‘I’ll come with you,’ said Carmel, recovering faster than her partner in wine.
‘No, you won’t,’ I said.
‘Yes, I will,’ she replied.
And thus it went on for several minutes, the two of us setting the room alight with sparkling repartee. Eventually Fionnula rediscovered the power of speech and butted in.
‘It should be safe for her, Champion,’ she said. ‘My lands are held sacred. I have my privacy here, and that is extended to my guests.’
Carmel looked like she was going to argue, but swallowed it down. Probably thinking of all the Alka-Seltzer she could glug while I was gone.
‘But,’ said Fionnula, turning to me, ‘you must promise not to leave the grounds. The barriers are all clearly marked; you can’t miss them. Not a foot outside, do you understand? Outside, I can’t protect you.’
‘From the Hooded Claw?‘’ I asked sarcastically. I knew she wouldn’t have a clue who Frankie Goes to Hollywood are, but she was annoying me. She was laying it on as thick as her foundation, and I was getting sick of being mollycoddled.
‘I don’t know what that means, but yes, if there is a Hooded Claw out there, it won’t trespass on my land.’
I nodded, and turned to leave.
‘One more thing!’ she shouted, just as I reached out to open the front door.
‘What?’
‘Take your coat. It’s pissing down out there.’
‘Yes, Mother,’ I replied, grabbing the parka and slamming the door behind me. Not very gracious, I know, considering they were worried about me. What can I say? It was that time of the month. The time of the month when I had to decide the fate of humanity and all.
She had been right about one thing – it really was pissing it down. The sky was a cracked steel grey, black clouds hovering over the distant sea like vultures spreading their wings. The temperature had plummeted overnight, and I wrapped the coat around me like one of those foil blankets they give to marathon runners.
I trudged off behind the cottage, past a neat vegetable patch and a washing line. There was a pond, the surface bombarded by raindrops, and a small family of frogs perched on the rim, looking up at me and croaking as I passed. I say frogs. They could have been people, for all I knew, suffering the wrath of Fionnula the Not-Always Fair. Just in case, I waved and smiled as I headed further down the field.
I walked for about an hour without seeing any visible boundary between this patch of land and the next. There were no other buildings in sight, and the trees were bent and withered in the wind, stripped nude by autumn. It was bleak and barren and fitted my mood perfectly.
I needed this space, out on my own getting my hair blown into tumbleweed, to think, to ponder. To give myself a damned good talking to. How would I handle it, the next time I saw Gabriel in person? How would I react? Would he realise that I’d been poking around in his brain a bit more than I’d intended? Would I be able to even speak to him without blushing? Nah, I decided. I’d never been able to do that. He was a one-man blush machine.
I was stamping a bit harder than necessary on the muddy footpath, my Docs splattered with sludge like the side of a four-by-four, streaks of rusty-brown dirt striping the backs of my jeans. I was angry. With the world, with fate; even – unfairly – with my parents, for not being around to help me with all this. Most of all, I was angry with myself. For being such a total wuss. Boo hoo, poor little Lily – a completely gorgeous man-god was in love with me, and I was crying about it.
I realised as the thought crossed my mind that I was crying. A lot. The tears were whipped away from the corners of my eyes as soon as they spilled, the wind was so ferocious. But, yes, I was bleating. Not a good look. I needed to get a grip. That was going to be my new catchphrase: get a grip. As soon as I was back in civilisation, I was going to get it printed up on a T-shirt, or possibly tattooed on my knuckles. I could say it to myself in my best Scouse accent: gerra grip, girl.
It wasn’t, I told myself, so bloody bad. OK, there’d been several attempts on my life during the last week. I’d been kidnapped by a bloodthirsty fairy, transported to the Otherworld, met my deceased parents, faced the news that I wasn’t even totally human, and possibly filed my last ever pop page, which saddened me more than it should under the circumstances.
And now, I had another sledgehammer to deal with – Gabriel. Not just the protector, or the Great, or the man-with-the-amazing-blow-up-body, but Gabriel, the man who had kept an eye on me for all these years. Who’d been proud of me when I thought nobody was. Who’d cursed himself for the pain he’d had to cause me. Who loved me, with every ounce of his not-inconsiderable being.
