Then, he was simply gone.
‘Da?’ Danny said. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Should we talk about sport to mask our emotions?’ Luke whispered urgently. Danny waved away the comment.
‘I’m fine,’ Tony said, his voice hoarse. He cleared his throat. ‘Are we getting the fuck out of this circle, or what? Away from her?’
‘Yeah. Yeah, Dad. Grotbags over there is gonna do what we asked her for Ellie and then we’re gone.’
‘Good,’ his father nodded. ‘I’m tired, son. I think when we get out of here I’m going to go home. Make sure your ma’s okay, know what I mean?’
But I need you, Danny wanted to say. You’re the expert. You’re the calm one. I have no idea what I’m going to do next. He said none of those things. During the battle with Carman they had looked to him to lead, and he had. He was exhausted and terrified and he knew if he begged his da to reconsider and come with him Tony would do so, because that was what parents did.
‘Away on home then,’ Danny said. ‘Get the pipe and slippers out, ya oul ballix. Make sure my ma does that ironing I sent her over an all.’
Tony smiled.
‘Sport,’ Luke said, and they couldn’t have agreed more.
*
Stepping forward into the spotlights of the encircling armed forces, staring down the barrels of guns, it was Steve spoke for them all.
‘Where the fuck have you cunts been?’ he demanded.
Ellie couldn’t help but grin.
‘Hiding down the bottom of my garden when I was a kid and scarin’ the shit out of me as I walked past, oh aye!’ Steve carried on, seemingly completely oblivious to the array of lethal weaponry now trained unerringly on his head. ‘Fuckin’ faerie army of bastards invades the fuckin’ place and starts eatin’ people left right and centre and none of you dickheads can be found! Did you see what happened in the city centre, aye? When we kicked the cunts out of the streets? That was us done that! No help from any of yous fuckin’ twats!’
‘I REPEAT,’ the voice over the loudspeaker began again.
‘Ach don’t give me that “I REPEAT”, ordering people about, fuckin’ army shite!’ Steve said. ‘You’ve lost the right to be all high and mighty! Now answer my fuckin’ question; where were yis?’
Larka padded forward, only a step or two. Guns swung in her direction. She was now level with Ellie. ‘You need only say the word,’ she said, so softly Ellie knew only she would hear it.
‘Well?’ Steve was saying.
‘Stand down,’ a non-loudspeaker voice said from amongst the newcomers. A man emerged from the ranks; an officer, if Ellie was any judge (and Christ knew she was no expert). He glanced around at his troops with annoyance. ‘Put the fucking guns down now!’ he barked, and the barrels drooped. He walked to Steve and proffered a hand so quickly that Steve shook it almost by default.
‘Brigadier Derek Hughes. I’m …,’ he looked back at the array of force behind him and Ellie saw embarrassment on his face, ‘well, I’m in charge of what you see here, and pretty much of everything else we’ve got here, at least in the North.’
‘Steven Anderson,’ said Steve, with the air of a dog who’s chased a car and now, having caught it, has fuck-all clue what to do with it. ‘I’m, um …’ and he trailed off, waving behind him helplessly to take in Ellie, Wily and Larka.
Wily stepped up. ‘He is a friend of the Morrigan and of the Named, and can readily speak for both.’
The brigadier’s ruddy complexion went white. Some of the guns behind him snapped up again as Wily’s words were heard. Steve saw the brigadier go for his own sidearm and then catch himself with a visible effort. Composed, he turned and motioned for his men to lower their guns, which they did. Eventually.
‘I’ll keep this brief,’ the brigadier said, his voice low and his gaze fixing itself on Steve as though he were an anchor to some form of reality. ‘You were quite right to ask about our whereabouts. In our defence, however, our bases seemed to be targeted as a matter of priority, and defending them proved somewhat of a challenge.’
A haunted look on the man’s face hinted that he was, in the fine British military tradition, understating things magnificently here. ‘A challenge?’ Steve pressed.
‘He is referring to their guns. They do not function here. In fact, they have not functioned since the worlds began to Merge,’ Wily said.
The brigadier flinched as if physically struck.
