The Invasion

by Peadar O'Guilin

  ‘A nest …?’ Anto says. Anybody who spends time in a survival college knows how rumours can grow out of all proportion from their modest beginnings. He shakes his head. ‘There was only one traitor. Conor Geary. He was in my year. They … they made him king so he could revoke the treaty that banished the Sídhe to the Grey Land. It’s the only thing keeping them out of Ireland.’

  ‘Right!’ says Ryan. ‘Terrifying. But it makes sense there’d be more than one traitor. The Sídhe catch people in the Grey Land. Hurt them – you and me know how bad that can get, right? And then, the only way to stop the pain is if you agree to work for them.’ His garbled mix of English and Sídhe can be hard to follow, so Anto almost misses his next words. ‘And now they’re saying that there was a girl traitor too. From your school. Workin’ with that Conor. The cook heard it from his cousin up there.’

  Corless nods emphatically from the far side of the table. ‘I bet there’re spies everywhere!’

  ‘Right,’ says Ryan. ‘I mean, who knows what really happens to us when we’re in the Grey Land? We’ve no witnesses to say we stayed loyal. But you we can trust, Anto. Everybody in that school owes you their lives. That’s what we heard this mornin’, right, Byrnie?’

  ‘Right.’

  Byrne – Byrnie, looks uncomfortable with the conversation and gulps down his food as quickly as he can. Then, without another word, he’s gone. ‘He’s a decent fellah,’ Ryan says. ‘It’s the talkin’ that puts him off, not you.’ But then, he notices the worry on Anto’s face. ‘You OK, Bullboy?’

  Anto’s not sure he is OK. His mind is swirling with the thought that there was a girl traitor too. Of course it wasn’t Nessa! She wouldn’t. She couldn’t! But people will be suspicious of how she escaped when her legs are so weak. They’ll be wondering why, when the Sídhe altered her, they made changes to her body that ensured her survival. When has that ever happened before? Unless you count the poor boy with the holes in his head who claimed to see the future. Or a freak like Anto himself.

  Feeling sick, he forces food down his throat. It doesn’t want to go though. The muscles in his neck squeeze it back out and his entire stomach has turned into a burning hot stone.

  Nessa. He’s here because of Nessa. He worked that out last night. With Megan dead, nobody knows her the way he does. Others called her ‘stuck up’ at school because she hid her emotions. But Anto has felt her heart quicken, has heard her breath speed up when they kiss. There’s a real girl under the reserve, not some kind of monster.

  Nobody pays any more attention to his discomfort. But Ryan must be aware of it, because he hangs around, reminiscing about the caravan he was born in and his old, deaf father, who still breeds workhorses to replace tractors all over the country.

  Anto is not listening. I need to get out of here. I need to find her.

  He could steal a car if he knew how to drive or if his enormous arm wouldn’t get in the way, which it would. A bike would be better, but where should he go? In the whole wide country, he wouldn’t know how to begin a search or even who to ask for help.

  A bugle blares over the speakers set up next to the main door of the canteen.

  ‘That’s the assembly,’ says Ryan. ‘You might as well come. The captain’ll tell you if you’re not needed.’

  The tired soldiers gather in front of the one working truck, which had to do relays last night to pick them all up. The captain, his breath clouding the air in front of his face, stands up on the tailgate.

  ‘So,’ he says, ‘seems like last night wasn’t a fluke. Our comrades in Kerry, Antrim and Waterford all had call-outs, and that makes twenty for the month – ten in the last week alone, by God.’

  ‘Holy Danú!’ Ryan whispers. He’s not the only one, and the captain nods his head.

  ‘Yeah, that’s right, lads. That’s right. Word is getting out among the civilians. Farmers going missing and the like. But it, uh …’ He pauses, and even Anto, who only met the man yesterday, can see he doesn’t believe what he’s about to tell the members of his squad. ‘Well, we won’t be getting any more call-outs. I’m told …’ He clears his throat. ‘I’m told we’ll be handing our duties and this barracks over to the local garda’.’ He almost spits the last two words.

  ‘The police are taking our jobs?’ This from Karim, who’s right up at the front. ‘But whatever is to happen to us?’

  ‘There’s a bigger problem for us to deal with,’ the captain says. ‘In Sligo. We have to go there and sort it out.’

