Processing those who chose to stay might have been very hard, bureaucratically speaking, if it hadn’t been for a certain child welfare officer who drove a pink Fiat and wore a scarlet jacket and skirt with a cream blouse, and who had turned out very helpful with adoption papers.
Last year, Deirdre Joyce had tried to take Aoife’s ‘sister’ Eva into care because her birth certificate didn’t match her age. But Aoife had set Deirdre straight about fairy time – and now the welfare officer’s expertise with strange adoptions was proving invaluable, because there had been something of a baby boom in Kilduff. When the banshees were killed and driven away, they had been forced to leave their stolen human babies behind. And these infants kept turning up in people’s beds; or hidden behind sofas; or even – in one case – rolled under the dresser. DNA tests matched a surprising number to their direct descendants. Others were recognized by family or neighbours who had known them. For instance, Teresa Gilvarry had discovered her best friend’s child eating biscuits in McCarthy’s shop: the original Ultan McNeal – a scrawny child of eighteen months. ‘Little Ultan’ was doing much better now, with the help of modern medicine, and was doted on by his father and older brother, ‘big Ultan’.
Some were old enough to announce their own names. A beautiful, enchanting three-year-old girl told everyone she was Caitlin McGreevey from Ballinadeen. There were no surviving members of the McGreevey clan, so the older Caitlin – heading home for the Land of the Young – palmed off her bête noire on Ultan. Because – as she explained to him – two is as easy as one (particularly if you’re not looking after either of them yourself).
There was even an original Sinead Ferguson – a baby still wearing a hospital identity bracelet from sixteen years ago – which was something of a shock, because the Fergusons had convinced themselves over the years that the hospital hadn’t given them the wrong baby after all.
The older Sinead had spent all winter working on her magic powers. She had developed the usual speed and strength when she’d turned sixteen; but her special power eluded her for some time – until she worked out that it was the power of letting people know exactly who she was, which was why Killian had always known when she was texting him. (She continued going out with Darragh, who had always known exactly who she was, and loved her for it anyway.)
Eithne Doherty – mourning her dead son – had opened the door of her house to find a chunky two-year-old boy sitting at the top of the steps, eating a chocolate biscuit. The original Killian Doherty – ugly, but enterprising – had found his own way home. And – to his father’s delight – was already showing a serious interest in diggers and concrete mixers.
The other, far more beautiful, Killian Doherty was laid to rest next to his grandparents in Kilduff graveyard – not in the tomb itself, because that was filled with concrete, but in the earth beside. The fact that he’d been murdered by iron was no bother to him. He was the son of Dorocha and the Deargdue, and he had been kissed by a lenanshee. The flowers planted on his grave grew so fast that old John McCarthy couldn’t keep them tidy, and Carla’s bedroom at home was always filled with snowdrops, daffodils and bluebells, which she often chatted away to. Now that the weather was warmer, she could leave her window open for the bees to come in, and make honey which would be gathered by beekeepers and end up on some woman’s table. And one day – somehow, somewhere, and maybe soon – Killian would walk the earth again.
There was another little grave within Killian’s grave. The husk of a butterfly, crushed in his sleeve. Maybe some of Donal’s sweetness would mix with Killian’s darkness, so that the next beautiful little boy to be born with white-blond curls and silvery grey eyes would grow up to break girls’ hearts but nothing worse.
Maybe he and Donal would be twins.
At least they would live again.
The other new grave in the churchyard was a heavy black marble affair, made out in gold lettering to Peter and Jane Munnelly and Peter Munnelly’s beloved mother, Lois Munnelly. The other, younger, Lois Munnelly – murdered by a lost soul in the Land of the Young – went unmentioned, because her body had never been found.
Aoife found it sad that humans could never be reborn. Although, as Shay had once said to her: ‘Daisies grow on every grave.’ (So maybe it was all the same, as her father had once suggested: ‘Think about it, Aoife! The body of Christ becomes bread and wine. How is that not a religion of rebirth?’)
Smiling, she shoved Shay with her foot.
He opened his eyes and smiled back at her. ‘What?’
‘Want to fly?’
‘Sure … In a minute …’ He was still half asleep.
Bored with waiting, Aoife, slipped from the cliff, circled, then flew straight out across the ocean, gazing down into its depths, as if through a block of blue translucent glass. A whale powered across the ocean floor, leaving behind it a silver line, like the trail of an aeroplane across the sky. Green and crimson forests flowered. For a moment she was tempted to plunge down into that paradise like a seal wife.
Instead she circled, higher, higher, higher. Savouring her weightlessness; floating like a gull above the glassy ocean, breasting the columns of warm air that bore her up.
Breaking the mist on the horizon were distant islands – circles of beauty she had never seen before, afloat on the pale yellow evening. Mysterious, secret … The darker creature stirred within her, unfurling its wings beneath her skin. An ancient being created thousands of years ago. A child who had first walked the earth, hand in hand with her fairy mother, when all the stars were different, and her father, a young hero of the Fianna, had even then been dead for three hundred years in human time.
When she was Aoibheal, not Aoife.
Without even thinking – or at least not with her mind – she coiled her sinews into powerful springs, getting ready to leap at inhuman speed for the horizon. Spreading her arms …
Then, changing her mind, circled again, descending.
‘Aoife?’ Below, on the velvet green headland, a waving figure.
She swept, grabbed him up, pulling him off the edge of the cliff, hugging him as they tumbled towards the sea, then up again, rolling over and over in the air.
He said, kissing her on the mouth, ‘Jesus, Aoife, I thought you were going to drop me.’
She laughed: ‘Never! You want scones at Carla’s grandmother’s house?’
‘Sounds good.’
So she headed for the Glen, with her true love in her arms and her best friend waiting for her. But as she flew, she glanced back towards the sea, towards that distant, golden haze …
One day she would fly out to those islands, and if she was right about what they were, she would spend a week or more sitting on the high flat rock as the tide rolled in and out and stirred the green silk on which her fairy mother lay, and washed her fairy mother’s red-gold hair and spread it out around her mother’s face like rays of sun. And she would lay her father’s own red lock of hair between her mother’s hands – and reunite those other, ancient lovers.
One day.
Another day.
I WISH TO ACKNOWLEDGE:
For being an endless source of inspiration: My son Jack – and his beautiful wife Rachel, who is literally looking down on me as I write.
For being so wise (and funny): Molly, Imogen and Seán.
For being my love: My husband Derek.
For being such a wonderful team: Claire Hennessy; Tom Rawlinson; Marianne Gunn O’Connor; Vicki Satlow. And for her sound advice, Kate Kerrigan!
Also, as ever:
For being great company: The Friday night crew – you know who you are! (Rose, come back …)
For always being up for a chat and willing to help out: My neighbours in Ross.
For always being there: Aideen, Bernie, Cathy, Sinead.
For being unforgettable: Tim, Liam and Joe.
And to Una and Denis: ♥
About the Author
Helen Falconer was a journalist on the Guardian before becomi
ng a full-time writer. Helen was educated at Dartington and Oxford. She lives in north Mayo, Ireland, with her husband and has four children.
Also by Helen Falconer:
They thought they were ordinary.
They thought the world was too.
They were wrong.
Join Aoife, Shay and Carla at the beginning of their journey, with the first two books in the Hawthorn trilogy …
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First published by Corgi Books 2017
Text copyright © Helen Falconer, 2017
Cover photographs © Richard Dixon & © Paul Gooney/Arcangel Images Ltd
Cover design and montage by Lisa Horton
The moral right of the author has been asserted
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978–1–448–19665–4
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The Hawthorn Crown Page 31