The Wren Hunt

by Mary Watson

  I scrambled back as the snake raised itself up, spattering small stones as its body arched. But then I saw at the base of its throat the snake had split in two. A second snakehead reared.

  ‘Snake!’ I pointed.

  ‘There are no snakes in Ireland.’ And certainly no two-headed snakes. Smith was always the voice of reason. He came towards me, clearly oblivious to the snake in the stones.

  I stumbled against the rail fence. As I fell I saw two open snake mouths hissing at me. They moved closer, poised to strike. And then, instead of forked tongues, two grey marbles pushed forward from inside the mouths. Like the special effects in some B-grade horror, the mouths shifted into eyes. Grey with long thick lashes, they stared at me with surprising gentleness.

  The snakes lurched forward and the eyes shot venom. The poison puckered my skin and the eyelashes blinked slowly. The skin on the inside of my forearm, where the venom struck, sizzled and burned. I fainted.

  The night of the first vision, Smith and Maeve seated me at the kitchen table. If I’d come home drunk and drugged with ‘whore’ tattooed across my chest they couldn’t have been more disappointed. The skin on my inner forearm was mottled and ugly and I stared at it while they explained. It turned out that there was something worse than animal entrails.

  My talent was apophenia. It was more commonly called, with some derision, spinny eye: the ability to perceive patterns in random things. And with it, I might see the future. But I didn’t care to know the future. No point in warning me to hide from an imminent apocalypse; I’d want to go, to dance between the falling rubble.

  It wore on you after a while, seeing significance in everyday things. The hidden pictures in soup, muck, gravel, fallen leaves, TV snow, branches on a tree and pee stains on toilet floors. The arrangement of peas and chicken in the vomit on the city streets on Saturday mornings. It was the road to madness, finding patterns in every random arrangement.

  Apophenia was rare, but pretty much everyone who’d had this talent ended up losing their minds. The only way to stay sane was to shut it out. The visions were a powerful hit, like a drug high. So, even as I tried to block them, my body craved them. The more I tried to see Hello Kitty in the bathroom mould, the more unhinged I would become. The hidden pictures beneath, which opened my glimpse into the future, were wild and not always easy to interpret. Sometimes they seemed to deceive me, deliberately twisting details.

  I could have lived with all of this. I could have gone with the occasional wood-whorl vision, carefully controlling how I indulged, so that I plotted my path to madness with precision and elegance. But what undid me was that any vision emerging through bodily fluids was forbidden. And most dangerous of all were the blood visions. These were wilder and stronger, but took their toll on the seer’s body. In the past, they’d killed augurs through convulsions and strokes, and so were banned by all groves. I was the girl who couldn’t look at her own toothpaste spit. There was no way on earth I could become a doctor.

  ‘Second marker to Wren,’ Maeve called out. I looked up. I hadn’t been watching.

  There, on the tree above my stone, sat a single magpie. Fastest response ever. Asks had been known to take all day when watching for birds to settle. Another magpie landed on my tree, as if to reiterate, yes, we meant Wren. I stared at my tree, still seeing the illusion of a woman, now with birds in her hair. Moving closer, I could almost make out details of a face.

  ‘What’s the third round, Mam?’ Aisling said. There were twelve possible rounds; the more serious the matter, the more we used. We’d completed two of four: stones in a circle, bird on a tree, and it wasn’t looking good for me.

  ‘Stone on skin.’

  Aisling looked up sharply. Stone on skin wasn’t commonly used. Even though it had been toned down from the days when augurs aimed to hurt, it still felt barbaric.

  ‘It’s a strong round, Ash,’ Maeve said. Stone on skin carried more risk for augurs and so it drew less from the nemeton.

  Aisling and I walked towards the edge of the hill. She didn’t look happy. Most people wouldn’t be, having stones thrown at them. But simple reasoning, the distance between us, the size of the stone, Maeve’s lack of muscle tone, meant it was unlikely to come anywhere near us.

  ‘Have you seen your mother’s aim?’ I tried to lighten the mood. ‘I’m betting she’ll hit that tree over there.’

  But when we turned to face the women, it wasn’t Maeve holding the stones. It was Sibéal. Sibéal who tried so hard not to be athletic. She disdained sport, and yet her body leaned naturally to it, eager for the chance to run, throw, jump.

