by Paddy Kelly
He stepped into the zone and slotted pulsing crimson bottles into the niches in the beams. Each one he slid in shook the air with a fat thump. My skin tightened. I was sure Dreabh had already done the same on the other side. All ready to open up this door.
When Grey-eye halted, with one niche remaining, the zone swirled as if filled with greasy water. Beams trembled, the connection straining to be made. They'd drawn a line across the middle, and on the other side of it, I glimpsed shapes crouching, three of them.
Next, Grey-eye stepped over to me and attached to my wrist a thing I recognised — one of the anchoring bracelets Seamus Cavan had used earlier. When he touched me, my mouth opened of its own accord, and I bared my teeth with a hiss.
He stepped, as if suspecting something. I held my breath. Then a sound from the zone snatched his attention, and he turned. The sound came again — a voice, leaking through the unopened door, garbled and stretched but definitely Dreabh's.
Grey-eye shouted an order. I was marched between two vertical beams and into the water-like swirl of heavy air, where I was pushed to my knees. Grey-eye stepped in and brought an anam bottle towards the final empty niche. Fingers of purple light crept out, reaching, encircling it. He shoved it closer, and on the bottle's last few inches, a whine rose, widened, spilt into growls, a dozen, a million, clamouring at the air until it gave and snapped.
The zone lurched, disgorging light. Stung senseless, I toppled onto my side. Around me, the gyre swirled, then thinned out. I pushed myself up, finding myself still on the ground of that other world, but now, across the dividing line, lay the zone in Crafters Lodge. Burke, Sister Agnes, the tunnel into the Poddle. And Dreabh, staring at the ones who were staring back, all their eyes bright green.
I stood and was shoved into the home half of the zone. Burke grabbed me, pushed me against the wall beside the Poddle tunnel and taped my wrists. Behind me, a low exchange in Irish I couldn't make out. Burke turned me and shoved down, trying to make me sit.
I resisted. "Look at them," I said. "Are they fucking angels? Look!"
Burke, keeping a painful hold on me, turned his head. Behind him stood Dreabh, in our side of the zone, along with Grey-eye and four others who'd crossed after me. Beyond that centre line, the room was sliced off — no walls, no ceiling, just three naked oak beams, the gaunt faces of the Sidhe, and the lifeless desolation of the ground, shifting with insects.
The Sidhe peered at me across the gulf. My gut twisted in a hungry ache.
"You see?" I said. Burke turned back to me, doubt wrinkling his face. "That's no paradise. They've conned you, Bruno. Dreabh lied and if you'd only—"
"Burke," Dreabh barked. Burke pushed hard, sending me to the floor within crawling distance of the Poddle opening. "Come," Dreabh said. "Leave that one."
But Burke was wavering. He looked down at me, then up at the five green-eyed people in the other half of the zone. Air from that world was leaking in, spreading its bitter reek. He straightened up, not as tall as Dreabh, but broader.
"Now look. This isn't what you told us. So maybe you can explain what—"
"Wait," Dreabh said. "I will explain. The hole. Do you see the hole?"
Burke turned to look at the tunnel leading to the Poddle. And in that second, Grey-eye pulled from his rough belt a bone topped with a black stone. He'd taken two steps before I realised it was a knife.
"Burke," I yelled from the floor. "Look the fuck out, they're—"
My yell caused Burke to turn just as Grey-eye shoved the knife through his side. A squawk, a staggered step, one hand to the spreading wetness, and Burke fell. He wheezed some words, then folded sideways onto the floor, facing away from me, where he lay still.
Sister Agnes had stopped praying. Her beads slid in a clatter to the floor.
"You fuck," I spat at Grey-eye. "What the fuck … you didn't have to—"
"Quiet," Dreabh snapped as he and Grey-eye studied the fallen man.
"Bruno?" Sister Agnes stood, one hand pressed to the wall. "Bruno?"
Grey-eye turned to her and took a step, his bone knife held low. Their plan blazed suddenly clear — kill her, then Tommy, and Debbie and Gernaud, if they returned, and also me. Now their door was open, we were worth fuck all.
