The Last of the High Kings (12 page)

Even with Donal's tireless help, it took J.J. the best part of two days to cut up the tree and clear away the debris. He hated every minute of the work. He remembered standing under a tree like that in Tír na n'Óg and hearing it resonate and ring with harmonies when he blew a note on his great-grandfather's flute. It was possibly the very same one. Cutting it up now felt like butchery. The gradual wilting of those beautiful red leaves was the worst part and made him wonder whether the greatest instruments in the world would be worth the death of this glorious fairy tree.

On the third day he borrowed a strong trailer from Peter Hayes and hitched it up to the car. He had cut the trunk of the chiming maple into three pieces, and he used the front loader of his old tractor to get them
onto the trailer. Then, at four o'clock in the morning of the fourth day, he set out for Waterford.

It was a long drive, but well worth it. There was a sawmill there run by a man who specialized in cutting timber for fine furniture and instrument making, and J.J. was taking no chances with this tree. He drove slowly, and it took him nearly five hours to get there, giving him plenty of time for thinking. He spent most of it dreaming of what Aengus had said to him about going to stay in Tír na n'Óg. The sense of timelessness there had been so blissful, and the company of those easygoing people so pleasant. There were fewer time constraints in everyone's life now that the leak had been stopped, but there were still plenty of other pressures and responsibilities that he would love to escape. He had never gone back before now because he had been afraid of getting it wrong and letting his earthly life pass by while he was playing the fiddle and dancing. But the idea of retiring there was a new one and very attractive. He would have to wait until the children grew up, of course, but after that what was there to stop him? Aisling could come too, if she wanted to. It would be hard to move her piano, but she could learn to play something else instead. And when the children had passed the best of their lives in this
world, what was to stop their coming over as well? He envisaged generation upon generation of middle-aged Liddys basking in the perpetual sunshine of Tír na n'Óg, immune to the passage of time in this world, the place that the fairies called the Land of the Dying.

While J.J.'s wood was being sawed in Waterford, there was a surprise visitor at the Liddy house. He didn't knock but walked in through the back door and lowered himself, with great difficulty, into the armchair beside the stove. Aidan discovered him there during one of his armed patrols of the house, and the visitor sent him to fetch Donal.

“Quick,” said Mikey when Donal came in. “I forgot my glasses. What time does that say?”

He held out his arm, and Donal read the time on his wristwatch.

“It says quarter to ten,” said Donal, “but it's wrong. It's about two hours slow.”

“Never mind the hours,” said Mikey. “I'm only looking at the big hand. I'd say I've been here five min
utes now, which means it took me just over half an hour to get here. Not bad for an old man, wouldn't you say?”

“Did you walk over?” said Donal, putting on the kettle.

“I did,” said Mikey. “How else would I ever get to hear a tune these days?”

Donal blushed. “I'm sorry I haven't been over lately,” he said.

“Not a bit,” said Mikey. “I'm only winding you up. But I said it's time I got into training, so I've made a start. I walked around the whole of the home farm yesterday, and I'm up as far as here today.”

“Training for what?” said Donal.

“The Dublin City Marathon,” said Mikey. “I start running tomorrow.”

Jenny came in at that point, and Mikey turned to her. “Did you hear that, girleen? I'm running the marathon.”

Jenny didn't know what the marathon was, so the joke was lost on her.

“You're not really going running tomorrow, are you, Mikey?” said Donal.

“Maybe not tomorrow.” The humor left Mikey's face abruptly. “Maybe we'll get up to the top of the
mountain first. God knows, I'll have no peace until I do.”

“The trouble is,” said Donal, “I'm afraid we couldn't get the helicopter. Dad—we tried all the helicopter companies in the phone book, but they only do golf tours.”

“Golf tours,” said Mikey flatly. “There's a thing. But thank your father for trying anyway. I had an idea it wasn't going to work in any case.”

Aisling came into the kitchen and was astonished to see Mikey installed in the chair.

“How did you get here, Mikey?” she said.

“I walked,” said Mikey. “Every step of the way.”

Aisling was instantly filled with guilt. Mikey had been a savior during the time when Hazel was small and J.J. was away at college. She was a “blow-in” and didn't know many people in the area. There had been a few good neighbors, but Mikey was the best. He called over nearly every day on his way up the mountainside to look at the cattle, always ready to stop and chat, always patient and entertaining with Hazel. If Aisling was depressed, he cheered her up, and if she was feeling cynical, he restored her faith in human nature. When he had given up the winterage at the top of the farm, unable to make the long climb anymore,
he had still walked over as far as the house, just to pay her a visit. She regretted that she didn't find more time to return those visits now that he found it so difficult to get around.

