The Wren Hunt

by Mary Watson

  ‘A lot of the work is contracted to freelancers, but there are four full-time office staff.’ I described the staff members. I told them about David’s light-bulb joke, and how it wasn’t hidden from anyone, which made me think that Cassa’s office was staffed only with judges.

  ‘But they said it in front of you too,’ Simon said. ‘So either they see you as invisible, which is good, or they were baiting you.’

  ‘What about Tarc Gallagher?’ Dermot said.

  Simon was looking at me intently. He watched me fidget with my hair and I hastily brought my hand down. Simon knew I was uncomfortable. He knew I was hiding something. Perhaps he could sense the inexplicable guilt that made me unable to look Dermot in the eye.

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Is he suspicious of you?’ Simon said.

  ‘No more than he should be.’ I remembered Tarc watching me from the other side of the room.

  ‘Have you noticed anything unusual about him?’

  ‘Unusual in what way?’

  ‘Does he have any strange markings?’ Colm spoke up from where he sat, sunk into Maeve’s large armchair. ‘Has he said anything that struck you as odd?’

  ‘There is something. About David,’ I said, mostly because I wanted them to stop asking me about Tarc. I looked over to Simon, offering him this truth. ‘On Stephen’s Day, he took strands of my hair.’

  And I’d triggered the first explosive.

  Smith was out of his seat, Simon’s face was like a stone. Maeve’s mouth froze in a silent ‘Oh’. Colm scribbled frantically in his notebook.

  ‘Can they trace me through my hair?’ I said, my hands curling over the edges of the chair.

  ‘No,’ Maeve said, but she sounded grim.

  ‘Taking hair,’ Colm said. ‘For judges, it’s an assertion of domination developed by their warrior unit centuries ago. It’s, well, a kill mark. David has marked you for the kill.’

  My anger was a tight furled thing. A blood-red peony bud. David had put a kill mark on me. I barely listened to Dermot explain how in the old days warriors would cut a lock of hair to indicate an intent to kill. It was a form of torture, the sure knowledge that the judge warrior would punish, slowly and painfully, when least expected. I was too busy thinking of ways I could punish David. I would be methodical. I would be measured.

  Dermot tried to reassure me that most likely David didn’t mean to kill me, just dominate, subdue, defeat. At that point, the meeting descended into a discussion about the judges’ first ré órga, the golden era when they developed superior military strength through a brutal system of warrior training. But really, all I wanted to know was how to get through the next weeks, not history lessons of defunct warrior units.

  ‘I think the kill mark is a test,’ Smith said as I stood to leave the meeting. ‘To see if you react to its significance.’

  He touched a hand to my cheek. ‘Don’t let David see that you understand what it means.’

  And with that I was dismissed.

  ‘We need to talk about Abbyvale.’ Maeve brought the meeting back to order.

  As I left the room, I heard Simon say, ‘And we need to talk about retaliation.’

  I closed the door, glad to be out of that room. I couldn’t wait to get to the woods, to feel my feet pound against the ground as I ran through my anger. But I’d promised Sibéal I’d look at her storyboard.

  She was at the desk in her bedroom, scribbling desperate words, as if by racing across the page she could escape her birthday that was fast approaching. Aisling lay on Sibéal’s bed, reading a book. She glanced up at me, and seeing my face, wisely returned to her book.

  On the desk was a clay figure of a girl with the head of a deer. Long, branched antlers. In the legend, Sadhbh was turned into a deer by Fer Doirich, a druid with dark powers. Sadhbh wore skinny jeans, a messenger bag slung across her chest.

  I picked up the clay Sadhbh, feeling the antlers branching from her long hair. I wanted to get the circle meeting out of my head. The kill mark. Snitching on Harkness House. Yes, I understood it was for the greater good. But I’d never liked tattling.

  Sibéal handed me her storyboard. ‘My film is based on the real history of the Tuatha na Coille.’ The people of the woods. Sibéal was an Irish-language purist and bristled when the village people conflated the Irish words to ‘tuanacul’.

  The first picture was of a wide-eyed, Manga-style girl running through the trees. ‘A beautiful girl is hunted by bad boys.’

  ‘Glad my annual hunt trauma feeds your creative process.’