  ‘First to Aisling,’ Maeve called.

  Sibéal stared at Aisling and then turned the stone as if she was warming it in her hand. Her face was set in concentration and she raised it, then threw. The stone whipped through the air and landed inches from Aisling’s feet. A perfect shot.

  A small smile on Aisling’s face. It could still be her.

  ‘Now to Wren.’ Maeve’s voice rang through the air.

  Sibéal’s shawl had slipped down. She pulled it up over her hair. Inexplicably, I felt unsettled. The intense stare on Sibéal’s face was cold and dispassionate. The stone was whipping through the air towards me. My hands flew up in front of my face and I felt a sharp pain just beneath my collarbone, muted by my shawl. I touched my hand to it, shocked. The stones were supposed to avoid the upper body. Sibéal was still staring at me in that strange way, and then she was running, screaming, ‘Oh my God, oh my God,’ like some kind of chant, her shawl and curtain dress flying out behind her.

  ‘Are you crazy?’ Aisling was shouting. ‘You hit her. Why did you aim so high?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ Sibéal was saying. ‘I swear I aimed for the ground like I did with you. I don’t know what happened. It’s like the stone flew by itself.’ She touched me with a tentative hand, pulling at my shawl to see the bloody skin beneath.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘I have a crap aim too.’ I tightened the cotton wrap around my chest.

  ‘Marker three to Wren,’ Maeve’s voice rang across the hilltop and seemed to echo down into the quarry. ‘An unbroken run. It is decided.’ Then more anxiously, ‘Did the stone hurt you, Wren?’ Her maternal instinct temporarily overtaking her role as head of grove.

  ‘Just the tiniest graze,’ I lied, my skin throbbing.

  We returned to the centre to close the ritual, Sibéal uncharacteristically quiet. We were all somehow more than we were before. All of us a little stronger. The ritual had done that. But, in exchange, that strange faint buzz was reduced, the frequency moving in and out of phase.

  Starting back down the hill, we listened to Ruth Lacey complain about the new doctor down at Kelly’s practice, that Simon, her younger boy, wanted to get his truck-driving licence, and how Mr Lacey was dreading the lambing that year. It was all so normal, so ordinary and reassuring. We’d go back to the cottage for tea and Maeve’s scones.

  There’d been three immediate markers. If there really was anyone out there answering our petty questions, they’d made it abundantly clear: it was me. I was it. I turned for a last look at the copse, and in my tree, the one where I’d placed the stone, I counted five magpies. I felt a slight chill, the faintest shiver. A sixth bird landed, closely followed by a seventh.

  We were always told: when something repeats, it gains significance. This is how a pattern is formed. And it felt like something was forming around me. Like I was being woven into something and couldn’t work my way out.

  FIVE

  The worst that could happen

  Today we visited Lady Catherine. She is brown with freckles and there are callouses on her hands. She offered to show me her garden.

  AdC

  Smith was outside with Simon, replacing the worn gate pole.

  We didn’t need to tell them; it was obvious from the way the girls flanked me. Aisling and Sibéal walked just beside me, their arms brushing mine every few steps. Maeve was behind, as if by forming this triangl
e they could protect me in the coming months.

  ‘I’m so, so sorry, Wren,’ Sibéal whispered. She was never contrite and a perverse part of me was enjoying the squirm. But her apology was muted by the sound of Simon dropping the heavy post pounder on to the pole.

  ‘Forget about it,’ I said, feeling the throb where the stone had hit. I looked down and saw, beneath the collar of my coat, blood had seeped on to my top. Again with the bloodstained clothes. Simon glanced at the blood as he lifted the pounder.

  ‘I didn’t …’ Sibéal started. The pounder struck down, the clunk of metal against wood inhibiting conversation.

  ‘… mean to hurt you,’ she finished louder as the pounder stilled. The sudden silence highlighted those words: mean to hurt you. I thought of David and his wrenboys. Mean to hurt you. They never did, mean to hurt. Always just happened.

  ‘Yeah, if you’d hit a bit higher,’ I tried for a joke, ‘maybe I’d be in hospital and the old folks would forget the plan.’ But my words sounded brittle.

