The Hawthorn Crown

by Helen Falconer

‘Oh, Zoe!’ Ambushed by guilt, Carla leaped up and ran to hug her little sister, swinging her up off her feet and carrying her over to the bed. ‘I’m so sorry, I keep forgetting how long I’ve been gone. Of course I’ll play Fairies and Monsters. How do we play?’

  Beaming, Zoe sat on Carla’s lap, one arm round her neck. ‘Whoever’s “It” gets to say who is a fairy and who is a monster. You can be “It” first.’ She was wearing a very old princess dress – the exact same one that a little Carla could be seen wearing in several of the oldest photographs of herself and Aoife among the hundreds plastered all over her bedroom walls.

  Carla stroked her sister’s nut-brown curls. ‘Do I get to say if Zoe Heffernan is a monster or a fairy?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Zoe Heffernan is … a monster!’

  Zoe squealed with fury. ‘I’m a fairy!’

  Carla pretended to be surprised. ‘But I thought I was allowed to choose?’

  ‘Yes, but you have to choose to say “Zoe Heffernan is a fairy”!’

  Carla laughed. ‘OK, OK – Zoe Heffernan is a beautiful fairy.’

  Zoe nodded, pleased again. ‘Now say, “Lauren Ferguson isn’t a fairy, she’s a monster”.’ Lauren was Zoe’s nemesis in junior infants.

  Carla said, thinking grimly of Killian being courted by Sinead, ‘Lauren Ferguson is a monster – just like her older cousin Sinead.’

  ‘And now say, “Aoife O’Connor is a beautiful fairy”.’

  ‘Aoife O’Connor is a beautiful fairy.’ With a smile, Carla glanced again at the photos on her walls. How strange it was that Zoe was right, even though the little girl thought this was only a game.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Carla shuddered and sighed in her sleep. She was dreaming of a demon girl who looked just like Sinead, sucking out Killian’s heart through a straw.

  ‘Wake up,’ hissed the girl, stroking Killian’s beautiful face. ‘Wake up, human boy, so I can torture you some more. Wake up!’

  ‘Aargh. What?’ Shooting upright in the bed, Carla lunged for the bedside lamp …

  Zoe and Eva, in their dressing gowns.

  ‘Jesus Christ.’ Carla had her hand to her heart. ‘I thought you were— What are you two doing in here? I didn’t know Eva was having a sleepover.’

  Zoe was looking very excited. ‘She isn’t, she’s here because she wants to play the game!’

  ‘But it’s dark …’ Rubbing her eyes, Carla peered at her bedside clock. Then panicked completely: ‘It’s four in the morning!’

  ‘It’s her turn, but she says she has to say it to you first!’

  ‘Eva, how did you get here?’

  Eva’s lip trembled: ‘I walked!’

  ‘It’s the middle of the night! It’s three kilometres from your house to ours! You could have got hit by a car!’

  ‘But I didn’t …’

  ‘But you might have!’

  ‘Don’t shout at me …’

  ‘I’m not shouting!’

  The little girl’s pale blue eyes brimmed with tears; cornflowers in the rain. ‘You are! You’re being horrible! I came all this way and you’re just being mean to me!’

  Crushing her knuckles into her cheeks, Carla took a deep, steadying breath. Fine. Stay calm. Be nice. ‘OK, OK. I’m not shouting at you. I can’t believe you— Aargh! OK, I’ve stopped shouting, don’t cry. What did you want to say to me?’

  Eva said, her mouth still quivering, ‘It’s about Aoife …’

  ‘Aoife? What’s happened to her?’

  ‘She’s turned into a monster …’

  Zoe stopped looking excited and raged indignantly, ‘Hey! You’re not allowed to say that! You have to say Aoife O’Connor’s a beautiful fairy!’

  It was a long, cold, windy walk back to the O‘Connors’, and Carla was having to piggyback an exhausted Eva the whole way. She knew she was doing wrong by sneaking the little girl home to bed without telling anyone – yet it seemed equally wrong to get her into trouble, just because a silly game had got out of hand.

  Also it was a good excuse to see Aoife, who would surely not mind being woken up.

  ‘Did you tell your big sister I was back, honey?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Was she pleased?’

