The Wickerlight

by Mary Watson

  I’ve nearly scalped Breanna, who is smart and clever and funny. Everyone, even the surliest teacher, loves Breanna.

  ‘Watch it,’ she growls, touching her hand to her hair.

  I catch the driver’s eye in the rear-view mirror. Breanna glares at me and the boy, Ryan, Dr Kelly’s son, looks amused. Like I’ve gone and poked a dragon, and he’s curious to see what happens next. When she heard he was repeating his Leaving Cert, Mom was dead keen for us to make friends with Ryan. But he’s been off school a lot, and when he is there, he couldn’t be less interested in my friendship. Nor is Breanna, who’s perfectly nice, but doesn’t make friends outside of her small circle.

  ‘Sorry,’ I mumble, and I’m not sure if it’s to Breanna, the driver or Laila.

  I’m off the bus when I see another boy sitting on the low wall. Cillian, I think. He’s sometimes there, waiting for Breanna and Ryan. With the same long, wiry build as Breanna, I’m sure he’s her brother. Behind me, Breanna, retying her hair, is still fuming.

  I’m about to cross the road when I hear Breanna say, ‘… clumsy cow drop dead like her sister.’

  I stop. The boys are laughing, and I almost envy them their careless laughter. How nice it must be, to find death funny.

  I turn slowly. The dark-haired girl with the sketch pad is off the bus, smiling lazily at Breanna and her boys.

  ‘Hey, guys.’ Her voice is huskier than I expected. ‘Any good garden fires lately?’

  The mood changes immediately. The laughing stops, and anger radiates from them. The bus pulls off with a loud belch and the girl smirks as she passes them. She’s not taken more than a few steps when they crowd her.

  ‘You’re not wanted here.’ Breanna is more threatening when she speaks quietly. ‘Leave.’

  ‘It’s Sibéal, right?’ Cillian gets in right beside her. He tugs lightly at the ends of her long hair.

  ‘You know who I am.’ The girl is unperturbed and he is such a creeper, touching her hair.

  ‘Unfortunately, Sibéal, we’re going to exact a penalty for trespassing.’

  I don’t know what he means. We’re on the side of the road, no one’s trespassed.

  ‘Look, if you’re going to do it, hurry up,’ Sibéal says with exaggerated boredom. She pulls something from her boot, black biker boots, which is not the only way she flouts the school uniform policy. She’s holding a letter opener, thin and unusually sharp. The boys smile. I step forward.

  ‘You going to take it or not?’ she says to Cillian, turning it so that the blade glints in the sunlight. Then she lifts it to her hair and, holding it taut, slashes hard. In her hand, a few strands have sliced off. It’s a weird rhyme to Laila’s haircut, but it shocks me more.

  Breanna stands rigid, her hands locked on her hips. She’s so much taller than Sibéal, and with the boys behind her, it looks like a mean gang beating up on the wimpy kid.

  Sibéal lets the hair flutter to the ground. ‘Thought not.’

  She turns and walks. She’s only gone a little way when Breanna grabs her by the arm, pulling her hair so that her neck is forced back.

  ‘I prefer to take it myself. Like this.’ Breanna is pulling her hair so hard that she’s ripping strands from Sibéal’s scalp.

  ‘Breanna, no,’ I yell, but she only tugs harder. ‘Stop her,’ I shout at the boys, but Ryan just shakes his head, a small smile curving his lips.

  I’m moving forward, I don’t know, to pull her off, kick her shins, do something, when Sibéal twists out of the hold, her blade raised. It’s level with Breanna’s throat and for a second I think she’s going to do it. That’s she’s going to jab the blade in Breanna’s throat. But Cillian catches her hand and pulls it back.

  ‘I’m not going to run from you.’ Sibéal is angry too.

  ‘You should.’ It doesn’t sound like an idle threat. Cillian leans into her space, the other two close behind. They’re all so much bigger, so much more. Despite the bravado with the letter opener, they’re way scarier than she is.

  ‘Does it make you feel strong? Better?’ My throat hurts from shouting. ‘A gang of you picking on one girl.’

  Their attention shifts to me.

  ‘Nah,’ Breanna laughs. ‘But two girls might do the trick.’

  ‘You should be ashamed,’ I breathe. I sound like Mom.

