The Invasion

by Peadar O'Guilin

  ‘Are we in the current?’ one of the men asks his comrade, who nods.

  Still not looking at her, they unhook their boat from hers and head back towards the shore as quickly as they can. Nessa is no longer moving so fast now. But move she does, slowly and surely, further and further from the quay. The current has her, and she knows she doesn’t have much time, no more than five or ten minutes before it carries her into the mist and the boat somehow drifts back home again somewhere down the coast.

  She tests the knots around her wrists. As she expected, the gap-toothed man knew his business and not even Nessa’s strength will free her. ‘All right,’ she says. The words emerge more as a sob than speech, but with nobody around to hear, she doesn’t mind so much. She stands, her arms held back by the rope. Then she throws her weight to one side. She fully intends to flip the boat over, to drown herself, because she knows for a fact it’s better than whatever will happen to her in the Grey Land.

  What she doesn’t expect, however, is that the boat is less enthusiastic about sinking than she is. Gently it stabilizes, as though she’s done nothing at all. She tries once more, pushing all of her weight to the right, only to fail again, but this time, as she falls to the other side, she realizes that it’s just like being on the swings as a child. She needs to make a rocking motion that grows stronger with every cycle. So, she pulls her weight left, then right. The boat rises significantly out of the water. Cold spray drenches her, chills her to the bone … Then her weaker left leg gives way and she’s on the floor with her two arms stretched painfully behind her. ‘By Crom!’ she cries. Her voice turns to a squeak when she looks up, because the edge of the mist is only a few hundred metres away now. How did it get so close? She pushes herself upright.

  ‘They won’t have me!’ she shouts. And Nessa starts the rocking all over again, locking her legs at the end of each swing to keep them as strong as possible. She curses and groans like a madwoman, refusing to waste more time looking ahead. She will not be distracted. She will not!

  The boat tips enough to take on water. It hangs almost vertically and Nessa heaves one last time at it, hard enough that her shoulder feels like it’s coming out of its socket …

  And down she goes! Feet first! Arms twisted painfully behind her. Down with the whole boat!

  I’m going to drown! Oh, Crom! Oh, Lugh! Anto! Anto, get me out of here! Dad! Dad!

  But this is what you wanted, isn’t it?

  Several seconds pass before she realizes she hasn’t swallowed any water at all. Air surrounds her in the bottom of the boat. She didn’t expect that. And she has a new dilemma now as the horrendous freezing chill of the water numbs her body and squeezes her hard enough to gulp down precious oxygen faster than she ought to. She must choose whether to wait for the air to run out and suffocate, or whether to try to drown herself by forcing her face into the water. She suspects the latter won’t work at all, because even now her idiot heart dreams of life.

  Her legs are starting to feel warmer and she imagines this is simply the first sign of another of the many deaths fighting for the privilege of finishing her off: hypothermia.

  Perhaps there’ll be hallucinations next. And right on cue, here they come! The ropes turn insubstantial. The wood of the boat fades in her vision like glass and then … then it’s gone altogether! The boat is gone! And Nessa is free. The air forms itself into a huge bubble and she just has time to take a last gulp of it before it flies off up and away from her.

  The water has turned as black and viscous as oil. It hates Nessa, it expels her. She’s shooting up to the surface after the bubble of air. And when the girl’s face finally breaks free of the sea, it’s not the Irish sky that greets her at all, but slow, slow moving spirals of dull silver.

  The Lie

  Anto has no memory of falling asleep. He opens his eyes and cries out in terror to find himself in darkness. He stumbles to his feet, ready to run, but something weighs him down. A giant arm! What has happened to his arm? And slowly the boy realizes that this can’t be the Grey Land, but a tent.

  He pants for a bit, starting to shiver as the air chills his sweaty brow. He wants to weep with relief, but there’s no time for that. He’s supposed to be leaving. Running away to the school to quiz Alanna Breen about Nessa.

  He reaches around in the dark for the pack he prepared earlier. He’s got food – mostly jars of beans and raw potatoes, although he doesn’t know the first thing about cooking them. He took grenades from the body of one of the infestation squad, but left the rifle behind, knowing its theft would be too obvious. Besides, he has never learned to shoot.

