The Call

by Peadar O'Guilin

  But maybe it’s not her, after all, because he pleads exhaustion and makes as if to close the door.

  “Anto, you look less tired than I’ve seen you since your Call. Anyway, I just want a few minutes of your time, and I swear by the Cauldron I’ll leave you be.”

  He backs away before her and, while he’s a bit young for her taste, she can’t help thinking that after this, when it’s all over and they’re both cured and back to normal, maybe something could happen between them. Certainly Bart Dundon never had such a solid chin!

  They stand looking at each other in the warmth of the room, their faces in shadow, because the only light here is from a single candle.

  “What did Nabil want?”

  He ducks his head and she doesn’t push it, any more than she would want to be pushed when it comes to his turn to ask questions. There is definitely something different about him though. In Ms. Breen’s office he hid himself away behind a pile of books and the Turkey kept saying, “Look, Anthony, you were the one who insisted on coming back to serve here.”

  “I have to be here!”

  “Right, right. But if you’re not comfortable to share your experiences with the students … ”

  “I … If they see me. I … ”

  Melanie understood completely! Anto had a “wound” of his own and it was a far uglier thing than hers apparently. She would have run off to a cabin in the woods if that were her! She would have thrown herself off a cliff, allowing that monstrous arm to drag her down under the sea. But all he did was hide it under a bedsheet when he came to the meetings.

  “Listen, Anthony”—Ms. Breen was practically gritting her teeth—“survivors are supposed to be … morale boosters, as well as instructors in their own right. But it’s not going to work if you hide yourself away all the time.”

  “I’ll … I’ll do it,” he said. “Let me stay. Just let me stay.”

  In spite of this promise, he has yet to show his face at any of the classes as far as Melanie knows, although rumors are flying that he made an unannounced appearance at a hunt of all things!

  “I have a question for you,” says Melanie now.

  He nods, and she notices that he’s facing her straight on this evening, not turning his right side toward her so as to hide his deformity. Is that because he knows he can trust me?

  “Why, Anto?” she says. “Why did you tell the Turkey that you had to be here?”

  The question startles him and Melanie grins at his reaction and even more as the words come tumbling out of his mouth, “I … I can’t talk about that.”

  “Good,” she says.

  “Good?”

  “Me neither. About why I have to be here, that is.”

  “Oh.”

  “I can’t talk about it,” she continues, watching his every reaction, “because I took an oath.”

  “An oath?”

  “I took an oath on the Cauldron.” It’s something students at the college swear by every day, along with taking Crom’s name in vain, or Danú’s or Lugh’s. But they don’t know, any of them, that Dagda’s Cauldron, with its ability to cure any hurt, is a real thing and that she herself has seen it. They don’t know that the Sídhe will heal you with it in exchange for certain … services.

  She waits for a tiny nod from him, for his mouth to crease into a secret smile, but all she sees is confusion and her voice is far angrier than she means it to be when she says, “You’d better start pulling your weight with the students or you’re out of here! And I for one won’t be sorry.” And out she goes, pulling the door shut behind her before he can see her tears.

  It doesn’t matter, she tells herself, a hand over the wound in her chest. Soon she will be whole again. The Sídhe never break a promise: It’s the one thing both the legends and the Testimonies agree on.

  But it doesn’t stop her from sobbing on her bed, because she doesn’t want to be alone in this, to be the only monster. To betray her own kind.

  You could run now, she thinks. Go to Nabil, to the Turkey, to anyone. You could confess.

  Instead she whispers, “It won’t be long, it won’t be long … ”

  And she’s right. Only a few weeks remain.

  And so this is it: the last ever meeting of the Round Table. Once Conor had nine soldiers to call upon. You are the elite, he told them. The future of Ireland because you are stronger and so much more dangerous than the cannon fodder who share our dorms.

  However, Tony, Keith, Rodney, Chuckwu, and Cahal are gone. More than half the gang. Year 5’s only survivor so far is one of the very weaklings he warned them against.

