The Call Read online

  And she does. She drops her remaining crutch, preferring to pull herself along the chain-link fence with the power of her arms. Years of weight training, of determination, move her over the rough ground almost as fast as the others can run. She hears more voices shouting behind her now: Nicole and Aoife. All her friends have come to buy her a slim chance at escape …

  But neither Liz Sweeney nor Bruggers has been caught up in whatever chaos Megan has arranged, and five minutes later Nessa meets them coming the other way.

  Nessa ducks out of sight. The two knights haven’t seen her yet. Their pace is reluctant and sweat rolls down their foreheads. Each is spooked whenever the other makes a sudden movement, leaving Nessa in no doubt that the mound is getting to them.

  But their imminent approach leaves her with an awful choice: crawl off into the forest, in the hopes that the poor autumnal foliage will cover her tracks, or slip through the break in the chain-link fence.

  The latter is not an option. It can’t be. Every muscle in her body—no!—every cell recoils from it. And that’s how she knows it’s her best chance. For who will follow her into that?

  She ducks under the wire, aware of Bruggers’s rough voice only ten steps away.

  “I’ve had enough. She’s dead anyway when they Call her. Don’t see why it’s our business to begin with.”

  And Liz Sweeney’s practiced sneer. “Are you jealous, Bruggers? You want Conor for yourself?”

  “So what? I don’t hide it. Unlike some.”

  And Liz Sweeney doesn’t like that one bit, but Nessa is struggling to concentrate on her own situation. She needs to get under cover quickly before they figure out which way she’s gone. Right by the break in the wire, a little animal track begins, zigzagging its way up the mound between rocks and bushes and tufts of grass. Almost as though it were designed to conceal her from anyone outside the fence.

  She crawls forward on her belly, fighting through spells of dizziness. No sooner does she pass the first turn in the path than she hears her pursuers arguing again.

  “There’s no way she went in there! She didn’t! She couldn’t have!”

  “You’re a dirty coward, Bruggers! Of course she went in there. Her tracks stop exactly at this point. Exactly!”

  “Then she’s been Called. That’s what this feeling is! Oh, gods! Oh, Crom. You stay if you want!”

  And Liz Sweeney’s voice, full of bravado and trembling just a little, cries, “Run then, you coward! I’m going in.”

  Nessa has used the sound of their argument as a distraction while she pulls herself along. She feels sicker than ever, but the feeling comes in waves, and every time the tide goes out just a little she drags herself farther along, farther up the slope.

  Liz Sweeney can’t be more than five footsteps away, but her voice is faint as she calls, “I’m coming for you, Clip-Clop! Not even the Cauldron will fix you after I’m finished.” And then the sounds of throwing up.

  Nessa’s journey feels like an eternity. The path must be twisting around the whole mound, because no matter how far she crawls, she never reaches the end of it. And the rocks! Why didn’t she notice them when she came up here with Megan? They’re huge! The only explanation she can think of is that the scientists must have dug them up. But that can’t explain the tree-sized ferns growing all around her.

  I’m hallucinating, she realizes at last. That sickening feeling, like a diseased finger lodged in her throat, is affecting her mind too.

  Liz Sweeney is still following. “I’ll get you … ,” she wheezes, some way back.

  Nessa could take her in an ambush, but somehow that never crosses her mind. All she can think of today is flight. And on she goes, around and around the base of the artificial hill, until at last the path comes to an end.

  Before her lies what can only be described as the face of a cliff, many times taller than herself—taller indeed than the whole mound should be. And in the rock is a door. Although “door” seems like a poor word for such a thing, so large and weighty, carved into the very stone of which it is a part. Were it to open, an elephant could charge through without scraping its sides, and the riders on its back wouldn’t even bow their heads to pass underneath.

  Two body-lengths away from the door, Nessa comes to a halt, unable to approach any closer, unable to bear the sight of it. This is when the contents of her stomach come up. Her thighs are damp with her own urine, although she doesn’t remember when that happened.

