The Changeling (22 page)

‘Oh my God . . .
What
are you on about?’ She stared in confusion from him to Caitlin. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Move further back! I know what you are!’

Still with his hands raised, Shay stepped back over the plank seats in the centre of the currach. ‘Calm the form – see, I’m not even touching her.’

‘But you were going to, weren’t you? You couldn’t help yourself, could you? You have a
grá
for her! Just as well I realized in time, before you turned her into a wrinkled old crone!’

Aoife flipped from being mystified to badly wanting to collapse in hysterics. She didn’t dare catch Shay’s eye – he clearly felt the same way, because he had sunk down on the small seat in the bow, his face buried in his hands. She said to Caitlin, trying her best not to laugh, ‘Chillax, it’s grand – give us a hand with the cat into the boat.’

‘I’m not getting in a boat with that one!’

‘It’s grand, he has his power under control.’

‘No, no, he can’t help himself!’

‘Really, it’s all right, he’s—’

‘
Pooka! Pooka!
’ Ultan came hurtling down the sandy shore, dragging up his shell-suit trousers as he ran, black smoke streaming behind him like he was a small plane. ‘We’ve got to get out of here!’ He flung himself full-length into the currach, and the fragile vessel lurched and water churned over the low sides as he floundered around on his knees, coughing, still in a mist of his own now-greying smoke, searching around under the seats. ‘Quick, row! Where’re the oars?’

But even without the oars, the boat was already moving away from the land as if whatever current had floated them in had suddenly reversed itself. The grappling hook trailed its long rope in the water. Caitlin, trapped on the beach, ran first to her left then to her right, eyeing the widening gap with horror, crying, ‘Come back!’

Aoife shouted, ‘We’ve no oars! Just grab the rope and we’ll pull you in!’

‘Oh, sweet Mary and Jesus . . .’ The changeling girl took a running jump and launched herself furiously into the air. Her distaste for the water gave her height – not only did she clear the gap – already a good eight metres; she was only saved from overshooting the boat altogether by Shay jumping up to steady her. The narrow boat rocked fiercely as the girl landed, and for a moment she clung to him. Then she pulled back with a shriek – ‘
Don’t kiss me!
’ – hitting him in the chest with her fists.

Still holding her by the upper arms as the currach slowly stabilized, he said in a low voice, ‘Keep the head, I’m not about to kiss you.’

She threw off his hands. ‘Just you don’t even think about it!’

‘Yeah, try and control the passion, man,’ said Ultan, highly amused. He looked a lot less scared now that there was a good stretch of lake opening up between the boat and the land. ‘I know it’s hard to resist her charms but be strong like me.’

‘Get lost, McNeal.’ Caitlin hopped back over the centre seats and joined Aoife in the stern, staring in disgust at the shore. ‘Oh for— Are we caught in a current or something?’ The beach was receding rapidly into the distance, the cat still lying trussed on the sand. Aoife’s hoodie, with the dud phone in its pocket, was in a small green heap beside it; everyone’s kitbag apart from Caitlin’s lay carelessly around. Caitlin reached over the side, paddling furiously with her hands. ‘Hey – help me get this turned round! We have to row back for the cat!’

Ultan said, arms stubbornly folded, ‘No way, I’m not going back to land with that thing around.’

‘We have to, or the zookeeper won’t let us in! How do you even know it was a pooka you saw? I bet you were after seeing an ordinary horse or something!’

‘It wasn’t in horse form, it was—
There it is now!
’ The beach was by now small in the distance, but the vast creature shuffling out of the forest was still terrifying to behold – horned, stooping, covered in black hair and with claws for hands. It went straight for the cat, picked it up in both hands and bit off the creature’s head. Yellow blood spurted up in a narrow fountain.

‘Aargh!’ Caitlin slapped her forehead with her palm. ‘This is a total disaster of a day. Weeks of tracking and nothing to show for it.’

Aoife knelt frozen in the stern, transfixed by the grotesque scene. The goblin was munching its way down the cat’s body, pausing occasionally to spit out shards of bone. In the depths of Aoife’s mind flashed up the dark intelligence of the cat’s eyes as it had gazed on her and purred; she experienced a brief, uncomfortable sorrow, as if there were something she should have done to save it from such a terrible fate.