  ‘The girl runs through the forest,’ Sibéal continued, ignoring my comment. ‘But the boys gain on her. Desperate, she begs the forest to hide her. The trees have mercy and they turn her into a weeping silver pear tree.’

  On the storyboard, the weeping silver pear bore delicate white flowers. Boys stood frustrated beside it.

  ‘But a ragwort sees everything,’ Sibéal said. ‘When it hears what the boys have to offer, the little ragwort blabs. The boys capture the girl and reverse the spell. But they botch it, so she is now half human, half weeping silver pear. At first, this is kind of awkward. She loves to feel ants walk down her face. She loves to bury her feet deep in the soil, feel it rich and fresh on her skin. But becoming part tree has given her magic powers. So she smites her enemies.’

  ‘Smite,’ interrupted Aisling from the bed. ‘I love that word.’

  ‘She curses the ragwort,’ Sibéal glared at Aisling, ‘making it a poisonous, unwanted pest.’

  ‘Sounds like your kind of gruesome,’ I said, picking up a small wooden box on the desk. Beneath the box was a sticky note where Sibéal had doodled a smiling flower declaring: If friends were flowers I’d pick you!

  ‘But that poor weed,’ I said. ‘The girl wouldn’t have had magic powers if it hadn’t blabbed. She would have been stuck as a tree.’

  I turned the box in my hand. An augur’s puzzle box, its secrets long told.

  ‘The necessary betrayal,’ Aisling said. ‘Like Judas. Without the betrayal, there’s no salvation.’

  ‘Weeds are cool.’ Sibéal reached for the puzzle box in my hand and moved the slats to lock it. ‘They’d be the best spies. They’d listen in and whisper secrets on to their little weedy friends.’

  ‘You know that the Tuatha na Coille are just stories, right?’

  Sibéal looked down at her notes but the set of her shoulders made it clear. I know things, her shoulders said.

  Looking at Sibéal’s box, now locked and out of reach, I had this elusive sense of another puzzle. One I didn’t hold all the pieces to. One I couldn’t entirely understand.

  TEN

  What are you hiding?

  I have been quite unable to convey the sadness I always perceive in daisies. They suggest to me that particular loneliness one feels when in a crowd.

  AdC

  A man’s watch with a leather strap. Two rose-gold ladybird earrings, wings aflutter. A worn gold necklace with an unpolished stone.

  Without realising it, I inventoried everyone. Catching the bus on a wet Wednesday, my eye swept over hands, wrists, ears. Searching for the jewellery that marked Sorcha’s absence. Seeing a leather watch strap, both brown and worn, I held my breath as I checked for a thin freckled wrist. It never was her. Still, I couldn’t stop myself from imagining it: the sweep of red hair, the wide smile, a blue flower-sprig dress.

  At Harkness House, a truck was near the garden door. Tarc emerged from the back. Jumping down, he pulled at a huge box, loading it on a hand truck. Cassa watched, oblivious to the rain that was now so soft it was almost invisible.

  Inside, the boxes had been stacked beside the broad, curved staircase. One flight led upstairs to Cassa’s private rooms and another down to the basement library. The boxes were stamped ‘Confidential’ and marked as property of the Harkness Foundation. I touched my hand to the wet cardboard.

  ‘Wren,’ Tarc said, wheeling in the next load. He was soaked, his dark hair wet and his ch
arcoal top plastered to his skin.

  ‘Is this the Lucas archive?’ I tried to hide my excitement.

  ‘That’s the last of it.’ He lifted the top box and stacked it with the others before wheeling the hand truck outside. I peered down the basement stairs, only to see David’s staring face framed by the banister below. His laughter travelled up and followed me down the wide hallway to the office.

  After lunch, I grabbed a few books and went in search of the cosy chairs in the basement library. Harkness House was still cold and unfamiliar, like it knew I was an intruder. But it felt different in the library.

  Sunlight streamed in from high, horizontal windows. Only partly beneath ground, it was a huge open room with hardwood floors, rows of tall bookshelves and a large oak table. From their rosebud vases, solitary poppies peered out of the narrow windows like sentries. Near the staircase was a wide, thick door with a keypad attached to the wall.

  The archive.

  I stood at the door and examined the keypad. My face against the wood. The muted sound of voices from inside.

