‘Sound stuff.’ Ultan was basking in the same posture as the otter, head back, eyes closed against the sun.
‘It’s not sound! We don’t have a beast – we have to get back to Gorias where the cat-beasts are!’
‘Ah, come on, Caitlin – relax for once and enjoy.’
Aoife got carefully to her feet, arms out to balance herself; she stepped over Ultan’s legs and moved up the boat towards Shay. He was sitting in the bow, staring intently ahead.
‘Where you going, hey?’ Caitlin glanced up from her map-reading. ‘I’m warning you, that one is getting a grá for ye! I can’t keep saving your arse if he gets it in his head to kiss you again.’
Ultan murmured, ‘Ah now, let her off – you had your chance. He was fair desperate to shift you and you turned him down—’
‘Course I did – he’s a lenanshee, ya fool. One of them fairy lovers who suck the life out of you if they get a fancy for you.’
Aoife, with one foot on the central seat, froze in the act of stepping over it.
Shay did not turn round. His shoulders visibly tensed, as if he knew she was there watching him, but he did not turn.
Behind her, Ultan was saying, ‘A lenanshee? Him? Aren’t they supposed to be mad good-looking?’
Caitlin’s voice said, ‘Are you blind? Look at him!’
There was a long pause, then Ultan muttered uncomfortably, ‘All right, sound – I suppose if I were a lass . . .’
‘Right. He’s a lenanshee right enough. Remember how he threatened to turn me into an old woman? You see how Donal came alive when your man kissed him, but then went out like a candle? You see how fast everything started growing on the child’s grave?’
‘Even so . . .’
‘You see that thing your man did with the caterpillar?’
‘Huh?’
‘Transformed into a butterfly, just like that.’
‘Jesus . . . I guess you’re right. That’s a strange fellow to have along for the ride.’
‘He comes anywhere near me, you get between us, OK?’
‘He seems quiet enough for now.’
‘That’s what they’re like, ya fool. They lull you. It’s all here in the book, I’ll read it to you.’ There was a pause, and the sound of riffling pages. Caitlin put on her story-telling voice: ‘Avoid the kiss of the lenanshee, unless you wish to write a load of crap poetry or go mad playing the fiddle and end up looking like a wrinkled old prune and die young.’
Aoife still felt unable to move. She gazed at Shay; he was holding the side of the boat with his sun-brown hand. The gold locket wound around his wrist glittered in the sun. In her mind’s eye, she could see and hear old John McCarthy in the graveyard, elbows sharp in his worn black jacket: Beware of the leannán sídhe, Aoife O’Connor. Stay away from the lover from the otherworld.
Caitlin was calling to her: ‘Danu’s sake, ya fool, come back here and sit down.’
Aoife unfroze, and stepped over the seat. She said, ‘Shay?’
The changeling girl tutted disgustedly to Ultan, ‘Some people just won’t listen. Serve her right if he can’t control his grá.’
‘Shay, are you all right?’
He said, without looking at her, ‘Do you think you could make this thing go faster? I need to get back to John Joe and the farm before the summer’s out. He’ll never manage to bring in the turf without me.’
Aoife stared at the back of his dark cropped head. ‘I don’t know what you want me to do about it. It’s up to the current how fast we’re going.’
‘You’re wrong – it’s you powering this boat.’
‘Me?’
He said impatiently, ‘Aoife, come on. Didn’t you drive a car with no engine?’
‘Oh . . . I guess I did . . . Maybe it is me.’ She felt suddenly rather proud of herself.
‘So would you mind speeding it up?’
Shay had repeated his request so coldly that tears pricked her throat. ‘Sorry, but I don’t know how, OK? I would if I could, I’m in just as much of a hurry as you are, but I don’t even know how I’m making it move in the first place.’
‘I’d say it’s just by thinking about where you want to be going.’ Still he didn’t turn his head to meet her eye.
Aoife crouched down just behind him, against the side of the boat, and fixed her eyes on his profile, willing him to look at her. His mouth was set firmly, upper lip deeply curved, no smile at all. The smooth sweep of his neck was tight with tension. ‘You’re right. When the car brought me to your farm, it was because I wanted to see you.’ She touched her fingers to his arm.
