They applaud! That’s how the enemy responds to this loss of their vassal. They laugh! And Anto feels no relief that the traitor has died. He sees no sign that a gate has closed or that a gate ever existed here at all.
Instead the music grows wilder, and suddenly all of those large, gleaming eyes are staring across the space that separates the hill of the Sídhe from that of the humans.
A single hero steps forward in armour of bronze, gleaming in the light of the nearest fire.
‘You have been foolish, thieves!’ he cries into the night. ‘We have more of your number nearby. We will fulfil our promises to them now.’
‘What’s he on about?’ asks Krishnan.
Taaft doesn’t care. She’s staring down the barrel at the hero. ‘You’re next, big boy,’ she mutters.
Anto senses something is terribly wrong. Why aren’t the Sídhe afraid? They don’t want to die here, but now they’re just standing there, looking up at their enemies’ guns. They should be running. They should be defending themselves.
They are.
The air shimmers.
‘I feel …’ says Mitch. ‘I feel …’
‘Me too,’ Liz Sweeney whispers. Behind her, Krishnan is doubled over, as though in pain.
And suddenly Anto is throwing up on to the grass of the hill. They all are, their heads spinning, and he remembers the horrible sensation he experienced at the Fairy Fort in Boyle, just minutes before his Call, as though the whole world had expanded around him. As though he were turning inside out.
Somewhere the Sídhe are cheering, but the humans can spare it no attention. That perfectly round hill they’re lying on changes … In an instant, it has become a mountain. The slope gets steeper and steeper and Anto has to cling on as pebbles become boulders and bushes surge to the height of ancient oaks. Krishnan is screaming; little Mitch babbles prayers. But to no effect, because all at once they are tumbling down what is now a cliff, their guns and packs with them. A door appears before them, large enough to take an elephant, and they all know exactly where it leads.
‘No! Nooooooo!’ ‘By Crom!’ ‘By God!’ ‘Please! Please …!’
And through they go! Tumbling on to another slope on the far side, while above them silver spirals replace the glory of the stars.
Dizzy, terrified, halfway down the hill, Anto finds his feet, ripped by slicegrass, his lungs heaving in the acidic air, his eyes stinging, watering. Way below him is some kind of arena, two people are fighting. But what does that matter? How can anything like that matter? He’s here. He’s back! Oh, Crom! Oh, Lugh! And his bladder lets go; he can’t help it. Who could? Who can bear to see the Grey Land a second time?
‘Pull yourself together!’ cries Taaft. ‘The door! It’s still open! Come on! Come ooon!’
And it’s true. The way home stands clear for them at the top of the hill, the sky of the Many-Coloured Land visible just beyond it.
A fairy host is moving now to block their escape. He has no idea how many there are, but they surely outnumber their remaining bullets.
‘Let’s kill them!’ shouts Krishnan, his voice wavering with terror. ‘Let’s kill them all!’
And Anto realizes he would like that. He would like it very much.
The Altar
Nessa has no idea how there can be guns in the Grey Land, but she is aware that fighting has erupted on the slopes up near the doors. A number of Sídhe are lifted from their feet by what might be grenades. Gunshots crack and more of the fair folk tumble away.
But others, many, many others, swarm up the hill and must soon cut the intruders off from the door through which they entered.
Dagda looks delighted. ‘Some of your friends pay us a visit. Sadly, they will not make it down here. I would enjoy their company when you are gone.’
He comes at her again, grinning with joy. He kicks one crutch as she tries to pass him, causing her to stagger so that she almost falls. And the spear licks out to bite her in the back of the leg. Oh, Lugh, that hurts! That hurts! But then she’s clear, and now the skull at the base of the hill is right before her again.
‘You’ll never reach your friends,’ Dagda calls happily, ‘if that’s what you’re thinking.’ He’s right about that: Nessa’s arms have no strength to carry her up that slope to where the humans have come in. Her breath is like the engine of an old bus, and a foul, stinging mix of sweat and blood has almost blinded her. She props herself up against the giant skull. An altar, she thinks, and I’m the sacrifice.
