The Wren Hunt

by Mary Watson

  ‘We got unlucky,’ he said.

  ‘Was it you? Did you beat Tarc while his arms were held?’

  He nodded, ashamed.

  ‘We need to find another way. Together,’ Aisling said and put out her hands, palms up, pleading. ‘No more secrets.’

  ‘It’s nearly over. Trust the plan.’

  ‘Listen, Wren. I have an idea,’ Simon said. ‘We have to target Cassa where she’s weakest …’

  ‘Will you listen to yourselves?’ I exploded, and the waitresses turned to stare. ‘Just stop. Maeve will get me an exact location of the stone by the end of the week. Please just stop whatever it is that you’re doing before someone gets hurt.’

  ‘Don’t think that people won’t get hurt if we do it Maeve’s way.’

  I threw my napkin on my plate. ‘Please, don’t try to tell the future. Leave that to those of us who can.’

  I stood and left them there, their faces as grim as the gargoyles above. I remembered the day of the Ask, when Aisling had hoped it would be her. Had I misread her? Was it that she really wanted the internship, the adventure that it brought? Was Simon’s ambition to become ard-draoi greater than I’d realised? I couldn’t understand why she and Simon were potentially jeopardising the plan and blowing my cover. I couldn’t reconcile the two friends I’d known all my life with the two people who’d colluded to kidnap a woman. It made no sense at all.

  TWENTY

  It’s you

  I hear rustling through my dreams. The faintest notes of a song.

  AdC

  I sat on Cassa’s garden bench, eating an apple. Overhead, a murmuration of starlings rose from the roof, flying towards a cluster of trees. Their small bodies speckled against the grey sky, swirling from one intricate pattern into another. I tried to break it up the way we always had, dividing the sky into different spheres and reading the movement of the birds, but it was no good.

  The past ten days had been awful. Aisling and I weren’t talking. Maeve, despite assuring me that she was close, still couldn’t tell me where to find the stone.

  The chattering of starlings filled the air. A few latecomers moved to the high branches, their wings flapping frantically. Hearing a crunch on the gravel path, I turned swiftly, hoping it wasn’t David or Cillian on their regular patrols.

  ‘It’s you,’ I said as Tarc stepped from the tall shrubs. I wondered how long he’d been watching me watching the birds. I felt a skip of anxiety: what if he knew I was trying to read them?

  We sat quietly, listening to the starlings. When they lifted off again, their wings like heartbeats, they moved as one. My face turned to the sky, all I could see were the things I couldn’t see. The patterns I couldn’t decipher, the messages I couldn’t read. I closed my eyes.

  ‘Maybe you should take a few days off.’

  I opened my eyes and looked at him. ‘Why?’ There was a bitter taste in my mouth, and it had nothing to do with the apple pips I’d chewed. Just beyond him, a clump of bushes caught my attention.

  ‘You seem tired. When you started here you were bursting with energy. And now, well, I just think you could do with a rest.’ He had something in his hand, a small round object that he was twisting and turning between his fingers.

  It bothered me that he thought I didn’t look well. It caused my little vain heart some distress. Sleep was elusive. If I hadn’t lived in the cottage most of my life, I would have thought it haunted. I’d wake from fleeting, manic dreams with the stuttering stop-start of rustles and scratches.

  ‘Sometimes Cassa,’ he started, then stopped, worrying the object in his hand. ‘Sometimes she doesn’t realise when she’s asking for too much.’ He looked up at the birds as he spoke, and it seemed he meant more than journals and tea. ‘Even when she makes it hard to say no, there are times when it’s necessary. Maybe …’

  But whatever he was about to say was lost in the ringing of his phone.

  My eye returned to the bush behind him. It reminded me of the whitethorn tree on the day of the Ask, where I imagined the figure of a woman. Only this time it felt like the tree was watching me.

  ‘She’s here with me,’ he said. ‘All right.’

  There was the slightest movement from the bush, like it was stretching out a leafy arm.

  ‘Cassa wants you to come to a party on Saturday night.’

  ‘What is that?’ I said, distracted. ‘The thing you have in your hand?’

  He opened his fingers and at the centre of his palm was an acorn.

