The Changeling (35 page)

‘I know! If you’d only kissed me before . . .’ Aoife let go of him and stretched out her arms to the sides, feeling the force of the wind against the backs of her hands, giving herself entirely to the moment.

‘Jesus Christ, Aoife . . .’

She teased him: ‘You want to fly by yourself? It’s fun. You can do it.’ She tilted sideways.

‘
Aoife!
’

‘Go on. You have lenanshee blood.’ She swept with him out in a wide circle, under the arching rainbows. For a while he kept his arms locked tight around her, his heart thudding hard against her, and the heat of his body burned through her clothes. But gradually she felt him relax. He loosened his grip, and laid his cheek next to hers. His eyelashes stirred stiffly against her skin. He murmured in her ear, ‘Where are we going to go now?’

‘Where do you want to go?’ As far as Aoife was concerned, she was already doing the one thing she was born to do – fly. What else was there to worry about, ever, in this world or any other?

‘Home.’

The burning joy drained from her blood.
Eva.
This was what everything was about – this was the meaning of this journey, even though she hadn’t understood for a long time. She had to find the little girl who was lost. She had been searching for her parents’ child since that first day when she had seen her running in her pink dressing gown down the hawthorn hill. Now she had to bring her home. She banked in a sweeping circle and surged back towards the minaret. The hawthorn circle was the size of a silver coin, rapidly growing larger, the trees parting beneath her like a flower to the light, like an opening, welcoming hand. She plunging headfirst through the sweet cushion of blossom – no thorns, no thorns – straight for the stone floor . . . The lenanshee boy in her arms closing his eyes . . . Not stopping, not slowing . . .

The water blood-red, then black.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Empty bog. Empty road.

It was just as it had been when she stood here with him on this hill before; when she had forced him to drive her out here to look. Except there were no blossoms on the hawthorns now, only a few shrivelled red berries. They had been gone for little more than a day, but this was a world of autumn skies and browning heather. No bog cotton. No flowers. A scatter of miserable grey sheep.

Empty bog. Empty road.

No child.

How many days had passed since Eva had tried to go home? She would have been found, a car would have stopped – someone would have seen her, as Aoife had spotted her before. Maybe this time the little girl wouldn’t have got scared and run away . . . Maybe there would be something about it on the news, and she could track her down that way . . . But how to get her back? No one would ever believe . . .

With a slight choke in his voice, Shay said, ‘Oh.’

‘What?’

Before Aoife had even turned to him, he was gone, running down the green hill and out across the bog, faster than she had ever seen him run. In the direction he was running, a rose-pink dot in the rusty heather – a patch of flowers, surely. She started to run herself. The flowers were gone with summer . . . It must be a lamb, a pink brand on its wool. She ran faster. But the lambs were gone too.

When she reached him, he was kneeling on the wet ground, cradling the child against him, sobbing. ‘Pray for us sinners . . .’ Her little face was pale blue, her eyes half closed – a rim of white visible through her blonde lashes. Her short hair plastered flat to her skull by the rain. Stains of blackberries around her mouth. Her rose-petal dress ragged and torn. Days out on the bog, nights of cold and dark, and only blackberries to eat. ‘Pray for Eva O’Connor, Hail Mary, Mother of God, pray for her . . .’

Aoife could hear her own voice howling wordlessly. She clenched her fists, pressed her lips hard together. Stop making that noise. She breathed in deep through her nose. Stop. Think. ‘Wake her. Kiss her. You’re a lenanshee. Bring her back to life.’

Shay pressed his lips to the child’s forehead. Her lashes fluttered, a little colour came into her cheeks, and then her head fell back, as Donal’s had done before.

‘Again!’

This time, only the tips of her lashes quivered before they again fell still.

He sobbed. ‘Aoife, it’s too late.’

‘
She’s not dead.
’

‘She’s growing cold—’

‘
Then rub her hands!
’ Aoife seized the child’s small hand, translucent as fallen petals. There was the scar that matched her own, a thin pale blue line across the white. Blood sisters. ‘Give me your penknife!’

‘What—?’

‘
Give it to me!
’

Tears running down his face, Shay fumbled in the pocket of his faded jeans and pulled it out – the key-ring with the torch that once, in the blackness of the cave, had seemed like all the magic she’d ever needed. She prised open the penknife with her teeth and stabbed the point into her hand, slicing along the line of the old scar and through the throbbing burn left by the ring.

