The Invasion

by Peadar O'Guilin

  Aoife hisses, her look so severe that even Liz Sweeney falls silent. ‘I’m going to question her. That’s all there is to it.’

  But the Sídhe woman won’t say another word.

  They spend a night shivering in a house, not daring to light fires, huddling together except for whoever’s on watch.

  By morning, the Sídhe is dead and Taaft is cleaning a large hunting knife. ‘Had to be done. I caught her looking at me.’

  Aoife hangs her head as though ashamed, but nobody says a word.

  The Cage

  A hundred deadly hands reach for Nessa, brushing her skin, while musical voices praise the power of the promise within her. She’s on the ground, trying to writhe away. Crying out for fear they will make a beast of her; a living cloak; a work of ‘art’.

  But no, they’re saving this prize for somebody else. For the worst and most imaginative of them all: Lord Dagda himself.

  A few of the Sídhe remain outside the pile. They heal the humans – the eyeless man with the broken arm, the crippled woman. Both scream with the pain of it, a pain Nessa remembers from her own transformation. Another Sídhe gathers the bones of those Nessa has killed. For the Cauldron no doubt.

  Of Fr Ambrosio there is no sign.

  Then the enemy pick her up. A dozen of them carry her above their heads, like the corpse of a deer, shown off to the rest of the tribe, although there is nobody here to see it. Down the slope they bring her, through rains of ash, laughing and excited. Chatting. ‘We are returning to the Many-Coloured Land,’ one tells her. There is no malice in his face, merely an excitement that he longs to share with a dear friend. ‘I myself will go forth after Conor has killed you and our promise to him is fulfilled.’

  ‘Conor’s dead,’ Nessa cries. ‘He burned in my arms!’

  ‘Yes! Oh, yes!’

  ‘Will you … will you bring him back to life in the Cauldron?’

  ‘He did not bathe in the Cauldron at his coming of age. It does not know him, cannot remember him. Nor will it remember you when Conor has finally killed you. Your fate is to die, sweet one. And it will be glorious!’

  It makes little sense to Nessa. The only important part is that they intend to kill her and that she intends to spite them by living and then finding her way home. She squeezes her eyes shut. She breathes and breathes again, fighting the terror that wants to lock her muscles rigid.

  I’ll bide my time. Nessa is thinking of all the bonfires she saw down by the Cauldron, each one a source of power. And what of the Cauldron itself? What if she swam in its silvery waters? Would it prevent her from dying here? Or would it make her one of them?

  A village of filthy huts lies at the bottom of the hill. A great crowd of humans shouts as she passes. Many point. Some are as young and beautiful as the Sídhe themselves. Others, perhaps less careful in what they asked for at the time of their promise, are ragged and old. A few have even been twisted into forms the Sídhe find ‘amusing’, and these sad ones scuttle from shadow to shadow, or shamble miserably about on elephant legs – if they can move at all.

  Nobody is smiling here. They look like they’ve forgotten how, although the day of their triumphant return must be very close indeed.

  Beyond the human village lies another, of a sort. It consists of hills with holes in them from which more Sídhe come sliding like worms. Nessa fears she is to be taken down there, into the damp dark of the earth. She struggles at this thought. Pointlessly, for they have a firm grip on her, until at last she sees where she is to be put.

  It is a cage. Thick columns of bone form the bars, supporting a roof of dense greasy hair. And when they fling her inside, she finds herself on a warm floor of leathery skin, the veins pulsing gently beneath her.

  ‘You won’t be here long,’ her captors tell her.

  They seal her in by moulding two of the bones together so that the entire cage bucks and screams in terror and pain.

  They laugh and pat it gently. Then they whistle up a pair of ‘dogs’, one originally a human man and one a woman, their tongues lolling, their eyes eager.

  ‘Our pets will mind you until Dagda comes,’ the Sídhe tell her.

  ‘When, uh … when will that be?’

  ‘When he needs the power the most.’

  They leave her there, some holding hands, some singing or laughing. One of them even skips …

  ‘Twist you all!’ she cries after them. She’ll kill them. She’ll kill every one of them if she can. But first she has to get out of here.

