It’s a mistake. Out of nowhere, a hand reaches into the ditch and covers her mouth. She jumps, ready to struggle, to fight to the death. But only for an instant. She’s been caught fair and square and that’s that. Final proof, if any were needed, that daydreams of love will get you killed.
A voice whispers, “Promise not to say anything?”
And Nessa nods, feeling relief roll into her. No hunt party would require her silence.
“Megan?”
“You’re a Crom-twisted wee whore for making so much noise. That’s not like you! Now shut it. I’ve got Squeaky Emma on my tail with Aoife and Nicole and Lugh only knows who else. Maybe I should send you out there for them to catch instead, eh?” But of course Megan would never do that.
“Listen,” Nessa says, “we’ll have to move away from the ditch. I’ve left quite a trail for the last few hundred yards.”
“All right. No more talk then. Come on.”
Megan’s not the fittest girl in Year 5, or the most studious. But she actually enjoys the hunts, and Mr. Hickey’s is one of the few classes where she keeps up with the rest. Yet Nessa finds herself criticizing internally as her friend breaks bracken or scatters twigs behind her.
And who am I to talk, with my big bloody crutches?
Throughout the woods they catch glimpses of flashlights combing the ground for prints, and sometimes sudden, excited calls ring out in the distance.
After ten minutes of exhausting creeping around, the two girls are sweating enough to fill the Shannon river. They have reached one of the known forest trails. They could make a lot of distance here and leave very few tracks. And yet at least one of the hunter teams will be lying in wait somewhere along the path’s mile and a quarter.
Megan puts a hand over Nessa’s lips and Nessa nods. Her friend will go on a little by herself to scout. Nessa points back the way they came, to indicate that she will check on the progress of their pursuers. They each nod once and off they go.
Nessa doesn’t get very far before she spies dark figures creeping through the bracken behind them. Heart in throat, she ducks out of sight and returns to the tree where she left her friend.
But there’s no sign of the other girl. No sign at all, except for a vague shape on the ground. Nessa creeps forward, feeling a rushing in her ears. Her heart is beating faster than it ever has in her life; her limbs are on the verge of just giving up and dumping her on the ground. She crouches to touch the shadow. It’s her worst fear: a jacket. Megan’s jacket. And Megan herself is gone. Nessa falls to her knees in the chill, damp leaf litter, her head spinning. The calm part of her mind has already started counting down from three minutes and four seconds, but there is bile creeping up her throat, trying to force its way past a suddenly dry and swollen tongue.
And then Megan steps out from the forest and leans down toward her.
Nessa’s response is completely automatic. She slaps her friend across the face. Once. Hard. And Megan, being Megan, responds in kind, holding nothing back so that Nessa’s head is ringing. Then they embrace and Nessa clings on to her like a life preserver.
“By Lugh,” says Megan, “you thought I’d been Called? And then you belt me hard enough to flay the skin from my face?”
“Your … your jacket.”
“Sorry. I’m sorry. I thought I heard hunters. My hood got caught on a branch and I just abandoned it, ran up the hill.” They’re still hugging and smiling, but Nessa feels nauseous. Finding Megan’s jacket was more than just a fright. It was a sign of the unavoidable future. She knows that going by the odds, one of them will be Called by Christmas.
“Listen, Ness,” Megan whispers. Her voice is suddenly tense. “I found something … something incredible. You have to see it!”
“What is it?”
Instead of an answer, Nessa gets a flashlight beam in the face.
“Two?” says Aoife. “Whoever caught two before?”
And Squeaky Emma, with real hurt in her voice at the sight of them hugging so tightly, says, “That’s not fair, Megan. I came out to you. Before I even told my mother!”
And the two friends burst out laughing.
But on the way back to the college Megan still isn’t herself.
“What is it? What did you see when you ran up the hill?”
“I need to find Nabil,” Megan says. “I need to find him right away.”
Their friends have hardly beaten them at all. Even so, they’ve been caught and must suffer now through a cold shower and a meal as chilly and bland as the cook can make it. But even that dubious pleasure must wait.
