by Mary Watson
‘What’s going on, Ash?’ I looked at the augurs behind her. They were restless, waiting to move. Whiskey in hand, but poised. Alert.
‘I know you care for him,’ she said as she looked at me sadly. ‘I’m sorry you’ve been put in this position.’
‘You have to get out of here, Ash.’
‘We’re doing this for you, Wren,’ Simon said. He seemed older, like he’d been carrying a heavy load this last while.
‘Doing what? What’s going on?’
‘It was foolish, attempting to kidnap Cassa,’ Aisling said. ‘Much better to get her where it really hurts.’
Tarc. I’d told them Tarc was Cassa’s weakness.
‘She’ll do anything to protect him,’ Aisling went on. Give up nemeta, tell Simon where the stones were. ‘Pay anything in ransom.’
It was a more decisive plan than Smith and Maeve’s. It was also far more wrong.
‘They know you’re here,’ I said. ‘They’ve known all along.’
‘So, they’re expecting us.’ She shrugged but her mouth was a tight line. ‘We’re not afraid of a fight.’
‘It’s not just Cassa’s boys.’ My voice was low with urgency. ‘The crowd from Birchwood are here. You can’t take on all of them. Not here. Not without hurting innocent people.’
‘That’s not what Canty said,’ Simon interrupted. ‘It was supposed to be Tarc and David.’
I looked at the four guys who’d come from Abbyvale. And about three from our own grove. There were way more gardeners downstairs. Trained fighters who delighted in their history of brutality.
‘It will be a bloodbath, Ash. You can’t do this.’
I looked at the boys behind her. They were ready, adrenalin pumping, excited to release years of pent-up frustration by getting into a fight with Cassa’s boys. It had been coming to this all along. I didn’t know why Smith was so adamant we could avoid violence. It seemed inevitable to me. But not tonight, if I could help it.
Aisling looked away.
‘Get them out of here, Ash,’ I said. ‘Before it’s too late.’
If it wasn’t too late already.
Aisling hesitated. Then relented.
‘Come on,’ she called to the boys. ‘We’re leaving.’ And then to me, ‘You with us, Wren?’
‘I’ll find my own way back.’ I had to talk to Tarc.
Aisling fixed her eyes on mine, a slight raise to her eyebrows.
‘Who are you trying to save tonight? Us? Or him?’ And then she walked away, the augur boys following behind.
‘We’re going to do this, Wren,’ Simon said as he passed me. ‘Not tonight, but soon. This is going to happen.’
I closed my eyes for a moment as they left. Then I followed a little way, watching them walk towards the wide staircase where a line of boys were coming up. Gardeners. And they were looking for trouble.
For a minute, I thought my attempts to avert the fighting had been in vain. Augurs walked down while gardeners stood like sentries every second step, watching them go. The hatred was palpable. I stepped back, keeping out of sight. I could see the physical restraint it took for them not to tear into each other. I could only guess they’d been told not to act until Tarc gave the command.
During that long minute the tension was unbearable. Then the augurs were gone. Two gardeners followed to make sure they were leaving. The rest talked among themselves, then started downstairs, either to drink or fight.
‘Tarc,’ I said, stepping forward. He’d been lagging behind, checking upstairs for stray augurs. And there I was.
‘What are you doing here?’ He came towards me, pulling me out of the line of vision of the remaining gardeners. ‘Were you with them?’
‘I came to stop them,’ I said. ‘I don’t want anyone hurt.’
There was a long silence.
‘Yeah? Too late for that.’ He turned to go and I lunged at his shirt.
‘Wait.’
He was too close.
‘Why are you here?’
‘I’m working, Wren.’ He sounded tired. Fed up. I was too.
‘Working or fighting?’
‘You saw?’
‘A little. Why would you want that, Tarc? Why would you want to be the Raker, the most ruthless and brutal killer? Isn’t being a gardener enough? Must you be the biggest badass too?’
‘All for you.’ He gave a mock bow.
‘This has nothing to do with me.’
