The Changeling (10 page)

‘Like her?’ Dave Ferguson had finished with the post office van and was now standing at her shoulder wiping his oily hands on a rag. He was bald, red-faced, and wore small wire-framed glasses – just like his brother Thomas, Sinead’s father.

Aoife said, ‘The seats are nice.’

‘They are nice, surely, and there’s nothing more essential to a car than to have nice seats. Who needs an engine?’

‘How much is it?’

‘You’re after buying a car off me, are you? How old are you now?’

‘Fifteen. But could you sell it to me, just to have?’

‘Good joke. Now, what size of a bike tyre did you say you were after?’

‘What if I paid a thousand in cash, right now?’

Dave Ferguson laughed, shoving the blackened rag into the pocket of his overalls. ‘Done. Yours for a thousand euros.’

Aoife experienced a strong stab of satisfaction. ‘So it’s a deal?’

‘Surely it’s a deal. Now about those—’

She pulled out the sheaf of notes.

There was a long, long pause, during which Dave Ferguson stopped chuckling, went even redder than normal and lit a cigarette. Aoife waited, holding out the money. Deep down, she was certain that the garage owner would have to stick to the deal they had just made.

After several lung-filling drags, and a coughing fit, he flicked the half-smoked cigarette into a nearby puddle. ‘Nope. Not possible. Your parents will murder me if I let you spend all your savings on a car. Especially this one.’

In one way, Aoife was relieved. So she couldn’t just
make
something happen, just by wishing it. Yet still she kept on patiently holding out the envelope towards him, hoping he would change his mind in the normal way. ‘A deal is a deal.’

‘Not with someone your age it’s not . . .’ Yet even as Dave Ferguson was saying ‘no’, his left hand was moving towards her. He glanced down at it with a frown. ‘Look, I can’t take your money . . .’

‘A deal is a deal,’ repeated Aoife, dropping the thousand into his outstretched palm. He groaned and turned redder still as his fingers gripped it.

In the shop in Kilduff, she broke into the remaining hundred-euro note to buy nine pink lamb cutlets and a strawberry cheesecake, then, because she was starving, a packet of chocolate Hobnobs. She set off home with the shopping bag in one hand and two new bike tyres over her shoulder, eating her way thoughtfully through the biscuits.

Buying the car for a thousand euros had been amazing, and had felt like the right thing to do at the time – but now she wasn’t so sure. The garage owner had clearly felt terrible about selling her the BMW, even though she’d assured him that she wouldn’t be driving it herself. When she’d tried to pay him for the tyres as well, he had insisted on giving them to her for free. Had she tricked Dave Ferguson, somehow? She had paid with real cash – yet it still felt wrong, as well as utterly bewildering. For another thing, it was ridiculous to pretend that the money was a gift from heaven. God was mysterious and never behaved in such a direct, uncomplicated fashion – not according to Father Leahy, anyway. In fact, if she was to believe the priest, God usually answered prayers by doing the exact opposite of what He was specifically asked to do.

Maybe he’s the phoney one
 . . .

Yet it was also ridiculous to pretend to herself that there was a rational explanation for her finding the money in her pocket. There was no getting away from the fact that she had wanted the money, and it had instantly appeared.

Sticking the last biscuit into her mouth, she slipped her hand into her trouser pocket. Empty. Shifting the shopping bag to her other hand, she tried the other pocket. Nothing. She made a big effort to imagine a million euros, in one huge colourful note. And tried again. Nothing. She wasn’t sure if she was more relieved or disappointed. Disappointed, to be honest.

In the evening, Aoife cooked the chops for dinner herself, and it was the best meal she could ever remember eating – maybe because she was yet again so incredibly hungry, even after eating the whole packet of Hobnobs. But her parents also declared themselves amazed by her cooking. They seemed to have fully recovered from the strange shock that the locket had given them, and talked cheerfully and aimlessly to each other about the upcoming elections and where they would go for a holiday in the sun, if only they had the money (Aoife quietly checked her pockets again – still nothing).

Afterwards, Maeve stayed in the kitchen to work at the table, humming tunelessly as she battered away at the keyboard of her laptop. ‘Got to get this finished and printed out for Declan, or we won’t be eating like that again for a while.’

