“Healing a brave warrior is never a waste. As for the foreign occupiers, we do what we can. But we cannot win your war for you. There are too few of us who are concerned with human affairs. Our homes and our lives are in the earth, in the sound of the wind, the crashing waves, under ancient hills. Most believe it matters not who walks on the ground, whether they speak Irish or English, or which gods they worship. It changes nothing for them.”
“But you’re different than most.”
“We are.”
“Why?”
“Because we have ears to hear the cries of your people. We hear the child whose house has been burnt to ash, whose parents have been slaughtered. We hear the farmer who ships his grain to England while his own children starve. We hear the seanchaí who rots in prison for telling our stories in the language of her mothers. And once we have heard, we cannot unhear.”
“If you’ve healed me, why can’t I move?”
“Even what you call magic takes time.”
“So . . . this is what the Good People do? Heal soldiers?”
“Not all soldiers,” the voice of stone said. “Not this one.”
Padraig looked around. A mist passed in front of his eyes and then he noticed that he was not alone in the clearing. Lying three feet away was another figure. He wore black and tan.
Padraig tried to reach for his rifle, but all he could do was stare. The soldier seemed as immobilized as he, but his face was contorted into a gruesome mask. Tears ran from his eyes, mixing with mucus that poured from his nose and saliva from his mouth. A grinding noise, then his mouth snapped open and a guttural scream tore open the night air.
“What’s happening to him?” Padraig asked. He couldn’t look away. He didn’t want to look away.
“The enemies of Ireland are our enemies as well,” the high voice spoke. “You are being healed. He is being punished.”
He felt hands on him again, caressing, soothing, silencing. “Shhh. It is our gift to you, child of Ireland. This is the man who shot you. A British soldier bent on your destruction.”
Again the Tan soldier screamed. Padraig had never heard such agony, such abject misery. It sent a thrill through him. “Are you killing him?”
“That is his desire,” the man’s voice growled. “But no.”
The soldier’s legs jerked and convulsed. Deep red blotches began spreading, staining the tan trousers. The stench of his bowels giving way.
Padraig’s stomach revolted. “What will you do to him?”
“We will release him, eventually, so that he may go back and tell his fellow oppressors how it feels to experience seven hundred years of pain.”
Seven hundred years of pain—yes, that’s what the British had brought upon his people.
He turned his head away, fixed his gaze on the alder branches above. “Where’s Tom? Where are the others?”
“They left you.” It was difficult to hear the voice over the Tan soldier’s gasps and moans.
“Left? They wouldn’t.”
The Tan started pleading, but his words were nonsense, jumbled cries and screams bursting from his lips between desperate gasps. Then, “Annie . . .”
Padraig wished he could block his ears. A sudden, fleeting image of a young woman, waiting for her lover to come home. He glanced at the soldier’s twitching fingers and saw a gold band.
It doesn’t change anything. Was this how Father had sounded before he died? Had Padraig’s mother’s name escaped his lips? His injuries from the beating had been so severe they’d had to tie him to a chair to shoot him.
“This one has a troubled mind,” the phantom woman’s voice remarked, her voice calm amidst the tortured screams.
“They all do,” the high voice answered. “Those who wear the Black and Tan.”
That’s why they’re here, Padraig thought. Too damaged by war to function in normal society. Sent to terrorize the Irish instead.
“It almost makes you pity him,” the woman said.
“Don’t,” Padraig croaked. “Don’t pity him. Any of them.” You don’t know what they’ve done.
“Oh, we know what they’ve done. More than you.”
The soldier sobbed. Padraig’s nerves twitched.
“When can I leave?”
“Soon.”
“And him?” Why had he asked that? What did he care?
“When we’re done with him.”
He wished the soldier would shut up, would just die already. The screaming started again in earnest.
“Can’t you leave off him?”
A pause. “Why?” The voice was curious.
“He’s had enough, sure he has. Just let him die, for Jaysus’ sake.” His voice echoed through the air, bounced between trees: die, die, die, die.