  Simon lifted the heavy pounder and drove it down again, lifted and dropped.

  ‘Only three months,’ he said, voice catching as he raised the pounder, his fingers curled tightly around the handle. ‘Sure, that’s no time at all.’

  He brought the pounder down with force and the pole sank deep.

  ‘Here, easy with that, Simon,’ Mrs Lacey said. ‘Come on in for a cup of tea.’

  ‘Nearly done, Mam.’ Simon raised the tool, both hands high as his head, like he was about to strike the killer blow.

  I turned from Mrs Lacey’s fretting over her son, who seemed to be confusing pole driving with punishment.

  ‘You OK with this?’ Smith said as we walked around the side of Maeve’s house. But it didn’t matter. If a ritual decided something – suck it up, princess.

  ‘What’s the worst that could happen?’ I was out of my depth. This creeping sense of inadequacy was confirmed when I caught my reflection in the window. Smith was tall and capable beside me. I was so much smaller, my face warped by the glass. How could a girl like me deceive a woman like Calista Harkness? I’d fumble it, and then we’d be worse off than now.

  Smith was pensive as he decided how to answer. He didn’t want to dwell on the dangers, because he didn’t want to alarm me. But he didn’t want me to underestimate the situation either.

  ‘There was trouble last night down in Abbyvale,’ Simon’s voice came from behind us. His eyes swept over me, reading my posture, my fingers looped in my belt holes, checking to see if I was ready to hear this. His talent for reading body language was pretty strong, but not always convenient.

  Smith interjected, ‘Simon, I don’t think …’

  ‘What happened?’ I said to Simon.

  ‘Three of them from Rowan Grove were caught on a judge farm. There’s a pillar stone there. A strong nemeton. They found it by accident last summer. Been going in at night for months, trying to bind to it.’

  ‘How many months?’ I interrupted, thinking of the augurs quietly humming the binding songs under the cover of darkness, their fingers working the patterns. Forming a bind was like filling a large pool with a small cup. Slow.

  ‘A little under six. Three men every night.’

  It took around six months for a grove to form binds to a nemeton. Rituals were flat and without magic if there was no bind.

  ‘And was it working?’

  ‘There was a change all right. But last night Calista’s boys got to them.’

  ‘David and his crowd?’ I was surprised. Abbyvale was a near derelict town thirty minutes away. ‘Surely Calista Harkness wouldn’t worry about a gairdín all the way out in Abbyvale?’

  It irked me that the group name for judges was not swarm or murder, but gairdín. A garden of judges. Which made them sound all flowers and sunshine, and that couldn’t be further from the truth.

  ‘It’s strange all right,’ Simon agreed.

  ‘What happened?’

  Simon paused. Smith shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

  ‘Calista’s boys roughed them up really bad.’

  ‘How bad?’ I stepped towards Simon.

  ‘They’ll be OK,’ Smith said. ‘They’re strong men themselves.’

  But I could tell from the way that Simon was standing so rigid that the three augurs weren’t OK, strong men or not. That ‘roughed them up really bad’ was understating things. Again, I felt a surge of hate towards David.

  ‘That won’t happen to me.’ My jaw was clenched.

  ‘What they did to those men last night was a message,’ Simon said. ‘A warning of what happens to augurs who cross them.’

  My unease grew. The tension between judges and augurs was rising because we were feeling the pinch of our depleted nemeta. Judges were smug, augurs were angry. Things had become volatile. Wouldn’t take much to trigger open conflict.

  ‘If Calista Harkness finds out that you’re deceiving her …’

  ‘She won’t find out.’ I had to believe it.

  I turned away from them and their frowns.

  ‘It’s a completely different situation,’ Smith was arguing to Simon as I walked off.

  The news from Abbyvale had cranked up my anxiety. There was nothing to give me away, I reassured myself. We’d spent the last sixteen years hiding in plain sight. Calista Harkness lorded over the judges from Harkness House. She wouldn’t know our faces or names. No one in the village knew we were augurs, while we knew every single judge family here. Smith was smart, the plan was solid. Sure, the struggle was uneven, but stealth was our secret weapon. Still, I couldn’t shake my worry.

