The Lost Tide Warriors

by Catherine Doyle

  ‘And now she has the Tide Summoner,’ said Fionn angrily. ‘A big hunk of Dagda’s magic.’

  ‘And we have our people,’ said his grandfather. ‘There is power in numbers.’

  ‘But what can I offer them?’ Fionn stared at his hands, the faint blue lines underneath his skin. ‘I can’t even understand my own magic. Sometimes I can feel it fizzing underneath my skin. It does things – little things – without me telling it to.’ He thought of Hughie Rua’s sinking boat, of Shelby thrown up from the sea. ‘Today in the garden, it was like the earth was trying to help me. Quaking and thumping until it threw Ivan off me, and then –’ he wiggled his fingers – ‘it faded again. Like it always does. Sometimes it feels like my magic is on my side, and it knows what I need. And then other times …’ He closed his eyes and tried to feel for a whisper of warmth inside himself, but there was nothing. ‘Other times, it feels as if it’s not there at all.’

  ‘I have been grappling with the peculiarity of this, Fionn,’ admitted his grandfather. ‘It seems the less you think about your magic, the better it works. Perhaps it’s not linked to your mind, but to something else entirely.’ He frowned.

  ‘But why?’ asked Fionn. ‘I don’t understand why I’m different to every other Storm Keeper, ever.’

  ‘Not yet, you don’t. But sometimes we must trust in the things we don’t yet know,’ said his grandfather placidly. ‘Another fridge magnet, no?’

  ‘No,’ said Fionn flatly.

  His grandfather chuckled. ‘What time is it, lad?’

  Fionn pulled out his phone. ‘It’s almost noon.’

  ‘Good.’ He sprang to his feet. ‘The day is bright. The sun is high. We are not yet out of time. We’d better wake your sister and your mother,’ he said, marching back into the cottage, the last remnants of himself held tight inside his fist. ‘We have a very important meeting to get to.’

  Fionn stared after him. ‘What do you mean, we?’

  His grandfather waggled the candle above his head. ‘This is the silver lining, Fionn. Take a good look at it. Our new candle is portable, and that means I am too.’

  Chapter Twenty-One

  THE LOST VISION

  The school hall was packed to the rafters. The events of this morning had spread quickly, onlookers carrying word of Ivan’s attack on Tír na nÓg to the furthest corners of Arranmore, where it leapt from house to house, like wildfire.

  Fionn shuffled to the front of the crowd with his grandfather beside him; Storm Keepers – past and present – come to perform their final duty before time splintered them apart for good. Tara and his mother marched after them, their coat pockets stuffed with candles, the rest of them piled in heavy carrier bags at their sides. They sat in the front row, where Sam and his family were wedged between a sea of other Pattons. Douglas Beasley was several rows back, his thick head and broad shoulders setting him apart from a set of smaller, more diminutive Beasleys. A slightly dazed Shelby sat beside him with her father, a thinner, paler version of Douglas, who was, mercifully, moustache-free.

  She waved at Fionn, pointing proudly at the new square bandage on her forehead. ‘Ten stitches,’ she mouthed.

  Fionn tried to smile but he couldn’t stop the shame heating his cheeks. He had taken and lost Shelby’s Tide Summoner in a single hour, and now they had nothing to show for their perilous journey but the scar on her forehead.

  After what seemed like an age, Fionn reached the top of the hall, where he hovered under the watchful gaze of five hundred faces, some pale with fear, others pinched with hostility. Elizabeth had seated herself two rows from the front, her hawk-like eyes boring into him with such force, he felt it in the pit of his stomach. He looked past her, to the Cannons, who waved at him encouragingly.

  Come on. Just get on with it.

  ‘Thank you all for coming.’ Fionn’s voice echoed back at him from the rafters. He was conscious of the clock on the wall, the clock screaming in his head. Tick-tock, tick-tock. ‘I wish I had better news for you, but there’s no point in sugar-coating the truth now,’ he said, relaying the speech he had rehearsed with his grandfather. ‘As you know, Morrigan will rise again tonight if we don’t do something to stop her. Ivan’s promise that he will spare you if you hand me over is a lie. He is Morrigan’s brother, and the leader of her army. All he cares about is restoring her to power once more. Today I went on a secret mission to recover the lost Tide Summoner, a shell that will call the Merrows to our aid. But when I got home, Ivan was there. He stole it from me.’

