The Dark Beloved

by Helen Falconer

  Aoife said hastily, setting both bowls on the table, ‘Don’t worry, she’s just a bit confused. Honey, I told you Mam and Dad moved here ages ago.’

  Eva seized the cereal packet and poured a mountain of it into her own bowl, and an equal mountain into Hector’s. ‘My mam in Dublin is skinny! My da has black hair! Hector wants milk!’

  ‘Oh. My. God.’ Carla looked ready to be sick. ‘This is awful. Her poor parents . . .’

  ‘Are asleep upstairs!’ Aoife reassured her wildly. ‘She just means they look a lot older than when she last saw them because time goes a hundred times slower in the fairy world! Honey, darling . . . Please. Tell Carla—’

  ‘Milk!’

  ‘Here’s your milk!’ Feeling slightly murderous now, Aoife slammed down the carton in front of her human counterpart. ‘Tell Carla your mam and dad’s real names!’

  ‘They’re called Mam and Da!’

  ‘Their real names!’

  Carla groaned, hands crushed to cheeks, ‘Can you remember where you found her? Was it outside a school? We can sort this out. We’ll explain you’re mentally ill, you won’t get into any trouble. I’ll help you. I’ll come with you, I’ll stand by you—’

  ‘Eva? Aoife? Where have you gone?’

  ‘Oh, thank God, it’s your mam . . .’ Carla turned in huge relief to the door as Maeve’s bare feet came hurrying down the stairs. ‘Of course, I’m an eejit for panicking – your mam must know what’s happening and she must have phoned the right people and they just haven’t come yet . . .’

  ‘Aoife? Eva?’ Maeve appeared in the doorway, looking terrified, dishevelled in her old paisley dressing gown. Seeing her girls, her soft round face lit up with joy and she rushed to kiss them both. ‘Oh, oh, oh, you’re both still here, the two of you – it wasn’t just a beautiful dream . . .’

  ‘Mam!’ The little girl stood up on her chair and threw herself into her mother’s arms. ‘Mam, there’s a big stupid sheep in the kitchen, and it keeps on asking who I am but I won’t tell it!’

  Suddenly noticing Carla behind the packet of Coco Pops, Maeve looked completely panicked. ‘Carla, goodness . . .’

  ‘Where’s Da? I want my da! Wake him up! I want him!’

  The expression on Carla’s face was wonderful to Aoife. Her best friend was staring in almost comical disbelief from her, to Maeve, to Eva, saying, ‘Oh. My. God. This is beyond . . . When Aoife told me about Eva, I just didn’t . . .’

  Aoife said, grinning madly, ‘Told ya!’

  And Maeve, totally misunderstanding the situation, lied, ‘That’s right, this is our new foster daughter and we’re hoping to adopt her! Isn’t it funny, Carla, that she’s called Eva too? It’s just as well we’ve always called Aoife “Aoife”!’

  Aoife protested in alarm, ‘Mam, no, Mam, I told Carla the real truth . . .’

  But already Carla was hugging Maeve, reassuring her. ‘You don’t need to worry – there’s no need to be ashamed of Aoife being mentally ill, my Auntie Ellie is lovely! Aoife, I have to go, but your mam will take care of you now . . . Take care of her, Maeve! And congratulations on your foster daughter!’ And Carla rushed out of the back door into the garden.

  Aoife collapsed at the kitchen table, face in hands, hardly knowing whether to laugh or cry.

  After a while Maeve sat down next to her, with Eva on her lap, and ran her fingers lovingly through Aoife’s long red-gold hair. ‘Oh, my love . . . So you told Carla the truth and now she thinks you had a nervous breakdown, like her mother’s sister?’

  Aoife groaned through her hands, ‘She was just about to believe me, but then you said about Eva being fostered!’

  ‘I’m so sorry, I thought we’d agreed to tell everyone—’

  ‘But I had to tell Carla! She thought I’d been away all summer without even letting her know where I was! Oh God . . . And now she thinks I’m completely mad.’

  ‘Poor love. But it’s probably better this way.’

  Aoife straightened up, staring at her mother. ‘What? Better that Carla thinks I’m mad?’