‘The guns don’t work?’ Steve said, disbelieving. ‘Then what the fuck’s all this for?’ he indicated the show of force, the array of weaponry that had been pointed at them.
‘Intel on the ground said this was their home office, so to speak,’ the Brigadier replied. ‘When the biggest building in the country falls over and doesn’t make a sound, and then this,’ he indicated the mega-Stonehenge of the monoliths forming the stone circle, ‘springs up in its place, it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out that’s where we need to be. We didn’t know,’ and he looked to Wily, ‘if they knew about the guns or not. A grand entrance seemed a risk worth taking.’
‘You were bluffing,’ Ellie said.
‘Is the short way of saying it, yes,’ the man sighed. He looked again to Wily. ‘I’ve had help from the others like you,’ he told the wolf. ‘At the Lisburn barracks. We were about to be overrun. I … I’ve never seen anything quite like it. Not sure I really believed what I was seeing until you, um,’ and he flushed as he tried to say the words, ‘spoke up. As it were. Er. Yes. You have my thanks.’
‘I am told your men fought well with what they had to hand,’ Wily replied, inclining his head, one soldier to another.
A man broke ranks to approach the brigadier. ‘I’ve got Stormont back on, Brigadier,’ and he paused whilst his superior officer let loose with a stream of invective so chock-full of expletives that even Steve and Ellie, Belfast born and bred, were taken aback. ‘They’re wanting an update, and they’re demanding we return.’
‘What am I supposed to tell them?’ asked the old army man, suddenly powerless. ‘When this went down, they were locked in some late-evening session in the Assembly. I’ve got seventy-two of the country’s most senior politicians trapped in a room surrounded by what’s left of the rest of my men. They’re convinced this is some sort of major terrorist attack. And since some of them believe some of the others are terrorists … well,’ he sighed deeply and pressed his hands to his temple. ‘It’s not an easy situation.’
‘How about tellin’ them to away and fuck themselves?’ Steve spat. ‘There’s people have had their entire families ripped apart in front of them tonight. This isn’t about politics. We’re being invaded.’
The brigadier looked at him almost pityingly. ‘Take it from a soldier, son. Being invaded is just about as political as you can get.’
Wily and Larka looked up suddenly, their ears pricked. Steve could have sworn he saw Ellie react in a similar way only a quarter-second or so behind the wolves.
‘Step back,’ Ellie told him.
‘Wh–’
‘The circle. Something’s coming out,’ Larka said urgently. She nudged Steve with her head, softly but insistently. If he’d been thinking straight he might have been touched by the gesture of concern.
Ellie grabbed his shoulder. ‘Do you really want to be standing there if Carman is the first thing to roll out?’ she hissed and, not giving him time to answer, promptly dragged him backwards. From this distance, they could see the slight shimmer in the air from the barrier separating the world inside the stones from the Merged world outside them.
Yet for all her trepidation, Ellie couldn’t shake the feeling of hope surging inside her. When they’d been dragged outside the circle by the wolves, a move that had almost certainly saved their lives, she’d reacted just as Steve had at first – banging on the barrier, trying desperately to get back in, until her energies had been expended and she’d been forced to take a breath.
And when she had, she’d heard it. Faint, far to
o faint to make out discernible words, but there was something in her mind, something that tasted like Danny, if thoughts could be said to have a taste. Of course, Danny’s synaesthesia had always made strange connections like that, hadn’t it? She’d never understood it but had, at times, been secretly quite envious, and not just when he was able to rattle off thirty-digit numbers for fun.
Though she couldn’t make out the words, she could sense the tone. It was calm. Hopeful. Those same emotions had permeated through to Ellie herself.
So it was that when the barrier came down, when the figures within walked free, Ellie was not surprised to find that her first emotion was delight, not horror. There was Danny and there, beside him, was Luke. Both of them still alive, thank God, thank God, thank God.
The third figure to emerge, looking a little unsteady on his feet, was Tony Morrigan. As she watched, frozen to the spot with astonishment, Danny’s formerly very dead dad caught sight of her and smiled fondly. He exchanged words and hugs with Danny and Luke, and then moved off purposefully toward the soldiers encircling them. She started to track him, to call out, and then the final figure emerged from the circle.
‘Ellie!’