  So she explores her prison, looking for weaknesses. She can’t give in. Not to the loneliness that hangs over every breath she’s taken since the day that Cassidy arrested her off the bus. Not to the despair, nor the odds.

  The cage trembles around her. ‘It’s all right,’ she says. She talks to it, in Sídhe and English and Irish. Can it be killed? Is she cold enough to do that after the way it screamed when the Sídhe twisted it closed? And even if she gets out, she’ll still have to beat the ‘dogs’ somehow. And then what?

  As if they can hear her thoughts, the two ‘animals’ start growling, ‘Dooooonnn’t liiiiike! Doooonnnn’t liiiiike!’

  But what’s bothering them is Fr Ambrosio, hovering outside the cage in a blur of wings.

  ‘There you are, my child.’

  ‘Father! You came back.’

  ‘Not the wisest course of action I have ever taken, sweet child. Why should I help her? I asked myself. I am damned, after all … God doesn’t care what I do.’

  ‘So why?’

  ‘Because I want to. For you of course – the only friend I’ve had in many, many lifetimes. And because I hate the Sídhe and will spite them if I can.’

  ‘Will you get me out of here?’

  ‘That is beyond my gift, child.’ She strains to hear him over the fury and yowling of the ‘dogs’. ‘No, there is only one thing you can do.’ He hovers above her and spreads his arms dramatically. ‘Challenge Dagda to a duel.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Duels are his joy. Watching them, for the most part. Building creatures to fight others. Healing them and making them fight again. But he loves taking part himself too, and when he wins, it is always through guile. He has tricked a thousand opponents out of their heads, so that only the Cauldron can save them. He has lured humans by the score into death or wishing for it.’

  ‘Does he ever lose?’

  ‘Not that I’ve heard. Not since the days of Nuada, or so my masters taught me when I bore them on my back as a horse. Which is why he will offer you anything you ask if you win. Because he thinks you won’t.’

  ‘And you think I will?’

  ‘Oh, you will have an excellent chance, my child! Excellent! Because, you, you have a trick of your very own.’

  ‘The fire?’

  ‘Oh, right, the fire. Well, two tricks then.’

  ‘What’s the second trick?’

  ‘Me!’

  ‘You? You will help me, Father? You’ll risk them remaking you into something worse?’ She’s touched, because this has always been his greatest fear. And here he is, hovering just in front of her: nodding, smiling. Licking his lips …

  ‘All I ask is an eyeball,’ he whispers. ‘You won’t need two for the fight. I’ll make it painless for you. I can do that. I’m sorry to ask. I wouldn’t, only I—’

  ‘Go away!’ she shouts at him. ‘Go! Go!’ She punches at him through the bars of the cage. He tumbles backwards so that one of the ‘dogs’ almost has him, its jaws snapping on empty air.

  ‘You need me more than that eye,’ he cries. ‘I could fly around his face. I could distract him. Why, you can barely stand without your crutches! A puff of wind would knock you over. You fool! Nobody beats him! Nobody can even touch him!’

  She turns her back on him, and soon he is gone.

  ‘Good riddance,’ she mutters, already wishing he would come back. She fights and fights against the tears, although there is nobody but the ‘dogs’ here to see them.

 
; She should have let him have the eye. Both of them even! It would be worth it not to face this alone. And if nothing else, it would cause her promise to be broken, for how could she see Dagda then?

  Nessa laughs at her own stupidity, setting the monsters outside her cage to growling. The enemy would make new eyes for her of course. They could twist them out of any other part of her flesh. No, she thinks. It’s better that the ungrateful priest has fled. She will face this danger, as she always does, alone, with her back straight and a snarl on her lips.

  ‘Easy now, my dears,’ says a sweet voice, and the growling of the ‘dogs’ turns to whines. A woman is outside, scratching both of the animals on their unkempt heads of hair. She pulls gently on the male ‘dog’s beard. Tears of joy roll down the wrinkles of his face.

  ‘Loooove you,’ he whines.

  ‘No, me! No, me!’ says the female.

