The Invasion

by Peadar O'Guilin

  ‘They’ve been stealing people away every single day for the last twenty-five years! Surely we should have drifted apart by now.’

  ‘I have already given you the answer, child. Promises. The power of binding, remember? Each promise kept between them and us is a lash that ties the worlds together.’

  ‘And a broken promise can push them apart again?’

  ‘Exactly, child, exactly! But worse. A broken promise is like a whole barrel of powder going off! Or so it seems to me, because it is the only thing they fear.’

  Nessa shakes her head. ‘I will teach them to fear me too. You’ll see. Come on, Father,’ she says. ‘The storm is gone and I want to test these new crutches.’

  They work perfectly. Nessa all but flies down the slope and springs halfway up the face of the next with the ease of a young gazelle. She feels as strong as she ever has. Every step takes her closer to danger, but if she can escape Dagda’s attention, that also means she’s nearer home and to Anto’s welcoming arms. He needs her. She knows that, and already she can imagine the delight on his face when they meet again.

  She sleeps where she can as the ‘days’ pass. She hides from house-sized predators. They’re not interested in her. Eagerly they hunt down swearing and sobbing beasts that are no larger than elephants.

  Above her head flies Fr Ambrosio. His wing has healed and his belly bulges from all the creatures Nessa has burned from their path. ‘Water!’ he’ll cry when he sees any. Or ‘Monsters!’ or ‘Sídhe!’

  Although there are never as many of the latter as she expected. As though they have all gone elsewhere.

  ‘You look more and more like one of them,’ the priest tells her.

  ‘Good. It’s keeping me safe.’ And it is. Twice, seeing her in the distance, the enemy has waved at her. And then there was that monster, with fangs as long as her arm, the one that referred to her as ‘master’ and backed away, trembling all over.

  ‘Good,’ she says again.

  She carries kindling in Fr Ambrosio’s old sling. At sleep time she uses the last of the heat in her bones to make a fire. She buries her hands in it, glorying in the sensation of filling herself up to the very brim.

  It is not a human that stalks towards Dagda and his Cauldron. It is a weapon.

  If only Anto were here, she thinks. We’d be un-stoppable. He with his mighty fist and she with her fire. She imagines the Sídhe bowing to them both. And then … why, if the enemy could just forget their hatred, their madness, if they could put it aside and use all their tremendous magic for good, a true paradise could be fashioned from the hell that is the Grey Land.

  ‘A fantasy,’ Fr Ambrosio tells her one evening. ‘You think to defeat the Sídhe with powers that they themselves gave you?’

  ‘I made them give me my power,’ she tells him. ‘I took it.’

  ‘Dagda made you, child, whatever you think. He knows everything about you.’

  ‘Then I’ll keep out of his way. You know the plan! I’ll see him from a distance, and then … I’m gone. Disguised as one of them if I have to.’

  Fr Ambrosio says nothing. He’s been here so long he can’t remember what hope smells like, let alone the taste of it.

  Crow’s Beak Mountain has grown so enormous now that its own foothills hide it from her. But Fr Ambrosio scouts out a pass between it and one of its lesser brethren. And it is at the top of this, having climbed it for what felt like two days, that Dagda’s domain is finally revealed to her.

  Fires burn down there. So many that she feels a sense of vertigo, as though she is looking down at the stars of home. But these are just bonfires. They twinkle on the plain below her, surrounding a town-sized crater, a perfect circle filled with a glowing liquid that could be mercury or molten silver. Even as she watches, bubbles form that must be as large as whales.

  ‘The Cauldron,’ says Fr Ambrosio.

  ‘That’s …? But … But I thought …’

  She goggles at it in amazement, but not for long. That’s not what the promise wants, is it? So already she is moving down the hill, faster than necessary.

  On a gentle slope like this, with good crutches, Nessa could almost fly if she wanted to. Stopping, however, is not so easy, and so it proves, because when she sees a pair of Sídhe on the path ahead of her, she hasn’t a hope of altering her course before they turn and spot her.

  She decides instead to accelerate. The fetid air whips past her face, stones scatter and spider bushes move all too slowly to pull her down. The figures are too surprised to react.

