Another startled silence fell. A few seconds later, Caitlin said, in a tense, angry tone, ‘What do you mean, you’re not a changeling, hey? Are you human, Little Miss Hanger-On?’
Aoife looked up hastily. Caitlin’s muscular shoulders were raised like the hackles on a farm dog; she was pointing across Aoife at Carla, who cringed in fright at the sight of the blue flames flickering around the changeling girl’s forefinger.
Ultan was protesting, ‘Ah now, Caitlin, even if she is—’
‘You are human, aren’t you, you treacherous little—’
Aoife grabbed Caitlin’s wrist. ‘Leave her alone.’
‘But she’s human!’
‘Sit down!’
Caitlin remained glaring at Carla for several more seconds, then slowly, reluctantly, subsided onto her stool. Jerking her wrist out of Aoife’s grip, she said plaintively, ‘How can you stick up for a stupid human? They’re mean and cruel to fairies.’
Taking a stool on the other side of the table and filling his cup with frothy hawthorn champagne – and a second cup for Carla, which he pushed towards her – Ultan said cheerfully, ‘Not all humans are like your mam, Caitlin. Sure my human mammy used to leave the fairies out cakes and milk, and she called them the good folk.’
Caitlin scowled over at him. ‘I hope you told her that was pure patronizing shite.’
‘Why would I have said that? I didn’t even know I was a fairy myself until I ended up here. Anyway, she wasn’t trying to patronize anyone, she had a great respect for the fairies. “Ultan,” she used to say—’
‘Oh, here we go.’
‘“Ultan, if you ever meet a fairy on the road, be sure to move out of their way and be polite. You’ll know them by their red hair and their green eyes. They’ll grant any human three wishes, so be sure to ask them for yours, and if you’ve been good to them, they’ll grant the three wishes freely, and if you’ve been bad to them, they’ll twist your wish and grant it quair. So never forget to put out the cakes and milk.”’
Grabbing a roasted wren and stuffing it into her mouth, Caitlin sneered, ‘You know what, your mammy was so wise about everything, I don’t know why I bother checking anything in my incredibly ancient, valuable druidic text at all.’
Carla, who had pulled the book towards her from where it had landed in the bowl of wild strawberries, said under her breath to Aoife, ‘Aoife? I wish I could read this.’
Aoife shivered, and the hair pricked on her arms as if someone had walked across her grave; a slight sinking feeling, like a decrease in pressure. It reminded her of the sensation she’d felt when Lois’s grandmother was complaining she couldn’t see properly with her new bifocals . . .
In between spitting tiny bones out into the palm of her hand, Caitlin was roaring angrily at Carla, ‘You get your traitorous hands off my book – it’s a treasure of Tír Na nÓg and nothing to do with filthy humans!’
Carla ignored her, bending her head over the book, turning pages rapidly.
‘Hey! Give that back!’
But Carla flattened a page, and read out in a loud voice: ‘Deargdue: A peasant girl famed for her beauty. She loved and was loved, but the Lord on the hill gave the girl’s father a handful of silver coins, and took the girl away from her boy to his house. And there she waited in hope for the boy to rescue her, but he never came. Only her Lord came, who cut through her skin with a small sharp knife and drank her heart’s blood through a hollow stalk of dried barley.’
The big changeling girl was on her feet, crimson-faced with outrage. ‘Stop pretending you can read Ogham script!’
‘When autumn passed without a single word from the boy, the girl stopped eating. In winter, she died.’
Ultan muttered, refilling his cup, ‘Mother of God.’
‘She’s making this up, I tell you!’
Trying to listen to Carla, Aoife snapped, ‘Be quiet!’
‘But she’s just a jumped-up social-climbing groupie pretending to be your new best friend!’
‘She IS my best friend! Now sit down!’
The big changeling girl’s face went white; her mouth twisted. ‘No, I’m your best friend, it’s me can read Ogham . . .’ She made a fierce grab for the druid’s book. ‘Give me that, you human scum!’
Aoife also sprang up, furiously wresting the book back out of Caitlin’s hands. ‘Carla is not scum, she’s my best friend, and you know you can’t read this yourself, so sit down and be quiet!’