  The Sídhe beauty comes over to stroke the cage too and Nessa wonders whether she should make a grab for her hand, before remembering that their hands are the last thing any human should be touching. Instead she clears her throat.

  ‘I want to make a challenge,’ she says. ‘To Dagda. A …’ By Crom it sounds so stupid! So childish! ‘I want to fight a duel.’

  The woman’s grin widens. ‘Yes. He said you would say that, and that I was to agree.’

  ‘He … he did?’

  ‘And you are to have your walking sticks back. He aches to see them used in combat.’

  As if from nowhere the woman passes some roots into the cage along with a human bladder filled with water. ‘Eat slowly,’ she says. ‘It is not much, but you will be dead before ever you feel hungry again.’

  The Duel

  Two strong Sídhe drag Nessa from the cage. She hears cheering. Word of the fight must have spread quickly, as men and women come slithering out of their burrows in the earth, to appear as beautiful and happy as angels.

  Her Sídhe guards parade her among them. Today they will see not one but two promises fulfilled. Their grip on the Many-Coloured Land will strengthen and they will send more and more of their monsters through the door until it is a safe place for them to live.

  How they cry out with joy, their sweet voices echoing from the walls of the Cauldron. With deadly hands they reach out to touch the thief – she who has challenged Dagda himself – and they watch her fighting not to flinch, as though they would harm her! The very thought!

  Fires burn everywhere. The flames rise tall as a house, feeding on bones and bleeding wood, on leathery old leaves and feebly struggling spider bushes. Twice the girl makes a dive for one of them, but the enemy are ready for her, with one woman even throwing herself laughing into the flames to prevent Nessa from reaching them.

  ‘Oh, what spirit she has!’ they cry. ‘Dagda will be pleased with this one!’

  Nessa sees humans among the crowd too – she knows how to recognize them now, to see through the glittering skin to the rotten soul beneath. They stare at her hungrily, as though jealous of her impending death.

  Further on she goes, carried up into the hills. Small bat-like creatures fly everywhere, croaking and calling out, wheeling in little flocks. One of them, no larger than her forearm, hops close enough to whisper, ‘Give up! Give up! What’s the point?’ It flaps away in terror when one of the Sídhe waves at it.

  The hills of the enemy village turn out to have a natural arena at their centre: a flat space, marred by the odd boulder, surrounded by a perfect ring of mounds. It’s already crowded. Fair folk and their human allies jostle for space on the slopes.

  Beyond the spectators, on the crown of each mound, lie more bonfires. But that is not what Nessa notices when at last her guards guide her right into the centre of the open space and hand back her crutches.

  She gasps, the eyes popping out of her head. There are doors up there. Not real doors, but the ghostly outlines of them, and each bears a familiar shape. She saw the like during her Call, didn’t she? And before that too, the day Liz Sweeney chased her up the side of a Fairy Fort, only that one was made of stone.

  A woman approaches Nessa. Glittering spider silk clings to her body, highlighted here and there by scraps of what might be bronze or gold. Even stretched into a smile, her lips remain full, her cheeks softly round beneath twinkling eyes large enough to feed Fr Ambrosio for a lifetime.

  A shoulder-high monster with the face of a human crocodile slides along beside her on a carpet of slimy tentacles. Its breath comes in painful whistles through its long mouth. Its eyes weep continuously.

  ‘I am Lassair,’ she says, her voice as sweet as her name. ‘Do you remember me?’

  It’s no easy task to tell one of the Sídhe from another. Their perfection leaves little to stick in the memory. But the clothing rings a bell in Nessa’s mind. ‘I met you the first day here. You … you wanted to turn me into a monkey.’

  Lassair beams. ‘Yes! We had such fun together!’

  ‘I killed one of your friends.’

  ‘Indeed!’ The woman claps her hands. ‘That was well done! A stake through his opened mouth. But now I must thank you, for it is the power of your death that will bring me home.’

  Megan’s ghost chooses that moment to whisper, Tell her to eat shit!

  But taunting isn’t Nessa’s way. She ignores the Sídhe woman, looking up at the bonfires on the tops of the hills. How can she get to them through such a thick crowd? How can she open one of those ghostly doors and go home?

