by Jack Spain
He continued on towards the middle of the square where another old man was tending to four tall bonsai trees around an imitation well, and sat on a bench nearby. The old man stopped for a moment to look at Moriarty, and when he was sure that Moriarty had nothing to say he just smiled and continued with his work, carefully pruning away untidy leaves and dropping them into a canvas bag.
Morphu emerged from a tunnel on the far side of the hill and stopped for a moment, looking side to side as if he was deciding where to go, before finally deciding and walking diagonally across the square in the direction of Balor’s house. As he drew closer the old man stopped pruning the tree and watched him stagger around, swinging his arms out in front to balance himself. Moriarty pulled his sword sheath around to his lap and leaned back in the bench as he watched him.
‘Are you sure that Cormac isn’t a zombie?’ the old man asked Moriarty, who seemed to ignore him at first. ‘He looks like a zombie to me!’
‘No,’ Moriarty replied after a short pause. ‘He’s not a zombie.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘He’s a vegetarian. Zombies aren’t vegetarians. They eat brains. He eats carrots.’
‘Good job he’s a vegetarian then. Not much brains in this hill. He would starve to death here. So why does he have all the bandages around his face?’
‘To stop him scaring himself whenever he sees his own reflection,’ Moriarty told him. ‘I don’t know why it scares him.’
‘I see,’ replied the old man. He went back to his pruning. ‘Is this what Balor has planned for the rest of us when we die?’
Moriarty thought about the question for a moment. ‘What makes you think that?’
‘Look around,’ the old man told him. ‘We are all old in this hill, apart from you and Betty, that is. Even the Kings Guard is made up of the middle aged.’
‘They seem to do all right.’
‘Aye, they do,’ he said. He stopped pruning and looked to Moriarty. ‘But they’ve only got another hundred years or so in them. What then? There are no more young ones to carry on when they are too old.’
‘It gives us a hundred years to work something out.’
‘Aye. That’s one way of looking at it. The other way is that malignant master of yours is probably planning on recycling the dead to replace them with an army of vegetarian zombies, and poor old Cormac was the prototype. You’ll never have any friends in this hill while you hang around with him.’
“I wouldn’t worry, I don’t miss the company,’ Moriarty reassured him. ‘Balor is forever making prototypes but nothing ever goes into production.’
The old man laughed. ‘We can consider ourselves blessed for that. If he was any good the hill would be full of cross eyed sabre toothed rabbits and zombies.’
‘I suppose it would,’ Moriarty said, with a slight grin on his face.
‘What news of the road,’ the old man asked as he went back to the pruning.
‘The road?’
‘Aye,’ said the old man. ‘Even the King wasn’t able to keep it secret for more than a few hours.’
‘How did you find out?’
‘Sure he told me himself, and told me to keep it to myself, and then promptly told everyone else the same thing. There isn’t much talk about it. I suppose it is his idea of making everyone know without having everyone talk about it, so when he does have to tell everyone, they won’t look so surprised. So, what of the road?’
Moriarty leaned forward. ‘It’s about two or three months away. According to the drawings it will cut through this hill. We had a look at it. Balor reckons that he has sabotaged it to delay it but I don’t know.’
‘Well, if there is one thing that Balor is good at, it is sabotage.’
‘I suppose so,’ Moriarty replied. ‘He seems bloody useless at being a druid.’
‘Aye,’ said the old man. ‘Balor seems a little bit more commercially minded than spiritual.’ He stood back from the trees to admire his work and then turned to look at Moriarty. ‘What do you think?’
‘They look fantastic,’ said Moriarty. He sat up and looked at each of them in turn.
‘You know,’ said the old man. ‘When I was your age, or probably a lot older, I used to sneak out at night and cross the fields to the town over the valley to tend the gardens of some of the Irish people that lived there. In the summer time I could spend an hour in the morning sun, pruning and sowing and tidying gardens before the Irishmen would wake. It was a wonderful time. And they never knew. They used to think the fairies or leprechauns did it.’