  She smashes into the pair of them like an artillery shell, flinging them aside and using their bodies to soak up her speed, so that a mere ten steps further on, she finally skids to a halt.

  Then she has to turn back upslope to finish them off, fighting gravity and the reluctance of the promise. It’ll be a temporary death at best she can grant them, what with the Cauldron so near. It will have to do. She can’t have anyone tattling to Dagda!

  She reaches the first of them: a woman with tangled hair, lying stunned where she fell.

  ‘Oh, bless you child!’ calls Fr Ambrosio from above. She can practically hear him salivating.

  Nessa studies her victim. It’s a woman with scarred arms. Tattoos decorate her neck: a rose, a sailing ship. Nessa stretches out a hand, ready to unleash fire, but then she pauses, her eyes catching again on the scars.

  They’re old.

  Shouldn’t the Cauldron have healed this woman? Shouldn’t it have perfected her?

  ‘Finish her!’ cries Fr Ambrosio. ‘Please!’

  Yes! says Megan’s ghost.

  But the other enemy, only now recovering himself, shouts, ‘We’re human!’ And then, driving a swooping Fr Ambrosio away with a wave of his arm, he cries, ‘Gah! I hate those things!’ Nessa sees with a shock that, despite the glittering of his skin and the large eyes, actual wrinkles line his forehead, pinching the corners of his mouth. ‘Arra, look now,’ he says, more in bewilderment than anger, ‘you’ve broken my arm. And poor Veronica’s legs too, by the looks of them.’

  ‘Good,’ Nessa growls. She’s shaking from the fight, adrenaline draining from her body, leaving nothing but confusion in its wake. ‘You’re traitors. The Sídhe would have twisted you otherwise.’ She needs these people dead. She needs it or her plan lies in ruins. Yet, when she looks at the unconscious woman at her feet … sees that tattoo: so personal, so human, the fire seems to recoil from her fingertips.

  The man nods at her predicament. ‘We’re no different from you, girl. We made deals in order to live. Some better than others, but what choice was there? And if it was just the likes of me and poor Veronica, you could say there was something wrong with us. But it isn’t, is it? You’ll see when you get down to the bottom how normal it is. A thousand of us honest to God human beings living in the shadow of the Cauldron. Our ageing stopped in its tracks. Free of disease. And when it’s all over, when the Conquest is complete, we go home again. It’s been promised.’

  ‘And what did you have to do in exchange for all of that? For them?’

  A look of terrible pain crosses the man’s craggy old face. Then, angrily, he shakes his head like a horse driving away a fly. ‘What does it matter, girl? Sure, aren’t they all dead centuries ago anyway? I’m here now. I have no …’ Is it the pain of his arm that makes him hesitate? ‘I have no family. And no regrets neither. I will be young again, and soon! Oh, yes, even one as lowly as me hears how well the invasion is going!’

  She stares, unable to take in his last sentence. It means her friends and family are already under attack. Yet it also means a door is open. A door home.

  The fire boils in her. Time to end this.

  But then the man bows. ‘Anyway,’ he says, ‘you are Nessa. Am I right?’

  ‘How …? How do …?’

  ‘Sure we’re here for you, aren’t we? Me and Veronica both. To greet you on Lord Dagda’s behalf. He felt your approach and thought you might be more inclined to trust your own kind.’ />
  ‘I trust none of you!’ she says.

  He laughs. ‘Sure how’re you any different from us? You who will strengthen my lords when your promises are kept? Better for Ireland if you had died during your Call, but no! No! You just had to live, didn’t you? You had to!’

  He grins, an old man’s grin. ‘Lord Dagda didn’t need you to trust us, in any case. We’re just here to take your mind off things.’

  ‘What things?’

  Then she hears applause. Laughter follows, delighted and sweet. And from behind the rocks all around a dozen more people appear. Sídhe this time: there’s no mistaking those huge, unnatural smiles for human.

  Something shoots out of the air – Fr Ambrosio! – and smacks the man right in the face. How he screams! But Nessa is already turning. Nobody can catch her on a slope. Time to make a run for it. But the woman with the broken legs is not as unconscious as she appeared. She knocks one crutch away and Nessa goes tumbling to the ground in a puff of dust.