“Nabil first,” Megan insists. “It has to be. And you’re coming with me.”
Nessa pushes aside the hunger and allows herself to be dragged along. She’s never seen her friend so agitated before.
They meet the Frenchman in the “barracks”—a corridor of small but comfortable rooms belonging to the staff and the veterans. He is old-fashioned enough to worry about being alone in his quarters with two young girls, so, to Nessa’s dismay, and maybe his own, he invites Sergeant Taaft to join them.
“I hear they were caught together” is the first thing Taaft says. “Helping her out, were you, Megan?”
“No, Sergeant. She was helping me.”
“Because there’ll be nobody to protect her over there. You need to train as if you’re working alone. That’s the whole point!”
Nabil intervenes, a hard edge to his voice. “Sergeant Taaft, please.”
He has cleaned his room to the point of sterility: a bed, a prayer mat, a desk. Not so much as a photograph of his family mars the walls. Even the bookshelves hold little more than the contents of the college curriculum: the Turkey’s History of the Sídhe; the hunting manuals; and year after year of survivor Testimonies, the later volumes in the language of the enemy, which he speaks fluently. But Nabil has to revert to English now for Taaft’s sake, and there he struggles, a national stereotype straight out of the old movies they show in the gym on Saturday nights.
“So, girls. I do not worry that you ’ave … that you work together. But what you need to report?”
“A corpse, Nabil,” says Megan. “We saw a corpse. Human maybe.”
Nessa opens her mouth to object, to say that she herself didn’t notice anything, but a good hard stare from Megan shuts her up. You want to see it or not? seems to be the message. So Nessa goes along with the story for now. And who wouldn’t be intrigued by the use of the word “maybe” in relation to a human body?
“But it’s more than just a corpse,” Megan says. “I think … I think you might want some of the teachers to come along with us. Mr. Hickey maybe. Ms. Breen and Ms. Sheng.”
“I’ll get the flood lights,” says Taaft, all business now.
Nabil nods. He scratches the scars cutting through his beard. He always looks tired, but never shirks on courtesy, “Megan, go please to fetch Ms. Breen and anybody you need. Nessa, tell Mr. Hickey to call in the hunt before he reports to us here. And get some sandwiches from the kitchen on my authority. We will all have need for energy.”
He’s right. It’s an hour before they’re back in the woods, shivering and wet, with Mr. Hickey’s labored breathing loud enough to kill any conversation dead. But it takes Megan surprisingly little time to find the place where she left the path, and as they climb the slope, Nessa too feels a strong sense of familiarity.
Have I been here before maybe? During the day?
Clouds have covered the moon, but soon enough the flood lights are placed around a great moss-covered boulder, and everybody gasps at once.
There is a girl in the rock. Or rather, a rotting corpse, the sight of whose glistening flesh threatens to squirt Nessa’s sandwiches right out of her stomach. But it’s only half a corpse really, because from the hips down the girl merges into the surface of the stone, and her hands are positioned in such a way that it looks as though she were trying to climb out of it when she died.
“It’s one of the Aes Sídhe,” says M
s. Breen, and Mr. Hickey agrees. Still panting, he points out the large empty eye sockets.
“Less than a fortnight old.” He spits. “Haven’t seen one of the monsters in twenty years. Must have got trapped on the way in.”
“She’s been here more than two weeks,” says Ms. Sheng, the skeletal teacher of field medicine. “Trust me.” And then her voice rises an octave. “But this is a mound!” she cries. “We’re standing right on top of one!” And all of the teachers gape at the dirt between their feet as though it’s poison.
“This is a Fairy Fort?” asks Megan. “An actual Fairy Fort?”
But she is ignored.
“Nabil,” says Ms. Breen. “Sergeant Taaft. No more exercises here for a few days. Please keep all students to the fields until we can get a team up from Dublin.”
And that’s that. The two girls and the instructors too are hurried away back to the college without any answers to their questions. In fact, when Megan tries to insist on the basis that “We found the thing!” she’s told by Ms. Breen, “Your job, girl, is to survive. For the Nation. You do that, and you decide you want to work on something a bit deeper, come back to me. Until then, you need your rest.”
