The White Horse Trick (20 page)

‘All I was asking for was a little bit of magic,’ he went on. ‘Simple stuff for the king of the fairies. Turn these awful storms off. Put everything back the way it was.’

‘I’m not sure about that,’ said JJ, but Aidan wasn’t listening.

‘I’m not asking for much. I’m not looking for a
Mediterranean climate or anything. I don’t want to grow olives and lemons, just cabbages and spuds like we used to have. I want to get some cattle up and running again. I want fresh milk and meat. I don’t mind a bit of wind and rain. I just want it back the way it was!’

‘Yes, but—’ said JJ.

‘I wouldn’t need to tax people then.’ Aidan was red in the face and close to tears. ‘I wouldn’t need to build terraces that keep sliding down the flaming hillside if the soil stopped running away and the shops were open again.’ He spun round to face JJ. ‘He wouldn’t come, though, would he? No. He sent my old dad to slap my hand and tell me to behave myself. Well, you better go back, JJ. Take your stupid white horse out of my living room and tell the king of the fairies to get his fat backside over here!’

‘I can’t,’ said JJ.

‘What do you mean you can’t?’ said Aidan.

‘I mean I can’t. For once in your life, will you shut up and listen?’

Aidan stared at him, then turned in fury and kicked first one dog, then the other. They yelped and bolted through the heavy velvet curtains into Aidan’s bedroom. The kittens vanished and the horse threw up its head.

‘I’m listening,’ said the commander-in-chief.

JJ took a deep breath. ‘The Dagda wants his children back,’ he said. ‘The ones you’re holding hostage.’

‘I’m delighted to hear that,’ said Aidan. ‘That’s precisely why I took them.’

‘I can’t go back without them,’ said JJ. ‘I’m prepared to put your concerns to the Dagda and ask him to come and see you, but I can’t go back without them.’

‘Oh, really,’ said Aidan. ‘Well, you’d better not go back then, had you? Because I’m not going to give up the only bargaining chips I have. Not for a vague promise that he “might” come over. Do you think I’m mad?’

‘Yes,’ said Jenny and Donal in unison.

‘I wasn’t asking you!’Aidan roared. He turned his back on his father. ‘So, if you’ve nothing better to offer, you might as well clear off.’

‘But what do you expect me to do?’ said JJ. ‘Wander around on this horse for ever?’

‘Why not?’ said Aidan.

‘Because . . .’ JJ hadn’t really thought about it, but now some awful eventualities besieged his imagination. ‘What if the horse gets tired and lies down or something? What if I go to sleep and fall off?’

Aidan grinned broadly, showing his yellow gums. ‘Poor Dad. What a predicament.’

‘Don’t listen to him, Dad,’ said Jenny. ‘We’ll think of something.’

‘Shut up, Jenny,’ said Aidan, and a look of pure malevolence came over his face. ‘I’ve just had an idea. Would you like a fighting chance, JJ?’

‘Of course I would,’ said JJ.

‘Then I’ll give you one,’ said Aidan. ‘What would you say to the idea of a little bet?’

The ghost’s talk about Donal’s cultural mission had reminded the púca of another kind of culture, one of which he was particularly fond. It was a weakness, he knew, a silly little foible, but the opportunity, now that it had presented itself, was too good to ignore.

He had to admit that it was a cunning plan, and he rather wished he had thought of it himself. There were other ways of doing it, of course, but if Aengus Óg got a whiff of the púca’s personal involvement, he would be sure to do his utmost to stymie his little project. Doing it this way was much, much safer.

The things he needed were small and light and easy to transport, but he had to travel quite a distance to get them. Although he could not, like the fairies, transform himself into a raven or a hawk, he did have ways of covering distances on foot at great speed. He used one of them now: became a white colossus striding across the mountainside, unseen by anyone in the thick, warm mist that followed the passing of the storm.

* * *

The third time Aisling went through the village, she was joined by a pair of sheepdogs, who seemed tremendously eager to help. She had devised a plan for collecting the immigrants together instead of directing them and had gathered a crowd of about thirty, who were dawdling along in roughly the right direction. The dogs paced backwards and forwards at the back of the group, hustling the stragglers and nipping at their heels. Aisling had never worked with dogs but she had seen them on TV, so she gave them commands and sent them speeding away in different directions to gather any nearby ploddies she might have missed.