“Stop it.” He wanted to see them, why couldn’t he see them?
The voices stilled. The soldier moaned.
“Death is too sweet for one of these,” the high voice said. A gust of wind ruffled Padraig’s hair. “Their brutality is not limited to acts of war.”
The wind swept down his body, chilling him. “You think I don’t know that? It’s only—”
“Only . . .?”
“I just want it to be over.” It was all he wanted. The British out. The fighting ended. The fear, the horror, everything that stood between him and a normal life. With Kathleen. Daisy.
The soldier stopped screaming. Padraig turned to look at the sudden silence. The body was still. The eyes open. Unseeing. Unfeeling.
Padraig exhaled.
“There is your mercy,” said the woman’s voice. Her hand caressed his brow. “And now, your healing is complete.”
He could move his arm. His hand flew to his pocket, to the envelope. He gripped it in his fist, brought it to his lips.
A murmur in the trees.
Get up. He stumbled to his feet like a foal standing for the first time. “I want to see you.”
“Not yet.”
“How can I know you’re real?”
A stronger gust of wind.
“No matter. We do not require your belief in order to exist. The war is almost over, Padraig Murphy. Go, see to your wife and child.”
“It is?” He staggered about the clearing, almost tripping on the Tan soldier’s body. “Do we win?”
No one answered.
“Do we win?” Louder this time.
Silence.
A sudden dread filled him. But why? He had been saved from death. At that moment it didn’t matter; he wanted nothing more than to leave this battleground and be home with Kathleen, to hold Daisy in his arms. He crashed through the bushes, breaking branches and thrusting aside the thick leaves. His body felt haler than it had in years. His thoughts hung in ribbons.
He burst free of the wood, into the field by the road where they’d ambushed the Tans. The hedgerow was no longer neat and thick. Large chunks were missing, the rest broken and bent. The road was empty, the bodies and debris taken away when it was still light. Crows feasted on the side of the road.
“Tom! Tom Quinn!” Padraig called. There was no sound of movement. Had they really left him there, while his own blood seeped into the ground? Perhaps they’d thought him dead, had gone to hide their arms and tend to the wounded, then returned to find him gone. It didn’t matter now. He had to get to Inishannon, to his Kathleen.
His fingers clutched at the envelope, tearing it. There, there she was, smiling at him, with mischief in her eyes.
He forced himself to his feet, ran to the back of the cottage and found what he needed—a bicycle. It was old and rusted, and the seat as hard as stone, but it would take him to Kathleen faster than his two legs alone. He pedaled furiously in the dark, the moon darting behind clouds as though trying to impede his progress. Would the Good People follow? Twice he fell, wheels lodged in the deep grooves of the clay road. But he took no mind of the scraped hands, the torn knees, only that he must keep going.
The village was quiet and dark, houses and pubs and shops sh
uttered for fear of the Tans. He careened down the main street, falling again as he turned the corner to his own lane too fast. Abandoning the bicycle, he sprinted toward his door. There was a candle lit in the window. Why? Was she waiting for him? Or did she hear of the ambush and think he was dead?
The door flew open at his touch and he stumbled into the front room. “Kathleen!” he shouted, bent over and panting. “Kathleen!” The room was empty, save for the dancing flame.
A figure emerged from the dark hallway—from their bedroom. “Kathleen,” he moaned, and started toward her. But then the woman came into the light. His stomach turned to stone.
“The Tans shot her,” her sister Grace whispered from the hallway. “I’d heard you’d been killed as well, how did you—”
“Killed?”
Grace nodded, her eyes wide and afraid.
“How? Why?” He stared at her, unblinking. It was not possible, not after he himself had escaped death. It would be too cruel an irony.
“She was on the market road, after seein’ the doctor for a wee cough of Daisy’s. We think—because of the way they found her—she was sittin’ on the wall, nursin’ the child. The Tans drove by in two lorries. One of them shot her, in the stomach, like. O’ course, she dropped the babe when she fell.” Grace closed her eyes. “The other lorry hit her.”
