The Feral Child

by Che Golden

  He just grunted and rattled the pages as he turned them.

  Granny took a deep breath. “Right then. It’s Halloween tomorrow, and we’ve got visitors coming. I’m going to do the shopping, and when I get back, the two of you had better have sorted this out.”

  Maddy squeezed up against the TV table as her grandmother reached past her to open the door. She looked down at her then, with one hand on the lock. Her eyes really were full of tears, big fat ones that huddled against the red rims of her eyes, waiting to overflow and streak her powdered cheeks.

  “I know you’re angry, love,” Granny whispered, “but you’re not the only one who’s hurting.”

  Maddy looked down at her feet then, a lump rising in her throat. But then the anger woke up and poked a finger in her ribs. I lost everything, she thought resentfully. Parents, school, friends, my whole life. What does she know? And now, thanks to Granda, my life here isn’t going to be worth living.

  She could feel Granny’s eyes on her, but she didn’t trust herself to look up in case she started crying. That had happened before, and it just got so messy and embarrassing. Granny placed a hand against her cheek and waited a moment. Maddy kept staring at her scruffy sneakers, and she felt Granny’s sigh sweep over the crown of her head before she stepped out the door, closing it gently behind her.

  Maddy stayed where she was, waiting for Granda to say something. The ticking clock boomed in the tense quiet while the fire snapped and growled. He just carried on reading the paper.

  Eventually Maddy stomped into her bedroom and pulled a box of books out from under her bed. She had loved myths, legends, and faerie tales when she was little, and her parents had bought her loads of books about faeries. She dug around until she found a collection of Irish myths and folklore, and she flicked through the pages until she found what she was looking for—stolen human children and changelings.

  There he was, in a folk tale from Connemara. Sean Rua, Red John. He had said his name was John. A wicked sprite who masqueraded as a boy and carried off children.

  She walked back into the living room with the book held open in her hand. She put its spine on the top of Granda’s paper and shoved down as hard as she could, tearing the newspaper from his fingers and leaving it a crumpled heap in his lap.

  “What’s got into you?” he yelled, his face going red.

  She glared back at him and tapped the page of the book with her finger.

  “Read that.”

  He glanced down at the book and the red leaked out of his face. But then he shoved it off his lap and started trying to smooth the pages of his paper flat. Maddy clenched her teeth to try to keep her temper.

  “Are you not even going to ask me why I want you to read that page?” she asked.

  “I don’t have time to play games with you, Maddy,” he growled. “I’m tired. I’ve been up half the night looking for Stephen.”

  “It’s a shame you didn’t find him then,” she said.

  He went very, very still when she said that. She cocked her head to one side and watched him. He looked uncomfortable and stared into the fire. Maddy sat in Granny’s chair and waited for him to say something. The silence stretched out between them.

  “You know that isn’t Stephen next door, don’t you? You also know why that faerie asked me if I could See him now. He’s threatened to blind me—do you know that?”

  He flinched, but he still didn’t speak.

  “I need to know what’s going on,” said Maddy. “He might come back.”

  Granda sighed then and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Just wear the cross and keep away from the mound.”

  “You need to tell me why I should even listen to you.”

  He glared at her. “Because you have the Sight, Maddy. It makes you special. It means you can see faerie folk, and they don’t take too kindly to it.”

  “What will he do?”

  “They will either try to blind you, or if you have a special talent, they will take you as a pet. Neither of them is a nice option. You need to stay safe.”

  “This is rubbish,” said Maddy. “If I’ve got the Sight, how come I didn’t see faeries before?”

  “You did, when you were a baby. Your mother had the Sight, and she learned to stay out of their way, but when you were born and she saw you reaching out to them whenever you were outside, she decided to take you and your father away,” he said. “That’s why she went to London. Faeries can’t live in cities; they can’t stand all the iron.”

  “I don’t remember Seeing faeries before.”

  “Your mind has taught you not to See things you are convinced do not exist. That fright you got the other night and my telling you the rules must have opened it up a crack.” He smiled thinly. “It’s nice to see something gets through to you.”