‘I have no desire to be the biggest badass, as you so eloquently put it. Becoming Raker is my worst nightmare. After my dad … I wasn’t going to compete.’
‘So that’s why you were beating the crap out of David downstairs.’ I folded my arms.
‘That fighting you saw? We’re battling it out for the girl of leaf and petal. Because that’s what the Raker does. He’s protector of the Bláithín.’
‘The Bláithín has a special protector?’ Cassa hadn’t told me this.
‘Do you know that David ranks second in our class?’ he said. ‘Do you know what happens if he wins? The connection between the Bláithín and her protector is for life.’
‘You shouldn’t.’ I realised what Tarc was doing. For me. ‘Not if you dread it so much.’
He lifted his shirt and pushed down his waistband, showing me the five-looped tattoo. ‘This is only the outline. It means I’m a contender, because of my family. It’s not complete. It will only be filled in if I win the title. All my life, this is what has been expected of me. My parents, Cassa. This is all they wanted from me.’
I touched my finger to the tattoo, tracing the top loop.
‘I’d hate it if it’s David.’ Even though I was planning to leave at the first chance I got, that bond would chafe.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘So would I.’
‘Do what you must. But don’t do it for me.’
I didn’t want Tarc to become something that might destroy him. Not when he called it his worst nightmare. Not for me, anyway.
There was no quiet around us that night, not with music pumping through the speakers, drunk kids shrieking and laughing. Someone lurched beside me, spilling her drink with a loud ‘Whoaaa’. But I didn’t know what to say, and my silence was laboured.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said eventually. ‘For not being honest with you. And because you now have a bunch of augurs out to get you.’
‘That was always going to happen.’ He made me hear it. That he was my enemy. That there would always be hostility between us. He stepped back. ‘They’re waiting for me.’
‘What happened between me and you wasn’t a lie.’ The words spilled out too quickly before he turned away. ‘I wasn’t using you like that.’
He stood there, like there were all these things he wanted to tell me but couldn’t get them out.
A loud, particularly sweary song began. He couldn’t seem to help the smile that now shaped his lips. The lights flashed to red, and for a short while, I wanted to pretend.
‘Come on,’ I reached out to him. ‘Dance with me. We can go back to being all awkward with each other on Monday.’
‘I should go.’
But before he could leave, I grabbed his hand. I held it firmly in mine, feeling the callouses, the hard, long fingers.
I drew him to the edge of the dance floor. A light drizzle of glitter rained from the centre of the ceiling.
And I danced in the falling glitter. Drawn by my movements, Tarc danced with me. As we moved together, his hand hit my hip. The first time it was probably an accident. Then it landed there and he pulled me closer. He dipped his mouth to my ear.
‘I should go,’ he said again, hardly audible through the music. But he didn’t.
Something had changed in the room. There was a feeling of a shared frenzy as the throng jumped up and down. Only we were slow and sure in a crowd gone wild. The lights changed to a steady ice blue. The glitter fell faster and harder. People turned gold and silver.
‘I should go,’ he said for a third time. And still he di
dn’t move. Grudgingly, he took his hand from my hip and closed it over my fingers. Two steps forward. I dug my heels in. I didn’t want this to end.
‘I don’t like the mood here.’ His mouth at my ear. We went another two steps.
The crowd had surged towards us. They jumped up and down in a steady rhythm, as if beating the floor with their feet. The very foundations seemed to shake with the fury and passion that swelled. Then, right before my eyes, the ground opened. The floor gave way, taking with it a large crowd of dancers in a cloud of dust. One minute they were dancing, jumping and shaking. And the next, they were just gone. Nothing but the rising dust swallowing the swirling glitter, and the sound of screams below and around me. The fall shook me, and it took a moment to find my balance.
For a second I wasn’t sure if I’d imagined it. But the screams went on, the furious push of the crowd away from the huge crater. The boy from earlier in the evening, the boy who’d asked if I was OK, dangled from the edge and then fell the long drop to the floor below. The ice-blue light flickered: now you see it, now you don’t.
‘Tarc!’ I shouted, but my cry was swallowed by the noise.
