Wormwood Gate (3 page)

Aisling handed over her phone, the screen showing her contact list. ‘Thanks,' said Julie, keying in Darren's number. She accidentally scrolled down the contact list when she was done and saw a number saved under ‘This Phone'. ‘You have your own number in your contacts?' she said, disbelieving.

Aisling shrugged. ‘I never have to phone myself, so I can never remember my own number. Then when I have to tell people… it's just easier. You should put my number in, actually,' she added. ‘Just in case. And I should get yours.'

‘OK,' said Julie, ‘just a sec.' She keyed in Aisling's number and then handed Aisling her own phone. Aisling took it with a small smile, adding Julie's number to her contacts with quick, deft movements of her thumb, and Julie was on the verge of saying … she wasn't sure what, but something that would make Aisling change her mind about splitting up, when a sharp smell came out of nowhere, forcing its way down her throat and nostrils and making her gag. ‘Urgh! What is that?'

Aisling was pinching her nose and had her hands over her mouth. ‘I ihn ih brumbud,' she said through her fingers.

Julie's hand rose to cover her own nose, but the smell had faded as quickly as it had arisen. ‘What did you say?'

Aisling let go of her nose and sniffed the air cautiously, then let both her hands drop. ‘I think it's wormwood,' she says. ‘Which is bizarre, because it's not like a lot of people grow wormwood in this part of town. Or anywhere.'

‘Wormwood? What is wormwood?'

‘It's a herb. They use it to make absinthe.'

‘Stands to reason you'd know about it, then. Maybe somebody broke an absinthe bottle.'

Aisling frowned. ‘That wouldn't –' Her head jerked around, and she pointed up to a street sign two storeys above the ground. ‘Heeeey, look at that!'

‘Wormwood Gate,' said Julie, savouring the way the words felt in her mouth. ‘Oh, that's a good one.' She rummaged in her bag for the notebook and pencil she always brought with her. ‘Got to write this one down.'

‘Don't you think it's weird?' said Aisling. ‘We're on a street called Wormwood Gate, and we just happen to get a smell of wormwood?'

‘It's a coincidence,' said Julie, writing
WORMWOOD GATE (street) (Dublin, Ireland)
on the head of a fresh page. She'd add the historical details later, when she'd had a chance to look them up. ‘The name probably doesn't even mean “wormwood”,' she added. ‘Place names change all the time. I mean … there used to be a wall around the city, in this part of town. The wall must have had gates, right? And one of them was here.'

‘That doesn't make it any less spooky,' said Aisling. ‘Come on! It may be a coincidence, but it's a cool coincidence! Don't you think?'

Julie stuffed her notebook and pencil back into her bag, exasperated. ‘I think –'

But she never got a chance to say what she thought, because at that very moment a door opened in the air in front of them and a white horse with a red mane galloped through at full speed, bowling them over onto the ground.

2

Julie stared up at the sky, too winded to speak or move. Her heart was pounding in her chest like a kettle drum, and she was having trouble breathing.
The light
, she thought.
The light is all wrong
.

‘Are you all right?' said Aisling. Her voice sounded worried, and somehow smaller than before, as if the two of them were at opposite ends of a very long tunnel. Julie tried to speak, but all that came out was a squeaky rasp of breath. She pulled herself to a sitting position, brushed some grit off her palms, cleared her throat, and tried again.

‘I'm fine,' she said.

‘You look like you've seen a ghost,' said Aisling.

Julie looked at Aisling's face. It should have been hard to tell what she looked like, whether she was pale or blushing or the same as usual. She shouldn't have been able to see much in the orange glow of the streetlights. But she could see every detail, from the black streak where her eyeliner had gotten smudged to the little red bump on her chin where a zit was about to form. She looked pale but, considering the way she wore her make-up, that might have been perfectly normal.

‘What just happened?' said Julie. Her heart was beginning to slow down now, and she felt like maybe she might be strong enough to stand up without falling over. She tried it, leaning on Aisling's shoulder without asking, and took a look around.

‘Jesus
Christ
,' she said, and fell again.

‘It would probably be good if you stopped doing that,' said Aisling, and her voice didn't sound distant any more, but it did sound shaky, as if she was trying not to cry.

‘I'm not doing it on purpose,' said Julie. ‘Look, help me up this time and maybe I'll be all right.'

Aisling grunted at that, but took hold of Julie's hands anyway and half-pulled her upright. Julie leaned on her and looked around again, trying to make what she was seeing fit into her brain.

The ground beneath their feet was not concrete or tarmac, but cobblestones, and the clouds above their heads glowed red, not orange; not reflecting sodium lights but what seemed to be a massive fire – no, two fires – no,
three
fires, one of them very close to where they were standing. There was still a river to their left, but when Julie rushed towards it to get a better view of what lay along the quays, she saw at once that it was not the Liffey. Couldn't be. It was narrow, and the water was clean, and there were seals frolicking around in it, their heads bobbing under and over the surface. There were no bridges, either, that she could see.

‘What the hell?' she said.