“And I’m supposed to sleep after seeing this? An actual Sídhe corpse? Melted into the rock?”
“You’d better, child,” and the principal is struggling to suppress the quaver in her voice, “because it’s the living ones you need to worry about. Now go. And tell nobody what you’ve seen here, or you’ll spend the rest of the week in the Cage.”
“What was it?” Squeaky Emma wants to know the following morning. “What did you see?”
The two Donegal girls have come in early for breakfast and have grabbed an empty table for themselves, but Emma won’t take the hint.
Megan, enjoying the attention, smiles enigmatically. “Bet you wish you hadn’t caught us, eh, Ems? I might have told you then.”
“What about you, ice queen? Will you tell?” This is directed at Nessa, who only shrugs and keeps her attention on the porridge-like slop in her bowl.
But Megan and Squeaky Emma are good friends, and when Nessa looks up she catches the exchange of a wink that brings a grin to the smaller girl’s face and stops all her questions in their tracks. Squeaky Emma returns to the usual table, where everybody else is finishing up.
“I hope you’re not planning on telling her, Megan Donnelly.”
“Why ever not?” Megan’s innocent rosy cheeks are like something straight off a Victorian biscuit tin. “People are dying for something to talk about.”
“It’s the Cage though, if word gets out. And it always gets out.”
“Well, I’m no stranger to the Cage, Ness, as you know. I’m even growing to like it.” But she grins and squeezes her friend’s hand. And then she changes the subject so transparently that Nessa can’t help rolling her eyes. “But what about that triple-F, Nessa, eh? Right on the grounds!”
“Triple-F?”
“Feckin’ Fairy Fort.” Megan smiles around a face full of dribbly porridge. Bad as the food is, they won’t leave so much as a smear of it behind them. “I thought they’d found all of the triple-Fs in the country.”
Everybody knows about the line in The Book of Conquests, the one where the Aes Sídhe traveled into exile by passing “under the mounds.” And the island has no shortage of artificial hillocks to match the description: Iron Age forts, Stone Age grave sites, medieval cattle corrals. For centuries they have attracted stories of malicious and beautiful creatures that steal away the young. Fairy Forts, people have always called them, a mere double-F at best.
“I thought we’d surveyed every last one of them,” says Megan. “That’s what Harvey big boobs said in archaeology class, didn’t he? All of the triple-Fs dug up and destroyed and nothing in them but trinkets and moldy bones.”
Nessa shrugs. “They had to be sure. The legends hold a lot of truth.”
“And bullshit too! Holy Danú’s milky tits! All that stuff about the Sídhe world being a paradise! The Blessed Isles! The land of eternal youth!”
That’s what the refectory looks like now, the land of youth, as more and more students come in to queue up the sides for bowls of congealing mush.
“The Sídhe are all young though, Megan. Eternally young, for all we know.”
“True, Ness. That’s true.” Megan’s eyes take on a faraway, greedy look. “And our girl is young too, isn’t she? By Crom, I’d love to see her again in the daylight. An actual Sídhe!”
“We can’t, Megan.”
“We’re entitled though!” She bangs the table. “The whole point of a survival college is to teach us about those scum. Everyone in the class should be walked past her body and given a chance to spit on it. To take a bite out of it even!”
“Megan!”
Megan grins. “Nah, you’re right, Ness. She’s gone all moldy by now. Probably doesn’t taste much better than this stinking porridge!”
And her words wake something in Nessa. “Wait!” She reaches for her friend’s hand. “There was no smell though, was there? I mean, I saw a dead sheep once. There should have been a smell of rot, shouldn’t there?”
“Good!” says Megan. “Curiosity. That’s very good. So you’ll come back with me then?”
“You know I won’t—”
“Because if you won’t come with me, Squeaky Emma certainly will.”
Nessa, still holding her hand, squeezes hard enough to get her attention. “Listen. Just listen, will you? We’re in Year Five now.”
“Bah!”
