The White Horse Trick (7 page)

There was nowhere for Donal to run to. He stood his
ground, the wind whipping at his coat and fluttering the end of his scarf. He braced himself for the impact of the púca’s horns, but it didn’t come. Instead the huge white goat skidded to a halt in front of him and said, ‘How delightful!’

He was soaked to the skin, his heavy white coat flattened against his bony frame, but he didn’t seem to care.

‘Come on up and join us,’ he went on. ‘Mikey has been expecting you.’

He turned and scaled the heap of rocks in four powerful leaps. It took Donal a lot longer, and he was in considerable pain and discomfort by the time he got there. But Mikey was the same as always, whole and unharmed and cheerful; the only soul that Donal knew who was entirely immune to the weather.

The púca stretched out into his long, humanoid form. His jaw shortened and his knees and hocks reversed their angles of operation. The cloven hooves on his forelegs receded and he grew hairy white fingers and thumbs. Donal stared in amazement. This was a thing he had heard about but hadn’t seen before.

‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘How can you be here? How come you allowed it, Mikey?’

Mikey, like most ghosts, had no voice, but over the course of a lifetime Donal had become adept at interpreting the images Mikey sent to his mind. The púca put the same information into words.

‘It’s all over,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing left for us to fight about.’

‘All over?’ said Donal. ‘What’s all over?’

‘It’s all over for the human race,’ said the púca, sitting down on a rock and crossing his legs. ‘It’s only a matter of time now.’

‘Does that mean the agreement is broken, then?’ said Donal. ‘Are you going to dig up the hatchet? Go back to the old ways and kill us all off ?’

‘No need,’ said the púca, and Mikey silently agreed with him. ‘All we have to do is wait. And not for much longer, either.’

‘How do you know?’ said Donal.

‘It’s not rocket science,’ said the púca. ‘I would have thought that even a birdbrain like you could see it coming.’

Donal pulled his wet coat tighter around him and turned his back to the wind. It was true. He could see it coming, and that was why he was trying so hard to get everyone out. But somehow this truce between the púca and the ghost made it all so much more final and terrifying.

‘How long?’ he asked.

The púca shrugged. ‘How long do you think? What’s left to eat? What’s left to burn?’

‘We’re getting somewhere with the terraces,’ said Donal. ‘They should produce a crop soon, and an even better one next year.’

The púca shook his head. ‘You might get a year or two more, if you’re very clever and very lucky. But there are storms around the corner that you can’t even begin to imagine. And behind them are more storms and more droughts, and then, in another millennium or two – well – a new ice age. But you needn’t concern yourself with that. None of you lot will be around to see that.’

Donal lowered himself carefully on to his favourite stone and listened gloomily.

‘Great for the old global detox, ice ages are,’ the púca went on. He was irritatingly cheerful about the end of the world, and Mikey didn’t seem too bothered either, though he was doing his best to cheer Donal up with encouraging images. Like Donal gathering the sick and the hungry and sending them away to a life of warmth and comfort. There was still that kind of hope, at least.

‘But I don’t understand why you ever tried to stop us, if you could see all this coming,’ he said to the púca. ‘It was only sixty years ago, after all. Why did you go to all that trouble to try and unearth the hatchet and stuff if we were all heading towards extinction anyway?’

The púca laughed. ‘That is just so typical of human arrogance. Do you think you’re the only ones going down with your
Titanic
? You’re taking the entire world with you, you know. All my beautiful creatures. And not just the big pin-up models like tigers and elephants and horses. Everything’s on the way out now, even the
lizards and beetles and worms and plankton. You might not care, but each one of my creations is as special to me as the next one. They all have their own job to do, their own place in the order of existence. But not any more. One by one those lovely things are being snuffed out, and all because you lot couldn’t keep your appetites under control.’

‘So if you had stopped us back then, you might have saved the rest?’

‘Exactly,’ said the púca. ‘Not all of them, obviously, but enough to be going on with. The worst of it is that you could have stopped it yourselves if you’d only tried a bit harder.’

Donal nodded. He had lived through it, after all. The great hopes before each of those climate meetings, when representatives from all over the world came together to discuss how they could lower carbon emissions. The increasing despair as failure followed failure. The gradual realization that it had all been left until much, much too late.

