Hollow Oaks

by Paddy Kelly

  "And what about the bones?" Debbie said. "In the tomb?"

  Ishbéal, across the room, paused for a second. "The tomb?" she said.

  "In the cave where we found the fuath." Debbie described what we'd seen there. The wall with the tiny entrance, that I'd pulled down. The niches packed with skeletons.

  It was many seconds before the fairy replied. When she did, it was a low moan. She stared down at the table she sat on, and rocked back and forth.

  "Ishbéal?" I said. "Are you … okay?"

  She moaned some more. "The queen, the stupid, arrogant queen. The water of years, that is what they said, I heard it but I did not think. An t-uisce na mblianta."

  Debbie crossed the room to the coffee table and squatted down beside it. Ishbéal kept moaning and muttering in Irish. It took Debbie a while to coax an answer.

  "I understand it now," she said. We kept still, as she was speaking so softly that even the creaks of our motion on the sofa masked her words. "And I wish I didn't."

  "Go on," Debbie said. "We have to know, if we're going to fix this."

  "This cannot be fixed." She sat up straight. "The Sidhe had vast skills in urge making. One urge allowed them to extend their lives, for centuries. The water of years. And how they made it … they infected one of us, their slaves, with a fuath. That one was kept isolated, so the fuath could consume the mind and body. And when they were close to finished, they were … opened up. Their blood taken. And the urge was made."

  "Wait," Gernaud said. "They infected you with the fuath and they killed you?"

  "Fuck," I said, seeing where this was going. "You're saying … the queen is making that urge for Seamus Cavan, using the small folk? Killing her own kind?"

  "Yes," she said. "A cave of bones, beside the well of a fuath. A place we are not allowed to go. I see no other explanation. Maybe she uses prisoners, or those from the wild clans. It explains where she gets her fine metal and special fabrics. And her gold."

  It all made terrible sense. Seamus Cavan, who'd become so old-looking all of a sudden. His two friends too. I recalled what Tommy had said, that Seamus had taken over the hotel and his father had vanished. Except he hadn't. Seamus was both, the father and the son.

  He could well be centuries old. And now he was dying.

  "That's why they were so desperate," I said. "With the anam fading, the urge was too. So I'm guessing the zone was opened, and the fairy urge-makers set to work right there on the Dublin side of the floor, as it had to be made here, using craft items from Tara."

  Ishbéal groaned. "Killing our own kind. This is truly a dark day."

  "But a potion of life," Gernaud, with awe in his voice. "And it is real."

  "Real and made from death," Debbie said. "Don't forget that part."

  A phone vibrated with a buzz, and everybody jumped. "Sorry," Debbie said. "Mine. Just a message. I'll check it later. Was there more, Ishbéal?"

  "There is," Ishbéal said. "And worse. The queen's urge-makers used my kind to make their water of years, like their masters before them." She stood up on the coffee table. "But look at me. I have so little blood. The Sidhe had so much more. As do you."

  It took a few seconds to see it. "Oh shit," I said, my hand pressed to my mouth.

  "The Sidhe used their own kind to make that urge," Gernaud said. "And ours."

  "Brought over," the fairy said. "Promised great things. Then lied to. And consumed."

  I shared a look with Gernaud, my skin creeping as if covered in ants.

  "So when they ruled you," I said to Ishbéal, "they were basically immortal?"

  "That is how it is told. They did whatever they needed to keep living."

  Everyone was sitting stiffly, leaning away from me. If I twitched, they'd probably flinch. I was now poison, the bringer of death for everyone in this room. Maybe the world.

  "Can I get rid of it?" I said. "Ishbéal, can I?"

  Her few seconds of pause were physically painful. "Perhaps," she said. "The queen's urge-makers clearly have forbidden knowledge. So if anybody knows, it is them."

  "But now they won't speak to us," I said. "In fact, they want me dead."

  "That is true. And the anam is so weak I suspect they could not help anyway. Which means the task I gave to you is still our burning need — find the stockpile and destroy it."

  A motorcycle passed in a roar, making the windows rattle. It receded, leaving a cold silence, filled with the slow and meaty hiss of our breaths.

  Gernaud turned to me. "This fuath. Tell me what it does to you. How it works."