  ‘Lucky acorn,’ he said, closing his hand again.

  I hesitated. ‘Will you be there?’

  Suddenly it felt too much, the nearness of him. It wasn’t in the plan. I thought of those charts, notes and diagrams on which Maeve and Smith had worked through possible permutations. Nowhere had there been a box diagram offering an alternative, should I find that Tarc’s proximity affected me so deeply. Nothing had prepared me for this hyper alertness to him. I was aware of every part of his body: his long, muscular legs, those arms, that chest. I felt myself drawing closer.

  ‘I’ll be there.’ He didn’t sound enthusiastic.

  For all the wrong reasons, I said, ‘I’ll come.’

  He nodded. But he didn’t seem happy about it.

  ‘Then you’re taking tomorrow off. I’ll tell Laney.’ And he stayed on the bench, his arm against mine as he shifted to return his phone to his pocket.

  ‘What’s bothering you, Wren?’ he said, his voice so gentle.

  But I was taken by the figure in the bushes. I could only make out the slight shape of a head, like there was someone enclosed within.

  Tarc seemed closer than before, the weight of his arm against mine, and part of me liked it, while part of me wanted to leap up from the bench. He turned towards me, his face nearer to me than I’d expected.

  I jumped up.

  ‘I need a minute. Alone.’ I sounded like I’d been running.

  ‘Sure,’ he said easily, and I held my breath as he crossed the courtyard towards the house.

  ‘Wren,’ he said, turning.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You look like you need this more than I do.’ He tossed the acorn to me and I caught it.

  He hesitated, then repeated, ‘Lucky.’ He paused. ‘Look after it. And remember, you can say no to Cassa.’

  I watched him go inside the glass door and then I went to the bush. As I drew nearer, I began to see familiar features. Hair, hands. Red Converse.

  ‘Are you insane?’ I said, peering between the leaves.

  Sibéal was there, curled into a small hollow. I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or more afraid that it was her and not something … other.

  ‘You have to get out of here.’ It wasn’t easy, shouting in a whisper. ‘They check the garden. A lot. How did you even get in?’

  Sibéal gave a little smile. ‘What’s bothering you, Wren?’ She spoke in a mocking, high-pitched voice. Then she put a finger to her lips and, like a cat, slipped beneath the branches and out of sight.

  I turned from the bush to the bench, wondering how bad my conversation with Tarc had looked to Sibéal.

  The next morning, I was snug in my childhood bed tucked under the eaves. My desk looked wrong but, half asleep, I couldn’t say why.

  Then I realised: the brídeog. Her red floral skirt and outstretched leaf arms were the last things I remembered before turning out the light. Seeing the gap on the desk, I felt a weird lightness. I had a fleeting sense of strange dreams that pulled me in and out of sleep. A light brushing noise on the stairs. A slow whispering song: Beneath the oak my love does lie.

  Scrambling out of bed, I stood in the centre of my bedroom, as if it were possible to launch a stealth attack on a doll of leaf and cloth. I quartered the room with my eye, carefully examining every part.

  And there she was. Down the side of the desk. She must have tumbled over. I picked up the doll and tried to shove her in an overstuffed drawer.

  And then I looked again. The doll had lan
ded too far from the desk to have simply fallen because of a banging door. To land in that spot, she would have had to jump. Staring at the floor, I tried to remember exactly where she had been before I picked her up. I was sure it was near the cracked floorboard. Except I wasn’t.

  I just didn’t know. I examined the doll as if she were going to disappear in my hands.

  Sighing, I tossed her on to the desk.

  In the bathroom, I got a scare when I saw my face. My eyes were bloodshot and slightly yellow where they were meant to be white and clear. The yellow blended unflatteringly with the green, like some kind of diseased feline. A bruise had formed along my jaw. I’d had a spinny-eyed moment with mildew the previous night. Before falling asleep, I lost myself in the stained ceiling. And saw, then felt, a fist looking for my face. It was the second time that a vision had physically marked me.

  Downstairs was quiet. I knocked at Smith’s door and peered in to find his bed in the same state of disarray as yesterday. Sometimes he stayed at Maeve’s. Not a thing I wanted to dwell on.