  Maeve was serving scones in her kitchen. Something sweet and cinnamony was in the oven. Cake on the counter. None of them appealed. It felt like there were rocks in my stomach.

  On the other side of the large room Smith’s research was mapped out on the dinner table. Charts, tables, diagrams, notes documenting exactly how we would lie and steal so that we could save ourselves. To stop an otherwise sure path to ruin. Already, families with weak or no talents were distancing themselves from their groves. With their rituals losing meaning, they no longer sensed the patterns of things. Shame or apathy made them turn away from their history and choose to live as if they weren’t draoithe. Groves were shrinking at an alarming rate. We had to act before we disappeared completely.

  Ignoring the background clatter of tea being made, cups brought out, the search for clean teaspoons, I went to the dinner table. Neon tags pointed from this thing to that. Colourful pinheads connected string from one possibility to another and then on to another.

  Heaps of notes, but the bottom line was simple: get into the archive at Harkness House, retrieve the map, locate the stones. And, bonus prize, find runaway mother.

  In the top left corner was the root of the problem: the nemeta. Our sacred sanctuaries. Sibéal had drawn a dolmen, a mound, an old oak, a circle of trees. Groves all over the country had lost their binds to nemeta. Either because a road ran where an ancient maze once was or because a dolmen had become a tourist attraction, its energy leached. But mainly because the most powerful nemeta were now privately owned by judges, their locations a closely guarded secret. They’d taken the best, and the leftovers were too weak to sustain us.

  ‘… must be another way.’ Aisling’s voice, both hissed and raised, carried across the room.

  I glanced up and saw her in the corner of the kitchen, talking to Simon. Their bodies were jagged angles and their faces tight. Her hand crept to her neck, as it did when she was agitated. Mrs Lacey, seated on the faded green armchair, blinked slowly.

  ‘Your cup is empty there, Ruth.’ Maeve smoothed over the awkwardness, carrying the teapot to Mrs Lacey. ‘And, Simon, you haven’t tried my coffee cake. Another slice, Ash?’

  Simon obliged and cut a huge piece of cake. Aisling, looking a little less blotchy, didn’t.

  Aisling was wrong, there wasn’t another way. I looked again at the map.

  In the bottom rig
ht corner Sibéal had drawn something like a triquetra, but not the usual three-cornered knot. Hers was looser, simpler: the Daragishka Knot. The solution to our problem.

  When she’d stolen her mother’s jewellery, Sorcha had taken one of the three Daragishka stones on the worn gold necklace. It had been in Smith’s family since his ancestor Ruairí Ó Cróinín found all three in the Red River, the Daragishka, on Hy-Breasil, the island that appeared through the mist every seven years. The original home of the druids.

  Together the three stones made the Daragishka Knot and were charged with the same energy that hummed through the nemeta, but on steroids. By forming the Knot we’d strengthen our nemeta and help other groves restore theirs. Problem was, the other two stones had been lost centuries ago.

  When Basil Lucas, the judge geologist and media whore, hinted that he could form the Daragishka Knot, Smith began to watch him. We discovered that he’d marked the locations of the stones on a map. After my premonition of his death at Christmas, we knew we had to find a way into his archive and get the map. We couldn’t let the judges find the stones. Not only would the Knot amplify our nemeta, tracking down Smith’s stolen stone would most likely lead us to Sorcha.

  ‘Wren, tea.’ Maeve pushed a cup into my hand and stood beside me.

  I sorted through the pages, passing over Maeve’s research into new ways of binding nemeta, Smith’s timeline for meeting targets, profiles on Calista Harkness, Jarlath Creagh and other influential judges. Beneath the carefully collected information, I found it. The plan of a house, Harkness House, the headquarters of the Rose Gairdín, with the Lucas Archive in the basement library.

  Where I would be spending the next three months.

  Unbidden, I saw my vision of the hands grabbing at the food-laden table. But not at Sorcha, with her long red hair. It was me stretched out on the feast table. Me with cocktail umbrellas in my hair. Me being fed upon. I shuddered, and from across the room Simon looked over with sympathy.

  Sibéal was being interrogated by Mrs Lacey. She looked uncomfortable, and I guessed Mrs Lacey was grilling her about her not yet emerged talent.