The Last of the High Kings (9 page)

When they'd had lunch, Jenny went out again, after promising not to go anywhere near the archaeologists. Aisling and Aidan went off in the car to do the weekly supermarket shop, and J.J. went back to work on the fiddles. As soon as he was sure that the coast was clear, Donal got out the Golden Pages and began hunting. There was no listing under “Helicopters,” but when he looked it up in the index at the back, it was there: “Helicopters—See Aircraft Charter & Hire.”

He turned to the page and found no fewer than four listings for helicopters, all of them offering “chartered customer services” and, for some reason, “golf trips.” Donal put his finger on the first number and looked at the phone. He took several deep breaths before he lifted the receiver and several more before he dialed.

“Hello?” said a woman at the other end of the line.

“Hello,” said Donal, trying to make his voice sound deep and adult. “I want to hire a helicopter.”

There was a little silence, and Donal realized the voice thing wasn't working. Then the woman said, “Who is this speaking, please?”

“Donal Liddy. It's about a present. For—for my grandfather.”

“I see,” said the woman. “And where does your grandfather want to go?”

“To the top of Sliabh Carron,” said Donal.

“The top of where?”

“Sliabh Carron. It's a mountain. In the Burren.”

“I'm sorry, Mr. Liddy,” said the woman. “We're not licensed to land on the top of mountains.”

“It's very flat up there,” said Donal anxiously. “It would be dead easy to land.”

“We can use only helipads or approved and inspected sites,” said the woman. “Perhaps there's somewhere else your grandfather would like to go? We specialize in golf trips. I'm sure he'd enjoy one of those.”

Donal tried to imagine Mikey on a golf course, with little success. “How much would a golf trip cost?” he asked.

“Well, we have packages beginning at four and a half thousand, including five-star hotel accommodation and course fees.”

“I'll have a think about it,” said Donal.

When he put down the receiver, his hand was shaking. He waited until it had stopped, then rang the other companies. One woman insisted on talking to his parents, and when Donal said they weren't there, she hung up on him. The other two people, both men, had similar stories to the first one. They didn't land on mountains; they offered golf trips.

In desperation, Donal phoned the air-sea rescue number, but all he got for that was a flea in his ear for wasting emergency services' time. He wandered into the kitchen and hunted for biscuits. He was bitterly disappointed by the results of his efforts, but at least this put an end to the matter. He would tell Mikey that J.J. had tried his hardest to get him a chopper, but there was no way it could be done. He dreaded seeing the old man's face when he gave him that news. He wished he could be like his dad and just not worry about these things.

 

It was true that J.J. wasn't worrying about Mikey and the chopper, but he was quite worried about the
ghost. On the way down the hillside he had asked Jenny about it, and she had told him all she could. What bothered J.J. the most was the bit about the monsters. Jenny had hunched her shoulders and made grizzly bear arms and a gruesome, snarling face. They were very big, she had told him, and they wanted the chopper, but she couldn't be more specific than that.

“And do you think the ghost can keep out the archaeologists?” he had asked.

“Definitely,” said Jenny. “No bother to him. He could do a lot worse to them if he wanted to, but he likes them. He likes everybody.”

But now J.J. was worried. How determined would they be, he wondered, to get to the bottom of it? He doubted they would go to the lengths of dynamiting the thing, but what if they airlifted in one of those small mechanical diggers? Would the ghost be able to stop a machine?

He finished stringing up Sean Pearce's fiddle and played a couple of tunes on it. It was okay, but he'd like a bit more power in the higher ranges. He loosened the strings and reached for the sound post setter. It wasn't in the rack. He remembered taking it away from Aidan, but not where he had put it. He was in the kitchen hunting for it when Donal came in.

“Dad?” he said, and did his trick of waiting until he had J.J.'s full attention. “Do you think someone could make it up to the beacon on a donkey?”

“You possibly could,” said J.J. “But when was the last time you saw a donkey around here?”

Donal thought about it. The answer was that he had never seen one around there. Nor had he ever seen anyone riding one anywhere in Ireland.

“Why?” J.J. asked.

Donal sighed. “Just wondering,” he said.

Jenny was determined to pay another visit to the dig on Tuesday, but she was collared by J.J. at five-thirty in the morning and kept under close observation until it was time to go to school. She tried two appeals, one on the ground of a sudden desire to become an archaeologist and the other on the ground of an equally sudden attack of bellyache; but no one was buying either excuse.

So she spent the day in school, trying with all her might to make the teacher feel dizzy. The only results were two reprimands for staring, the first one quite mild and the second one extremely savage.

The minute she got home she kicked off her shoes and raced away across the pastureland and up the mountainside. When she got to the beacon, the scene
was deserted, but she noticed that all the marker strings had been moved around to the other side, as though the archaeologists had decided to try a different approach.

After school on the following day she was just about to head up the mountain again when there was a knock at the front door. Aisling opened it and found Alice Kelly and David Connelly standing there in the rain. She invited them in. They declined the offer of tea and waited, somewhat anxiously, in the sitting room while Donal winkled J.J. out of the workshop.