  Maeve sighed, hugging Eva against her, her cheek pressed against the small girl’s softer cheek. ‘Maybe it’s for the best that Carla thinks you were in hospital without anyone knowing.’

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘Aoife, my darling . . . You have to accept, even if she believed you, no one else would.’

  ‘I don’t care about that! I want her to believe me!’

  ‘But what if she did, and told someone – anyone – about you bringing a little girl home from the fairy world?’

  ‘I swore her to secrecy!’

  ‘But this is way too big a story for anyone to keep to themselves. And if someone in authority – like the doctor, or the guard – got to hear it, and came round to check, and they realized Eva had no birth certificate or any kind of papers . . .’

  Aoife suddenly realized the danger she had placed them in. There was a birth certificate – but it was for an Eva O’Connor born fifteen years ago. And that, as far as the world was concerned, was Aoife. ‘Oh . . . Crap. Does this mean I have to let her think I’m mad?’

  ‘I know it’s horrible . . . But she’ll soon see you’re just your same old self, and forget about the rest.’ Maeve had rearranged herself now, to have her arms safely round the two of her daughters. ‘A lovely normal human girl, with a lovely new little foster sister.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  It wasn’t as good as flying, but powering along on her old bike was definitely the next best thing. She felt light as a bird, and full of energy – on her way to meet Shay, racing up the lonely bog road, her grey hoodie and navy Canterburys thrumming in the wind as she crouched over the handlebars. A cluster of skinny sheep streamed away across the heather in bleating panic. A soft grey curtain of rain swept over the gap between the mountains, cooling her, carrying the salty smell of sea. A scrap of rainbow glittered in a patch of sky, far up and away between the rapid clouds.

  (Shay had told her he would come and meet her, driving his brother’s car. She’d refused to let him. ‘You have to stop driving on the public roads! You’re only fifteen!’

  He’d said, with an odd edge to his voice, ‘Not any more.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve been sixteen for a while now.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘My birthday was back in July, while we were away.’ He’d sounded strangely troubled – perhaps because of how fast time had passed in the human world while they’d been gone. If they’d spent two more days in the Land of the Young, a whole year would have passed in the human world above.

  When she’d got over her surprise, Aoife said: ‘Makes no difference – you’re still a year off legal, so I’m coming out to you anyway. Stay at the farm unless you want to walk down to the coast road to meet me.’

  ‘Aoife, about me being sixteen—’ But then he’d run out of charge.)

  She herself was now fifteen and half, and her fairy strength was definitely increasing as she neared her sixteenth birthday. Even though she was now bicycling steeply uphill, she was still doing a crazy speed. Sixty kilometres an hour, seventy . . . Faster! So good to be alive! The road was rising to the gap between the mountains, the wind was strong in her face, the cold sweet air pouring into her lungs. The road twisted as it crested the hill . . . She didn’t see the cream BMW until it was nearly upon her, when it swerved with a screech of tyres and shot off the road across a patch of grass.

  ‘Ah, crap . . .’ Fifty metres on, Aoife managed to slow enough to turn and charge back up the hill and over the top again. The driver had already backed out onto the road, and was doing a U-turn and stopping. Suddenly she recognized the car – it was the cream BMW that she’d bought with fairy gold and given to Shay’s brother, John Joe. She threw down her bike and rushed to the driver’s window. Her delight in seeing him made her briefly dizzy. She leaned her forehead against the vintage car; the cool of wet metal against her skin. ‘I thought I’d told you not to come and meet me.’


  Shay was winding his window down, grinning up at her. He was wearing a dark red hoodie half zipped up over a clean white T-shirt, and his black hair looked as if he’d run the clippers over it that morning. ‘I’d have stayed at home all right, if I’d known some lunatic on a bike was going to try to kill me.’

  She couldn’t stop smiling at him like an eejit. ‘How are you driving this thing anyway?’

  ‘John Joe took the Ford because he was picking up some tractor parts and didn’t want to get this one dirty.’

  ‘No, I mean – I thought it hadn’t got an engine?’

  ‘Oh, right . . . No, John Joe stuck one in her over the summer – found it in a breaker’s yard. Here, let me out.’

