Hollow Oaks

by Paddy Kelly

  My mind spun. In theory, you could block the flow of anam, say by stockpiling craft items and never using them. But the anam in them would eventually leak back into circulation. Even rust lost its oomph after a while. I had four charging frames running back home, oozing moonlight and sunlight into children's teeth and nails and eggshells and newly-fallen acorns, all of which had to be traded to the fairies within a few months or they'd be worthless.

  So how could you block the flow of a thing that couldn't be stored?

  "Okay," I said. "Let's say I believe you. But I'm not sure how I can help."

  "Is it not clear? Find who is damaging the flow. You will be rewarded for the effort."

  I stared at the tiny pocket-sized person, as the woods gabbled and rattled around me. Pondering how to handle this, and what I could get out of it.

  "But if you do not wish to," she said, "I can just ask the other one."

  That caught my attention. I leaned forward. "What other one?"

  "The other trader. He comes here a half-moon from when you do."

  This guy again. "What's his name? What's he look like?"

  "He has skin of a proper darkness and a name I cannot say."

  I pressed my lips together. Only one trader fit that description — Philippe Gernaud, a French-Algerian who'd had a run-in with Cormac at some point in the past. Gernaud was always poking around, Cormac had said, making trouble, snooping in places he wasn't supposed to.

  And now, given this new evidence, this was hard to question.

  But I'd fume about that later. Right now, getting past this fairy was priority one.

  "Okay," I said, with minor enthusiasm. "I guess I'll help. So what's this reward you mentioned?"

  She stood, strode to the far end of her boulder, and jumped down. A sound like a cat crossed with a chainsaw erupted from the trees as I leaned sideways to see what she was doing back there, but couldn't make it out in the dark. When she climbed back onto the boulder, she had something in her hands. She held it up, and I couldn't help a little gasp.

  A coin, of lumpy, lovely fairy gold, like a plate in her tiny hands.

  "You will contact those you know in the trade," she said, "and locate who is taking more items of craft than they need. Then return to tell me, and I will give you this."

  "Okay," I said, transfixed by the gold. "But I'll need time. Few days at least."

  She lowered the coin. "I will remain in this area for three days and nights. If you return with useful information in that time, this coin will be yours. Agreed?"

  I nodded, watching the gold like a dog tracking a stick. Worth about three hundred Euro, half a month's rent on Cormac's house. Not that he needed my rent, swanning around that retirement village in Spain in his big hat and sandals, the fucker.

  But who could resist fairy bling? That list was short, and I wasn't on it.

  Ishbéal said, "So we have an agreement?"

  Like I have a choice, I thought, but didn't say. "Fine. You said three days?"

  "Yes. Can you not use the other dair, across the river? It is much easier for me."

  There was a portal oak in Phoenix Park, about ten kilometres north of my usual one in Marlay Park. But it was cramped, and spat you into a swampy part of the other Ireland, full of squigglers and nibblers. Cormac had taken me once, and once had been plenty.

  "Sorry, this one will have to do." I was starting to grasp that I'd gotten away with it, that maybe I could keep myself in business. With a possible sprinkle of gold on top. "And look," I went on, "maybe I should head off now, before the sun comes up."

  It was still far from dawn, so there was little risk of that deadly other-worldly sun sneaking up to bubble the flesh and fat off my bones. But I was keen to get home, as that bath was calling to me, across the worlds. And before this small one changed her mind.

  "Very well." Ishbéal grabbed her spear, as long as she was, and strode to the edge of the boulder. Where she paused for a moment, and turned. "Do your best, Bren McCullough. I mean it. The link between our worlds might depend on it."

  She jumped from sight. A moment later, a furry bullet shot out from behind the rock — a hare, its ears flattened, the fairy pressed to its back. It galloped through the grass, parting it like a wave, and plunged into ferny darkness, with barely a rustle.

  The ferns grow still, and a slab of worry slid off my shoulders. Fucking hell. That could have gone a lot worse. Plus, I'd been given a job, paid in gold. Not too shabby.

