Texting the Underworld (7 page)

“That's disgusting.”

“Better than slaughtering a cow. Cows are sweet.”

“You danced. That
seems more like fun to me.”

“How do you know I danced?”

How
did
he know?
Oh right. That was a dream.
But also . . . “You talked about it.”

“I never danced.” She turned on her heel and crawled back into her cupboard, closing the door behind her.

“Sorry,” he called to her, although he didn't know why.

“Sorry about what?” Glennie said through the door, on her way to the bathroom.

“Nothing. I—uh—I was talking on the phone.”

“Da-ad, Conor's talking on the phone after eight thirty.”

He could lose his cell phone for doing that. Conor scrambled out to the top of the stairs. “It was just a quick call,” he yelled. “I'm not talking anymore.”

His father appeared below. “Who was it, some girl?” He'd been asking questions like that ever since Conor turned twelve. They made Conor's stomach curl up..

“No. It was . . . it was Javier about pre-algebra.”

“I saw Javier and he said he wasn't talking to you.” Glennie emerged from the bathroom, half smirk in place.

“Shut up,” Conor said.

“Don't tell your sister to shut up,” Dad said. “Start getting ready for bed, both of you. If you're still up when your mom comes home, I wouldn't want to be any of us.”

When Conor got back to his room, Ashling was in the beanbag chair, flipping through Trivial Pursuit cards. “I beg your pardon. I did say I danced, and I do remember it. I was in a ring of people.”

“Who were the people?”

She shrugged. “It . . . I think it was at Beltine, after we ran the cattle through the fires. Many of us danced.”

“You ran cattle through
fire
?”

“Between rows of fire, witless one. To protect the beasts for the grazing season.”

His dream at school. He'd heard cattle lowing when it started.

“My father was not pleased that I danced, because I was betrothed to our neighbor.” Ashling added a card to a stack of favorites at her feet, then added matter-of-factly, “The neighbor was old and bad-tempered, and his mouth smelled of rot and he never bathed. But he would have died in a few years, and I would have had his cattle to add to my own.”

“
That's
disgusting.”

She looked up from her cards. “This is the second time you've said that about my life. Mark this, boy—we slaughtered hogs to eat, and we married to improve our fortunes.” She stood up, dignified. “I have no need of your approval.”

“Yeah, but . . . you didn't even like this neighbor guy, did you?”

“I do not remember what I felt.” Ashling marched back to her cupboard, crawled in, slammed the door behind her. This time, Conor didn't make the mistake of saying he was sorry.

As he lay in bed later, the mosquito-like flute music came back with its whiff of woodsmoke. He closed his eyes and saw people silhouetted by flames, flickering . . . flickering . . .

Bellowing, drunken hulks of men grapple in the heat of the ceremonial fires, roaring insults, pushing apart so they have room to slash at one another with swords. Silhouetted against the dying flames, three brave souls play flutes, hoping to calm the fighters, although that has never worked before. In a pen nearby, cattle moan and snort.

He stands panting at the edge of light, the dark and the spirits at his back. He scans the shadows for Aengus, the pig, the traitor. His blood burns.

Why did they haul him away from the fight? He was winning. Aengus was on the ground, squirming like a pig to dodge his blade.

The fires are burning down, scenting the air with pitch and apple. Someone half his size is next to him. He smiles down at her.

The next morning, Conor awoke with woodsmoke in his nostrils.
Her hand on my heart,
he thought.

And then he thought,
Huh?

He remembered most of the dream, still felt the anger that coursed through him. Who was Aengus and why was he a traitor? For that matter, who was
he,
the angry man in the shadows?

There was nothing in the dream about a hand on a heart.

He almost woke up Ashling to ask her about it, but he was late. He got dressed, gobbled breakfast, pelted for the door, grabbed his helmet . . . and was struck full-on by the futility of it all. He hung the helmet back up on its hook and ran after Glennie to the corner.

He regretted his decision the minute the bus door closed, and actually let out a shriek when the driver slammed on the brakes to avoid an aggressive Volkswagen on Dorchester Street.

“Jeez, Conor,” said Sean Allen, who was sitting with him. “It was better when you had the helmet on.”

Javier never even glanced back at him. He talked quietly with Mohamed, who also didn't look back. Conor was sure they were talking about him.

He did not,
did not,
call anyone in his family that morning. He was in social studies, trying not to think, when fate came to find him.

Mr. Rose was standing by the window when something outside caught his attention. “Conor, is that your cousin out there?” Obviously he'd been talking to Ms. Alexis. “Doesn't she go to school somewhere?”

“Uh, no. She's . . . she's visiting. From Ireland.”

“Why didn't she come to school with you?”

“Uh . . . she . . . uh.”

Mr. Rose marched to the classroom phone and punched in a number, then took the receiver out into the hall the way he always did when he might be talking about something tricky. He was beaming when he came back in.