  I’ve no hidden weapons. I’ve nothing to take them on. Cillian releases Sibéal’s hand, pushing her arm so hard that it twists in a way it shouldn’t. Her hissed intake of breath is the only sign that it hurt.

  Cillian turns to me and I feel a flash of panic. He’s loping with a false easiness, a languid cat facing a cornered mouse, and as he reaches me, he bumps his shoulder against mine. Hard. I stumble to the side, my feet tangling with a crack in the tarmac. As I regain my footing, my hand brushes the outside of the deep parka pocket and I feel something chunky. Cillian continues to Ryan, like nothing happened. I want to lob something at his head, so I reach inside the pocket and pull out the thing there.

  And then I see what it is.

  It is so ugly, almost alive-looking, that I drop it, shaking out my hand. Just, ew. I’m checking if it’s a dying baby demon rat when Breanna’s trainer tramps down, pushing whatever it is into the crumbling road surface.

  ‘You look like a nosy sort of girl,’ she says, like we’re just shooting the breeze. But it’s a warning. ‘Some advice.’

  Her make-up is so flawless it’s a mask. But looking at Breanna’s perfect eyebrows, her glowing skin, I sense something hidden beneath the mask. Something that simmers beneath her nice girl veneer. I’m not sure I want to know what it is.

  ‘Mind your own business. Keep away from us.’ She lifts her foot. ‘Got that?’

  She starts to move away before she glances down.

  We both stare at the thing for a tense moment.

  ‘And keep away from her too.’ Breanna jerks her head back at Sibéal before taking another look at the thing on the ground. Before she can, I grab it and put it behind my back.

  ‘I’m heading,’ Ryan calls. I don’t move as Breanna finally turns away. She goes to him and together they walk away.

  Sibéal stands between the tarmac and patchy grass. She’s watching me, studying my face. Her eyes are dark and intense and it feels like they’re boring into me. She turns away abruptly, and then she’s gone.

  Just me and the thing from my pocket.

  I hold it out it between my thumb and forefinger.

  It’s hard to describe. Something so hideous it shouldn’t be looked at. Shouldn’t be carried in jacket pockets. It’s made of cobweb and hair, both coiled strands and matted chunks. Laila’s hair, forming a small nest of yuck.

  It’s like a disgusting hairball vomited up by a mangy, diseased cat. As I lift it, the smell hits my nose. How did I not notice this stink from my pocket?

  Between the twine and hair are fingernail cuttings.

  This must be one of Laila’s spells.

  Even though I don’t believe in magic, it’s difficult not to connect this horrible thing with the strange way she died. It feels like Laila doomed herself, accidentally cursed herself, and died.

  Knowing Laila, there’s probably blood and spit on the hair and twine. Earwax and snot. Because that’s how she believed, by putting everything of herself in it. And I’m clearly deranged by grief, because I like that it brings me a little closer to her. That I’m touching something that was part of her once living body, a body I’d do anything to have with me again.

  I feel such sadness for Laila, who wanted magic so badly. For all the spells she’d cast that achieved nothing. For all the moonlight chants around trees that didn’t help her. I am unspeakably sad for the girl who believed so fiercely and in the end it all meant nothing.

  But I want to know. Need to know. What this hideous thing means, what Laila thought it would bring her. I pull out the card I’d stuffed in my purse.

  THE SCAVENGER HUNT

  Find your treasure.

  I dial the
number. Nervous, I wait.

  SIX

  I can keep a secret

  David

  Oisín is nowhere to be found.

  I’ve searched the Rookery, the fields, the outbuildings and courtyard. I’ve even checked the dusty confines of Mamó’s cottage, where no living man dares tread.

  I’m bricking it as I run back down the fields behind the house to search the lake shoreline. I don’t know if I’m more worried that he’s done a runner, or if something unspeakable drives my panic.

  And then I see him. Pensive, he leans against a tree, looking out at the water. Like it’s Sunday afternoon picnic time, and not the day he gets hauled over the coals by Cassa for messing up her ceremony.

  ‘Oisín.’ I want to tear my hair out. But losing my cool will get me nowhere. ‘We have to go.’