 

She took over the making of the tea. A minute or two later Aidan came in and stood surveying Mikey, as though wondering how to get rid of him.

“Is Belle outside?” said Donal. “Can I give her a biscuit?”

“She's at home in the house,” said Mikey. “She must be the stupidest dog ever walked this earth, that one. I can't get anywhere when she comes with me. You'd swear she was doing her best to make me fall.”

“Poor Belle,” said Donal. “I don't think she's stupid. I think she just likes being close to you.”

“Close is one thing,” said Mikey. “Under my feet is another.”

“Go home,” said Aidan.

“I'll go home when I'm good and ready,” said Mikey. “And you mind your manners.”

Jenny got bored and began a new, aimless circuit of the house. She hadn't been outside the house since the day the tree arrived, and now that she was spending more time inside she was discovering things that
she had never noticed before. The pile of unused instrument cases in the corner of the sitting room had a spider city built behind it. The window in Donal and Aidan's bedroom didn't close properly. And the front door, which had always seemed so heavy and solid when she was trying to sneak out through it, was a flimsy defense. One tap on it from the púka, and all those glass panels would shatter into tiny pieces. Jenny knew she wasn't safe anywhere.

She couldn't decide whether she preferred being on her own or with the others, so she went back into the kitchen to find out. Aisling had poured the tea. Mikey was drinking his rapidly, with an interesting variety of noises.

“Will I get the accordion and play you a tune?” said Donal.

“I don't think so,” said Mikey. “Not this time. If I sit here much longer, I'll seize up entirely, and you'll have to get a crane to lift me out.”

Mikey handed his cup to Aisling, and Aidan took the opportunity to dash in and give him an open-handed smack on the knee. With surprising speed, Mikey grabbed his hand before he could pull it free.

“Good man,” he said to Aidan. “Give me a hand up now.”

“Noo,” Aidan wailed, trying to pull his hand away.
Mikey used his struggling and pulling to get up out of the chair. Or at least he pretended to.

“By God, you're strong for a young fella,” he said, letting go of his hand at last.

Torn between flight and flattery, Aidan stood in the center of the room.

“Will you be all right, Mikey?” said Aisling. “I can't give you a lift because J.J.'s got the car.”

“I'll be fine,” said Mikey. “Why wouldn't I?”

“Shall I come with you?” said Donal.

“No,” said Mikey. “But d'you know what you'll do? Go up into the hazel woods there this afternoon and cut me a good long stick”—he joined the tips of his thumb and forefinger to make a circle—“about this thick”—he then held his hand, palm down, level with his shoulder—“and that long. It'll be a great help to me in my training.”

He stepped out into the sunshine and closed the door behind him.

Donal looked at Jenny. “Will you come with me?”

Jenny shook her head.

“Yes, you will,” said Aisling. “We've all been cooped up in this house too long. We'll all go to the woods and get a stick for Mikey, and we'll bring Sergeant Aidan for the walk.”

John Duffy at the sawmill dropped everything to get J.J.'s wood sawed, so that he could get back on the road again. He was very impressed by the wood, and so was J.J. when he saw it coming off the mill. It was beautifully figured, with the strong flame and curl so prized by instrument makers. John Duffy offered to buy some of it from him, to sell to other customers, but J.J. said he wouldn't sell at any price.

He asked John to cut the wood in different ways. He wanted mainly fiddle backs, but he asked for a few cello backs as well. Most of the wood was cut on the quarter, like very thin, very deep slices of a pie. This would make the flame show as horizontal stripes running across the backs of the instruments when they were made. Under the varnish, the stripes would
appear to have three dimensions when they were moved around under the light. It was a sort of natural holographic effect and was to be found only in the best of curly maple. It was the most common way for wood to be cut, but J.J. asked for some to be slab cut as well; that would give the fiddle backs a different, more irregular and unusual pattern.

When it all was cut and loaded back on the trailer, J.J. set off again, and he had as much time for thinking on his way back as he had had on his way there. More time than was healthy, perhaps, because it was during that long drive that he came up with an extraordinary idea. He tried very hard to dismiss it, but once it appeared he just couldn't get rid of it. It was meeting the púka that had given rise to the seed of the idea. Or meeting the púka again, because he was as sure as he could be that the púka was the same one he had met in Tír na n'Óg. It had made him think back to that earlier meeting, and he had remembered something the púka had said: “Do you want to know the real magic that is at work in the world?” And there had been something else: “Do you know who we are who walk between the worlds and haunt the wild places of the earth?”