‘Come on now, keep going,’ she said to a couple of children who were sitting on the kerb, playing marbles with beach pebbles. They got up happily and skipped along the street, but an elderly man and a soldier had started wandering off in the wrong direction and she had to go back for them.

Why couldn’t the Dagda just leave them? They weren’t doing anybody any harm. Her body as well as her mind was rebelling against the job she had been given, and she found that she was walking more and more slowly. She was, she realized, beginning to despise herself for following the Dagda’s orders.

‘What kind of a little bet did you have in mind?’ asked JJ nervously.

‘Here’s the deal,’ said Aidan. ‘If you win, I give you this clever little key here which belongs to the place where the fairy children are hidden.’

‘And tell him what it opens,’ said Donal.

‘And where it is,’ said Jenny.

Aidan shot them both a look. ‘All those things,’ he said to JJ. ‘And you can take them home with you to the fairy patriarch and ask him very nicely if he’d care to pay me a visit.’

‘OK,’ said JJ. ‘And if I lose?’

‘Very simple,’ said Aidan. ‘Piece of cake, really. All you have to do is get down off the horse.’

In the silence that followed his words they could all clearly hear a loud rumbling, creaking sound, coming from nearby. Aidan crossed to the door and called through the grille.

‘What’s the noise?’

‘Drawbridge, sir,’ came the reply. The voice was
muffled, as if it came through a very thick scarf, but there was nothing unusual about that in the weather they were having.

‘Why are you opening the drawbridge?’ Aidan barked back.

‘Maintenance, sir,’ the voice said. ‘Just discovered a kink in the chain.’

Aidan closed the cover. ‘Well?’ he said to JJ. ‘What do you think?’

‘Don’t do it, Dad,’ said Jenny.

JJ had no intention of doing it, but he was intrigued all the same, and he wanted to know what Aidan was prepared to risk.

‘So what’s the game?’ he asked.

‘Cards, I thought,’ said Aidan. ‘A few hands of poker, perhaps?’

‘Poker?’ said JJ.

‘Pontoon if you prefer.’

‘Aidan,’ said JJ, ‘I’m your father, remember? You’ve been using marked cards since you were eight years old. I had to go to your school and pay back all the money you swindled out of your classmates.’

Aidan laughed with delight. ‘It’s a fair cop,’ he said. ‘We can toss for it instead. Best of five.’

‘Not that, either, Aidan. Not if you’re still using that weighted coin.’

‘I’ve an idea,’ said Donal.

‘Have you now?’ said Aidan. ‘Let’s hear it, then.’

‘Drink him for it.’

‘You what?’

‘Have a drinking contest. Whoever is left standing, or conscious at any rate, is the winner.’

Both men stared at him blankly. Jenny stared at him as well. His wet clothes were steaming in the warm room, and it made him look like a cartoon character whose brain was overheating. The idea sounded insane, but he seemed to be quite serious about it. And if Jenny had to choose one person in either of the worlds to trust with her life, it would be Donal. So she backed him up.

‘Yeah. Sounds like a brilliant idea to me.’

Aidan edged backwards so he could inspect the poitín on the sideboard without taking his eyes, and the gun in his pocket, off his brother.

‘You might have an idea there,’ he said. There were two full bottles and a bit left in a third. They wouldn’t need anything like that amount. Aidan knew his father had enjoyed a few pints when he was a young man, but in later years he had given it up entirely because it sent him to sleep. In a straight drinking contest, glass for glass, Aidan knew he could drink JJ under the table.

‘I’m up for it,’ he said. ‘Are you, Dad?’

JJ hoped Donal knew what he was doing. But in the event that he didn’t, at least JJ would know nothing about it. If he fell off the horse in an alcoholic stupor, then he’d never feel himself turning into a heap of old bones.

‘I suppose I am,’ he said.

The two dogs, for all their apparent enthusiasm, never came back to Aisling. As she traipsed along behind her little herd of willing ploddies, she caught a glimpse of them in a distant field, chasing each other and rolling in the grass like a pair of puppies. The sight of them made her stop and think, and she sat on a grassy bank beside the road and pulled a summer stalk to chew on.

She wasn’t going to do it. Somehow she had decided that without even realizing it. She wasn’t going to deliver these refugees back to the Dagda so he could throw them out. It was obvious that there was no future for them in Ireland. Sending them back there amounted to an act of murder, or at least manslaughter, and she was simply not going to do it.