“The principal says she can join us while she's here. You'll have to go to the office later and sign her in, but for now just bring her up so we can get back to work.”

“Bring her
up
?” How did this happen? How in a million years could it be that Conor O'Neill was bringing a death-wielding banshee into his seventh-grade social studies class?

“Yes, Conor. Go now. Please.”

When Mr. Rose said “Please,” there was no hope left.

Ashling ran to him when he beckoned from the door. She was wearing her regular clothes—long green tunic, red cloak, rough leather shoes. But she'd added thick, bright pink lipstick—his mother's color—smearing some of it on her cheeks. She had on so much eye makeup she looked like somebody'd punched her twice. It was a misty day, and black streaks ran down her cheeks.

“I forgive you for saying I was disgusting,” she said.

“What the heck is all that on your face?”

“I have seen this on the Dear Departed. It is the fashion amongst living women. I wish to fit in.”

“It's melting all over you. Plus, what are you doing here again? I thought you were supposed to stay home.”

“Yes, yes, I am. But the Lady will never find out. I know you don't want me here, and I will be very discreet. How can I sit there waiting when all this is out here?” Ashling gestured grandly at the ancient brick building and the row of wooden houses across the street. “I am quite able to pretend I am not what I am. I am the best liar of my family.”

“Fine. I'm taking you inside. But stop in the girls' room and wipe that junk off your face.”

As he waited outside the girls' restroom on the second-floor landing, he made a mental list of what she had to know before they got to his classroom. Cousin. From Ireland. Visiting. Not dead. Not here to make anyone else dead.

She probably shouldn't discuss being engaged to a man with bad breath, or slaughtering hogs.

Why am I so worried about people knowing what she is?
Maybe he could tell everyone. Maybe Mr. Rose could suggest some way to prevent the Death.

Ashling emerged, the streaks gone from her cheeks but eyes still black-ringed and lips as pink as ever. “I must stay secret, you know, so the Lady does not hear of this.” She was so cheery she might have been discussing hog slaughter. “If you tell your friends what I am, I will turn into a wraith and kill them all.”

Stop thinking she's a girl,
Conor thought.
She's a monster.
“You can't make yourself turn into a wraith when nobody's dying.”

“I might be able to. I don't know. Do you want to find out?” She started up the next flight of stairs and tripped. She briefly became invisible.

“You disappeared for a second,” Conor said.

“
Ach
. I must have been distracted.”

Conor didn't want to follow her. He didn't want to take her into his class, spend the day wondering if she was going to disappear or kill everyone. He put one foot in front of the other and there he was, at the top of the stairs. “We'll say you're my cousin from Ireland.”

“Cousin from
Uladh
.”

“It's called Ulster.” And there was the classroom door.

“Ah yes,” Mr. Rose said when the introductions were over. “Ulster, class, is in northern Ireland, and part of it still belongs to the United Kingdom.” He pulled down a rolled-up map by the blackboard to show them.

“Ulster does not belong to any other kingdom,” Ashling said. “Ulster is its own kingdom, the bravest and most beautiful of them all.”

Mr. Rose grinned as if she'd made a joke. “A patriot! Makayla, perhaps you'd switch chairs so Ashling can sit next to her cousin.”

In full data-collection mode, Javier was eyeing Ashling. “What is she, like, a hippie?” he whispered loudly to Katherine Foster as Conor sat down. Katherine giggled. “And what's all that on her face?”

Class that day was about Abraham Lincoln. Five minutes later, when Mr. Rose was talking about Lincoln being a lawyer in Springfield, Illinois, Ashling spoke up without raising her hand. “How many people were executed for Abraham Lincoln's assassination?”

Mr. Rose gaped at her, shifting gears. “Well, Ashling, I don't know that off the top of my head. I'll be happy to find out—”

“Four,” Ashling said. “Executed means killed.”

“Well, yes, it's a punishment for a particularly bad crime. In the past, criminals were hanged or—”

“Got an ax through the head. That is very painful.”

“Well, yes, I suppose it must—”

“Assassination also means killing.”

“Yes. It's killing an important person, a head of state or the like.”

“With an ax through the head,” Ashling said with authority.

“Not usually. You know, Ashling, on this side of the pond we raise our ha—”

“An ax through the head does not tickle.”

“Thank you, Ashling. Now, in 1837, Springfield, Illinois, was—”

“What World War I battle saw sixty thousand troops killed on the first day?”

“The Battle of the Somme,” Mr. Rose said, triumphant at last.

So it went all the way through social studies class, until Mr. Rose obviously was thinking dark thoughts about axes in relation to heads. When the bell rang for second period, Ashling screamed, “Banshee!” and dove under her desk. “How silly,” she said, emerging. “As if I'm not one mysel—”

“Math class!” Conor yelled.