He flinched. ‘Best not come near to me. Best keep away.’
The tears rose in her throat again. ‘Why should I keep away?’
‘You heard Caitlin. You have to keep away.’
‘That’s crazy!’ Aoife lowered her voice. ‘You know she makes stuff up. Why would you believe anything she says? She’s just got that into her head because of what you said about turning her into a crone. If you were a lenanshee, you’d know.’
‘Like you knew you were a fairy?’
‘When my power came, I knew—’
‘But not right away. You thought you were imagining things.’
‘No, I did know, deep down. I just couldn’t believe it at first.’
Shay turned his face a small way towards her, but kept his lashes lowered. ‘And that’s how I’ve always known – deep down. Knowing but not believing, because it was so impossible to believe.’
‘But what made you think—?’
‘My mother showed me how to hold a caterpillar and turn it into a butterfly, just by feeling a love for it.’
Aoife sighed. ‘That’s amazing!’
‘No, it isn’t. The butterflies would only live for a few minutes – half an hour, at most. I never lost a newborn lamb, but the ones I saved always got sick and died within the year. I told myself it was a coincidence, or I’d got the sheep mixed up, but deep down I knew there was something wrong about me. I kept away from other people. I tried not to talk to anyone, because I was afraid I might bring the same harm to them.’ Shay groaned, pressing his fingers to his eyes. ‘God help me. Why didn’t I keep away from you?’
‘You’ve never done me any harm!’
‘Not yet. But what if I do get a grá for you? I’m a beast. Like the pooka.’
‘No!’
‘Aoife, if you’d seen my father die – an old, old man at thirty with all the life and energy sucked out of him. My mother burned him up.’
‘Your father loved her – she didn’t mean to hurt him.’
‘But she destroyed him, Aoife. And she knew it. That’s why she killed herself, jumping from the cliff. She wanted to take me with her. She said I was like her. Maybe I should have kept hold of her hand.’
‘And die as well? That’s a terrible thing to say!’ Aoife went to stroke his shoulder, to comfort him, but he shrank from her again.
‘Please, Aoife, don’t . . .’
She dropped her hand. ‘Listen to me. The only thing that happened when you kissed me was I knew I could fly.’
‘And what if flying for you is like painting was for my father? It was beautiful, what he did, and he was lost in himself when he was doing it. He said he felt more alive when painting her than at any other time.’
‘She was his muse—’
‘She was the drug that killed him.’
‘It was love.’
‘No, it was her burning him up. Don’t look at me like that. I mustn’t go getting a grá for you. I can’t risk doing the same thing to you.’
‘But what if—?’ Aoife stopped. She wanted to say: What if it’s too late? What if you already have, and I for you?
Shay was holding his head in both hands, like it ached. From his sun-browned wrist, the gold chain dangled.
I love you, Aoife O’Connor.
He’d been wearing the locket since he’d followed her under the ground, and had never once offered to give it back.
<
br /> He followed her gaze, ran one finger over the gold heart, then, with a swift movement, unclipped the catch, shook the chain from his wrist and handed it to her. ‘You’ll be wanting this back.’
‘No, really . . .’ Aoife felt tears well up in her eyes, and couldn’t trust herself to say anything more.
‘It’s yours. I kept meaning to give it back to you. But I got used to wearing it and forgot I had it.’ Shay kept on holding it out, the locket trembling from his fingers like a delicate pendulum, catching sparks of sunshine.
In the end there was nothing else she could do but take it. The heart was warm, from his flesh or from the sun shining on it. As soon as she took it, she experienced a fierce tug, like someone had tied a string to her heart and pulled. As if something about the locket was physically dragging her onwards. The boat suddenly, massively, increased its speed.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The woods flashed past; in seconds they were powering through the mountain pass – the white marble sides of the gorge soared far above them, capped with emerald trees.