  Someone at the back of the hall gasped.

  ‘Ivan also destroyed a lot of the candles. Our supply of magical weapons has been drastically reduced.’ He took a deep breath, tears prickling behind his eyes when he said, ‘And I’m sorry. I’m really sorry for letting you all down.’

  Silence then. Horrible, swelling, soul-crushing silence.

  ‘But the candles were our defence,’ said Una Patton, from the front row. ‘We’ve been practising so hard with them. We were good.’

  ‘Some of us were brilliant,’ said Douglas Beasley angrily.

  ‘There are still some left,’ said Fionn, with as much confidence as he could muster. ‘And I have a plan for them. But I need your help …’

  Wide eyes and bated breath. A nebula of nervous energy, hanging on his every word.

  ‘Well, get on with it then,’ said Douglas.

  ‘Ivan has been keeping his Soulstalkers down in the Sea Cave. That’s where he’s taken the Tide Summoner. There’s only one course of action left now … I want us to use the remaining candles to attack the Sea Cave together before nightfall.’

  The silence shattered, an aria of whispers suddenly filling up the hall. The island blew a breeze in through the windows, rattled chair legs and purse straps. A baby started crying somewhere at the back of the hall. One of the Cannon twins screeched, Alva diving into the aisle to yank him back on to her lap.

  Elizabeth Beasley’s voice rose above the fray. ‘You can’t possibly expect us all to go down into that terrible, cursed place and risk our lives like that. To stand against an enemy who already outnumber us. We know exactly what they’re capable of.’ She pressed a hand to her collarbone. ‘Surely there’s a better way?’

  ‘Not with what we have left,’ said Fionn. ‘We have to get the Tide Summoner back before sunset or Ivan will twist its magic and destroy it forever.’

  ‘Or we could just hand you over, in exchange for our safety?’ said Douglas Beasley.

  Shelby turned to glare at him. ‘How could you even suggest such a thing, Uncle Douglas?’

  ‘Come on now, Doug,’ said Niall. ‘Be reasonable.’

  ‘I’m only saying what we’re all thinking.’ Douglas looked around, searching the sea of frightened faces. ‘The odds have changed – drastically it appears. Our defences have dwindled. We need to find a new solution to this mess.’

  ‘If you hand me over, Morrigan will be back before dawn,’ said Fionn. ‘It won’t be the end of the island’s suffering … it will only be the beginning.’

  ‘Well, that sounds like something you would say,’ muttered Douglas.

  ‘So why don’t we just leave then?’ said Juliana Aguero. ‘All of us together. Today.’

  ‘How are we supposed to do that?’ said Shelby. ‘They’ve destroyed all our boats!’

  ‘We can try to call the coastguards,’ suggested Donal. ‘Request a mass evacuation. It will be dangerous, especially with Ivan lurking on the island. We’d need to make at least ten trips, but we might be able to pull it off, if we’re quick and quiet.

  Murmurs rippled through the hall.

  ‘That won’t stop them,’ said Fionn, shaking his head. ‘The Soulstalkers are awake. They remember who they are. Why they’re here. They’ll raise Morrigan one way or another. Then they’ll spread their power to the mainland, and before we know it the whole country will be dead or enslaved.’ He clenched his fists by his sides. ‘There is another way. We can stay and fight. If we can get
the Tide Summoner back, we can stop this battle before it even begins and defeat the Soulstalkers once and for all. We can save the world, together, like Dagda always intended.’

  A horrible laugh filled the room, like the high-pitched titter of a cruel bird. ‘Well, I for one am not going to risk my life because of your continued incompetence, Storm Keeper,’ said Elizabeth, standing up.

  ‘Spoken like a true Beasley, Elizabeth,’ said Fionn’s mother.

  ‘And you wonder why you haven’t had a Storm Keeper in eight generations,’ added Sam’s father.

  ‘So, you all intend to die for this foolish plan?’ said Elizabeth viciously. ‘For this foolish boy.’

  Fionn’s grandfather shot up from his seat. ‘My grandson is no fool, Betty.’