“Relax, Conor,” said Mr. Rose.

Easy for him to say.

“Your cousin's cool,” Ricky Desmond said as they left class. Ricky hadn't spoken to Conor since he'd done all that Latin School teasing the day before. Three other classmates smiled at him in the hallway. Perhaps there were advantages to impending mass destruction.

Nevertheless, Conor pulled Ashling into a corner by the fire doors. “This isn't fair,” he whispered furiously. “You say you have to stay secret and then you go talking about axes and banshees and stuff.”

“Relax, Conor.” She mimicked Mr. Rose's exact tone. “None of that tells anyone what I am.”

“It tells them you're a total freak. They'll start asking questions about you and what will I say?”

“That's your trouble, Conor-boy, not mine.” Ashling set off after the tail end of the seventh grade, heading for math class. Conor caught up with her and whispered frantic instructions about the importance of raising her hand and not interrupting and, in general, shutting up.

“Shut up, yourself, Conor-boy.” Ashling swept into Mrs. Namja's classroom as if she belonged there rather than on some fifth-century windswept bog.

Pre-algebra rendered Ashling incapable of speech. Conor had almost started to calm down when he and Javier got called to the board to do equations. Javier aced his. Conor was so distracted that he aced his, too.

“Well, good for you, Conor,” Mrs. Namja said. “Glad to see you concentrating again. This stuff is bound to be on the high school exams next fall.”

High school exams. Big deal. Hardly anyone ever died taking them.

“You did that task very well,” Ashling commented as the class disbanded for lunch.

“Why should you care?” Probably he should be more polite to the death-wielding banshee, Conor reflected.

“What are exams?”

“Tests we have to take if we want to go to a special school.”

“Tests of courage, strength, and agility?”

“No. We have to do math and reading and other things.”

“Oh, that's all right then. You can do that.” She clearly had no confidence in Conor's courage, strength, and agility. Which was fine, because neither did Conor.

They headed down the stairs to the lunchroom. “Will your school be for making maps?” Ashling asked.

The idea was so striking that Conor didn't answer right off.

“You should apprentice to a maker of maps,” Ashling continued. “I knew an apprentice smith, and he was as good as his own father. Or at least he said he was.”

“I don't think there are apprentice mapmakers.”

“Oh, there must be. There are apprentices for everything.” Ashling stopped in her tracks on the second-floor landing as Joey Mandrell sipped from the drinking fountain by the boys' room. “Potent Mother Maeve! There's a cunning thing.” She had to take a drink of water before she'd move on. It went up her nose, which made her braid stand straight in the air. Conor grabbed it and held it down.

His arm buzzed. His own feet lifted off the floor.

He let go and his feet thumped back down right away, but not before Paula Reilly saw it happen and halted in her tracks.

“Did you . . . ?” Paula said.

“The science homework?” Conor said. “Yeah, but I bet it's all wrong.”

Paula gave her head a shake and continued downstairs without another word.

“We can sit by ourselves for lunch,” Conor said when Ashling had finished coughing and snorting and flickering out of sight.

“No.” Ashling jutted out her jaw, Glennie-style. “I want to sit with others and see what school is really like. I've heard about it from so many dead mouths.”

“Will you stop saying things like that?” Conor glanced around to see if anyone had overheard.

“Girls and boys our age, you know. They come before the Lady, and they say, ‘But I have school tomorrow!' And the Lady tells them they're dead, and they'll be sent back as mere babes—or harts or hares, who knows. You should see their faces.”

Conor wondered what would happen if he stuffed Ashling into a locker.

In the lunchroom, Javier was already at their regular table, ignoring him. Conor steered a reluctant Ashling to a table in the corner and left her there while he went through the line. He groaned out loud when he emerged to find Marissa Babcock and Olivia Kim sitting with her, eager to get to know the Irish girl who dressed like a hippie.

“Oooo.” Ashling eyed Marissa's lunch tray. “What is that?”

“Macaroni and cheese,” Marissa said.

“Holy macaroni,” Ashling said.

“It's awesome.” Olivia dug in to her own mac and cheese. “Aren't you eating?”

“
Awe
some.” Ashling rolled the word around in her mouth like food.

Marissa held out a forkful of macaroni. Ashling sniffed it. “Awesome.” She sneezed and disappeared from the waist down. None of the kids noticed, but one of the cooks dropped an entire tray of fruit cocktail.

Marissa inspected her forkful of macaroni, which might or might not have had Ashling's snot on it. “Want this?” she asked Ashling.

Ashling shook her head, holding her nose so she wouldn't sneeze again. “Thag you. Dot hu'gry.”

“She ate a huge breakfast,” Conor said.

Marissa unloaded the contaminated forkful on the edge of her plate and attacked the rest of her mac and cheese. Sinuses under control, Ashling watched every mouthful.

