The White Horse Trick (16 page)

‘Do we have rules?’ Aengus said to Jenny.

‘You don’t understand,’ said Aidan. ‘This is my kingdom. Nothing happens unless I order it. No one eats or sleeps or moves without my permission. You expect me to give up all that?’

‘It’s not a bad idea though, Aidan,’ said Jenny. ‘You wouldn’t miss any of it once you got to Tír na n’Óg. You probably wouldn’t even remember most of it.’

‘But I want to remember it!’ said Aidan. ‘I don’t want to wander around in a daze and be subjected to that diddly-aye music and have Aengus Óg telling me what to do.’

‘Do I tell people what to do?’ said Aengus.

‘Well, what alternative do you have?’ said Jenny.

‘I’m glad you asked that,’ said Aidan. ‘Because that’s why I’ve asked Aengus to come here. I’ve been studying
the literature, you see. And I reckon Aengus here can sort out all our problems for us.’

‘I can?’ said Aengus, without taking his eyes off the kitten, which was beginning to creep out again.

‘I know what you can do,’ said Aidan. ‘I know that you can produce feasts and banquets with a click of your fingers. With magic like that, nobody would ever need to go hungry again.’

‘What’s he talking about?’ Aengus asked Jenny.

‘Glamour, I’d say,’ she said.

The kitten had reached the leg of Donal’s chair. The rainwater that had drenched his clothes when he went out to get the tobacco was now dripping into a puddle around his feet, and the kitten had walked into it by accident. It was shaking its paws in irritation, one after the other. Donal reached down quietly and picked it up.

Aengus watched, annoyed. ‘Why should we do tricks for you, just because you tell us to?’ he said. ‘We’re not performing monkeys.’

Aidan waved his keys again. ‘Because I have something you want.’

‘I know that,’ said Aengus, and there was a flash of danger in his eyes now. ‘You have my tobacco.’

‘Is that all?’ said Aidan. ‘Really? You don’t want your children back?’

‘My children?’ said Aengus. ‘I’m not missing any children.’ He pointed at Jenny. ‘This one here is my youngest.’

‘Is that so?’ said Aidan. ‘Well, I have three of your changelings in my possession. They must belong to somebody.’

‘Oh, wait a minute,’ said Aengus. ‘Now you come to mention it, I might have another one growing up somewhere. But we never worry about them. They make their own way home when they’re ready.’

‘Well, these ones won’t,’ said Aidan, waving the keys again.

‘Oh, that won’t bother them,’ said Aengus. ‘They’re—’

Jenny elbowed him in the ribs. ‘Dad! You have to take this more seriously!’

‘Do I?’ said Aengus. ‘All right, then. If you say so, Jen. What is it he wants?’

‘Food,’ said Aidan. ‘Feasts.’

‘Glamour,’ said Jenny.

‘Oh, all right,’ said Aengus. ‘We can probably rustle up a bit of glamour if that’s what you want. But it won’t do you any good, you know.’ He reached out and pulled Donal’s woollen hat off his head and dropped it on to the table, where it turned into a chocolate pudding. ‘Let’s see,’ he went on. ‘What else?’

As Aidan watched, his gun turned into a loaf of hot, crusty bread, the plastic fruit into muffins, the stack of fairy books into a leg of roast lamb surrounded by crisp, golden potatoes. Steam rose from the food and the room filled with mouth-watering smells.

‘Happy now?’ said Aengus. He turned to Donal. ‘Give me a go of that furry thing, will you?’

The kitten was purring contentedly in Donal’s lap, but the moment he handed it to Aengus it stopped and started wriggling and mewling.

‘That’s exactly what I meant,’ said Aidan. ‘I knew it! I knew that it would work.’

‘There’s only one snag as far as I can see,’ said Jenny.

‘And what’s that?’ said Aidan.

‘Well, see for yourself. Go on. Have a taste of the chocolate pudding.’

Aidan hesitated for a moment, then plunged two plump fingers into the pudding and licked them. ‘Mmm. Delicious,’ he said, putting the fingers back in and scooping out another mouthful. ‘Scrumptious.’

‘Why is it squawking?’ said Aengus, trying to restrain the struggling kitten.

‘Other way up, Dad,’ said Jenny. ‘I wouldn’t eat too much of that now, Aidan. You might regret it.’

Donal, who had been watching quietly throughout, suddenly came to a realization. ‘It’s not real, is it?’ he said. ‘It’s just made to look irresistible. That’s what glamour does.’

‘Didn’t you know that?’ said Jenny.