The same two men from before are behind her like commentators at a football match.
‘I say he kills the cripple slowly.’
‘She lasted a good while though. Didn’t I say she’d last?’
And suddenly Nessa laughs. Dagda pauses in his advance, his mighty head cocked to one side.
‘Yes,’ she tells the god. ‘Yes, I’m going to die. But not alone. Not for nothing.’
Her grin is wide enough to match his, savage enough to open the cuts on her face. Oh, why didn’t she think of this before? She turns to the crowd.
Standing there, right at the front, are two glitter-skinned human men. The commentators. Here they are, she thinks, immortal. Passing horrific endless lifetimes until the Sídhe keep their promise to send them home.
Nessa extends a hand and burns them both to a cinder.
Everything stops.
The door above slams shut.
There must be a thousand in the Sídhe crowd, but all at once, like at the flick of a giant switch, their manic grins turn to looks of shock and horror.
A promise kept, Lassair said, is powerful, but a promise broken can shake the very worlds in their orbits. And Nessa feels the ground shaking now, she really does, like laughter in a giant’s belly.
One of the men she killed was wearing clothing. It’s burning and Nessa gratefully drinks her fill. She sees a human woman nearby. Another person awaiting the fulfilment of a promise.
‘No!’ cries Dagda, recovering all of a sudden. ‘No!’
Nearby Sídhe try to throw themselves in the way, but the human woman dies anyway and the entire crowd wails.
Nessa doesn’t get to gloat – the shaking of the ground throws her from her feet. The very walls of the Cauldron tremble, spilling silvery liquid over the sides, and nobody needs to tell Nessa what’s happening: the two worlds, the Many-Coloured Land and the Grey Land, artificially held together by the magic of a thousand promises, are trying to go their separate ways again.
This is not Ireland’s last day, but it is the end for Dublin.
On a pier in Dún Laoghaire, sticking out into the ocean, a few dozen defenders crouch behind sandbags. Sleet hampers their vision. It freezes fingers to the barrels of guns, even through the wool of their gloves.
A few of them still have regimental patches on their uniforms: a cow with spider’s legs, a tree-sized fox.
‘They look pretty childish now, eh?’
‘Indubitably,’ Karim responds. She yawns as though she hasn’t a care in the world, as though she hasn’t lost a score of friends between Roscommon and here. She’ll probably join them herself sometime over the next twenty minutes.
Behind them, the sea surges against the old stone. Waves roll in from … well, nowhere. If Ryan were to look back – of course he can’t afford to do that right now, but if he did – he would see how the water flows right into the fairy mist that hasn’t cleared in twenty-five years. He remembers how it used to be on the coast. How the family would stop for the night in a parking bay looking out over the Irish Sea and the horizon seemed to stretch away for ever.
But all his attention is focused forward. He squints out over a carpet of dead so thick he knows he could walk from here to Cabra without ever touching the soil. He’s seen worse, hasn’t he? He’s felt worse. A hand pushing into his flesh as though he were made of nothing but damp clay and pain.
The shudder runs through his entire body.
‘Dearest Ryan.’ Karim sighs. ‘Rest easy. It will b
e over soon. They’re coming.’
‘There’s no way you could see them yet!’
‘No need to. I feel them.’
The last two members of the North Leinster Infestation Squad are crouching beside each other in a line of soldiers. Some are middle-aged. Others, who have yet to see their thirteenth birthdays, have lined eyes and shrivelled hearts. But their outsized rifles come up as quick as anybody else’s. Quicker maybe, having more to lose.
‘Faraz?’ Ryan hasn’t used Karim’s first name in years. Not since the last of their children was Called and her mind seemed to … ‘Retreat’ is the only word he can think of, even if it sits poorly with such an excellent soldier and leader as she is.
She sights down her rifle, as though the name he has spoken belongs to a stranger.
‘I …’ What could he possibly have to say to her now? Or she to him? You did an amazing job? I’m glad I followed you? What comes out instead is a muttered, ‘I love you, Faraz.’
