The Invasion

by Peadar O'Guilin

  ‘Anto,’ Nabil says. ‘Anto. I’m sure you’re right. You knew her best. But if she was sent to the Grey Land … It’s already too late. You know that, my friend. They will have transformed her. It’s not like a Call where you have to resist for only a day. Or what feels like a day. I’m so sorry.’

  Anto knows Nabil needs him to pull himself together. That’s what instructors always want from you: don’t stay down. It’s just that this time he doesn’t know how to get up.

  ‘They’re here!’ a soft voice calls. An answer comes from another direction: ‘They’re here!’ A flock of birds takes to the sky, all of them dressed in black, unnatural feathers, all with the wizened faces of old men and women. ‘They’re here, they’re here, they’re here!’

  ‘We need to go,’ Taaft says. Her arm rests on Nabil’s as though it belongs there. Most people think the two instructors despise each other, but Anto has seen them together and knows it’s a lot more complicated than that. ‘Gather them up, Froggy. Don’t want to be hanging around when the reinforcements arrive!’

  Nabil and Taaft call together as many of the survivors as they can find. In a way they are lucky, for their strange battle with the centaurs has produced no wounded at all. Students are either alive or dead. Others may have wandered off into the forest, but a cold-hearted decision is made not to go looking.

  Nor will they bury the casualties.

  Krishnan pulls a weeping Mitch Cohen away from a red smear nobody else can recognize. Bianconi the Boar gets a spare pistol he claims he can use. Then it’s off again, in under the trees while the crow-people swoop down to the road.

  ‘They’re going to feast on our dead,’ Liz Sweeney tells Aoife. ‘In case you were wondering.’

  ‘Leave her alone,’ Anto says. His voice is hoarse from crying. He’s not sure if he’d prefer to be here or lying dead back on the road.

  ‘What’s it to you?’ says Liz Sweeney.

  She’s always been a strange girl: as tall as he is, her eyes slate grey, her cheekbones sharp enough to gouge stone. She might have been a model in the old world, but here and now she reminds Anto more of a mercenary from the movies. Or one of those assassin girls in the tattered books on his grand-mother’s shelf.

  ‘I won’t have you touching me,’ Liz Sweeney says.

  Anto stares, but the girl is talking to Aoife, not him. ‘I know you’re in love with me, and I won’t have it.’

  ‘What?’ Aoife is shocked. ‘How, by all the gods, could you think that?’

  ‘You risked your own life to save mine. Don’t think I didn’t notice. A coward like you! By the Morrigan, you must want me bad!’

  Aoife’s eyes all but fall out of her head, so widely is she staring.

  The whole group is moving down a path that runs parallel to the main road leading into town. Little Bronagh Glynn walks ahead of the three Year 5s, as though asleep. Some Year 3s follow on after, two boys and a girl, with Taaft bringing up the rear. Anto can’t see past the lanky Krishnan to the front of the column. He’s not even sure how many are still alive.

  ‘That’s wrong, Liz Sweeney,’ Aoife is saying. ‘I don’t love you. I couldn’t love anybody except Emma.’

  ‘Oh, yes, Squeaky Emma!’

  ‘Don’t call her that!’

  ‘But she’s dead now, so—’

  ‘Don’t!’

  ‘– so now you want somebody else, and I’m the obvious candidate. Well, I’m not that type, and even if I was …’

  Aoife staggers away off towards the front, pushing past Krishnan, uncaring of the branches that slap her on the way.

  Liz Sweeney shakes her head. ‘She’s wasting energy doing that. Can you believe it?’

  ‘You should leave her alone,’ Anto mutters again, but he hasn’t the heart for an argument. All he can think of is Nessa, who fought so very hard to live. More than anybody else he knows. And then, the horrible irony of finding herself in a boat for the Grey Land. The terror of it. The fury. The unfairness. What must be happening to her now?

  He shudders. He told Nabil he wanted to get in a boat himself to go back for her, even though he would inevitably arrive too late. He’s so relieved he doesn’t have to go, and so ashamed by his own relief. He is empty. Worthless.