Through the dust, people ran screaming towards the stairs. A gaping hole yawned where the dance floor had been just seconds ago. Where the throng of dancers had plunged twenty feet. A few people were clinging on, their hands clutching the broken edge. Tarc was trying to help someone up. I moved towards the girl closest to me as she tried to heave herself over.
People surged forward and pushed into me. I felt a sharp jab against my back. Trying to stay on my feet, I was carried along in the tide moving to the exit. I turned round, pushing against the swell of people. But it was useless; another shove and I went down, falling between the running legs and feet.
I broke my fall with my hands and tried to get up. But the crowd kept coming in a relentless wave. Someone stamped on my hand causing me to cry out. A heavy foot on my thigh.
A hand grabbed on to the back of my dress and yanked me to my feet. I tried to see who helped me but I couldn’t. I surged forward with the crowd, and in the next lull I moved to the side. I surged forward again, and then to the side.
Now at the edge of the crowd, I couldn’t see Tarc anywhere.
I’d been to the old power station a few times, and as luck would have it, I’d kissed a nice boy in the fire escape on the other side. There was an emergency exit and a narrow flight of stairs on the opposite side of the chasm. I could cross at the bar area, but everyone was pushing towards the main exit. I’d be going against the tide and I’d get nowhere. Or I could cross an extremely narrow, insecure strip of floor along the opposite wall.
The crowd still pushed and pressed towards the stairs. It didn’t seem that they were moving at all. From below, I smelled smoke.
I moved towards the narrow strip and began crossing, shuffling one careful foot and then the other. I pressed my back against the wall, trying not to look down. As I crossed, I could feel the pulsing light on my face and hear the sounds of screaming and the stink of burning.
There weren’t many people on the far side. The few that remained stared down into the void, transfixed. One sat down, sobbing. Another ran around aimlessly, shouting incoherent words.
I took a last look around the room. I had to believe that Tarc would find his way out. I swept my eye over the crater and saw a figure hanging on to the edge with both hands. He was trying to climb up, but it was hard with the floor so unstable. I took a step towards him, uncertain. If the floor gave, we would both go tumbling down.
And then I saw it was David.
I hesitated. It would be easy to let him fall. He’d never bother me again. I watched him hanging over the smoke-filled pit. I could see the jagged edges of snapped metal rods. I could hear people screaming with pain.
David’s fingers slipped.
I lay down flat, reaching out both hands. The floor beneath my arms strained as he pulled. It felt like he was dragging me in. But just as he gained purchase, part of the floor fell away and I screamed. David was let loose, dangling worse than before.
Then I felt the hands on my hips as someone pulled me back. And as I retreated, David pushed with his forearms while gripping my hands tightly. My hips were weighted down by someone holding on to them from behind. I couldn’t turn to look, but I knew who it was. He held me strong and secure. David’s head emerged above the floor. I sat up to help him as he crawled to safety, then he fell down on his back. I scrabbled away from the edge like a crab. David lay still, his chest rising and falling.
‘We have to get out of here,’ I said, getting to my feet. My lungs were tight. Tarc’s hand clamped down on my wrist and he pulled me up.
‘Let’s go.’
‘This way,’ I said, pointing to the corner of the room.
‘The stairs are over there.’ He pointed to the opposite end of the room, across the yawning gulf, where bodies still pressed too close.
‘Emergency exit,’ I said, and the two boys followed me.
Tarc looked sceptically at the door like I was about to drag him to a storeroom. Grabbing a chair, I propped it open and pulled him through. On the other side was a narrow stairwell. We ran down to a door with a crash bar. I pushed against it but nothing happened. David and Tarc both worked at it but there was no give.
‘It’s jammed,’ David said, pointing to a mangled Allen key that had been inserted in the bar, presumably to lock it at some point. The building was abandoned, whoever supervised it was probably more concerned about keeping people out than the proper procedure for emergency exits. The two boys heaved and pushed against the door until it broke. We fell into the cold marsh outside and away from the smoke and dust. I took in big gulps of the clean air.