  Conor still has his old chair at the head of the class, but nobody else can be bothered to sit. They won’t be here that long.

  Bruggers’s face is beetroot red as he hammers the desk in front of him. “And those girls! A bunch of little girls has beaten you, Conor! Again and a-bloody-gain! By Dagda’s Cauldron! Girls!”

  Bruggers doesn’t care that he is saying these things in front of Liz Sweeney, who flattens him on the mats every time they meet. She raises no protest, she, who only a few days ago worshipped Conor as though he were Lugh in the sky. She hasn’t said much of anything since she chased Clip-Clop up the mound a week before.

  Only Fiver and Sherry remain loyal. The runt of the litter and the girl who wants to be Conor’s consolation prize.

  “Go on then,” Conor says at last. “Go on, the lot of you.” Even now he might win them back by smashing Bruggers in the nose, by making him weep and beg. But it is the king’s own loss of faith that matters to him now. He has always known that he would be one of the Call’s survivors. He even dreams about the event itself, the ultimate challenge that will confirm him in his greatness.

  Except he no longer believes it. What Bruggers says is true. If Conor and his nine knights cannot overcome a red-haired freak from Donegal and a cripple, surely the Sídhe will swallow him whole.

  He watches them leave: Liz Sweeney in a daze; Sherry, casting glances like the kicked puppy she is; Bruggers and Fiver disappointed that he made no effort to win back their loyalty.

  Clip-Clop is getting out of the Cage today. He’s been counting down the hours because he has decided to kill her. This will mean the end of his own life—the country has no resources for murderers. But he doesn’t care. He can’t live with this idea of himself as a failure or with the thought of her scorn when he lowered himself so far for her sake.

  Everyone will know soon enough that she rejected him. Just as they already know about his failure to make her and her friends pay in the forest, and the fact that he ran from Anto, of all people.

  Conor doesn’t rush things. Even now he fantasizes that he is more predator than prey. So for the next few days he watches her. He goes to the library and pretends to read Testimonies, but he has cleared out a hole in the shelves so that he can see through them to the door of the girls’ toilets.

  His opportunity comes sooner than expected. He hears her uneven footsteps on the worn and faded carpet, and he’s on his feet with a large glass paperweight in his fist even as she pushes open the swing door. He wants to kill her quickly and with the minimum of bloodshed, because there is still a small chance that in the labyrinth of the library he might get away with it.

  He’s in through the door like the avenging angel he is, but Nessa is always faster than he expects, so that when he swings the paperweight, she gets an arm up.

  He’s strong though! Oh, how strong he is, especially now that he is dispensing justice! He smashes through her awkward block, and while she has saved her own life, still he strikes hard enough to leave her dazed and utterly helpless.

  It’s an incredible feeling for him. Never has he been so powerful, so much in charge of anybody. This, he thinks, is why I was born.

  And then the paperweight hits the floor in a shower of glass, and the mess is covered by the empty tracksuit that falls on top of it.

  Conor laughs when he realizes what has happened. The swirls of faint grey light ab
ove hypnotize him with their beauty. In the distance, tornadoes rip through the hills and every plant, from the slicegrass at his feet to the smother trees out to his left, represents the very challenge of which he has dreamed his whole life.

  “Oh, thank you!” he says. A great king does not need to believe in gods, but Conor knows now that the Call has saved him from a pointless murder. His losses of the past few weeks are suddenly irrelevant, because this is the only test that anybody in the country cares about. And he is ready to face it.

  The Sídhe always come to the place where their victims first appear. But Conor, perfectly calm, takes a minute to pick out a route for himself. Then he starts to jog, gambling, as anybody must, that he is running away from the pursuit, rather than toward it. He skips over the slicegrass and, with a cheeky grin, sidesteps the grab of a spider tree.

  The air cuts at his throat and makes his eyes itch. The stench of vomit on the breeze offends him with every breath, and yet he feels amazing.

  A few hundred yards from his starting point, he hears the first of the horns coming far off and to the right. And now his heart begins to beat faster, but he steadies it with proper breathing and resists the foolish urge to sprint.