  “Can you See them?”

  “Yes. It runs in the family. But I pretend not to See them. I wear iron—” he lifted his shirt to show her a dull cuff on his wrist—“and I stay home when the sun goes down, as much as I can. They’re stronger when the light fades.”

  “Can Granny See?”

  “No! And I don’t want you to upset her either, talking about what you can See. The Unsighted in this world are better off not knowing about these things.”

  “You knew that thing wasn’t Stephen when you found it, didn’t you?”

  He looked ashamed, but he nodded.

  “What is it?”

  “A faerie changeling,” said Granda, looking faintly sick. “One of their own that is weak and ill. They take human children and put the changelings in their place. They don’t like dealing with their own problems too much.”

  “What do they do with the human children?”

  “Who knows?” said Granda. “They keep them as servants, pets . . . No one knows for sure.”

  “How many people in the village have the Sight?” asked Maddy.

  Granda looked at her warily. “A few. Dr. Malloy for one; Sheila who works at the castle gift shop . . . There are about twenty of us, I’d say.” He smiled at her sadly.

  “Enough for a rescue party,” said Maddy. “When you go after Stephen, I’m coming with you.”

  “Rescue party . . . ?!” Granda looked at her, surprise widening his eyes. “Maddy, nobody sets foot in the realm of faeries, and no one comes back.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “Stephen is gone, love.”

  She stared at him in horror, and then her eyes hardened with anger. “We’re getting him back, or else I go next door and I tell Mr. and Mrs. Forest exactly what’s going on.”

  “What are you going to tell them, Maddy? That he’s not their son? That they’ve got a faerie changeling in the house? They won’t believe you, and even if they did, it wouldn’t do them any good to know the truth. Stephen is gone. Let them be happy with what they think is their son—you’re only going to break their hearts.”

  “But they’ll know!”

  “They won’t. They’ll only see what they want to see. They might think he acts strangely, that he doesn’t thrive the way he should, but they will learn to live with it.”

  “But what about Stephen?”

  “I told you, Maddy, he’s gone. Stolen children go into the mound, and we can’t follow.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we can’t. We wouldn’t last five minutes in their world. You can’t fight anyone as old and powerful as the Tuatha de Dannan and the other faeries.”

  “Who are the Tuatha de Dannan?”

  “The old ones, the Shining Ones, the Gentry, the ones we tell stories about that you laugh at. We call them faeries now, but we used to call them gods when they ruled Ireland a long, long time ago. Faeries like Sean Rua are bad enough, but they are nothing compared to the Tuatha de Dannan, and they are the ones who rule Tír na nÓg. I’m telling you, Maddy, it can’t be done. It’s why your mother took you away. She didn’t want you to be one of the stolen ones. Go after Stephen, and you’ll be starting a fight we can’t win, and God knows how many peopl
e will suffer then. We’ve lived with the faeries this long because we’ve learned to protect ourselves from them and make sure we don’t cross paths with them too often. Draw the attention of the Tuatha, and nobody is safe. I’m fond of Stephen, but I won’t risk you or your grandmother for him. And his father would say the same, if it were you that was missing.”

  Maddy leaned forward and put her head in her hands. She stretched the skin on her face with her palms while she stared at the floor. She couldn’t believe this. Faeries existed, they had stolen Stephen, and Granda, her strong, sort-anything-out Granda, was just going to sit by the fire and hope the faeries didn’t notice him.

  She got up and walked to the window to watch the rain. It hadn’t stopped since Stephen went missing. It was lighter now, a constant soft rain, as if the leaden sky was weeping. The dark clouds were spreading out from Blarney Castle, stretching long black fingers toward the village. As she watched, the clouds became slightly thicker and blacker and spread their shadow a little farther, but the rain never got any worse. There were no dogs barking, the birds roosted miserably with their sodden feathers fluffed into balls, while the saplings were bending almost to the ground under the weight of water.

  “Was it like this before, when the others went missing?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “The weather.”

  Granda looked at the window, then he got up and steered her away by the shoulders.

