The Call

by Peadar O'Guilin

  He covers his mouth, thinking of the way the girl in the rock had grown the more she emerged from her stony prison. And then there was that story out of Bangor about the footprints Liz Sweeney’s brother had seen, getting smaller and smaller all the time. And the thumb-sized man the boy claimed to have incinerated, of which no evidence could now be found.

  “People have told stories like this forever,” Alanna says. “About little people, even though we know the Sídhe are not little.”

  And all the hunt master can do is nod, gobsmacked. Thinking about a conclusion that is so obvious neither of them need voice it aloud: the closer we get to the Sídhe world, the smaller we become. Indeed, the toes of the girl in the rock were too tiny to be seen with the naked eye. And Seán Hickey immediately stands and rips the useless maps from his wall. But more from wonder than despair. He is imagining a world small enough to fit into a single drop of water, or a human hair, or an atom. He is wondering if somewhere in all this there also lies an explanation for the way time stretches during a Call.

  He laughs, startling his guest. “By Crom,” he says, “does this mean if we found their world, we could just step on it and squash it?”

  “I doubt it,” Alanna says. “I doubt we could find it. Nabil and Taaft have been up and over the mound all night, and even though they can see the hole in the fence, they can’t find a path.”

  “So … only a student can see it?”

  “That’s what we think. Only an adolescent, and only before they get the Call.”

  A series of punishment cells lines the third floor of the staff building. The amenities are poor: a hard, spiteful pallet leaves space only for a chamber pot that needs to be lifted out of the way whenever the door opens.

  “Well,” says Megan through the grille, “you finally made it to the Cage. You’re wasting your time if you think you can beat my record.”

  “You’re not supposed to visit! You’ll end up in here yourself!” Nessa can’t see her friend’s face, but knows there’s a grin on it.

  “I’d slip some chocolate through here, but it’s two years since I’ve seen any.”

  “You’re talking about the bar from my granny I was saving?” says Nessa. “The one that went missing from my locker?”

  “That’s the one. I didn’t mean to take it. I just woke up one night and it was smeared all over my face.”

  They both laugh at the idea of this. It never happened of course. The bar did go missing, but their chief suspect is Nicole.

  “I’m glad you came, Megan. I wanted … I wanted to say sorry for running. I didn’t think Conor would go after you too.”

  “Your running was the whole point, you silly whore!”

  “I know. But he’s capable … of anything and—”

  “And nothing! By the shit-filled cauldron of shit! This is all because he wants you, you know?”

  Nessa did.

  “Couldn’t you just bat your eyelashes at him until he gets Called? Or write him a wee poem?”

  “Would you? Would you bat your eyelashes?”

  “Of course not! I’m going to eat his liver. I’d eat it now if you put it in front of me.”

  “Okay, then. Bring me that chocolate and we’ll do a swap.”

  It shouldn’t be funny, but for once it is she who makes Megan laugh, and Nessa remembers the sense of humor she used to have—or thought she did—back when she knew nothing of the Grey Land and her parents spent all of their love and inventiveness to keep her that way.

  After Megan leaves, she wraps her arms around her knees and thinks about her parents, and poor Dómhnall, her brother. He has no Testimony, of course, having died in the Grey Land. But somewhere in the library there will be a report on the state of his body and she has never dared to read it. She wonders now if her parents did, if this explains her mam’s fragility.

  The day progresses and she watches the light from the window move down the length of her pallet. The mourning bells ring and she wonders who was lost. And she obsesses over food, although less than a third of her three-day sentence has passed.

  But mostly she thinks of Anto. She thinks of the sheet with which he covered his entire body and how he had begged her, actually begged her, not to look at him. And the distress on his face! And the terrible loping gait as he fled.

  He saved her life and she was too out of it to thank him or even to say how happy she was to see him.

  The imaginary world she thought dead has come back to torment her and it’s twice as strong as it ever was. She fights it heroically. She curses the poets and all the poison they wrote that won’t now come out of her veins. But night has fallen, and after Nabil has done his rounds and called in, “You still there, brave one?” she uses her strong fingers to force open the rusty window and fill the room with freezing air.

  She has never done this in winter before. She has never done it on an empty stomach or forced her way headfirst and upside down out over a three-story drop where the wind batters her face and numbs her fingers before her hips have so much as left the building.

  No moon shines on her efforts and nobody will see her if she falls. And it is only now the full folly of her venture becomes obvious. Her arms hold her entire weight on the narrowest of windowsills and she has no way of getting herself back inside.

  Her memory has lied to her. She expected to find the drainpipe waiting just outside, and yes, yes, it’s there, but a full foot and a half from where she imagined it, and already she is tiring.

  Don’t panic! Don’t panic! And to be fair to her, not panicking is a talent Nessa has in spades. She wedges her knees in the window and walks her hands two agonizing steps to the left.

  She has one chance, one tiny chance of avoiding, at the very least, broken bones that will never heal by the time her Call comes. It’s insane, but this is what she does: She allows her weak legs to slide from the window. Just as she’s about to topple over into the abyss, she pushes with them for what little they’re worth. Meanwhile her arms push too, splaying out and clawing at the empty air until they find the pipe and her whole body twists around and slams into the wall.