What worlds? That was what J.J. wanted to know.

Just this one and Tír na n'Óg, or were there others? In his mind was a fixed memory of his grandfather's flute when he had first taken it out of the wall between this world and Tír na n'Óg. One end of it, the Tír na n'Óg end, was clean and shiny. The other end, which had been exposed to the passage of time, was dusty and covered with cobwebs and noticeably darker. One end, in effect, was older than the other.

J.J. tried again to put the idea out of his mind and forget about it. He just couldn't.

 

When he arrived home, it was late, and he was exhausted. He had a quick cup of tea and a bite to eat, then enlisted Donal and Jenny to help him unload the sawed timber. He had brought home on the trailer every last scrap of it, even the useless offcuts, just in case John Duffy had been tempted to make a closer examination of it. He doubted anything would show up in analysis, but he didn't want to take any chances.

As he took it off the trailer, J.J. separated the pieces into three piles. Donal took everything on the first pile into the loft of the cow byre and stacked it there. Jenny took the pieces from the second pile into the workshop, where she left them on the floor for J.J. to stack later. The third pile was smaller and was made
up of some of the nicest pieces on the trailer. By the time he had finished unloading there was enough wood on that pile for the backs and matching necks of ten fiddles. About half of them were wedges for two-piece backs, tied with string into matching pairs. The rest were wider pieces for one-piece backs, and two of them were slab cut. These last ones were J.J.'s favorites, and his fingers itched to start carving them into shape. They might have to keep itching for another eight years, but J.J. had set aside that little pile for a particular reason. If his plan worked, he might be turning them into fiddles much, much sooner than that.

When they eventually climbed into bed that night, Aisling told J.J. about the trip to the woods to cut a stick for Mikey.

“Did you see the púka?” said J.J.

“No, no sign of him. But I'm very worried about Jenny.”

“Why?” said J.J.

“She's totally lost her confidence. She spent the whole trip hanging on to me as if her life depended on it. I've never seen her like that before.”

“She'll get over it,” said J.J. “She's just had a few shocks, that's all. You didn't see the púka when it tore up that tree. It was pretty scary, you know.”

“Perhaps that's all it is,” said Aisling. “But she must be feeling a bit insecure, knowing she's not
our real daughter and all that.”

“I don't see what we can do about it, do you?” said J.J. “Other than what we're doing?”

“No, I don't,” said Aisling, “but I wish I did.”

She turned over, and before long she was snoring softly. But tired as he was, there was to be no sleep for J.J. that night. He lay awake, staring into the darkness of the room, listening to the night calls of vixens and owls, and going over and over what he was planning to do the following morning. He knew it was going to be dangerous, and he was deeply afraid; but no matter how hard he tried he couldn't talk himself out of his decision.

 

At first light he got up quietly and went downstairs. He wasn't hungry, but breakfast was an excuse for delaying his departure, so he made tea and toast and sat at the kitchen table until they were finished. Jenny, who still woke early even though she no longer went out, came down as he was getting up to leave. She didn't show any interest in where he was going, and he didn't invite her to come.

The previous evening he had packed all his specially selected wood into the biggest rucksack he had. It was alarmingly heavy, and he was afraid that the bag wouldn't stand the strain, but he was reluctant to leave
any of the wood behind. If his plan worked, it might be the only chance he got, so he had to take all he could carry.

The straps cut into his shoulders as he walked across the farmland, and the sharp corners of the slabs and wedges dug into his back. Despite his discomfort and the anxiety that dogged his every step, he found himself appreciating the fresh morning air and the energy of the birds as they soared and sang in the sunlight.

He scanned the hillside ahead of him. At first he couldn't see what he was looking for, and he wondered if today of all days, the púka would decide not to show. But eventually he spotted him, high, high up and far to his right, a little white dot perched on a rock at the very edge of the mountaintop.

He stopped and adjusted the straps of the rucksack. It looked as though he had a long, arduous climb ahead of him, but if that was what it took, he was prepared to undertake it. On the off chance, though, he waved his hand in the púka's direction, three times in the biggest arc his arm could make. For a moment nothing happened. Then the púka began to descend and cross the hillside toward him.