  She rolls, makes it up on to one knee. The first of the Sídhe are here. A beautiful, beautiful woman whose smile could melt the most calcified human heart. But Nessa points and she’s the one who melts instead. Now Nessa’s up again! Three more of the fair folk block her path. Didn’t anybody warn them about her? She cooks them where they stand. A man grabs her shoulder. Another has an arm around her neck, chuckling happily in her ear, until they too burn away. And still the Sídhe are unafraid. More and more of them coming, until, with her fire all gone, they bear her to the ground, laughing like a giddy heap of children until she lies still.

  The Park

  Anto comes downstairs in the morning. Everyone is there. Aoife avoids looking at him altogether. Krishnan and Mitch are holding hands. They are badly matched – one so gangly he might have been created by a particularly unimaginative Sídhe; the other tiny enough to be eight instead of twelve years old. They stare defiantly around the room. Who, by Crom, do they imagine cares? Do they think the Nation needs their children all of a sudden?

  But when Anto turns, Liz Sweeney has appeared behind him, her whole manner that of the cat who got the cream. His heart misses a beat, but not in a good way. It’s not from love, because he knows what that feels like and he knows what it feels like to betray it too. We’re both traitors now, he thinks, me and Nessa.

  Anto wanders into the back garden where he finds a pathetic little grave waiting for him. Nabil, of course. Taaft lies unconscious beside it, a large empty bottle of something foul clutched in one hand.

  He plops himself down, feeling the freezing damp soak through his old tracksuit.

  Like a scholar wandering the ruins of a once-mighty city, he looks inside himself. Is there anything worth saving? The arm is still there of course. Ready to fight again. To pound, to smash. The rest of him serves no purpose. Maybe he should try something heroic. He could fight his way down to Dublin to save his family. But he’d never get there in time, not with a whole army in the way.

  He is empty. Numb. A withered pile of ash. Yet, if he looks carefully, deep down, a single ember burns, and as he pokes at it, it flares, suddenly white hot.

  Hope. Anto hasn’t tasted it in so long that several heartbeats pass before he recognizes it. Aoife got it right, he realizes. Because even a ragtag group such as theirs might have a chance to make a difference.

  He runs into the house. ‘Get up!’ he shouts.

  The others look at him, totally startled.

  Liz Sweeney says, ‘We’ll never make it through to Dublin now.’

  ‘We’re not going to Dublin,’ Anto replies. ‘The Sídhe aren’t going to Dublin either, are they? We’ve hardly seen a single one.’ Then he surprises himself, and the others too, by grinning hard enough to hurt. ‘Don’t you get it? We never see them because they’re all too scared to die in the fighting, now that they’ve found their promised land. I like that they’re afraid. I love it. And here we are, behind their lines with a load of modern guns and ammunition.’

  The students are all nodding, slow vicious smiles spreading across their faces. Even Aoife looks frightening. Of all people!

  ‘But that’s not even the best part,’ Anto tells them. ‘That guy we had here last night. That Crom-twisted, back-stabbing murderer, was the king of Sligo. The king the Sídhe made who let them through the gate up there. Well, we had a king over in Boyle too. Remember that? They were trying to open a gate, but when Nessa –’ he catches himself, swallows, and manages to carry on – ‘when the king of Boyle died, the gate shut in their faces and their invasion failed.’

  ‘By Crom,’ says Krishnan, his Adam’s apple bobbing. ‘If we’d known. If we’d killed him!’

  ‘Oh, we’ll kill him, all right,’ says Anto. ‘He boasted he was heading home so he can have more monsters to command. He enjoyed that. Enjoyed wiping out the people trapped in that farmhouse. And then he pretended to be one of them!’

  ‘I’m in!’ cries Krishnan.

  A shadow has appeared at the door, stinking of cheap alcohol.

  It’s Taaft. Her eyes are so puffy it’s a miracle if she can see anything. ‘We’re killing that man,’ Liz Sweeney tells her. ‘Morris.’

  ‘He’s mine,’ Taaft says simply.

