. So I push the blade deeper. A line of red forms on his pale skin. Not blood. Not yet.
‘A letter.’ His words are clipped. ‘Nothing important.’
I’d be daft to believe an augur. It was clear that whatever Maeve and Sibéal were looking for was very important.
‘I swear,’ he grits out. ‘A girl who did a few jobs wrote a letter to her family telling them about the secret community living in the village. Maeve doesn’t want the family asking questions about draoithe.’
‘What girl?’ I’m thinking about Maeve gasping, her hands to her knees. The girl, she’d said.
‘The dead girl. The one from the village green.’
I search his face, to see if he’s telling the truth. This close, I can see a light spray of freckles, the long-healed scar beside his eyebrow. And for the briefest second, I imagine an alternate universe, one without Sunder. Maybe we would have been friends, beers down at the pub, kicking the ball on a Saturday afternoon. But this is not the world we’ve inherited.
‘Let me up, David.’ Simon sees me falter. ‘This is pointless. You can’t kill me. Not like this.’
‘Don’t be so sure about that.’ My voice is low. He can’t know the Warrior’s Oath, the words all garraíodóirí swear when leaving Birchwood. New soldiers promise to only take a life, even grover life, in battle or in defence. Never in cold blood. Whatever the augurs may think, we are not monsters.
And augurs would demand blood for blood. That’s how it goes. A sleeping war, Dad calls it. Hostilities, with small, sometimes lethal, attacks. Here, everywhere, is our battlefield. The street, the library, the bus stop, the woods, every place is just another arena where we might fight each other. A contained horror. But this sleeping war could wake up into a full-on fucking nightmare, with the right provocation.
‘C’mon, David.’ Says the fella with the knife at his neck. Who somehow knows that I haven’t the emotion to drive the sharp edge through skin, slicing through vein and artery.
I’ve hated them for so long that my hate has lost all strength and urgency. This hate has become so familiar, so ordinary, that I’ve begun to forget it’s there. Why it’s there. What I see instead is my brother, broken and haunted. All in the name of a centuries-old sleeping war.
Simon’s looking at me again with that normal guy face. I think he sees it too: a recognition that things could have been different, that we could have been different. That he could have been someone I went to school with, if I hadn’t trained as a soldier instead.
‘Let’s just forget any of this happened. The spying. This conversation.’ His tone is cajoling. His facade is straining. He is anxious. Afraid. I’m known to be volatile.
And suddenly I can’t take it any more. The ordinariness of this boy, my enemy. An unfamiliar discomfort settles over me, and I’m feeling wrong. My skin is too tight. I feel like I, the me that is hidden and lost inside the muscle and blood and bone, am trying to claw my way out of my body.
I lift off him, pulling up my hood as I step away, willing my body to obedience.
He’s right. This is pointless.
‘We’ll forget this happened.’ It’s a warning: he can’t tell the augurs it was me spying at the house.
‘Never saw you.’
He’s on his feet and the intensity of the exchange is receding.
Still, I feel all kinds of odd as I walk away. Reeling a little from the shock of looking into your enemy’s eyes and seeing your own.
‘David,’ Simon calls.
‘What?’
‘One last thing.’
He’s just behind me when I turn. I realise what’s happening a second too late. His fist lands close to my mouth, my ears ring and my vision is obscured by a thin film. Something sharp sinks into my lip – the bastard has a spiked ring. I’ve only myself to blame, my stupid
thoughts. I deserve nothing less.
I’m stumbling back when he says, ‘That’s because you’re an arsehole.’
THREE
Stabbed
The old lady gives me the creeps.
LAS
Zara
Mom has shut herself in her bedroom. No light shines from beneath her door and I’m sure if I put my ear to the wood, I’ll hear muffled crying.
I’m back in Laila’s room. It’s as she left it, her books on her desk, the school bag beside the wardrobe. Like she popped down to the Spar for Skittles and any minute she’ll throw herself on the bed and tell me she walked through the forest and how the trees shimmered with an unnatural silver glitter and what can it all mean?
Except, she won’t.
It bothers me that Laila’s room is still the same. That, like her body, it bears no sign of the brokenness that’s become our normal.
I don’t stop to think as I grab the heavy scissors from Laila’s desk.
I don’t know if it’s sorrow or anger or helplessness that makes me dig the sharp end into the wall, gouging it deep into the paintwork.
There. Scars show pain.
It helps, so I do it again. A large, deep fissure across the wall. And then another, until I’m attacking the plaster with short hard stabs. I catch myself then, crying and trying to hurt a wall. I step back, realising the damage I’ve done.
We don’t do this. We don’t behave like this. We never lose control. I still don’t know what came over me, and I drop the scissors like they possessed my hand.
Shaking, I look at what I’ve done.
Jarlath Creagh, our landlord, will not be impressed. Mom and Dad are dealing with their own stuff, there’s no room for my vandalism.
I take down the giant corkboard, twisting the hooks from the wall. Moving it to the left will hide the damage, barely. If Mom notices, I’ll tell her a hook came loose. But as I move the board, a small card that had been tucked behind it falls.