by Mary Watson
‘You’re friends with Cillian, right?’ Her words are stilted. I hadn’t realised they’d met.
‘Yeah, our families are tight. I’ve known him all my life.’
‘He’s a prick.’ She says it with venom.
‘I know.’ I let out a breath. ‘He’s difficult, and it’s been worse lately. Has he given you hassle?’
‘He and Sibéal are always at each other. What’s that about?’
‘They are?’ He’s said nothing to me.
‘He threw a firecracker into their house the other day.’
Not good. Sibéal will be plotting her revenge. And when their little war of attrition intersects with Dad’s need for retribution, no one is safe.
Zara’s waiting for an answer.
‘There’s a lot of hostility between Maeve’s family and ours.’ Damn you, John Canty.
‘A feud? One of those village disagreements that run through generations and people knock each other’s stone walls down?’
I frown at her; where does this come from?
‘Definitely runs through generations,’ I concede.
The music travels to us as we follow the shoreline, the raucous cheers and calls. The Rose sounds drunk.
We’ve crossed into the field below Cassa’s when Zara suddenly stops, the tips of her fingers hooked into mine. I turn to her.
‘What were you doing that night, out here?’ she says. It feels like a test.
‘Digging.’ I step towards her. I shouldn’t.
‘Why?’ Her hair falls over her cheek and I lift a hand to brush it away. I tell myself that’s all. One small touch.
But with her fingertips, she tugs me nearer. ‘Why were you digging?’
‘Because my aunt instructed me to.’ I inch forward.
‘Instructed? Why?’
I put my hands on her waist.
‘My aunt –’ I’d rather not be talking about Cassa right now – ‘really loves flowers.’
‘But that’s not all, is it?’ Zara slips her hands up to my shoulders. Tentative, shy hands. Her touch feels good.
‘No.’ I tug her into me, her body against mine. Her face is turned up and I’m over the moon that she’s letting me in.
There has been so much ugliness. But this moment, the moment I press my lips to Zara’s, is reprieve. To feel her respond is absolution. Then I forget thinking and I’m just there with her.
Drawing back, she’s smiling. So perfect.
Which is why the frown that crosses her face is unexpected. One minute she’s looking at me in a way that I’d so hoped she would. And then she’s not.
‘What’s wrong?’ I lean back, trying to read her better.
‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘There’s something that I need to remember.’
We walk on in silence, Zara deep in thought.
We jump the gate into Cassa’s field and my luck runs dry.
Someone’s there. In the distance, near the peony patch. By the shape of him, tall, broad and moody, it’s Dad. He’s just staring, hands in his pockets.
‘Can we not right now?’ Zara sees him too.
We move stealthily along the hedge towards the copse of trees where Zara hid that night. Then I realise what has Dad so transfixed.
I knew they would grow a little faster than is natural, but the abundance of flowering plants makes me stop. The whole patch is covered with newly budding peonies, despite being planted at the wrong time of year. Tuber to bud, in just over three weeks.
This is magic. Real, strong magic. Not the subtle magic of my connection with my totem. Not the slow magic of our laws.
This is silver magic. It feels, smells different. What if Cassa is right? What if we’re on the cusp of the third ré órga?
Just in time for Dad to reap the rewards. He couldn’t have planned this better.
I tug on Zara’s hand, but she doesn’t move.
‘The briars,’ she says. The hedge is holding on to her.
There are thorns deep in her hoodie and on the cotton of her shorts and scratching her legs. This is not an accidental brushing up of the hedge, these are plants protecting their own. They’re trapping her, for Cassa. They mustn’t have realised that the Rooks have ascended.
A word attacks me, a fist to my face. I pull a briar from her skin.
Sting.
And it wants to be encased in the blooded thorn. I pause a moment, squeezing the thorn as I put the word inside, then slip it into my back pocket.
Zara slips out of the hoodie and we’re both frantically trying to detach her from the twisting briar. Then I hear Dad’s voice behind me.
‘David.’