  ‘I don’t know why she’s obsessed with me,’ says Liz Sweeney. ‘But who are we to talk, eh, Anto? We were both in love with traitors. Me with Conor, the Crom-twisted king himself! And you with that ragged sow, Nessa.’

  He stops breathing altogether. Every thought is like a needle in his brain. Liz Sweeney has no idea what she’s just done. ‘Oh, yeah,’ she continues. ‘I heard what the Turkey said to you before she closed those bulging eyes of hers.’

  He clenches his giant fist. His muscles bunch. He’ll kill Liz Sweeney. He, the vegetarian, will kill her dead with a single punch. ‘Come on,’ she says hurrying forward. ‘We’re holding up the line.’ And Liz Sweeney lives another day.

  Vengeance

  Nessa is still alive, but not alone.

  She clings to a lonely rock clustered with foul-smelling barnacles. A few hundred metres from where she hides is the shoreline of the Grey Land, and there a group of half a dozen Sídhe have formed a chain and are wading out towards her.

  ‘We felt your arrival, thief!’ cries one of them.

  She’s tired enough that she slips a little, cutting her good hand on one of the razor-sharp shells that cling feebly to the rock. She still has her sopping, half-burnt prison uniform. How strange to be here with clothing!

  ‘What will you become?’ shouts another of the Sídhe. ‘A horse? I need one for the war! Or a mouse to feed our hawks?’

  They seem to think she lies closer to shore than she actually does, and this might have something to do with the way she upended her boat. Perhaps it would have deposited her right in their laps if she hadn’t altered its course. But they keep moving out from their initial position and will find her soon enough.

  ‘The thief is not dead,’ one says, a man’s gorgeous baritone. ‘I can feel that much, and … and there’s something else.’ He raises his chin as though sniffing the air. ‘Something beautiful.’

  ‘Oh, yes!’ a woman replies, her hair glimmering with bits of glass and metal. ‘I can taste it even from here!’

  Nessa’s breath quickens. She has nowhere to go. Nobody she can call on for help. She could swim directly away from the shore until she drowns. But what if one of them is a better swimmer than she is with her two broken fingers? They’ll catch her easily and turn her into something terrible. And the pain of it! An agony, a horror she will feel for ever, because it’s not like this is a Call that ends after a single day.

  They’re still coming forward, arms outspread, smiles huge.

  Behind them, the land gently rises away from the sea. Over there it is raining ash. Further left, a volcano spits angrily, blasting burning rock down on to the world, and Nessa realizes that she was wrong to think there was no safe place for her in the Grey Land, because she alone of all humanity can claim fire as a friend. If only she could get there!

  ‘She can’t breathe water,’ says the male Sídhe on the end of the line. ‘Not yet, anyway. She must be behind that rock. Yes! Yes! She is the beating heart of a promise. Can’t you feel it? The sweetness of it on the air.’ No further word is spoken, yet all at once the six of them are surging forward, four women, two men. They split after a few steps so that three of them can come from either side of the rock. They shout with joy while still several metres away. One man takes a hunting horn from around his neck and blows loud enough to raise the dead.

  A lesser girl would have panicked at this stage and set off swimming, but although the rhythm of Nessa’s heart is urgently requesting flight, she has a lifetime’s experience in overruling it. She would have been dead long ago otherwise, sharing the cold ground with a legion of those other girls.

  The Sídhe slow now as the water rises to waist height on them, chattering excitedly about all the changes they will wreak u
pon her body.

  ‘I would like a monkey,’ says one woman, her face like something out of a Disney cartoon. ‘But I want its head facing backwards and oozing boils on its neck that sparkle in the glittering sky! Oh, how I will make her dance for me!’

  The two groups surge around the rock to left and right, but Nessa, waiting for this, throws herself forward instead, over the top of her hiding place and straight into the sea behind them. She doesn’t make the mistake of closing her eyes. Even under this oily water, even in the poor light of the spirals, she perceives the shadow of legs. During her patient wait she has prised a razor shell from the rock. She uses it now to hamstring the man with the hunting horn, his blood unfurling like a flag. She abandons her weapon and before the others can turn around she’s already swimming through the water, powerful arms working like an engine, her injured fingers begging her to stop.

  She gains a lead of twenty paces, as they wade awkwardly after her.