  She ignores the shock. She ignores the pain and the terrifying, stomach-dropping lurch as several of the rivets holding the pipe to the wall come away at once and tinkle down three stories.

  But she’s still clinging on by the time her vision has cleared.

  I should go back in now, she thinks. But it’s just not physically possible. As it is, it’s a miracle she even makes it to the ground, scraped bloody and speckled with bruises.

  She falls to her knees, heaving for breath and shaking like a dying leaf. It wasn’t fun this time. The only thrill she felt was one of fear. All she wants now is to turn herself in and take her punishment. Nobody has ever been stupid enough to escape from the Cage before.

  But when her breath comes back Nessa remembers that she’s only a few windows away from Anto’s room and that this was the whole point. Candles flicker inside and it looks for all the world like something out of a Christmas movie with Nessa as Scrooge, staring longingly through the glass. Not that she can see anything with the curtains drawn. Before she knows it, she finds herself knocking.

  Anto’s face appears, squinting into the dark, and then confusion crosses it only to be chased off by despair.

  “You have to let me in,” she says through chattering teeth.

  “But you’re in the Cage!”

  “Or maybe I’m a ghost. Look, I just want to see you.”

  The window is almost too stiff for his right hand, but it’s the only one he’ll use, pushing it between the curtains and straining until it opens a crack. Then she can add her strength to his—which isn’t a whole lot at this point. He even has to drag her through, when she gets caught halfway. Pretty undignified all round.

  But he has carpet on the floor and warmth, by the Cauldron! Warmth enough that when she finds her bottom on the ground and her back to the wall, her eyelids are too heavy to keep open.

  �
�They’ll come looking for you,” he whispers. He has wrapped a dressing gown around himself, but it’s not heavy enough or long enough to hide his misshapen left side completely. So he leans away too. “They check every two hours at night.”

  She blinks awake. “They do?”

  “Sure. You’ve never been in the Cage before, but think about it. What if someone came back from a Call and needed help? They have to check.”

  Nessa raises her head to find he is sitting on the bed, as far from her as the room will allow. She wonders if he wants her gone. He’s trembling more than she is, his face is flushed in the candlelight, and those once-beautiful eyes are sunk in shadow.

  “Will you grow your hair back now, Anto?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I’d love if you’d grow it back. Long enough to braid again.” He has no answer to that. Nor does he know what to do when she uses the very last of her strength to pull herself upright, although her hands are nearly as useless now as her legs. It’s only three steps until she’s standing in front of him.

  “They’ll find you. Nessa … ”

  She bends over and kisses him. He ducks away, but it’s all right, because she knows why and she has a fix for that. She reaches under the fold of the dressing gown and takes hold of his massive left arm.

  “Please, Nessa. Oh, God, I don’t want you to … ”

  Other than the fact that it’s twice as big as it should be, it feels normal. If he overreacts now, he could kill her with it. He could rip her head off or punch bricks out of the wall. Why did the Sídhe do this to him? What were they planning on turning him into? Whatever it was, their work was interrupted when the Grey Land spat him back.

  He doesn’t resist as she pulls it free and places it over her shoulders. She is sitting beside him now. She can feel the warmth of the arm, feel its massive pulse.

  “I’m a monster,” he says.

  “I could go to sleep right here” is her only reply. And it’s true. She has always imagined this moment. Their first kiss since poor Tommy’s death opened their eyes to each other. She thought there would be excitement and passion and the ripping away of clothing. That sort of thing. But what she feels now is comfort. As though she has finally taken off those too-tight shoes she’d forced herself to wear. The ones nobody else noticed or liked.

  And he too is finally beginning to relax, the pulse slowing and his breathing approaching normality.

  “I know it was you,” he says. “With the poetry.”

  “Bet you couldn’t read it.”

  “There may be few Irish speakers left in Dublin, but even we know how to use libraries.”

  She is grinning hard enough to hurt. He continues, “I thought you were crazy. And I was right about that, wasn’t I, Nessa?”

  “You were.”

  “I wanted to tell you to stop.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  He doesn’t answer. His cheek now leaning against her forehead feels damp.

  “I came back here for you, Nessa,” he says eventually. “And yet … I couldn’t bear for you to see me.”

  “I know all that.”

  Then they both jump as a knock comes at the door. “Can I come in? It’s Nabil.”

  Anto springs to his feet. “I … I can’t open the door, sir. I … I have no clothes on.”

  “Oh,” Nabil replies, deeply embarrassed. “Because, uh … because I’m not here for you.”

  Nabil takes her away and she thinks he must be furious. He hushes her and half drags her up the stairs, as though he’s racing for the last bin collection with a particularly vile sack of garbage. But he apologizes as soon as the door to her cell slams shut behind her.

  “Look,” he says, “once I’ve confirmed nobody saw us, we will forget this whole thing.”

  “We … will?”

  “You are incredible,” he says. He hunts around for a good Sídhe word, but there isn’t one, so he has to content himself with English. “Like, um … like the acrobat, yes? At the circus?” And he grins, his dark face as handsome as a movie star’s, despite the scars. “He’s a nice boy, that Anto, but I don’t think you will try this again, will you?”