Pain. I needed pain. But they'd taped my hands, so all I had was my head. I turned it, pressed my forehead against the rough stone and rasped it along. Skin ripped, pain swelled, the fuath kicked. I swung my head back, then slammed it in an explosion of wet light.
Her flame swelled, licked against the edges of its hiding place, fed by my fast-pumping breath, and the smell of the Sidhe. Then it burst, unfolded, screaming, out.
I was up, without having remembered standing, and a step away from me, Grey-eye had turned, his eyes flat and horrified. My head a cage of ruffled light, my heart twice its size. The floor trembled, all shining as if ankle-deep in a wash of golden varnish.
Dreabh turned. As did all other eyes, in the border zone and beyond. All those bodies, bones and heat-blood that curled around meat, alive and wet-thumping.
I wavered, dizzy, in my stance. Into my ears came a tremble and slow pulse, the caress of voice and word. My darling my love I am here always and now feed me feed me.
In the single moment I had, I filled my body with air — yes yes show me yes — and focused it on my need, the freedom of taped hands, compressed it to a tiny supernova behind my back. Heat flared, then pain on skin, and my hands ripped apart.
I held them up — red, blotches of burnt tape, but free.
Grey-eye figured it out. I saw the moment, the folds around him shifting from gritty to smooth. Eyes narrowed, he lunged at me, at us, my eternal dear and love—
My hands swung up to form the air and send it as a wedge into him — delicious consume him take him — to break his charge. He lunged as he fell and the knife swung past me. Crack onto his knees where he spat and scrambled and in panting plumes he stood.
I turned to other Sidhe in the zone, amidst a devouring din of light. They were moving towards me. I threw my hands forward, bringing all of it to bear, the long dull tail of centuries of dark-scrabbling hope and hunger, the strings of fire joining mind to mind, uncoupled it into the flow and I unleashed it all.
A couple of steps they'd taken, but no more, because with me as its ground-battered pin, fire and the light erupted. They staggered, three of them falling, one strong one still moving towards me. I redirected the force at him, but too late, and he crashed into me, slamming me into a wall, grasping all slippery for the naked throb of my throat.
A mistake. His smell and nearness made her thrash, sending molten iron through me, as a fist landed on my chest, but like hitting steel. I gulped air, drawing his smell into every popping synapse, letting the fuath ignite in a world-fuck rage.
I stood in that storm, colours smeared back like streaming hair, voices no longer needed nor heard. The man staggered under the assault, one hand up to cover his eyes from the whipping light. The fuath's voice yammered, too fast to hear, as dust and gravel rose, blending all sounds and motion into the sleet of the whirlwind's brutal scream.
Half-blinded, I sensed the anam bottles quivering in their niches, those rivets that held the two overlapping worlds in place. I directed the storm of which I was the eye, and—
Crack. Shockingly loud, and a part of me understand that sound. Dreabh and the gun fuck it the gun I'd forget all about the gun I had to stop it now stop it or else—
I expanded, stretching down to the bones of the world, igniting the anger I'd kept there, polished and pretty, a thing to look at while pretending I'd forgotten it, all dust and coal and petrol in the violent aching heart of a nova, triggered and exploded.
The floor shook. Stones cracked in the walls and ceiling. Shapes were running, diving, in the thickening dust and light. I tugged again, harder, with a scream, ripping columns loose and pulling anam bottles from their niches, as if yanking on a web of ropes. And in a single jarring whack, a conflagration of screams,
the connection cut off.
The final thing I saw before I fell were pillars exploding in splinters, stone smashing to dust, and the ceiling cracking, slabs descending, their crushing weight—
I lay flat, in a silence filled only by my pained breath. I had to get to the tunnel. The zone was fucked, but the exit was close, it was just ahead, I just had to—
A howl of rage burst out, and it didn't echo, like in an enclosed place, but rang out and faded, as if outside. It took another tortured yell to make me open my eyes and confirm what I'd started to suspect and didn't want to see, but now couldn't deny.
Earth and short grass. Bugs scrambling over skin. I raised a heavy head to look, as the burn of the fuath cooled and was replaced by an ache the size of a world.