‘Really?’
‘Aye,’ he said. ‘It’s true. Fairies and leprechauns. Have you ever heard anything so ridiculous? I loved it. And, while I did, it made me feel as if I was free from this cursed cavern and all the hiding we do. There were some lovely gardens around here back in the day. Now they are horrible set ups, with exotic plants and, you know, I’ve even seen a palm tree.’
‘Why did you stop?’
‘Progress, and the famine.’
‘You went out during the famine?’
‘The famine put an end to it. The one in the 1840’s. My, that must have been nearly one hundred and seventy years ago,’ said the old man and then the changed his expression to something more sombre. ‘It was a terrible time. All that starvation. I shudder when I remember all those young men and women and children’s corpses. Stacked up by the side of the road. Some just lay where they fell. Many weren’t even buried at all. There were no more gardens to tend. They even ate the flowers in desperation. It made me think of what times must have been like for our fathers before they came down in to the caves. The war that drove us here brought famine with it I’m sure. Yes, those Irishmen suffered as much as us. They seemed to lose interest in gardens in the end. They took an interest in hanging plants. How was I supposed to reach those?’
‘But it came to an end,’ said Moriarty. ‘When the famine was over they carried on. They didn’t have to hide in hills. They weren’t afraid of the rising sun. They didn’t have to scrounge through rubbish tips for pieces of metal and old food to survive. They had a famine, yes, but when it was over they were still out in the sun. Look at us. Look at you, tending a bonsai tree under streetlights in a cave. When you die, that’s all they’ll have to remind them of you. And we will all still be in the caves.’
The old man, a little surprised at the outburst, stood still and said nothing for a moment before gathering up his tools and placing them in a bucket. He picked up the bucket and the canvas sack of leaves and looked at Moriarty. ‘I’ll be seeing you tomorrow then,’ he said before turning and walking away slowly. Moriarty flinched and looked to either side, as if he was trying to think of something better he could say. The old man stopped and turned around to look at him. ‘You know,’ he said. ‘You’re right. This place does need a little variety. Do you ever go by that garden centre near the town?’
‘Sometimes,’ Moriarty replied. ‘What do you want?’
‘A cactus,’ he replied.
‘A cactus?’
‘Aye,’ said the old man. ‘Bring me back a cactus if you can. One of them round prickly ones. They’ll be needing something in this hill to remind them of you when you die, which will be before me if you keep hanging around with that old druid.’
Moriarty said nothing but grinned in acceptance of the remark. ‘I’ll do that,’ he said.
The old man smiled back and walked away. As he did the square was filled with another light, from a large flat screen television that came on for the late news. A small crowd began to assemble around it in the square. A moment later a small argument broke out over where the remote control was. Moriarty felt a hand pat his shoulder and he turned to see a young woman standing beside him, barefoot but dressed in dark camouflaged clothes with her short black hair tied up and behind her head. A dozen or so necklaces hung around her neck and she had dark ribbons tied around her wrists.
‘Sounds like you were being a prickly sort,’ she said.
‘Hi, Betty,’ said Moriarty. ‘You heard all that?’
‘I did.’
‘I thought that we weren’t talking?’
‘Oh we’re not,’ she said as she sat down beside him. ‘You’ve had a long day?’
‘You could say that.’
‘How did it go at the roadworks?’
Moriarty turned to look at her. ‘Who doesn’t know about the roadworks?’
‘You know this place,’ she said. ‘Everyone here knows everything on a need to know basis.’
‘I must be the only person trying to keep it a secret.’
‘You must,’ she replied. ‘What are you up to now, anyway?’
‘I’m waiting for Morphu.’
‘Morphy?’ she said with a smile. ‘I saw him walking across the square just a few minutes ago.’
‘He was too early. Morphy?’
‘Yes, Morphy,’ said Betty. ‘It sounds better than Morphu, or Morpheus. Too early for what?’