Padraig sank to the floor. His stomach churned, but the rest of him was as paralyzed as though the Good People had put another spell on him.
“And Daisy?” He couldn’t finish.
Grace hunched, clutched her arms around her chest, shook her head. Then she turned abruptly and went into the kitchen. The kettle was boiling.
He watched her go, then his eyes fell on the light in the window, the dancing flame. Slowly, he made his legs carry him to the window. He snuffed the tiny flame out between his fingers, barely registering the singed flesh.
He began the long walk down the shadowed hallway. When he reached the door, his hand hovered over the knob. There was still a chance he was trapped in purgatory, or in some pain-induced dream. But if he turned the knob, if he stepped through the door and found his wife and daughter dead, there would be no waking up.
He pushed open the door.
Her hair was down. It spread around her on the white pillow, like blood splayed across a field of new snow. Her face was ashen, without the enduring flush in her cheeks, the memory of which had kept him warm on so many nights, camped in damp fields and mouldy ruins.
Their daughter was cradled in her arms. She had been bandaged from head to tiny toes, a wee mummy.
He wanted to go to them. To touch them. To hold their stiffening bodies.
He backed out of the room. Closed the door.
Grace was waiting for him. She offered him a glass of whiskey with shaking hands. He took it, drained the liquid between clenched teeth.
“I’m so sorry, Padraig,” she said. “Shall I—” He silenced her with an abrupt wave. He set down the glass, then moved toward the door. “Where are you going? You’re not thinking of leaving!”
“I showed him mercy,” he said, his voice low, his eyes fixed on the doorknob gripped in his fist.
“Who? What are you talking about?”
“One of these bastards. One of the men who did this. Mercy.” He spat the word.
“You can’t leave,” Grace said, choking. “You mustn’t go after them, Padraig, you know how they are! Will you have your whole family murdered?”
He released the knob and faced her. The gentleness with which he put his hand on her cheek belied the storm below. “Take care of yourself, Grace.”
She jerked away from him and for a moment he saw Kathleen’s face in hers. “What about Tom Quinn and the other lads, then? Will you leave them as well? What about Ireland? Does it matter what happens to her?”
“Ireland is lost. Even the gods can’t bring her back.”
Was this true? Did he even know what they were capable of?
“I never thought I’d hear you say that, Padraig Murphy. You call yourself a patriot. Are you sure you’re talking about Ireland? Or Kathleen?”
He stared at her. Even the gods can’t bring her back. Can they? Did they know what had happened?
The phantoms had shown they could take life. Could they give it?
Grace crossed her arms. “Look at you. You’re overcome with grief, that’s what you are. But I won’t allow you to leave this house, not in this state. Father Higgins is coming first thing in the morning. You’ll wait and speak with him.”
“Father Higgins?” His mind was clearing. “No, I’ll not be seeing him. You tell the good father it’s too late for me. I’ve a deal to make with the devil.” He wrenched open the door and stalked out.
He picked up his bicycle at the end of the lane. The ruts in the road sent him careening like a drunk past fields and thatched cottages. And then he was there, by the ruined hedgerow and the deserted home, just as the sun began to spill its light over the field. He crashed through the brambles into the wood, feeling no scratches, no rips in his flesh, only desperation. The worry he would be too late. Finally, bleeding and limping, he was in the clearing. His rifle still lay among the leaves.
The Black and Tan soldier was gone.
“Hello!” he cried, circling about with wild eyes. Could they hear him? “Dia daoibh!”
Nothing.
He picked up his rifle and loaded it. “I know you can hear me! Where are you?”
There was a rustle in the leaves and he spun around to face it. The light had not yet fully permeated the wood, but instead sent strange shapes peering through the branches and spreading across the floor of the clearing. He backed up. “You were right! Is that what you want to hear? That I believe?”
Another rustle. No one spoke.