Barren ground stretched away in yellow-lit darkness. The stump of an oak pillar, another one flung far across the ground. A couple of the anam bottles, melted. And a few metres away, outside the circle, several dozen Sidhe, gaping mouths full of brown teeth.
A groan from behind. A person lay on the ground, just outside the ring of broken columns. A tall figure in jeans and a t-shirt, on his back, with blood on his face. Dreabh.
The filthy crowd were edging closer. Seeing them, a part of me was ready to sit down and give up. But the more stubborn bits, the bits that had kept me moving my whole life through stares and whispers, weren't ready to fold quite yet. They stood me up, stiffened my legs and held me upright as a thought unfolded and I hastily grabbed it.
"Fuath!" I shouted. The ones coming towards me flinched, and stopped. I stepped away from the ring as another groan came from the ground.
"Fuath anseo!" I said again, and pointed at myself, making it clear.
"The river," a voice gasped from my pocket. "Over there. Look!"
I shot a glance across the stream, the Poddle of this world, where lay dark ground and, not far off, some boulders. On top of one boulder sat a tiny form. A shadow, waving.
The fairy Ishbéal had talked to. Carmath.
A sound behind made me turn. Dreabh had rolled over onto his front, and was trying to sluggishly stand. In his hand, the black shape of the gun.
From the crowd of Sidhe rose a wailing sound. Hands went to faces. People fell to their knees, their cries of failure and rage rising like scorched sin.
They'd worked it out, that their way out had been closed. Because of me.
"Fuath!" I yelled once more, then turned and sprinted for the stream, and took the whole thing in one clumsy leap. I landed with one foot in water, but scrambled up the bank and onto flat ground, insects scattering, and in the light of the rising moon I sprinted with terrible cries rising behind me and a corpse of a world laid out ahead.
Now they knew, the ones watching me run. I carried a fuath, the seed of their destruction. And once they'd re-organised, I knew what they'd do to the one who'd killed their plans.
They'd trap me and my parasite in the rising sun, and burn us both to ash.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The moon hung above the horizon, and the scene it illuminated, as I trotted in aches and spurts after the sprinting fairy, was what I imagined the surface of that moon might look like.
Hard ground, mostly flat, where grass grew, or stringy weeds, or nothing at all. The flatness was broken by the occasional stump of a petrified tree, like bristles on a badly shaved face, or by boulders and planes of slanted rock. And all of it looked licked clean, as if by a god's rough tongue.
An occasional glance behind confirmed they weren't following, not yet. Maybe they were trying to repair the zone, or dabbing up the concentrated anam, if any remained, to power it.
But no point. The zone in Crafters Lodge was mangled. I'd seen it collapse, its beams splinter and fail. Which meant the ones still there — the nun, the few Sidhe who'd made it across — had either got out through that tunnel, or had been crushed.
Didn't matter either way. Because I was stuck here, and dawn was coming.
Running felt like it was all uphill, even when the ground slanted down. But Carmath the fairy led the way and I followed, Ishbéal peering out of my pocket. Around a square boulder and up a stony slope, where, at the top, I raised a hand, gasping, and fell to my knees.
"Stop," I said. "Please … I have to … rest."
Carmath turned, a few metres down the other side of the slope, and looked back. Ishbéal jumped from my pocket and trotted down to speak to him. He stared back at me sourly, said something to Ishbéal, then sat.
She jogged back to me. "A hundred heartbeats. But no longer. I don't see them." She was peering back in the direction we'd come. "But there is light and movement in the zone. They must still be working there."
I sat down, legs stretched out, panting. "So Dreabh's not after us? You sure?"
"Yes. That is what I said. And look there." She pointed in the direction we were heading. "Do you see it?"
I turned, squinting across the moonlit ground below. Away to my left ran the stream, terminating at a great flat place. The Dubh Linn lake. But what sat in that lake was too unbelievable to grasp.
A truncated pyramid of stone, maybe fifty metres high, maybe a hundred, and so wide that the lake was like a moat circling it. A ring of spires emerged from its top, and its slanted walls, full of holes, shone grey with hints of green in the moonlight. It radiated brute power.