Caitlin stared at her for a long moment, her big mouth working, a suspicious glint of water along her lower lashes – and then stormed furiously away across the room, fiercely kicking aside the piles of gorgeous dresses and screaming, ‘I don’t care if you are the stupid queen, you’re as mean as a human, and you can take back all this cheap worthless shite and give it to your new best friend!’ And she charged headlong up a sweeping marble staircase, in floods of angry tears.
Carla said anxiously, ‘I didn’t mean to upset—’
‘Just keep reading.’ Aoife’s heart was beating painfully. She would comfort Caitlin some other time. Right now she had to know what had happened to that dangerous, damaged beauty.
With one last guilty glance towards the stairs, Carla dipped her head over the book again. ‘The body of the poor suicide was left out by the side of the road, and there the boy found her and recognized her and buried her deep in the ditch, and to cover his shame he put no stones on her grave to mark her and there were no stones to keep her down, and so when spring came again, she rose with the grass and came to the boy and pierced a tiny hole into his heart with her knife, and sucked him dry through her barley straw, night after night, until by autumn his agony was over and he was dead.’
(Ultan gasped, ‘Mother of God . . .’)
‘And then she came for the handsomest son of every nearby townland and they would dance with her, and she would bring them away with her one by one to her house to break into their hearts and suck out their heart’s blood through a barley straw . . .’
(‘My mam was right again!’)
‘. . . and none would see them again in the human world, nor in the Land of the Young, for she cares not for the living, fairy or human, and her only house is Tigh Duinn, the land of the worms, the House of the Dead, or Land of the Dead, from where none can return alive, for once they have crossed her threshold, all are—’ Carla stopped reading abruptly; her soft eyes brimmed with tears. ‘Oh, Aoife. He’s . . . Oh, poor Shay . . . He’s . . . Oh, Aoife . . .’
Ultan said with a deep sigh, shaking his auburn head, ‘So that’s it then. Poor old Shay Foley’s dead.’
CHAPTER NINE
Aoife said, ‘Wish for Shay to be here.’
Carla went white with shock. ‘Wish for . . . ?’
‘Wish for Shay to be here. Now. If Ultan’s mother is right, you’ve got three wishes.’
‘But Aoife, I can’t wish for Shay to—’
Wildly, desperately, hungrily, crazily, Aoife cried, ‘Yes you can! Stop wasting time! She’s torturing him! Say I wish Shay Foley was here!’
‘No! Don’t!’ Ultan was cringing in horror. ‘Don’t say it – he’ll come back with no heart, he’ll be un-dead like in the Dracula films—’
‘Carla, wish it!’
‘But what if Ultan is right? You don’t want Shay to come back as a zombie!’
Aoife moaned despairingly at the thought. ‘But what if he’s not dead? What if she’s still torturing him, still sucking at his heart and he’s in terrible, terrible agony? Please, darling, please, I’m begging you, if you love me at all—’
Ultan howled, ‘Carla, do not!’
But Carla had broken. Through a flood of terrified tears, she cried in shrill panic, ‘I wish Shay Foley was here!’
Aoife’s own heart throbbed with a wild, ecstatic joy. She said as calmly as she could manage, ‘Your wish is granted.’
Carla dropped her head to the table and wrapped her arms over it, as if Shay in death might swoop down on her like the giant f
erocious sluagh, shrouding her in a mantle of black wings. Ultan actually took cover on the floor behind his marble stool.
But Aoife was on her feet – exultant. The hairs were pricking on her arms – and neck, and legs, and scalp – agonizingly sharp and sweet, like her skin was being tattooed with words of love. The drop in pressure that she now knew was associated with granting a wish had left her feeling light and dizzy.
Any moment now . . .
Would he come through the door? Or down the stairs?
She gazed eagerly around the huge room. There were a thousand places in it to hide – it was so cluttered with the dresses, strewn over outsized marble chairs, sofas, tables; polished bronze mirrors leaned against pillars; plump gold cupids were poised on their toes, clutching arrows tufted with gold-painted feathers. The marble stairs swept upwards. She listened for footsteps from above . . .
Nothing.
But surely, any moment now . . .
Beyond, in the courtyard, bird song rose and fell.
