The Invasion
Page 15
After days of walking, after witnessing so many horrors, Anto welcomes the escape, hoping only for oblivion.
However, he does dream.
For once it’s lovely, because Nessa is there with him. He smells her clean skin. He basks in the smile that she saves for him alone, listening as she draws for him a picture of the future. Everybody used to think she was so reserved, but with him, at the end, it was very different. ‘You want a dog, don’t you, Anto?’
‘Um …’
‘I knew it. But up there –’ she means in Donegal – ‘we’ll need more than one. For company. I like collies best. What do you think of collies? Good.’
He is lying with his face on her belly, totally relaxed, more happy than he’s ever been. But then, from nowhere, a calloused hand covers his mouth. His eyes fly open to the dark, cooling room in the abandoned house in Longford. Taaft is right there in front of him and she whispers, ‘Shut up. Keep schtum.’ Then she’s gone, to wake somebody else in the same way.
Anto realizes he’s lying on somebody’s belly after all, his normal arm around her waist. Liz Sweeney of all people. She meets his eyes. The sun is just starting to creep in through a crack in the curtains, making a perfect crescent moon of her left cheekbone. She shrugs. Looks away.
He should apologize, but then the street outside fills with sudden noise: the shouts of a troop of centaurs, dozens of them all together: ‘Please don’t make me hurt somebody! Please!’
Anto looks around the room. Nabil and Taaft are back in the kitchen. The others huddle together: Mitch and Andrea, a Year 3, holding each other tight; Krishnan, curled into a ball, but still taller than Seán beside him; and that girl with the birthmark, Niamh. Only Aoife sits alone, arms around her knees, eyes tightly closed.
He crawls up to the window, peering around the edge of the curtain, while Liz Sweeney does the same on the far side of it. He gasps, but dangerous as that is, he can’t help himself, for the whole world beyond the glass is a churn of monsters.
Furry beasts run close to the ground emitting wordless, screeching cries. So tightly do they crowd together they seem to form a living carpet.
This is why Taaft woke them.
Meanwhile, ‘crows’ have come to roost on the chimney. How they squabble just above the heads of the cowering students! ‘I’ll find them and eat their faces!’ ‘No! No! I will!’
And in the sky with great bat-like wings, trailing a nest of tentacles behind them, three creatures soar, singing so incredibly beautifully that Niamh Fegan starts to weep. She has to bite down on her own hand to keep herself quiet.
Trapped, Anto thinks. We’re trapped. He’s not sure he cares. But the parade of monsters outside the window goes on and on and he can’t help remembering that each and every one of them has been twisted out of a living human being. We made the Sídhe into monsters, now they make monsters of us. It’s the human thing to do, isn’t it? It always has been. We bomb and impoverish others. We starve their children and gape in outraged surprise when they turn our cruelty back on us. But why Nessa? What did she ever do to the Sídhe? She could be out there right now, her lovely mouth full of fangs. Her eyes on stalks, her elegant hands sharpened to points and dripping with poison.
Something flashes in the distance. A moment later, the house shakes, and suddenly, across the street, an entire building explodes. Shrapnel tears holes in the living carpet of monsters. They screech and wail, but more explosions flower everywhere at once.
Taaft pokes her head around the door. ‘Stay put,’ she yells over the sound of the bombardment. ‘We’re as safe here as anywhere. We’ll just have to take our chances.’ She returns to the kitchen, presumably to consult with Nabil.
The students know a bomb from their own army could hit them at any moment. Or a swarm of beasts could barge through the door in search of shelter from the battle. But none do. The creations of the Sídhe obey whatever orders they’ve been given. Many of those outside, though injured by shrapnel or falling buildings, though they be burning alive, crawl onwards, regardless, never once deviating from the path. Doubtless large numbers of them will make it through to the human defenders, wherever they are. The retreat of the army will go on and on. All the way back to Dublin.
And once there …
Anto imagines the people living in the city. His parents. The twins. His cheeky little sister. He feels nauseous. His great fist clenches, wanting to smash the traitor who allowed the Sídhe back in, the new king of Sligo. Whoever he is. Wherever he is.
