The druids greeted the banshees as they arrived, taking the babies and toddlers from them, and bringing them away to an area beside the altar where white lamb’s-wool blankets were heaped up like snow. As soon as she was relieved of her stolen child, each banshee spun on her heel with a great sweep of her cloak and stalked back across the temple, empty arms held wide, dark red mouth open, keening – a slow, rhythmic cry of despair, set to the steady booming of the temple bell. The long lines of banshees still queuing, still clasping their babies, took up the piercing wail, filling the temple with their grief. The grogoch joined in, screaming its own distress; the pooka rose to its feet, rattling its chains. A gathering of seal-wives still wet from the sea sent up cries like gulls in a storm. The dullahans lifted their rotting heads in mute salute, creating a wave of orange fire around the walls. From floor to roof, from wall to wall, the very air wept, and Aoife’s own heart shrank under the weight of all this concentrated grief, and she found herself despairing.
There was no point to life.
No point in hoping that Shay was still alive.
He was in the House of the Dead, unreachable and gone.
Carla was right: he had been a ghost.
His heart had already been bleeding out from under the hand clasped to his chest. His heart, broken into and sucked dry . . .
At the altar steps, a further commotion. A small, ancient druid, Morfesa, was carrying the little boy in the Liverpool strip up the steps of the high altar; the child had his arms wrapped round Morfesa’s neck, gazing anxiously back at the weeping banshee who had relinquished him – her grief had infected him; he too was crying in a high piercing wail.
Aoife said hoarsely to the zookeeper: ‘What’s happening now?’
He shrugged, peeping out from inside the dog’s head. ‘Your guess as good as mine, my queen. Reminds me of an old country story about the real reason why the fairies steal human children – to harvest them every seven years at the Festival of the Dead—’
She jerked forward with a cry – ‘Harvest them?’ – but he redoubled his grip, dragging her back to his side, crushing her elbow.
‘Be quiet! You’ll get us thrown out! I want to enjoy the festival!’
‘Are they going to kill them? But the banshees love them too much!’ She watched in horror as Morfesa reached the altar, where he sat the distressed child on the edge of the stone, and stood fussing with a bowl and a white linen cloth, dipping the cloth in the bowl, then using it to clean a knife.
Seán Burke was saying in her ear, the dog’s cold snout pressed against her cheek: ‘Don’t you know we have to kill the things we love? Sure your mother cast human men behind her like sweet wrappers, until the one that murdered her—’
With a furious cry, Aoife tried again to break free. ‘Let me go! I’m going to stop this!’
But again the zookeeper dragged her back, his sharp eyes gleaming out through the grille of yellow teeth. ‘What happens here is none of your concern, my queen. It is not your festival and not your religion.’ His grip was unbreakable; it was as if her arm was pinned down by the claws of a living cooshee. But above his head, the white eyes of the dog gazed intently into Aoife’s face, and she found herself looking deep into the eyes of her favourite dog – and an odd calmness swept over her, and she felt her heart quieten, while around her the waves of grief rolled on – the beautiful, deafening chorus to the dead.
Touching her hand to the green-furred snout, Aoife said slowly and clearly, ‘Let me go. I am the queen. I order you.’
From within the depths of the head, the old man scoffed impatiently, ‘You’re a mite too young to be giving Seán Burke his orders— Hey, what . . . ?’ His wrinkled face had sprung fully into view as the cooshee’s upper and lower jaws snapped wide open in a ferocious yawn, and he was still saying, startled, ‘What the feck—?’ when the jaws crunched down again on his cheeks and chin. ‘Aaargh!’ Dropping Aoife’s arm, the zookeeper staggered in agonized circles, wrenching frantically at the dog’s jaws with both hands, silver blood spurting from between the yellow teeth. ‘Get off me, ya brute! Call him off! Call him off!’
But Aoife was already gone, racing towards the massive altar.
The horde of druids circled the base, gazing up towards Morfesa, who was now bending over the child, pressing him gently back against the stone, raising the Liverpool shirt.