  "How it works?" I swallowed. "It eats the things that make me happy. My desires. Food tastes like nothing. Chocolate, coffee … all gone. And it’s getting heavier, making me duller and slower. I know it's the fuath doing it, but that doesn't make it any better."

  "But it heals you too," Debbie said. "You showed me."

  "Yeah." I showed them my palm, but couldn't bear to look at the finger again. I just held it up, bandaged. "This too. And I think it stopped that fairy poison."

  "The healing," Gernaud said, "must be connected to its use as a life potion." He turned to Ishbéal. "Is that how it is?" She didn't answer, and sat, folding up into a sad pile on the table.

  Debbie's phone vibrated again, and again she left it where it was.

  "That water of years," I said. "That's not what Vesta was making, was it? Unless uisce beatha is the same thing with a different name—"

  "No," the fairy said. "That is another ancient urge. Uisce beatha protects against the sun of the other side. Not all the way, but some. It is useful for your kind, not mine."

  "It protects?" Debbie said. "You mean, I can be in Tara, and not burn?"

  "In some small way. Our sun will still kill you, just slowly. But you will not ignite."

  I rubbed my eyes. Too much to take in. It also didn't help me with the fuath. And when it came to the fuath, there was one question that made all others fade.

  "How long do I have?" I said. "Until I fall down and won't get up again?"

  "I don't know," Ishbéal said, looking tiny and terrified way over on the table. "What happened then is badly remembered. But when the fuath got loose, the dying started quickly. They say it took only days. Yours is weak and alone, so maybe you have longer."

  I stared at her, unable to feel anything besides numbness.

  The phone buzzed again. "Fine," Debbie said, standing. "I'll answer you." She grabbed it, pressed it to her face. "Yes, it's me." And she wandered off into the kitchen.

  "Do you eat our food?" Gernaud said to the fairy. "It will not harm you, but possibly you have some strange suspicions, like many of those on this side—"

  "I will risk it," Ishbéal said quickly. "Especially the sweet shrunken fruit."

  "Raisins?" She nodded. "Then I will fix this." Gernaud stood and strode into the hall, where he started rummaging through the shopping for, I assumed, the raisins.

  Debbie's stressed voice drifted in from the kitchen. "You're sure? How sure? Okay. Yes. Keep looking. Call me the second you hear anything. Anything. Thanks."

  She walked back in, and I saw on her face that something was wrong.

  "That was Martin, Tommy's cousin. He was supposed to meet him to help out, but Tommy didn't show." She pressed the screen and held the phone to her face. "And he doesn't answer his phone either. So I'm calling him now." After many rings, she shook her head.

  "Should we do something?" Gernaud said, box of raisins in hand. "Look for him?"

  "But where? Maybe it's nothing. Maybe he ran out of battery."

  "This Martin," Gernaud said. "How did he sound?"

  "Worried. He sounded worried." She looked at me. "What should we do?"

  Of all the possible options, falling onto a bed and staring into the dark was top of my list. But I couldn't. Because I realised I knew where Tommy was.

  They had him. It came back to me what the nun had said, in the van. They wanted me to perform a task for them, that only one of "my kind" could do. By
that, she meant someone who could cross into Tara. Clearly they couldn't, or maybe didn't want to.

  But if that was the case, Tommy could do that job just as well as me.

  I closed my eyes, trying to recall what else I'd heard them say in the van. If they'd let slip some clue about who they were. But the whole thing was blurry with pain.

  Hang on, though … wasn't there a name? The nun's name. Burke had said it, at some point, right before the thing I couldn't think about too hard. So what was it?

  "The urges," I said, and stood. The fairy yelped, Debbie took a step back. I stepped around them, and their terrified stares, to my coat in the hall, where I grabbed the bag of urges.

  Four left — one lust, one focus, two vitality. I dug out the focus, and strode back in.

  "What are you going to do?" Debbie said, sounding doubtful.

  "Remember." I popped the wax on the urge and caught a whiff of ginger before I gulped it down. Debbie watched me from where she stood by the curtains.

  "Which one was that?"

  "Focus. I need to remember what happened in the van."