  Elizabeth raised a spindly finger. ‘And you’re even worse for allowing it, Malachy. What on earth has possessed you to back this ridiculous idea?’

  ‘My son,’ said Fionn’s grandfather. He raised the candle in his right hand, and Fionn felt the heat of his anger, as if it was a real furnace burning around him. ‘My only son, Cormac, died so that Fionn would live to save these shores from terrible darkness.’ His words came down like the crack of a whip. ‘I know because I saw it in the Whispering Tree when I was fifteen years old. If we don’t strike now, Morrigan will kill us all.’

  ‘But how can we take your word for it, Malachy? I saw you only days ago outside your house and you had no idea who I was.’ Elizabeth turned slowly, like a figurine in a music box, so that the islanders could look at her smug face. ‘In fact, I would bet that half the time, you don’t even know your own self.’

  There was an awkward clearing of throats, a shuffling of chair legs. Averted gazes.

  Elizabeth narrowed her eyes. ‘Do you deny it?’

  ‘No,’ he said simply. ‘I don’t deny it.’

  ‘Well, that’s it then.’ Elizabeth swatted his words away. ‘Our only remaining witness to the importance of the boy’s plan is completely unreliable.’

  Fionn’s mother stood up, her chair screeching in the bated silence.

  ‘My husband, Cormac, saw Morrigan and Fionn in the Whispering Tree three months before he drowned.’

  Fionn reeled backwards. ‘What?’

  His grandfather turned his head sharply.

  Tara stared up at their mother with dismay.

  Fionn’s mother lifted her chin and levelled Elizabeth Beasley with a scathing look. ‘Cormac was brought to the Tree three months before I was due to give birth to Fionn. He was shown things more terrifying than his worst nightmares. Arranmore cloaked in darkness, a black mountain spearing out of the sea. A shore covered in ash and smoke. He saw the waters of Cowan’s Lake run red with islander blood.’

  She raised her gaze to the ceiling, frowning, as if she was looking for something in the slats. Fionn knew what she was really doing: she was trying not to cry.

  ‘He saw our boy standing against Morrigan before he was even born. He knew – we knew – that Fionn was the only one who could face this darkness.’ Her voice cracked. She pressed her fingers to the base of her throat to keep it from breaking. ‘Cormac went out in that lifeboat knowing it was part of a greater destiny. The island’s destiny. He went out knowing he wouldn’t come back.’ She shut her eyes tight. ‘I knew he wouldn’t come back.’

  Tara folded over herself.

  Fionn went still as a statue.

  Are you ready, son?

  You’re the bravest of all of us, you’ll see.

  ‘Oh,’ said his grandfather in a quiet voice. ‘The lost vision.’

  The lost vision.

  All his life, Fionn had never known the real truth of his father’s demise. All the while, his mother had held the secret from him.

  She had known his destiny before he took his first breath.

  How many more secrets had she kept from him?

  She turned to him, her shoulders drooping. ‘For years I tried to avoid our future. I tried to hide my son from this place. I ran from it. But it followed me to every single flat we lived in. Every school, every job, every free moment of thought. I was haunted by my husband’s last goodbye. By everything he had given up for a better world.’

  Fionn opened his mouth, closed it again. There was a galaxy churning inside him, constellations of anger and frustration and confusion, and a great black hole in the middle, all the things he thought he knew about his life in Dublin, and his mother, tumbling down inside it.

  It was all a lie.

  ‘My husband did not go to his grave so we could hide our heads in the sand and die, one by one,’ she said to the islanders. ‘To leave now will damn our island and damn our country. We are Dagda’s descendants,’ she said, her fists shaking just as hard as her voice. She was not crying now, but trembling with rage. ‘The odds might have changed, but we have not. This is our home, and we must stand together and fight for its survival.’

  Fionn had never seen his mother like this. Here was her warrior’s heart, still beating after all this time, and in that moment, he hated her for it. For hiding his future from him. For sending him back here, without her.

  She sent you to your dad, said a voice inside his head. She couldn’t say goodbye to him twice.

  But she could say goodbye to you, said another voice.

  He refused to look at her, turning instead to the crowd, who watched him now with clear eyes – with curiosity. This boy, who had some great unknown future. This boy, who didn’t have a lick of magic to show them. He would have to show them his courage instead.