They’ve got to get out of here, he thinks. They’ve got to get back home.
He staggers off in search of Nabil, finding him in the kitchen. Taaft has her arm around him, smiling lazily.
‘I hate you,’ she says to the Frenchman. ‘But you’ll do.’
‘Well,’ he replies sadly, ‘I don’t hate you, Sergeant.’
‘It’s only been ten years, Froggy. I’ll get you there.’
Anto taps the wall to get their attention. They step apart, although it’s not the first time he’s seen these two together. At least they’re wearing clothes now.
‘Surely we can’t stay here,’ he says. ‘There are so many of them. If … if they get ahead of us we’ll never make it home.’
Taaft snorts. ‘Are you planning to carry us over the lines with that big arm of yours, kid?’
‘No need to speak with him like that,’ Nabil says. ‘What the sergeant is saying, Anto, is—’
And that’s when Liz Sweeney comes rushing in, her face red, her breath fast. ‘Giants! They have giants in the street. They’re breaking the doors of all the houses and searching them. They’ll be here in ten minutes.’
That gets their attention.
‘Ah,’ says Taaft, suddenly all business. ‘Then we’d better get out of here after all.
‘We’ll make a run out the back. The Arab can go first and find us another hideout. Me and Liz Sweeney to cover. You got any of those grenades left, kid?’ Anto nods. ‘Keep them ready.’
In no time at all they’ve gathered the others into the kitchen.
It’s still early enough that the land outside is lost in shadow. But they scouted it well and they know that a vast overgrown garden lies out the back, with plenty of cover from the sky, even at this time of year. A vegetable patch lies between here and there though. A good ten metres to cross, with nothing to hide them other than the distraction of the bombing.
‘Time to go,’ Nabil whispers. ‘Me first.’ He doesn’t need to say who goes next. The instructors have been training them all week. They have a specific marching order, and every child right down to the youngest has been shown the rudiments of loading and firing the automatic weapons, ‘In case,’ Nabil said delicately, ‘either myself or Sergeant Taaft should fall while doing our duty.’
‘You might, Froggy,’ Taaft replied. ‘But I’m made of sterner stuff.’
And now it’s time to leave. The sky still flashes with bombs, while in the distance a whole street appears to be burning, sending a black pall of smoke into the freezing blue sky.
Nabil runs just like the soldiers out of the movies, his rifle ready for anything nasty that might be hiding in the first of the bushes. He disappears in among the frosty branches of a rhododendron.
‘Wait!’ Taaft warns Mitch, who’s next in line. A whole minute passes before the Frenchman reappears and waves. ‘Now. Run, kid, and keep it quiet.’ Niamh goes next, followed by Krishnan, who breaks the rules by looking up over his shoulder.
‘I swear,’ Taaft says, ‘one of these days I’ll kill that boy.’ She curses again as he trips over his own feet, but already Andrea is out the door with a backpack of food bouncing on her shoulders.
‘Anto! Get a move on.’
Anto’s face chills in the air immediately. His back hurts in all the usual places. It was never designed to carry an arm such as his. He has balanced it out a little by hanging a bag of supplies and grenades over his right shoulder, but it’s far from ideal.
All
this effort to survive, he thinks. And for what? Nessa is gone. The Sídhe are winning. Pushing into the heart of a country with no manufacturing capacity for new weapons. Every person they capture only adds to their strength while weakening the defenders.
‘I’m moving on,’ Nabil tells him. ‘You’re in charge now until Taaft comes over.’ He doesn’t wait for acknowledgement, but disappears further back into the garden.
Aoife appears at the back door. Her cheeks are red and her hair finger-length. She lowers her head and runs. Anto remembers how she saved his life once, forcing him through a window at the burning school. And then, later, fighting with him outside against the shrinking Sídhe. She’s not the coward that Liz Sweeney takes her for. It’s just that her heart has been torn out. That’s all. Like his.
‘I’ve found them!’ a voice shouts suddenly. ‘I’ve caught them!’