It was raining, large, almost painful drops. At the front of the building the emergency services were arriving. Cold, ragged partygoers watched in shock. I didn’t want to think about the people inside.
‘I need to get away from here,’ I said. I felt panicked by my need to escape.
‘Me too,’ Tarc said. He looked pale, unsettled. David was on his phone, and from what I could hear, Laney and the other gardeners were on the far side of the building.
I texted Aisling, relieved when her message pinged to my phone, saying they were at the Lacey farm.
Before he set off to find Laney, David shuffled uncomfortably.
‘Thanks.’
Across the marsh were ambulances, guards and a multitude of vehicles whose flashing lights signalled the horror of what had happened.
A helicopter circled and we ran off into the wet night, losing ourselves in the marsh. We made it to the road when the rain stopped.
‘Where’s your car?’ I said, shivering.
‘I came with David,’ Tarc said. ‘I’ll get you a taxi.’
‘I want to walk.’
‘It’s too far.’
‘Just for a while.’
We trudged through quiet roads, passing a petrol station, a row of shops where blank-faced mannequins stared out of the windows. We’d been walking for about twenty minutes when I stopped suddenly. I bent over with the weight of it: that awful lead in my gut. I closed my eyes, hearing the screams of the people who had fallen.
‘You’re soaked. I’m calling a taxi,’ Tarc said, taking out his phone.
We’d stopped in a small tunnel beneath a bridge. From the motorway above, I could hear the muffled sound of zooming cars. The tyres crossed the expansion joints, and from the tunnel it sounded like a heartbeat.
But I didn’t want to go home just yet. I didn’t know how I could sleep without seeing all those people who’d been dancing in glitter and fog, not realising what would happen in the next minute.
Another car drove above us, and the heartbeat thumped again.
‘Do you think they’re OK?’ I said. ‘All those people who fell?’
‘Some of them will be.’ Which meant that some of them wouldn’t. Thump, thump from the cars above us.
‘T
here’s something you should have,’ Tarc said. He pulled a small book from his jacket pocket and handed it to me. ‘Arabella’s journal. Read it before you do the ritual.’
I took it from him. The rain had washed away the dust, but silver and gold glitter still clung to his face.
‘Don’t tell Cassa I gave it to you,’ he said.
‘Tarc,’ I began. There was so much to say, but still I couldn’t. I stared down at the book, wishing I could explain.
‘Yes?’ But his voice was cold and whatever truce we’d called had come to an end.
‘Thank you.’
My taxi turned the corner. As I walked from under the bridge, I heard the last heartbeat as a car on the bridge crossed the expansion joints.
THIRTY
I’ve got you
They come to me all the time now. They are drawn like moths to a flame.
AdC
The next day was the equinox, and I had to read the egg from the divining hen.
On the fridge, held by a small magnetic photograph of Smith and me, I found Maeve’s instructions, which included fasting, incense and dancing in the forest. She’d also left her flowery bag with a hip flask of sherry and a vial of something that smelled disgusting.
I was glad Smith was out. I didn’t need an audience for any part of this. Looking through kitchen drawer, I found the cones of incense and frankincense tears. Maeve’s instructions, bafflingly, called for a pure stone. There were some stones I’d brought home long ago from a beach at Spiddal, and I went to look for them in the shed.
Smith must have cleared it out. The floor was pristine, no bird shit anywhere. But there were new tools, tins of paint in the corner. Stone in hand, I shut the shed door. Somewhere inside the cottage my phone rang, but I ignored it.
In the bathroom, I burned frankincense on the flat stone and stepped into the hot water. Easing down, I immersed myself in the heat. I opened Arabella’s journal, breaking several of Laney’s rules for handling old books.
It was a slim book, written in a neat, old-fashioned hand. The diary entries were erratic and not chronological. It seemed that Arabella eschewed the left to right page order and chose to write entries in the middle of the book, at the back or three months earlier. It didn’t help that not all the entries were dated. The effect was a jumbled mess. But there was one thing that Arabella was adamant about: I am not mad. I am in full possession of my faculties. I choose an alternative way to frame my experiences of this world. I am not mad.