  Oisín ignores me, slowly getting to his feet. Nothing to say for himself, pathetic bag of bones that he is. Never have I wanted to shake him, hug him, punch him more. He gathers his jacket, wraps himself in his large grey scarf like a granddad with his blanket, and ambles across the fields. The car is parked on the side of the house.

  ‘You’ve got it, right?’ I check before we get into the car.

  ‘Got what?’

  ‘Your knitting.’ I restrain myself from giving him a slap upside the head.

  But he’s looking at me blankly.

  ‘The Eye, you twit.’ I can’t help rolling mine.

  ‘I don’t have the Eye.’ He opens the car door.

  I pause. Oisín is obviously in one of his moods. I have to talk to him like I would a petulant child.

  ‘Well, don’t you think you should get it?’ I nod encouragingly. ‘Before we go to HH?’

  He shrugs, staring down the drive.

  ‘Get the fucking brooch, Oisín.’ I get into the driver’s seat, trying to control my vexation.

  But Oisín sits mulishly, pulling the car door shut.

  ‘I don’t have it.’

  ‘Yes you do,’ I sigh.

  ‘It’s disappeared.’

  ‘Can’t have.’

  I’m tired. Hungry. Worked an early shift at HH and overdid it with the training earlier. Running around looking for Oisín hasn’t helped. But Dad is on my case. He’s determined that I must win. He reminds me daily that his company is haemorrhaging money, that the Rookery is in danger of falling down on us as we sleep. He tells me again and again: winning is the only thing that can save us.

  ‘I don’t have it any more.’ Oisín lays his hands flat on his lap. His jeans hang off him, and his hands are strangely large. Disproportionate. ‘It’s not in the safe where I kept the trove. It’s not in my room or anywhere else. It’s gone.’

  ‘The Eye can’t be stolen.’ No one can enter the Rookery without us asking them in. Not a postman nor plumber. Anyone gets too close to the house without an invitation and the rooks will chase them off. But our best protections are saved for augurs – they can’t even set foot on one of our fields without the rooks flying at them. Our birds love the taste of augur blood.

  ‘When did you see it last?’ I turn to Oisín. Three rooks swoop down in front of the car. Keen-eyed, they’re watching us.

  ‘Around three months ago.’ Oisín stretches his arm through the open window, and the nearest rook lifts off and flies towards us, flapping its wings a moment before flying away. They don’t even look at me. The rook is Oisín’s guide, as it is Dad’s and Mamó’s. I am irrelevant to them. ‘Beginning of March. I took it out of the box because …’

  He clams up.

  ‘Because what?’

  He’s not saying.

  I start the engine. We’re going to have to go HH without the Eye, which is not unlike wading into croc-infested waters.

  If we’re lucky, Cassa will understand, Oisín’s been ill. It has to be somewhere in the house. With a bit of time, we’ll find it. OK, a lot of time. The Rookery is old and huge, and there’s a lot of clutter. Things could stay lost in that house forever.

  Small stones scatter beneath the wheels as I drive out of the Rookery gates. ‘Spill it, Oisín.’

  ‘Someone wanted to see it.’ Oisín unwraps his scarf. The day’s turned good. Warm, bright sunshine has chased away the earlier showers.

  ‘You showed the Eye to someone who wanted to see it?’ My brother is a big walking headache. ‘Who?’

  ‘A girl?’

  ‘A girl?’ I spit the words out.

  If Oisín lost the Eye trying to impress some girl he likes, I’m going to kill him. And Mamó and Dad will bring him back to life so they can kill him again. There must be some dark, ancient ritual for that.

  ‘She was my friend. That’s all.’ He begins pulling the scarf around him again, oblivious to the sunshine. ‘She was nice.’

  ‘What friend?’ Oisín doesn’t have friends, other than one or two garraíodóirí. And Laney, a family friend who’s also Cassa’s assistant.

  ‘Laila.’

  ‘Laila who?’ The name’s familiar and I’m trying to place her among the judge girls. There’s no Laila in the Rose, but maybe she’s from another gairdín?

  ‘Laila is the girl who died. On the village green.’ He’s so wrapped up in the scarf that his words are muffled. Intentional, no doubt. ‘Did you ever meet her?’

  That Laila.

  ‘Handful of times. Trespassing down our fields.’

