Voices were calling Alan, alien voices, speaking to him in tongues he did not recognise. In his mind he worried about his friends, but his lips were unable to articulate the words. Somehow he sensed, without understanding how, that he was passing through the gate.
A force was invading his being. He felt an almighty shock of dizziness, a disorientating sense of change. His consciousness was probed by some vast and impersonal matrix. It amazed him that he was still able to think. I want to know if my parents really were murdered. I want to know if this suffering will make me understand why they were murdered. There was a rage of confusion in which his limbs felt as if they were being torn from their sockets. His body was in the grip of agony so bad it went beyond anything he recognised as pain. I so want to punish them – I want to get them back – whoever was responsible. He no longer had physical substance. He was diminished to nothingness. The loneliness was worse than the agony. It was unbearable, as if he were a single mote utterly lost in a universe of starlight.
PART II
The First Power
The Stone Circle
Kate’s head reeled with dizziness. For several minutes she hardly dared to move. She just lay there, struggling to open one eye to see. Clumsily, through a mixture of pain and giddiness, she peered again with both eyes: Snow!
How was it possible that she was lying out in the open, in – she widened her eyes for an instant – a blizzard?
Coughing to clear her throat, she blinked, and looked again at a landscape of black rock and snow.
Well, if she wasn’t dreaming, this was insanity. All of her common sense denied the possibility of her being here. Yet around her she could hear cries and moans that suggested her friends were experiencing similar difficulties. Somehow they really had arrived in this place, wherever this place happened to be. Slumping back into the snow, she just had to acknowledge that there wasn’t going to be any rational explanation.
‘Kate?’ she heard a nearby voice call out.
‘Alan? Is that you?’
‘No!’ Mark wheezed. ‘It’s me!’
Mark’s voice had been so husky she hadn’t been able to tell his English accent from Alan’s American. But turning her head, she saw him now, a hunched-up figure moving towards her through the blustering snow. She asked him, ‘Where on earth are we?’
‘I wish I knew.’
She sat up too quickly and the dizziness swooped down on her like a punishment.
Mark leaned for a moment against a huge black stone soaring vertically out of the ground. He flopped down and started to pull his trainers over his feet. Kate blinked with the memory of taking off her own trainers. Suddenly Mark’s example seemed a very good idea. As she bent down to follow suit, she noticed that drops of blood were seeping out of her nose and splattering in small red circles in the snow. Fright made her gasp. She tried to calm herself down with deep breaths. Then she pulled on her trainers, knotted the laces. She only wished she had socks as well, but socks under trainers had not been fashionable this summer. While she sat upright again, feeling was returning to the skin of her face. She registered the icy-cold touch, the brittle feel of the snow crystals against her skin, the flapping of her disordered clothing in the wind.
‘Alan?’
‘Alan is out of it.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Stunned, I think.’
‘Help me up, Mark. I want to see him.’
‘Whoa there!’ Mark took her arm and they both tottered for several moments. ‘There’s nothing you can do. No injuries that I could see. But his forehead is hot. I put my hand on it and it felt like it was burning.’
She let go of Mark’s leather-jacketed arm and followed him to where Alan was lying unconscious in the snow. Mo was sitting next to him, looking bewildered. Kate felt overwhelmed by panic. Kneeling down in front of Alan, she put her hand on his brow, under the brown fringe of hair. Mark was right. His forehead felt as if it were on fire.
‘Whuh-whuh-what is it, Kuh-Kuh-Kate?’
‘I don’t know. I can’t see any kind of crack to the head that might have knocked him out.’
‘Muh-muh-muh-maybe it was buh-buh-bringing us here. He tuh-tuh-took it all on himself.’
Kate looked into Mo’s eyes. ‘Help me wake him up!’ She leaned over him, rubbing a handful of snow over his face.
‘Uh-uh-uh … I’ve tried!’
‘What are we going to do?’
Mark had his mobile switched on. ‘Nothing – no signal!’
