The White Horse Trick (5 page)

He was saved from having to reply by a knock at the door.

‘Enter!’ he said.

A waterproofed corporal put his head round the door.
‘B-Troop all present and correct, sir,’ he said. ‘Waiting on Colonel Crowley and ready to proceed.’

Crowley gave Donal a long, significant look.

‘Dismissed, Colonel,’ said Donal. ‘Your orders are perfectly clear.’

If there had been anyone watching from the ground, they would have been astonished to see the speeding raven vanish from the sky mid-wingbeat. But the land that lay between Gort and Loughrea had been turned from productive farmland into sour, impenetrable bog by the relentless rainfall which fell year round, three years out of four. Nothing lived there now except for marsh birds and frogs, and the occasional gaunt feral dog.

A lot of the west country and the midlands had gone the same way, but Aengus didn’t know that. He was back in his own world again, where no winds blew unless ordered to do so by his father, the Dagda, and where the land was just as it had always been and always would be.

He flew back the way he had come until he reached the place that, on the other side of the time skin, was the remains of Gort town. It was a place he disliked intensely, populated as it was by leprechauns, clurichauns and their creepy distant relations, the little red mischief-makers, fír dearg. In the normal course of events Aengus never went
near the place, but he was going to have to brave it now if he wanted his tobacco.

He stayed aloft for a while, examining the layout of the town and looking for a good place to land. There was some kind of a market happening down there, and he could see the dogs and sheep of the clurichauns all saddled and bridled and tethered in the market square. If he flew low enough, he could make out the high-pitched, angry bickering of the leprechauns and the drunken ranting of the clurichauns. It was probably a gold market, then. All of them loved gold. The clurichauns liked to exchange it for what they called goods and chattels but essentially amounted to alcoholic drink. The leprechauns loved it because . . . well . . . they were leprechauns, and leprechauns love gold. Everyone knew that. As for the f ír dearg, they were a law unto themselves and no one ever knew what their motives for anything were, other than playing nasty tricks on people and having a great laugh about it.

Aengus circled one last time, as low as he dared. The arguments beneath him seemed to be increasing in intensity and he wondered what the point of these markets was. He couldn’t imagine what the clurichauns could possibly possess that would induce the leprechauns to part with their gold, and he strongly suspected that, in fact, no gold changed hands at all. He was wondering whether the leprechauns set them up just for sport, to taunt their drunken cousins, when an accurately aimed boot – a red one, of course – hit him on the head
and knocked any further wonderings out of his mind.

He plummeted down towards the heaving marketplace. A thousand eyes peered up at him, all as small as shirt buttons. Among them he spotted the red man who, he was sure, had thrown the boot. He was dancing on the spot, laughing and cheering with delight. Aengus dreaded to think what might happen to him if he landed in the middle of that mob. He had always hated leprechauns and dreaded their little hammers. The clurichauns thought they were incredibly suave and witty, but would in fact bore you to death in the course of an evening. As for the fír dearg, there was just no knowing what they might do, and Aengus found he had no desire at all to find out. So once again he took the only escape route he could, and dived through the time skin into the other Gort, the ploddy one. It was a last-ditch effort, and he was only just in time. He landed, very painfully, on the crumbling tarmac remains of the high street, and the shock jolted him out of the bird shape and back into his human one.

He let out a string of furious curses. He was a god, and not at all used to being tossed around by gales and hit on the head by boots. That evil wind was still blowing and the rain was coming down as if there were water cannon up there in the sky instead of clouds. And as if all that wasn’t bad enough, when he finally managed to get himself to his feet, he found that he was staring straight down the twin barrels of a shotgun.

Donal stayed where he was and listened to the men assembling in the parade ground. Troop by troop they moved off, until there was no sound remaining apart from the wind and rain. Still he didn’t move. His bones hurt and his spirits were low. He hated being at odds with Curly Crowley, and wished he could make things right between them. Until he could do that, there was only one remedy for the way he was feeling now.

Mikey.