All she says is, ‘They’re coming.’
She’s right. Ryan can feel it now too.
There’s nowhere to retreat to after the pier. All over Dublin, little pockets of resistance waver and go under. Already armies of freshly made monsters are marshalling to march on Belfast and Derry, while the entire population of Galway cowers on the Aran Islands with nowhere else to go.
Karim lowers her eye to the rifle sight, obscuring the tattooed names of their children. Her finger rests lightly over the trigger. And that’s when Ryan sees the enemy too. Time to get to work.
This last attack starts with a wave of ‘claws’. Men and women barely altered from the normal human form. The only difference is that their hands have been turned into spikes and their minds have been changed just enough to make them eager to kill their own people.
‘Jolly quick to make,’ Karim mutters.
Easy to slaughter too. Down they go by the dozen, falling over the ones in front, as two hundred expert shots scythe through their ranks. What a waste! Ryan thinks. Even for the Sídhe. Don’t they want these people for their attacks in the north? Why the rush?
But then screams come from where the wounded lie at the end of the pier as larger monsters swarm up out of the sea, all plates of bone and long, suckered limbs.
Suddenly Karim swings up into the air, clutching at the tentacle wrapped around her neck. Ryan cries out, tracking the thing that’s taken her, looking desperately for a gap in its plates of bone—
And then …
Everything stops.
Like years ago, when a video game would glitch and freeze on a single frame.
The earth rumbles – Ryan can feel it in the soles of his feet. The very walls of the pier shudder, spilling seawater over the sides. And the strangest thing happens: the sun is out.
It’s not that it has emerged from the clouds. It’s that there are no clouds. They are simply gone. The sea is as calm as a bath, and behind the monster holding Karim by the neck is a ship so large a dozen buildings could fit inside of it.
‘A … a cruise liner,’ somebody breathes.
Gently the monster lays Karim down to where she can catch her breath.
‘Shorry,’ it says. ‘Don’ want hurtch youuuu.’
And Karim laughs. Everybody does. Shocked, trembling. Happy. She turns to Ryan, and in her normal voice, the one he hasn’t heard in years, she says, ‘Me too.’
But then the sun disappears. The clouds, the sleet, the roaring waves are back, and all the monsters scream and return to the attack. It’s as though the defenders dreamed all that beauty and must pay for it now, with their lives.
Nessa pulls herself up from the ground as it begins to steady again.
‘You think that’s enough, thief?’ Dagda cries. He hasn’t left the centre of the arena. His face is a mask of fury but also confusion. ‘You think three broken promises can undo an eternity of work? We are granting wishes now! Dozens of them! Building up the power again. And there is one more promise … the one I myself made to Conor, that will now be kept.’
He strides towards her.
Nessa throws herself aside, but she is weaker now and Dagda’s shield batters her to the ground. He stamps on her crutches. Snap! Snap! Here comes the spear, straight for her belly! Nessa rolls away, but comes right up against his heroic calves, his sandals of human leather.
‘And now—’ he says.
She hits him in the legs with the last of the fire she drank from the burning clothing of her victims. She gives it every drop of heat she has, until the stench of cooked flesh is powerful enough to make her gag. The pain! Even one such as Dagda howls with it and crashes to his knees. He’ll fall into shock. He must do. Anybody would.
But this is no human. This is a god.
‘At last …’ he says. ‘It’s gone … yes? The fire? All used up?’
She tries to crawl away from him, but he has her by the ankle and pulls her close. His grip moves up to her neck and he lifts her like a ragdoll.
His feet are nothing but smoking stumps. Sweat covers his face and his clothing twitches in distress. But Dagda’s smile returns.
While the gunfire on the hills continues, he takes the spear from the ground beside him and holds it up for her inspection. At the tip, she sees now, lies a fragment of charred, sharpened bone, no larger than her thumb.
‘Conor,’ he says. ‘What’s left of him. Only he has harmed you today.’
This is a sacred moment and everybody in the small crowd that remains knows it. They hold their breaths, waiting for the sacrifice that must come, that will stabilize the doorway between the worlds.