Moments later, the beach had disappeared as the lake narrowed into a river, passing between hills covered in oak trees, heading straight towards the brilliant white mountains. Bulrushes and reeds lined the shallows, rustling with moorhens, and an otter sprawled on its back on the grassy bank – it had a fish in its paws, which it was eating up one side and down the other like a corn on the cob, much more dainty in its manners than the goblin devouring the cat.

Caitlin had retrieved her rope and grappling hook, rolling them up and stuffing them into her kitbag, and was now studying an ancient map drawn on the centre pages of her book. ‘I don’t believe it – this stupid river is taking us towards Falias.’

‘Sound stuff.’ Ultan was basking in the same posture as the otter, head back, eyes closed against the sun.

‘It’s not sound! We don’t have a beast – we have to get back to Gorias where the cat-beasts are!’

‘Ah, come on, Caitlin – relax for once and enjoy.’

Aoife got carefully to her feet, arms out to balance herself; she stepped over Ultan’s legs and moved up the boat towards Shay. He was sitting in the bow, staring intently ahead.

‘Where you going, hey?’ Caitlin glanced up from her map-reading. ‘I’m warning you, that one is getting a
grá
for ye! I can’t keep saving your arse if he gets it in his head to kiss you again.’

Ultan murmured, ‘Ah now, let her off – you had your chance. He was fair desperate to shift you and you turned him down—’

‘Course I did – he’s a lenanshee, ya fool. One of them fairy lovers who suck the life out of you if they get a fancy for you.’

Aoife, with one foot on the central seat, froze in the act of stepping over it.

Shay did not turn round. His shoulders visibly tensed, as if he knew she was there watching him, but he did not turn.

Behind her, Ultan was saying, ‘A lenanshee? Him? Aren’t they supposed to be mad good-looking?’

Caitlin’s voice said, ‘Are you blind? Look at him!’

There was a long pause, then Ultan muttered uncomfortably, ‘All right, sound – I suppose if I were a lass . . .’

‘Right. He’s a lenanshee right enough. Remember how he threatened to turn me into an old woman? You see how Donal came alive when your man kissed him, but then went out like a candle? You see how fast everything started growing on the child’s grave?’

‘Even so . . .’

‘You see that thing your man did with the caterpillar?’

‘Huh?’

‘Transformed into a butterfly, just like that.’

‘Jesus . . . I guess you’re right. That’s a strange fellow to have along for the ride.’

‘He comes anywhere near me, you get between us, OK?’

‘He seems quiet enough for now.’

‘That’s what they’re like, ya fool. They
lull
you. It’s all here in the book, I’ll read it to you.’ There was a pause, and the sound of riffling pages. Caitlin put on her story-telling voice: ‘Avoid the kiss of the lenanshee, unless you wish to write a load of crap poetry or go mad playing the fiddle and end up looking like a wrinkled old prune and die young.’

Aoife still felt unable to move. She gazed at Shay; he was holding the side of the boat with his sun-brown hand. The gold locket wound around his wrist glittered in the sun. In her mind’s eye, she could see and hear old John McCarthy in the graveyard, elbows sharp in his worn black jacket:
Beware of the leannán sídhe, Aoife O’Connor. Stay away from the lover from the otherworld.

Caitlin was calling to her: ‘Danu’s sake, ya fool, come back here and sit down.’

Aoife unfroze, and stepped over the seat. She said, ‘Shay?’

The changeling girl tutted disgustedly to Ultan, ‘Some people just won’t listen. Serve her right if he can’t control his
grá.
’

‘Shay, are you all right?’

He said, without looking at her, ‘Do you think you could make this thing go faster? I need to get back to John Joe and the farm before the summer’s out. He’ll never manage to bring in the turf without me.’

Aoife stared at the back of his dark cropped head. ‘I don’t know what you want me to do about it. It’s up to the current how fast we’re going.’

‘You’re wrong – it’s you powering this boat.’

‘
Me?
’

He said impatiently, ‘Aoife, come on. Didn’t you drive a car with no engine?’

‘Oh . . . I guess I did . . . Maybe it
is
me.’ She felt suddenly rather proud of herself.

‘So would you mind speeding it up?’

Shay had repeated his request so coldly that tears pricked her throat. ‘Sorry, but I don’t know how, OK? I would if I could, I’m in just as much of a hurry as you are, but I don’t even know how I’m making it move in the first place.’