Donal still experienced a twinge of guilt when he thought about his friend. He knew now that he had not been responsible for Mikey’s death, but at the time it happened he had been convinced that he was, and the emotional response to it had never entirely let him out of its grip. He had only been nine, and the old man had been his closest friend outside the family. So when Mikey had asked him for help getting to the top of Sliabh Carran, Donal had agreed. Mikey had said he wanted to stand on the beacon, the massive pile of stones that was up there, one last time before he died. To this day, Donal couldn’t
decide whether he would have done what he did if he had known Mikey’s real reason for going up there. He wasn’t like Jenny. Jenny was a fairy, and she didn’t see things the same way ordinary people did.

Because she
had
known. She’d known about the ancient peace agreement between the púcas and humans which was symbolized by a hatchet buried deep beneath the stones, and she had known that the púca was trying to break it. She’d known about the ghost that lived up there as well, and that it was the only thing in the human world that could protect the beacon from the púca.

When he thought about the púca, Donal’s feelings were mixed. He knew what would have happened if he had managed to get at that hatchet. He had seen the nature god in his warlike form, and his scalp still crawled when he remembered the sight. But seeing the state the world had got into, he couldn’t help feeling a certain sympathy for him as well. After all, he had only been trying to save what he had created from the excesses of mankind.

Jenny had helped him take Mikey to the top, that day. The púca had tried to stop them, but she had called upon Aengus Óg, and between them all they had succeeded. Donal hadn’t known that the boy ghost, who had been guarding the beacon for thousands of years, was weakening and preparing to leave, but he was the only one who hadn’t. The púca knew, and so did Jenny. Most importantly, Mikey knew it. That was why he had gone to all that trouble to get himself to the beacon. That was why he had
died up there, in Donal’s arms. And that was why he was still there now, a vigilant ghost, keeping mankind safe.

Safe from the púca, anyway. It was still up there on the hill, watching the beacon from a distance. Donal had seen it nearly every day for more than fifty years. When Mikey died, he had willed his land to Donal, and Donal had been going up there ever since. And that, if only he could get his painful old joints to cooperate, was where he intended to go now.

Jenny walked up the main street with JJ. She was glad he was there, even if he was old and grey. When he saw them coming, the boy soldier got up from where he was relaxing on the ground and held his gun in a half-ready position; not exactly threatening but not particularly friendly, either. Jenny wondered whether it was time to do something about it. Maybe not quite yet. It was probably enough to keep a close eye on him for the time being.

When they got closer, the old woman stood up, and there was a look of delight and amazement on her face.

‘JJ Liddy!’ she said. ‘It is, isn’t it? Can it be?’

‘It is,’ said JJ, ‘but I’m not sure . . .’

‘Oh, no,’ said the woman. ‘You wouldn’t know me. Eileen Canavan is my name. I came to your dances once or twice when I was a girl, but mostly I know you through your CDs. Back in the old days, that is. When we could still play them.’

‘But he’s been dead for years!’ said the old man beside her.

‘I know he has,’ she said. ‘Which just goes to prove
what I’ve been saying all along. We’ve died and gone to . . . well . . . I don’t know any more whether this is heaven or hell.’

‘No, no,’ said JJ. ‘I didn’t die, no matter what anyone said. And this isn’t heaven or hell.’

‘I told you,’ said the boy soldier. ‘You wouldn’t listen to me.’

‘Well, where are we then?’ said the old woman.

So JJ sat them all down in the street and told them about the place they had come to, and how there was no time here, and how it was that he was still alive and unchanged despite all the years that had passed on the other side since he left. He told them that coming and going between Ireland and Tír na n’Óg had once been commonplace, and that this was how the Irish myths of fairies and gods had arisen, and how it had created the misconception that Aengus Óg and his people were immortal. And when he was finished with all this, he asked them about the world they had just come from, and what he heard made his heart very heavy.

His youngest son, Aidan, had been a law unto himself from the day he was born. He had been a strong-willed and belligerent toddler and, contrary to all expectations, he had never grown out of it but had gone on to become a greedy and selfish child and a truly impossible teenager. Unlike the rest of the laid-back Liddys, he had always been a go-getter, obsessed with money and possessions. He had begun gambling when he was still in national school,
setting up crazes for poker and blackjack, then cleaning out all the other players. And that was only the beginning. Aidan, it seemed, had been born to be wealthy and powerful, so it came as no great surprise to JJ to hear, from the wet people, what he had become.

