The Dark Divide

by Jennifer Fallon

  CHAPTER 9

  It was raining again by the time Darragh and Sorcha reached Jack’s place, which was fortunate because it kept the paparazzi next door in their cars. Darragh’s ankle was swollen and throbbing by the time Sorcha retrieved the key from its hiding place in the glasshouse and they let themselves into the kitchen. Rónán had a memory of Jack owning an impressive first aid kit, which Sorcha located in a cupboard under the kitchen sink. By the time Jack got home from his gardening club meeting, Darragh’s ankle was bandaged, he was almost dry and feeling very little pain due to the helpful contents of a small white bottle in the kit labelled ‘codeine’.

  ‘What the feck are you two doing here?’ Jack demanded. He entered the kitchen through the back door, shaking the rain from his coat as he spied Darragh sitting at the table. He didn’t need to have it explained to him that this was Darragh and not Rónán. Jack had seen them together and could tell the boys apart at a glance.

  ‘There was trouble at the rift,’ Sorcha explained, coming up behind the old man. She had a kitchen knife in her right hand and a scowl on her face that did not bode well for Jack’s future if he refused to help.

  Jack ignored Sorcha and stared at Darragh. ‘Trouble at the rift, you say? Is that how you cut your face?’

  Darragh fingered the bruised slice across his cheek. It was still there which meant Rónán hadn’t yet realised he was able to heal the injury magically. It seemed odd to Darragh that Ciarán or Brógán wouldn’t have explained to Rónán by now that he could heal himself.

  ‘No. This is an injury Rónán received in another reality.’

  Jack looked around then, as if expecting to see Darragh’s brother. ‘Where’s Ren?’

  ‘Safely through to the realm where he belongs,’ Darragh assured the old man, although he had no real way of knowing. He was certain Jack would toss them out if they intimated that something ill had befallen his twin.

  ‘Not so safe, if somebody’s already smacked him in the face. What are you and Attila the Hen, here, still doing in this realm?’ he asked, full of suspicion and doubt.

  ‘Something happened to the rift,’ Darragh explained. ‘I sprained my ankle and couldn’t get to it before it closed.’

  Jack stared at both of them with a doubtful expression, shaking his head. ‘So you came here? To my house? Next door to Kiva’s place? Are you mad? This is the first place they’ll look for you! Christ, half the fecking Dublin press corps is parked outside your mother’s place!’

  ‘That woman is not Darragh’s mother!’ Sorcha sounded offended. ‘His mother, and Rónán’s too, was the Druidess Sybille —’

  ‘Whose stupid idea was it you come here?’ Jack cut in, ignoring Sorcha’s interruption.

  ‘Patrick’s,’ Darragh said as Jack slumped into the chair opposite at the table. ‘He said he’d come for us later.’

  ‘Jaysus, you didn’t tell him I helped you find Hayley at that rehab centre, did you?’

  Darragh shook his head. ‘Hayley made it safely through the rift. Patrick doesn’t realise I’m not Rónán, and he hopes I’ll tell him what happened to her.’

  ‘There’s a conversation not to be missed,’ Jack muttered sourly. ‘Jaysus-fecking-Christ, what am I supposed to do with you two now?’

  ‘Shelter us until we can find a way home,’ Sorcha said.

  ‘How long is that going to be?’

  ‘Until I can contact Rónán, that’s all,’ Darragh said, making it sound straightforward and everyday. ‘Once I arrange for him to open the rift on the other side, we can leave, and you’ll never see us again.’

  Jack frowned, as if he believed the promise a little too glib to be genuine.

  A fair assessment, Darragh conceded. He had no way of knowing if he could contact his brother, no way of knowing if he would ever find his way back to the reality where he belonged. The mechanics of their return were something he didn’t feel the need to burden Jack with. Better the old man keep thinking that contacting another reality was no more complicated than dialling up … what had Rónán called it … the puddle phone?

  Jack remained unconvinced. ‘You can’t trust Patrick Boyle,’ he warned. ‘You’ve nicked his daughter, lad. He isn’t trying to help you. He’s trying to find Hayley.’

  ‘We can explain what happened to her,’ Sorcha said.