J.J.'s heart stopped as his nerve failed. Was he really
going to do this? It wasn't too late to change his mind and pull out. Then he remembered why he was doing it. His pulse restarted, racing at his throat, and his feet began to move again. He was going to make some of the best violins the world had ever seen.

No one could understand why the instruments made by the famous Antonius Stradivarius were so good. The most faithfully executed copies could not compare with the originals, even though all the dimensions were the same, right down to the last tenth of a millimeter. The fiddle that J.J. played was an original “Strad,” although he didn't make this generally known. It had been a gift from the maker to Aengus Óg, who had left it behind on one of his visits to J.J.'s grandmother, and it had been handed down in the family ever since.

Aengus had never asked for it back, but it was he who had told J.J. that Stradivarius had made the backs of his violins from chiming maple. It had grown once on the ploddy side of the time skin, but every last tree had been cut down during the Middle Ages. Somehow Stradivarius had discovered the wood in Tír na n'Óg and had succeeded in acquiring regular supplies of it. Only J.J. knew this, and he had every intention of exploiting his knowledge.

 

He crossed the wall at the top of the farm and continued to walk diagonally across the hillside in the direction of the púka. He was hidden from his sight now, by the crags and hollows that lay between them. There was a possibility, of course, that they wouldn't meet at all, but J.J. thought it unlikely. There was no doubt that the púka had seen him.

At the edge of the hazel woods he stopped. His heart was pounding, partly from the exertion of the climb and partly from a growing feeling of terror. He began to wonder what kind of madness was compelling him to do this. What was it that Aengus had said about púkas? “Members of the devil class,” that was it. But then Aengus himself was hardly the most reliable person he had ever met, and there was clearly some deeply held enmity between him and the púka. In Tír na n'Óg they had bad-mouthed each other. And the evidence from this world was that the púka was quite benign. Admittedly he had frightened the wits out of J.J. and the children, but on the other hand, he had been given plenty of opportunity to do harm, particularly to Jenny, and he never had.

Even so, that first step forward into the green shadows of the woods cost J.J. every ounce of courage that
he had. After a few paces he stopped again, letting his eyes adjust to the difference in the light and wishing his frantic pulse would settle. He took a few steadying breaths and moved on into the heart of the woods.

He didn't have to go far. The púka was waiting for him, in his long shape, sitting on a mossy rock and leaning against the silvery trunk of an ash tree.

“Hello, J.J.,” he said. J.J. chose a rock for himself at a respectful distance and shrugged the heavy pack from his shoulders. It dropped with a rattle to the ground.

“Hello,” he said, trying to sound cheerful. “Beautiful morning!”

“Ah, but isn't every morning beautiful, J.J.? Isn't this whole world just the bee's knees?” The púka stretched languidly and crossed his legs. His hands, J.J. noticed, had fingers and thumbs like his own, but his feet still had cloven hooves. “But what has you up and about so early?”

J.J. would have preferred to have beaten about the bush for a bit longer, but since the púka had asked, he came straight out with it.

“I was looking for you, actually.”

“How exciting,” said the púka. “It's very unusual these days for anybody to come looking for me. What can I do for you?”

“Well,” said J.J., “I wanted to ask you something. You told me once that you walked between the worlds, and I was sort of wondering about whether that just meant, you know, between here and Tír na n'Óg or whether there were other worlds as well.”

“There are indeed,” said the púka. “More than you could count. But was there some particular kind of world you were looking for?”

J.J. nodded. “You know the way there's no time in Tír na n'Óg but there's time here, and it goes by at a certain speed? Well, I was wondering whether there might be a world where time goes by even faster than it does here.”

The púka laughed. “Since you sat down on that rock,” he said, “whole worlds have been born, lived out their existence, and died again. Is that fast enough for you?”

“Whoa,” said J.J. “That's a bit too fast.”

“But why would you want such a world?” said the púka. “Are you tired of your existence? Are you in a big rush to spend the rest of your years?”

“No, no,” said J.J. “It's not for me. I don't want to go there. I just want to send something there.” He reached into the rucksack and took out a quarter-sawed slab. “I have this beautiful wood, you see, from the tree you got for me. But it's too fresh, and I can't
use it. It needs to cure for eight or ten years before I can make fiddles out of it.”

“I see,” said the púka. “So the world is in a great rush for more fiddles, is it?”

“Well, not exactly,” said J.J. “There are plenty of fiddles around. But these would be better.”

“And you need a better fiddle than you have?”