‘Daddy!’ she shrieked.
Father and daughter collided, embracing each other, tears already falling. Sobs of happy disbelief wracked her. She trembled from head to toe, hardly daring to let go.
‘You died,’ she kept saying. ‘You died. You were dead. You died. I saw you. They killed you and you died. You’re dead … and now you’re alive, you’re alive, you’re alive, you’re ALIVE!’ and she half-staggered with the enormity of it, only for Danny and Luke to appear as if by magic at her sides, propping up an arm each as she gabbled. ‘So this, all of this, it is a dream. It’s a dream …’ now anxiety shot through her and she squeezed her father’s hand hard enough to make him yelp in pain, as if she were daring him not to be real. ‘Or I’m dead now. Am I? Am I dead? Are we all dead?’
‘Relax,’ Danny soothed her. ‘None of us are dead …’ and he paused. ‘Not here.’ He gathered himself, took a deep breath, and for the first time noticed the assembled ranks of army forces surrounding the stone circle. He looked to Ellie and a corner of his mouth tugged upward. ‘I can’t leave you alone for a minute, can I?’ he said.
Ellie gave him a who, me? look. ‘What happened to your sword?’ she said, noticing for the first time that he was no longer wielding the weapon he’d used to such dazzling effect at the top of Lircom Tower.
A shadow fell across his face. ‘All part of the deal,’ he said, and eyed Ellie’s father significantly. ‘She needs it for what comes next.’
‘She needs it? Who needs it?’ Ellie asked.
‘Carman,’ Danny admitted, and stepped backward involuntarily. It turned out to be a fairly wise move.
‘Carman? What the fuck d’you mean, Carman? She’s not dead? You were supposed to … What the fuck d’you mean, she needs the sword? She kidnapped my son and turned him into He-Man for fuck’s sake! And you! You let her keep the fucking magic fucking sword that caused all this shit in the fucking first place?’
‘Ellie,’ Danny said, placing his hands on her shoulders and slowly bringing his forehead to rest against hers. ‘Ellie, please, I had to make a deal. Your da coming back is part of it, so is mine.’
‘She’s gonna do it all again,’ she said, feeling her chest tighten and the panic begin to rise. She couldn’t go through all of this a second time.
‘No,’ Danny shook his head. ‘She’s promised to send it back up.’
‘Up? Up where?’
‘Long story. I’ll explain, promise.’
‘Might wanna start with that. The army ones are in touch with Stormont,’ she said.
Danny made a face. Suddenly, monstrous faeries, collapsing buildings and fights to the death with glowing swords didn’t seem so bad. He felt like he’d been summoned to the headmaster’s office.
‘Brigadier seems decent enough,’ Ellie said. ‘Go talk to him.’
There it was again, the absurdity of being looked to as some sort of figurehead or spokesperson during all this madness. Squeezing Ellie’s arm, and giving her a too-brief kiss that hopefully conveyed an urgent sense of more to follow, Danny walked over to meet the brigadier. Ellie turned towards her son, standing there beside her, all grown up.
‘So,’ Luke said. He cleared his throat. ‘I–’
He got no further, caught up in his mother’s arms. Initial awkwardness melted to acceptance, and the young man who Danny had personally witnessed performing the sort of feats that would have caused Hercules to go green with envy hugged his fully foot-and-a-half-shorter mother.
When she pulled away, she had to blink away tears. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to. It’s just that,’ and she craned her neck back a little more, ‘you’re my baby boy.’
‘Muuuuuummmmmmmm,’ Luke squirmed, looking significantly at Wily and Larka, who were watching all of this with equal parts interest and amusement, it seemed.
‘Strange,’ was all Larka said.
‘What?’ Wily asked her.
‘The gifts the Morrigan gave us – the emotions, the perspective, the soul. It’s all so new to me.’
‘To all of us,’ Wily said.
‘Seeing this woman, how she acts with her child, is causing me to feel something in response.’
‘Maybe you’re broody,’ Ellie suggested offhand.
‘Broody?’
‘I believe she means you may want children of your own,’ Wily explained.
‘Ah,’ Larka considered this.
‘Of course,’ Wily went on, ‘that cannot be what you are actually–’
‘No, she is correct,’ Larka said calmly.