  Pulling a ratty cardigan over my pyjamas, I slipped my bare feet into old wellies beside the kitchen door. Outside, the frost in the long grass seeped through the cracks in the soles.

  Smith had complained that the black hen rarely laid. And that she ate the eggs before he could collect them. She’d pecked the other birds and had closed her horrible little beak around Smith’s finger. She was not a very impressive magic bird.

  I couldn’t see her with the other hens pecking around the grass. I went into the henhouse, stepping between the dried droppings. No hen. No eggs.

  The brídeog had unsettled me, and I half expected the hen to have vanished. That morning, everything felt that bit more unstable, less rooted to the world.

  Rounding the cottage, I spotted fresh chicken poop on the front drive. Squawking sounded from the opposite hedge and I went out into the road, thinking up bad chicken jokes.

  It didn’t bother me when I heard the car approach. The village already found me a little odd, so out and about looking like the dog’s breakfast wouldn’t cause any loss of esteem.

  But the car slowed down and the driver called out, ‘Hey, Wren.’

  There were few people who could be that ra-ra up-and-at-’em so early in the morning. He was also one of the last people I wanted to see outside the cottage.

  ‘Hey,’ I said. ‘Nice morning isn’t it?’ Which translated loosely as ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

  ‘It’s grand,’ Tarc said in the way that only Irish people mean grand. Not majestic and opulent but fine yeah good OK all right let’s get on with things.

  ‘So, why are you here outside the family homestead?’ I gestured to the cottage. Which was not grand, in the usual sense of the word.

  ‘I’m heading to the village. Hop in, I’ll buy you tea. You know you can’t resist tea.’

  My confusion was evident. I looked down at my broken spotty wellies and pyjama bottoms dotted with grey hearts that Maeve had given me a few Christmases back. My hair straggly over my bruised jaw.

  ‘I’m not dressed.’

  He gave me a onceover. ‘Looks good to me.’

  ‘Five minutes.’ I glared at him. ‘You’re not coming inside. You’re staying right here. And I’ll have a large tea. With a pastry.’

  As an afterthought, I turned back. ‘If you see a hen, catch it.’

  Pulling on my jeans, I entertained myself with the thought of Tarc being pecked by that devil bird.

  Smith had come home and lit a fire while I’d been out tracking the hen. The woodstove needed cleaning, judging by the smell of smoke in the house.

  I found him in the kitchen.

  ‘Tarc’s outside,’ I said as I popped my head in. ‘He’s on his way into the village. I’m going with him.’

  Smith was making something that involved extensive use of all the surfaces. Probably toast. He raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Since when did you become his assistant?’

  ‘He probably just needs a local to interpret the natives. Won’t be long.’ I kissed his cheek. ‘Be good.’

  Back at the car, Tarc was standing next to it.

  ‘Where’s my hen?’

  ‘You mean the one I saw walking towards the house? She seems like a very nice pet. Docile.’

  ‘She went back in? Where was she?’

  Tarc pointed to a hole in the hedge. I went over, squatted down and saw a large blue egg. Very large. That must have hurt. That explained the infernal shrieking. No wonder she went into the hedge for some privacy. I covered it with grass.

  ‘So you happened to be driving past my house?’ A quiet lane that led to an abandoned quarry.

  ‘I have absolutely no excuse.’ His lips curled into an almost smile. ‘I was passing through the village. I wanted company. Just ended up coming this way. Guess I hoped you’d be out looking for hens.’

  His words sat uncomfortably.

  ‘You mean you wanted protection.’ I crossed my arms. ‘You don’t trust the natives. And I make a good human shield.’

  He laughed. ‘Your knowledge of the locals is a draw card.’

  ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘Been working. Now I’m suffering a severe caffeine deficit. I figured you could tag along.’

  He got into the car and started the engine.

  ‘Tag along?’ I climbed in beside him, wondering what part of running an arts and heritage charity involved the security trawling small villages early in the morning. ‘I think you meant to say you wanted me for my expertise.’

  ‘You’re right, Wren. I’m interested in your skills.’