Could I live with that? I’d be a fool to not even try. And the by-product could be, you know, saving the world as I knew it. Shopping malls and all.
I turned it around and around in my head, trying to calm my hysteria, and started to feel a tiny chink of light creeping in: I could do this. I could accept Gabriel. He wasn’t perfect, but his heart was good. And his body wasn’t bad, either … Whichever way I looked at it, there could be worse fates. I would try, I decided. Try harder; be better. Live up to my alleged goddess status. I mean, how could I be a fertility goddess and not even have it in me to love a man and be loved in return? Surely that was a big part of it? How could I bless the land if I couldn’t even bless my own life?
OK, I decided as I stomped the life out of innocent ridges of muddy soil. Fresh start. Try not to run for the hills; give Gabriel a chance. Get Fionnula to show me how to stop my touch-type visions. Accept him as my mate; maybe even get laid at last, har-de-har. Put some effort into being less cynical about the world, about love. About life. And yeah, try not to get killed in the process. It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was the only one I had.
The tears started to slow, and my breathing faded back to something like normal as I slackened my pace from Olympic-standard walking speed. I was exhausted, but it had worked. I’d walked myself calm again.
I was busy wiping loose strands of hair out of my eyes when I first heard it. A tiny whimpering sound. So tiny I had to strain my ears against the wind to catch it. A mewing, faint and stricken. I glanced around, but couldn’t see anything except the wild, sodden landscape and a fence running horizontally for miles in front of me. The border of Fionnula’s land. I’d finally made it.
I walked towards the downtrodden shrubs along the base of the fence, kicking aside withered briars way past their bloom, using the toes of my boot to mooch around. Nothing there except some fat ugly woodlice. Yet still I could hear it, that pathetic, strangled mewing. It was a cat, I was sure. In distress, by the sound of it. Maybe another of Fionnula’s experiments.
I pulled back some of the off-greenery, and saw a stile in the fence, complete with a little hop-up step to help you over. On the other side was a kitten. Black and white and so small it could fit into the palm of my hand. It was tangled in the trailing fingers of the briar, sharp thorns stabbing into its soft fur. Its coat was drenched with the rain, laid so flat to its puny body that I could see the shape of its skull clearly outlined.
‘Oh, poo …’ I muttered, peering over the stile, just as an ominous roll of thunder started to lumber in from somewhere to the west. Lightning followed seconds after, for one eye-searing moment drenching the sky in vivid platinum stripes.
I blinked away rain, looked over the stile again. There was nobody there. No thunder gods had appeared wielding hammers. No men in black. No soul-sucking Tuatha. No Hooded Claw. Nobody for miles and miles. Just me and this teeny tiny creature, writhing against the briar and getting itself more and more tangled each time it tried to roll free.
Nobody there but little old me, soaking wet, in an ear-splitting thunderstorm, weighing up whether or not to save the life of a defenceless kitten who just happened to be trapped on the other side of Fionnula’s boundary. Double poo.
I did another quick danger-check, then hoisted up the flapping wings of my coat and climbed – not very elegantly and wi
th a few swear words involved – over the stile. I jumped down with a squelch and stepped towards the kitten, kneeling down in the muddy grass and making what I hoped were soothing cooing noises as I took it into my hands. The cooing was all but drowned out by the drum roll of thunder and the subsequent shock of bright light. I don’t know who was more spooked, me or the kitten.
The poor thing squeaked and squealed as I tried to pry it free of the thorny tendrils, pricking my fingers so much drops of blood started to spot its fur. Eventually, I managed to pull the last cord away, taking a clump of downy-soft white hair with it. As soon as I did, the kitten wriggled out of my hands, did an amazingly acrobatic backflip, and ran away, without so much as a thank-you meow. Typical.
I stood up, wiped my mud- and blood-smeared hands on the thighs of my jeans, and pulled my hood tighter around my head. It was so windy I felt like my head could come clear off, like a scarecrow, and go tumbling off across the field, still talking to itself.