‘Nothing,’ he replied. ‘Morphy? It sounds like a Dublin version of Murphy. Balor called him Morphu, or Morpheus, after some Greek or Roman idiot who changed into something else. As in changed from a dead person into a living person. See?’
‘You know that nobody in this hill believes he was dead in the first place,’ she argued.
‘I know,’ said Moriarty. ‘He looked dead on the day. The surgeon thought he was dead.’
‘The surgeon was drunk. Anyway, he hasn’t seen a dead person for a hundred years or so.’
Moriarty thought about it for a minute. ‘You know, Morphu is much better company than Cormac ever was, if you can look past the bandages, the moaning, and the endless obsession with carrots. Who cares if he was dead or not? It’s actually a big improvement.’
‘Aye, that’s true,’ said Betty. ‘What caused that carrot thing?’
‘I’m not sure, but I think it has something to do with the blood transfusion we gave him from Chopper. He’s lucky that he’s not cross-eyed with big ears.’
‘I see,’ she said. ‘So what did he die of?’
Moriarty looked at Betty for a moment and thought about what to say. ‘It wasn’t old age for sure. We think it was Comither addiction. I assume that he got addicted to being able to forget about things he didn’t like about himself, or maybe he was just sick of living in the hill. He could have just been very lonely. In any case, he was found slumped in an alleyway a few months ago by the King’s guard. The surgeon thought he was dead. So did Balor.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ she replied in a quiet tone. ‘How did you know about the Comither?’
‘We found about fifty empty vials of Comither in his house. Since then we count them out and count them back in.’
‘I thought they were safe.’
‘That’s what we thought,’ said Moriarty. He leaned back. ‘To be honest, I’m not sure whether Balor turned him into a zombie or if the Comither did that.’
‘It could have been the transfusion?’
‘I was only joking about that. Nobody knows why he likes carrots. Maybe he always did. He was such a contrary old coot that nobody really gave him any time. Balor took him in though in the end. Maybe it has worked out well in an odd sort of way.’
They both sat silent for a while watching the people come and go in the square. Betty would occasionally glance over at Moriarty as if she was going to say something but changed her mind. Eventually she decided. ‘So, Moriarty,’ she said, ‘what can I do to help with the road?’
Moriarty turned away to smile and then looked back at Betty. “I don’t know. You tell me.’
‘I could help with setting up social media sites to protest about the road. Get some of the Irish involved. You know, blogs, Facebook, twitter and the like. I could write some letters to the local politicians, and stir up some antipathy to it.’
‘Facebook and blogs?’ said Moriarty in a barely hidden condescending tone.
‘Yes. Facebook and blogs. Social media is a powerful tool when used properly with the Irishmen.’
‘Yeah, but we are supposed to be a secret race. Having a Facebook profile wouldn’t be that handy for keeping us secret.’ Moriarty held up his sword. ‘This is what the Irishmen need,’ he said. ‘Quick and silent, while they sleep.’
Betty’s eyes narrowed. ‘Is that all you know? To run some poor unsuspecting person through with a sword. Is that your answer to everything?’
‘Pretty much.’
‘You’re despicable,’ she said. Betty stood up. ‘That’s not fighting. Sneaking up and stabbing innocent people in the heart.’
‘They are not innocent,’ he replied, unrepentant. ‘They are building a road through our home. If they do, and we cannot find anywhere else to live we could all die!’
‘Murdered in your sleep by someone you don’t know for something they didn’t know that they did? That’s just terrorism. Where has that ever got anyone?’
‘We’ll have to wait and see,’ he replied defiantly.
‘You know,’ she said standing up. ‘The gardener was right about the cactus.’
