The Changeling (26 page)

One by one, the lights began to reappear – this time not on the river but coming up through the steep woods. Three points of orange light . . . four . . . The smell grew worse. The pack of dogs whimpered and scuffed at the path with their heavy claws, snuffling loudly.

Aoife hissed, ‘
Quiet!
’ gripping the nearest two by the scruffs of their necks.

Ultan whispered shakily, ‘They’re getting closer.’

‘If they call the sheóg’s name, I say we dump her and run.’

‘
I want my mam!
’

Aoife snapped, ‘Stop scaring her, Caitlin! Hush, honey, no one’s going to hurt you . . .’ Eva, weeping, was struggling to get down from Shay’s shoulders. Aoife let go of the dogs to comfort the child – and in an instant, the pack was gone, howling and snarling, hurtling downhill through the ancient yews.

For a moment they stood shocked into frozen silence, staring after the rampaging dogs as they disappeared into the trees. The deep, fierce barking echoed back and forth in the dark woods, ranging from side to side and down towards the river. Yet there were no other answering sounds – no fighting, no shouts, no running of feet; even the orange lights had suddenly gone out. It was as if it were only the beasts themselves running wild in the forest – frightened farm dogs on a windy night chasing imaginary ghosts around the yard.

Ultan said, relaxing, ‘Nice one. I think they’ve frightened them off – fair play to—
Mother of God!
’

The cries of the cooshees had abruptly changed – several of the dogs were not barking now, but screaming. Then yet another changed its tone, then another, from courageous challenge to hideous howls of pain. Eva shrieked shrilly and covered her ears with her hands.

‘Quick, let’s go!’ Caitlin took off at full speed up the path, followed by Ultan. ‘Quick, now, while they’re busy ripping them cooshees to bits!’

Aoife groaned, ‘The poor dogs—’

‘
Leave them!
’

Shay touched Aoife’s arm. ‘Come on, she’s right – nothing we can do.’

‘The poor brave dogs.’ Swallowing her grief, Aoife ran after the others.

The path climbed and twisted, narrower and rockier. Roots caught her feet. Behind in the woods, the beasts were screaming. Ultan cursed and fell. Aoife sprang over him, and turned to help him up. Shay waited for them, Eva in his arms, her frightened little face buried in his shoulder. ‘Are ye all right?’

Ultan gasped, hands on knees, ‘Grand. Are they following us?’

The three of them stood listening for a second – the sounds of ghostly battle were still ebbing and flowing through the woods, but more sporadically and further back. Aoife thought she saw a lantern flare briefly, but only as the faintest orange spark. At the same time, a deep, ferocious barking started up down near the river, before mutating into a high-pitched, almost ethereal scream – a blood-chilling, gut-wrenching death-cry.

Shay shuddered. ‘Come on.’

As they ran, Aoife dropped a little behind the others, listening. The canine screams had ceased now; all she could hear was the breathing of Shay and Ultan and the scuffing of their feet as they mounted the hill ahead of her, up through the dark woods towards the crimson sky.

About a quarter of an hour later, the trees thinned and they came out on the crest of a steep hillside. Caitlin was standing with her back to them, her hands on her hips, silhouetted against the brilliant sunset.

Yet it wasn’t sunset, because the sun had long set. It was the pyramid city, its rose-coloured walls lit by a thousand golden fires that burned on every balcony and in every courtyard.

Falias up close was vast – much vaster than it had appeared from the top of the waterfall, because from there the lower two thirds of the pyramid had been hidden, and only the tip visible. The city that was now before them rose up out of a deep, circular valley; most of it burned gold, but its upper levels were pale blue, and the very point seemed to float above the rest, a delicate minaret of silvery white. The hill at their feet formed one side of the valley. On the far side, half circling the pyramid like a vast protective hand, was a hemisphere of marble cliffs, reflecting the city’s lights as a solid sparkling wall of rose-gold. Above was a warm green sky, with a round yellow moon. The river emerged below to their left and swept round the city’s foot, so bright with mirrored fire that Falias appeared to rise from a sea of crimson lava.

‘Nearly there . . .’ Shay started immediately down the hill. But Caitlin ran after him, grabbing him by his torn shirt.

‘Stop. We can’t just turn up.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because we can’t get in without a pass and we need money, and we can’t get either without handing over a beast to the zookeeper.’ She plumped herself miserably down on the dark grass. ‘Danu, I so want to get back in. What d’ya let them cooshees go for?’