I shut my eyes a long moment. When I open them, Zara is looking at me with such kindness.
‘Dad.’
‘Who’s your friend?’ Even though he appears calm, it’s obvious Dad is raging. The cold, clipped tone and the way he leans over Zara is meant to make her nervous. Afraid. He wants her to go away and never return.
‘This is Zara.’ Dad knows who she is. ‘We were down at the lake.’
Dad keeps his eyes on her as he says to me, ‘Make sure Zara gets home.’
‘Yes, Dad.’ He’s not said a word to her. I’m embarrassed at his rudeness, but mostly I’m afraid for her. I don’t want Zara on Dad’s radar. I don’t want him deciding that he doesn’t need tenants any more and finding a way to end the lease or making trouble for them.
I take her hand and walk with Zara through the trees. Neither of us speaks, until we reach the hollow.
‘Your dad was really mad,’ she says. ‘Will you be OK?’
‘I’m always OK.’ I shrug. ‘It’s really late. You smell of fire and you’ve lost some of your clothes. Right now, I’m more worried about your dad than mine.’
It’s a lame joke but she smiles.
‘But will you be OK?’ I say. I don’t want her in trouble because of me.
She nods and turns to leave, moving through the narrow cluster of trees and hedge. She looks over her shoulder.
‘Mind yourself, David.’ And then she’s gone.
THIRTY-ONE
Nothing to do with curses and magic
I wish I could describe to Zara how it feels in the woods. How I feel like my real self there. I am Horrible Laila who loves the feel of bark on her skin.
LAS
Zara
Mom’s furious with me. Last night she was waiting up when I came home. My hoodie missing, and my hair and clothes smelling of grass and fire. She scorched me with one long look.
‘Just tell me you weren’t with that boy.’
‘His name is David,’ I told her. But I could see her fear, her grief at losing Laila, as she struggled to find her words.
‘I’m too angry to talk right now.’ She turned away as I went up the stairs.
One of my favourite Horrible stories is the one where the horrible children lock their parents out of their ditch. The horrible mother and horrible father watch between the tangle of branches. Let us in, they wail with their horrible little mouths. But no, say the horrible children, and they sit down to dirt and leaf soup. Let us in, wail the horrible parents again. But no, say the horrible children, and they lie down on their twig and mulch beds. The horrible mother and horrible father shiver and shake in their bare thread clothes but still the horrible children won’t let them in.
In the morning, I’m thinking of the horrible parents peering through the brambles and briars when I hear her coming up behind me.
‘Mom,’ I say before she sits down on the velvet couch. ‘Do you believe in magic?’
She pauses. It’s not what she expected.
‘No.’ She is so certain, and yet …
‘Does Ma?’ I ask about her mother, who is like a woman from a fairytale. I vaguely remember stories from our childhood, stories of curses and boys dancing with swords.
She gives a small laugh. ‘She does.’
‘Do you think Laila died because she was cursed, like in Ma’s stories?’
>
‘A doekoem?’ Mom says, but she’s not surprised. I’d guess she’s thought about this herself. ‘No. Of course not.’
She sighs and sits beside me. ‘Sometimes horrible things just happen. Whether we deserve it or not. Nothing to do with curses and magic.’
Mom is calm as she hands me a cup of hot lemon water from the table beside her.
‘Where were you last night?’
‘Next door,’ I say. ‘They had a midsummer bonfire. I got caught in some briars. I’m sorry about the playsuit, I’ll fix it.’
‘It’s not the clothes, Zara,’ Mom sighs.
‘It’s him. David,’ I say.
Some years ago, Laila and I were hanging out in the city. A bunch of young men were sitting in the sunshine, drinking beer. They laughed too loud, catcalling to the women who passed, each one trying to be more obnoxious than the other. And with them was a younger boy, maybe fourteen. He laughed at the jokes a beat too late, and when they left, he trailed behind, trying to keep up.
‘I don’t trust him,’ Mom says. ‘And I know you didn’t go to camogie camp. What’s going on with you, Zara?’