Aoife went into the back room to watch television. Her father was already sitting in the armchair by the empty fireplace, television off, reading one of his ‘new’ second-hand books.

She knelt at the hearth. ‘Do you want me to light a fire for you?’

He looked up from his page. ‘Do you think we need one? It’s a warm evening.’

‘I know, but it’s nice for the smell of the turf burning. I’ll just make a small one.’ She took two pieces of turf and a firelighter from the wicker basket. While she set the fire, she glanced at the broken spine of the old leather book. ‘What’s that you’re reading?’

‘The
Lebor Gabála Érenn
. A good translation from the Irish.’

‘What’s it about?’ Aoife had never given her father’s hobby much thought, or wondered why he was so fascinated by the old stories – it was simply the way he was and always had been in her memory of him, just as she couldn’t picture him without silvery-grey hair. Now she wondered if there might be something he had come across in his books that could explain what had been happening to her. She had flicked through the odd volume, taken from the piles of second-hand books on the stairs, and she knew ancient Ireland was full of strange goings on: St Patrick battling snakes and giants, and beautiful St Dympna plucking out her eyes and causing a holy well to spring up from where she threw them down.

‘You haven’t heard of the
Lebor Gabála Érenn
?’ Her father half closed the book, showing her the cover. ‘It’s the ancient history of the Irish fairies, the Tuatha Dé Danann.’

‘Oh. Right. Fairies.’

He laughed. ‘I take it you don’t believe in such things.’

‘There is a limit to what I can get my head around. I am fifteen.’

‘Well, grown-up girl, your great-grandmother was a firm believer, and she was eighty-eight when she died.’

This time, it was Aoife who laughed. ‘OK.’

Her father said suddenly, with a very sad, straight look at her, no humour in it at all, ‘She didn’t like my parents buying this house, you know. They only got it cheap because it was built on a fairy road.’

That was news. ‘Seriously? When me and Carla were young, we were always playing at—’

‘I know it. Your mam kept having to drag you back home before you disappeared over the hill.’

She was still amazed by his revelation. ‘I never realized the road was like a real thing. I thought we’d made it up. I must have heard you talking about it. Why didn’t your nan want your parents to buy this house?’

‘Because the road would bring the fairies to our door, and she was a Mayo woman, and afraid of them. She thought they were dangerous, evil creatures.’

Aoife looked away, stirring the fire with the poker. She felt unsettled now, and strange. So the fairy road had been more than a game. ‘From what I’ve heard over the past few days, it sounds to me like your nan was right.’

‘Have people been teasing you about leprechauns again?’

She looked up, surprised by how upset her father sounded about it. He was leaning forward in his chair, staring intensely at her. ‘Dad, chillax! I can cope with a bit of slagging. Anyway, I didn’t mean that, I meant I heard a couple of stories about real fairies.’

‘Real fairies?’ He still sounded suspicious.

‘Well, you know what I mean – real as in not little men wearing green coats and pointy hats.’

He settled back in his seat. ‘And what did these great experts on Irish folklore tell you?’

Aoife threw another piece of turf on the fire, and sparks of orange drifted up. ‘That sheógs lure human children out across the bog to drown, and lenanshees suck the life out of anyone they fall in love with, and banshees steal human babies and sell them to the devil.’

‘
No!
’ Now her father seemed even more upset, his dark eyes large and shocked. ‘Don’t listen to that sort of rubbish, it’s all—’

‘Dad.’

‘. . . superstitious nonsense—’

‘
Dad.
Like I said, I’m fifteen.’

He stopped; pulled a self-deprecating face. ‘Sorry. I know you’re too sensible to believe in the old country stories. Your great-grandmother had my head wrecked when I was a boy. I had to do a lot of reading to find out the truth about the Tuatha Dé Danann.’ He nodded at the shelves of books, the tattered volumes piled in every corner.

She arched her eyebrows mockingly at her father. ‘There’s a
true
story about the fairies?’

He mimicked her expression, peering at her over his glasses. ‘
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio
—’

‘Yeah, yeah – so what’s this “true” story, then?’ Aoife settled herself cross-legged on the hearth rug. ‘Impress me, Professor O’Connor, with the results of your extensive research.’