  Anto nods. There’ll be plenty of blood for everybody, he thinks.

  Among the wreckage of the town are enough bikes to mount an army. Liz Sweeney knows how to fix them up, and Krishnan is no fool either when he’s not showing off for Mitch. So, while only bald tyres are available, they gather several of these and other spare parts, before taking the road back towards Carrick-on-Shannon.

  The students travel by day – utter foolishness of course. Except that’s what Morris will be doing, and the thought of losing him in the dark is too much for any of them to bear. Still, though, that first afternoon a fine covering of twenty-year-old trees hides them from the air. It’s cold, but sunny. Wind rushes past their faces, and animals of every kind can be seen in the bogs and hedges and fields.

  Oh, it’s fun, Anto thinks! How can anything be fun? And yet it is. Krishnan races madly after birds, skidding dramatically along the rims of potholes that could swallow him. There’s no bike large enough for his lanky frame. He’s like a clown in a tiny car. Mitch laughs, and even Aoife finds an uncertain smile when a downhill stretch makes them all feel like they’re flying through flashes of sunlight.

  At one point they skid to a stop in a panic as something monstrous crashes through a nearby field. But it’s just a poor horse with too many legs, the sort of thing the infestation squads used to hunt. It doesn’t even see them as it blunders by.

  Soon enough, though, their road takes them right to the edge of an empty town with a dozen overgrown housing estates to either side of them.

  ‘He could be anywhere,’ Liz Sweeney whispers. ‘Remember when we passed through here before? There must be a hundred houses, right?’

  ‘We know where he’s going,’ Anto insists. ‘Back to his kingdom.’

  Minutes later they reach a park along the edge of the river, and here they’re rewarded with the sight of a single Sídhe. It’s the first Anto has seen since the one he killed with a grenade when he was with the infestation squad. The glittering man doesn’t even notice them. He’s staring at a tree. One hand reaches out to it, trembling, his face awed.

  ‘So beautiful!’ he cries. ‘Oh! Oh!’

  Afraid to move, they watch him fall to his knees. Softly he weeps, pressing his face to the trunk. ‘I only ever wanted to come home. Oh, my home!’

  He doesn’t hear a sound as they ease bikes to the earth and pad across the grass. Their attack is like the frenzy of sharks. They rip him to pieces in utter silence, and when there’s nothing left they just stand there, wordless, dripping with blood that’s no different from their own.

  I am a beast, Anto thinks. He tries the thought again, like probing at a sore tooth with his tongue. But he feels no regret.

  A sudden squeak makes them jump. Another Sídhe is there, watching them from a
bush, her perfect mouth stretched open in horror. She freezes as they advance on her. ‘I … No!’ she says. ‘I can’t die here. Not yet! I can’t feel the Cauldron. Please!’

  Her golden skin has shining freckles. Her cheeks curve sweetly enough to break hearts. But who has room for one of those? Guns, yes. And knives too, which are far more satisfying.

  ‘You’re on a Call,’ Liz Sweeney whispers. ‘This is what it’s like, you filthy twist! This is what it feels like to be us!’

  The woman runs then, or tries to. They give chase, their faces contorted into grins. All the grace of her people has deserted her and the first rock she comes to trips her up, a weeping, sprawling heap.

  ‘Wait!’ It’s Aoife who calls a halt to the gory blades. Tears drip down her face. ‘We can question her, can’t we?’

  Anto shudders. Is that … is that relief he feels? ‘Yes.’ His voice is hoarse. ‘We have a mission now. A mission. We need to know where Morris is.’

  Krishnan covers the woman’s dangerous hands with cloth and secures them behind her back, while Liz Sweeney goes through the pouches at her belt. ‘By Crom,’ she says. She has found a white pulp and is sniffing at it. ‘Kind of sweet.’

  The Sídhe, still weeping, snaps at her. ‘Thieving my food? You think if you look like us we will spare you after the conquest? No! We can see beyond the skin to your hearts. We will know our own, we—’

  Liz Sweeney kicks her hard, twice, and is going in for more when Aoife drags her back.

  ‘Get your hands off me, Aoife! I told you I’m not interested! I have a boyfriend now.’