The White Horse Trick (24 page)

‘A soldier boy,’ he said. ‘Or a boy soldier. Which is it?’ Pup was too surprised to answer, and the púca went on, ‘What brings you up here at this time of night?’

Pup found his voice. ‘I’m looking for General Liddy.’

‘General Liddy?’ said the púca. ‘Now, which of the Liddys would that be?’

‘Donal,’ said Pup. ‘General Donal Liddy.’

‘Ah, Donal,’ said the púca. ‘Well, he’s not here, as you can see. But I happen to know where he is.’

‘Really?’ said Pup. ‘Where is he?’

‘In Tír na n’Óg,’ said the púca. ‘It seems to be all the rage this summer. They’re all flocking over there for a bit of sunshine.’

‘Not the general,’ said Pup. ‘He can’t be.’

‘I assure you he is, though,’ said the púca. ‘I put him there myself. Him and his big trunkful of memories.’

‘You did that?’ said Pup. ‘You moved the container?’

‘Piece of cake. ‘The púca yawned and sighed and said, with a drop of acid in his voice, ‘Is there anything else I can help you with?’

‘No,’ said Pup. ‘I’ll be going back, I suppose.’

He turned and started down the side of the barrow, but the púca called out after him. ‘Soldier boy?’

‘Yes?’

‘There’s someone here who wants you to take a message.’

‘Who?’ said Pup. ‘Who’s there?’

‘It’s just an old ghost,’ said the púca, and fear crawled over Pup’s scalp. ‘He wants you to give a message to General Liddy. Are you intending to follow him over to Tír na n’Óg?’

‘Yes.’ Pup’s eyes searched the surrounding darkness but he could see no sign of any ghost. ‘But I have some things to do first. It won’t be for a while.’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ said the púca. ‘There’s no mad rush. But when you do see him, tell him Mikey says goodbye.’

‘Mikey?’

‘Mikey says goodbye. Can you remember that?’

‘I can,’ said Pup.

As he walked back towards the stony steps, a wind began to snake around his heels, threatening worse to come. Above him there were no stars at all, but out of the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of something bright and shining. It seemed to float along the edge of his vision for a while, before rising up and vanishing among the clouds.

‘Mikey says goodbye.’ He repeated the words to himself to make sure he didn’t forget them. ‘Mikey says goodbye.’

Into Donal’s dreams came a sound from his childhood. His mother’s favourite piece, played so often that everyone thought of it as her theme tune. In the dream he was on the sofa, and Jenny was under the television, pulling the plug out of the wall. Aidan was a toddler, wandering around with a hammer.

The Dagda stood enraptured, his eyes closed, his hands drifting around him as though he was searching for something in mid air. Indeed, Aisling realized as she watched them that he probably could, and did, pull music out of the air. He
was
music, from the tips of his gently tapping toes to the fly-away hairs on the top of his head. With the right kind of guidance he would make the conductor to beat all conductors. Her fingers moved automatically through the familiar piece but her mind was already racing ahead. Whatever it took, she would knock the starry-eyed rabble of Tír na n’Óg into an orchestra and hand it over to him.

When the piece came to an end, the Dagda opened
his eyes and blinked. ‘How did you do that?’ he said. ‘That yoke is a whole orchrista in a shed.’

‘Not quite,’ said Aisling. ‘It’s just a piano.’

The Dagda nodded sagely. ‘Without the corjeen bit.’

‘Without the corjeen bit,’ said Aisling.

‘But come here,’ said the Dagda. ‘You’re not going to try and tell me a ploddy wrote that? What you just played?’

Aisling thought about it. The piece was an old one, from the baroque period, by a French composer called Couperin. But if, as JJ had discovered on his first trip to Tír na n’Óg, the people of Ireland got their music from the fairy folk, who was to say that it wasn’t the same all over the world? The name of the piece said a lot. It was called, translated into English,
The Mysterious Barricades
.

Aisling smiled to herself. ‘I used to think so,’ she said. ‘Now I’m not so sure. It’s quite possible that I was wrong.’