  And it wasn't odd that Ishbéal was so keen to untangle the anam problem. The small folk depended on the craft items I supplied them, to control their boars and wolves and hares. My Earth-based customers, on the other hand, used craft items from Tara to create urges, that affected the mind and senses, or unguents for healing, or mood dolls for the slow shifting of temperament. And Seamus Cavan … fuck only knew what he did with them.

  So my Dublin customers would be put out by craft items losing their potency, sure. But for the small folk, no craft items basically meant the collapse of their society.

  I couldn't do anything else in the wild woods of Tara. So, head sore from a long and taxing day, I stood, brushed leaves from my damp arse, and strode back across the grass, then up the slope where the tree sat. Smells lay thick around me — the richness of leaf and crumbling wood, the soft sting of animal piss. Bugs darted, like nibbly satellites.

  I ducked under branches, waded through ferns, skipped over snargling tree roots, until finally I stepped into the clearing of the portal oak. It sat there in the moonlight like a great arthritic hand grasping for the sky. Trotting up to it, I halted, neck slick with sweat, my lungs an ache of breaths, and ducked through the opening in its great body.

  Inside, I crouched down on a floor of earth, scattered with leaves and twigs. The air was dusty and dry. And when I closed my eyes, I felt the creak and tremble, the place where two worlds scraped at their join like tectonic plates.

  From my deep right-hand trouser pocket I pulled the anchor — two testicle-sized balls, connected by a leather cord. One was wrapped in fur from a Taran rabbit, the other in suede from Earth. I prodded the fur ball, feeling its tiny kick. And I held it up, peering.

  That kick … was it fainter than before? Could the fading anam be affecting even my anchor, my means of passage between the worlds? Because that was not good.

  A raucous slam of noise outside the tree, of two large things going for each other in a rage of teeth and claws, prompted me to move it along. I closed my eyes and slipped my fingers around the anchor. And squeezed. Purple light flashed across the insides of my eyelids, and the curved tree-wall leaning against my shoulder suddenly lurched back.

  On my next breath, the air was chilly and damp, the chatter of the woods replaced by the patter of rain and the muted growl of traffic. Anchor in hand, I opened my eyes.

  Right outside the tree lay a muddy puddle, being pecked at by raindrops. A few steps beyond that lurked another oak, and through its monochrome branches glowed the putrescent orange of a Dublin night sky. I slipped out, then hurried across muddy grass, over a low fence and footpath, making for the unwalled edge, and my well-chained moped.

  Was my luck still holding? I was facing the collapse of my business, and that was shit. But I'd sneaked some craft items into a good charging location, I'd made a deal with a fairy, and some gold lay in my future. Despite the clear indication that something odd was going on, and I needed to do something about it, and I'd no real idea where to begin, and my future plans were looking shaky, and I needed a drink, the answer more or less felt like yes.

  And if that luck held until I could slide into a bath, I'd be the happiest boy in Ireland.

  About two streets from home, I smelled the smoke.

  Tootling along behind a fuck-you SUV, I pushed it from my attention. Probably a fire in a rubbish skip. A torched car. This was Dublin, after all. But the closer I came to my house, the stronger the smell grew, and the more edges the swell in my gut acquired.

  I s
peeded up, as much as the traffic allowed, swinging into the street before mine, leaning into the curve. Against the clouds, blue lights flashed. Muffled yells rang out. The smell just grew nastier. I swallowed, throttled up, and turned the final corner onto my street.

  Whereupon my world submitted an official request to begin falling apart.

  My street was closed halfway up by blue and white tape, beyond which sat a police car and a fire engine. Men in red swarmed before my house and the one beside it.

  But not houses any longer. Now just skinless walls around stink and rubble.

  I stumbled off my moped and let it topple to the road with a clatter. A few steps to the tape, where gawping locals had gathered. I lifted it, ducked under, walked on.

  A Garda, a mere boy in a hat, strode up and stopped me.

  "You a resident?" I barely heard it, staring past him. "I said, are you a resident, sir, because otherwise I'll have to send you back behind that—"

  "Yes," I croaked. "I'm a, I live there, I … what the fuck happened, what the fuck…"

  "So you're … Cormac Flynn?" the Garda said. "Sir, are you—"

  "No, I'm fucking not, I rent it. Cormac's in Spain. It's his house."