Aoife screamed, ‘Stop! I order you! I am your queen!’ But her cries were swallowed up in the mighty requiem of sorrow. Louder and louder the banshees shrieked their deafening grief; the bell tolling faster above the doors – Boom-boom! Boom-boom! Boom-boom! – shaking the whole vast edifice of quartz. The zookeeper’s cries of pain had been cut brutally short, but the pooka was trying furiously to break its chains, and the grogoch was tumbling around its cage . . . Gasping, Aoife thrust and elbowed her way through the ranks of red cloaks, in between the druids – who barely glanced at her – then raced headlong up the altar steps. Morfesa had his back to her; he had stopped cleaning the knife and was holding it above his head, point sideways, testing it with his thumb it for sharpness.
‘Stop!’ She seized his white-clad arm.
The ancient druid turned his gaze to her – eyes dark, malevolent, glazed. He should have known her from her coronation, yet he seemed not to recognize her at all – it was as if he was drugged or blind. He complained in a thin, high, whining voice, ‘Who orders me to stop? A banshee, is it? You’ve given away your child!’
‘No I haven’t!’ Pushing him aside, Aoife swept up the sobbing boy from the altar and clasped him to her chest, ran halfway with him down the steps, shouting to the wailing crimson crowd, ‘All of you, take back your children! Take back your children!’
The druids at the foot of the steps turned to look up at her in quiet puzzlement, not seeming to know what to do, still vaguely swinging their silver-filigree lamps of incense. A single banshee stepped forward, holding out her arms – and Aoife let the boy slip down to his feet, sending him racing down on his short little legs to his surrogate mother, then stayed where she was on the steps to shout again: ‘Take back your children!’
A tough, sinewy hand sank its fingers into her arm and Morfesa spun her round, staring at her with the same dark, malevolent coldness, drawing her back towards him. ‘I do not know you.’
Aoife shook her red-gold hair free of the red shawl, and met his blurred gaze with her own turquoise eyes. ‘I’m your queen. I order you to stop this harvest.’
Still he stared at her with that strange, wilful blindness, repeating, ‘I do not know you.’
‘I am the queen of the Tuatha Dé Danann, the queen of the Land of the Young.’
His expression did not change. ‘No member of the Tuatha Dé Danann can be recognized in this temple today. This day is not yours.’
But the tall female druid who had crowned Aoife with her own hands was coming up the steps towards them, followed now by the other druids, swinging their lamps. She was urging in an eager, melodious voice, ‘Morfesa, this is wonderful! Don’t you understand? She has come to us, as predicted! It’s the prophecy fulfilled! Every seven years a teenage girl comes to lead the way. We requested that the Beloved bring us a human girl from the surface world, and were angry when he failed, and ordered him to stay away from this festival. We should have been kinder to him in his failure. We should have had faith. A greater hand was at work! It is not possible to force the hand of fate! The prophecy has been fulfilled without our interference!’
Morfesa was shaking his head, frowning. ‘No – it is a human girl that is needed, and this one claims she is the queen of the Tuatha.’
‘But this is the daughter, not the mother – and is it not well known that her father was one of the Fianna, the human heroes?’
‘A hero—’
‘But a human one, Morfesa! Human!’
The ancient druid’s dazed eyes widened in sudden understanding, and he flung back his white head and called out to the temple roof in a high chanting voic
e, ‘Long live Death! Long live Death!’
The pooka, the grogoch and the zookeeper redoubled their cries of distress, and the bronze bell continued to solemnly ring. Boom, boom, boom . . . But the banshee chorus of grief had ebbed in the temple, replaced by a whispering, throaty murmur as the crimson-cloaked women gathered around the little boy in his Liverpool shirt, and began casting longing glances towards their own stolen children. Only the other druids filled the breach, taking up Morfesa’s chant: ‘Long live Death! Long live Death!’
And while Aoife stood there, utterly confused – what did they mean about her father? Was she really part of some prophecy? – the tall female druid came smiling towards her, and drew the red shawl from her shoulders, letting it fall to the floor, and ran her hand over Aoife’s red-gold hair, and carefully placed on it a wreath of hawthorn – not flowering, but studded with red berries. Then pushed her gently back against the altar, and cried loudly but sweetly: ‘Lay her on her front to spare her the sight of the knife!’