‘Hello again, Lily,’ said the voice in my head. ‘I know you haven’t heard from me for a while, but I thought you might need my help.’
I physically jumped at the sound, only just keeping my boots steady in the mud pool around the stile, holding on to the wooden rail to calm myself. No, I hadn’t heard from Fintan for a while, and I’d seen and learned a lot since then. I’d been in Gabriel’s mind. I’d seen the Otherworld in a whole new light. And I’d found out that Fintan had definitely been behind the deaths of my sisters.
I didn’t want his voice in my head. Or anyone else’s. It had to be first on my hit list when I got back to Fionnula’s. If I got back.
‘What do you want, Fintan?’ I asked.
‘Ah. I see we’ve been informally introduced. I’m sure you’ve heard terrible things about me, Lily.’
I stayed silent. I had. And I believed them. But still, Fintan had never actually lied to me, made a move against me, or broken his word. That was enough for me to keep his occasional presence in my mind a secret. Everyone needs their secrets, and as my mind seems to get treated like a rummage sale by all and sundry these days, me especially.
‘Where have you been?’ I said. ‘Out marauding and plotting the downfall of humanity?’
I sounded braver than I felt, but this was the New Me. The Gerra Grip, Girl me. The me that Coleen would be proud of … Maybe some good had rubbed off from her after all.
‘Oh no, I don’t maraud,’ he said, disdain dripping from every word. ‘I’m more of a strategist. And I think you already know that I’ve been unable to contact you while you were on Fionnula’s land. Hardly fair, do you think?’
I pondered. I’d been right. It was Fionnula’s power keeping him out. And all it had taken was stupid me to climb over a stile to let him back in. She’d warned me not to cross the boundaries, and I’d ignored her at the first sign of feline fluff. I’d be in for a proper bollocking when I got back.
‘Did you get that poor kitten wrapped up in thorns just to get me over here?’ I asked.
For some reason, that bothered me as much as anything right now.
‘Would you believe me if I said it was serendipity?’ he replied.
‘No,’ I said.
‘Then you’d be right. No harm done: it’s scampered away now, back to a cosy hearth, or chewing a mouse or whatever it wants to do. It was a pawn, Lily. A sacrifice to get you here, so I could talk to you. Set a few facts straight, as I can imagine what Fionnula is filling your mind with.’
‘She’s been very helpful with make-up tips,’ I said, spoiling the bravado slightly when the latest crash of thunder made me leap into the air. I screwed up my eyes and waited for the lightning to follow.
‘Has she been explaining about your visions?’
‘No … no, we haven’t got to that part yet,’ I replied reluctantly. It felt wrong to be telling him anything, but there was no point lying. I’m really crap at it.
‘I see. It’s important, though, isn’t it? For you to be able to control them? You’ve spent your whole life tortured by them. Spent your whole life scarred by your loneliness, never able to reach out and touch someone, never able to be held or comforted. Never able to share physical intimacy with anyone. No hand holding, no kissing, not even a casual hug from a friend. Not without anxiety. Never able to relax unless you’re on your own, scared of even brushing by someone on the street for fear of what you might see. How has that affected you, Lily?’
I stayed schtum. That, frankly, was my business, but I felt my spine stiffen as he made his list. He was right, about it all. If I survived all of this nonsense, I’d need to be in therapy for the rest of my bloody life. My inner child was well and truly pissed off.
‘Well, don’t worry,’ he said. ‘Fionnula will be able to show you. She’s a good teacher, despite her many faults, and it’s actually quite simple to do. Very simple, in fact. So simple, Lily, that really, you should have been able to do it by the age of ten. Your sisters were older than you. They’d already started their training before their … untimely deaths. Fionnula did it for them. The visions had started by then, but because of Fionnula, they were able to control them, live normally. Can you imagine how different your life would have been if you’d had that training, Lily? If you didn’t have your visions?’
I really couldn’t. I would have been a different person. I would have had a different life. I’d only need a few years of therapy instead of decades. I’d have been able to reach out in ways I’ve only ever fantasised about, and even the fantasies stopped once I got through my teens.