  His house, but my stuff. The little safe with my gold and cash, that I hadn't bolted to anything yet. At least that was fireproof. Which couldn't be said for the craft items I was charging for export. Or my sketchbooks. Or my clothes and digital piano and books.

  "Was anyone in the house?" the Garda said. "Sir, was there—"

  "No," I said. A firemen lifted a hose to direct a broad mist of water over charred brick and broken beams. "Just me, and I wasn't home, and … what happened?"

  "It looks malicious, that's what they're saying. Any enemies, sir? Angry ex-wife? Debt collectors?" I shook my dazed head. "No one home at least. Lucky."

  Lucky. The word now a total fucking turncoat. A sniggering betrayer.

  "A safe," I spluttered. "Did you … big as a microwave, the bedroom—"

  He cut me off with a hand and spoke into his radio. "In a wall, was it?"

  "No, I … hadn't got around to it yet. Upstairs. Just … upstairs."

  He mumbled again into the radio. A garbled response came back. "Afraid not, sir."

  A woman stepped in from nowhere, green reflective jacket, red bag. She put a hand on my shoulder. "Hi," she said. "Can you sit down for me, please? Just right there."

  I sank my bony arse onto the road. She squatted in front of me.

  "Nobody in the house, then? No cats, nothing?" I grunted. "Then that's good, right? It can all be replaced. But you're in shock, so drink this for me. No arguments."

  She handed me a bottle of what was probably water. I took a few slugs. The keys in my pocket pressed into my thigh. Useless metal now. Just paperweights.

  "Do you have somewhere to go?" she said. "Sir, do you—"

  "Yes," I rasped. "Course, course I do."

  A pair of fireman approached the orifice of my front door and prodded the wall with a bar. Bricks collapsed with a clatter, kicking up the ash and grit of my former life.

  She spoke again, but her words had faded into the buzz. I stretched my floppy legs out and pressed my hands to wet asphalt as I gulped down the stinking air.

  The safe was gone, of course it was. The fuckers who'd lit the fire had taken it. My gold and cash, the majority of my savings. And my craft items were likely ash and sludge, the anam they'd contained returned back to the chalky embrace of the ground.

  The paramedic lady was trying to help me up, and the Garda was talking into his radio, and a photo flash came from behind, and more bricks collapsed.

  My money. My gold. And not just them but what they represented. The operation, my recovery holiday, all of it now just a stream of black piss running into a gutter.

  Swooshing, swirling, and gone.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The apartment door opened a crack before it barrelled inward, helped on its way by my foot. I barged through and slammed the much taller man up against the wall, to his wide-eyed astonishment.

  "My house," I said, spittle flying. "What the fuck you do to my house?"

  "I think," Philippe Gernaud said, after a moment's consideration, "that you are confusing me for a person who knows what in the hell you are talking about."

  I pressed my elbow into his chest, blood roaring in my ears. "My house was burnt the fuck down. And you've been taking my customers. So if anyone stood to gain, it was you."

  Gernaud was barefoot, silky bathrobe, book in hand. Ready for bed, which wasn't weird, given it was after midnight. He was not looking a great deal like someone who'd spent the evening torching domiciles. And when I directed my glare into his eyes, I saw genuine confusion. The eyes of a man who did not know what the fuck I was on about.

  The fiery rage that had propelled me from the rubble of my house to a room in a shitty hotel to the string of phone calls that had helped me dig out Gernaud's Dublin number smouldered and died. But I kept him pressed to the wall as tears built.

  "McCullough," he said, pronouncing it Mac Cullock. He took my arm and gently lowered it. "Here is a plan. I pour whiskey and you will tell me what the fucking hell has happened, yes?"

  I glared, breathing in a nasal wheeze, marinated in smoke and sweat, with hair that stuck out in all directions like a four-dimensional basket of straw. And weakly nodded.

  The glass of whiskey he handed me didn't last until I reached the couch. By the time I'd sat down, a full one had replaced it and that was fine with me. As I sipped, I stared at the wallpaper, counting the plastered-over ghosts of screws long gone as Gernaud sat across from me, bathrobe smooth, glass in hand.