Kneeling in the prow of the boat, Aoife felt her sadness lift as the boat rushed on. The speed was exhilarating, almost like flying. Her red-gold hair streamed behind her and the material of her T-shirt thrummed against her skin, drying in the wind and sun. This must be what a motorbike rider felt, burning up the outside lane, blood pounding with speed and power. She clutched the locket tight in her pocket. Somehow it was pulling her on – and it was getting stronger, the feeling of it, as if she were getting closer to her destination. And that destination must be Falias, because that was where she wanted to go.
Shay’s hair and shirt were drenched with spray; he shouted at her over the noise, ‘You’re amazing! I wonder how many powers do you have?’
She shouted back, ‘Ultan said we get one each.’
‘But you have so many—’
‘Then he must be wrong: we do get more.’
‘Or you are special.’ He said ‘special’ with a very warm, wide smile at her, his eyes running over her face. But then he turned his head away, saying, ‘I mean, especially good at this magic thing.’
At the back of the boat Caitlin was screaming in outrage, ‘Slow down! Slow down, you stupid boat, you’re going to kill us!’ and hammering her fists on the black, tarred sides of currach as if this could get its attention, and Ultan was howling, ‘I’m going to be sick!’
Shay looked at Aoife, eyes dancing now, laughing.
And then he was gone.
The currach had up-ended over a waterfall. Aoife clung desperately to the side of the boat as Ultan, with a high-pitched scream, nose-dived past her down the roaring face of the cataract. Caitlin came tumbling after him, but managed to get a grip on Aoife’s leg and hang on. A microsecond later the currach toppled even further forward and plunged down the deafening drop. Below, Shay was disappearing into a wide blue pool, in a clean dive. Ultan vanished after him, with a mighty splash. Caitlin and Aoife rode straight down the waterfall in the boat, both yelling, Aoife clinging to the side and Caitlin clinging to her, until it crashed prow-first into the boiling foam and sank, taking both of them with it.
Thrown out of the currach, Aoife drifted underwater, half stunned, waiting for her downward momentum to slow before heading upwards. The deep pool swirled warmly around her, sunny, creamy blue with bubbles and – this far beneath the surface – blissfully quiet. The currach, now levelled out but upside down, was settling on the floor of the pool beneath her. A couple of metres above was a wriggling cluster of legs – long ones in jeans surrounding short, plump ones in electric-blue trousers: Shay dragging Ultan to the bank. Caitlin’s book and kitbag came floating past her towards the surface.
Caitlin?
On the point of swimming up for air, Aoife realized that the girl was nowhere in the water. She must be under the boat.
Lungs straining, Aoife dived downwards and seized hold of the rim of the currach, exerting all her strength to roll it onto its side. As it tilted, the changeling girl came floundering out – eyes bulging, mouth bubbling.
Instantly Aoife kicked towards the light, but it was like trying to swim up through mud – Caitlin had seized her around her neck from behind, and every time she tried to prise her loose, the big, strong girl gripped her tighter. Aoife struggled on until the open air was only a metre above her, thin yellow sunbeams striking through the water. She had to breathe in the next few seconds or her head would explode . . . She seized in desperation at the intangible straws of light . . . They slipped through her fingers, and the surface got further away.
Bright pictures began flashing through her head. Autumn in the field behind the small stone house. The ash tree outside her window, leaves bursting off in gusts of wind. Her Facebook page, full of messages regretting her death. Her guitar, plastered with stickers, a ribbon tied around it. In the kitchen, her mother, dark blonde hair scrunched up into a ponytail, sitting at the table poring over photographs. In the back room, James reading, looking up to find her there . . . Smiling at her with tear-filled eyes that reflected an empty room.
Carla, darling Carla, in bed, face pressed into the pillow, pale, sick and forlorn . . .
Oh, she would never get home. She would never see any of them again.
No, she had to try – she had to get home. Keep trying. Keep swimming. Think of Shay. Shay, his mouth so curved, his eyes so green . . . Shay, floating like an angel towards her through the blue sky, reaching for her . . .
Aoife held out her own arms and opened her mouth to welcome him, and cool water poured into her lungs, putting out the fire.