‘Well, then, I will.’ He reopened the volume on his lap. ‘This is one of the best accounts of the Tuatha Dé Danann. It was written about a thousand years ago.’ He pushed his glasses back up his nose. ‘Here’s the story of their arrival in Ireland.’ He cleared his throat and read aloud:

‘They landed with horror, with lofty deed,

in their cloud of mighty combat of spectres,

upon a mountain of Conmaicne of Connacht . . .

Without ships, a ruthless course

the truth was not known beneath the sky of stars,

whether they were of heaven or of earth.’

‘Sounds like they came from outer space.’

‘No, they were from the earth.’ He smiled at her with sudden warmth, the way he had when she was little and he was about to tell her how much he loved her. ‘They were magical, Aoife – beautiful to look at. Tall, slender. And immensely powerful. A true fairy race.’

‘Cool beans. So, where did they go?’

‘Into another world.’

‘There’s another world?’

‘Many other worlds. Under the ocean to the west are the blessed isles. Under Munster lies the land of the dead. But under Mayo and the rest of Connaught lies Tír na nÓg, the land of the young, and that’s where the fairies went.’

‘And what’s it like down there?’

Aoife’s father was no longer gazing at her but somewhere over her shoulder, towards the window that faced out onto the garden. ‘It’s a beautiful world where no one grows old or dies. Where life is eternal, and death has been defeated.’

‘Something like heaven?’

‘Something like that, please God.’ He looked down at the book again, but he wasn’t reading it; his eyes were nearly closed, like he was dreaming.

‘Dad?’

‘Yes?’

She was going to say:
Do you
really
believe in fairies?
But it seemed a bit too much like asking him if he was mad, so instead she said, ‘That’s a lovely story.’

There was a strong scent of rotting hawthorn. She sat up and turned on her lamp. The sickly stench was coming from the toy rabbit, which had been under her pillow since she’d brought it home from the bog. Hawthorn blossoms seemed to have got into its leaky body, replacing some of the stuffing.

What had she been thinking of, bringing the dirty thing home with her? God knows what wildlife it was crawling with. Getting up, Aoife rummaged through her drawers for an old T-shirt, mummified the rabbit and pushed it to the back of her jewellery and make-up drawer.

Later, the scent of hawthorn grew even stronger. She got up again, to shut the window. She didn’t need to turn on the lamp this time, because there was a silver glow in the room – yet as she reached out to close the window, she saw that it was a black, moonless night.

For a moment she couldn’t bring herself to turn back into the room. She had a sudden terrifying thought that if she did, she would see a pair of glowing fairy eyes gazing at her from the dark. Not one of her father’s fantasy angels, but a creature of the night, of the old country stories . . . She turned quickly, and there was nothing. Yet there was still a silvery light in the room. The PC screen was dark, as was her phone.

Aoife went back to the bed, and when she moved aside the duvet, she realized that the light was coming from her own hands. She looked closer. The veins were shining through her skin, as if her red blood had been drained out of them and replaced with liquid, shining silver.

She must be dreaming.

In her dream, she got back into her dream-bed and closed her eyes.

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘
Come to me.
’

Aoife lay rigid in the dark. A child’s voice had woken her. She raised her head very slightly from the pillow, listening. No creak of movement in the room. Maybe the leaves of the ash tree whispering against the half-open window . . . She must have been dreaming again.

‘
Come here to me.
’

Her heart raced, and her skin prickled with cold sweat. She reached to switch on her lamp and sat up. No child in the room. Everything normal: the tangled mess of clothes on the carpet; the ancient PC still asleep; her guitar leaning in the corner; Kurt Cobain and Lady Gaga still gazing down.

She got out of bed and went to the window, opening it to listen. A thin yellow rectangle of light stretched out from behind her, pointing its way along the fairy road; her shadow was long and narrow on the grass, overlaid by the flickering movement of the ash tree. Something rustled in the hedge and a young fox strolled out across the lawn, appearing and disappearing as it moved in and out of the light. The dark breeze from the mountains plucked at Aoife’s T-shirt and ran across her skin like cold fingertips.