  She moved aside as he climbed out, then stepped back towards him. For a long moment he remained where he was, arms by his sides, looking down at her – very still and very close. His hazel eyes drifted to her mouth. She tilted her face further up to his. But then he said, in an oddly strained voice, ‘Hop in the car, while I stick your bike in the back.’ And turned away.

  Left standing, a trickle of hurt ran through her. She felt like saying, Hey, what’s the matter with you? but her throat felt tight and she was worried it would come out as a squeak. She turned to look at him. He was lifting her bike into the car, wrestling it to lie flat in the boot, leaning in over it. One of the pockets of his faded jeans hung loose, torn. He smiled at her again, over his shoulder. ‘Go on, get in, more rain’s on the way.’

  She walked round the front of the car, sat in and stared out at a grey world. OK. Grand. Even though he’d admitted to loving her, he clearly hadn’t changed his mind about kissing her. Ugh. He was being so stubborn about this. Yes, his mother had been a lenanshee – a lover from the otherworld – and his besotted father had died too young: an old, old man at thirty-five. Yes, she knew Shay had inherited his mother’s nature – she had seen the evidence: caterpillars in his hands became butterflies, living out their lives too fast. Yet surely it was up to her if she thought his love was worth the risk? Enough of this wrapping her up in cotton wool . . .

  The back door of car slammed and Shay fell into the driver’s seat beside her, slicking the rain from his fresh-cropped hair with both strong hands. ‘So, where do you fancy going? That café on the coast road? It’s a bit crap, but it’s the only place round here. And you must be starving after that mad bike ride.’

  She looked at him as he turned the key in the ignition – the steep, sloping line of his jaw; the slight flush on his strong cheekbones; his long black lashes; the silver earring, high in his ear. She remembered old John McCarthy, telling her in the churchyard: A grá is no ordinary, comfortable, fireside sort of a love. It is a mad love, a wild love, a hunger, a longing, a terrible insatiable desire that cannot be turned aside. If Shay still had the grá for her, surely he shouldn’t be able to help himself, kissing her? And yet he seemed to be doing a pretty good job of self-control.

  He shot her a curious glance. ‘You OK? I’ll pay, I’ve money.’

  ‘Oh, right . . . Sorry. Sure.’

  He smiled without comment, then put the car into gear and pulled off. The BMW purred smoothly over the high gap between the mountains, and the purple land and slate-grey, wind-ruffled Atlantic opened out beneath them. The road fell steeply to the sea. Changing into a lower gear, he left his hand on the stick, close to her knee. He was humming very quietly to himself – something by Christie Moore, she thought. Her eyes rested on his left wrist. Around the sun-browned skin was a paler line, where he had worn her (Eva’s) golden heart locket for a while. Before giving it back to her when he’d found out what he was – a dangerous lover.

  A song lyric flashed into her head, setting itself to the soft tune he was humming:

  Around your wrist, a narrow line

  of paler skin

  because you once were mine . . .

  Stop. He was hers – and she was his. The love of a lenanshee was too powerful to fade overnight. Only yesterday, measured in human time, she had stood at the altar with Dorocha the Beloved, before the whole of Tír Na nÓg. And no matter how brutally Dorocha had attempted to force on the ring, he hadn’t been able to do it. She was desired by Shay. And she loved him back. Therefore no other man could steal her. That was the power of the lenanshee. This was the grá that had brought her safely home. If it wasn’t for Shay . . . A chill ran over her skin, the hairs of her arms on end. Dorocha had said, We are one, for all eternity.

  She shrank a little, pressing her body into the soft red leather of the seat.

  Down.

  Until Dorocha had taken her hand, she hadn’t understood him.

  Something bad, something endless . . .

  She’d thought he was merely a lightweight madman, come to power in a careless world. She’d imagined that after Eva was safe, she could escape him. She’d thought she was easily strong enough for Dorocha, married to him or not. But then, at the altar, when he had pushed her fist into his heart . . .

  No heart.

  Down.

  The empty space behind his ribs. Like a dry well, into the depths of hell.

  The un-empty emptiness within . . .

  ‘Aoife? What’s up?’ Shay’s voice, bringing her back – the interior of the car, sweet-smelling leather, polished wood. Safety. She clenched her fists to stop them trembling.

  ‘Will he follow us, do you think?’

  ‘Will who . . . ?’ Reflexively, he glanced into the mirror at the road behind.