  The old man snorted at her. ‘To be sure you can. And when Darragh delivers your lunatic explanation about how he sent her off to an alternate reality to be healed by Faeries, his next call will be to the good Doctor Symes who’s gonna have Ren-Mark-Two here declared criminally insane. You won’t see the light of day again, lad, not until you’re my age. If you’re lucky.’

  Darragh held up his right hand, displaying the triskalion. ‘But it’s obvious I am not my brother. His tattoo is on his left hand.’

  Jack shook his head. ‘It won’t matter. They’ll convince themselves that’s where it’s always been, because that’ll make more sense than what you’ll be telling them.’

  ‘Then we must silence Patrick Boyle,’ Sorcha declared. ‘If he cannot speak, he cannot betray us.’ She hefted the carving knife pointedly and added to Jack, ‘I am with you, old man, in your belief that his betrayal is not only likely, but inevitable.’

  ‘Patrick is not Amergin,’ Darragh reminded her, weary of her insistence the similarities between the men made Patrick in any way predictable. Or certain to betray them.

  ‘He is near enough to be dangerous,’ Sorcha replied.

  ‘Who the feck is Amergin?’ Jack asked.

  ‘Patrick Boyle’s eileféin,’ Darragh replied with a sigh. He didn’t want to have this discussion with Jack. He wanted to have it even less with Sorcha.

  ‘His what?’ Jack asked, climbing stiffly to his feet. He walked over to the counter and took the electric kettle from the bench to fill it at the sink, asking, ‘Anybody else want a cup of tea?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ Darragh said, seeing a welcome opportunity to change the subject. ‘I hope you don’t mind, but we helped ourselves to breakfast before you —’

  ‘An eileféin is the alternate-reality version of a person from our reality,’ Sorcha explained, undeterred. ‘It turns out Patrick Boyle is the eileféin of the most heinous traitor ever spawned by man in our reality, the Vate of All Eire, Amergin.’

  Jack turned the kettle on and then pulled out a battered enamelled mug from the sink. ‘Seriously?’ he asked, as he rinsed it under the tap. ‘Kiva’s house boy? Pussy-whipped Patrick? The Vate of All Eire? Can’t see it, myself. But that’s why it’s an alternate reality, I suppose.’

  ‘They’re not exactly the same person,’ Darragh pointed out. ‘Obviously your history has diverged significantly from ours. But his bloodline runs true enough for him to be considered eileféin.’

  ‘Which means what, exactly?’ Jack asked, dropping a teabag into his chipped mug before shovelling an alarming amount of sugar into it.

  ‘It means he’s likely to betray us,’ Sorcha announced at almost exactly the same time as Darragh replied, ‘Nothing.’

  Jack’s gaze swung back and forth between them for a moment. Then he smiled. ‘I’m sensing a differing of opinions here.’

  ‘Sorcha mistrusts everyone,’ Darragh explained.

  ‘Then she’s obviously the brains of the outfit,’ the old man said.

  The kettle bubbled to a boil and switched off. Darragh was secretly fascinated by the self-heating kettle, but he couldn’t afford to let himself be distracted by the gadgets and gimmickries of this realm.

  ‘Patrick will do nothing until he’s spoken to us about Hayley,’ Darragh assured him. ‘I know him better than both of you, and that is what I believe.’

  ‘You’ve been here a couple of days, lad,’ Jack reminded him. ‘You don’t know squat. Fetch the milk for me, would you, love?’ he added to Sorcha who was standing closest to the fridge. She scowled at being addressed as ‘love’ but did as Jack asked.

  ‘I have Rónán’s memories,’ Dar
ragh told the old man with complete confidence. ‘Rónán trusted Patrick with his life.’

  Sorcha handed the carton to Jack and slammed the fridge door, turning on Darragh impatiently. ‘Do I have to keep reminding you and your credulous brother exactly what happens when the Undivided trust Amergin? Or any other manifestation of him in any other realm?’

  ‘Why do you assume Amergin would betray us?’ Darragh asked. ‘Perhaps the defining event in our reality was the interference of Marcroy Tarth. With no Faerie lord here to corrupt him, Patrick could prove to be our greatest ally.’

  ‘You’d not be wanting to bet twenty-to-life on that, lad,’ Jack said, bringing his tea back to the table. ‘He certainly hasn’t shown any guilt about tossing me into the shite-hole with you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that if the Gardaí find you sitting here, shooting the breeze in my kitchen, I’ll be in a shiteload of trouble, lad, along with you.’