But Donal didn’t answer. The realization had brought with it a sudden stark insight into another kind of glamour. It was a long time ago now, but he saw it all quite clearly: how the media and the advertisers had created
their own kind of glamour to seduce whole populations into a kind of insanity. Food that was bad for people, drink that turned them into mindless thugs, countless tons of useless rubbish, all dressed up by advertising glamour to appear like things people couldn’t live without. And the human race had fallen for it hook, line and sinker, becoming what the business moguls and advertising chiefs had wanted them to become. Consumers of limitless glamour, all of it ultimately worthless.

And where had it got them? To this. A world used up and overheating, and the human race on its way down the drain.

Aidan had stopped eating and was looking distinctly uncomfortable.

‘Look,’ said Aengus, who had finally got the kitten the right way up and was cradling it against his chest. ‘In all fairness I don’t think this is the answer to your problems. All this impending disaster stuff isn’t my department. You’d be much better off having a chat with my father.’

‘Your father?’ said Aidan. The chocolate pudding was giving him a stomach ache and it had left a distinct aftertaste of sodden wool and wood smoke.

‘The Dagda,’ said Aengus. ‘He might be able to help you. All kinds of powers, my father has. He can fix anything. He might even be able to sort out your climate for you. And he’d definitely be impressed by your thing with the bunch of keys. He’s mad about his family, the Dagda is. Except for me, maybe.’

‘That sounds good,’ said Aidan. ‘So how can I get to meet him?’

‘Come over,’ said Aengus. ‘I’ll tell you where to find him.’

‘Oh, no,’ said Aidan. ‘You’re not going to fool me with a trick like that.’

‘Right,’ said Aengus. ‘Tell you what. Give me that tobacco and I’ll go and fetch him for you. Is that a deal?’

Before Aidan could answer, Aengus snatched the bag from his grasp and vanished. The tobacco, being inanimate, vanished with him. The kitten, being in essence a ploddy goon, did not.

Even Jenny was surprised by the suddenness of Aengus’s departure. In the moment it took her to wonder whether it might be a good idea to go with him, she lost the opportunity. Because Aidan acted like lightning. Before anyone could react, he leaped to his feet and, with astonishing speed, was behind Donal and had a gun to his head.

Another gun. Jenny winced. She should have suspected he would have one, but she hadn’t.

‘Don’t try anything,’ Aidan said. ‘If you disappear, I’ll shoot him.’

She ran through her options in her mind, but he was ahead of her at every step. ‘Do you think you can, Jenny, eh?’ he said. ‘Can you turn me into a pig quick enough, do you think? Only takes a fraction of a second for my trigger-finger to act, you know. Would you risk it?’

She wouldn’t, and he knew she wouldn’t. She said nothing.

‘He was your favourite brother, wasn’t he, Jen?’ Aidan went on. ‘Donal and Jenny, always off around the place together.’

It wasn’t how Jenny remembered it, but it was true that she had been closer to Donal than to any of the others.

‘You wouldn’t want anything to happen to him, would you? You’ll stay with us for a while, at least until your clever grandfather turns up.’ As Aidan spoke, he was backing towards the door. He called through the grille and, with the gun still aimed at Donal’s head, drew the bolts with his free hand. Two goons burst in, bristling with weapons. But it seemed that reinforcements weren’t the only things Aidan had on his mind.

As soon as the men were inside the door, he snapped out an order.

‘Get me a drink,’ he said.

Aengus sat on the hill in the lee of the stony steps and eagerly filled his pipe. But the tobacco was disappointing. It was little more than dark brown dust, and when he lit the pipe, it flared up and singed his hair. The smoke burned his throat and made him cough.

‘A pox on these ploddies anyway,’ he said. ‘Can they never get anything right?’

He packed the pipe again, tighter this time, and managed to get enough smoke into him to finally calm his cravings. But it was not a nice experience, and he was still coughing and spitting out bitter tobacco dust when he put away the pipe and set off down the hill.

At the bank of the rath he discovered a strange scene. His father was sitting on a box with an outsized fiddle between his legs, and Aisling appeared to be teaching him how to read.

‘That’s D there,’ she was saying. ‘And so the next one up is E.’

‘Hello, Aengus,’ said JJ. ‘You know the white horse down there on the road?’

‘What about it?’ said Aengus.

‘Is it quiet?’ said JJ. ‘Would it mind if I pulled some hairs out of its tail?’

The Dagda looked up from the music score and noticed Aengus Óg. ‘There you are,’ he said. ‘What have you been up to this time?’