  The child leaned her sharp little chin on Carla’s shoulder. ‘She didn’t care.’

  Carla said, taken aback, ‘Oh?’

  ‘Because she’s a monster now so she doesn’t care about anything.’

  ‘Oh, Eva. I told you, that’s just a game.’

  Up over the hill to the school, then down past the Dohertys’ three-storey mansion, the moon gleaming on its windows at the end of the long drive.

  Killian …

  Oh well.

  Hopefully, when he found out she was back – and if he still cared about her at all – he would find a way to see her. Maybe he’d climb up the scaffolding at the back of the extension, as Eva had done. Mad child!

  Down the hill, past a few more fields, and then the GAA pitch where poor Shay Foley had once reigned supreme; out by the shop where the bin had been overturned by the wind, and rubbish was flying around; across the square; past the graveyard; past the turning to the church hall and the deanery; on down the Clonbarra road.

  At least it wasn’t raining.

  Now she was trudging past the empty estate – although judging by the cars parked outside some of the houses, it was not so empty any more. Killian’s builder dad, who owned the properties, must be pleased.

  She was passing the garage now. The moon, which had been lighting her way, slipped suddenly behind the clouds and darkness fell. When they reached the lane that led down to the O’Connors’ house, it became even darker under the trees. She could hear sheep bleating and racing across the neighbouring fields as if in alarm, and the ghostly snorting of some heavy creature running at full pelt up the far side of the ditch, behind the elderflowers. A foul smell filled the air, and the beast bellowed like a demon, nearly deafening her. Carla sweated with fright – but then told herself sternly not to be such a coward. As she’d already explained to Eva, there were no monsters in the human world. The creature on the far side of the hedge was obviously a bull, and the farmer would have his field well fenced.

  A moment later she stumbled and nearly fell, her foot slipping into a pothole. Eva grabbed her tight round her neck. Leaking out through one of Eva’s clenched fists was a faint light.

  Carla said hopefully, ‘Did you bring your phone?’

  ‘No, it’s at home.’

  ‘Then what’s that in your hand?’

  ‘My fairy light.’

  ‘Show me?’ Carla was half expecting to see something like a tiny magic lantern, brought back from the fairy world, but when the little girl opened her fist, the source turned out to be a line drawn directly across her palm. The light wasn’t bright enough to make much difference to the dark, but it was a very pretty silver colour. ‘What is that, honey?’

  ‘When the banshee came for me I was very sick, so she cut my and Aoife’s hands and she pressed them together, and our blood got mixed up, and then I felt better.’

  ‘Oh!’ Carla hadn’t heard that detail of the story before. Hanging onto the little girl’s ankles, she splashed onwards through the mud and potholes, thinking about it. ‘I remember Mam told me once that, when Aoife was little, she was really sick and everyone thought going to die. Although of course I suppose that wasn’t her – that was you. The real Eva.’

  ‘I did feel sick, but Aoife’s blood made me better.’

  ‘There you are, you see, like I told you – Aoife’s a fairy!’

  Eva said doubtfully, ‘Mm. OK.’

  ‘No, really. She’s the fairy child that got left behind in your place when the banshee stole you away. And your parents called her “Aoife” because that’s how people say “Eva” in the west of Ireland. And she grew up in Kilduff instead of you, while you stayed the same age in the fairy world for years and years. Though I suppose to you … Let’s work
it out, will we? You and Aoife were four years old when the fairies swapped you out, and Aoife’s fifteen now. So, you’ve been gone for eleven years. Divide by a hundred. Um … um … Forty days! Oh, you spent such a short time in the fairy world! I didn’t realize.’

  Eva said, very seriously, ‘No, I was there for years and years.’

  For a moment Carla thought she’d come across another illogical glitch in fairy time – like the one that had brought Aoife back over two weeks early – until she thought back to when she was four years old herself, and remembered how the gap from Christmas to Christmas had stretched for ever.

  The old two-storey farmhouse loomed up ahead – white in the moon, which was back again. ‘Now, how are we going to sneak you back into your house without your parents knowing?’ If she was a fairy queen like Aoife it would be simple: she would run up the wall to an upstairs window, with Eva on her back. But she was just a normal, boring human teenager. Nothing magic or powerful about Carla Heffernan.

