The Call

by Peadar O'Guilin

  In front of her lies a great flat bog of spider bushes and other grass-type plants. But a strange path runs through all of it, covered with thumb-high clumps of moss and nothing else.

  Nessa wants to avoid such open ground, but before she can move a Sídhe girl comes running along it, her face full of laughter, her blonde hair and cloak of human skin flying out behind her. Nessa scrambles around for a rock—any kind of weapon at all!

  She won’t need it. The Sídhe steps on one of the lumps of moss, and suddenly she’s gone, replaced by a hole in the ground. There’s the sound of a large splash and a scream. Silence returns to the bog.

  Nessa crawls forward. She avoids all the other clumps of moss and comes right up to the lip of the hole. It stretches down, three times her own height, to a pool of bubbling liquid, probably acid because the body of the Sídhe below looks like it’s digesting.

  Small lumps, or sticks maybe, line the inside walls of the pit—perfect handholds and footholds if she wants them. And of course she does! This could be the perfect hiding place!

  She climbs in, gagging on the fetid stench of rotting flesh. The Sídhe might never see this hole in the vastness of the bog. But if they do, if they bring their “dogs” or whatever, and climb down to get her, she need only drop into the acid below to kill herself. It will be a horrible, horrible death, but she might not have to avail of it and it can’t be any worse than what the Sídhe will do to her, or the flames back home for that matter.

  At least I’m fighting, she thinks, looking at the digesting mess below her. And I’ve caused this one’s death already.

  The sticks in the walls of the pit turn out to be bone of some kind. It chafes at the soles of her feet. She ignores that pain and climbs all the way down until she is no more than a few steps above the dead Sídhe, so that a casual glance from above might not spot her.

  The stench is beyond appalling, as the body beneath her continues to bubble and dissolve in the faint silver light of the Grey Land.

  Beads of moisture are forming on the surfaces around her. Her hands become slick and, like her feet, they too are chafing. The sticks she thought of as bone more closely resemble teeth. And the shape of the wall is beginning to change, curving inward at the top, with the teeth up there now pointing down. Above her, the hole looks smaller.

  “What?” she whispers to the monster whose throat she now occupies. “You don’t want me to leave?” It’s more like something Megan would have said.

  Except Megan would never be this frightened.

  “You see,” a Sídhe woman says, her head at Conor’s hip, “we have made you king of this place.” She waves at the locals, on hands and knees in the parking lot. “They all acknowledge it. All these thieves here pledge their loyalty to you.”

  “On pain of death,” Conor says.

  “Yes,” she agrees. “That is kingship. On pain of death, the weak kneel to the strong and proclaim their love. You have the right now to declare an end to the treaty in this tiny part of the Many-Colored Land.”

  “And then what?” he asks. But he can’t keep the grin off his face, because it’s all happening now. Exactly as they promised. Ms. Breen, battered and bleeding, lies in front of him, having sworn an oath to serve him. Other teachers are here. Some of the instructors even, unable to resist the agony of a Sídhe hand sunk deep into their backs, caressing their organs and threatening to squeeze. He wishes he could do that. He wishes he had asked for that power, but it’s too late now. “You’ll go into the rest of Ireland, won’t you? You’ll make other kings?”

  “We need no others,” she says. “The other tribes we destroyed were mere … training for us. This is where our exile will end! Here! When our army arrives, we will expand your kingdom. The Gate will open and those who pass through will not grow smaller, but may live and die here! That’s what the end of the unjust treaty means. And all the remaining thieves will be yours to rule so long as they bear no children.”

  Conor thinks back to his Call. To when the Sídhe lord pinched off his arms and legs. The memory shudders through his body, but he also remembers the moments that followed it, and they are in a way the proudest of his life. For he overcame the pain to demand revenge.

  “You promised,” he says now, “that I would be the one to kill Nessa. Give me that and I will revoke the treaty. Not before.”

  “It must be revoked tonight,” she says.