At six, all I’d wanted was a cuddle, for someone to tuck me in at night, stroke my face like my mummy used to, hold me tight and tell me everything was going to be OK. I was used to being loved, to being hugged, to having my small hand held as we skipped to the shops for an ice cream. I lost that overnight, and badly wanted it back. Wanted to feel that safe again, to lie in someone’s arms giggling and listening to stories and knowing that I was the most precious thing in the world. But even at that age, I’d realised I shouldn’t touch Coleen, or anyone else. Because if I did, scary things happened. Bad things.
By fifteen, like most girls, all I’d wanted was a boyfriend – one I could kiss without seeing him halfway through a colonoscopy in a few decades’ time. And by eighteen, I’d realised there was no use torturing myself with it any more. I was never going to have a boyfriend. There was no white knight. I was Lily McCain, and I saw dying people. It wasn’t ever going to lend itself to romance, or even to friendship. I was only safe when I was alone. Not a barrel load of laughs, but that’s just the way it was. No point crying over milk that’s been spilled, stood in, and gone sour.
So what if my sisters had been trained, and I hadn’t? For some reason, maybe to do with Fintan’s slaughtering of them, I’d had to go through it alone. Yes, it had been hell, but on the plus side, I wasn’t dead.
‘Fintan,’ I said. ‘Do you have a point? Because I’m really, really wet now.’
‘Very brave, Lily. Yes, I do have a point. The reason you weren’t trained, the reason you were taken away and placed in Coleen’s hands, the reason you were left to the fate of your visions when you needn’t have suffered them at all is this: the man you call Gabriel chose it for you. He decided it, Lily. He not only chose Coleen, he chose to leave you with the visions, and with no way of controlling them. He chose to let you grow up like that. He’s also a strategist – and that was one of his gems. To let you drag yourself up, damaged and alone and broken. So, whatever sweet lies he tells you, remember that: it’s all his fault.’
I felt a blur in my eyes, and realised I’d been staring so long without blinking that rain had gathered inside my lower lids. I shook it away, and stood as tall as I could, my knuckles white as I grabbed the fence. I felt all soft and slippy inside, and didn’t want to fall. Not during a brain invasion.
‘What do you mean?’ I said. ‘I already know he took me to Coleen. He said it was to keep me safe. From you.’
‘Really
? Well, he would, wouldn’t he? Yes, he took you to Coleen for that reason, trying to hide you away. But what do you think was the reason he left you with your visions, Lily? What advantage did that give him? He could have sent Fionnula, as he had to your sisters, within a year or so. He could have done that and still kept you safe. But he forbade it. He ruled that you should not receive the same training, that she shouldn’t show you how to protect yourself. He barred Fionnula from contacting you, even though she wanted to, even though it was the only way of giving you any peace. It was him – he decided to leave you, alone, with Coleen, unable to touch or be touched, rigid with fear every time someone stood next to you in the playground. So I ask again, Lily: how has that affected you?’
The rain had turned my hair into thick auburn ropes the colour of rusty nails, whirling in the wind and lashing me across my icy cheeks. I saw it happening, but could barely feel the contact. I couldn’t feel my hands, or my feet. I couldn’t feel anything. I’d known Gabriel had secrets, but this? This was … too much.
I pondered Fintan’s question, the one he’d repeated. How had it affected me? And why had Gabriel – the man who loved me, and the man who was also ruthless beyond imagining – decided to deliberately force me to live like that, if it could have been so easily avoided?
‘It made me … alone,’ I said at last. I could have elaborated: it made me lonely, isolated, sad, practical, independent, frightened, strong, weak. All of those things were true. But mainly, it had made me very alone. Surrounded by people, by life, but afraid to touch. Scared of everything but my own company.
‘Yes. Alone. And pure, Lily. Free from ties, free from relationships, free from any kind of emotional or physical entanglement. It kept you alone – like you were spending your life in quarantine, waiting. Waiting for him to come along and kiss it all better. He distanced you from everyone else; he put your life on hold until he was ready. He left you completely and utterly alone, until it suited him. Until he needed you.’
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