  But they’re laughing of course. How they always laugh! And with good reason, because they have an eternity to hunt her down, while she, friendless, with nothing to eat, can only grow weaker.

  Closer to shore, her hands begin to tip the bottom, but she won’t stand just yet. Nessa knows she can’t rely on her legs to get her out of trouble, so instead she drags herself along until even her knees are scraping on rock.

  The enemy gain on her again as they reach the shallows, although they laugh less now, saving their breath for the chase.

  Nessa scrambles upright, gathering up stones along the way. Now she fires them off. She hits one woman in the face, hard enough to send her back into the water.

  Four remain uninjured, grinning, delighted, close.

  They stumble to a halt no more than five paces away.

  ‘Why do you not run?’ asks the remaining man. He looks innocent and sweet, with dimples marking his flawless skin. His voice is as soft as a boy’s.

  ‘And why do you smile, thief?’ says the princess who wants Nessa for a monkey.

  Fear, is the answer to that question, with a good dollop of adrenaline stirred in too. Nessa has thrown all her stones. Used up all of her advantages. Any of her classmates in this position could simply turn now and run. They are trained for it, trained to go for hours if necessary. They can fight too, so much better than she can, for although she outmatches most of them in the strength of her arms and shoulders, her legs will betray her at the slightest nudge.

  She forces her grin wider, wide enough to match theirs.

  ‘I have been changed,’ she says, filling her voice with a confidence she doesn’t feel. ‘Changed by Dagda himself. Look! See my skin?’

  They can see it, somehow in this light, the faint, porcelain-like quality it has borne ever since her Call.

  The monkey princess shrugs. It makes her seem human, despite those large eyes and her clothing of spider silk and glittering scraps of metal. ‘And why should we not change you again? Killing you is forbidden of course – we can see the beauty of the promise on you. And great power will come with its fulfilment. But Lord Dagda would not deny us the simple pleasure a monkey brings.’

  ‘He will want to see me himself,’ says Nessa, hoping against hope her words will have some kind of effect on them. But all that happens is they laugh and the woman says, ‘I, Lassair, will show you to Lord Dagda when we have made you lovely!’

  ‘Dagda wouldn’t want that!’ Nessa pushes back against the rock behind her, as though she could disappear into it. ‘You must believe me!’

  ‘Who can believe a thief that took our lands from us with iron swords?’

  The monkey woman, Lassair, reaches out and rests her hand on Nessa’s shoulder. She licks her lips. All she needs to do is to squeeze and the girl’s arm will elongate or shrink, or fall off altogether. Or grow fur. Nessa’s bladder actually gives way in the absolute terror of the moment, but with all the water around them, with the stench of the air and the oily sea, her enemies fail to notice it. All they hear is her steady, steady voice, which, unlike her legs, can bear the weight of entire continents. In this alone she is not like any other human they have ever seen before. Begging is what they have come to expect. The word spoken most often by human lips in their presence, is ‘please’, usually followed by ‘don’t!’ By screams and tears or pathetic defiance.

  Calmness is not part of their experience.

  ‘Dagda will want to see me,’ Nessa asserts again, ‘exactly as I am.’

  ‘This is an attempt to fool us. To escape.’ Lassair’s graceful fingers tighten ever so slightly.

  Nessa looks the woman right in the eye. ‘No. That’s where I’m going. To see Dagda. I mean it. I promise it.’

  The acrid, half-poisonous air of the Grey Land seems to shiver around them, or is that just Nessa’s imagination? She feels suddenly light-headed, her legs even weaker than before. It is only with the greatest of effort that she keeps them from buckling and driving her into the water.

  The Sídhe woman releases her hold as though scalded. All of them bow their heads, hands together like the most fervent of believers in church. ‘Thank you, thief. Thank you. We will accompany you to see Lord Dagda at the Cauldron.’

  Nessa manages a nod in return. Lassair walks her gently to the shore, even lending an arm for support. ‘Do you mind,’ she asks, all courtesy now, ‘if we wait a moment to retrieve our comrades that you wounded?’

  ‘Uh … not at all.’ Nessa’s head is spinning. What just happened there? They thanked me. They actually thanked me. But for what?

