The White Horse Trick (22 page)

And one by one, he turned all Aidan’s uniformed guards into ginger kittens.

On the other side of the souterrain, Captain Pup was obeying his orders to the letter. At least, so far he was. He had sent the castle party through, the domestic staff first, then the goons, and after them he had sent all but two of his handpicked team of squaddies. The ones who were left were his best friends, and as they stood guard over the slumbering figure of their former commander-in-chief, the three boys talked about their past lives in Ireland and their future ones in Tír na n’Óg.

The Dagda, just like his son, was instantly kitten smitten. He ran around the rath until he succeeded in trapping one of them under a rock and catching it. He was delighted with it, laughing and cooing and talking to it in baby talk. But when he came back to Aisling’s side he grew serious again.

‘Come on,’ he said, indicating the refugees, who were lounging happily on the grass. ‘What are you waiting for? Why haven’t you got started yet?’

‘Because I’m not going to,’ said Aisling. ‘I told you that before, and I haven’t changed my mind.’

‘But why?’ said the Dagda. ‘I don’t understand. What have I done to offend you?’

‘You haven’t offended me,’ Aisling said haughtily, ‘but what you’re intending to do offends my principles.’

‘Huh?’ said the Dagda. He momentarily relaxed his grip on the kitten, which took the opportunity to race up his arm and launch itself into space.

‘Look at them, Dagda,’ said Aisling. ‘There’s nothing for them in their own country except misery and starvation. They’re happy here. They’re doing nobody any harm. It’s immoral of you to send them back.’

‘Send them back?’ said the Dagda, absently accepting the struggling kitten from the small child it had landed on. ‘Who said anything about sending them back?’

‘But . . .’ said Aisling. ‘But why have you rounded them up and brought them all here, then?’

‘Because here’s where all the music and the instruments are,’ he said. ‘So here’s where we’ll have to have the norcrystal.’

‘Orchestra?’ said Aisling.

‘That’s what I said. Orchrista. We’ve got enough people, haven’t we?’

‘Well . . . yes,’ said Aisling.

‘So what are you waiting for?’ said the Dagda.

Up at Aidan’s castle, Donal’s soldiers were ransacking the stores and carting off whatever they fancied. They began with the clothes, and soon every man was kitted out in new boots, shirt, jeans and, best of all, new waterproofs. Then they moved on to the food. There were none of the old staples left – bread and biscuits hadn’t been seen for years – but there was still some good stuff. There were crates full of tinned beans and peas and sweetcorn, rice pudding and peaches and sweetened condensed milk. There were jars of jam and chutney and pickles, some of them mouldy and inedible but some miraculously preserved against all the odds. Donal would have turned his nose up at the ancient food when he was a child, but today’s survivors had strong stomachs and this was the finest of fare for them. There would be a feast in the barracks tonight.

In the morning they would feast again, then Donal would send them over to Tír na n’Óg, with as much of the treasure from his container as they could carry. This world had reached its end game and there would be no more
need for armies now that Aidan had gone. Donal planned to join them before too much longer, but he had one last time-consuming job to do first. He hoped he would have enough strength left to carry it out.

When the last of the rejoicing squaddies had returned to the barracks, the sun was sinking rapidly. But there was still another half an hour of light left in the sky, so Donal decided to have a sort through his container and choose which things would go and which would have to be left behind. He climbed the ladder, opened the container and went in.

There was another of JJ’s handmade fiddles, and he put that beside the door to go, and then a box of modern novels that he had picked out when he had still had time to be choosy. He was just going through a stack of children’s picture books when he heard a strange sound on the roof of the container. It was like footsteps, but hard little ones; nothing like a man. He turned towards the open doors, just in time to see the púca changing himself into his long form and swinging down into the container.

‘Good evening, Donal,’ he said. ‘You’re the very person I was looking for.’

When he got over the initial shock of seeing the face, JJ urged the horse forward. It complied, and he might have realized that it did so too willingly if he hadn’t been so intrigued by what he had found. The ancient plastic windows made it difficult to see the face, but it was clear that it belonged to a child, and behind it were two more, looking out eagerly. The kidnapped children. Who else could it be? JJ had stumbled across exactly what he had been sent here to fetch.