He screamed, an incoherent eruption of rage so forceful his throat tore. “You need to save them!” He raised his gun and fired into the ground where the soldier had been lying. A burst of dirt and shattered leaves. He fired again, into the trees. It clicked, a horrible, hollow sound that echoed in his ears, mocking him.
He tossed the rifle to the ground, his breathing heavy and laboured. “Then what good are you,” he muttered. He moved in circles through the clearing, every sense tingling, struggling to hear them, feel them, see them. “Hiding in shadows. You knew this happened. You saw it, you said so yourselves. Why didn’t you stop it? Why didn’t you save them? What good are you, if you can’t save them?”
He sank to the ground, sweat and tears and mucus dripping from his face. “Why? Why save me . . . and not them?”
He couldn’t be sure how long he sat there. The sun pressed through the trees, lighting up the clearing like a nave.
Stiffly, he stood.
What was he doing here? He should be with them. With his wife and daughter. With the family and neighbors who would come to pay their respects and curse the British. He should be with his countrymen.
He fought his way back to the road. His nan had warned him the faeries could not be trusted. They kept their own counsel, and woe to the man who pretended to know what they wanted, why they did the things they did. He’d not wait on them. Revenge belonged to the men of Ireland. There was no place for phantoms in an Irish Republic. He would bury his wife and child. And continue the fight for freedom.
A lorry rumbled toward him on the road. He turned to flag it down, to beg a ride back to Inishannon.
***
The farmer found him the next day. He and his family had just returned to their cottage, after hearing the news a treaty had been reached between Britain and Ireland. All British troops were pulling out of the country. The Black and Tans were to be the first units to leave.
“Christ have mercy,” the farmer said, crossing himself as he stared at the lifeless body just behind the hedgerow. Whoever had killed this man had done it slowly. Tans, most likely. The man’s ears had been cut off, and most of his nose. Half his skull was crushed. His hands had been shattered. The farmer squa
tted beside the body and examined the pockets, looking for identification, as he doubted anyone would be able to recognize the poor sod’s face. The grass around him was dark and slick. The farmer found nothing with the stranger’s name on it, only a bloodstained envelope.
A wind rose and the envelope twitched in his hand.
***
Jodi McIsaac is the author of the THIN VEIL fantasy series, and A CURE FOR MADNESS, a thriller. She grew up in New Brunswick, Canada. After stints as a short-track speed skater, a speechwriter, and fundraising and marketing executive in the nonprofit sector, she started a boutique copywriting agency and began writing novels in the wee hours of the morning. She loves running, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and whiskey, and is an avowed geek girl. She currently lives with her husband and two feisty daughters in Calgary.
AKIKO
by Kate Maruyama
Author’s Insights:
I’ve always been fascinated by netsuke, (pronounced net-skay), tiny carved ornaments that adorned sagemono (pockets or bags which outside kimono) in Japan from as early as the 17th century. The detail in these ornaments, many not larger than two inches square, is extraordinary. In that space of shiny white bone, ivory or wood, artists create entire families of rats or turtles, men fishing, boats with tiny people carved onto them, skeletons. The legend of Akiko has likewise fascinated me and I pursued it at an earlier time in my writing life, but she’s emerged here in full.
Los Angeles makes movies and television shows that are often shot locally and are seen all over the world. Decisions about these shows and films are made by a small group of people, most of whom live west of LaBrea Avenue. As a result, aside from a few independent films, a very narrow and somewhat monochromatic scope of the city is presented to the world. When I travel, I find that people have a limited, sometimes comical view of this fantastic city in which I’ve lived for almost twenty-five years. Palm trees, pools, movie stars, cars: that isn’t the multicultural, artistic, vibrant city I know.
When a friend asked me to write a supernatural story with a Japanese background (despite my last name, I’m white) I sank into the familiar comforts of downtown LA, being young in this city, and into that uncomfortable space where you don’t know if someone in your professional life like-likes you or just likes you.
Phantasma: Stories Page 4