Suddenly realizing what was about to happen, Aoife made a fierce break for freedom, but there were too many white robes already surrounding her, pressing against her, gripping her by her dress, her arms, her hair, plucking her off her feet, throwing her face down on the high stone table—
‘Stop! No!’
A forest of hands pinned her by her legs and arms. A sharp point, just to the left of her spine—
‘No!’
A terrible pain pierced her, sinking in through the black cardigan, the dress, into the flesh—
‘No! Mam! Dad!’
The knife slid between her ribs, piercing the skin of her heart . . .
‘Shay!’
The voice of a ghost, calling on another ghost to save her—
‘Shay!’
The knife thrust through her from back to front.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Down.
Yet she was looking up, lying on her back. On one side, rising monstrously against the night sky, was a vast hulking construction of stone – a sloping façade, fitted together out of crude rough blocks. In the sky above, long streams of stars swirled in spirals like glitter in water . . .
Down.
. . . around a deep hole of intense darkness, revolving slowly above Aoife’s head, as if someone had pulled the plug from a bath of stars . . .
Down.
. . . the long, beautiful, bubbling streams of stars spiralling slowly down into the eternal drain.
Fearful of the strange sky, Aoife closed her eyes and, with a deep sigh, stretched out her arms and flattened the back of her hands on cool wet grass – not grass but flowers: poppies, their oily, soporific haze drifting up around her. Overpowering.
So tired . . .
She would sleep, right here, at the foot of this monstrous prehistoric barrow, among the poppies. A wave of torpor swept down over her eyelids like a brush thick with glue.
So tired . . .
And yet she hovered for a while on the edge of her unconsciousness, like a star drifting along the horizon of a black hole.
The back of her hip was resting uncomfortably upon a stone. Eyes still closed, she felt under herself. Not a stone, but a small metal object – a ring. No, a cap . . . Attached to an empty leather flask . . . A vision came bubbling darkly to the surface of her mind: a boy of ten years old with a thick mop of chestnut hair and freckles and bright green eyes. Donal. He had given this juice to her and . . .
Shay.
A trickle of urgency ran through her, but her eyelids remained sealed.
Stay awake.
Shay.
Thick warm waves of sleep, rolling across her brain. She felt again for the flask, and blindly, clumsily, pulled it out from under her and lifted it towards her mouth, fumbling with the bronze cap, spilling what little contents it contained over her chin. In the end, all she could do was lick the cold brass rim, where a single thick drop of juice still clung. It was enough. After a long moment of sickness – heart pounding dangerously – wakefulness flooded her like a cold hit of salt sea, and she gasped and rolled over, rising onto her hands and knees.
On either side, a vast starlit plain stretched away in utter darkness, trembling with shadowy poppies. But before her was the vast stone barrow rising up against the swirling sky, and directly facing her was a pair of upright gateposts, four metres high. A lintel rested across these massive stones, creating a square black entrance to the barrow. There was no door; only this yawning invitation into the dark. Over the stone lintel was a lattice of long bronze daggers . . .
The druid’s knife! With a rush of fear, she pressed her hand to her chest, expecting to feel the sharp point of a blade sticking out. Nothing – only a small rent in the black dress, under which her flesh felt smooth and warm. Sinking back on her heels, she felt for the circle of hawthorn berries. The thorns were muddled with her red-gold hair, too painful to disentangle, and after a few seconds she gave up trying.
What was this place?
She got to her feet, still staring up at the lattice of daggers – they were set to form the words: Tigh Duinn.
Tigh Duinn.
She knew these words.
Aoife’s mind wandered, searching for them . . .
Tigh Duinn.
Yes.
Carla had read it aloud: And her only house is Tigh Duinn, the land of the worms, the House of the Dead, or Land of the Dead, from where no one can return alive, for once they have crossed her threshold, all are . . .
Then came the word that Carla refused to speak. And that word was . . .
Dead.
A giddy emotion filled her, as if she’d swallowed hawthorn juice again – dizzying, shocking – two thoughts at the same time, one terrifying, and one electric:
So she was dead . . .
But Shay was here!