  And out he goes into the freezing night under a million twinkling stars. He’s not alone in the darkness. Over by the road, a large silhouette that might be Corless blocks the way north. Anto avoids him by scuttling behind a truck, wincing as his big arm catches on something and breaks it.

  ‘What was that?’ asks Ryan from inside the vehicle.

  Anto freezes, terrified his breathing will give him away, but he’s trained to wait, still and quiet as a rock, and this he does.

  ‘What does it matter?’ Karim slurs with the strong drink they gave her as an anaesthetic. ‘Why, my dear, after today, you can’t possibly imagine our pretty friends need to sneak up on us?’ Anto strains to hear her through the wall of the vehicle. ‘They’ve taken the whole area around Sligo, captured at least a hundred thousand people. They can make as many monsters as they desire with no need for subtlety. Check if you like, but you’ll just end up shooting another cat. Or – and here’s a novel thought! – you could just save your bullets for the real job. Holding the line here, as we’ve been ordered.’

  Ryan doesn’t like that one bit. ‘So we’re just going to abandon the whole northwest? Sligo? Donegal? Roscommon?’

  The news has Anto grinding his teeth, because of course Boyle and its survival college are on the wrong side of that line. But he can’t give up now. Not when his goal lies mere kilometres away. He’ll keep low and at the first sign of trouble, he’ll—

  ‘The boy is here,’ comes a gravelly voice from right behind him. ‘Outside your truck.’ Anto jumps. His giant’s arm flexes around the backpack, crushing a jar of beans in the process.

  ‘Oh, Ryan,’ says Karim. ‘Are those the sweet tones of our new visitor? Down from Dublin to play the tourist?’ Her voice turns hard. ‘Such a shame you didn’t shoot after all …’

  Anto hears no more. A shadowy figure pulls him by the collar around the truck to where a bonfire waits, while Anto tries to keep beans and grenades from tumbling out of his stolen pack. He smells old leather and sweat.

  Released from the grip, he falls before the fire and looks up. ‘Lawlor,’ says the stranger. This is no soldier, although he carries himself like a fighter, with a square jaw of the type often seen in comic books. He wears a trench coat too small for his heroic frame and a filthy, floppy hat. ‘Lawlor,’ he says again, focusing now on the arm the Sídhe transformed. His eyes are like blue laser beams from a movie and Anto fancies he can feel them burning him where they touch his skin. ‘You’re no spy,’ the man says, almost with regret.

  ‘Excellent,’ says Karim. ‘That’s settled then. Goodbye, Detective Cassidy. Such a pleasure.’

  She is standing on the steps at the back of the truck, one hand in a sling, the fire gleaming off the moisture on her face. Her other hand rests on a holster at her side.

  ‘We gave you permission to question the little chap, not to throw him around like a sack of turnips. He’s one of us now, after all. He is not to be harmed.’

  ‘I haven’t finished,’ says the man, Cassidy.

  ‘Oh, but you have, dear detective, you have. Look! Perhaps you fail to recognize this object? We call them guns, and my pointing it at your face is an invitation for you to toddle off back to Dublin.’

  The detective, if that’s what he is, shows no fear at all. Not of the gun, nor of the men and women crawling out of tents to either side, forming fists or drawing kn
ives. On the contrary, he takes several paces towards the truck.

  ‘I have a mission. From the government.’

  ‘The government? The ones our grandparents voted for and who never left power? Do go on.’ Her limbs tremble. She will fall over at any moment, anyone can see that. Her gun points more at the ground now than at him.

  ‘It is my job,’ Cassidy says, ‘to root out the traitors that are among us.’ He’s a big man. A ball of tension, as though he has not once relaxed since his time in the Grey Land. Maybe he can’t. Those fists of his could make a red smear of Karim along the road before she could raise her gun again or before any of the squad could intervene. He’s probably crazy enough to do it too. Some survivors carry a death wish with them, but it seems that this Cassidy has yet to meet anybody capable of granting his. He’s a strong man, yet his face is weather-beaten and ageing. The time is not far off, surely, when he’ll get his heart’s desire.