  Eva said, ‘I left the back door open.’

  Carla laughed. ‘You did? Well done! We humans aren’t that useless after all, then. OK, stay quiet, we don’t want to go waking anyone up.’

  With Eva still clinging around her neck, Carla crept through the dark kitchen and up the creaky stairs, and into the box room which had been made into Eva’s bedroom when Aoife had rescued her little ‘sister’ from the fairy world. Settling the girl into her bed, Carla whispered, ‘Now, you go to sleep, and don’t go wandering off again.’

  Eva answered sleepily, snuggling down, ‘Be careful when you go past Aoife’s room, because I still think she’s a monster.’

  Carla sighed. ‘Where did you and Zoe get the idea for that silly game?’

  ‘From a book.’

  ‘What book?’

  ‘Da’s book, from the telly room.’ The child pointed to the floor, yawning. Lying by her bed was a crimson hardback, very old and tattered: A Most Comprehensive Catalogue of Ye Irish Fairies. Carla picked it up – it was heavy – and flicked to the first page. Under the main title was scribbled in green ink: All Eval Craitures, Wich and Monster, Demon of Deth and Nightmar.

  ‘I really don’t think your dad would want you reading stuff like this, Eva.’

  ‘I can’t read, I just look at the pictures.’

  Carla sighed, then tucked the book under her arm, deciding to return it to James’s library in the back room downstairs. ‘OK, but that’s just as bad. Like I said, there’s no monsters in this world, honey. You left them all behind you when Aoife rescued you.’

  ‘But …’ Eva yawned hugely, and the muscles of her body relaxed, and pale lashes fluttered down.

  Out on the landing, Aoife’s door was closed.

  Carla inched it open, expecting to see the small bedroom in which she’d spent so much of her childhood – the walls covered with pictures of the two of them, just like in her own bedroom. Hundreds of photos depicting their whole lives together, from infants to teenagers. Physically changing with every passing year, but in their hearts always the same. Inseparable sisters.

  The room was a fridge: the casement window was wide open, and a freezing wind was sweeping the curtains out stiff. The cold white moon shone brilliantly in, and for a moment Carla thought she was in the wrong room.

  For one thing, it was extremely tidy. Instead of scribbled song lyrics and broken-backed books, there were glossy magazines stacked in the bookcase along with fluffy teddy bears and rabbits. Instead of Aoife’s music icons on the walls (Kurt Cobain and Lady Gaga) there were posters of wide-eyed kittens. And although there were some photos on the walls, they weren’t stuck up carelessly but were pinned to a specially designated corkboard just inside the door.

  All very recent photos, printed out on some glossy printer.

  None of them of Carla.

  Instead, they were of …

  No.

  Impossible.

  This must be a dream.

  A nightmare.

  Aoife would never, ever betray her like this.

  And yet …

  Here was actual physical unavoidable proof, staring down at her from the corkboard …

  No. No.

  Thirty, forty, fifty photos.

  Aoife and Killian, messing with each other’s hair.

  Aoife and Killian, sharing a Coke with two straws.

  Aoife, astride Killian’s childhood pony – him beaming up at her, holding the reins.

  Aoife and Killian, under a huge umbrella – Aoife hogging it, acting all girly-terrified of getting wet, despite being already smothered in a bright pink waterproof.

  Aoife and Killian …

  Aoife and Killian.

  The room spun and Carla thought she was going to faint. She couldn’t breathe. She was going to vomit. It was that sickening moment all over again when she thought she’d been snatched up into the sky by the sluagh …

  Not daring to even glance towards the bed – because if she saw Aoife’s familiar, sleeping face, she knew she would scream – Carla turned and fled from the room and down the stairs. Out through the kitchen door. Headlong across the garden and up the lane, sobbing freely now, running as fast as she could in the dark, still mindlessly clutching the heavy book which she’d forgotten to return to its shelf.

  In the field beside her, the thunder of heavy feet and a terrifying roar. Through a gap in the hedge, a bulky black shape was briefly visible, racing at full tilt down the middle of the field in the direction of Aoife’s house. But Carla wasn’t scared – not this time. If the damn thing broke out and gored her to death right now, it would be a relief.