It’s one of the crow-women. It has swept down from the chimney of a nearby house and flaps frantically above the running girl’s head. Its voice is too small surely to attract attention above the sound of the bombing, but Aoife stumbles to a halt, staring up at the creature in horror.
Anto jumps up from cover. ‘Come on, Aoife! Run!’
More crows are coming, all of them taking up the cry of alarm, flying in formation.
Aoife looks across the remaining five metres of the vegetable garden towards Anto. Her face screws up in sudden puzzlement.
And then she’s gone. Her warm winter coat settles neatly on top of her tracksuit. She will never wear it again.
Ambrosio
Nessa plunges down into a stand of greedy trees. They cushion her fall and she crawls away even as they begin fighting over her. ‘Crom twist you for saving my life!’ she cries. But it doesn’t stop her rolling downhill and pulling herself over a rock until she’s lying in a shivering heap behind it.
Above her the spirals turn, indifferent to her plight. Some are small enough to be mere dots, others she couldn’t cover with her fist. Are they stars? she wonders. Could they be worlds in their own right?
It’s the sort of thing Mr Hickey back at school would have loved. She can imagine the excitement in his voice; see him leaning forward, shooting ideas into the class like a gun. ‘What if the Grey Land’s like a bus, calling from town to town? It’s close to our world now, isn’t it? Isn’t that what has allowed the Sídhe to work their horrors on the children of Ireland? But when their world drifts away again, it must go somewhere, right? Somewhere else. Oh, the places the Sídhe could visit if their spite didn’t poison them!’
They don’t want other places though. They want Ireland. And according to the one she just escaped from, they have already found a new king to revoke the treaty and let them back in.
Nessa pulls her gaze back to ground level. The flying beasts have gone and she sees no other life on the rocky slopes to threaten her. At this rate, it’s hunger that will have the last laugh, and that’s not such a bad way to go.
She stands, shaking all over, and begins trudging in the direction of the volcano. She’ll find herself a cave too hot for the Sídhe. Then she can close her eyes for the last time. She’ll dream of Christmas – not the one she’s just had at home, but the one that hasn’t happened yet, that will never happen, where Anto’s parents are there too, and everybody’s grinning and saying, ‘This is great! It’s wonderful! But … but aren’t you too young to be getting married?’ And the happy couple will laugh. ‘Things are different now, you know? We’re veterans. That makes us adults.’
More than adults really.
They could apprentice themselves out to one of the thousands of elderly farmers without surviving children. He’d have a grumpy plough-horse, but Nessa, Nessa would charm the fetlocks off him with wizened winter apples. She would press her face against his warm hide …
No! No! She clenches her fists. She will have all of those things still. She needs a place of safety, yes. Access to fire. But not so she can lie down and die. Nessa will plan. That’s what she’ll do. She will live, even if she has to eat rocks, or the Sídhe themselves.
Something flies at Nessa’s forehead just as she’s struggling across a flat stretch of cold mud. She ducks and feels a stinging line run across her scalp.
Here it comes again! A flittering thing, barely visible in the pale silver light. She swats at it, but misses as it darts to one side and finally hovers just out of reach.
It’s a little man, she sees, with wings on his back that flutter too fast for the eye to follow and with a toothpick-sized spear in his hand.
‘I don’t want to crush you,’ she says wearily. ‘Go away.’
‘Such violence, my child!’ he replies, although his voice is almost below her threshold of hearing. ‘I am a man of the Church. Father Ambrosio. Allow me to bless you! Any blessing you desire, and all I’ll have in exchange is a single eyeball.’
He bobs about in the air, seeming to take Nessa’s lack of reply as a desire for more talk. ‘I can understand your reluctance, my child. Perhaps you think charity is for others only?’ His voice is scolding now. But then, suddenly, it turns sad. ‘Or perhaps you despise me, holy beggar that I am. You refuse to put yourself in my rags, to imagine what it is like to be twisted by our pagan overlords so that you must eat eyeballs or suffer again the pain of your making.’ Fr Ambrosio shudders. ‘Eyeballs are all I can think about. Oh, the taste of them! The fine juices, so expressive of sorrow. It’s been too long already, I fear … You, lovely child, you are my last hope.’ He hovers a little closer, but still not close enough. ‘Why won’t you speak? I am not a cruel man. Not at all! I will pray for you – entire decades of the rosary! Although God cannot hear us in hell. Or is this just purgatory, do you think? With somewhere even worse waiting for us?’