He remembered it all now that they had stopped for a moment and he was no longer fighting with the horse. The drinking contest. Donal cheating. The written note. The key. He had won, so surely he must have the key. Moving gingerly and still fighting waves of nausea, he checked in all his pockets. He couldn’t find it, and nor could he remember anyone giving it to him.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said to the children. ‘I’ll soon have you out of there.’

The door didn’t look very strong. It belonged to an old caravan, which had been cleverly concealed inside the
ruins of the house. If he could just move that big rock, it shouldn’t be too difficult to get it open, even without a key. He coaxed the horse forward, and again, too willingly, it obeyed him. It almost seemed to sense what he wanted, and positioned itself as close to the big rock as it could get, so it was easy for JJ to reach down and—

‘Dad!’ came a voice from behind him. ‘No! Don’t touch it!’

JJ straightened up and turned to see Jenny racing through the rubble towards him.

‘Don’t worry, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘I’ve found the children. I was just—’

He stopped mid-sentence and broke into a cold sweat.

‘Just doing exactly what Oisín did when he fell off the horse,’ said Jenny.

‘Oh my God,’ said JJ. ‘I was, wasn’t I? Lucky you came along.’

The horse turned and glared at Jenny, and she got the distinct impression that it didn’t agree. It tossed its head, swivelled on its hind legs and, with JJ still somehow clinging on, set off again for the sea.

‘Have you been drinking?’ said the púca, sniffing the air.

‘Not me,’ said Donal. ‘My father and my brother. It’s a long story.’ He had changed his clothes along with the rest of the men, but Aidan’s poitín had somehow soaked right into his skin and he was sure he could taste it as well as smell it.

The púca looked around the container. ‘Such a marvellous idea. So clever of you to think of it.’

‘It was Mikey’s idea, really,’ said Donal. ‘I just expanded on it a bit.’

‘All the same,’ said the púca, ‘it’s a great achievement. Do you have a copy of
The Grafter’s Bible
, by any chance?’

‘I’ve got several Bibles,’ said Donal. ‘I don’t know which versions they are.’

‘Not that Bible,’ said the púca. ‘
The Grafter’s Bible: A Layman’s Guide to the Propagation of Fruit Trees
.’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Donal. ‘It might be in one of the boxes. I did get some farming and gardening books, but I doubt whether they’ll get through.’

‘Not get through?’ said the púca. ‘Why would they not get through?’

‘There aren’t enough people left now,’ said Donal. ‘Not here anyway. So most of this stuff will have to stay where it is.’

‘That would be a shame,’ said the púca. ‘Of course, there’s always the chance that I might be able to give you a bit of help.’

Donal stared at him, struck with a vision from his childhood. The púca’s fist reaching between the worlds and returning with a tree in it. He had seen it with his own eyes. He swallowed hard, refusing to allow hope to engulf him. Because if the púca could do that, what was to stop him doing the same thing in the other direction? If he could pull things out of Tír na n’Óg, he could surely push things into it as well.

‘I see that you remember,’ the púca said. ‘It would be no bother to me at all, you know. I could put the whole lot through for you if you like.’

‘That would be fantastic,’ said Donal. ‘You have no idea what it would mean to me.’

‘But naturally,’ the púca said, ‘I’d have to ask for a little favour in return.’

Donal remembered his terror of the púca when he was a child. He ought to have realized there would be a catch. The hopes that had dared to surface sank back into the depths they had come from.

‘What kind of favour?’ he asked.

The púca held out a bunch of sticks, some of them hairy little roots, others twigs cut from a tree. ‘I’d like you to take these over with you and look after them for me. It’s completely harmless, just a bit of good rootstock and some cuttings from my favourite trees. I may need them again one day and it would be nice to know they were somewhere safe.’

‘I don’t see a problem with that,’ said Donal.

‘There isn’t one,’ said the púca. ‘But I would rather Aengus Óg was kept in the dark about it, if it’s all the same to you. We’re not exactly the best of friends, and he’d be certain to try and thwart me if he knew what I was doing.’

‘OK,’ said Donal, hope emerging afresh. ‘I don’t see why he needs to know anything about it.’

‘Excellent,’ said the púca. ‘So I can rely on you to keep them hidden? Just these few little precious things? Will you keep them with you?’

‘I could do,’ said Donal. It was, after all, a small price to pay for getting the rest of his stuff across.