  Aoife and Killian.

  Aoife and Killian.

  As she turned onto the Clonbarra road, a downpour drenched her, instantly soaking through her very un-waterproof school coat. Still weeping helplessly, she staggered on through Kilduff, up the hill, past the pitch, past the Doherty mansion – I hate him! (I love him) – past the ghostly bulk of school, and on over the summit of the hill down to her own house.

  When she got to her gate, she heard a car in the distance and glanced back – who would be driving this way, at this time of night? The road that wound up from Kilduff past her house went nowhere. Surely it couldn’t be her mother, out looking for her?

  As if this night could get any worse.

  She panted up her driveway and around the house to the back, and to her relief found her mother’s dark blue Toyota parked there out of sight. On the far side of the extension, old scaffolding was still fixed to the wall. She climbed back up the way she had come – although it was much more tricky to negotiate this time, with the stupid heavy book still under her arm.

  In a normal week, Noel Heffernan – who worked as an engineer in England – flew home to Ireland every Friday evening. But not this week. As soon as he’d heard from his wife that Carla was home, he knew he couldn’t wait until Friday to see his darling daughter.

  So he abandoned his work and went online, and after half an hour he’d managed to book an expensive last-minute business-class seat to Cork. From Cork, he hired a car and drove the seven hours up the west coast to Mayo. As he was nearing Kilduff, he started falling asleep at the wheel. To make matters worse, the heavens opened and his windscreen wipers struggled to cope with the downpour. Now he could hardly see or control the car, which was skating over the road as if on ice. Thank Christ no one was abroad at that time of night, or he might have killed somebody.

  Reaching Kilduff, he turned up the hill to home, by McCarthy’s shop. When he swung into his driveway it was five at the morning, and the house was in darkness. He let himself in, climbed the stairs, looked in on his sleeping wife, then very quietly – very, very quietly, so as not to wake her but only to gaze lovingly upon her – he opened the door to Carla’s bedroom …

  At the precise moment that his daughter was climbing back in through the window, drenched to her skin.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Carla was now so doubly, trebly grounded, she doubted
she would be allowed out to her own funeral.

  ‘But, Dad, I wasn’t trying to run away! I just went for a walk!’

  ‘You were out in the middle of the night in a rainstorm! A car could have knocked you down and killed you!’

  ‘But it didn’t!’

  ‘But it might have!’

  ‘Dad, don’t shout at me …’ (Something about this was reminding her of another argument she’d had recently.)

  ‘I’m not shouting!’ shouted Noel Heffernan, normally the mildest of mild men.

  Carla was woken the next morning by the sound of her tall, thin, grey-haired father unbolting and removing the scaffolding from the back of the extension. Good. She never wanted to leave the house again. She just wanted to lie completely still in her bed for the rest of her life, and not think about anything. Or anyone. Ever. And as soon as she had summoned the energy, she would take down all those hundreds of photos of herself and Aoife that still covered her bedroom walls …

  Unbearable to look at them. There they were, at every stage of their existence since they were four years old. Toothless little kids in princess dresses and gauzy wings, back when the fairy world was just a game. Then as schoolgirls, with their arms round each other. Always with their arms round each other …

  Oh, Aoife.

  What had happened to the girl in those pictures?

  Less than a year ago Carla remembered texting her best friend: ‘I love you more than any boy.’

  And Aoife had texted back: ‘Me too.’

  Maybe Aoife had always been two-faced …

  For the next half an hour Carla lay wallowing in bitter thoughts. She must never have known her best friend’s secret heart. Aoife must have been deceiving her all these years. Everything about their friendship, depicted on these walls, was clearly a horrible lie.

  Yet after a while more reasonable thoughts began to float to the surface of Carla’s logical mind – despite her best efforts to push them down.

  First thought: the Aoife she knew from these photos would never have done this.

  Second thought: something terrible and unusual must have happened to change her.

  Third thought: something terrible and unusual had happened. Shay Foley – the love of Aoife’s life – had been tortured to death by a demon girl. And Aoife had been unable to accept the awful truth. And then she’d been dragged out of the fairy world with no warning, and found herself alone in Kilduff, without even Carla to comfort her for her loss …