  “No, this is different,” he said, his face grim. “But the Samhain Fesh is almost upon us, when they are at their strongest. It will be over soon, and then we can all get back to normal.”

  “Except for Stephen, of course,” she snapped. She shrugged his hands off her shoulders, furious at his weakness, at how little he seemed to care.

  “Maddy, you have to let this go. It will send you mad otherwise.”

  “No, I won’t! You’re actually just going to leave him? Would you leave me if they took me?”

  His jaw dropped, and she could tell she had scored a point.

  “Of course not! I look after my own, because it’s all I can do,” he shouted. “I thank God it isn’t you, and I look away, like plenty of others have done in this village.”

  “How many times has this happened exactly?” asked Maddy, her voice shaking with shock and anger. “How many other children have you Sighted let go into the mound and done nothing to help?”

  “That’s enough now, Maddy,” he said. “There’s nothing more to talk about.”

  “No, because you should be doing something!” she yelled.

  “WHAT CAN I DO?” Granda shouted back. “Do you want me to go marching into the Garda station and start telling them faerie stories? What do you think will happen then, Maddy? Do you think they’ll say, ‘Oh, right so, now that you’ve told us, we’ll just go and swap the changeling for Stephen and arrest any faeries that come back into Blarney’? They will think I’m mad, Maddy, an old man who’s gone soft in the head. There’s plenty of Sighted sitting in mental hospitals who will never be free again because they tried to tell people about the faeries, and that’s not going to be me. Because what do you think will happen to your granny if the faeries find out I’ve tried to tell people about them? She can’t even see them coming, Maddy. I have to keep my own family safe. There’s nothing I can do for Stephen now.”

  Anger flooded Maddy’s head and pressed against her eyeballs. It turned her breath so hot it scorched her lips as she glared at him. “I’m not going to drop this,” she said.

  “Yes, you are,” said Granda.

  “You need to stick up for your friends,” said Maddy. “You taught me that.”

  Granda looked back at her, his bloodshot eyes wet with unshed tears. “There are some fights, Maddy, you have to walk away from.”

  She shook her head slowly. “No, you’re wrong. If I let Stephen go, that’ll be just as bad as you and everyone else in this village who have turned a blind eye for years,” she said. “I couldn’t live with myself.”

  Chapter Seven

  Maddy sulked and stomped about the house all day, refusing to speak to either of her grandparents. Come bedtime, George was banished into his kennel, despite the rain, while Maddy sneaked a flashlight into her bedroom so she could scour her books for information on faeries. But all her books described were sweet tiny things that granted wishes, not ones taller than she was that went bump in the night. When she finally fell into an exhausted sleep, the sound of the rain drumming on the roof was the last thing she heard.

  It was also the sound that greeted her the next morning. The wind sighed and wept in a soft way that was beginning to get on Maddy’s nerves. It was as if the weather was going out of its way to be atmospheric and mystical. If the faeries were behind this, then they had really tacky taste.

  “You’re overdoing things, folks,” she said aloud in her bedroom.

  It was Sunday, Halloween, and it was her job to get the papers from the local shop. She got dressed quickly and grabbed the change that had been left for her on the TV table. On the way she stopped by the village payphone and called her cousin Roisin. Her Aunt Fionnula sounded frosty when she answered the phone, but Maddy didn’t have time to figure out what she had done to upset her this time.

  “Hello?” said Roisin, her mouth full as usual. Granny said Roisin was “sensitive.” It meant she ate a lot for comfort.

  “Hey. Roisin, it’s Maddy. How’s it going? I need you to go online, Google ‘faeries’—‘f-a-e-r-i-e-s’—and find out everything you can about fighting them and getting into a faerie mound.”

  “Good morning to you too, Maddy. Why should I be doing this for you?” asked Roisin.

  “It’s for a project we’re doing at school. I’m going to get in deep trouble if I don’t get it done. I should have done it over the holidays, but there’s nothing in the library, and we haven’t got the Internet,” said Maddy. Her grandparents hadn’t gotten a mobile phone yet, never mind a computer.