  Settling on the couch directly across from the archive, I opened a compilation of letters. My eyes kept darting to the oak door. I was working on the Arabella Index, a detailed table of references to her life and art. It meant searching art books for mention of her and then categorising it. I wasn’t sure how trawling through a million old books on nineteenth-century art was going to develop my skillset. I’d rather carry on making tea.

  After an hour of dull details that really had no business in any letter, the thick archive door opened. David emerged. Tarc held the door for the wrenboys. I fixed my eyes on the page until they’d passed.

  ‘Little bird.’ I might have imagined the whisper.

  Through the open archive door I caught a glimpse of shelves, a reading desk and chaos. Boxes had been opened and papers were strewn across the room, as if someone had rummaged through the priceless archive without care.

  At the desk sat Cassa. She was motionless, her arms stretched out in front of her as she looked straight at me. There was an eternity in that gaze. She just stared, not smiling nor acknowledging me. A white potted orchid on the desk, a large wooden box and a pile of books in front of her. I could just make out the title of the fat one on top: Lady Catherine’s Garden Journal.

  The door started to swing shut. Still Cassa stared.

  Watch her.

  But, caught in her gaze, it felt like the tables had been turned. That it wasn’t me with the secret agenda, with the bag of tricks and deceit. That instead of watching, I was being watched. Again I felt that repel, like we were two magnets facing the wrong way.

  She looked at me as if she could see some hidden thing. I didn’t worry that she could tell I was an augur. Rather, it seemed her all-knowing gaze saw more than just a girl in a library. Self-conscious, I touched my hair that had half unravelled from its loose bun. Maeve’s lucky hair combs hung precariously near my shoulders. The door eased shut. The boys with their heavy boots had already disappeared up the stairs. And still I felt the heat of Cassa’s stare.

  I was late leaving Harkness House that Friday and missed my bus. Thirty minutes before the next one and I was ready to eat a scabby child off the floor. I went to the Tesco Express, where I skulked the aisles looking for food. But staring at the ready-to-go shelf, it felt like there was lead in my gut. On my way to the checkout, I grabbed a drink and a banana. Texting Smith, I bit into the banana, wondering at the strange taste and texture in my mouth. Looking down, I saw that I’d bitten into it, skin and all.

  ‘Wren?’

  I turned to see Tarc waiting behind me, holding an energy drink, and I swallowed the peel. It wasn’t too bad.

  ‘Your go’, Tarc said, and somehow his words seemed a challenge. I wondered if he knew about the kill mark. Would David tell him?

  I turned away but Tarc stayed a step behind. Distracted, I put the banana in the bagging area and the machine beeped with a bland anger.

  ‘You need a hand there?’ He raised an eyebrow at my inept checking-out. ‘Not your talent, huh?’

  My spine went rod straight. But Tarc was smiling and it seemed he meant no innuendo.

  ‘Hitting town?’ I gestured to the energy drink while an attendant placated the machine.

  ‘More like hitting the road.’ We walked out of the shop. His big black car was parked on the street.

  ‘I can bring you to Kilshamble,’ he said. ‘I’m headed that way.’

  Nothing was in the direction of Kilshamble. Except judges. Too many judges.

  ‘If it’s no bother.’

  Tarc turned the ignition and the thick idling of the diesel engine highlighted the silence. Across the road, something caught my eye but was lost in the steady stream of people.

  Tarc pulled out. And a little way down, there it was. The thing that had resonated: a lone figure wearing a yellow raincoat. Sorcha. In my milk dragon vision, I’d seen Sorcha wear a coat just like it. As we drove by, I craned my neck to see a face, but it was dark, and she had the hood up.

  Tarc negotiated a large roundabout with impatient commuters who creatively interpreted the rules of the road. Then we were out of the city and on the motorway.

  ‘So, you’ve known David a long time,’ he said. ‘You hang out much?’

  ‘Well, you know, I’ve never been to visit him,’ I said, curious how David and Tarc fitted together. ‘Have you?’

  ‘Visited David? Not exactly.’ He was one of those drivers who happily took their eyes off the road, chatting easily. One languid arm reaching forward. His fingers tapping on the bottom of the steering wheel, as if he were half listening to some inaudible tune.

  ‘But you’re friends, right?’