  ‘It’s not trespassing if she asked.’

  And suddenly I wonder what else Oisín has been doing while I thought him hiding beneath his bedsheets these last months.

  ‘Let me get this straight. The last time you saw our ancient, our most treasured family heirloom was the day you took it out of the safe to show to some random village girl because she was nice?’

  I can’t stop the string of expletives that fall from my mouth.

  ‘Did she know about us? What we are?’ I’m thinking of Simon in the woods yesterday evening. Maeve gasping about the girl. ‘What were you thinking?’

  ‘I can keep a secret.’ There’s bite to his words. ‘I didn’t tell her any of that. We talked about other things.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

  He’s quiet as we continue on the narrow road.

  ‘What did you talk about?’ I sound rougher, abrupter than I mean to. But this is the second time she’s come up in two days. Can’t be nothing.

  ‘We talked about dreams, about hope, about belonging. History. The limitations of family. How she hated being called exotic, and how people treated her different because of how she looked. About how it’s been drilled in me from birth that strength and ambition are more important than kindness. That feelings are something to be overcome.’

  Why does he have to speak so slowly? So mumbly? Whittling on about feelings. There’s a tractor ahead and I want to blast it out of my way. Cassa is waiting.

  ‘And we got talking about family treasures. I told her how the Eye has been passed down in ours. She wanted to see it.’ He folds his arms like this is perfectly reasonable.

  ‘And then?’ But Oisín ignores the heat in my voice.

  ‘Then we went for a walk. I must have packed it away.’

  ‘Must have?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘You need to give me better than that, Oisín.’

  He doesn’t answer. I speed up, passing the tractor on the narrow road.

  ‘I don’t know.’ His words are nearly whispered. ‘I mean, it would have been careless to not pack it away, but I haven’t been …’

  He hasn’t been himself.

  ‘Laila was my friend.’ He shakes his head. ‘She wouldn’t have stolen it from me.’ But he sounds unsure. Vulnerable. I don’t recognise my brother in this boy who connects more with a stranger from the village than with his gairdín.

  ‘When did you last see her?’

  ‘That day.’ Oisín swallows. ‘That was the last time she came over. Three months ago. Three weeks before she died.’
<
br />   Yeah, this is not looking good.

  ‘We’ll have to search the tenants’ house.’ There are three houses just outside the Rookery that we rent out. Only one is currently occupied, by Laila’s family.

  ‘I already did.’ Oisín releases the words with a sigh.

  ‘You did?’ I take a pothole too hard and the car jolts. ‘All of them?’

  ‘I spent most of today looking. If Laila took the Eye, it’s not in their house.’ For a few seconds, Oisín sounds almost like his old self. ‘Nor the empty two. I’m sure of that.’

  It’s hard to hide a magical artefact this old and powerful. There’s a slight thrum off it when in arm’s reach. Like Mamó, it likes to tell you that it’s important. In a house filled with ordinary things, the Eye would stand out. And Oisín may be damaged, but his new slowness makes him possibly more methodical.

  ‘It’s not there,’ he repeats.

  My thick lip, still tender, tells me that Simon is not to be trusted. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the missing object Maeve and Sibéal were talking about outside the bungalow could very possibly be the missing Eye. I don’t know how they’re connected to Laila, if they are at all. But augurs are schemers, and this reeks of them.

  ‘Do you think the augurs want to summon Badb?’ I muse out loud. Oisín ignores me, fishing earphones out of his pocket.

  ‘It’s cheeky. Stealing our treasures to defeat us,’ I continue. But stupid. They mustn’t understand how it works. The Eye, with its twisted knotwork design, is a specific form of silver magic. And Knot magic demands action. The augurs can’t know what action it needs. I don’t even know what action the Eye needs.

  ‘It’s not like they can actually use it.’ I’m talking to myself. Oisín plugs in one earphone, then the other. In fairness, this is the longest conversation we’ve had in months.

  ‘Sure, they don’t know the offerings,’ I say. ‘And they never will, unless they think they can read our minds. Which they can’t. So this is a waste of time.’

  ‘Shut up, David,’ Oisín says. He’s staring rigidly ahead. Tinny beats escape from his earphones.

  ‘How many offerings do you know?’ I glance at him, not really expecting him to tell me.