  ‘Dorocha.’

  Relaxing, he took the next steep downward bend. ‘Are you worried about that muppet? I’d say he’d have turned up by now, if he was planning to follow us.’

  ‘He might be waiting for something.’

  He glanced at her, frowning. ‘What, though? He knows he can’t have you. Even with all the druids and the dullahans and the changeling mob behind him, he couldn’t control you. What chance would he have here, in this world where everyone you love will stand for you?’

  She couldn’t help herself. ‘Including you?’

  ‘Especially including me.’

  Warmth flooded her. She said lightly, ‘Good to hear it!’ Although it struck her – did Shay understand what it meant to stand for her? He hadn’t seen the darkness in Dorocha – only the beautiful, self-confident man who was worshipped in the Land of the Young. He hadn’t heard the voice of a self-confessed murderer, only the voice of a handsome charmer who had promised Aoife’s people, the Tuatha Dé Danann, to take care of the dead queen’s daughter for ever – even to the point of marrying her.

  Shay was saying cheerfully, ‘Sure, he’s a jumped-up joker with ideas above his station, and you left him standing.’

  ‘But if—’ She stopped, looking down at her hands.

  Bolts of power could burst from these fingers – but not when she was near Dorocha. He drained the strength from her. The only time she had struck him was with Nuada’s sword, and it was the sword that had flung itself at Dorocha’s heart . . . No heart. She had escaped him at the altar because she had been able to fly – but that was only because she had made Shay kiss her; she had stolen Shay’s energy, the life-force of the lenanshee . . .

  She needed Shay. He was her shield. And yet . . .

  It wasn’t fair on him to make him feel solely responsible for her safety. If Shay Foley loved her, that was fine – more than fine. But it wasn’t his job to love her, simply to protect her. And it would only put him in harm’s way if Dorocha did come after her.

  She said, ‘You’re right. I’m sure he’s not going to follow me. And I don’t care if he does. You’re right. He’s nothing.’

  ‘A clown,’ said Shay contemptuously.

  They were at the cliffs, and he swung left along the coast road. The café he’d been talking about came into view: a lonely, shabby little building with dirty windows, caught between the vast mountainous bog and the poorly fenced cliff-top. He slowed and pulled into the empty car park just beyond – a small gravelled bi
te out of the orange bog – and killed the engine. Instead of getting out, he sat for a moment with his strong, square hands upon the wheel. It was as if he was planning to say something else. Something he knew she wasn’t going to like.

  Again, she felt that cold trickle running though her. Foreboding.

  He said, still without meeting her eyes, ‘Let’s go get something to eat.’

  Even though it was lunch time, the place was empty. The solitary woman owner was delighted to see them – dishevelled and over-excited, peppery grey hair flying out in all directions.

  ‘Come in, sit down! What will you have? Tea? Cheese and ham toasties? The food’s not fancy . . .’ Her voice wavered slightly. ‘I had such plans for this place, and then the recession . . . It’s taking such a long time picking up . . .’ She rallied. ‘Tea and toasties, is it? Good choice.’ She filled a huge striped teapot from the Burco boiler at the counter, brought it to their table and ran off into the back, where a wild clattering began.

  Aoife waited for Shay to say what was clearly on his mind. Instead of meeting her gaze, he checked under the lid of the pot – ‘Plenty of tea bags at least’ – and gave the contents a long, pounding stir.

  After a while she gave up waiting. ‘Carla came round really early this morning. She bicycled all the way in the middle of the night, even though she’s really scared of the dark.’

  ‘Sound of her.’ He replaced the lid and poured out two striped mugs of thick black liquid, pushing one towards her before heaping three spoons of sugar into his own, taking a mouthful, pulling a face, then adding another spoonful.

  Aoife held her own mug in her hands for the warmth: there was nothing burning in the small iron stove and the tearoom was chilly. ‘I told her the truth about where we’ve been.’

  At last he looked up, slightly startled. ‘How did that go?’

  ‘Not great. She decided I’d been in mental hospital not knowing who I was, and it was you tracked me down and brought me home, and that’s why you and me have only really been together for a couple of days.’

  He laughed, shaking his head. ‘Fair play to her for making sense of the unbelievable!’