“Tell us about your home,” Olivia said.

“Not much to tell,” Conor said. “Right, Ashling?”

“It was beautiful.” Ashling's eyes went misty. “Our house was round, on stilts in a pond. Any who wished to attack us needed a boat, so we were safe as eggs in a nest unless we went out with the cattle. No one lived better than we. No one.”

“Attack you?” Olivia said. “Slightly emo, don't you think?”

“Eee-mo,” Ashling said. “What is that?”

“It's when somebody's being too emotional,” Olivia said. “I mean,
attack
is a pretty strong word for—”

“An ax in the head?”

“Oh, look,” Conor said. “They have brownies for dessert.”

He went to get one, which turned out to be a mistake: By the time he got back, Marissa had asked whether Ashling had a boyfriend.

“I was betrothed to our neighbor,” Ashling said. “He stank, but he was very old and was always fighting, so he'd probably—”

“Ha-ha-ha, Ashling, stop joking around.” Conor kicked her. Marissa and Olivia were wide-eyed.

“But he did stink,” Ashling said. “His teeth were rotten.”

“You . . . you were going to marry some old guy?” Marissa said. “No way.”

“Yes, and when he died I would get his cattle,” Ashling said.

“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha,” Conor said. “Quit it, Ashling. Jeez. What about the dancing guy, huh? What about him?”

“I danced with . . . Mother Maeve, I can't say his name. Oh, how could I forget his name?” Ashling slapped her hands to her cheeks. “He was part of my soul and now I can't . . . ah.” Her face cleared. “Declan. His name was Declan. And I danced with another. Whose name was . . . Aengus, I think.” She went silent, drawing something swirly on the table with her finger, then said, “Declan was to be a smith, like his father.”

“How come you barely remember their names?” Olivia narrowed her eyes. “Do you do drugs?”

Brrrrriiiinnnng.
Never had the end-of-lunch bell been so welcome. Olivia forgot about her question in the bustle of kids returning trays and lining up to leave. Upstairs after recess, prompted by a history display, Ashling imparted the information that World War II was waged by fifty-seven countries and, as an unrelated bonus, that the 1956 collision of the ocean liners
Stockholm
and
Andrea Doria
killed fifty-one people.

Science class was next. Conor was so exhausted that he forgot to avert his eyes when he walked past the poisonous spiders of the world poster by the door.

“Welcome, Ashling,” Ms. Alexis said. “Take your seats, class. We have to chloroform our moths.”

The moths fluttered about in a large bottle with a screen over the opening. Ms. Alexis dripped chloroform on a piece of cloth, pried up a corner of the screen, and dropped the cloth in. She reached for the screw-on cap that would block off the moths' air.

Conor, sitting next to the door, felt a chill breeze on his cheek. Startled, he glanced at Ashling, who showed him a face transformed in horror: mouth open, eyes wide and terrified, face pale and stretched out like Silly Putty.

“Oh, Conor-boy,” Ashling whispered. “It is sad, so sad.”

She was turning into a wraith in front of his entire class. Everybody would die.

He didn't stop to think. He grabbed Ashling's hand and bolted for the classroom door.

“Conor!” Ms. Alexis exclaimed. “What are you—?”

The door slammed behind them. The corridor was a blur—empty, thank heavens—then they reached the fire doors, and the stairs to the alley with the dumpsters. The outside door slammed behind them.

Ashling's hand was gone. He whipped around and saw the school's red bricks through a haze lifting skyward.

“Don't loo-oo-oo-oooook!” Ashling shrieked. Conor hunkered himself down as small as he could get, buried his face in his hands.

The keening began, and this time he thought there were words.
Gone, gone, gone, my love, my dove, ne'er again, ne'er again . . .
The sadness in the voice was wrenching, soul-tearing. Conor plugged his ears with his thumbs. What was the point of life if it ended like this?

He barely noticed when the sound stopped and the world went back to normal. A small hand shook his shoulder.

“Conor, Conor-boy, it is over. It's all over.” He gazed into Ashling's eyes, blue as a summer sky. “I didn't mean to,” she whispered. “Please believe me.”

He almost did.

Almost.
She's a monster.

The door banged open. Ms. Alexis. Mr. Rose. Dr. Dencill, the principal. “Conor,” Ms. Alexis said. “What on
earth
 . . . ?”

“I am very sorry.” Ashling hauled Conor up by the arm. “It is my . . . my horrors. They come on me, you see.”

“Claustrophobia?” Ms. Alexis said. “Or did it bother you that we were killing moths, dear?”

“Yes,” Ashling said. “That.”

“But why did Conor . . . ?”

Ashling gave a winning smile, brown tooth and all. “My horrors . . . they are well known in my family. Conor knew he had to get me outside.”

“What was that shriek?” Mr. Rose asked. Dr. Dencill shuddered.