Aoife said sharply, ‘They saved us from the dullahans!’

‘They didn’t need to, stupid dogs – we could have sneaked off and got away. It’s your fault for not keeping them under control. This is a complete disaster. Even that burned-up cat would have been worth something to us. If stinko-boy there hadn’t taken a dump near a pooka—’

‘I didn’t know it was there!’

‘I bet it was the awful smell that attracted it, like blood to a shark.’

Shay hefted Eva higher in his arms. ‘We have to chance it anyway – there’s got to be a way.’

Caitlin said fiercely, ‘Don’t you listen? We can’t get passes off the zookeeper without bringing him a beast!’

Ultan said, ‘Well, let’s go see him anyway, and explain we did have loads but we lost them.’

‘Oh, for— Why bother?’

‘I’m starving, Cait. He feeds the animals, doesn’t he? If he can feed them, he can feed us. And maybe he can get us some new kitbags before we go back out.’

‘I’m not begging animal food off Seán Burke! I’d rather starve!’ Caitlin’s eyes were flashing, yet at the same time she sounded very young and hopeless. She sat cradling her kitbag in her arms like she was using it for comfort; like it was a doll. ‘I’m telling you, we have to go back to Gorias – we have to get ourselves another beast.’

Aoife stepped away under the trees and waited a while until her eyes got used again to the dark green dusk. The fallen needles were spongy under her feet; the bitter smell of them sharp to her nose. There was an utter stillness in the woods – the sounds of the desperate dogs had long faded to absolute nothing. She felt a deep sadness at having abandoned the dogs to their fate. What were dullahans – creatures or men? They were
headless
? With what had they ripped the dogs apart? Claws? Weapons? Bare hands?

She listened, and the wind moved in the wood and branches bent. The needles on the floor shifted. The hairs rose delicately on her neck . . . So hard to see more than a few metres into this tree-cluttered darkness. She took another step forward. A darkness slunk through the trees . . . And another.

‘Here, boy?’

She was only whispering, but her voice cracked with strain. Supposing it was the dullahans. The sweat rolled down the hollows of her neck and under her arms.

Five, six shadows, closing in around her. Aoife stayed where she was, her arms extended. They pushed their long bony heads against her back and chest; their thick fur was wet with stickiness. She stroked one after the other, running her hands up the ruffs of their huge necks. She counted only seven of them. The younger, smaller dog was present, but the biggest, the king of them all, was among the missing.

CHAPTER TEN

‘Seven cooshees? Sure you have. Lovely creatures. I seen one once. A dead one, mind.’

‘We had twelve—’

‘Course you did.’

‘But they got in a fight—’

‘You’ll get that. So, where’s this famous seven—
Mary, Mother of God, ye were serious! Get them away from me! Them’s dangerous beasts!
Oh, my heart . . . Don’t you be after coming one step nearer, girleen – you get them straight over there into that cage – there, the one that’s open . . . Holy Mary, Mother of Christ, and all her saints . . . Close the door on them!
Close it now!
’

‘I have to get out again first, don’t I?’

Aoife jumped out of the high wooden cage, then slammed it shut against the dogs, which were whining and jostling to follow. ‘Sorry, lads . . .’ She slipped her hand through the bars, stroking the bony nose of the youngest cooshee – badly slashed around the head and missing an ear, but otherwise one of the survivors.

Caitlin said, ‘Now. Seven beasts. We want passes and money.’

‘Tie the rope, tight . . .
Tighter.
’

‘All right, all right.’ Caitlin wound the thick sugán rope repeatedly around the doorframe, knotting and re-knotting. ‘Safe enough for you now? Scared of cooshees? I’m not, they’re safe as houses. Thought you were a zookeeper.’

‘Can’t help the job I was given by the Beloved. Lovely man, lovely man, not saying a word against him. Said I was perfect for this job even though I never minded nothing before but two cows and three chickens—
Tight.
’

Caitlin snapped, ‘It
is
tight! Give us the passes and lots of money.’

‘Don’t be in such a hurry, girleen. I have to answer for every penny that goes through these hands.’

‘There’s seven there, Seán Burke – count them for yerself!’