  “Come back,” says a voice behind her.

  It is Liz Sweeney, all aggression gone, her face like parchment, like that of an ancient.

  “Come back,” she says again. And Nessa can only agree. Her own death is meaningless here. Her mutilation, her life. Liz Sweeney’s life.

  Together they turn around, and although nobody is hiding from anybody else now, they remain on hands and knees, the lowest of creatures, without even the dignity of a worm.

  Both are starving by the time they reach the break in the fence again. They’ve spent a whole day climbing the hill. Exactly a day—they must have. The sky is the same color it was when they went in; the same hailstones bounce from every surface.

  People will be wondering where they’ve gotten to. Year 1s will be combing the forest for their bodies, expecting that they will have been Called.

  So it comes as a huge surprise to both of them to find Conor, Tony, Fiver, and Bruggers waiting for them, with Megan tied to a tree at their backs. She looks as if she is sleeping.

  “Well done, Liz!” Conor’s smile is broad, genuinely warm. “That was quick indeed!”

  Neither of the returning girls speaks. Neither can. They only stare as Conor gently separates them. Then he pulls Nessa close and whispers, “I wish you hadn’t made me do this. I ought to kill you. I should kill you. But I’m just going to break your arms today. I don’t enjoy hurting people.” His breathing is fast, however, like a boy before that first, longed-for kiss. And he takes her unresisting left arm and Bruggers says, “Do it!”

  And Keith and Tony both nod, although the latter looks away in shame.

  “And Liz Sweeney?” Conor asks. “What’s your vote?”

  But Liz Sweeney is too far away to cast any preferences. She has fallen to her bottom against the base of a tree, her chin stained with vomit.

  “Well then, if we’re all in favor … ”

  He turns her around so that the others can see his face, see how mature and measured he is being about this whole thing, and indeed, how little Nessa means to him.

  Still, she does not resist. She is facing the mound now. She doesn’t care about her arm. She is thinking, I could walk to the very top of it in two minutes! No huge rocks dot its surface. No prehistorically large ferns. Just waist-high ones, pushing up through the soil and through clumps of fist-sized stones.

  “You will leave her alone.”

  Nessa is released to fall at Conor’s feet. It is not an instructor that has found them, but a stranger: a boy wrapped in a filthy bedsheet, his short hair wild, with a patchy beard struggling to cling to his face.

  “Anto?” Conor is surprised.

  A man-sized bush is all that stands between them: two boys, one at the peak of physical perfection, an Olympian, the other a ghost.

  “Nessa?” Anto whispers. She manages to drag her gaze away from the mound. He flinches from her, lowering his eyes. “Aoife knocked on my door yesterday. Said you were … threatened. You … you can leave now.”

  But she hasn’t got the willpower to move.

  As for Conor, he just laughs. “So, the mighty conqueror returns, does he? You? You escaped the Sídhe?” He steps closer. Anto sways back and Nessa idly thinks that there is something not quite right about the way he is moving, about the way the sheet that covers him lies across his body.

  “Conor … ,” he pleads.

  “Not such a hero after all?” The king grins. “I took two pints of your blood last time. I will have another if you force me to. Now back off!”

 
; “Nessa?” Anto whispers. “Come. Come on. Just … just don’t look at me.”

  “No!” cries Conor. “She’s not going anywhere! I don’t care that you’re a veteran. She will pay the price for her disrespect. Two arms broken.” He leans down to take Nessa’s hand again. “Your only job is to watch.”

  “Don’t … ,” says Anto, a bit louder than before, and when Conor moves his grip to Nessa’s elbow Anto cries, “Don’t! Don’t!” Tears of distress are pouring down his face.

  “I will!” shouts Conor, “I—”

  And Anto screams.