  Nessa’s two victims are helped to shore and neither bears her any ill will. One of them grins from a mouth of smashed teeth, the other has horrific new wounds on his ruined leg that could not have been caused by the shell she slashed him with.

  ‘Scavengers,’ the man says happily. ‘While I lay in the water.’

  ‘Doesn’t … doesn’t it hurt?’ asks Nessa.

  ‘Oh, yes! You must be proud, thief, very proud! The Cauldron would take a thousand thousand heartbeats to heal me at this distance! But I have the honour of accompanying you there and will recover more quickly as we approach.’

  The Cauldron is real, Nessa already knew that much. Dagda himself told her so during her Call. In legend it brought warriors back even from death, but this creature seems to think it will heal him anywhere in the Grey Land. He winks at her. The other man slaps her on the back like an old comrade.

  All of a sudden it seems that her captors have come to trust her and she still can’t figure out why.

  It doesn’t matter, she thinks. It’s perfect. For she intends to murder them all. Maybe even try a little experiment. Let’s see how quickly the Crom-twisted Cauldron brings them back to life when she rips the heads off their corpses and feeds them to the next monster she encounters.

  She looks at them, at their heart-stoppingly beautiful faces. She feels only hatred, her whole body thrumming with spite. Of its own accord, her fake grin widens.

  Anto. Anto would be horrified. Sometimes she thinks the slightest glimpse into her thoughts would kill the love he has for her stone dead. Megan, on the other hand – her memory perches like a little red-haired devil on Nessa’s left shoulder and nods approvingly. Her imaginary suggestions are as foul as they are brutal: I know where you can stick their heads! Right, Ness?

  After what feels like a few more minutes, they set off across a beach that burps noxious gases. They climb a steep path up the side of a cliff. Nessa has to use her arms a lot. She struggles to maintain even a gentle pace and her captors see how her left hand makes her wince and sweat.

  Breathing easily, they begin to speculate among themselves as to how best her body might be altered to work better.

  ‘My monkey idea was the best one,’ asserts Lassair.

  But the now-lame Hornblower interjects. ‘More of a baboon though, don’t you think? We could make the thief’s arms longer and put suckers on them like that boy from before, do you remember? I made a trellis of him and kissed you to
the music of his tears.’

  ‘But I want a monkey. Imagine pursuing it through the clinging forest? How long before it would be consumed?’ And the fairy princess’s laugh is so beautiful and so infectious that Nessa has to fight to keep the hatred from her face.

  At the top of the cliff lies a plain of mud. Ash starts to fall then, sticking to everyone in the party and obscuring a stand of finger trees nearby.

  ‘I’m slowing you up,’ she tells the Sídhe. ‘You go on ahead if you wish.’

  ‘Come now!’ says Hornblower. His skin is so smooth the drifting flecks of ash fall away from it at once. His jaw alone would win him any election on earth, while his eyes are all a-sparkle with sweet innocence.

  ‘Did you not hear us before? Let us give you better legs. I could bend those back for you. Make you fleet as a faun!’

  ‘No. I am as Dagda made me and I will stay that way until I see him. But … but if you escort me to those finger trees, I could make myself some crutches. And for you too until you are healed.’

  ‘Crutches!’ he cries in delight. ‘How many lives since I heard that word! Yes, yes, a fine game indeed. Let us have crutches, you and I! Come!’

  Astonishingly, the others let the two of them go alone into the trees. It is darker here, away from the silver light, with angry hissing from among the roots. Something altogether larger growls deep enough to be felt through the packed earth between the trees. ‘Away with you!’ Hornblower shouts. ‘Eat one of your own! This thief is not for you!’

  Another growl and the trees shake.

  ‘You wish to be shaped again? Shall I make of you a prey animal?’

  His words induce a panic. Branches – whole trunks maybe – shatter as the monster lumbers away.

  ‘This is exciting,’ Hornblower confides. ‘I think … My memory has been broken so many times, but I think I might have had crutches when still we lived in the Many-Coloured Land. As a … as a boy? Yes, I was a boy, I think. I followed animals, I cannot remember which type now. I think we ate them, or perhaps it was they who ate us. And there were dogs, but none we could talk to like the ones we have now.’