  ‘I’ll answer!’ Anto says. ‘I’ll answer his questions. Sure what harm?’

  Karim sits down suddenly, her face leaning against the metal frame of the truck. ‘Charming,’ she says, just as Ryan stops her from falling out onto the ground. ‘That’s … that’s settled then.’

  Cassidy nods, and without even looking at Anto strides away into the darkness. Beyond the camp he turns on a wind-up torch to light his way.

  ‘You don’t have to follow him, lad,’ says Ryan.

  Anto smiles at him, but picks himself up to go after the stranger.

  They travel across a field, frost crunching under boots, until they’re a little above the muttering camp and standing by a an old stone wall with tiny icicles glinting in the blue light of the detective’s torch.

  ‘I see they grabbed you,’ Cassidy says. ‘The Sídhe.’

  Anto catches himself turning away to hide his left arm and has to force himself still.

  They both look for a moment up towards the stars. Anto feels afraid. Not for himself, but for the Nation. He has been focused on Nessa these last few days, but now, hours after doing battle with a giant made of tortured human beings, it’s finally coming home to him that the Sídhe are here. This world with its stars and glinting ice, with its green fields and his parents and younger siblings … it has been betrayed.

  So many nights he has woken, thinking himself in the Grey Land again. Far from being a silly dream, it’s starting to look like prophecy.

  At last, Cassidy speaks. ‘What we must do for the Nation is hard,’ he says. ‘Our enemy will kill us all, down to the last baby. Our job is to make it tough for them. We will spit in their faces as we go down.’

  Anto shivers.

  ‘There were traitors in your college, boy. Just up the road from here.’

  ‘Traitors, sir?’ Anto straightens up. ‘You mean … Conor?’ Conor made himself king and was going to let the Sídhe come back to Ireland. Only his death prevented their return that time.

  ‘I don’t mean Conor. There were others too. Girls.’

  Of course. Girls. That terrible, terrible rumour.

  ‘You seem nervous, Lawlor. Have you something to tell me?’

  ‘No.’

  The eyes are like drills. The wind isn’t helping either, and Anto realizes that the clothes he put on are nowhere near thick enough for the escape he’s been planning. His teeth chatter. The cold invades his thoughts too.

  Girls. Traitorous girls. Oh, not Nessa! Please, God, please don’t let it be her.

  ‘One of the girls confessed,’ Cassidy says. ‘The one called Melanie. Your fellow veteran.’

  ‘Oh,’ Anto shudders. ‘Oh.’

  ‘You know something.’ This is not a question.

  ‘We had a conversation one time … Melanie said … I think she said the Cauldron was real. That the Sídhe could use its power to heal people. Something like that.’

  ‘She was sounding you out, son. I know that for a fact. The girl herself told me. She told me everything. And lucky for you, she convinced me you weren’t involved. Indeed, lots of witnesses saw you in action. I commend you for what you did for the Nation that night. Bloody work. Good work.’

  Anto swallows, remembering it.

  ‘But here’s the thing. Your girlfriend, Vanessa Doherty, was involved too.’

  Anto can only stare. His eyes are stinging in the wind; his belly has gone all loose, as though he’s eaten rotten food and is about to pay for it.

  ‘You look shocked, son. But not surprised.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Anto cries. ‘Not surprised! Not surprised?! What are you even saying? You don’t know Nessa.’

  ‘You’re wrong there, son. I know her better than you do. Strong, she is. Stronger than you and me both.’

  ‘Exactly!’

  ‘She held up under questioning, like nobody I’ve seen. And I left that room, in spite of my misgivings, thinking she was innocent. People get lucky in the Grey Land; we all know it. Maybe even she got lucky with those legs of hers. Legs that would have got her trimmed from the herd in a less forgiving society than our own great nation. And as I left her there, I even felt regret for the … manner of my questioning.’

  Anto tenses. ‘What did you do to her?’

  ‘But it turns out I was wrong. As are you, son. I can read your mind. You’re thinking how sweet she is, that pretty little thing. You’re thinking she couldn’t have sold us out to our enemies who are even now Calling our last few children away to be murdered. Not her, not Vanessa Doherty.