As for the consequences, she would put up with them, whatever they were. The sheepdogs had reminded her that there were worse fates than being an animal. And for all she knew, toads might have more fun than any of them. Whatever it was like, it had to be better than living with the knowledge that she had been complicit in
sending these innocent people to their deaths. She wished JJ was there so she could tell him what she was doing and why. She hoped that he would make it and that she would see him back here in Tír na n’Óg again, even if he didn’t notice her peering out from beneath a rock or flying over his head.

A child sat down beside her and leaned against her shoulder. One by one the other people sat down beside the road, or on it, or wandered away into the adjoining fields. They were happy, and Aisling was, too. Whatever happened happened, and at least she would be facing it with a clear conscience.

Aidan reversed to the sideboard and collected two shot glasses. He put them on the table and returned for the bottle, never once taking his left hand out of his pocket or his eyes off Donal.

Donal reached for the glasses, but Aidan snatched them up from the table.

‘Whoa, whoa,’ he said, hugging them to his chest like a small child with a bag of sweets. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

‘You can’t take part in a contest and be the referee as well,’ said Donal. ‘I’ll pour the drinks and hand them out.’

Aidan stared at him suspiciously.

‘He’s right, Aidan,’ said Jenny. ‘You can’t have it all your own way.’

Aidan set down the bottle and the glasses. ‘No funny business, then,’ he said. ‘Equal measures. And you pour them right in front of me, there on the table.’

‘OK by me,’ said Donal. ‘Is that OK by you, Dad?’

‘Fine by me,’ said JJ, although the whole thing was anything but fine by him.

Donal picked up the bottle and, under Aidan’s eagle eye, poured two perfectly equal measures. Aidan reached for one of them but Donal put a hand over it.

‘Hold on a minute now,’ he said. ‘There’s something we need to sort out before we start.’

‘What’s that?’ said Aidan.

‘The key. And directions to the place where the children are being held. If you pass out, we won’t know where to find them.’

‘But I won’t pass out,’ said Aidan. ‘Never happened before. Won’t happen now.’

‘Then the deal’s off,’ said Donal. ‘No point in having a contest only one side can win.’

‘All right, all right,’ said Aidan. ‘But you don’t expect me to tell you now, do you?’

‘No,’ said Donal. ‘Write it down.’

‘Write it down?’

‘Yes. And sit on the piece of paper. If you fall, we take it. If you win, we never see it.’

Aidan looked carefully at Donal and then at Jenny. ‘No funny business, then. You haven’t forgotten the other thing, have you? The thing in my pocket? Because it’s still there.’

‘What thing in your pocket?’ said JJ.

‘Don’t worry about it, Dad,’ said Donal. ‘We haven’t forgotten, Aidan.’

‘Right.’ Aidan took the writing pad and, without taking his left hand out of his pocket or his eyes off Donal,
wrote something on the top sheet, then tore it off and folded it.

‘And the key,’ said Jenny.

Aidan searched through the bunch of keys until he found the one he was looking for, then levered it off the ring. He wrapped it in the handwritten note, then put the little package into his back pocket. ‘Happy now?’ he said. ‘Are we finally ready?’

Donal handed one of the glasses to Aidan, then picked up the other one and turned towards JJ on the horse. The instant his back was to Aidan, he casually slopped at least half of the poitín on to the front of his jumper, where it made no impression at all on the soaking wet wool. JJ reached out his hand and Donal pushed the glass well into it, so JJ’s fingers closed right around it and hid the level of the drink.

‘Sláinte,’ said Aidan, throwing back his drink in one go. JJ followed suit, and his reaction left no doubt in anyone’s mind that there was poitín in that glass. It was throat-scorching stuff, and JJ coughed and gagged and waved his hand in front of his mouth as if he’d just bitten into a chilli pepper.

‘Nice stuff, eh, Dad?’ said Aidan. ‘We make it ourselves out the back, just like in the old days. It’s getting scarce now though, what with the shortage of spuds and all. You’re honoured to be getting a drink of it. I hope you appreciate it.’

JJ nodded weakly. His eyes were streaming and were
fixed with dread upon Donal, who was pouring the next round. But once again, as soon as he turned his back on Aidan, Donal spilled half the drink down his jumper. He did it with no sudden or obvious movements, just a careful tilt of his wrist at exactly the right moment. JJ wrapped his hand around the glass and raised it to his other son.