After everyone had gathered, Alice Kelly began. “I wanted to apologize. I behaved very badly when you came up to visit the dig, and I hope you'll forgive me.”

“You're grand,” said J.J. “We understand.”

“Absolutely,” said Aisling, fighting off a renewed desire to laugh.

Alice turned to Jenny, but Jenny hadn't actually heard anything she had said because she was too busy trying to make her get dizzy and fall over again.

“The thing is”—Alice went on—“that none of us had ever encountered anything like what happened to us up there. It was quite frightening and disorientating. I overreacted and blamed your daughter, which was clearly ridiculous.”

“Clearly,” J.J. said.

David Connelly took over and explained what had happened to them all when they tried to move the stones. They had made several more attempts on that day, and more again on Tuesday, at different points around the base of the barrow. The same thing had happened to them every time. Eventually, on Wednesday, one of the students had hit upon the idea of seeing what would happen if instead of trying to take stones away from the pile, they tried to add some. The results had been remarkable. They had been able to move around freely on the slopes, carrying the imported stones, but once they had put them down among the others, they were entirely unable to remove them again.

“So that was when we decided to call it a day.” Connelly finished up.

“But we wondered if your daughter—” Alice Kelly began.

“Jenny,” said Aisling.

“Jenny,” said Alice. “We wondered if Jenny would mind telling us a little bit more about the, er…”

“The ghost?” said J.J.

So Jenny told them, cautiously, a few things. She told them how to see the ghost and how he had met
his death and that he was guarding the beacon against intruders. She told them how much he loved the human race and how pleased he was to see people up there on the mountain. But she didn't tell them about the chopper in case it made them want to dig it up, and she didn't make the monster shape and do the gruesome face either. The archaeologists listened politely and seemed contented enough with what she told them.

“So what will you do now?” J.J. asked.

“We were wondering,” said David Connelly, “whether Jenny happens to know anything about the other barrow. The one on the next hill.”

Jenny nodded enthusiastically. “There's no ghost on that one,” she said.

“Are you sure?” said Alice Kelly.

“Positive,” said Jenny. “And there is someone buried under it. It's a much better place for digging.”

Alice looked pleased. “We'll move our operations over there then.”

“And will you publish what you've discovered?” said J.J.

“No,” said Alice. “The entire team has been sworn to secrecy. If word of this got out, we would have half the country marching around up there, trying to get a
look at the ghost, and ruining the barrow. That would be in nobody's interests.”

“But you'll come back to it at some stage?” said J.J.

“Perhaps,” said Alice. “But I very much doubt it.”

 

Jenny raced up to the beacon. When she got there, she found that the markers were gone, and so were the tents. The only things left were the twelve white plastic containers, their contents now of absolutely no use to anyone. Jenny was sorry to have missed the fun, but she was pleased that the ghost had kept the beacon safe. She went up and sat with him, and complimented him on his achievement, and told him what the archaeologists had said to her. But instead of being proud or satisfied, he seemed gloomier than ever. The archaeologists had been nice. He liked having people around, and he missed them. He had had to stop them, it was true, but the beasts were the real problem. He showed them to Jenny again, and she shuddered at the terrifying images that invaded her mind. They were taller than the beacon. They had massive thighs and long, scaly snouts and enormous, twisted horns.

“Stop it,” she said to the ghost, and he did. The visions faded from Jenny's mind, and the fear passed;
but she was unsettled, and she didn't want to stay there any longer. She stood up unsteadily, picked her way down the hill of jumbled stones, and set out for home.

 

On the way she met the púka, and they dropped into the woods, where they could talk without being seen, and where the púka could adopt his long, almost human form. He spoke more clearly that way, because his face was flatter and his tongue was rounder. But he had no lessons for her that day. He wanted to know what was happening up on top.

Jenny told him about the departure of the archaeologists, and he seemed pleased.

“Perhaps we've seen the last of them,” he said. “Perhaps that poor ghost could be persuaded to give up his foolishness now and move on.”

“The archaeologists said they might come back,” said Jenny. “Anyway, it isn't them he's worried about. Not really. It's the monsters.”

The púka shook his wise old head slowly. “What monsters?” he said.

Jenny gave the best description she could of the beasts the ghost had shown her. “And have you seen them?” said the púka.

“Only in my mind,” said Jenny. “The way he showed them to me.”

“And where does he say they live, these monsters?” asked the púka.

Jenny shrugged. “He doesn't say.”

“Doesn't he?” said the púka. “But they must be somewhere. You have walked all over these hills. You've been into the woods and the hollows and the valleys. Have you ever seen a monster like that?”

“No,” said Jenny.

“No,” said the púka. “And that poor boy needs to be persuaded that there's no need for him to spend eternity standing on that hill. Because he's badly deluded, Jenny. It's all in his head.”

“You mean he's making it all up?”

The púka nodded. “Not on purpose, of course. But it isn't so unusual, you know, for someone to believe in something that isn't true.”

Jenny shook her head in bewilderment. “You mean he's been standing up there for thousands of years, guarding the beacon against—against nothing?”

“Well,” said the púka, “what do you think?”

Jenny looked around at the hills and across the plain to the ocean. “I think you're right,” she said. “I think there are no monsters.”