  She laughs and shakes her head. She feels suddenly amazing. Giddy and clean.

  “Close the window,” he tells her. “Then get some sleep. You know you’ll have nothing but water for two more days.”

  And both of their smiles disappear at once, for the Grey Land is never very far away.

  Two doors down from where Anto sits on a bed with Nessa, another girl, eighteen years old, stands naked before the full-length mirror in her room. This is Melanie, the college’s female veteran. According to the doctors, who have also seen her without her clothing, she’ll be lucky to reach her twentieth birthday.

  This is because of the hole in her chest—and, yes, it is literally a hole. With the help of the mirror, Melanie can see right through the fist-sized gap to the patched blue curtains behind her. She calls it her “wound,” but no blood seeps from the edges. Instead the skin around the sides is so smooth and perfect that she might as well have been born with it.

  And yet, the pain when it happened! By Crom! She staggers with the memory of it, pawing at the frame of the mirror for support.

  Breathing hard, she thinks of the dour Dr. Moore. He got it wrong when he swore the wound would kill her. And he’s wrong too in thinking she’ll have to endure it the rest of her life, reminded every time she lies down and sees her T-shirt fall into the hollow between her breasts. A cure exists, and Melanie knows exactly what she has to do to get it.

  “Be strong,” she tells herself. It’s really very simple.

  But the wait is driving her mad. In particular the secrecy and the loneliness of the whole thing. Melanie wasn’t meant to be by herself. What a beautiful girl she was! Everybody wanted the attention of those startling blue eyes. And how they admired that pert chin of hers, held aloft over the elegant neck of a ballerina. She used to have Bart Dundon kiss her right there, so that the tingles ran over her entire body. Every day until the Sídhe took him.

  But who can she talk to now?

  Five of her class survived the Call. A few of them got in contact with her after. Sleazy Eamon, totally unscathed! No holes in him! And Anne Boring Asshole Shevlin. Gods! Not even if she were the last person on the planet!

  Melanie also has invites from support groups. From the best therapists in the country, who have given their whole lives to helping people just like her. Except that … except that most of the survivors aren’t like Melanie, are they? And that’s the terrible part. She needs the help on offer, but can’t avail herself of it. She needs somebody, anybody, to talk to. She’s like the boy in the legend who kept King Lowrey’s secret so well he began to die of it.

  “How long must I wait?” she asks the mirror in Sídhe.

  As a survivor, she doesn’t need to speak that language anymore. But many like her are more comfortable in it than English, and since they have no choice but to marry each other, the primary schools of the country are filling with tiny tots whose innocent mouths spout the long-dead language of their distant ancestors, which also happens to be the living, never-changing tongue of the enemy. Some day, she thinks, we will be them, a greater victory for the Sídhe than if they kill us all.

  She hears knocking on a door farther up the corridor. A low voice asks, “Can I come in? It’s Nabil.” And, after a pause: “I’m not here for you.”

  Melanie is curious enough that if she weren’t naked, if her … her wound weren’t on display, she’d be out of her room like a shot. She grabs for her clothing anyway, in case the Frenchman should come to her too. It’s not that he won’t know what happened to her—it’s in her Testimony, after all, and no lies on her part would have obscured the doctors’ report. But she shudders at the thought of Nabil’s eyes—anybody’s eyes—lingering on it.

  Melanie did lie in her Testimony though. Her story also has a hole, but this one is big enough to swallow the worl
d.

  By the time she has covered her wound in three layers of T-shirts and a dressing gown, strange shuffling footsteps fill the hall. She opens the door a crack, but is too late to see who went past. However, she is not the only one looking on. Her fellow veteran, Anto, quickly retreats when he sees Melanie there.

  “Interesting,” she mutters to herself.

  Like her, he came back to the college after his Call without so much as a break. He’s as good-looking for a boy as Melanie is for a girl. And he too has been horribly altered by the hands of the Sídhe. What if, she wonders—she can’t help it—what if he shares the same secret she does? The idea makes her rickety heart pound dangerously fast. If he does, he won’t be allowed to discuss it with anybody. Nor is Melanie of course. Most of the time she won’t even permit her thoughts to wander there for fear she will blurt it out over dinner with the staff. What a shock that would be to them all! Oh, Crom! By the Cauldron!

  But she could be careful, couldn’t she? She could sound him out.

  Back to the mirror to comb her golden hair—it’s no longer short, but she keeps it in a bob these days. There’ll be time enough after she’s cured to set it free. She tightens the belt of her dressing gown to ensure its folds can’t fall into the hollow in her chest, or the matching one at the back. Then, excited for the first time since her Call, she is face to face with her fellow veteran.

  “Melanie?”

  “You’re good,” she says, and her face forms itself into the impish grin that once served as her trademark. “It’s about time we talked.”

  “It is?” Anto’s face is flushed for some reason, and while they have exchanged a few words before now at meetings with a very frustrated Ms. Breen, he seems happier than he was then. And Melanie wonders if it’s because of her. Imagine the lucky boy to be visited by a beauty in the night! Her grin widens. How she has missed this!