  ‘Do you want us to leave?’

  Jack hesitated, and then he shrugged. ‘You can stay. For now. At least until you talk with Patrick. You’re going to have to convince him Hayley is safe and well, though, or he’ll be calling the Gardaí from here.’

  ‘And then what?’ Sorcha asked.

  The old man shrugged. ‘And then you’d best figure how to get home, lass, because you’re not going to last long in this reality waiting for faeries to come rescue you.’

  ‘The Faerie are the cause of our problem, not the solution to it,’ Sorcha complained.

  Jack looked at Sorcha in wonder, shaking his head. ‘It’s fascinating the way you can say that with a perfectly straight face.’

  ‘Is there any way to tell if the authorities know we’re still in this realm?’ Darragh asked, mostly to distract Sorcha who was looking a little offended.

  Turning back to Darragh, Jack shrugged. ‘The TV, maybe. They were all over this on the morning bulletins.’

  ‘Do you have a TV?’ Sorcha asked.

  Jack smiled. ‘You really are from another world, aren’t you?’

  CHAPTER 10

  It turned out to be a long walk to Kazusa’s compound. Or rather, her family’s compound. For the better part of an hour, as the sun climbed steadily higher in a bright, cloudless sky, Ren allowed Kazusa to poke and prod him, guiding him this way and that through the trees, pointing him in the direction of her home. After about an hour, they broke out of the kozo trees onto a low ridge that looked down over an emerald valley, surrounded by more carefully planted stands of trees. The distant hills were terraced in what seemed to be rice paddies. Nearer the ridge, fat black-faced sheep grazed on the edge of a settlement clustered around a large walled complex of brick buildings with red tiled roofs, quite unlike the wooden buildings of the Tanabe compound. There were armed samurai patrolling the top of the wide, mud-brick walls surrounding the buildings. It might have been a village or a concentration camp. It was hard to tell from this distance. It wasn’t a fort, he figured. Much of the village was outside the thick walls, and despite the armed men patrolling the top of the walls, they didn’t seem high enough to deter an invasion. It was almost as if they’d been built to contain rather than repel.

  ‘That’s home?’

  ‘Hai. That is Shin Bungo, home of the great and glorious Ikushima clan.’

  ‘Impressive.’

  Kazusa smiled. ‘One day, we will be the most powerful clan in Airurundo.’

  ‘Says who?’ Ren asked, wondering at this girl’s self-assurance. She had answered an important question for him, though. She’d called this place Airurundo, not Nippon or Nihon. They were still in Ireland. The exploding rift had sent them to some wacked-out reality where the Japanese ruled Ireland. Ren couldn’t imagine how far back in history his reality had diverged from this one for that to happen.

  ‘My brother, Namito, says so,’ Kazusa informed him proudly. ‘He says that when the Empresses are —’ She stopped abruptly, her eyes narrowing, as she hefted the katana off her shoulder and pointed it at Ren’s belly.

  Kazusa had been lugging the heavy sword for a while, and the weight of it was telling on her. Her arm was trembling with the strain of holding it level. Ren could have disarmed her in an instant, if he’d wanted, but she was taking him somewhere they might not want to kill him on sight — somewhere he might get food and water and some idea of how he was going to get home. Ren was content to let Kazusa believe she had the better of him. For now.

  ‘Are you loyal to the Empresses?’ she demanded. Her eyes narrowed as she studied him, waiting for his answer. ‘Given what you are, I’d be surprised if you said yes. But you might be loyal to them. That might explain what you’re doing here.’

  ‘If I say I’m not, are you going to kill me?’

  ‘I’m more likely to kill you if you say yes,’ she replied with an alarming amount of vehemence.

  ‘In that case, may the evil bitches rot in hell,’ Ren said pleasantly. ‘How many empresses are we hating, exactly?’

  ‘What sort of question is that?’ Kazusa asked, rolling her eyes. ‘It’s that way.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘The path down to the village. It’s over there.’ She pointed to the left with her trembling sword.

  Puzzled by her odd behaviour, Ren spied the faint game trail they’d been following and set off toward the edge of the ridge where the ground sloped less sharply, heading down toward Shin Bungo and hopefully some answers. He glanced up at the sky for the thousandth time, hoping to spot Trása, but if there were any owls about this morning, he couldn’t see them.