  “I can’t keep doing your homework, Maddy. I’ll get in big trouble if Mam catches me,” said Roisin.

  Maddy gritted her teeth. “I don’t want you to write the essay. I just want you to get me the information so I can write the essay,” said Maddy. “I just want you to print off a few pages for me and bring them round when you come.” She knew her relatives would be paying their regular Sunday duty visit.

  “I don’t know, Maddy. Dad doesn’t really like us printing stuff off. He says the ink costs a fortune, he’ll go mad—”

  “Please, Roisin, please!” interrupted Maddy. “I wouldn’t ask if I weren’t really desperate. Honestly, Roisin, I never ask for anything. Can you not do me a favor this once?”

  Roisin hesitated. “You do ask for favors you know . . . oh, fine, OK, but I’m not printing anything off for you ever again. You have to persuade Granny and Granda to get a computer. Hey, are you dressing up for Halloween?”

  Maddy hung up on her. She glanced at the sky as she hurried to the local supermarket. The clouds were right overhead now, looking as if they were about to reach down and grab her in their sooty fingers.

  Later, after Mass, Maddy played the good girl by offering to run errands for her grandparents so they could sit by the fire and keep out of the wet. Luckily for her, one of the errands involved bringing the local paper round to an elderly neighbor. The old lady asked her in for a biscuit, and while she rummaged in the kitchen, Maddy managed to steal her poker. She was back home just before lunch, putting it in her backpack to join the one she had already stolen from her grandparents and hiding the bag behind the coal shed, when Roisin came hurrying down the path.

  “Quick, take these off me before Dad sees them,” she said, as she pulled sheets of paper out of her jacket. Maddy rolled them up without looking at them and stuffed them inside the bag.

  “What did you find out?”

  “Old wives’ tales, stuff about them not liking iron, that sort of thing,” said Roisin.

  “Anything about getting into a fae
rie mound?” asked Maddy.

  Roisin frowned. “Very little—it was a very specific request. I did find one entry, but it was a bit strange . . .”

  “Maddy!”

  Roisin and Maddy froze as they heard the braying voice of Danny, the psychopath. He was waiting for them as they came out from behind the shed, practically dancing with joy. Maddy groaned inwardly. If he was happy, then she was in big, big trouble. She ran through all her recent memories to try to figure out the cause and what she could do about it.

  “Oooh, Maddy, you’re in for it now. Mom is HOPPING, and she wants to talk to you right now!”

  Maddy felt her insides churn. Of all her aunts, Fionnula was the worst. A grim, unsmiling woman, her entrance into a room made water boil and flowers wilt. Luckily you could always hear her coming, as she wore nothing but nylon tracksuits, in pastel colors. The soft hiss of her thighs rubbing together was enough warning for children and animals to flee. She was wearing a green one today. The shiny material reflected back on to her face and made her look queasy.

  Aunt Fionnula was in the living room with Granny and Granda, waiting for Maddy. She was standing with her back to the fire, and her arms were folded. Her brood huddled on the sidelines—Aunt Fionnula liked an audience when she was humiliating someone. It always amazed Maddy that someone who so clearly did not like children had had so many of them. Aunt Fionnula was all square, hard lines, from her letter box of a mouth to the shape of her face. The only things that looked soft about Aunt Fionnula were her shell suits—even her dark hair was sprayed stiff into a helmet that a sun-blinded sparrow could bounce off.

  Aunt Fionnula was a firm believer in duty, discipline, and the medicinal qualities of cod-liver oil. Her children did not talk back or make a mess, and they got good grades in school. She declared to anyone who would listen that the fact that Maddy achieved the opposite was evidence that the child needed a firm hand and that it was her moral duty to take her dead sister’s daughter away from her elderly parents and give Maddy the discipline and boundaries she was so clearly crying out for. Aunt Fionnula would have been surprised to learn that Maddy too was a fervent believer in boundaries. She would dearly like there to be one between herself and Aunt Fionnula that was three yards high, spiked on top, and guarded by men with machine guns.