Nessa is no longer afraid. At least she is not to be twisted. Nor will she have to stay here for ever. Alone. For her it will be over soon. All those years fighting for the right to live. Why didn’t she just spend more time with the people she loved? Training every day when she could have sat in a warm kitchen with her books. Learning more songs maybe. But would she have met Anto then? A few kisses is all they had, and she remembers her shortness of breath at those times, the mad beating of her heart. Struggling to hide the grin in the refectory; staring into a cup of tea so her eyes wouldn’t betray her.
Anto. Mam. Dad. What is to become of them when she’s gone? It’s not for herself that she’s asking, not that! But how she wishes she had more fire, more … more heat to strike a blow for the ones she loves.
Then she realizes that she does. She reaches up to touch Dagda on the arm. How warm he is! His entire body is full of heat, and Nessa sucks in as much of it as she can.
He cries out. Drops her at once.
‘I thought you knew me,’ she says, grinning a Megan grin.
She has weakened him, but not fatally. His skin is pale as snow; even his lips are white and he shivers uncontrollably.
‘You didn’t take that much,’ he gasps. ‘Not enough to kill me.’
But she doesn’t need that much, not at all. He shoves the spear right at her face and Nessa releases all that stored heat into the tip. The sharp point flares once, and then … it drifts away, nothing but a cloud of ash.
‘Goodbye, Conor,’ she says.
For five slow heartbeats nothing happens. As though the universe itself can’t believe what she has done.
Then the ground doesn’t just shake: it bucks.
Like a wild horse, like a hooked fish, it thrashes, flinging each of them in a separate direction. Everywhere are screaming Sídhe. Some claw at each other, or at their own faces.
On the nearest hill, the door opens and closes, opens and closes. She imagines that the enemy, whether in the Many-Coloured Land or here, must be fulfilling all the promises they can, but it’s not enough, it’s never going to be enough. The worlds should never have clung together so long. The pressure to split has been building for a generation.
A number of the enemy have the presence of mind to run for the last door, hoping to jump through to the beauty beyond before it’s too late.
But the guns throw them back.
/> Nessa crawls to the base of the hill. The crocodile thing is waiting for her, all alone in the midst of the trampled, shuddering earth.
‘Kill me,’ it says, the words barely recognizable through its long muzzle. ‘Burn me. Please.’
‘I will,’ Nessa replies. ‘If you carry me to the top of that hill.’
The Lost
The students fight to escape the Grey Land. With bullet and knife. With the last grenades.
Anto goes down under a pair of ‘dogs’, his giant arm trapped beneath his own body. Fingernails rake his skin in stinging lines. Their hot breath is on his throat as human teeth struggle towards his jugular.
Not for the first time, Liz Sweeney saves his life: crack, crack – one shot each as ammunition runs low.
He comes up swinging, punching a Sídhe warrior hard enough to make him fly, snapping the skinny legs of a spider-like horror that’s running towards Krishnan.
Something has panicked the Sídhe. Just a short while ago they were all down in that arena thing, watching some kind of fight. Gouts of fire are chasing them up the hill and—
The ground lurches. Anto trips and down he goes again. He’s face to face with Mitch in the muck. The boy’s eyes are glazed over, the life draining out of them. Does Krishnan know?
But Anto can’t tell him; the door is still fifty metres away at the top of the hill. It’s none too stable either, flickering like a fading light bulb. Something is wrong with it, and the Sídhe feel it as much as he does. They’re all charging for the door too. Piling over each other; trampling; floundering; scrambling.
Anto has never seen such a panic. It’s as though this is the last lifeboat. As if they’ll never be able to open another door once this one closes for good.
Here a princess with flowing locks stamps on a fallen man; there a hero in glittering bronze rides full tilt into the crowd on a panicking man-faced horse, until somebody in there cripples the creature with a touch of the hand, so that rider and mount drown in a sea of milling limbs.
Mere humans will never shoot their way through that!
The Invasion Page 23