Shay groaned, ‘Oh God, Aoife . . .’

She cradled Eva’s fragile hand, took a quick breath, then slashed the knife across it and pressed her palm to the child’s. Her hand so much larger, dwarfing the little child’s, engulfing it. The human blood running into her, and her blood running into the child – fairy blood to cure the human child of death, fanning awake the smallest flame of life. ‘Kiss her again – bring her back for me!’

Again he bent his head, touched his lips to the child’s white forehead. Again her lashes fluttered . . . This time a little more . . .

‘Again!’

The blood still flowing. Eva’s eyes opening, icy blue with a hint of silver. Her mouth opening now – a weak, trembling cry, as if her lungs were new born. Aoife herself weeping and covering the child’s face in kisses, while still pressing their palms together.

‘Eva – Eva, how long have you been—? Ah, you wouldn’t know . . . I’m so sorry we took so long . . . Did no cars pass? Did no one stop?’

The child’s sobs were getting stronger; she was taking deep shuddering breaths. ‘I tried to find Hector – then it was dark, and I wanted Hector, and no one came and I’m hungry and
I want to go home.
’

‘We’re taking you home, sweetie . . . honey. We’re taking you home.’

A tractor with a trailer-load of turf was rattling along the bog road. Shay ran to wave it down. It creaked to a halt, and the eighty-year-old farmer eating a sandwich pushed open the door of the cab, looked down at Eva in Aoife’s arms with teasing good humour. ‘Is it a fairy you are, little girl, running out of the bog in that pretty dress?’

‘I’m a sheóg and Aoife is a fairy.’

‘Well, that’s grand, so.’ He took a bite out of his sandwich. ‘I could do with a few wishes.’

Shay said, ‘Would you mind giving us a seat as far as the road?’

‘For an aul pot of fairy gold now . . .’

Aoife had no pockets – she pushed her hand into Shay’s back pocket instead, pulled out a wad of euros and slammed it down on the step of the tractor. ‘There. And my sister is hungry – is there another half to that sandwich?’

The old man’s mouth dropped in shock. ‘Oh merciful Jesus, put that away, will ya, I was only joking—’

‘Take it. There’s plenty more where that came from.’

‘I will
not
– have ye robbed a bank? Here, I have a whole tin of the sandwiches – the old woman makes me enough for an army – ham and cheese do ye? It’ll have to; they’re all of them ham and cheese and always have been.’

The tractor took them as far as the Clonbarra road, and left them there – the old farmer still indignantly refusing money. With Eva now clinging around Shay’s neck, they trudged on towards Kilduff. Rain was falling now – not the light, misty dew of paradise, but proper, heavy, sodden rain, making them three times as wet as they had been after climbing out of the pool. The leaves on the trees poured rivers and the ditches gleamed with rain-polished sloes and blackberries. The little girl, although no longer hungry, was shivering; she started to cry a little. A white Toyota was coming in the opposite direction. As it passed them, Sinead’s face was at the side window, her mouth making strange distorted shapes at them through the rainy glass. Aoife cried, ‘Oh, it’s the Fergusons!’ and waved frantically. The Toyota actually increased its speed, disappearing round the bend with a screech of wheels. Exasperated, she said, ‘You’d think they’d stop for us in this weather, even if they are going the wrong way. It wouldn’t kill them to run us back as far as Kilduff from here.’

‘Maybe she didn’t recognize us.’

‘No, I’m sure she did. Maybe they’ll come back.’

But the Toyota did not return. They walked on. The rain was running off Shay’s short black hair and pouring down his face; dripping in silver drops from his long lashes. He had placed one square hand flat over Eva’s head like it could act as an umbrella. The rain ran in a thin silver line down the brown sweep of his neck, down under the torn collar of his Mayo shirt. For the first time in a long while, a song lyric came into Aoife’s head:

I dream of this:

Under the hawthorns he raises me with a kiss.

Shay was smiling at her. ‘You know, I like that dress on you, even if you do look like a drowned rat.’

‘Great. Thanks a million.’

‘You still have that thing on your head.’

‘What the . . .?’ She felt the top of her head – the circlet of hawthorn and mistletoe was still there, caught in her hair, and she pulled it off and threw it into the hedge. Then had an epiphany: ‘Look, what are we doing – what are we walking for? I know we’re back in the real world, but that doesn’t mean we have to pretend to be human. How about you . . . you know, and we fly to Kilduff?’