  ‘We went to school together,’ Tarc said.

  ‘You were at the same boarding school?’ I turned to face him. ‘In New York?’

  ‘Boston.’

  Of course. It was generally agreed that following their lean years in the 1800s, before the second ré órga, the judges had been saved by the wave of emigration to the States. With that characteristic charm, they sometimes popped up as politicians or celebrities. But not all judges were schmoozy charmers. Some were quiet, almost taciturn. Like the boy beside me.

  ‘The same year as David?’ I had a weird image of Tarc and David confined by school desks, discussing poetry.

  He nodded. Tarc wasn’t exactly chatty about school.

  ‘Is he always that smug after exams?’ I remembered how particularly insufferable David was on Stephen’s Day.

  ‘Exams?’ Tarc glanced over. ‘David tell you about that?’

  ‘Back in December.’ I looked at my hands. ‘Told me all about how he’d celebrate with a new tattoo.’ Which made me think about Tarc’s hidden tattoo. The one he didn’t want to show me. I wondered where it was.

  ‘You get yours too?’ I hadn’t meant to say that. Just as I didn’t mean to check him out so thoroughly, running my eyes from his arms, his chest, down to his legs.

  My eyes up again, I saw he was watching me, amused at my scrutiny.

  ‘Do you have one?’ He smiled, keeping his eyes on mine.

  ‘What, you’ll show me yours if I show you mine?’ I really needed to shut it.

  Tarc laughed. It was so easy to be with him. Except that it wasn’t.

  ‘No tattoos,’ I said. Just mottled skin from imaginary snake venom. ‘But I did get myself a little reward after finishing my Leaving Cert.’ I’d sat the national exams the previous year thanks to Smith’s homeschooling.

  ‘What kind of reward?’

  ‘I’ll let you know all about it if you answer a question.’ I smiled at him from under my lashes.

  ‘A question?’ His eyes met mine.

  ‘One question.’

  ‘Then you better make it good.’ He looked in the mirror as he indicated to overtake.

  ‘When you said your tattoo was a warning, what did you mean?’

  We whooshed by an eighteen-wheeler. Tarc didn�
��t answer.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ he said eventually. ‘It’s just a Birchwood thing. Calling it a warning is an in-joke, I guess.’

  Tarc wasn’t a good liar. But I couldn’t focus on that now.

  ‘Birchwood?’ I didn’t sound as casual as I’d hoped.

  ‘Yeah, our school.’ Tarc’s finger hovered above the radio power switch, then jabbed it on right in the middle of some inane jingle. His words had lost that flirtatious edge. Guess he didn’t like this game any more.

  ‘How is Birchwood a school?’ Why would a school interest Smith?

  ‘It’s a nickname. And that’s two questions.’ He was looking at me quizzically.

  ‘Sounds more like an isolated asylum from a Gothic horror.’ I shrugged, trying too late to affect nonchalance. ‘But I guess that works for David.’

  ‘Birchwood isn’t like most schools.’ He pinned me with those steady marble eyes. I’d been too obvious. ‘The curriculum isn’t exactly standard.’

  I was dying to ask about the non-standard curriculum. Maybe they studied things like the Judge History of Wickerwork (modules include weaving of baskets and men; augur derivation of ‘wickering’ as pattern-based hypnosis abso-fucking-lutely not covered). Or Nemeton Acquisitions: ‘as long as they’re ours.’ Or How to Hunt and Pursue Girls Through Woods. But I knew Tarc was baiting me. He was gauging my interest in Birchwood. Assessing whether it rang odd. So I dropped it. Pulling out my phone, I called Smith.

  ‘I’m getting a ride home,’ I said, glancing at Tarc, who was focused on the road. I suspected he wasn’t appeased. ‘From Tarc.’

  There was a pause while Smith considered this. ‘OK,’ he dragged out the word. ‘We have to be at Sibéal’s concert.’ There was no concert. Sibéal didn’t do concerts, unless they involved beheadings or public flogging.

  ‘But you have your key,’ Smith continued. ‘And we’ll be back shortly.’ Which translated as, ‘We’ll be home as soon as the bad guy leaves.’ He rang off.

  A signpost emerged from the darkness, lit up in the headlights, and then disappeared.