‘You’ll forgive me for saying so,’ he said to the púca, ‘but you seem very cheerful for someone who’s watching his life’s work go down the spout.’

The púca laughed again. ‘No point in crying over spilled milk, is there? Give it a million years or so and we can start all over again. I can’t wait, actually. I’ve got loads of brilliant ideas for new kinds of birds and beasts. We’ll do it even better next time around.’

‘Meaning you’ll leave us out, I suppose?’ said Donal.

‘You?’ said the púca. ‘Human beings, you mean? You don’t think we created you, do you? No. You were never anything to do with us. You came from somewhere else entirely.’

‘Really?’ said Donal. ‘Where?’

But the púca had clearly had enough of the conversation and was already reverting to his goat shape. He hopped down off the beacon and splashed away across the waterlogged ground, kicking his heels with joy.

Donal watched him go, then sat in silence for a while, trying to find a position where the wind couldn’t penetrate his clothing, but failing. Finally he said to Mikey, ‘No reason for you to stay any longer then, is there, my old friend? You might as well go on and see what happens next.’

Mikey had told him he had no idea where souls went after they left the Earth, and he wasn’t in any hurry to find out. He still wasn’t, apparently. He told Donal, through his picture-talk, that he was going nowhere as long as Donal was still here struggling with his plans. Their plans. For without Mikey’s constant help and encouragement Donal would have found it hard to go on.

‘Thanks, Mikey,’ he said. ‘I suppose you may as well stay until the end. It looks like it won’t be long anyway.’

The ghost’s outline nodded gravely.

‘Will you be sad, Mikey?’ Donal went on. ‘You always had such a lot of time for people.’

But the images that the ghost put into Donal’s mind were of suffering, because that was all the news Donal ever brought him now. And no one, not even Mikey, could be sorry to see that come to an end.

As Jenny walked out of the town with the boy soldier she noticed that he was limping.

‘What’s wrong with your leg?’ she asked him.

‘It’s nothing much,’ he said. ‘I just got some blisters. My boots are too big, that’s why.’

‘That’s a shame,’ said Jenny.

‘Not the first time it’s happened,’ he said. ‘They’ll get better in a couple of days.’

‘Not here they won’t,’ said Jenny.

‘Why not?’

‘Because there’s no such thing as a couple of days here. If you’re ill you’re ill. You won’t get any worse but you won’t get any better. Same with this.’ She touched his sopping wet sleeve. ‘You won’t get dry, either.’

‘You’re making no sense,’ the boy said. ‘I’ll dry off in an hour or two in this sunshine.’

‘No you won’t,’ said Jenny. ‘There are no hour or twos. There isn’t any time at all.’

They walked on quietly, past the great rock edifice
that was the Dagda’s home and on to the Moy road, which led across the plain towards the hills.

‘What’s your name?’ Jenny said.

The boy paused, as if this were a question he had to think about. Then he said, ‘Pup. It’s not my real name, but it’s what everyone calls me.’

Jenny looked at him again. He was only as tall as her shoulder, and in the oversized boots and baggy clothes he came across as almost comical; a child dressed as a soldier. But there was nothing remotely comical about the gun he carried. You wouldn’t dream of laughing at someone who carried a thing like that.

‘It’s so weird,’ he went on, looking around. ‘All this is under the sea where I come from.’

‘I guessed as much,’ Jenny said, ‘when Aengus came out of the shop that time.’ She laughed, remembering. ‘He just nipped across to get his tobacco and found himself taking a swim.’

‘So he doesn’t need to go through the crawl-hole and the wall like we did?’ said Pup.

‘No. Nor do I. We can go through anywhere. But you can’t. You might not be able to go back at all, actually. Time keeps passing on the other side, you see, and your life keeps passing with it. If too much time has passed, you could find you’re very old when you get back there. Or even dead.’

Pup shook his head. ‘Not me,’ he said. ‘That could never happen to me.’

Jenny was irritated by his arrogance, and she might
have changed him into a donkey to teach him some respect if he hadn’t suddenly turned to her with a charming smile.

‘I like it here,’ he said. ‘I don’t care what the general or anybody says. Once I’ve found my brother I’m going to come back, and I’m going to bring my whole family with me.’