‘Well,’ said Aengus, ‘since you ask—’

‘Wait a minute,’ said the Dagda. He closed his eyes and concentrated for a moment, and the others felt a strange, subtle jolt beneath their feet.

‘What was that?’ said JJ.

‘Barricades are up,’ said the Dagda. ‘No more coming and going. Let’s see the ploddies try and get through now!’

On the other side of the time skin the jolt was felt as well, but it was a gentle sensation and nothing like the storms that rocked the container castle every day. No one took any notice of it except Jenny. She had never experienced it before, but her instincts told her what it was, and a tentative exploration with her free hand confirmed her fears.

She was filled with despair and terror. Like all the fairy folk she was not inclined to worry, and although it wasn’t very nice being held captive by her brother and his nasty henchmen, she’d had no doubt that she would, sooner or later, manage to get away. But that subtle tremor in the world’s edge represented a death sentence to her. If she couldn’t get back to Tír na n’Óg, she was condemned to
sharing the ploddies’ miserable and doomed existence. She was no different from anyone else trapped on this side and subject to the irreversible effects of time. Like them she would now have to live with the awful fact that, sooner or later, she would die.

‘You sealed the time skin?’ said JJ to the Dagda.

‘But Jenny isn’t back yet,’ said Aisling. ‘And I think that little lad might have gone back through as well.’

‘That little lad who was here?’ said the Dagda. ‘The one who couldn’t play?’

‘Maybe you could open it and then close it again when they come back,’ said JJ.

‘Actually,’ said Aengus Óg, ‘that might not be a bad idea. Thing is, Dad, there are a few of us still over there.’

‘What?’ said the Dagda.

‘And I said you’d go over and sort it out.’

‘What?’ roared the Dagda.

‘And stop it raining and blowing. You should see the storms they get over there. Serious stuff.’

‘What?’ bellowed the Dagda.

Aengus went on doggedly. ‘And the thing is, that son of his has turned into a bit of a warlord and by all accounts he’s making everyone’s life a misery.’

‘Whose son?’ said the Dagda.

‘JJ’s,’ said Aengus. ‘And he’s got some of our kids locked up somewhere and he says he won’t let them out unless you go over there and put everything right.’

The ground was trembling beneath their feet again, but this time it had nothing to do with the time skin. The whole of Tír na n’Óg was affected by the Dagda’s momentous rage.

‘How dare he?’ he roared. ‘How dare he take my children hostage and make outrageous demands of me?’

‘That’s exactly what I said—’ Aengus began, but the Dagda ignored him.

‘I will not go over to that godforsaken place under any circumstances. I will not make deals with a despot. I will not even enter into a discussion!’ He looked around wildly in his fury, and his eye fixed on JJ, who was in the act of trying to make a quick getaway.

‘You!’ he called. ‘This is all your fault!’

‘Me?’ said JJ. ‘How could it be my fault?’

‘Because it’s your corrupt offspring that is causing all this trouble.’

JJ might have pointed out that the Dagda washed his hands entirely of Aengus Óg’s indiscretions, but he was aware of what might happen to him if he didn’t play his cards very carefully indeed.

‘Well, I’m sorry if you think that,’ he said, ‘but—’

‘But nothing!’ said the Dagda. ‘Get over there and sort this mess out!’

‘Get over there?’ said JJ.

‘He can’t,’ said Aisling, stepping over to JJ and clutching his arm.

‘Of course he can!’ said the Dagda.

‘Actually, Father,’ said Aengus, ‘I think she might be right.’

‘I don’t care what you think, Aengus Óg,’ said the Dagda. ‘That white horse down there is bored out of its brain. It’ll do it the world of good to get a bit of exercise.’

JJ gasped. The white horse. He knew, as everyone did, that it was the one that had taken Oisín across the time skin and come back without him, but it had never occurred to him that it could do it again. ‘Now hang on a minute,’ he said.

‘I will not hang on,’ said the Dagda. ‘If you value your skin, JJ Liddy, you will do as I say. Get up on the white horse and go over to Ireland. And don’t come back until you have set my children free!’

Aengus strode over and threw a hearty arm around JJ’s shoulders. ‘He’s right, you know. You’ve nothing to worry about. So long as you don’t get down from the horse you’ll be grand.’

‘Oh yeah,’ said JJ. ‘Just like Oisín was grand.’

‘Well, he fell off, the old eejit,’ said Aengus. Then he raised his voice and said, very loudly, ‘And anyway, you can’t go over because my genius of a father has just sealed up the time skin.’

There was a grunt from behind them and they felt a second jolt, just like the first.