When I think of him, that boy from long ago, he breaks away from the older men. He wanders down a river path, the sun on his face.
‘You don’t have to trust him. David is not your child.’ I sip the lemon water but it’s too hot. ‘Do you trust me?’
She nods, unhappily.
‘Then that’s all you need. Look, I know David’s a little … wounded.’
‘That’s not the word I’d use,’ Mom says darkly. ‘You can’t change someone, you know.’
‘I know, Mom,’ I say, ‘I know.’ But people can change themselves. Not for anyone else, but because they want to be better.
David has his darkness. But there’s also a vulnerable side. I saw more than David realised last night. I saw impossible things, the flowers growing and budding at an unnatural pace, the briars grabbing and trapping me.
I saw David, in all his brokenness. I saw David and his fear. I saw his dad, and the firm hold he keeps on David. I saw the boy trying to resist that hold.
‘I like him.’ A lot. ‘I think he needs someone …’ Outside of his normal.
‘But why should it be you?’ Mom sounds so broken. ‘I’ve lost one daughter, I have to protect the only one I have.’
‘Mom.’ I take her hand and she’s surprised. We never talk like this. ‘You can’t use Laila’s death to keep me from living.’
There are so many things Mom wants to ask. I feel it in her restlessness, her dissatisfied sigh. She wants to know if I’ve kissed him. She wants to know if it was more. She wants to know what I meant when I said he was wounded, if I know what happened before he came into her surgery, whether he’s addicted to whatever drugs she prescribed for him.
But she feels the brambles and briars. She knows that she’s been locked out.
I take the same route, and it’s like I’m trying to undo yesterday’s broken journey home. I pass the spot where I saw Dad’s car, the tree where I sat. Before I reach Maeve’s house, I slip between the trees at the edge of woods and go around the back of the house. Hiding behind an oak with a split trunk, I watch.
I think through my visits there: something similar happened both times, but with very different results. The repetition of regular sounds and movements, different instruments in some weird orchestra, somehow affected my head. The first time, it made me feel unusually peaceful. Safe. The second, combined with Sibéal’s fixed staring at me, was invasive and violent.
Whatever it was, it’s not normal.
And then I see Sibéal. She’s out in the backyard eating an apple. I crouch lower. I definitely don’t want her to find me here.
‘Come on, Sibéal, Ash will miss her train,’ Maeve yells into the back garden.
‘Coming,’ Sibéal says, throwing her core to the trees. She goes around the side of the house. After a minute, I hear the faint sound of a car door, the engine.
They’re gone.
A week ago, I wouldn’t have dreamed of doing this. Of climbing over the back hedge and dropping into the cement backyard. The very idea of walking up to someone else’s house, trying the back door and stepping inside would have been anathema. But here I am in Maeve’s kitchen.
Things are different now.
Sibéal’s cards are still at the kitchen table, a reminder of the previous afternoon. I don’t know exactly what I’m looking for as I move through the house, opening drawers and cabinets. Between the girls’ bedrooms, there’s a small box room. The desk there takes up the entire width of the room. In the drawers, I pull out a folder titled ‘Whitethorn Grove – Finance’ and another ‘Whitethorn Grove – Members’. There are several other documents related to Whitethorn Grove.
I remember Laila’s wish and fear, written on the papers I found. She wanted ‘them’ to bring her into the grove. She meant Maeve and her family.
In Sibéal’s room, the walls are cluttered with artwork. Beside her bed is her sketch pad. Just as I open it, I hear the voice from down the passage.
I scramble under the bed. There’s a man in the house, and from the one-sided conversation, he’s on the phone. He’s walking down the passage to Maeve’s room.
‘No. Not at all,’ he says. ‘Tell Sibéal she’s caused enough damage … Sibéal needs to hold herself back, it was a daft and dangerous thing to do … Yes, I know it was unplanned and she just showed up, but really, Maeve, you should have known better. Do you really think that boy is just going to tell her? It was reckless and won’t achieve anything.’