He was kissing her, which was strange when, before, he had flinched from her touch. His lips withdrew. She could feel the solid warmth of his hands pressing on her heart. His mouth back again, on hers. She didn’t have any urge to kiss him back – his mouth felt different from how she had imagined.
Now she could hear his voice nearby, raised over a constant noise of thunder. ‘Breathe into her, then push. Get the water out. Harder. Breathe—’
‘I’m doing it.’ Ultan, on the verge of hysteria.
‘He’s making a pig’s ear of it, hey?’
Ultan snarling, ‘Hey, who nearly drowned her in the first place, hey, hey, hey?’
Stomach spinning, Aoife jerked into a sitting position and vomited a belly-load of water in one, two, three body-clenching waves. It was several minutes before her body had finally finished convulsing; then she sat shivering weakly with her forehead on her knees. And finally opened her eyes. Her first thought was that she really was in heaven now, floating in the middle of a rainbow. But a moment later she realized that she was sitting on a marble ledge beside a massive waterfall, which was pouring into the deep pool from which she had been rescued, then out again over the far edge. The air was thickly misted with rainbow-coloured spray and Ultan’s round brown stare was hovering centimetres from her own. He shouted above the roar of the water, ‘Are you right now? Just as well yon lenanshee’s after swimming like a fish, even if he doesn’t dare kiss girls. That was me giving you the aul kiss of life by the way – don’t be worrying that you’re going to start changing into a wrinkled old crone or anything.’
‘That’s great.’ Aoife rubbed her mouth with the back of her hand. ‘Thanks a mil.’ Shay was crouched behind Ultan, smiling rather madly at her like he didn’t know how to stop. She smiled at him. ‘Thanks for pulling me out.’
He grinned even wider. ‘Not a bother.’
Ultan said, ‘Hardest job was persuading Caitlin to let go of you, she’s that scared of the water . . .’
Sitting with her knees pulled up and head down, the changeling girl snarled, ‘I’m not scared, I just don’t like it, so stop going on at me about it. It’s all right for you. You never drowned thinking you was a devil child going to hell.’
Ultan fell silent, pulling a guilty face.
Shay stood up and went to get the purple blanket out of Caitlin’s kit; he dropped it around her shoulders. S
he shrugged angrily – ‘Don’t touch me, lenanshee boy!’ – and he moved away, walking through the blinding spray to look down over the edge of the ledge.
Aoife followed him; standing beside him, she felt her heart clench with shock at how high they still were. The waterfall down which they had fallen was only the first of many. After this first pool there was a second waterfall, which fell into another pool, and then a third, a fourth . . . Five in all, before the river became horizontal again, winding calmly away through a dark green hilly forest. A thin white line – a road? – ran alongside the river, and the forest was dotted with clearings in which there were tiny earth-coloured structures – maybe houses and farms.
And only a few kilometres away, a massive rose-quartz pyramid rose straight out of the forest, shining white and crimson like blood-streaked snow, and glinting in the sun as if every door and window were made of gold. It was so brilliant to look at, it hurt her eyes.
She turned to Shay in wild excitement, shouting over the thunder of the falls: ‘Falias! We’re nearly there!’
He shouted back, with a look of desperation, ‘Yes, but how are we going to get down?’
‘There has to be a way!’ But the face of the marble cliff down which the cataracts thundered was utterly smooth – apart from the ledges of marble that framed each pool. ‘We’ve got the rope in Caitlin’s kit – maybe we could lower ourselves down the side of the waterfalls, from pool to pool. Even if it’s not quite long enough, we could sort of swing and drop into the water.’
‘Not a bad idea . . .’
But when Aoife really looked, she saw that it was a terrible idea. The second waterfall was much bigger than the first, maybe fifty metres, and the rest were easily as much again. ‘No, I’m an eejit, it’s too dangerous – and even if it worked, it would only do it for the first drop, because we couldn’t bring the rope with us.’
‘It’s all right – I’d lower each of ye, and then dive with it.’
She turned to Shay in horror. ‘Are you crazy? You’d be killed!’
The Changeling Page 17