‘What?’ Wily said. ‘But we used to consume our young!’
Larka considered this, too. ‘That was then,’ she said. ‘This is now.’
Ellie watched all of this, aglow, forgetting for a moment the army and the faeries and all of that nonsense, and basking in the wonder of having her son back (albeit slightly taller) and her father back (much less dead). She watched Danny, deep in conversation with the brigadier, pointing this way and that. He seemed barely recognisable from the perpetually-unsure of himself young man who had muddled his way through premature parenthood, and yet – he sensed her eyes on him, and smiled over at her before returning to conversation – in so many ways he was still the same, still her Danny.
My Danny. She took a second to let that sink in. Had she ever really considered him hers before? She had fancied him, she had desired him (obviously), and she had been willing to make a go of a life together with him. It was probably, if she was honest, for Luke’s sake more than hers. Living with him, going through the sleepless nights and the money troubles, she felt like a headless swan most of the time – frantic activity going on under the surface, fuck-all left above it.
Having been shown the glimpse of a life without Danny, however fleeting, had clarified things. It was tough to know whether you were happy when you had nothing to contextualise that happiness against, bar her parents’ relationship, and that would have been like using the Manson compound as a template for opening a Bed & Breakfast. It wasn’t as if she could drop into other people’s houses and see them in their daily grinds. Soap operas pretended to show that, but they didn’t. They couldn’t.
What they showed was life distilled and distorted into a thirty-second clip that you were then supposed to take on faith represented weeks, months, years. Any idiot can sit through thirty seconds, Ellie thought. Try staying awake for fourteen hours with a sick screaming baby, feeling despair open up beneath you like a living thing, and then trying to figure out if you’re ‘happy’, whatever that even means.
More than anything, she just wanted to be home. To close her front door and be in her own house with Danny and Luke, and just sit and do stupid things. Make a coffee. Watch TV. Close the curtains and put the heat on for a bath. Do all those silly little things that felt lik
e fuck-all at the time, but were actually the key Lego bricks in the playset of life.
There was a commotion from behind her.
‘Holy shit!’ someone exclaimed. It sounded like Steve. Her heart sank. What now?
She turned, reaching for Luke, absurdly wanting to draw him close and protect him, despite the fact he was some sort of mystical ninja Jedi or something. She didn’t care. Anything or anyone went near her six-foot and change baby boy and she’d fuckin’ cream ’em.
It wasn’t what she anticipated, or feared. In fact, it was pretty much the last thing she’d expected to see. ‘Oh!’ Ellie squeaked.
‘Mum?’ Luke asked.
‘Um. Well. One of the wolves, has an itch. And the other wolf. Um, the other one. Yes. The other one’s trying to scratch it.’
Wily and Larka were engaged in a visceral and completely unashamed display of vigorous wolf-sex.
Her hand reached out and, with no small amount of difficulty, she managed to physically turn Luke’s body around so he was facing the other way. They were joined a second later by Steve, also with his back to the X-rated lupine action. Within moments an awkward line of people had formed, shuffling their feet and trying very hard to pretend that they couldn’t hear the howling going on behind them. Even the soldiers ringing their position seemed to have found something immensely fascinating going on around their own navels.
‘It looks like …’ Luke said.
‘Wily’s found Larka’s itch. Yes,’ Ellie cut him off. ‘Yes, and Larka is ever so pleased and grateful,’ she risked a quick glance behind her. Her eyes boggled. Her head whipped around again. She cleared her throat. ‘My mistake. It hasn’t gone just yet,’ she said.
‘I thought they were having sex,’ Luke said, puzzled.
Steve had abandoned all pretence of diplomacy. ‘Somebody get a fucking bucket of cold water,’ he called. He paused. ‘Better make it a big one.’
IRELAND / OTHERWORLD, NOW
It was time for the Sword of Nuada to perform its greatest feat.
Across Ireland, at the moment the shimmering veil separating the world inside the standing stones had come down, those who had lost their lives in the chaos that had ensued hours before – through accidents created by the panic, or at the claws or teeth of Carman’s children – all of them found themselves reconstituted, whole and healthy.
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