‘I think,' said Aisling slowly, in a low voice, as if she were talking to herself, ‘that somebody slipped me something, and this is a hallucination. At least, that seems like a reasonable hypothesis, given the evidence.'

‘If you're hallucinating, what am I doing here?'

‘Well, you must be a figment of my imagination.'

Julie glared at her. The leather coat was so thick that pinching her arm would have no effect, and the big stompy boots she was wearing probably had steel toecaps, so she grabbed Aisling's hand and twisted her arm back.

‘OW!' Aisling cried. ‘What the hell are you doing? Let go!'

‘Ever get your arm twisted in a dream?'

‘That's hardly a reason to –'

‘Nobody slipped you anything, Aisling. You're really here, wherever “here” is, and so am I.' She let go of Aisling's hand. ‘Look at those seals!'

Aisling leaned on the parapet and stared, looking a little dazed. ‘I saw a seal from the top deck of the bus once,' she said slowly. ‘I couldn't believe what I was seeing. A seal, in the Liffey? It had to be lost.'

‘There's a whole family of them, look.'

‘I see them.'

‘You're not even looking in the right direction!'

‘I'm looking past them. What's that thing? It looks like – don't you think it looks like – here, look –' She pointed, and Julie looked away from the seals to where her finger was aiming. ‘Don't you think it looks like …'

‘Like a … horse?' Julie said. ‘It's coming this way. It's swimming! I didn't know horses could swim.'

Aisling looked at her, frowning. ‘They can't,' she said. ‘Well, they can, but not far, and not in water this deep.' She looked back at the probably-a-horse's-head. ‘It's bobbing around at a weird angle, don't you think?'

Julie shrugged. The probably-a-horse's-head had come quite close; if it had been a person, she could have shouted to it.

‘I don't know what a swimming horse is supposed to look like,' she said.

‘I'm not a horse,' said the creature in a great big booming voice, swimming towards them all the while. ‘I'm a merhorse, and I can't help but wonder what two such creatures as you are doing in the City of the Three Castles.'

Julie blinked and glanced at Aisling, whose face had gone quite blank. ‘The City of the Three Castles?' she said. ‘Is that what this place is called?'

The creature stopped where it was in the water and stared up at them. It occurred to Julie that, although it looked as if it was just standing still, the river was deep and fast enough that it must have been swimming quite strongly against the current just to avoid being swept away. ‘Not just two-legs, but mortal two-legs,' it said, as if it were talking to itself. ‘Well, well, I suppose there's no help for it.'

‘Can you tell us where this place is?' said Julie. ‘I've never heard of the City of the Three Castles before.'

The merhorse huffed, a sound somewhere between a laugh and a snort. ‘The City is in the Kingdom of Crows,' it said, then shook its head a little. ‘Well, no, strictly speaking it's not any more. It was once, you see, but it's been part of the Realms Between for … I'm not sure how long, but a good long while. Though not so long that the Queen-that-is ever stops worrying about the Queen of Crows stealing the City back.'

‘That doesn't actually clear anything up,' Aisling muttered.

Julie gave her a dig in the ribs, but the merhorse kept talking as if it hadn't heard.

‘You'll be wanting to get back, I suppose,' it said. ‘Well, you needn't ask me for help, for I have nothing to do with the gates or the roads or any of that nonsense. I stay in the River with the seals and the souls, and here I am quite content.'

‘When you say “get back” …'

Julie hesitated. It wasn't that she was entirely taking what she was seeing at face value. There was a part of her brain that was screaming and gibbering inside at the weirdness of it; but that part wasn't the part that was in control.

‘Get back to where you came from, of course,' said the merhorse. ‘Mortals like you never stay long in the Realms Between. Never seen a one of you stay long enough for a body to have a chat, now that I think of it. Usually you slip in and out in half a breath, just long enough to give the place some atmosphere. But that was before the queen had the gates closed.'

‘Wait,' said Julie. ‘If the gates are closed, how did we get here?'

‘To judge by the smell, you came through the Wormwood Gate,' said the merhorse, and Julie's head snapped around to look at Aisling, who was already looking at her with eyes wide as saucers. ‘The Wormwood Gate's not under the queen's control,' the merhorse went on, ‘though not for lack of trying on her part. And for all I know, it's gone a-wandering off beyond the bounds of the City by now. It doesn't stay in one place, you see. You might as well go for a stroll through the streets and see if you can find it, though you should keep away from the queen's guards. They'll clap you in irons as soon as lay eyes on you.'

‘Thanks for the advice,' said Julie.

‘Don't mention it,' said the merhorse, and it leapt up into the air like a dolphin, giving Julie and Aisling a brief glimpse of its scaly, fishy netherparts before it plunged under the water and was gone.

‘Oh,' said Aisling, ‘a
mer
horse. I get it now.'

‘Don't you think it looked familiar?' said Julietentatively, not quite sure whether she'd just been imagining it. She was not quite sure whether she'd just imagined everything that had happened since they'd left the house, but she was trying not to dwell on that.