  “Then you’d better bring her by tonight. Otherwise the treaty stays.”

  It’s the first time he’s ever seen one of the creatures lose their grin, and she’s no longer beautiful in its absence, for it has left deep, deep lines behind it in her cheeks and at the corners of her eyes. Like scars. “We cannot control what a thief will do. She may be in that burning hall above us. She may kill herself as so many do before we can play with them.”

  Conor’s chest swells, enjoying her discomfort. “For your sake, she’d better be alive. An oath is an oath. I played my part. I killed the dogs and then strangled two of my friends with my own hands.” Liz Sweeney got away from him, but Bruggers … Sad to kill a friend. Nevertheless, Conor smiles in satisfaction over a job well done. He’ll strangle Nessa too, he thinks. Her white neck was all but designed for it.

  He keeps imagining the look there’ll be on her face! He’ll make her apologize first. He’ll make her swear her love. And then he’ll do it anyway, yes, he will.

  “Bring Nessa to me and I will revoke the treaty.”

  Nessa is hanging on for her life. It may be a whole hour she’s been clinging here, but in the Grey Land who can say? Her arms, her powerful arms, wobble with exhaustion, and her hands are slick with blood, as the teeth slowly, slowly grind into them.

  She has decided she doesn’t want to die like this, all alone. She wants to see Donegal one more time. She wants to apologize to her parents for how cold she has been with them. And for them to say sorry for their lack of faith in her chances.

  They were right of course.

  She longs to hug Anto. And she’s never seen Megan’s grave and wonders if anybody ever visits it with flowers. As for children, that would be nice. They could fill her little cottage while, outside, chickens Anto will never let her eat peck their way through the grain.

  She wants all of it. All!

  Instead, it’s to be acid if she can’t hold on, fire if she can. There won’t be enough of her left to fill a teacup and everyone will say how they knew she’d never make it, but wasn’t it sweet the way she kept trying anyway? Really, very touching.

  She slips again, curses, spits at the walls in front of her. Prays to her mam’s God for her mam’s happiness, that she might find peace. Nessa is in almost total darkness now, for in the time she has hung here, the hole above has shrunk to the size of her hand.

  “Masster!” a voice cries. “Masster!”

  “Oh, good dog! Great dog!” And then a laugh and a shout. “The thief! My dog has found her!”

  Feeble light pours in, and above Nessa three beautiful faces stare into the gloom. A resonant male voice calls, “The stomach will not free you, thief. The only reason it has not shaken you off the wall is that it still feeds on my dear, sweet friend. Come! She would want us to have our fun with you! We will drop you a rope! We will pull you free! And after we will take our companion’s remains to the Cauldron.”

  She looks up, to see him above her. The Sídhe all look alike to her, with their glittering skin and large eyes; with their elegance and beauty. Even their hair is all the same color in the pallid grey light. But this one wears a circlet of bone at his forehead and he is much less delicate than the rest: a Hercules with a strange rippling costume that emphasizes the hugeness of his torso.

  “Crom take you all!” Nessa spits. “I’d rather die here than at your hands.”

  “I swear,” he says. “I swear we will not kill you.”

  “Oh! Oh, that’s right. You have promised that pleasure to Conor.”

  “Exactly!” He beams. “Come, take the rope. W
e will make you truly beautiful, so that your people will gasp to see you.”

  Nessa ignores the kind offers of help that grow ever more insistent. Her hands and the soles of her feet are in agony, constantly shifting position in search of a comfort that isn’t there. Below her, the Sídhe woman is a horror of bubbling bones.

  But the presence of the enemy has filled the girl with defiance. She loves their obvious discomfort over the fact that they must break their word to that traitor Conor. She loves it! As time passes, as every joint in her body feels like it’s popping out of its socket, as her feet shred, as the foul air savages her throat, she grins a grin every bit as vicious and joyful as theirs.

  “You’ll never last,” the hero pleads with her. “Hours remain!”