Above her crouched the vast House of the Dead – a monster looming against the stars. Heart beating painfully, she took one step closer to the entrance. The high stone gateposts were decorated with carvings – worms wrapped around each other in segmented coils; armoured woodlice and beetles as big as her fists; centipedes. From the dark, a stream of cold air gushed into her face – wintry, bitter and venomous – chilling her to the bone. Tightening the thin black cardigan around herself, Aoife stepped into the icy blast and stood for a moment, head bowed against the wind, waiting for her fairy vision to intensify. Slowly her eyes picked up a ruby glow from further down; a light wash of vermilion and shadow shifted across the walls; her breath seemed to flutter from her lips in ghostly pink wisps like butterflies. Now she could see that the walls of the passageway were carved like the gateposts with the creatures of the earth: woodlice, ants, worms. She took another step. The stone floor sloped steeply downwards. The wind blew strongly up from the depths, freezing her skin.
Another step.
Another.
Twenty more.
Aoife came to the source of the ruby glow: a doorway set in the wall, heavily draped in scarlet wool with candles behind it. The curtain wafted slightly in the breeze. She pushed it aside, just a very little, enough for one eye to see. Within was a small stone bedroom with a clay floor; a high stone bed was placed in the centre with its foot towards the doorway. There were several tall candles set around the bed, most melted halfway down, and a figure was lying there – a long, slender teenage boy, covered to his eyes in a length of the same scarlet wool cloth as the curtain. No pillow; his dark head resting on the bare stone.
Fear held her in place for less than half a second, before longing drove her into the room.
‘Shay. Shay, wake up!’ She touched his leg through the cloth of scarlet wool. Cold and still. Weak with unshed tears, she moved on up the bed, pulling aside the blanket to gaze into his face. He was lying on his back, with a smile upon his mouth. A beautiful teenage boy, with long black lashes . . . But not Shay. Not Shay; some other poor boy . . . His mouth not curved, but straight; his cheekbones high and sharp, the chin pointed, with a scrap of dark
beard. He was wearing a dark blue shirt and thin red tie; the tie was loosened and his shirt unbuttoned, revealing his rib-cage. From a small hole in the centre of his chest there thrust the end of a small straw – a hollow, dried stalk of barley. Out of the hole a single trickle of dried blood rippled down over his thin ribs and under his arm. His heart must have been pierced long ago by the Deargdue, who had sucked it dry through her barley straw. Shivering, Aoife touched him. Under her hand, his bare skin felt as cold as the clay beneath her feet.
Dead . . . And yet he looked asleep.
She still had the leather flask, and unscrewed the lid, but there was not a single drop left to jolt him into whatever life – if any – might remain. She set down the flask on the bed beside him, and stood thinking. Remembering.
When she and Shay had found Eva lost on the bog, the little girl had been as still and cold as this. Yet Shay had kissed her, and his kiss had stirred a spark, even from the cold ashes of death, and Aoife had reopened the old wounds on both her and Eva’s palms and let her fairy blood leak into Eva’s veins, and life had come rushing back . . .
In this vast grave, there was no lenanshee to bestow a kiss. On a sad impulse, Aoife leaned down to kiss the dead boy’s cold lips herself. Nor was there a knife to slice open her hand or his. Gripping the barley straw between the thumb and finger of one hand, she pressed down the base of her other thumb on the sharp stalk. The point of it pierced the fresh scar left by Mícheál Costello, and a drop of silver blood trickled down the hollow tube, making its way into the boy’s heart.
She stood back and watched.
He lay unmoving, his lips still cold and pale. With a sigh, she pulled the blanket over him again, as if by this act she could keep him warm. She turned away, lifted the curtain and stepped back out into the stone passageway.
Twenty metres on, another candlelit room behind a curtain of deep dark blue, and here another boy was lying – this time on his side, his knees drawn up and his hands folded under his cheek. Not Shay. Handsome, freckled, with dishevelled blond hair to his shoulders and thick golden lashes; his full lips slightly parted. He was wearing flared jeans and a faded denim shirt, open to the waist – it must have been forty years since this youth was stolen away by the Deargdue, dancing away from the party across the starlit fields, joyful and in love.
The Dark Beloved Page 27