For a moment Shay’s face lit up, his smile widening, entirely flattening the deep curve in his upper lip. And then faded again. ‘Aoife, I really don’t think that’s a good idea.’

‘Oh, for . . .’ She walked faster, leaving him behind – would have run off on him entirely, only for not wanting to leave Eva.

He caught her up, splashing through the puddles. ‘Aoife, believe me, it’s not about not wanting to kiss you.’

‘I know, I know, I get it. It’s not me, it’s you. Grand. Wonderful. I appreciate your concern for my well-being. Thanks.’

‘Aoife, I need to tell you—’

‘Really, it’s all right.’

‘The lenanshee that came to find me—’

‘I
said
, it’s all right! You don’t need to tell me anything.’

‘But I want to explain—’

‘Shay, there is absolutely no need for you to explain to me about every girl you decide to go off with. I’m not some kind of mad stalker type.’

He blurted his next sentence out in one long breath before she could interrupt him again. ‘She told me that if I had feelings for you, I should stay away from you.’

Now she just wanted to laugh – and did, bitterly. ‘And you believed her.’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, there you go then.’

‘Aoife, stop walking away from me – look at me – you’re getting this all wrong.’

She turned on him angrily, stopping dead in the middle of the road. ‘OK. So tell me, how am I supposed to get it
right
?’

Under the strong umbrella of his hand, Eva was only half awake, eyelids swollen, cheeks as pink as the rose-petal dress. Gazing steadily at her, Shay said, ‘My mother killed the one she loved and she has to live with that for ever.’

She felt the urge to protest –
But your mother is dead
– and stopped herself. ‘I know that’s what you believe—’

‘It’s not her body in the graveyard, Aoife.’

She stared at him, the cold rain trickling down her neck. John McCarthy’s old-man voice was playing in her head, shaky and crackly:
That’s not Moira Foley in there. ’Tis a log of driftwood. They fairies do love to play tricks.

‘The girl who came to find me? That was my mother, Aoife.’

Still she stared speechless. Shay gazed down at her over the child’s sleeping head, his green eyes shining as if the rain had filled them up – his face soft with emotion: happiness, grief, longing, loss.

Aoife found her voice. ‘Oh, Shay.’ In the drenching rain, she stepped forward and put her arms around him. ‘Shay.’ And Eva, in the warm space between them, stirred and smiled in her sleep.

A car beeped. As Aoife pulled away from him, conscious that they were standing out in the middle of the road, a woman in her seventies with blue-rimmed glasses wound down the window of a rusty VW. ‘I guess ye’ll be after a seat. I have all this shopping in the front, but if you push over my bag on the back seat there’ll be room for the three of ye.’

‘Thanks a million.’

‘No trouble, pet. Can’t be letting you young lovers walk in this weather, specially with a little child. That’s it, move it over – don’t forget your seatbelts.’ The woman kept glancing in the rear-view mirror as she drove towards Kilduff at thirty kilometres an hour, clearly wanting to hear the full story. ‘You’re all three of ye very wet – ye look pure drownded like ye came straight out of the ocean.’

Leaning her head against the window, staring out at the wet green world of home, Aoife smiled. ‘Yes, it’s raining pretty hard out there.’

‘And you in your pretty flowery dress! And he in his bare feet! Are ye hippies on your travels? I was a hippy once, beads and all. Where are ye headed? A festival? I love a good music festival.’

‘Just Kilduff.’

‘Ah, Kilduff. ’Tis a very tragic town since those two poor teenagers died in May. Did ye know them?’

Aoife glanced at Shay, a shiver going through her. ‘Sort of . . .’

‘Sure, as wet as ye were I thought for a moment ye were the pair of them returned from the sea.’

Still holding her gaze, Shay’s eyes widened. He must also have just figured out the full story with the Fergusons – they had seen ghosts: the drowned dead come to life, drenched with sea water. No wonder the car had speeded up. Clearly, just walking in on everyone was going to be a difficult business. In the bag beside Aoife, among crumpled handkerchiefs and packets of medication, was a mobile phone. She leaned forward between the seats. ‘Would you mind very much if I use your phone, just to text some people? I’ve been away, I’ve got to find out what’s happening. I can give you some money for it.’