“We can’t risk the Cage. Neither of us. More than half the class will be Called, you know that, and—”
Conor’s team burst through the door and make their way over to the boys’ tables, their faces still flushed and healthy from their morning stretches. Normally they would be loud and boastful, but today they all stop talking the moment the doors swing shut behind them, and their eyes swivel toward the two girls. Word has spread, obviously, and the boys’ tables want to know the secret as badly as anybody else. But Conor suddenly laughs and points at Nessa.
“We nearly had you last night, Clip-Clop,” he says, “but we wanted a challenge! Right, lads?”
Nessa doesn’t look up from her bowl. She is shaking, but with temptation rather than anger. She heard Conor and his boys calling each other “knights.” Ridiculous! Like seven-year-olds and their wooden swords.
She has the power now, right here, to humiliate him with this knowledge. Her breathing increases and she opens her mouth to speak. However, he is a real danger to her and she will not give in to the urge for the sake of a meaningless victory. She clamps her mouth shut. Her control is excellent.
Megan’s is not. “Woof, woof,” she says, to remind Conor of her previous insults. He smiles, pretending confusion, but his eyes narrow and Nessa knows Megan will pay sooner than she expects.
A week goes by with experts from Dublin out in the forest, tight-lipped and middle-aged. Alexandra from Year 6 is Called and has a miraculous escape. She’s the college’s first survivor since Ponzy and, unlike him, she seems unaffected, at least physically. Everybody celebrates! And even though the mourning bells ring twice more in the week, hope suffuses them all.
But Nessa feels divorced from the joy. Her only real friend is spending rather too much time in the company of Squeaky Emma, the two of them thick as thieves and surely planning on a visit to the girl in the rock. Of course they are! When the woods are swarming with instructors and researchers and the Cage awaits anyone who is caught. By the Cauldron, are they mad?! But Nessa knows better than to oppose Megan on this, so she concentrates on her studies. She practices new techniques in the gym. She scours the hunt manuals for clues, while nearby laughter tells her Anto is entertaining his friends with tales of the “overly curious gerbil” or the “drunken aunt.”
Nessa strains against the muscles in her neck that want her to turn and look in his direction, that want him to be looking back. But mostly, when her s
elf-restraint fails, it’s not his eyes she finds, but those of Conor.
Friday comes and it’s Nabil’s day off. It’s also a morning when Year 5s have the whole library to themselves. It’s a sprawling room of narrow aisles and musty shelves. Hidden nooks lie everywhere, with old computers quietly rusting, their ethernet cables still plugged into sockets that go nowhere.
But Nessa prefers books anyway. Especially the endless volumes of survivor Testimonies, which, by definition, are all success stories. Since coming to college she has filled a dozen notepads with an illegible scrawl. Clues to the Grey Land. Strategies for dealing with the various hazards should she encounter them when her time comes. Hopes.
Today she is sitting in her favorite cul-de-sac with a battered edition of The Book of Conquests in front of her on the table, along with the most recent Testimonies. The only other chair is empty right now, but Megan’s pen is there, a notebook open and the page, as is typical for Megan, still mostly blank and mostly written in English. Nor does any of it make much sense: “Grab ankle.” And “keep to the right of it.”
Not for the first time Nessa wastes precious minutes fretting about her friend. Foolishly she allows the worry to grow. It’s normal for the young to imagine their companions dead whenever they fail to turn up for something. Whenever they spend too long, as Megan is now doing, in the bathroom. This is pointless, and for a while Nessa focuses back on the book in front of her, her attention like a spotlight on the story of Rose Smyth, who stabbed a Sídhe prince in the face with a sharpened bone. But what really interests Nessa is the fact that Rose is one of the few survivors to have witnessed the “windows” phenomenon in the Grey Land. Yet her concentration fades again, because every line Nessa reads is another in which Megan has not yet returned.
She stands with a sigh. It’s going to be just like that time last year when she knocked on the cubicle door only for Megan to respond, “What? You want to stick your hand up there and drag the turd out with your fingers? I swear, after that lasagna, it’s like giving birth … ”
The Call Page 7