‘You’re not getting my eyeball,’ Nessa tells him.
He grins triumphantly. ‘I am. I will. I will have them both, and at my leisure! That mud you are standing on has trapped you, bless it! When your hands stop working, then, my child, I will do as I must. Unless that shameful thief Brother Peter gets to you first! But he’s not here, is he? He’s not! He’s not! And it’s all mine!’
Fr Ambrosio has been talking for quite some time and now Nessa realizes why. For her legs, weak on the best of days, have grown positively numb. As though anaesthetized. The lack of feeling has travelled as far as her knees already and creeps higher with every beat of her heart. No plants grow anywhere around her, and what she had taken to be twigs earlier are in fact the parched bones of other creatures.
The little man flutters a little closer.
‘Exactly,’ he says with a grin and follows the Sídhe word with a few phrases in Latin that are no doubt both witty and wise. ‘You cannot get away from it, my child! Not by yourself. But, if you’re quick – if you let me take an eye now – I’ll tell you how to escape the mud. But believe me, the moment you fall to the ground it will be too late for you and I’ll have to be blessed careful not to get caught myself, do you see? An eye,’ he says. ‘Just one of them, and I’ll tell you the trick of getting out.’
‘Do you promise?’ she asks him.
The priest shudders, raising his hand in front of his face. ‘How dare you!’ his little voice cries. ‘How dare you doubt me, a man of God!’
‘It’s just a promise,’ she says. ‘Promise you’ll show me the way out.’
‘Very well then, I will give you my word. Is that what you want to hear? Look!’ He cuts the palm of his hand with the tip of his spear. It’s impossible to see, but he must be bleeding. ‘By my very blood, I will tell you the way. By the blood of Our Saviour even!’
‘Why won’t you just promise it?’
‘Curse you!’ The priest is almost in tears. ‘Curse you! There is no way out, all right? I will have to risk myself now when you fail to escape. Can’t you see how unjust that is? When it costs you nothing anyway? You are doomed, so why sully your soul with one more unnecessary cruelty? An eye! An eye! It’s all that keeps the pain away!’
A metre and a half away, a hand-high ridge of stone shows her where the energy-sapping mud ends.
All right then.
She swings her arms as hard as she can, like twin pendulums.
‘What are you doing, foolish child?’ asks the priest. ‘Why won’t you help me?’
At the third swing, she tries to kick forward with her legs. They fail to cooperate, but that too she is used to. The ground smacks into her belly and chest. Her fingers scrabble at the stone shelf.
By Crom and Lugh, it’s cold! By Dagda! By Danú herself! Nessa’s muscles spasm. The whole front of her torso goes numb.
‘It’s too late, you villain! Now you can’t breathe!’
She doesn’t need the little man to tell her that. Black motes swim before her eyes. New spasms ripple through her back so that it arches up, loosening her grip on the ridge, but she catches it again on the way down, and her arms, growing colder, but still working, jerk her body forward until she can get her head and neck out of the danger zone.
Yet the air won’t come, for the mud still holds her chest, a dead weight, a nothing. Her heart begins to slow and her movements grow weaker.
Now the little spearman flies in for his attack, a barely visible fluttering in the darkening tunnel of her vision. Nessa’s right hand swipes at him out of instinct. Then, with her biceps trembling like a dying bird, she heaves one last time, scraping herself bloody on the rock, collapsing on the far side of it.
Air! By the gods, air! Why won’t it come? Instead there are stabbing pains all over her body and she knows the flying man has attacked again, and that she is gone.
The first surprise is that she wakes at all.
Nessa is a mass of bloody scratches on breasts and belly and legs. Random pains stab at her calves, but now she realizes this is just a sign of the numbness wearing off. At least she can breathe again, and even the rotten bleach-like air of the Grey Land comes as a welcome relief.