Kate knelt upright. She tried her own. She got the same blank screen. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Maybe we’re nowhere on Earth at all.’
‘What?’
‘You asked me, earlier, where on earth this could be. If Padraig is right—’
‘Oh, button it, Mark!’ Kate turned away from him and put her hand onto Mo’s shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze.
Mo clenched her eyes shut, as if to control some inner demon. ‘Muh-muh-muh-maybe … muh-maybe Mark’s right.’
‘Oh, holy blessed mother!’
Mark looked at the two girls. ‘Look around you! Do you imagine that Clonmel is just over the horizon?’
Kate saw that she was kneeling in a circle of stones, like a smaller version of Stonehenge in England.
Mark whistled. ‘And here was I thinking we’d been chosen for some great adventure. Now I think we’re the offerings for some weird sacrifice!’
‘Stop it, Mark!’
Kate felt Alan’s brow again. She noticed something Mark hadn’t. The heat was coming from one small area, right at the centre – from the triangular birthmark he called his ‘stork bite’. Poor Alan! That was why he grew his fringe over his forehead.
But why should a birthmark get heated up?
‘We all know this is bananas.’ Mark patted at his pocket, establishing the presence of his harmonica. ‘Maybe it’s another of those shared dreams. Any moment now we’re all going to wake up!’
Gasping with a new explosion of dizziness in her head, Kate made a more careful appraisal of her surroundings. There was a residual sensation of … of what? The impression of change, of incredible dislocation. The experience had seemed dreamlike all right, but there was nothing imaginary about this place.
‘Oh … Oh … oh man!’
That was Alan’s voice! Kate’s heart leaped to recognise the American accent, in spite of the fact he was moaning. Oh, why couldn’t her heart come down out of the debilitating sense of panic? Her hands flew to her mouth, grateful to Mo, who was brushing more snow against his fevered brow.
‘Kuh-Kuh-Kuh-Kate … huh-huh-help me!’
Between them they fastened the front of Alan’s jacket, then lifted his head out of the freezing snow and laid it on Kate’s lap. Mo lifted one foot after the other and put on his trainers.
Alan’s eyes were open, but staring in bewilderment about him. His gaze faltered on the huge shadows of the surrounding mountains.
Mark patted Kate’s shoulder. ‘Listen! You stay here with Alan and Mo. I’m going to look around.’
She shivered and kept rubbing snow over Alan’s heated brow until Mark came stumbling back from the edge of the circle. ‘Look what I found!’ He held the Spear of Lug aloft, its former bright steel blade now blue-black, as if scorched beyond anything that Padraig’s forge could have achieved.
‘Maybe Alan could use it for support.’
‘We’re going to have to get out of here as fast as we can. We’re halfway up a mountain and there isn’t any shelter. I don’t know how many hours of light are left, but we can’t stay here overnight.’
‘What are we going to do?’ Kate did her best to keep a wail of fear out of her voice.
Mark exhaled. ‘If I’d known the destination of this mystery tour, I’d have packed my sleigh and huskies. I’m just praying Alan brought the poteen.’
Alan whispered, ‘Help me!’
Mark rammed the shaft of the spear deep into the snow next to Kate and fell to hi
s knees, searching Alan’s pockets. He pulled out the silver flask, with the bald eagle embossed onto the front face. ‘Thank you, Padraig!’ He glugged a mouthful, winced, then screwed the cap back on and passed it to Kate. ‘Might be worth giving Alan a sip?’
It was a difficult task for Kate, with her numb fingers, to get the cap untwisted. Her arms trembled and she spilled some of it over Alan’s face as she brought the flask to his lips, causing him to cough and retch.
‘For God’s sake – don’t spill it!’
‘Luh-luh-let me huh-huh-help you.’ Mo supported Alan’s face, encouraging Kate to give Alan a second sip.
Alan came to with the sensation of burning in his throat. He coughed and jerked his face away. He realised with shock that he was lying in snow with his face in Kate’s lap.
‘Where are we?’ he asked her groggily.
‘We’re halfway up a mountain.’