  His words were casual. Light. Still, I wondered if he meant my talent. He couldn’t know I was an augur, there was nothing that told. Even if he had caught me staring at birds. Sure, normal people watched birds all the time.

  ‘Hey, what happened here?’ he said, running a finger down my jaw.

  ‘Hit it off the bedside table. Bad dreams.’

  ‘Dreams?’

  ‘Just dreams.’

  In the village, I showed Tarc the main tourist attraction in Kilshamble: the village green where the bleating of animals could still be heard when the wind blew right. He admired it dutifully.

  ‘There’s a paint colour called Kilshamble Green that’s the exact shade of slaughterhouse grass,’ I said as we passed the newsagent’s. ‘Very stylish.’

  But Tarc had stopped, his attention taken by something just inside the newsagent’s door. The morning papers. The headline screamed: ‘Fire at Newton Grange.’

  ‘What’s Newton Grange?’ I said.

  He skimmed the article, turning to page five, where it continued. The fire had been contained to the barn and apple orchard. One dead, and two in hospital for smoke inhalation and second-degree burns.

  Mrs Forde gave a loud cough from behind the counter, but Tarc didn’t seem to hear.

  ‘I think she wants you to buy it,’ I whispered loudly.

  He returned the paper to the stack, and we walked out of the shop. A dark mood had settled on him.

  ‘Gallagher,’ said a voice from beneath the awning.

  ‘What the hell happened last night, Canty?’ Tarc’s fury was unexpected. ‘You sent me on a wild goose chase.’

  ‘Got the wrong information.’ He shrugged. ‘It happens.’

  Then he stepped in front of us, hand outstretched with something yellow in his palm.

  ‘For you.’ He looked at me.

  So fast that I barely saw him move, Tarc had the man up against the wall. He held him by his moleskin jacket collar.

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  Moleskin, who’d been at the Huntsman with David, struggled against Tarc, but was pinned firmly against the wall. Tarc spoke in a low angry voice. And then Moleskin said something that caused a rush of anger in Tarc, who shoved him harder against the wall.

  ‘Out of my hands, man. It was out of my hands.’

  ‘Oh no, boys, none of that here.’ Mrs
Forde came out of the newsagent’s and glared at them. ‘Go on. Take it somewhere else.’

  For good measure, she glared at me too.

  With a final, disgusted shove, Tarc let Moleskin go. He walked ahead, visibly trying to rein in his anger. Moleskin lit a cigarette, keeping his eyes on mine while I muttered an apology to Mrs Forde.

  Moleskin strolled off in the opposite direction.

  I started after Tarc, but was held up by Mrs Forde, who asked after Roibeárd, which always confused me until I remembered she meant Smith; he went by his middle name in Kilshamble. He was an awful flirt and popular with ladies of a certain age.

  I caught up with Tarc, who was standing rigid ahead.

  ‘This what happens when you don’t get enough caffeine?’

  ‘What?’ He was stiff and distracted. Then he seemed to notice me, to remember where we were.

  ‘We’re in frontier land,’ I touched his elbow. ‘The sheriff will hound you out for unnecessary violence.’

  Though really, in Kilshamble, our one-man uniformed presence was David’s uncle, who would likely pat him on the back and invite him in for a whiskey.

  But Tarc was visibly upset. More than anger, something else was running through him, agitating him. His struggle for control was clear in the hard line of his body, his clenched jaw.

  I pulled him down the small lane between the tea room and the credit union. He stared furiously at the scratchy grey wall. Then he hit out, pounding it several times, cursing with each fist as it landed.

  ‘Hey,’ I said. ‘Want to talk?’

  He said nothing.

  ‘Is it the fire at Newton Grange?’ I pushed.

  But he stood there, the ugly grey wall behind him as he breathed deeply, trying to settle his agitation.

  I took his hand, folding it in mine. His skin was grazed and I wiped the blood with a tissue from my pocket. He watched me.

  ‘Wren,’ he breathed.

  Just behind his head, I saw that someone had sprayed Wickd bad! on the wall in black paint. Then I realised I was tracing patterns on his hand with my thumb. Ogham letters. R-E-N. But he was too preoccupied, too miserable to notice. I’d never seen him like this, lost and sad and angry.