  I sat back down. Everybody else remained where they were. Watching.

  My tongue dabbed my lips, re-tasting the ginger. Was it working? How would I know?

  I held up my fingers, counted them, studied the nails, as the three other occupants of the room watched me like coiled springs. A minute and forty seconds passed before I turned to Gernaud. Three crooked teeth, the blemish on his right cheek, the left ear with the faint impression of a piercing. I thought back to when I'm shoved him up against the wall. The bathrobe he'd been wearing, the smile lifting one side of his mouth only—

  "You are staring," he said. "I hope it is the good kind of staring."

  I pulled my gaze away, and it skittered around the room, bringing things into embossed focus. I closed my eyes and turned that focus inward. The van. The tape around me. Burke's reeking breath. The nun on her fold-down seat, the crucifix beneath her throat.

  Forward, Bren, think ahead. To the hard part.

  Burke, crouching by the crate of tools, lifting the lid, and a paper sliding off, caught for a moment in the grip of my sight. A map, a red line going southwest from the Liffey, curling around Dublin Castle, then splitting and passing the fold onto the other side.

  The paper unfroze and floated from sight, but the images rolled on. Burke turning, with the secateurs, black blades and orange grips. A rust stain shaped like a pear on the van wall. I struggled, he grabbed me, the rank smell of him. I gagged, and he spoke — "Hold the legs, Agnes" — and my eyes snapped open.

  "Agnes," I said, finding Gernaud and Debbie staring at me. "The nun's name." My words sounded stretched out, almost a drawl. "Get the laptop, I need to search."

  Gernaud stepped quickly back after handing me the laptop. I searched for "Bruno Burke Agnes nuns". The results came up. "Look," I said. "I won't bite anyone."

  Debbie and Gernaud, keeping a couple of steps behind the sofa, peered at what I'd found — a newspaper article about a charity raffle at a convent. The name Bruno Burke was in the text, and in the photo stood five nuns, some smiling, some not.

  "Sister Agnes," I read, transfixed by the image, counting the people, the fingers visible, the bricks in the wall behind them. Trying to work out what time of year it was taken.

  "Which one is it?" Gernaud said. I lifted a slow hand and pointed.

  "On the right. The Sisters of Benevolence. Five years ago. Wait a second."

  I dragged my attention from the image to hunt down the convent's website. I clicked the "sisters" tab and went through all twelve, studying each one. But no Agnes.

  "Maybe she left. But they might still know where she is." I paused, captivated by the patterns on the curtains behind one of the nuns. Swirls like fish and atoms.

  "Then we go there," Debbie said.

  I turned to her. Eyes brown, with a few flecks of gold. Brown-red hair drawn back, left eyebrow slightly wider than her right. Delicious and asymmetrical and a coil of unbirthed possibilities and my stupid head hurt.

  "Are you … okay, Bren?"

  "No problem. Fine. Should we go now? Is that what you said?"

  "But it's eleven in the night," Gernaud said. "And yes, these nuns might let us in if we bang on their doors, but will they help us? I doubt it. We will go tomorrow, with a plan."

  I nodded. My heart beat in a long slow swoosh, every chamber flexing.

  "Their convent is off Mountjoy Square," Debbie said, looking at her phone. "It doesn't have opening times, but I suppose convents don't have opening times, do they?"

  "And what if they cannot help us?" Gernaud said. "Or will not?"

  "We just have to make sure they do," Debbie said. "And I don't care how that happens."

  "Sleeping," Gernaud said, cautiously. "How do we … go about it?"

  Shifty looks were exchanged. With the fuath inside me, and all the warnings from Ishbéal, nobody appeared willing to sleep close to me, or anywhere near me.

  I gathered my syrupy thoughts. "We need a look out. In case anyone tries to sneak up on us. Or Tommy or his cousin calls. I've been asleep all day already, so I'll take the first watch. And I'll sleep on the couch when it's my turn. That sound okay?"

  "Place me in a far room," Ishbéal said. "In a very dark place."

  "And I," Gernaud said, "will fix some water for the little one."

  He strode into the kitchen, while Debbie started looking for a good light-excluding cupboard for the fairy, and something she might use as a small toilet.