‘Yeah – in deepest Antarctica,’ somebody added. It took him a moment or two to register that it was Mark’s voice. Mark was standing back a pace and looking all around him.
Alan pushed the flask away, attempting to climb to his feet. ‘Oh, brother!’
Kate motioned to Mark, who accepted Alan’s silver flask and stuffed it into his coat pocket. Between them they helped Alan onto his tottering feet.
Alan muttered, ‘Feels like my head is on fire.’
Kate pressed the spear into his right hand, so he could lean on it.
‘God almighty!’ A howl of wind lashed his face. ‘Feels like I’ve got a piece of hot shrapnel buried in my skull.’
Every shriek of wind whistled through the fibres of Kate’s pullover, as if somebody was scourging her with fishhooks. ‘Mark! Give us a bit more of a hand!’ she called.
Alan put his left arm around Mark’s shoulder and, leaning on the spear with the other, he staggered forward on unsteady feet, forcing down nausea and ignoring the wrenching pain and debilitating giddiness. Then, lurching around a huge stone poking out of the snow, he looked around himself in astonishment. Huge slabs of rock jutted out of the snow like the snarling teeth of some monster at bay. He realised what the others knew already, that they were standing in a stone circle that looked as old as the mountains.
The skin of his face felt as stiff as a mask. Breathing steam into the air, he took in the darkening sky, the wrack of clouds wheeling above, and the light rising from the white ground as if a black sun reigned in this blasted world, and darkness instead of light was falling on the earth. He recalled what Kate had told him: We’re up a mountain.
He tried to consider that fact calmly, though his heart hammered beyond logical consideration. Peering upwards, he could see ridges jutting into the sky for thousands of feet.
Mark spoke quietly into his ear. ‘We’re not going to survive here. We’ve got to make it down the mountain. Find shelter.’
Now, looking down into that terrifying panorama, a prickling erupted over Alan’s face that would have been sweat in temperatures above zero. Squinting down the slope, he estimated ten miles of snow and ice with hidden crevasses before they reached more level ground.
‘No way we’re going to make it down in the state we’re in.’
‘We don’t have much of a choice,’ retorted Mark.
Moaning, Kate pulled up the neck of her sweater so it was higher and tighter round her throat. ‘Mark’s right. We can’t stay here. We’re going to freeze to death if we do.’
Alan wiped snow out of his eyelids. ‘I’ve got to think. We all need to think about this. We were called here, remember!’
‘Yeah,’ added Mark. ‘By the Snow Queen!’
Alan looked around himself all over again. The fact was they were here, so they had to make the best of it. Even within the few minutes he had been staring down the valley, the wind had reared into a new crescendo of howling. Down a scree of ragged boulders and shale, and between those towering black ridges, a torrent of wind and snow fomented and roared, accelerating madly over the flatter ground,. He shivered. ‘We were brought here for a reason. We’ve got to trust our feelings about the calling. We’ve got to try to figure this out.’
Kate shouted above the howl of the wind. ‘What was that name you called out on Slievenamon? Why don’t you try it again?’
Alan said, ‘Mórígán – she’s the Celtic goddess of death!’
They all shouted it out into the blizzard. They called on the goddess again and again. But there was no response. And soon they were too cold and exhausted to shout any more. Mo’s body was trembling, her face icy with tears.
Mark put his arm around his sister, ‘I once read that freezing to death isn’t such a bad way to go. You get so cold you don’t feel anything.’
‘Get stuffed, Mark!’
‘We’re getting nowhere,’ Alan sighed. ‘Let’s try building a shelter. Use one of the stones as one wall and build a half-circle around it. Maybe we could do it like the Inuit. Use hard-packed snow like building blocks.’
‘Yeah!’ Mark countered. ‘And we can dig a hole in the snow and use the spear to catch seals.’
Alan soon found how impossible it was to make an igloo in such conditions. Decidedly groggy after just a few minutes of attempting to cut one or two snow bricks, he rested back against the ungiving stone and put his left arm around Kate. He held Kate tight against him, so his face was pressed into the auburn pillow of her hair.