  ‘No way!’ a woman shouts. ‘My mother can’t move across the country to be near me. What about the Donegal lads? They’re right next door! Let them fix it.’

  ‘Enough!’ says the captain. ‘The Donegal squad will be fixing it. They’re going too, fair play to them. Every squad in the country is going. I need you to pack your bags. I don’t know what’s behind all this myself, but there’s to be no communication with your mammies, or whoever the hell you’ve got left. I do know that this is big, though, you understand me? People up in headquarters are afraid, really afraid.’ He clears his throat – he does this a lot. ‘Now,’ he says, ‘one hour. There’s a bus coming for us. The truck will take our bags.’

  Anto grabs Ryan by the arm. ‘You’re going to Sligo?’

  ‘We’re going, lad. That includes you. And no, before you ask, I have no idea why. The captain, though … he looks panicked. It’s the only word for it.’

  Anto nods. ‘I’ll get my stuff,’ he says. Not that he has any stuff to get. He’s thinking he can use the chaos of everybody leaving to get away and go looking for Nessa. Yet he still doesn’t know where, or even how to start.

  But Ryan is still talking to him. ‘You’ll know the area anyway, won’t you, lad? It’s not that far from your old school.’

  The boy stops dead. It’s true – Sligo town lies no more than an hour up the potholed roads from the college that taught him to survive the Grey Land. Alanna Breen, who literally wrote the book on the Sídhe and who knows government ministers by their first names, is still up there.

  Anto has somewhere to go after all, somewhere to begin his search. But first he’d better go back and finish his untouched breakfast. He’ll need his strength for what comes next.

  The Ambassador

  The guards part to reveal the strangest door Nessa has ever expected to see. It’s like something out of an old book of peasant stories – and Nessa has read more than a few of those. Her teachers insisted on it.

  Horseshoes hang nailed to gnarled wood, each touching its neighbour without a gap. Ribbons are jammed into cracks between the boards and somebody has taped a handwritten prayer to St Brigid right up at the top.

  Professor Farrell snorts. ‘Superstitious peasants,’ she says. Scorn drips from her words, but beneath it all is excitement. She must think she is going to learn something today, and she’s not the type to care who pays for it. ‘Only the iron is important here,’ she adds.

  As if to prove her point, the door opens to a room made entirely of shiny metal, with an exit of the same material right in front of them. Guards push the three women inside, squeezing them together so they can fit. It’s like a coffin, Nessa thinks, an impression made all the stronger when the door swings shut to leave them in total darkness.

  ‘What’s happening?’ asks Angela, a hint of panic in her high little voice.

  Nessa feels the same way. She struggles to keep from leaking any of the flame out of her bones, if only to have a bit of light, to confirm she hasn’t died. But mere seconds later the inner door heaves open and they pass blinking into a much larger space, where Warden Barry and four more guards are waiting for them. The warden smiles reassuringly, but Nessa notices that he makes no effort to approach and that he steps back slightly as the old woman hobbles in.

  One entire wall is made up of a mirror, faced by four chairs. How strange, Nessa thinks. She sees her own tired features looking back at her, her hair grown to the length of a finger for the first time in years.

 
‘What you are about to see,’ says Warden Barry, ‘is a state secret. Am I clear, ladies? If ever you are released into the public again, you will say nothing of it, even to your mothers. I doubt this nation of ours would hesitate to send both you and them out in a boat. You understand?’

  Nessa and Angela both nod, but it’s not enough for Warden Barry. ‘I need you to speak the words, ladies.’

  ‘I understand,’ they chorus.

  ‘Good.’ He rubs at the grey hairs under his nose, his face solemn. ‘In a moment I’ll turn off the lights in here and the mirror will become a window into the cell of another prisoner. The person on the other side cannot see you. No matter what he may claim. It’s one-way only. And he cannot hear you either unless we turn on the speaker system. Again, you must ignore anything he may say to the contrary.’ He turns to the professor. ‘Are you sure we need to do this?’

  ‘I need to learn,’ she says. ‘It’s your job to let me.’