Aisling turned around and leaned her elbows on the parapet. ‘Yes,' she said, a dreamy expression on her face, ‘but not like I'd seen it before in person. More like it was in a painting I saw once, a long time ago.'

Julie opened her mouth to speak but changed her mind and turned around herself, leaning on the parapet just like Aisling. What she could see of the City of the Three Castles was old-looking, in a way. The nearby houses were Georgian, like the old parts of Dublin, all red brick and fanlights and tall sash windows with lots of small panes; but the houses themselves looked new, without a trace of pollution stains or braces in the walls or worn-down brickwork, and farther down the river she could see buildings that looked both older still – Tudor, to judge from the beams – and newer still, as if they had been built yesterday.

She slid her hands sideways and gripped the stone of the parapet. It was granite, rough and solid, with little flecks of mica sparkling in the firelight.

‘We're in the City of the Three Castles,' said Aisling, still sounding dreamy and far away.

‘Yes,' said Julie.

‘In the Realms Between,' said Aisling.

‘Yes.'

‘Formerly of the Kingdom of Crows.'

‘Yes.'

‘Shouldn't you be writing this down?'

Julie looked at her. The dreaminess wasn't entirely gone, but the fear and the confusion that had been in her eyes before were nowhere to be seen. Now she looked thoughtful, and perhaps even determined, as if there was something she very much wanted to do.

‘You sound pretty calm,' said Julie. ‘What happened?'

‘I just had a conversation with a merhorse,' said Aisling.

‘Hey, I was the one who did the talking! You were too busy freaking out.'

‘Well, exactly. Whatever's happening – and I'm not ruling out the possibility that this is an unusually coherent hallucination – wouldn't it be stupid to run around all “Like, oh my God, oh my God,
oh my gaaahd
, I am, like,
so
totally freaked out right now”?'

‘Nobody talks like that,' Julie muttered. Aisling gave her a pointed look, and Julie resisted the urge to squirm. All right, maybe she did talk like that sometimes, but only when she'd been hanging out with Tina and the girls and they'd been laughing and getting hyper, and who'd made Aisling ‘Polysyllables' O'Riordan the boss of how people should talk, anyway?

‘I'm just saying,' said Aisling. ‘
Carpe diem
and all that. Here we are, right now, wherever “here” is. Let's enjoy the ride. We can freak out later.'

At that, the part of Julie's brain that had been gibbering and screaming fell silent abruptly, and she smiled despite herself. ‘That sounds like a plan,' she said, and she laughed. ‘This is better than a nightclub!'

Aisling grinned. ‘You're telling me!' She grabbed Julie's arms. ‘Let's explore! We're going to have to go back sooner or later, but in the mean time, let's see what other weird crap this place has got to offer.'

Julie stepped back, pulling her arms from Aisling's grip but linking her left arm with Aisling's right. ‘Lay on, MacDuff. Where should we go first?'

‘Well, actually …' Aisling said slowly, a thoughtful look on her face, ‘I wasn't kidding when I said you should be writing this down. You write down the places you've been, don't you?'

‘Oh!' Julie took out her notebook and pencil and turned to a new page.
CITY OF THE THREE CASTLES
, she wrote on the top of the page, and underneath that
(city) (Realms Between [formerly Kingdom of Crows])
. ‘Not that I have any idea what that means,' she said. ‘It sounds good, though.'

‘Perfect,' said Aisling. ‘Now, where do you want to go?'

Julie tucked the notebook and pencil away and looked around. Over the tops of the buildings, she could see a tall tower ringed with white lights somewhere on the other side of the River. It looked majestic.

‘How about we go towards that tower?' she said. ‘It looks interesting, don't you think?'

‘It looks like a good place to start.' Aisling set forth in the direction of the river's flow, a light of purpose shining in her eyes. ‘There has to be a bridge along here somewhere,' she said as Julie scrambled to catch up with her. ‘Unless everyone in this city is a sea creature. But that doesn't seem likely.'

‘Maybe most of them can fly,' said Julie, and Aisling flashed her a grin, her eyes shining even more than before.

Even though the air was just as cold as it had been in Dublin, Julie felt quite warm as she walked alongside the river, alongside Aisling.
This is an adventure
, she thought to herself. She started bouncing on her toes and humming.
A proper adventure!

Aisling's grin disappeared, replaced by a disapproving scowl. ‘What is that you're humming?'

‘Oh, you know what it is. Everyone knows!' Just to annoy her further, Julie started actually singing the words and doing a little dance with hops and twirls.

‘Shut up!'

‘Make me!'

They were passing by streetlights now, but they weren't like normal streetlights: their standards were black and elaborately decorated, and the lights themselves were more like huge candle flames than orange sodium lamps. Aisling glanced at one as they passed it, frowning, but whatever she was thinking was immediately displaced by Julie singing and dancing in a circle around her.

‘No, seriously, stop that,' Aisling said. ‘It's unbelievably annoying.'

‘Would you prefer Justin Bieber?'