  ‘But she did it, son. She sold us. The Sídhe recognized her strength. Knew it would be useful to them and added to it by making her even stronger. Ensuring her survival in our world as well as theirs. And just when we had caught her and put her in prison—’

  ‘You put her in prison? Nessa?’ Anto didn’t think there were any prisons any more. How can the State afford to feed criminals? But he knows from the movies what terrible places they are, and the thought of Nessa locked away after all she’s been through terrifies him. ‘That’s why I was made to join the infestation squad, isn’t it?’ He’s trying not to shout – Nessa wouldn’t want him to. But he’s not as strong as she is and his spittle flies in the wind with every word he speaks. ‘They sent me here so I wouldn’t find out she’d been taken away. Well, Detective, you’re wrong about her. I don’t care what you think you know. What that lying Crom-twisted Melanie told you. Nessa would never do anything to hurt us.’

  The detective’s next words are almost too quiet to hear. ‘Then how can you explain the rescue attempt?’

  Anto stares, uncomprehending.

  ‘They came for her, her allies. They went to enormous effort to get into the prison. A dozen of them digging right into her cell. Putting their bodies between her and the bullets of the guards. Their leader was even overheard to say … well, I don’t speak their filthy tongue like you youngsters! It’s made all these betrayals possible, if you ask me … But in English, he said something like, “We came here for you. To keep our promise. We will never harm you.”’

  ‘No,’ says Anto. He’s shaking his head. ‘No.’

  ‘You need to speak to me,’ Cassidy says intently. ‘The fate of the Nation could hinge on what you know about her. Are there other spies? Did she associate with anybody strange? Did she give you names? I’ve come all the way up here. I need to know.’

  ‘Oh, Crom, please. Oh, Lugh.’

  Cassidy grabs him by the shoulders and hisses into his face, ‘Stop speaking that language and listen to me, boy! Listen! She’s a traitorous little bitch and the sooner—’

  ‘NO!’

  The giant left arm has a life of its own. It throws the detective two metres across the frosty grass. Then it swings again to smash one of the rocks from the wall so that splinters fly everywhere, tearing Cassidy a new scar across his cheek.

  ‘You’re lying!’ Anto screams it into the teeth of the cold wind. ‘It’s all a lie!’

  He runs, eyes streaming, his great big arm banging into everything and dra
gging on the ground, off into the darkness.

  The Escape

  Since the visit of the Herald and the attack of the snake that bit Lena Peekya, there have been no further incidents at the school. But smoke rises from the town of Boyle. The countryside holds its breath and, for the first time that Aoife can remember, the hooded crows have fled the trees around the burnt-out skeleton of the dorms.

  The last of the students and staff crowd into the gym. Alanna Breen stands by the climbing wall, her back straight, her face shiny with burn scars. Plump Mr Hickey hovers by her side along with handsome Nabil and the scowling Taaft.

  Aoife waits with the remaining twenty-eight students, rubbing at her neck where it was splashed by, well … by whatever was left of the girl running behind her. Her skin feels warm there, prickly, as though something is crawling and probing. But her fingers find nothing whenever they touch it.

  As if reading her mind, Liz Sweeney mutters, ‘What a waste! At least Lena could run a bit. Not like you or that stupid Krishnan.’

  ‘Why can’t you ever leave me alone, Liz Sweeney?’

  ‘There’s nobody else left in our year. We need to stick together.’

  ‘You call this sticking to—’

  ‘Quiet!’ says Liz Sweeney, ‘Can’t you see the Turkey’s about to speak?’

  Indeed Alanna Breen, principal of a dead school, has opened her mouth, and everybody hushes to hear what wisdom her smoke-damaged voice will produce.

  ‘My children,’ she tells them in her perfect Sídhe, ‘you are the Heart of the Nation. If you don’t live, it will be as though we adults never lived either, as though nothing we did mattered.

  ‘So we need to get you out of here at once. Radio reports came in of … I won’t hide it, of terrible attacks pushing into Donegal and Mayo and now down towards … towards Longford.’