  The guards, all young men, sit the prisoners in chairs against the wall furthest away from the mirror. They are particularly careful not to touch the professor, merely pointing the way with truncheons. She obeys readily enough and surrenders the wooden cane without complaint. She even grins, her eyes eager, excited. ‘I want him to speak to the subjects,’ she says. ‘But not straight away.’

  ‘All right,’ says Warden Barry. ‘It’s your show.’

  One of the guards twists a knob and the room fades into twilight. And, just like that, they can see him. The other prisoner.

  His skin folds into a thousand wrinkles and cracked lines. His legs are knotted arthritic sticks and a wattled neck bends backwards as though he is looking all the way up through his metal prison into heaven. Slowly, although he can’t possibly know anybody is watching, his chin comes down again and he is facing them. Every muscle in Nessa’s body jerks into life; she bangs her head on the wall behind her. Her jaw is clenched hard enough to hurt and her eyes blink and blink again. She needs to get out of here! She needs a weapon. She feels fire in her throat.

  When finally she can talk she says. ‘That … that man is a Sídhe.’

  There’s no mistaking those eyes, the skin that glitters slightly under the lamps in his cell.

  ‘So kind of you to point that out,’ says Professor Farrell.

  ‘But he’s old!’

  ‘You really must have been top of your class.’

  It’s Angela who stands. Angela who approaches the mirror. Nobody tries to stop her. On the contrary, the professor leans forward, an expression on her face that could be greed or lust. The monster, the Sídhe, cocks his head to one side.

  ‘Wonderful!’ Professor Farrell whispers. ‘He feels her presence.’ And indeed he must do, because he too stands and walks forward to the mirror. He raises his hands – but no! – only the stumps of his wrists remain.

  ‘So cruel,’ whispers Warden Barry. His sadness seems genuine.

  ‘A waste,’ the professor agrees. ‘We could have learned so much by keeping his hands …’

  The stumps press up against the glass, exactly opposite where Angela’s hands now lie.

  ‘Get away from him!’ Nessa cries.

  ‘Don’t be absurd,’ says Professor Farrell. ‘Even if he could touch her, what harm can he do now? You. Warden. Turn on the speakers. One-way only for now.’

  Nessa pushes herself upright and reaches for the back of Angela’s uniform. ‘Don’t talk to him!’ she says.

  Warden Barry hesitates, narrowing his eyes to look at her. But then he says, ‘Speakers on.’

  And here now is the voice of the enemy. ‘Oh, you are special,’ he says to Angela. His words crackle and hiss with age. ‘Is it that you can’t hear us,’ he wonders, ‘or that we can’t see you? Yet, there you are and here am I. I can feel you through this stone.’

  And now Nessa realizes something else.

  ‘He’s speaking English,’ she says.

  They called him ‘The Ambassador’, didn’t they? She wonders how long he’s been a prisoner. How the professor caught him, if she really did. Or if he came here once upon a time of his own volition to … to negotiate?

  Nessa shakes herself free of the spell and takes Angela’s hand to pull her away. No sooner are the two girls in contact than the Sídhe covers his mouth as though in horror. ‘No!’ he gasps. He pounds the glass with the stumps of his wrists. ‘No! A broken promise! Oh, no!’ He staggers back, a look of pure nausea on his face. Then he masters himself. And forces a smile such as the ones his comrades seem to wear at all times in the Grey Land.

  ‘Little one,’ he says, his eyes focusing exactly on the spot where Angela is standing, ‘tell me what you want.’ He starts coughing and has to fight to speak again. ‘Tell me what you dream above all else. Keeping a promise to you may allow us to fix the uncompleted one. The goddess has shown me the way. I feel it.’

  Angela, fascinated, opens her mouth to reply, but Nessa silences her. ‘You mustn’t talk to him!’ she hisses.

  ‘That’s right,’ says Professor Farrell, ‘because he can’t hear ye yet.’

  ‘You mustn’t,’ says Nessa, grabbing Angela’s wrist to pull her away, ‘because he—’

  She never gets a chance to finish that sentence. Somehow the old lady has freed herself of the handcuffs. Now she swings them hard enough at Nessa’s head to knock her from her feet and leave her barely conscious on the floor.

  Warden Barry cries in outrage, yet his guards hurriedly obey when the professor says, ‘Turn on our speakers too.’