  When he addressed the room again, it was with renewed determination. ‘There is still hope. The descendants know how to use the candles now, and together, we can raise the sea. A wall of water, one hundred times as strong as a ferocious storm. We can sweep the Soulstalkers from the Sea Cave by flooding it, and bring Ivan and the Tide Summoner to us before the sun sets on Arranmore. The shell belongs to the person who found it … the person who is truly worthy of it. And that’s not me,’ he said, smiling at his friend in the crowd. ‘It’s Shelby Beasley.’

  Shelby’s face lit up with delight, as the other islanders turned to stare at her. ‘Really?’ she said breathlessly.

  ‘Are you … sure?’ said Elizabeth, confusion pinching her brows together. ‘Shelby is …’

  ‘Worthy of it,’ said Fionn, remembering the way his friend had glowed with the shell in her hands, how the merrow had sung to him of the shell’s bond. ‘I saw it. We both did.’

  Shelby was beaming so hard, Fionn could see every one of her silver braces. ‘So I’ll blow it then,’ she said.

  ‘And then the Merrows can finish the Soulstalkers off,’ said Fionn. ‘Once and for all.’

  ‘It just might work,’ murmured Niall.

  ‘Of course it will,’ said Fionn’s grandfather.

  ‘It has to,’ said Sam’s mother.

  ‘How many candles do we have, Fionn?’ asked Donal.

  ‘Enough,’ was all Fionn said. ‘For one last stand.’

  ‘And what about the islanders who’ve changed their mind?’ asked Douglas.

  ‘I can organise passage from the island for anyone who wishes to leave,’ said Donal. ‘We’ll have to move quickly and quietly. Children and elderly first. Then the non-descendants.’

  ‘That’s cowards’ talk,’ boomed Tom Rowan. ‘I don’t need magic to fight. I have my pitchfork. And I’m an islander too!’

  ‘I’m staying right here with my family,’ said Sam’s mother defiantly.

  ‘I’m not a descendant but I’m definitely brave enough to help,’ said Mia Aguero. ‘I’ve been learning judo since I was five!’

  ‘Oh, well, all right,’ said Juliana reluctantly. ‘If everyone else is staying, then I’m not going to miss out.’

  There was a sudden burst of chatter, questions raised and answered in the same breath, panic settling into consideration, and then possibility fell like raindrops, flooding the room with an unmistakeable sense of determination – of brave
ry.

  ‘Take a few minutes to think it over,’ Fionn said to those who were still chewing on their decision. ‘I don’t want to force this choice on anyone, but our time is running out.’ He glanced at the wall, where the moon-faced clock ticked over them. ‘Those who want to leave, go to Donal’s house, and he’ll arrange passage. For everyone else, we’ll start planning in twenty minutes.’

  Fionn’s mother drifted over to him. ‘Sweetheart …’

  He pulled his hand away before she could grab it. ‘I need some air.’

  The room was moving. Two people stood up. Then four more. A couple with young children, and a trio of surly teenagers, marched out by their mother. A few more from Fionn’s class at school. He followed them out of the hall, ducked around the side of the building and sat in the shadows by the sports shed, staring up at the sky. Evening was hurtling towards them, the sun’s rays already reaching for the horizon.

  His phone beeped in his pocket – a text from Shelby: I get to blow the shell!!!!

  Another from Sam: We are waiting here for u! Ready to fight!! Especially Mum! Ha!

  Shelby again: I’m so aptly named

  And then Tara: Where r u? Get back here.

  Sam: Almost everyone is staying! Even Bartley can’t resist those candles!!

  Fionn laid his head back against the wall and listened to the distant chatter of the school hall – islanders and descendants alike, wearing their bravery like battle armour.

  I’ll go.

  Into the storm, whatever that may be.

  I’ll go.

  Just like their ancestors before them.

  Just like Cormac Boyle, long lost to the sea.

  Fionn squeezed his eyes shut, and tried to quell the fluttering in his chest. He didn’t know whether he wanted to laugh or cry, only that there was a bird trapped in his ribcage, and it was beating its wings against his heart. His father and his grandfather: a lifeboat and a candle. Bargains made and lives traded for him. All for this strange destiny, this storm that awaited them all.