“Not me,” said J.J. “I have a good one already. But I could sell them, you see.”

“They would be worth a lot of money, I imagine,” said the púka. He appeared to be battling with some kind of strong emotion, and J.J. tensed. But the battle, whatever it was, resulted in a smile. “And you would become world famous as a violin maker.”

“That's about the size of it, I suppose,” said J.J.

“I see,” said the púka. “And for this you are willing to sell your soul?”

J.J.'s jaw dropped, and the púka laughed. “What you desire can be done, J.J. But do you think I'm just here to grant your wishes? Like a fairy godmother?”

“Well, no,” said J.J., although the bitter truth was that he had thought just that.

“No,” said the púka. “I think I'll probably let you keep your soul. But if I age the wood for you, I will expect something in return.”

“Like what?” asked J.J., suddenly far less keen on the whole idea.

“What would you think was fair?” said the púka. “A pound of flesh perhaps? A few pints of blood? The fingers of your left hand?”

J.J. returned the slab to his rucksack. “I'm not sure this was such a good plan after all,” he said.

“How typical of your race,” said the púka scathingly. “You want everything, and you want it now; but you know the true cost of nothing. Without so much as a second thought you strip the planet of its trees and drain it of its oil and smother its skin with concrete.”

J.J.'s hackles rose. He knew that the planet was in serious danger, and at home he and the family lived as simple a life as any family he knew. But he felt extremely guilty about the number of aircraft flights he had been taking. “Actually there are plenty of people with second thoughts,” he said. “They're just not the same people who had the first thoughts.”

The púka, with a visible effort, reined himself in. “Perhaps I'm not being fair,” he said. “After all, you only want to make a few fiddles. It's a harmless enough occupation, isn't it? It's hardly heavy industry.”

J.J. shook his head. “It's so I can stay at home and
do a bit of farming instead of flying around the world playing concerts. I would be doing the environment a favor.”

“Let's make a deal then,” said the púka. “There is in fact something I want, and it won't cost you an arm and a leg. I'm afraid I gave the little fairy child a fright when I fetched your tree for you the other day. She hasn't been to see me since then. It's so rare for me to have a friend, and I miss her dreadfully. If I do this thing for you, will you promise to bring Jenny up here to see me and help me to win back her confidence?”

J.J. thought long and hard, but he couldn't find any objections. In all the months and years Jenny had been roaming the hillsides with the púka no harm had ever come to her. The main problems would arise when term started again.

“All right,” said J.J. “But there's one condition: You mustn't let her take time out of school.”

“School?” said the púka. “What use is schooling to a fairy child?”

“Not much, I agree,” said J.J. “But if she doesn't go, it creates big problems for my wife and me. The authorities, you know? They don't understand about púkas and fairies and all that stuff.”

“Hmm,” said the púka.

“She can come anytime outside school hours”—J.J. went on—“but she can't keep taking time off.”

“You drive a hard bargain,” said the púka.

“Well…” said J.J. “Maybe she could take one day a week off without too much hassle. But definitely no more than that.”

“Done,” said the púka abruptly. “You have yourself a deal.”

Delighted with himself, J.J. unpacked the wood. The púka stretched out a hand that was enormous and way out of proportion to the rest of his body, but J.J. was too excited to be shocked. He stacked the slabs, the wedges, and the neck blocks in the massive palm, and when they all were there, the púka closed his hairy fingers around them. He sat quite still for a moment, concentrating hard. Then, with terrifying speed and violence, he swung his arm up and punched a hole through some invisible membrane in the air. Fragments of brilliant green light splintered around his fist for an instant, and then it was gone. The púka's arm appeared to end at the wrist.

“How old do you need it to be?” he asked.

“About ten years?” said J.J. “Twelve would be perfect.”

The púka nodded thoughtfully, waited a moment
or two longer, and then, in another scatter of flinty green splinters, withdrew his hand. It was absolutely filthy, covered with layers of grime and powdery reddish dust. He dropped the pile of wood at J.J.'s feet, and J.J. inspected the top piece. It was just right: dry and hard and absolutely ready to be used.

The púka's hand had returned to its previous size, and he was busy trying to brush the dirt off it with the other one.

“This is perfect,” said J.J. “Thanks a million.”

“You're welcome,” said the púka, who was now wiping the dirty hand on the thick moss that covered a nearby rock. “Just don't forget your side of the bargain, all right?”

“I won't,” said J.J., packing the wood back into the rucksack. “I'll be back with Jenny before the day is out.”