  ‘Tell me what you long for,’ says the cracked Sídhe voice again, and Angela, as though hypnotized, responds.

  ‘I wish,’ she says, ‘I wish I survived the Call.’

  ‘No …’ Nessa murmurs. Her vision is swimming. She must stand. Never stay down! A tiny flame escapes from between her lips, but nobody is looking, not even the warden. And nobody hears her when she says, ‘Don’t talk to him …’

  ‘You wish to return from the Grey Land alive?’ the Sídhe ambassador is pressed right up against the partition.

  ‘Oh yes!’

  ‘Then it is yours, little one.’ He seems to suppress another cough. ‘It is a promise. And keeping it will allow us to mend the other that is broken.’ And Nessa knows he’s talking about her. Because the Sídhe had sworn to let Conor take her life, yet he was the one to die instead.

  ‘You never tell me why ye Sídhe are so obsessed with promises,’ says the professor.

  The ambassador laughs at her. ‘Dear thief, it is simply that you refuse to believe the answer.’

  ‘Because it’s nonsense!’ she cries, enraged. ‘Super-stitious nonsense like the horseshoes on the door. There’s an explanation. There’s always an explanation!’

  He’s coughing too much to say any more, sliding back against the far wall.

  ‘He won’t last another year,’ mutters Warden Barry. Then he remembers Nessa. ‘Help the poor child up, somebody!’ Two guards lift Nessa to her feet as the lights come up. Her head is beginning to clear, although warm blood drips down one side of her face from where the professor struck her.

  ‘Well,’ says the old woman, eyes shining, ‘I bet ye found that interesting.’

  It’s all Nessa can do not to burn the hag to a cinder. But she’s not one to give in to spite, especially not when her survival is at stake.

  On the way back, new handcuffs are found for Professor Farrell. The two girls walk along beside each other and have a chance to talk again. Angela is smiling as though a great weight has been lifted from her shoulders.

  ‘You shouldn’t have drawn attention to yourself,’ says Nessa. She’s sweating. The heat won’t be happy to lie curled in her bones much longer. It wants out. It wants out now, but there’s nowhere safe for it to go.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I want you to do something for me, Angela. I want you to promise that if you find yourself waking up in the Grey Land, you’ll run for all you’re worth.’

  ‘Run? What f
or? I’m not sure I’ll ever be Called, but if I am, he promised I’d survive it, didn’t he? And he’s, well, you know, an ambassador.’

  Nessa takes her by the elbow, squeezing hard with her powerful hands. ‘He said you’d survive. He didn’t say what condition you’d be in when you came home. With the Sídhe, you need to be clear, you always need to specify—’

  ‘Oh, Crom!’ Horror blossoms on Angela’s face as she understands what she has done. ‘But I’m not fit,’ she breathes. ‘I haven’t trained in over two years.’

  ‘Listen,’ Nessa says. ‘You can do what I did. Threaten to kill yourself. They fear breaking a promise more than they fear missing out on their fun with you. It’s the worst possible thing in the world for them.’

  ‘But … but why?’

  ‘How should I know? Even the professor hasn’t got a clue – you heard her! The ambassador, he was … disgusted when he sensed me there. I should be dead, but I’m not. So he wants that fixed now.’

  Angela covers her mouth with both handcuffed hands. ‘Have I … Have I got you in trouble? You said to keep away from him, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t. Even when the window was a mirror, he was pulling me to him, like I had a hook in my belly. I wanted to go though. And now … now … I’ve …’

  Yes, Nessa thinks. You’ve agreed to be Called. You’ve asked for it. How could anyone ask for it?

  ‘Maybe,’ she says aloud, ‘maybe they won’t Call you at all, right? You’re an adult now. You’re past all that.’ But she doesn’t believe her own words. And also, as they lead her back to her cell where Annie sleeps noisily on the other bunk, she can’t help wondering what the ambassador intends for her.

  The Battle Kingdom

  The last of Boyle Survival College’s students are out running in the fields, all years mixed together. ‘Pick it up!’ Taaft cries. Lena Peekya takes the lead, though she’s only twelve. Aoife, never the best athlete, is barely ten steps ahead of the three tiny Year 1s. And at her side, not even breathing hard, Liz Sweeney lopes along.