  The woman waits, stroking her weeping pet.

  ‘What if I don’t die?’ Nessa asks.

  Lassair laughs. ‘Of course you will die! A promise kept is powerful, but a promise broken can shake the very worlds in their orbits!’ For a moment she loses her smile. ‘When Conor failed to kill you the first time, the consequences …’ She shudders. ‘Luckily we found a way. We found a … a certainty this time. Your bones will stay here and I will ride the power of your death to my proper place in the Many-Coloured Land. Now,’ she says, ‘our lord bids me tell you to choose a weapon.’

  Nessa snaps to attention. ‘A … a weapon?’

  ‘Of course! You think him unfair? But no, he is like you, Nessa.’

  He is nothing like me!

  ‘Your people took everything from us. Or tried to! They stole away all beauty, and yet –’ Lassair indicates the tortured crocodile person at her side – ‘we made beauty of our own! They snatched away happiness and forced unjust treaties on us that only a human king can renounce. Yet, foolishly, they abandoned their kings, allowing us to make our own. And through all of it, through our struggles, Dagda’s will has been firm and he sees this same strength in you, for all you are a thief.’ She pauses, frowning at her pet. With delicate fingers she smooths away a lump from its back, while the crocodile’s jaws open and it moans in what can only be terror.

  ‘Please,’ says Nessa, ‘don’t—’

  ‘Of course,’ says Lassair, ‘my lord will cheat you. It is in his nature. He will watch you die, as shall we all. But you deserve a chance to fight. You deserve a weapon.’

  ‘Fire,’ Nessa says, taking a deep breath. They’ll never let her have it. ‘I want fire.’

  ‘Fire?’

  ‘Let me stick my hand in the flames for the count of a hundred. That’s all the weapon I need.’

  ‘And that, thief, is your final choice?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘You do not wish for a blade? For a sling? You could have a spear.’

  ‘I want the fire.’

  And Lassair throws her head back and laughs enough to startle her tentacled crocodile. ‘Ah!’ she cries. ‘It is just as my lord Dagda predicted you would say. “Fire,” he said. The girl will ask for the flames!’

  And Nessa feels a chill run through her bones.

  They escort Nessa to the nearest bonfire at the top of the hill.

  ‘I hope you will not waste your flames on me,’ Lassair tells her, without fear. ‘You will need them for Dagda.’

  Nessa has, of course
, considered murdering this woman and making a run for it. But other obstacles await. A group of Sídhe have placed themselves between her and the way out. She would have to cook them all where they stand. And what then? Her promise will pull her back here very shortly; she knows that because already she aches to return to the arena and see Dagda, to get it all over with …

  Stop it! she tells herself. Stop it!

  She has to force herself to stay put and bathe her hands in the flames while the sleeves of her ruined prison shirt char away to ash.

  ‘Perhaps it would be fitting after all if you burned me,’ Lassair murmurs. She holds Nessa’s crutches. ‘I am named for the fire, you know?’

  There is another way out. Less than twenty metres away stands a door. It’s just a shadow, a ghostly outline for now, glowing a faint green that seems so out of place in this colourless world.

  Please open, Nessa begs it. Please, please open.

  And Lassair must know what she’s thinking, because she laughs again and calls out over the sound of the crackling fire: ‘They only open one at a time, and only with great expense of power!’

  ‘From … from promises?’

  ‘From promises kept. Look!’

  Nessa squints to follow Lassair’s pointing finger. Exactly opposite her current position, on another hill, a hundred Sídhe have lined up in front of a door just like this one, banners flying in the ash-filled breeze. She can’t see their faces, but something about the set of their bodies signals eagerness and joy. They’re going home. To Ireland. Nessa’s home. They will take it for themselves. They will kill her family and friends, or exile them here for an eternity of horror and madness.

  ‘That door is next,’ Lassair says unnecessarily. ‘To finish the attack on Eblana!’

  And Nessa shudders, for that is an old, old name for Dublin, the biggest remaining city with enough people to flood the country with monsters. It will be the end of Ireland, and Nessa’s foolish promise, her hunger to live, has only brought it closer.