But Donal? Aidan’s right-hand man and commander of his army? It made no sense. Donal had always been the most sensitive of all the children. He didn’t have an ambitious bone in his body, and he had no more interest in power than the daft old dog, Belle, that he had inherited from Mikey when he was a child. Still, JJ couldn’t ignore what he was hearing.

‘Yes,’ said the old woman. ‘It was General Liddy’s men that came every week to steal food from us.’ She glanced at their young guard as she spoke, but he made no attempt to contradict anything she said. ‘They called it taxes, and said it was to pay for our protection, but it’s a long time since we got anything in return for what we handed out. And then the time came when we had nothing left to feed ourselves with, let alone give to them, so they rounded us up and took us all to the castle. The young people were put to work on the commander-in-chief’s building works, and us old folks were sent into a hole in the ground.’

JJ shook his head slowly and took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry about all this,’ he said.

‘It’s not your fault,’ said the old woman. ‘No one’s blaming you.’

‘But they’re my sons. I feel responsible for what they’re doing.’

‘Can you stop them, do you think?’ she said.

‘I don’t think so,’ said JJ. ‘I can’t go back, you see. But maybe Jenny could go over and see what’s going on. Could you, Jen?’

‘Oh, thanks,’ said Jenny. ‘Just what I need. A trip into a war zone. A chance to be kidnapped and get shot at.’

‘But they’re your brothers,’ said JJ. ‘They won’t shoot at you.’

‘They’re not really my brothers,’ said Jenny, ‘any more than you’re really my dad.’

‘Well, thanks a lot,’ said JJ. ‘That’s gratitude for you. And where was your real father for all those years when you were—’

Abruptly the boy cut across them. ‘Can you two save this for later?’ he said. ‘I need to get these people going. Just tell us where the stuff is and we’ll leave you to it.’

‘What stuff are you talking about?’ said JJ.

‘Anything,’ said the boy. ‘Anything we can eat or drink or burn. We have payment for it. We left it up beside where we came in.’

JJ shook his head. ‘I think you’ve got a wire crossed somewhere. There’s nothing like that here.’

‘What do you mean, nothing like that?’ said the boy. ‘How can you not have food and firewood and stuff ?’

‘We don’t need it,’ said JJ. ‘There’s no time so we don’t get hungry. The sun never goes down so it never gets cold.
We don’t have any use for money because we have everything we need. And I don’t know what you’ve brought along to try and pay for it with, but whatever it is, we don’t want it.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ said the boy. ‘You’re just making it up to try and get rid of us.’

‘He’s not,’ said Jenny. ‘It’s true. And listen, why don’t you just forget about going back? It isn’t as simple as you think, and by the sound of it you’re far better off here than you were over there. Eternal sunshine. Great music when that fella with the beard catches the goat. No cares. No worries. Why would you want to go back?’

The wet people exchanged bewildered glances.

‘I’d like to stay,’ said Eileen Canavan, and the others cautiously nodded their heads in agreement. All except for the boy. He thought about it for a while, looking at the odd, crooked houses that lined the street. When he finally spoke, he sounded regretful.

‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I’d like to, but I can’t.’

‘Why not?’ said JJ.

‘I have to report back to the general,’ he said. ‘And I have to find my brother. I heard all that you people said about my army, but you don’t know the whole story. We aren’t half as bad as the commander-in-chief’s private guard. They’re the ones who kidnapped my brother and took him away.’

‘Kidnapped your brother?’ said Jenny. ‘Why?’

The boy shrugged. ‘Nobody knows. The goons just
arrived one night a few days ago and took him away. I have to go back and try to find out what happened to him.’

Jenny was impressed. Tír na n’Óg tended to have a narcotic effect on everyone who entered it. The peace and the sunshine and the absence of time relaxed people and took away their anxieties, and a lot of their memories as well. This boy must have really cared for his brother to be concerned about him even here. It made her mind up for her.