  “Oh, I’ll last!” she cries. “I’ll last! And nobody will know it, because I was Called from a burning room and the flames will take me the moment I return! But they were wrong about me. Everybody was, for I will have survived the Grey Land, and Crom take the polio and the doubters! Crom twist you all!”

  “A fire?” the man says. His great brow creases, and Nessa laughs.

  “No matter what happens,” she says, “you have broken your word. You are liars, no different to us Irish. You are liars and oath-breakers.”

  A terrible wail breaks out among them, and it sounds as though there are hundreds of them there now, crowding around the pit.

  “You must come out,” says the man. He leans dangerously forward. “You cannot do this. Do you understand? This cannot be!”

  His hands are on the edge of the pit. The sleeves around his wrists are each formed from a human mouth, breathing in distress.

  “It doesn’t matter.” In spite of her pain, Nessa relishes the words. If she must die, nothing can be better than causing these monsters such anguish. “It’s not like you can stop me going back to where I came from.”

  “No,” he agrees, “we cannot keep you from the fire. But we can change you! We can change you just enough to prevent it harming you.”

  Nessa is near the ends of her strength. Ready almost to drop. To let the acid take her while they cry despair over a stupid broken oath. But the princeling above has stirred her interest.

  “You can make me”—there is no Sídhe word for this, so she has to invent one—“fireproof? You could do that? Of course you can!” She grins. “But I think I’ll just wait here. I’m tired. I’m letting go.”

  “No!” he shouts. “I beg you, no!”

  “You will just twist me anyway.”

  “Twisting?! Why do you say such a thing? We will make you beautiful! You will be a jewel in living flesh!”

  Nessa has had enough. She’s so weary, in such pain, that the acid mess below her has come to resemble the softest mattress in the world. She struggles to speak.

  “Fireproof me then,” she says. “And promise you will do me no further harm.”

  “We never harm! What we do is—”

  “Oh, for Crom’s sake! You will do nothing that I consider harm. Understand me? Do you understand?”

  The smile of the hero slips, but he nods solemnly and Nessa knows he will keep his promise. They’re so famous for it she wonders why nobody has ever taken advantage of it before. And why do they care so much anyway?

  A rope dangles in front of her face, made, she doesn’t doubt, of human skin. It doesn’t stop her pushing torn hands into the loops they have tied in it so they can lift her up and out. It is only when the Sídhe have taken hold of her arms that she realizes she could have asked for more than just fire protection. She could have demanded health. Strong legs! Anything! But it’s too late.

  The enemy are standing all around her, hundreds of them and their “dogs.” In the distance, the door in the sky is still glowing green. It is brighter than ever now, and the mound they were building is high enough to reach it. A great host fills the plain around it, and she recognizes it for what it is: an invasion force.

  “That’s right,” says the Sídhe hero. “I, Dagda, thank you! For if you had killed yourself below, we would never be able to return to our country, and your people might have survived. By saving yourself, thief, you have killed them. All we need now is for your king to renounce the treaty, and why would he break his promise to us if we have kept ours?”

  “I … I don’t understand,” she says.

  His grin is back, more powerful than ever. All of the Sídhe are laughing at her.

  “I will prepare you for the fire,” he says now. “And the pain will be memorable.”

  He’s not wrong.

  Everything is burning. Everything, that is, except Nessa. It doesn’t look that way, because the flames dance along her skin and play in her short hair. She breathes out, and that too is fire.

  She should laugh, but the Sídhe were no more generous than they had to be, and she hasn’t a scrap of strength left in her body. Her palms and feet are still torn, and they hamper her efforts to drag her feeble legs around to the parts of the floor that might just still support her weight.

  Burning drapes rage outside the dorm. Windows crack like shotguns going off one after another. On the same stairs she used to skid down on her way to a run, paint now bubbles in the heat, and smoke bends her over in a coughing fit that threatens to shoot her lungs right out of her body.

  In the end, Nessa slides down the last few steps on her belly and crawls out the main entrance.