Betty stormed off leaving Moriarty seated in the middle of the square. She was mumbling a lot of angry words as she did, and barged through a crowd of people entering the square carrying the remote control for the television. She carried on up the alleyway past the King’s residence, which was a grandiose stone building, and around the back to the steps that led up to a higher level that overlooked the village below. When she got there she sat down on the ground and continued to brood for a few minutes, rehearsing an argument that she was planning to have with Moriarty. After a few moments she composed herself and rested her arms crossed on her knees, and then her chin on her arms. She looked down at the big screen in the square and watched the news, which she could barely hear from where she sat. As she watched she noticed Morphu walk past the screen carrying a canvas bag and stagger through the crowds to Moriarty. She sat up to see what was going on.
Morphu handed the bag to Moriarty, and then pulled out a large tube of something. Moriarty stood up and checked all around him before indicating to Morphu to follow him into the Bonsai trees. There the little man with the sword, and the vegetarian zombie, took the plastic leaves from the bag, and applied glue before they carefully stuck them back to the branches of the plastic bonsai trees, so that the gardener, who was the oldest man in the hill, had something to do every day when he came out for his walk. Betty watched them place every single leaf back on the trees until Morphu put the glue away and staggered off in the direction of Balor’s round stone laboratory. Moriarty looked around once more and headed off in the opposite direction.
Betty leaned back. ‘Damn you, Moriarty,’ she said. ‘Let’s see what an eco-warrior can do with a few emails and a blog.’
Cornflake Tikka Masala
Michael McManus sat at the kitchen table and looked long and hard at his breakfast. Sally was pottering around in the kitchen, looking in cupboards and reading the ingredients of tinned food, such as tins of peas, that contained peas, and tins of carrots, that contained carrots, and looked very surprised with each new discovery.
‘It’s been three days. How much longer is she going to keep this up,’ he said. McManus looked at his wife for a moment and then across the table to Emily.
‘What did you get?’ He asked.
‘Apple crumble and roast potatoes,’ she replied sheepishly. ‘It’s actually not that bad.’
‘Oh, actually? Where did you learn that word?’
‘I’m a girl. We learn big words faster than boys. What was the biggest word you knew when you were my age?’
‘I think it was noooooooooooooooooooooo.’
‘No?’
‘No. Noooooooooooooooooooooo.’
‘Pathetic!’
‘I see. More big words,’ McManus replied with a grin.
‘What did you get?’ she asked in return.
McManus looked at his plate and stirred the strange lumpy orange concoction
with a fork for a second and looked back up at Emily. ‘It looks like Cornflake Tikka Masala or curried cornflake omelette,’ he said.
‘Noooooooooooooooooooooooo?’
‘Yes. Pathetic.’
‘Not when a girl says it. Guess what I had for dinner last night?’
‘I give up. What did you have for dinner last night?’
‘Chocolate cake and sausages smothered in chicken gravy,’ Emily announced cheekily, ‘and we had gherkin and sweetcorn caramel ice-cream for pudding!’
‘Noooooooooooooooooooooooo?’
‘Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeessss!’
‘You ate gherkin, sweetcorn and sausages without arguing?’
‘Yes I did,’ said Emily, suitably proud.
‘And all that time that we couldn’t get you to eat vegetables or meat? Somebody was missing a trick, don’t you think?’
The phone rang before Emily could answer. McManus watched her shovel a roast potato and apple crumble into her mouth before Sally called him. He went from the table to the kitchen and took the phone from Sally who was reading the contents of a can of sweetcorn, which she was comparing to a bag of frozen sweetcorn.
‘Answer me this, Michael,’ she said.
He put the phone to his shoulder and looked at Sally. ‘What?’
‘What’s the difference between frozen sweetcorn and tinned sweetcorn?’
‘One of them is very cold and the other one is hiding from a green giant,’ he said before putting the phone to his ear.
‘Yes,’ McManus said. ‘Yes,’ and then there was a pause, ‘what, what, what, what potatoes? When? I’ll be right over.’
McManus slammed the phone down and grabbed his car keys. He went to the kitchen table and kissed Emily on the head and then back into the kitchen and looked around for a moment.
‘Where’s the dog?’ he asked Sally.
‘He’s outside,’ she said. ‘I don’t think the vindaloo curry he had this morning agreed with him.’