  "Your house," he said. "It burned up, is what you are telling me."

  I nodded, giving my glass a swirl, feeling the edges of the day start to soften.

  "And you think it was me? Now, I know we have not been very close over these years. But what did I ever do to make you think I walk around burning down houses?"

  "You cheated Cormac, that's what he told me. Fucked him over on some deal. And then you threatened him when he confronted you about it. Like, physically—"

  "That," he sniffed, "is not how it was. I offered goods to your Cormac, but before the deal was completed, I found a better price elsewhere, and I took it. But Cormac had already promised my goods to somebody else. He became angry and we had … words. I may have promised to throw him from a window. But he deserved it. Your Cormac always had problems with me. And it was natural to assume you shared his views."

  I shrugged. "He said you were always making trouble, trading stuff to the small folk that they shouldn't have. And that you shouldn't even be in the trade, not being Irish—"

  "Not being white, is what you mean. He said it to my face — bloody blackie, his precise words. And I'm sure he said it other times when my face was not there."

  "Fuck." I sat up, a ragged jitter in my head. "Cormac said that? Really?"

  "Oh yes. He disapproved of my research. My prying, he called it." He gave his drink a slow swirl. "But mostly he disapproved of me. And he was happy to have all the crafters turn against me."

  I drained my glass and set it down on the arm-rest. "What research?"

  Gernaud shrugged from his chair. "A hobby. Concerning the small folk. Of little interest to others. So your house burned. But how do you know it was a criminal fire?"

  I knew a changing-the-subject manoeuvre when I saw one but I let it slide. My feet were hurting so I unlaced my boots and popped them off, hoping the smell wasn't going to warp the fabric of spacetime too badly.

  "The guards said so. And my safe was gone."

  "And that was the house of Cormac. Or perhaps he gifted it to you?"

  "Cormac? Fucking not likely. I rent it. He's retired. But all my stuff was there."

  He adjusted the belt of his bathrobe. "Well, yes, I see why you might suspect me. Cormac losing his house makes me cry very little. But to burn it, that is murder."

  "Yeah,
" I said, not meeting his eye. Feeling terrible for having even suspected him.

  Gernaud drained his glass and took mine. "No more booze. Some tea instead."

  He stepped into the next room, which I assumed was the kitchen. I heard drawers opening, water gushing. And my guilt burned even brighter.

  Gernaud seemed … kind of okay. I'd been talking shit about him for five years, spreading Cormac's story that he was untrustworthy, and now here he was making me tea.

  Where I couldn't see him. With maybe knives or urges at hand…

  No, stop it, Bren. No more suspicion. I scanned his flat, to distract myself. A laptop on a tidy leather-topped desk, no television, lots of books.

  My attention snagged on a doll on the bookshelf. It was fairy sized, with brown-orange fur, and bright yellow feathers sticking up behind, like a peacock. Was this the hobby he was referring to, making dolls of the small folk? What the fuck for?

  "Gernaud," I said towards the kitchen. "What are you doing in Dublin, anyway? Wasn't Cork your territory? Cormac would lose his shit if he heard you were here."

  "I was forced to," came the reply, over the clink of cups. "By the small folk. They could no longer control the territory to the south. The small angry ones, the lepps, they were getting too crazy. So they told me to use the trees in Dublin for trade, and this I did."

  "Too crazy? You mean there's too many lepps, or what?"

  He returned with a tray, on which sat two mugs, a purple pot of tea, a milk jug and a bowl of sugar. My stomach clenched, anticipating a sugary hit, as he set it down.

  "No more than usual," he said. "But they were losing the ability to control them."

  I poured myself some tea, slopping in milk and three spoons of sugar.

  "Control them?" I paused in my stirring to look up. "You mean the fading of the anam. The craft items, losing their kick. Right?" He nodded. "Did you talk to Ishbéal?"

  "Ishbéal?" He gave me a very interested look. "Who is that?"

  "Just … one of them I talked to." I was close to telling him about the task she'd given me. But then I realised he might want to help. And no way was I sharing that gold.