Carla raised her head, checking around nervously, her terrified sobs slowly fading as she realized – clearly, to her relief – that the three of them were still alone. Ultan got cautiously to his feet, also peering in every direction, and let out his breath on a long, shuddering sigh. ‘Thank Danu that wish didn’t—’ He checked himself hastily. ‘I mean, what a shame the wish didn’t work. He was a grand lad, for a lenanshee . . .’
Surely, surely, any moment now . . .
Aoife moved slowly towards the open doors. Far above the marble statues and carp-filled pools, the thin finger of the crystal tower burned in the sun, wearing its scented ring of hawthorn. A sluagh circled it, poking its withered head from side to side, surveying the city.
A very long way off, the sound of golden hinges creaking . . . The front gate! As the sluagh disappeared round the far side of the tower, Aoife fled down the steps and across the courtyard to the archway, where she paused at the entrance to the avenue, on her toes, listening, holding her breath . . .
The trellised tunnel of flowers curved away into the distance, humming softly with golden blur-winged bees . . .
Whispering footsteps, far off, out of sight?
No: the distant falling of rose petals . . .
Footsteps; it was footsteps!
But so soft, so slow, like the weak, hesitant shuffling of an old, old man . . .
Aoife wavered, poised between fear and longing. Was it . . . ? Could it be . . . ?
Nearer . . .
She was shaking.
Why would her feet not move?
The perfumed trellis curved away; the slow, soft footsteps drawing nearer . . . A movement in the roses, a ruffling of the soft white petals . . . A pale hand, as pale as the petals, crept round the corner, feeling its way along the golden wire that secured the roses to the trellis. And now a shadow fell, trembling like water in the sunlight that fell through the ceiling of flowers.
After the shadow, he came himself.
Dressed all in black, the way she’d seen him last. But not dancing now. Feeble, sick. Walking slowly, so slowly, one hand sliding along the golden wire like a blind man feeling his way, the other hand pressed to his heart . . .
Shay.
In Aoife’s mind, she was already running towards him, screaming out his name . . . Yet her feet were still frozen to the ground and she could not speak – she could hardly breathe.
Slowly, slowly he made his way towards her under the drooping, wind-blown roses. Closer, closer. His hand still pressed to his heart. Now his dark green eyes were fixed upon her. Why didn’t he smile, or speak? Was he not glad to see her? His skin was as white as the roses that had scattered their petals in his hair, melting into the blackness of it like snow into black water.
‘Shay?’ At last she had found her voice – it came out husky with grief and longing. ‘Shay?’ But still she couldn’t move.
Behind her, she could hear Carla crying, ‘Oh my God, he’s . . .’ in a high, trembling voice.
‘Aoife, don’t touch him!’ Ultan’s warning blurted out shrill with fear. ‘That’s not him, that’s a zombie!’
And still he moved towards her. Slowly, slowly. The silver earring glinted high in his ear. His deeply curved mouth was slightly bruised, as if someone had bitten down hard on a kiss.
‘Shay?’
He had nearly reached her. One step away from her. Still he clutched the trellis with one hand, and held the other pressed to his heart. Between his fingers, dark red liquid leaked . . .
‘Oh God, Shay, you’re hurt – speak to me . . .’
His lips parted slightly. ‘Hold me,’ he murmured. ‘Hold me . . .’ He seemed not to have the strength to take the final step. The blood ran down his shirt.
‘Oh, Shay, Shay . . .’ With a deep groan of joy and fear and sorrow, she took the final step herself, opening her arms.
‘Hold me,’ he said again, and – closing his dark green eyes – he fell forward into her embrace. She sank to her knees beneath the roses, clasping him to her . . .
And found herself clutching at nothing.
The howl rose from deep within her gut, animal-like in its desolation. ‘Shay! Shay!’
Carla was instantly beside her, comforting her. ‘Poor you, poor you . . . How sad . . .’
‘He’s gone, Carla! Where did he go?’
‘He was a ghost, Aoife! He wasn’t really here at all.’
‘But at least he wasn’t a zombie.’ Ultan sounded a lot more relieved than disappointed. ‘Ghosts are way preferable.’