Despite the nerve-racking encounter with the goat and all the talk of ghosts, Pup did not seek out the company of his comrades-in-arms at the barracks. Instead he steeled his nerve and went back to the castle to make preparations for the days and weeks ahead. Because if the general really had gone through to Tír na n’Óg, then it was all up to him now. He would have to manage on his own.

Some of the containers had been unlocked and left with their doors wide open, and the rats had called their friends and relations from all over the county to come and help themselves. In every corner, cats and kittens watched,
or slept, or washed themselves, all of them full of rodent and enjoying the break before they began hunting again. Under the sofa in the ransacked living room of the commander’s quarters, Pup found a bunch of keys. By the light of his candle-stump, he began to unlock and search the containers that the soldiers hadn’t got around to breaking open. He was amazed by what he found. Boxes of toothpaste gone hard with age and toothbrushes still perfect in their plastic packaging. Crates of tools, never used but welded together by rust. Boxes of candles and matches, soaps and shampoos, pots and pans and glasses and cups. One whole container was packed full of electrical machines that had never been used and never would be. He had no idea what any of them had been for.

Tinned food was heavy and there was only so much that Pup could carry with him, but he had the commander’s keys now and some of the padlocks they opened, and it gave him an idea. He picked an empty container on the second row and claimed it for his own. Into it he packed everything that he thought he could possibly need over the weeks ahead, and more besides, to be safe. A pile of new waterproofs and six different pairs of boots, all in the right size. A dozen wind-up torches and the same number of Swiss Army knives. Boxes of paper and plastic bags and pens.

The rest was food, and he laboured at that for most of the night, stocking his storeroom high. He didn’t intend to be around long enough to eat it all, but a person who has
experienced as much hunger as Pup had can never take enough precautions against it. The rats and the cats worked alongside him all night, and from the sounds of it they were all getting fed. So when Pup was finally satisfied with his provision store, he locked it up securely, then lit himself a little fire and cooked himself a feast.

At first light, Colonel Mooney distributed painkillers to his men to help them over their hangovers, and those who had the stomach for it ate a massive breakfast. An hour later they abandoned the barracks and set out for the rath.

Pup watched them and waited until he was sure no one was coming back. Then he packed a brand-new rucksack with as many of the provisions as he could carry and made his way down to the barracks. The place was a mess: a rubbish tip of discarded cans and bottles, torn cardboard boxes, dirty pots and pans. There were piles of vomit in all the corners and the stink from the latrines hung over the whole place like a malignant mist. The rats were already busy but Pup ignored them as he made his way to General Liddy’s quarters. Nothing had been touched since he was there with the colonel, and he spent an hour transferring Donal’s meticulously written notes into separate, sealable bags. When he was done, he packed them into the top of his rucksack and set out on the road.

His first port of call was his home place, where his mother and sister were still just about hanging on. They
were delighted to see him, and amazed by the news he brought. They spent a day together, and the next morning Pup gave them one of Donal’s notes and went on his way.

When the Dagda came back to the rath and discovered the children there with Jenny, he was delighted, and announced that JJ was off the hook. But when another hundred or so bewildered soldiers appeared, he was not so pleased.

‘That’s too many. We don’t have enough instruments for all these. They’ll have to go back where they came from.’

Aisling neatly distracted him by commandeering the entire army to bring the Bechstein down from the stony steps. She supervised the operation herself, dividing the army up into ten lifting parties which took it in turns to carry the piano. And through all the tramping around inside the container, and the shuffling for position, through all the barked orders and warnings, through all the grunts and groans of the lifting parties, Donal slept on.

Down at the rath, Pup’s mother and sister came through into Tír na n’Óg. Billy raced over to welcome them and Jenny followed. She was pleased to meet them and delighted to hear about what Pup was doing over there and that he was well. But something had been puzzling her. Jenny had tested the children’s godling skills with a few simple lessons, and there was no doubt at all that the other two children who had been kidnapped by
Aidan’s men were of fairy origin. But Billy, she was certain, was not. He could neither step through the time skin nor change a kitten into a piglet – or anything else, for that matter. So something was wrong with the story, and she asked Pup’s mother to clarify it for her.