  Trása, wherever she was at the moment, and in whatever form she had assumed, was on her own.

  Shin Bungo turned out to be the last thing Ren was expecting. It wasn’t a concentration camp or a fort, despite its outward appearance — it was a fireworks factory.

  That explained the thick walls. They weren’t trying to fight off their neighbours. These walls were built to contain an explosion.

  Kazusa’s family had been in the fireworks business for generations, she explained as they reached the valley floor and headed for the compound entrance. She was much chattier now they were within shouting distance of home. The Ikushima factory, Kazusa informed him as they walked along the rutted road beside the wall, had been here long before the kozo plantations surrounding them had spread out so far, planted by the greedy newcomers sent by their noble families in the middle kingdom, the Chu-cho-, to seek their fortune here in the colonies.

  Ren filed that away for future reference — even in this reality, Ireland was occupied. Not by the British this time, but by the Japanese.

  It was not a recent event, Ren figured. There had been more than one wave of immigrants to Ireland from Chu-cho-. Kazusa spoke of more than eight generations of fireworks masters in her family, and although she clearly had some Asian heritage she was not the pure Japanese of Chishihero or Hayato. Hardly surprising, Ren thought. Eight generations in a new country … at that point, you were no longer immigrants. You were locals and you were probably marrying the natives and having kids with them, too.

  Kazusa didn’t have much good to say about this latest wave of immigrants who, Ren gleaned, were responsible for a great deal of trouble in her part of the world. He gathered there were moves afoot by the neighbours to move the Ikushima family’s factory to a remote area because of the risk to the surrounding forests. Kazusa scoffed at the very idea, claiming her family had been here much longer than those wretched kozo trees, and if they wanted magic so badly, then they shouldn’t have killed all the Youkai.

  Ren hadn’t been paying much attention to Kazusa’s chatter until then, but that dragged his attention back with a savage jerk. ‘Whoa! Hang on, did you say they killed all the Faerie?’

  Kazusa shrugged. ‘Well, maybe not all of them — you’re proof enough of that — but they’re pretty thin on the ground these days.’

  Ren stopped walking. He needed to get this cleared up now. The last time someone decided he
was Youkai they tried to slit his throat. ‘I’m not Faerie, Kazusa. I’m human.’

  Kazusa never got the opportunity to argue the point. Someone spotted them from the walls. A shout went up and a few moments later the gates swung open and a dozen or so mounted samurai galloped out to surround them.

  Here we go again. Ren raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. The lead horseman skidded to a halt, swung his leg over his horse’s neck, and jumped to the ground. He was heavily armoured, and when he removed his kabuto his long dark hair was gathered up into a thick ponytail on the very top of his head. Kazusa dropped her sword and threw herself at him. The warrior hugged her briefly and then pushed her away, holding her at arm’s length.

  ‘I told you not to leave the compound.’

  ‘And I told you there was no chance of finding the yabangin Youkai by thundering around on horseback,’ she shot back, looking very smug. ‘I found him. Sleeping in the Tanabe forest.’

  ‘You went into their forest?’ The warrior muttered something under his breath, and shook his head as he let her go. ‘You are forbidden to enter the forest, Kazusa. If the Tanabe found you …’

  ‘They wouldn’t hurt me, Namito. Even Chishihero wouldn’t dare.’

  ‘No, but she would hold you for ransom,’ he warned. ‘And if you go onto their lands again and they catch you, I won’t pay it.’

  Kazusa was grinning broadly, and even Ren could tell the young man didn’t mean a word of his threat. He finally turned his attention to Ren and bowed politely before addressing him. ‘Thank you, wagakimi,’ Namito said, ‘for bringing my sister home safely.’

  ‘He didn’t escort me home!’ Kazusa objected. ‘He was my prisoner!’

  Namito ignored her. He tucked his helmet under his arm, revealing a young man not much older than Ren. He had distinctly Asian features and startling blue eyes that were out of place in such a handsome, oriental face. He bowed once more, smiling. Namito must have appreciated the fact that Ren had humoured Kazusa by allowing her to capture him and bring him here. ‘I am Namito, Daimyo of the Ikushima. The Youkai are welcome here.’