‘I’d say it’s just by thinking about where you want to be going.’ Still he didn’t turn his head to meet her eye.

Aoife crouched down just behind him, against the side of the boat, and fixed her eyes on his profile, willing him to look at her. His mouth was set firmly, upper lip deeply curved, no smile at all. The smooth sweep of his neck was tight with tension. ‘You’re right. When the car brought me to your farm, it was because I wanted to see you.’ She touched her fingers to his arm.

He flinched. ‘Best not come near to me. Best keep away.’

The tears rose in her throat again. ‘Why should I keep away?’

‘You heard Caitlin. You
have
to keep away.’

‘That’s crazy!’ Aoife lowered her voice. ‘You know she makes stuff up. Why would you believe anything she says? She’s just got that into her head because of what you said about turning her into a crone. If you were a lenanshee, you’d know.’

‘Like you knew you were a fairy?’

‘When my power came, I knew—’

‘But not right away. You thought you were imagining things.’

‘No, I did know, deep down. I just couldn’t believe it at first.’

Shay turned his face a small way towards her, but kept his lashes lowered. ‘And that’s how I’ve always known – deep down. Knowing but not believing, because it was so impossible to believe.’

‘But what made you think—?’

‘My mother showed me how to hold a caterpillar and turn it into a butterfly, just by feeling a love for it.’

Aoife sighed. ‘That’s amazing!’

‘No, it isn’t. The butterflies would only live for a few minutes – half an hour, at most. I never lost a newborn lamb, but the ones I saved always got sick and died within the year. I told myself it was a coincidence, or I’d got the sheep mixed up, but deep down I knew there was something wrong about me. I kept away from other people. I tried not to talk to anyone, because I was afraid I might bring the same harm to them.’ Shay groaned, pressing his fingers to his eyes. ‘God help me. Why didn’t I keep away from you?’

‘You’ve never done me any harm!’

‘Not yet. But what if I do get a
grá
for you? I’m a beast. Like the pooka.’

‘No!’

‘Aoife, if you’d seen my father die – an old, old man at thirty with all the life and energy sucked out of him. My mother burned him up.’

‘Your father loved her – she didn’t mean to hurt him.’

‘But she destroyed him, Aoife. And she knew it. That’s why she killed herself, jumping from the cliff. She wanted to take me with her. She said I was like her. Maybe I should have kept hold of her hand.’

‘And die as well? That’s a terrible thing to say!’ Aoife went to stroke his shoulder, to comfort him, but he shrank from her again.

‘Please, Aoife, don’t . . .’

She dropped her hand. ‘Listen to me. The only thing that happened when you kissed me was I knew I could fly.’

‘And what if flying for you is like painting was for my father? It was beautiful, what he did, and he was lost in himself when he was doing it. He said he felt more alive when painting her than at any other time.’

‘She was his muse—’

‘She was the drug that killed him.’

‘It was love.’

‘No, it was her burning him up. Don’t look at me like that. I mustn’t go getting a
grá
for you. I can’t risk doing the same thing to you.’

‘But what if—?’ Aoife stopped. She wanted to say:
What if it’s too late? What if you already have, and I for you?

Shay was holding his head in both hands, like it ached. From his sun-browned wrist, the gold chain dangled.

I love you, Aoife O’Connor.

He’d been wearing the locket since he’d followed her under the ground, and had never once offered to give it back.

He followed her gaze, ran one finger over the gold heart, then, with a swift movement, unclipped the catch, shook the chain from his wrist and handed it to her. ‘You’ll be wanting this back.’

‘No, really . . .’ Aoife felt tears well up in her eyes, and couldn’t trust herself to say anything more.

‘It’s yours. I kept meaning to give it back to you. But I got used to wearing it and forgot I had it.’ Shay kept on holding it out, the locket trembling from his fingers like a delicate pendulum, catching sparks of sunshine.

In the end there was nothing else she could do but take it. The heart was warm, from his flesh or from the sun shining on it. As soon as she took it, she experienced a fierce tug, like someone had tied a string to her heart and pulled. As if something about the locket was physically dragging her onwards. The boat suddenly, massively, increased its speed.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The woods flashed past; in seconds they were powering through the mountain pass – the white marble sides of the gorge soared far above them, capped with emerald trees.