  "Be sure to wake one of us in a few hours," Debbie said. "You need sleep too."

  I nodded, studying the laptop, the faces of the nuns, the letters in their names.

  Sleep. Maybe. But it felt like a waste. If Ishbéal was right, I'd only get worse in the days to come, as the fuath spread its shroud. Every minute sleeping was a minute where she could whisper her pretty promises. And I really wasn't sure how much longer I could resist them.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Getting to see the prioress on such short notice wasn't easy, but finally, at three in the afternoon, half a day wasted, me and Debbie sat waiting in the small library of a house close to Mountjoy Square, while Gernaud sat in his car a few streets away, eyes wide open and one foot hovering over the pedal.

  The little library smelled of carpet shampoo. Six chairs, two low tables, a vase with white roses. Shelves covered most of the walls, except for one space containing a large flatscreen TV. On the big window hung thick blue curtains, held back by golden ropes with tassels. All so prim and nun-like I just wanted to draw a cock and balls on something.

  I nudged Debbie, hearing whispering in the hall outside, and soft footsteps moving towards the door. I hugged the bag closer. A sports bag, borrowed from Gernaud, the ghosts of old sweat still clinging to it. But Tommy needed us. We could do this. We had to.

  The door opened. A woman who I assumed was the prioress stepped in, pushing the door softly shut. She turned — a round nun, with a few sprigs of grey hair poking out under her head veil and a quick-eyed nervousness. Not surprising, given the woman and the scruffy man who sat watching her, the man with a bag clutched protectively in his lap.

  "Hello," she said. "Sister Fidelma. Thank you so much for your donation, first of all. The silver is … unusual, but we're very grateful for it." Gernaud had thrown a half-kilo silver bar into the cash we'd pulled together. "A fine shine, don't you think. Yes. Now."

  She settled across from us in a hard chair with a straight back. "You had an interest in helping us further, I believe. Or so I was told by Sister Mary—"

  "That's the thing," I said, letting the lies roll. "My aunt, she died last year—"

  "Oh, I'm sorry to hear it, the Lord have mercy on her soul."

  "Thanks. But she made us promise a thing. She knew a nun years ago, who'd helped her a lot. Saved her life, she said. And she wanted to leave a, um, sum of money to this particular sister and her convent. Assuming, of course, that
we can locate her."

  The prioress straightened up in her chair. "I'd be most delighted to help. Final wishes should be honoured, don't you think? And who is the sister in question?"

  "Sister Agnes," I said. On her face began a small collapse, but she halted it, and quickly reassembled her features, although with eyes a bit wider than before.

  "Ah," she said, fingers fumbling in her lap, as if trying to climb over each other. "Yes. That … particular sister, I'm afraid, we no longer have contact with. So I can't—"

  "You don't have to talk to her. Just tell us where we can find her."

  "We don't discuss private details of our sisters, current or former." A definite chill had seeped into her voice. "If that is why you've come, I'm afraid I'll need to ask you to leave."

  "But, the money," I said, "and it's a lot, too. You'll only get that if—"

  "I understand. Perfectly. And, as I said, I'm afraid I can't help you."

  She looked about to stand, so I had no choice but to roll out the scrappier part of the plan. I stood, placed my bag on my floor, and strode to the door. There was a key, which I used to lock it. I pulled it out and turned, hoping my hammering heart wasn't obvious.

  "Now." I returned to my seat, pocketing the key. "Let's talk."

  "If I yell," the prioress announced stiffly, "there are four sisters out there. And we do have another key." She rose to her feet, all the softness gone from her face. "I don't know what you want, and I don't intend to guess. So, please take out that key and—"

  "We need to show you something. A thing that will change your life."

  She hovered uncertainly, sensible walking shoes peering out from under her long dress. A sturdy woman, and I guessed she could take me, but not the both of us. Probably.

  "It's in the bag. We show you, we tell you what it represents, and you'll see why we need to know what we're asking you. Just three minutes, that's all we ask. Okay?"

  Her gaze slipped to the bag, which I'd recovered from the floor.

  "Three minutes." She turned her head and yelled, "You hear me out there, Sister Mary? Three minutes. And if I'm not out by then, you go fetch the hurleys!"