The zookeeper drew nearer to the filthy cage; he had a head like an outsize conker, dusted with a cobweb of grey hair as fine and fluffy as a cat’s. Every item of his clothing was heavily patched – shirt, trousers, even the heavy boots on his feet. ‘One, two . . . God save us.
Ye
might say seven, but if ye stirred these up together in the one pot ye’d be lucky to have enough to make one—’

Caitlin snarled, ‘There’s no rule we have to bring them in absolutely perfect. They’re still in good working order. ’Tis only a few ears.’

‘And three with stumps for tails – d’ye think I’m blind? And look at these horrible gashes across their backs – what did ye do to them? They’ve been whipped to pieces with something right powerful. I’m going to have to get the vet to them – it’ll cost me a fortune, so it will.’

Shay’s voice came from the darkness. ‘We haven’t got time to stand around chatting with you – we’re in a hurry, so we are.’

The old man’s eyes shifted, searching. Barely half a kilometre away across the valley, the city of Falias shed its brilliant light, but here between the high wooden cages all was shadowy. ‘Who said that?’

Shay stepped forward. ‘I did.’

‘No time to chat, is it? That’s very sad, very modern.’ Then the zookeeper’s gaze fell on Eva, who was now asleep with her cheek pressed to Shay’s shoulder, mouth distorted. His face lighting up with interest, he hobbled over to peer more closely at her. ‘Well, well, well. Is that your own sheóg, if you don’t object to my asking?’

‘She’s mine,’ said Aoife quickly.

‘Yours?’ He turned and looked her up and down, and his expression changed from blustering meanness to something deeper – cleverer. Like the ancient farmers at the mart judging the worth of cattle, hands in their shabby black coats and caps pulled down low. ‘So you’re the . . . A new arrival, are ye? That’s very, very interesting, so it is.’ He leaned closer to her, attempting a friendly smile, his face as creased as the patched leather boots on his feet and his teeth sticking out at curious angles. ‘Why don’t you come up to the house, girleen, and I’ll find you a special pass?’

Aoife winced at the foulness of his breath. ‘Four passes and some money.’

He cast up his faded, watery eyes. ‘All right, all right – daylight robbery, but come on, the lot of you. I have the water on and I’ll make ye all a nice hot cup of tea.’

Ultan’s plump face lit up with sudden longing. ‘
Tea?
’

‘Not
real
tea, laddie, not unless ye’ve brought a handful of Barry’s with you.’

‘Oh . . .’ Ultan’s face fell again. ‘No. I haven’t.’

The zookeeper said sympathetically, ‘I know, ’tis desperate, the food and drink ye get here in paradise, isn’t it? No decent tea, no Kimberley biscuits. Unless ye know the right people, that is. But I’ll do me best.’ And he shuffled off between the ramshackle cages, beckoning to them, grinning and bobbing – servile yet powerfully insistent.

Aoife said to Ultan, ‘We’ll just have to get the passes and go; we haven’t the time for tea.’

‘I don’t mind – if it’s not Barry’s original, I’m not interested.’

‘Shut up about stupid Barry’s,’ grumbled Caitlin, hitching the kitbag up onto her shoulder again.

Seán Burke plodded along the muddy track in front of them, a stick in his hand which he occasionally poked into a cage to disturb whatever misshapen creature was curled up on foul straw trying to get some rest. If any hissed or snapped at him, he leaped back very nimbly for his age – which must have been well over eighty. It hadn’t struck Aoife that there might be changelings here who hadn’t been called home to paradise until they had grown old. How had this man spent his life, before he found out who he really was? He reminded her of two or three ageing bachelors in Kilduff: fanciful types, full of extraordinary stories about aliens and monsters – or ‘pure shite’, whichever the listener chose to call it. ‘Away with the fairies’, people said of them – and maybe they should have all gone away with the fairies years before, but they had stayed behind instead, trapped in the pub with only themselves and the barman for company. Had Seán Burke been walking back along the bog road late at night, full of brandy, when the sheóg finally called him home – and had he run after her like he was young again?

‘Jaysus, will you look at the state of these craiturs,’ said Ultan.

In one cage, a strange beast with toad-like skin and one leg was asleep on heaps of dirty straw. In another that looked empty, a small child-sized being suddenly materialized out of thin air, leaping and clinging to the bars with human hands – for a second Aoife thought it
was
a child, then saw its wizened face and claw-like nails. The little creature was naked, its body covered with a thick reddish coat of hair, matted with sticks and leaves.