  This part of the building has burned the longest and little more than a shell of it remains, held together by scraps of iron and the memories of all the students who have lived and died there.

  One fire remains, taller than she is, composed of burning timbers fallen from the upper floors. She barely notices it, but when five Sídhe come running toward her, no higher than her hips, they shy away from the fury of its heat.

  “You must come,” they urge her. “You must come to him now.”

  “Or what?” she says, each word a spew of flames from her lips. She can see how desperate they are to make her move, but they have promised her to another and they keep their distance.

  The last of the fire she absorbed leaves her skin and her breathing returns to normal, no longer full of flames. Rest is all she can think of. She longs to lie down. But unfinished business remains. And here it comes: Conor strides from the direction of the parking lot, his face furious. He knocks aside the Sídhe, as they beg him, “Revoke the treaty now! Just do it now! Then you can have her! You can have an eternity with her if you want!”

  “Come here!” he orders Nessa.

  She doesn’t move, swaying gently in the tremendous heat of the burning timbers at her back. Her whole body glows with it. She is lovelier than any Sídhe, than Danú herself! His fury shrivels and blows away.

  Why? he thinks. Why did I ask them to let me kill her? Of all the things, of all the things!

  She stands helpless before him. Stunned, he thinks, to see him here in his glory, the king that Ireland has always needed. And, like a king, he must take charge now, pushing through the boiling air, until, at last, his hands tremble on that slender, lovely throat of hers. It’s delicious! He could crush it like a sparrow. Except he can’t. And yet he must. What choice have the Sídhe left him?

  “Kiss me,” she says.

  “What?”

  “Kiss me first. Just once.”

  Conor has always wanted her to beg, hasn’t he? To apologize. To desire him. And what is a kiss if not all of these things at once?

  She leans her long neck back. He can’t help it, his lips lead him on, bending forward and down. She wraps her powerful arms around him. Draws him close.

  And drops back into the fire.

  Somewhere, a door slams shut.

  Aoife no longer feels the presence of the mound. Turn her around a few times and she won’t even remember where it was. All of the Sídhe shriek with the horror of their loss.

  It’s enough to wake Anto out of his misery. He screams like a wild beast and charges into the parking lot. Human pris
oners scatter before him, but the mourning Sídhe have only ever lived for vengeance, and here now is a worthy target of their hatred.

  At least thirty child-sized men and women run in from all angles. Anto meets them with a giant’s fist. He sends the first flying into three others, scattering them like skittles. The next he smashes flat, and the sound is the most sickening thing that Aoife has ever heard.

  But soon they are all around him, little hands reaching for his ankles, knowing that if they can cripple him, they will swarm him like ants.

  Anto doesn’t seem to care, but Aoife is terrified for him. She comes in from behind, trying to keep his back clear. She punches a tiny man in the face, but another manages to touch her hand and the pain is enough to bring tears to her eyes. She stumbles back, finding that three more of them have appeared to separate her from Anto’s desperate fight.

  “It was I who killed your lover, thief,” says a tiny woman. Her silken hair flutters like a flag in the breeze. “Her heart lay in my palm, a trembling bird. And then—”

  And then the Sídhe woman’s head explodes.

  Crack, crack, crack! Three more enemies fall with unexplained holes in their bodies and Aoife witnesses a sight so strange that even after this night she will remember it for as long as she lives: Nabil and Taaft—both stark naked apart from boots—are striding across the parking lot. They have armed themselves with the late Private Madigan’s weapons, and every bullet finds a target.

  In their own world the Sídhe give their lives joyfully, or so the Testimonies say, again and again. But the slamming of the door, the loss of the mound, or whatever that was, seems to have taken the fight out of them. They scatter before the gunfire.

  By morning, even the townsfolk are hunting them—a dozen rat-sized people fleeing into the undergrowth. And it is only then that Aoife finds Nessa. She is still alive, by Crom! Like the princess in a story. She sleeps amid a pile of ash, her arms wrapped tenderly around a charred skeleton, a sweet smile on her face.