‘So where would you put them?’ the púca asked.

Donal opened his jacket and showed him the poacher’s pocket.

‘Oh, isn’t that wonderful?’ said the púca. ‘You know, old Mikey is right about some things. You people are not entirely useless. That’s an extremely clever idea.’

‘There’s loads of room in it,’ said Donal. ‘They’ll be quite safe in there.’

‘But you’ll have to take those other things out, presumably,’ the púca said.

‘Oh, I will,’ said Donal. ‘But I’m not going over just yet. I have some work to do first and I’ll need the things that are in there.’

‘Oh.’ The púca sounded disappointed. ‘Well, would you mind if we tried it out? I’d just like to be sure that my stuff will fit in there.’

‘No bother,’ said Donal. He took out the rolls of plastic bags and the A4 pads and the ballpoint pens. The púca stretched out his hairy arm and placed the rootstock and cuttings carefully inside. The tops protruded slightly.

‘Do you think they’ll be safe?’ he said.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Donal.

‘Even if you do up the jacket?’

Donal demonstrated, buttoning the jacket up to the top.

‘And they won’t get broken if you sit down, or when you go to sleep?’

‘No,’ said Donal. ‘I’ll make sure they don’t.’

‘Good,’ said the púca, and with a speed that caught Donal completely off guard, he stepped out on to the ladder and slammed the container doors closed.

The horse careered down the hillside, leaping rocks and scattering stones. The setting sun was directly ahead, fiercer than any searchlight, making it impossible for JJ to see where he was going. He had given up trying to influence the horse’s behaviour and was concentrating hard on holding on to anything he could find. The empty stirrups bounced wildly, hitting him in the thighs and once, when he was pitched forward, on his nose. It was the nightmare to end all nightmares, and it felt as if it was never going to end. At the bottom of the hill, where the encroaching sea met the foot of the mountain, its storm-driven waves had eaten away a sheer cliff, about ten metres high. And the horse, which couldn’t see much better than JJ could, had no idea it was there.

When Aisling surveyed the ragtag bunch of humanity gathered before her, she began to wonder whether she might not, after all, harbour some fascist tendencies. Because the idea of trying to turn a hundred tone-deaf refugees into a functioning orchestra was absurd. It filled
her with such panic that she almost wished she had sent them all back where they came from after all.

She didn’t know where to begin, but the Dagda was striding through the crowds as if it was all perfectly simple.

‘Here,’ he said, handing the piano accordion to a bent old woman. ‘You play this. And you, that tall fella over there – you play this dirty great big fiddle thing. The muddy one, that’s right.’

It was ridiculous. If Pup was anything to go by, these people wouldn’t even be able to sing. They didn’t have the first rudimentary concepts of music. She would have to start them all from scratch, get them listening first, and maybe doing some clapping exercises. But there was the Dagda, surrounded by a gang of children, handing out whistles as if they were lollipops. And, predictably, the first thing they did was blow into them as hard as they could.

Aisling glanced up at Aengus, who was watching from the sidelines, his handsome face creased with laughter. ‘Right!’ she said, with the volume and tone she had often borrowed from her first headmistress. ‘Everybody stop blowing and listen. Aengus Óg is going to play us a tune.’

One moment JJ and the horse were hurtling down the stony hillside; the next, completely without warning, they were in mid air and the brilliant surface of the sea was soaring up to meet them. They hit it with a crash and JJ gasped at the sudden cold shock.

It was just as well he did, because that last snatched breath of Irish air had to last him a long, long time. The horse did not stay on the surface, but plunged straight down beneath the waves and stayed there, swimming strongly through the gloom, dragging JJ in its wake. The sea bed wasn’t far below but the horse stayed above it, ploughing through the seaweed that grew there. As the oxygen began to run out in JJ’s lungs, he was gripped by the awful realization that the horse wasn’t going to take him back through the time skin to Tír na n’Óg. It had never intended to do that. He remembered it rubbing his leg against the boulder on the hillside. He remembered how cooperative it had suddenly become when he wanted to move that stone that was up against the door of the caravan. He wondered again how many people the white horse had taken out of Tír na n’Óg and back to Ireland. And he wondered whether any of them had made it back again. Because he saw now that bringing people home wasn’t the horse’s job. Twice it had tried to get him off with the old rock trick, and now it was trying to drown him.