Mo wandered away from the others until she stood in the dead centre of the stone circle with her legs buried to mid-calves in snow. Here she gazed up into the lowering sky. A spindrift of snowflakes appeared to spiral gently downward. The steam of her breath blew about her. She felt it freezing on the skin of her face, congealing as ice. But now she thought about it, even that was telling her something. Her breath was not ripped away by the howling wind, not while she still stood here at the heart of the circle.
Mo frowned.
‘Muh-Muh-Mark!’ She called out to him.
Mark came and flopped down in the snow next to her, where he just couldn’t resist taking the harmonica out of his pocket and clowning about with playing a few halfhearted blues riffs.
‘Shush, you lot!’ Kate rushed out of Alan’s embrace to join Mark and Mo in the centre of the circle. ‘I thought I heard something!’
Alan came and joined them.
‘Shush, I said!’
They all stared at Kate.
‘Stop fooling around and listen!’
They held their breaths but all they heard was the howling of the wind.
Kate shook her head. ‘Mark – do it again. Play something.’
‘I’ve been trying to remember what the band played on the Titanic.’ But then, looking at their faces, Mark shrugged and said, ‘I have a better idea. Mo – why don’t you give us one of your songs.’
‘Shuh-shuh-shuh-shut up, Mark!’
‘No – no! Mark’s right!’ Kate said, recalling what had happened on the roof of the Comeraghs. ‘Oh, come on, Mo – please try it.’
Mo looked around at their expectant faces. Suddenly they all began to encourage her. ‘Go on, Mo! Just one song!’
Suddenly, tremblingly, Mo began to sing. They all listened, with their hearts faltering, to the same angel voice they had heard calling out to the mountain. It was such a beautiful voice, the most magical sound imaginable in that place of desolation.
A mother came while stars were paling
Wailing round a lonely stream
Thus she cried, while tears were falling
Calling on the Fairy King …
Mo stopped singing, embarrassed to tears. ‘I – I duh-duh-don’t recall – duh-duh-don’t know—’
Mark shrugged, then hugged her to him. ‘Mo imagines that her real mother sang it to her, when she was a baby.’
‘I – I – I …’
Kate whispered, ‘Oh, Mo – Mo!’
Alan muttered, ‘Knock it off, you guys! Listen. Can’t you hear it? Kate was right. There’s something – like an answering s
ound. I don’t rightly know what … maybe just an echo.’
Kate agreed with him. ‘I know I heard it too. It’s as if the stones were singing in chorus.’
‘Oh, for goodness sake!’ exclaimed Mark. ‘First it’s mountains calling, and now it’s the stones singing!’
‘C’mon, everybody,’ Alan called out, ‘let’s form a circle.’
‘Hold hands, you mean,’ said Kate, getting the idea.
They linked arms. Alan took Mo’s right hand while Kate held her other. Mark shook his head but he joined them anyway. ‘Now, sing it again, Mo,’ Alan bade her. ‘Give us just one more verse.’
‘Oh, please do it, Mo!’ Kate also encouraged.
Mo sang again, in that lovely, unearthly voice:
Why with spells, my child caressing
Courting him with fairy joy
Why destroy a mother’s blessing
Wherefore steal my baby boy?
This time there could be no doubt about it. The stones were echoing every note. But the music did not end as Mo stopped singing. The stones began to syncopate around her theme, as if a gigantic natural organ were taking up the melody, wheeling and spiralling around it, at once both eerie and delightful. Whether it really was the numbing effects of the cold, or the mesmerising effects of the music, or both, their fears were beguiled away. They sat, holding hands in the snow, entranced.
As they drifted into sleep, they were only vaguely aware that darkness was falling about them. None heard the slouching presence that approached the circle from the enveloping night, or felt the gnarled fingers that probed their limbs and faces, any more than they sensed their bodies falling, tumbling head over heel, heedless and lost.
The Snowmelt River Page 13