That was it, the Sidhe's great concentrator. And maybe deep in that lake rested the bones of the ones who had woken the fuath, and destroyed this entire world.
My hundred heartbeats of rest were running out, but I couldn't make myself stand. Just looking at the tower was exhausting. Knowing I had to get over to it was worse. But it was the only shelter on offer. A place to hide, eating insect paste, while I waited for Esmerelda to suck the final drops from me. Did I really want to hurry to that?
"Water," Ishbéal said. I looked down, having forgotten she was there. "You must drink." She pointed at a rainwater pool in the rock beside me, little more than a puddle.
"I will." I closed my eyes, feeling the breeze across my face. "In a second."
I let my breath hang there, on the cusp of breathing in. The fuath's warm whisper grew louder. I slipped down, to hear better, and smiled as her heat unfolded. My love my dear for always. Fake promises, but sweet. No more stumbling in the dark, or searching, or failing—
"Ow!" Something hard nicked my face, ripping pain across it. I opened my eyes to see Ishbéal standing under me, with another stone held and ready to fling.
"Remain awake! And drink. The pool is clean. Do it, or I throw something bigger."
I leaned down to scoop up some water, getting most of it into my mouth. Bitter cold. But I gulped it down and took a few breaths, as dribbly drops slithered down my chin.
"Are you ready?" Ishbéal said. I was about to answer, when a smeared-out shout came from behind. I looked back, at the ground spread out in a silvery sheen.
There was still a light at the border zone, but no movement.
"Raise me!" Ishbéal said, by my feet. I hoisted her onto my shoulder, and she grabbed my hair to hold herself steady while she peered in the direction we'd come.
"Most are still at the zone," she reported, "but two smaller groups have left, one with a light, the other without. One group contains a taller figure. It must be him."
My stomach tightened, at the thought of Dreabh, and his gun. I strained to see, but I'd no hope of matching Ishbéal's vision. Would he kill me? The odds were quite good.
"We must run," Ishbéal said. "Our destination is not hard to guess."
"Okay," I said. More running. I wasn't sure I could do it. "How long till we get there?"
"Carmath says an hour of travel. We have boats to cross the lake but you will have to swim. A bridge of stones reaches into the water, but even from there it is three hundred body lengths. Can you manage that?"
That was three hundred feet-ish. Eighty metres, in cold water. Sure. Probably.
Wake me use me I can make it fly the water
slide past you and hold you warm and—
I shook my head to still the voice, and its bubbling comfort. It was hard.
"Begin moving," Ishbéal barked. "None of us wish to be taken by the Sidhe."
I stumbled to the edge of the rise, and stared at the tumbled chaos of boulders on the other side, its long slow fall down to flat ground, and the river, and the lake.
More running. But for what?
"Ow! Stop that!" Ishbéal had pulled my hair, yanking me back to the moment.
"We think and we worry when we get there. For now, we run. Go."
With Ishbéal holding onto my hair, I loped ahead, moving from stone slabs to rough ground and on, following sure-footed Carmath, who'd lived his whole life here.
She was right. Thinking could wait. Now our best chance lay in running and hoping.
Although it was a terrifying toss-up as to which one would get us the furthest.
We passed ruins on our path to the lake, and at one place I squatted behind the remains of a low wall, with the two fairies a short distance away, to pee. Forehead pressed to stone, I listened to the patter of piss on dark ground, as bugs nibbled my neck.
"I've too heavy," I whispered to the wall. "Too fucking heavy. And too tired."
I will make you light my dearest make you fly anything you want.
"But you won't," I whispered back. "You'll drain me. It's what you do."
I do not drain you it is you who drain yourself by resisting by pushing me back—
"No," I said as piss splattered my boots. "You're a damn liar."
The fighting is what tires you there is no need to fight my love.
"Be still," came a voice from the world outside. I stuck my head around the wall as I rebuttoned my trousers. "Down!" Ishbéal snapped. I squatted in the steam of my own piss, waiting until Ishbéal came sprinting around the corner of the broken wall, and slipped in beside me.