  A voice calls out to him, “Help me, sir! Help me!”

  But the king is not to be fooled and he keeps his eyes focused on the route ahead of him, ducking under the death nettles that hang from boulders; trampling a herd of tiny, screaming men; veering left when a cloud that might be ash or a swarm of bloodsuckers hovers above some nearby trees. He is Mr. Hickey’s perfect pupil, and Nabil’s and Taaft’s. No student before him has absorbed his lessons so deeply that they have become part of his very flesh, and either the Sídhe will never catch him, or they will rue the day that they did.

  The horn sounds again, much closer than before. But how can that be? Surely the Sídhe can’t run that fast without exhausting themselves? He would have read about it in the Testimonies.

  Conor jogs out from between the trunks of some mighty smother trees, to find himself on a flat mucky plain, and now the horn is sounding from his left and the ground beneath his feet shudders as though a herd is thundering toward him—as indeed it is! Conor can see it already, and he feels his first doubts. Because this time the enemy have horses!

  As with the “dogs,” they have molded men and women, by stretching their heads and necks, by increasing their bulk and size until they stand on all fours as high as Conor’s head. Each bears a laughing Sídhe on its back, twirling weighted nets of human hair above their heads as they charge toward him.

  Conor is not stupid enough to run. Instead he stands as though frozen to the spot with terror until they are almost upon him. The first net swings toward him, and that’s when he explodes into action, leaping to one side, yanking at the woven hair to sweep the surprised rider from his mount.

  “Oh, well played, thief!” the Sídhe cries, until Conor smashes his face with the heel of one foot. Other riders are regrouping and gathering their nets, but the riderless “horse,” her long face twisted into hatred, charges him straight away. She will crush him; she will rend his flesh with her teeth.

  But great King Conor grabs up his victim’s net. He tangles the human fists that make up her hooves and then, as she finds her feet again, he leaps onto her back, screaming directly into her ears: “I’m your master now, you dirty bitch! Ride! Ride! Or by Crom you’ll wish for the pain of your making all over again!” And he pulls back hard enough on her hair to rip out a bloody clump of scalp. She panics, pelting across the plain, while the grinning Sídhe cavalry rushes on in pursuit. How ironic, he thinks, for the master of the Round Table to meet actual knights! He laughs, and if anything convinces the “horse” that he is now her master, it is this.

  How fast she runs! Quicker than any real horse. The Sídhe have molded her back into a comfortable, natural saddle, but Conor has never ridden before and he spends most of the trip across the plain gripping her neck, never more than a heartbeat from a deadly fall. He glances behind him and sees the rest of the merry band following on after him, their calls of encouragement and laughter swallowed by the wind.

  Up ahead, brown hills rise to the height of small houses. A horn sounds again and he wonders, Is it coming from in front of me? Should I try to turn? And then it’s too late, for the hills are full of holes, and from these dozens of beautiful Sídhe warriors come slithering out, cries of joy filling the air. Conor’s “horse” shouts, “I brought him right here!” And suddenly he’s flying from her back.

  A warrior breaks his fall with her body. She had a spear. Now it is his, a weapon with which he has trained again and again. Although none bore such fine carvings, such a sharp tip of bone!

  “I am the best,” he shouts at them. And they applaud, they actually applaud!

  Then they come running for him, and Conor makes good on his boast.

  He stabs and parries. He leaves his spear in one Sídhe’s body, while punching the next hard enough to rock her head back. Her weapon becomes his. Its butt shatters a skull. Its shaft sweeps the legs of attackers. Its point drinks again and again.

  Never has Boyle Survival College, or any school in all of Ireland, produced such a perfect warrior as Conor. Even as their bodies pile up around him, the Sídhe are cheering him on. “You are a joy,” says one prince with his last breath. And Conor knows it’s true, as he kills and kills again, his grin as large as any of theirs.

  He loses track of time, but soon he finds himself on top of one of those hills in which they live, and their attacks have come to an end. More of them have arrived from all over, and they stand cheerfully on the bodies of their own dead, as though on grass.