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I had a baby swapped on me all right. But it wasn’t Billy. It was his brother that was the changeling. It was Pup.’

And so, ironically, the boy who was doing his best to rescue the surviving people of Ireland turned out not to belong to the race of people that he was working so hard to save. Nor did he know, although sometimes he suspected, that he didn’t need a fairy fort to get into Tír na n’Óg but could step through the time skin wherever he chose.

When he left his mother’s house, he called to the few neighbours who still survived and told them about Tír na n’Óg. After that he made it up as he went along, delivering his notes at every inhabited house he was able to find in the bleak and barren country. To begin with he returned to the castle regularly, to stock up on provisions and, when he ran out of them, to painstakingly write out more copies of Donal’s original note. But as time went on, his mission took him further and further afield, and in those places where his message met with a good reception he found that people were willing to share their meagre meals with him and he had no need to carry so much food. And he
found, as well, that he could see no natural end to the job he had set out to do. No matter how far he travelled there were always more people to be reached, and how could he save one family and leave the next to its fate?

So, on his final visit to the castle, he packed a minimum of tins and jars and filled the rest of the space in his rucksack with paper and pens, and a spare pair of boots. Then he took a new waterproof jacket and set out to walk the roads of Ireland.

Donal dreamed that he was riding in the car with his father, along the Moy road to Kinvara. There were huge new houses all along the way, signs of the new wealth in the country. He dreamed of fat people driving fat cars, of ride-on lawnmowers, of rubbish bins overflowing by the roadside. He dreamed of being at home with a roast in the oven in the dry, warm kitchen, and his mother coming in from the garden with her arms full of fresh sweetcorn.

Some people called the wandering boy a madman, others a saint or a prophet. Some welcomed him and his message, and believed every word he said. Others shot at him or threw stones. Once a bullet hit him in the elbow and he lost the use of that arm for nearly six months. Another time a gang of raiders came across him on the road, and they beat him up and left him for dead. They took his rucksack and his supplies, but they left his precious notes, which were what mattered most to him.

Donal dreamed of television, of the programmes he used
to watch. They played in his head, like dreams within his dreams. People getting famous, people winning money and prizes and cars. It was all so easy. And the advertisements in between promised more. You could have anything you wanted. You could borrow money for the asking, and you could buy anything you wanted with it.

On Pup went, through dangerous territories governed by other warlords like Aidan, and through peaceful parts, where people pulled together and helped each other out. Here and there along the way he picked up stories about other raths, and when he took people down into them to test them, all but one of them worked. But Pup never went across himself. He was afraid that if he went into Tír na n’Óg again, even for a little look, he would never be able to bring himself to come back.

And still he had work to do. In friendly homes he dried out his wrinkled paper and wrote new notes with new directions, and he got help from some of the older folks, who could write as well as the general himself had done. And when he was rested and refreshed he went on again, to the next house or hamlet or village. Avoiding dangerous warlords wasn’t too difficult because people were always willing to tell him where they were, but avoiding the weather was not so easy.

Donal dreamed of shopping malls. He dreamed about the bright lights, the heat, the endless open doors of shops like
mouths, sucking people in. He dreamed of money changing hands, of shelf after shelf piled high, of lorries and warehouses and factories, all crammed full of things. He liked the things. He wanted the things, even though he realized he had no idea what any of them were supposed to be for.

In the third year of Pup’s wanderings the next drought hit. For fifteen weeks no rain fell. Wells ran dry. Gardens dried up, fruit trees died, and people went over to Tír na n’Óg in droves, through their nearest forts. The drought was barely over when the first hurricane hit. It tore through sturdy houses as if they were cardboard boxes and toppled boulders from hilltops where they had stood for thousands of years. It thrust its snarling snout into every remaining sheltered spot in Ireland, uprooting orchards, demolishing terraces, making a muddy soup of vegetable gardens and washing away topsoil by the ton. Whole hillsides lost their grip on the rocks beneath and slid down into the valleys, taking houses and gardens with them.