Grief and fury rushed in after desolation. ‘He wasn’t a ghost! He was alive! I felt him! It was like . . .’ She pressed her hand to her own heart; it beat on her palm, furiously. That was where she had felt him. Alive and real. Yet in her arms, on the surface of her skin, he had been like the mist rising from a river – beautiful and gone. She should have held him tighter. ‘Wish him back, Carla!’
‘Aoife, he was a ghost!’
‘Don’t say that! It’s not true – he’s alive! He said to hold him, and I was afraid! I was scared, and by the time I’d taken him in my arms he had slipped away . . . This time I’ll hold him!’
Ultan was shaking his head. ‘Even if you’re right, my mam says you can only wish for a thing once, it never works the next time.’
‘No. No!’ Aoife screamed her pain. If she had ruined his only chance of rescue through sheer cowardice . . .’You’re just saying that because you’re afraid of him! That can’t be true!’
‘I am afraid of zombies – who wouldn’t be? But that’s not why I’m saying it, and Mam’s right about most things . . .’
She seized Carla’s arm. ‘Carla, do it, I’m begging you. He was here, he was alive, but I didn’t run to him, I was afraid and I waited, and then he was pulled back to wherever he is.’
‘But he has to have been a ghost, Aoife. The book says he’s in the Land of the Dead. Oh dear God, his heart was bleeding and he looked so . . . ghost-like!’
‘I don’t care what he is! Carla, please.’
Carla broke down again, weeping with terror. ‘I wish that—’
But before she had even uttered his name, to Aoife’s unspeakable joy the distant gate had creaked again, and the shuffling footsteps had begun their slow ascent. She cried, ‘He’s found his own way back!’
Ultan gasped, instantly scared again, ‘Aoife, wait! He might be a zombie this time!’
But already she was gone – springing eagerly to her feet, sprinting down the long arching tunnel of white roses. This was what she should have done before: run towards him, not stood there trembling like a leaf, as if afraid of what he had become, and then not holding him . . . That was what had gone so wrong.
This time she would hold him and never let him go.
In the distance, a bell was tolling – a church-like sound. Ding, dong . . .
‘Shay! I’m coming!’
‘Welcome home, my queen,’ quavered a thin, weak voice. And the little old man in h
is unspeakable dark green coat came limping through the roses to meet her, his walking stick tucked under his arm.
At the sight of Aoife’s face fading from joy to utter horror, Seán Burke couldn’t seem to stop laughing. The cooshee scalp he was wearing as a hat slid backwards, but didn’t fall off: he wore the long lower jaw of the dog around his neck like a collar, fastened with a twist of wire, so that its yellow lower teeth bristled up in front of his chin. ‘Now who did you think I was, my queen? Have you still your grá for that lenanshee lad of yours?’
Recovering her breath, Aoife raised her hands in rage, itching to blast this sniggering little nobody up through the roof of flowers above. ‘Where is he?’
‘Such a hussy you are, Aoibheal, like your mother before you—’
She pointed her forefingers . . .
Smartly the zookeeper snapped the upper jaw of the hat back down over his face, the curved yellow teeth of it enclosing the top half of his face like a visor. The bone-white eyes of the dog were now on a level with her own – staring at her with great melancholy, leaking soft jelly tears. Slightly muffled inside the dog’s head, like a biker from within a helmet, he said, ‘Now, now, my queen – don’t you be thinking of abusing a little old man like me. And how can I help you if you blast me to kingdom come?’
She lowered her hands, clenched her fists. ‘Tell me what you know about the House of the Dead.’
‘Nothing, my queen, although I have to say it sounds pretty self-explanatory.’
‘Where is Dorocha?’
‘Sure what would I know about the Beloved’s movements? There might be laws, but he’s a law unto himself, that one. I’m a mere lackey.’
Behind her were cries of ‘Aoife!’ ‘What’s happening?’ – Carla’s and Ultan’s voices, and their feet racing down the avenue. In the depths of the dog’s head, Seán Burke’s eyes lit up.
‘And here come your little friends to rescue you!’ Reaching up with his walking stick, he slammed aside a spray of roses, revealing a patch of sky in which the sluagh could be seen, still circling the tower. Waving the stick through the hole, he cried in his high, shrill, wavering voice, ‘Here, bir—’
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