Jenny smiled back. He wasn’t bad looking at all, and there was something about him that she found mysterious and alluring. It was a shame he was so young.

‘We’ll see about that,’ she said. ‘One step at a time.’

Aengus walked on through the hot, steaming sunshine. It was not in the least bit pleasant and he began to suspect that he would never get dry at all, since any moisture his clothes released as steam was immediately replaced by his own sweat. There wasn’t much to see as he walked through the outskirts of Gort. Here and there a rusting wire fence surrounded a patch of weeds that might once have been a vegetable garden, but there was little sign of current human habitation. Most of the houses were in ruins, and swarming with fearless rats, inside and out.

He wondered what he should call himself this time round. He remembered now that he had called himself Larry when he was a policeman, and Lad the time before that, when he had masqueraded as a farm labourer and courted JJ’s grandmother. He quite fancied himself as a David, but there was always a danger that people would shorten it to Dave, which he couldn’t stand, and there was no point in looking for trouble. He liked Michael, too, but his skin crawled at the thought of being called Mike or Mick. A lot of the good names had the same problem. He
liked Patrick but hated Pat and Paddy, liked James but couldn’t bear Jim. It appeared to be an intractable problem and he was quite glad when the sight of a person sitting at the roadside took his mind off it. And he was even more pleased to see, as he drew closer, that the person was a young woman. He was always ready for a bit of flirtation with the ploddy girls.

‘Good morning to you,’ he said as he drew level, although now that he came to think about it, he had no idea at all what time of the day it was.

‘Just keep walking,’ the woman said coldly. She had a deep basket on her lap. There was a grubby checked cloth thrown over it, and one of her hands was concealed underneath it.

‘No need to be like that,’ said Aengus Óg, flashing his most winning smile. ‘Are you heading for the market?’

‘Just keep walking,’ she said again. ‘I’m in no mood for small talk.’

‘I know how you feel,’ said Aengus, ‘but I was just going to warn you that they’re an odd lot there in Gort. There are a couple of fellas with guns, would you believe?’

‘I would,’ said the woman. ‘Are they anything like this one?’

She pulled the cloth away to reveal the hidden hand. It had a pistol in it and it was aimed straight at him.

Aengus took a step backwards. ‘Well, no, actually,’ he said. ‘Theirs were much bigger. But that’s a very handy one, isn’t it? Just right for a pretty little thing like you.’

The young woman wasn’t exactly what you’d normally call a ‘pretty little thing’. She had that gaunt look that Aengus remembered from a visit he had once made during the great famine in the nineteenth century. But she would probably have been pretty if she had been better nourished.

‘Don’t try and flatter me,’ she said. ‘Do you think I was born yesterday?’

‘Would I?’ said Aengus. His words sounded innocent but there was nothing he loved more than a challenge. He seldom, if ever, failed to get his way where ploddy women were concerned. He glanced around casually. There was room on the low wall beside her but it would be far too forward to try and sit there. The road was wet, but then so were his clothes, so he sat down just where he was and crossed his legs. The woman looked startled, but she didn’t say anything.

‘There isn’t much to buy in the market,’ he said. ‘Not that I could see, anyway.’

‘I’m not planning on buying anything,’ she said, loosening up a little but keeping the pistol aimed steadily at his chest. She tilted the basket to show him the apples inside.

‘Good for you,’ he said. ‘Excellent. I love apples, don’t you?’

She stared at him blankly, and he was struck by inspiration. ‘Tell you what. I don’t think there are any buyers there anyway, and maybe I can save you a trip. What
about this? If you can guess my name, I’ll buy the whole basketful off you.’

The woman’s expression didn’t alter by a millimetre, but Aengus could clearly see a glimmer of interest coming into her eyes. ‘Are you having me on?’ she said.

‘Nope,’ said Aengus. ‘A deal’s a deal. If you can come up with the right name for me, I’ll buy all your apples.’

The interest in her eyes hardened into suspicion. ‘Buy them with what?’ she said.

Aengus hadn’t thought that far. ‘What do you want for them?’ he said.

She looked him over. It was clear that he had nothing on him to offer by way of barter. ‘Silver or gold,’ she said. ‘I won’t take anything less.’