  “Why aren’t you fighting?” he shouts. His voice is hoarse. His limbs are lead weights and he has clothed his nakedness in a layer of dried blood thick enough that it feels like armor to him. He thinks that he is but moments from collapse and wonders how much time has passed, if he has survived long enough to be sent home. But then he thinks, Why would I want to go home? I belong here! And it’s true. He has never felt so alive. He would fight and kill forever if he could.

  The crowd in front of him parts for the arrival of a man wearing a crown of gleaming bone over shining hair. He is as large and strong as Nabil and his face seems to glow, like that of a god or the saint in a stained-glass window. He has the great square jaw and shoulders of a hero, with rings of metal straining to hold together around his fierce biceps. But what really draws Conor’s attention is the extraordinary garment that covers his chest. It actually ripples as he moves, always catching the best light, hugging the marble muscles of his body.

  “Let us speak,” he cries, “hero to hero.”

  Conor feels his chest swell and he nods through his exhaustion.

  “Come up then, lord.”

  The Sídhe prince smiles a perfectly human smile. He makes a show of grounding his spear before striding up to the top of the hill.

  “I am named Dagda.”

  “After the god? The one with the Cauldron?”

  “I see you have heard of me. Good. It will make this easier.” He surveys the carnage. “Great work, my child. I would be proud to have one such as you in my service.”

  Conor grins, thinking to himself that a king serves no one. But he knows how to be polite and nods. A worse smell than usual tickles his nostrils. It began with Dagda’s arrival. He sees why when he studies the man’s clothing, and he gasps, for the hem of each sleeve is a set of human lips—a whole human mouth, in fact, panting in distress around the Sídhe’s wrists, while a tiny trail of what might be vomit drips away to the ground.

  Even as he watches, a pair of miserable eyes opens to stare back at him.

  “Lovely, is it not?” says Dagda. “I could make you one, if you like.”

  “I … It looks a little cruel,” says Conor. “I don’t like cruelty.”

  “Oh, I think you do. I think you like it very much. But where you live, amid such constant beauty, those who appreci
ate suffering must pretend otherwise even to themselves. But tell me this at least: You think my garment is clever?”

  And Conor has to accept that it is. The way the skin changes color from brown to green, pulsing gently in its agony. Its body heat too must keep the Sídhe lord warm at all times.

  “Listen, thief, you need not die here today. Give me your oath of fealty and I will send you back to the Many-Colored Land unaltered and alive.”

  “You should be the one to give me your oath!” says Conor. “I will be a king in my own right one day, and I will finish the job our ancestors started. I will finish you!”

  The Sídhe grins joyfully. “Oh, you bring me such pleasure! Let us fight then, you and I! Let us fight, and the loser will serve the victor.”

  “You cannot serve me as a corpse!”

  “And yet I cannot die! You know of the Cauldron, do you not? You know it’s real? We put in our dead and they crawl forth eager for battle again. All of these people”—he waves an elegant arm—“have lived here since the beginning.”

  “They … they have? I mean, I’ve heard the legends … but … but … ”

  “What do you think keeps us young?” His grin grows wider. “So, we will fight, you and I? And even if you lose, I will make you king! You have my word, and we always keep our word. You know that about us.”

  What can Conor say to such a noble offer? He can’t lose any fight today anyway, for they fear him as the men of Connaught feared Cú Chulainn in his fury. And even if the impossible does happen. Even if he loses, Dagda has promised to make him king!

  “Very well!” he says grandly, and clasps arms with the Sídhe.

  “That was not a clever way to begin the fight,” Dagda says.

  “Begin? But we haven’t begun yet, we … ”

  The Sídhe has his hands on Conor’s elbows, and just like that he begins to squeeze. The pain is the most intense the boy has ever known. So bad that it drives him to his knees, his eyes roll in his skull, and he dislocates his own jaw in his efforts to scream. And the Sídhe pinches off the arms like lengths of putty, before grabbing Conor by the knees and working the same horrible miracle.