He listens impatiently, then bites out, ‘Stick to the plan, target the grandmother … Yes, I know, but she can’t lock herself in her house forever. She’ll have to come out sometime and we’ll be ready.’
He ends the call and walks back down the passage. A few seconds later I hear the back door shut.
What grandmother? Could he mean Callie?
I crawl out from under the bed, still holding on to the sketchbook. The pages are divided into squares, and in each square is a drawing. It’s perhaps a comic, or a storyboard.
I flick through, and towards the end of the book, I find a picture of a girl sprawled awkwardly on the grass, eyes to the sky.
It’s Laila. That’s Laila’s faux fur. Laila’s roughly chopped hair. I go back a page to the beginning of this two-page story. It begins with Laila walking by herself. She approaches something that looks like Stonehenge and goes inside. A cloaked figure stands over a sacrificial altar, holding a knife. He looks like he’s trying to grab something from her.
Then there’s a picture very like the Wishmaker disc I found hidden in the hairball. It fills the entire square with a twisting knot design. But on Sibéal’s drawing, words are written on two of the four quadrants. Entrap, Sever. The remaining quadrants have question marks. Two pop-out squares with smaller drawings illustrate entrapment and severing: a hunched figure locked in a cage. Two lovers at the edge of frame, their hands reaching for each other but unable to cross a jagged tear.
In the next square, Laila’s mouth is open in a silent scream. Her terror is obvious.
The back door opens again. Someone whistles a tune, banging in the kitchen. The fridge opens. The sound of the kettle heating travels down the passage.
Quietly, I put the sketchbook back in place. Footsteps sound down the passage. I hear a door, perhaps the bathroom, shut. I push the window open and lift up to the sill then drop down outside.
I run. I get the hell out of there.
I helter-skelter towards Meadowsweet House to check on Callie. I might be completely paranoid – sure, there are a good few old ladies in the village. But if there is any chance that man was referring to Callie when he said to target the grandmother, I have to do something.
There’s no one at Meadowsweet House, and I haven’t seen Callie these last few days, so I leave a message. I don’t want alarm the woman but I want her to be careful.
Callie,
/> I’m a little worried. Please can you come to me? It’s probably nothing, but please find me. My number and address are below. I’m looking forward to our next visit.
Zara
I ask at the Spar and the restaurant in the village, but no one seems to know her. I wish I’d thought to take her last name.
There’s nothing more I can do, so I go home. I’m thinking about Sibéal’s story. It’s obviously fictional, Laila had no knife wounds, and there’s no Stonehenge around here. But I know there’s truth in what she drew.
I just have to figure out what it is.
THIRTY-TWO
Tell me their names
David
In the days after midsummer, the Rookery is busy. Garraíodóirí, both full-time soldiers from Liscarron, the military base disguised as a private research institute, and the older wardens are in and out of the house.
Cassa is kept in a locked room, and Dad has already found a way to delay her trial. I want to check on her, but I’m not allowed.
Her personal guard is disbanded, and Dad seems to take special delight in assigning the most unpleasant jobs to Tarc. He gets the 3 a.m. call-outs from grumpy farmers miles away to check on possible nemeta attacks. Dad wants Tarc worn out, so that when Liscarron calls the next War Scythe round, he’ll be at a disadvantage.
‘There you are.’ Dad finds me in the hallway. ‘I need your help.’
‘Sure, Dad.’
I follow him but stop dead in my tracks as we enter the old ballroom. It has been completely repurposed. Maps have replaced the paintings on the wall. There are charts detailing different augur groves with approximate geographical location. The arch druids are named, and the groves with the highest number of fighting-age men and women identified.
Dad is beginning a war.
He unlocks a cabinet and is reaching for something there. But I can’t stop looking at Dad’s war plan.
‘David.’
I turn and Dad’s right there, holding my metal box.
Dad has my words.
‘There they are.’ I am so relieved. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you had them? I’ve been frantic.’