  He grabs the bush between them by its trunk and pulls it right from the soil, roots and all, swinging it about his head like an enormous club. Stones fly from it to strike enemy and friend alike. Megan jerks into consciousness and cries out in fear. Bruggers and Fiver fall back, staring and staring at this impossible feat of strength. And that’s not all they see.

  Conor and his allies, with the exception of the silent Liz Sweeney, flee for their lives. And slowly Anto’s passion cools and the bush falls to earth. Hurriedly he covers himself with the sheet, but not before Nessa has seen his left arm. It is twice as thick as his right and long enough that the tips of the fingers reach down as far as his ankle to form a giant’s fist.

  “Don’t look,” he begs her, and never in her life has she seen such despair. And then he too is gone, running lopsidedly, with the bedsheet flying behind him like a superhero’s cloak.

  It is an hour before Megan frees herself and gathers up the two other girls to lead them back to the college. Darkness has fallen, and slowly Nessa beats back the numbness that afflicts her.

  “That was Anto,” she manages.

  “Yes,” says Megan. “That … was … ” She is bleeding from her scalp and bruised about the face and neck. It takes all of Nessa’s willpower to get out a “thank you” to her best friend for saving her life.

  Somewhere ahead of them, on the way into the shower block, Tony’s tracksuit falls to the ground, his body gone from it.

  Like most teenagers of this time and place, Tony’s story is not a long one, and it will come to its end no more than twenty minutes after his arrival in the Grey Land.

  Tony can run as fast as anyone in Year 5, save maybe Anto. His sparring is good too and he takes great delight in tracking others in the hunt, or in fooling them by leaving elaborate false trails of his own. It’s this intense focus on the ground, on the secrets of soil and twig, that prove his undoing.

  He has sprinted away from the area where he appeared, and is now leaning against a tree to catch his breath. He never will catch it. Instead a great, soft weight smacks into him hard enough to smash him to the ground. Bones are broken in the fall, and he is on his face in acidic muck, barely able to turn his head in order to breathe.

  And then the strangest thing, a voice, speaking English with an American accent. “Oh, thank you! Thank you, Jesus!”

  “Who … ?” Tony manages.

  “Hush now! Hush! You’re the answer to our prayers.” Needle-sharp teeth rip a fist of flesh out of Tony’s back. He twists like a speared eel; he screams, until a filthy claw piles mud into his mouth and begs him, “Oh, no! Please don’t! By God and all his angels, you are so delicious. I’m sorry, I have to—” And then Tony is thrashing again.

  “Papa, Papa!”

  “I’m here, girls, I’m here! Quick now, before they come for him. Eat what you can, you hear?”

  Heavy, furry bodies land hard enough to fracture more of Tony’s bones. New teeth tear at his flesh, filling his vision with red …

  Only his skeleton returns for examination, picked clean of even the marrow. Nor is his the only corpse to turn up that day in the school. Two others, a Year 4 and a Year 6, will add to the silence in the refectory this evening.

  Dozens of the latest Testimonies lie open on the narrow desk in Mr. Hickey’s office. His tongue sticks out in fascination, and every few minutes an ink-stained hand wanders up from the books to push his glasses back into place.

  “Interesting,” he’ll mutter, his breath clouding the cold air.

  But he’s not searching for evidence of plants or new dangers to document, as he’s supposed to. Instead, like thousands all over the island, the hunt master is indulging in the pointless hobby of “mapping” the enemy’s world.

  Teenagers stumble through horror and chaos. They flee every kind of peril, from Sídhe arrows to sucking mud, from god-sized storms to murderous “insects.” All they can think of is survival, and those few who return are often so traumatized from the events that it can take trained psychiatrists months to get anything useful out of them. And these addled accounts then form the basis of Seán Hickey’s … pastime.

  Let’s say that a decade ago a girl wandered through a swamp full of singing “lizards”? And just last year that boy, the famous one from Cork, nearly sank to his death with some kind of music in the background? It might be the same place. And the river he skirted could well match up with the one that appears in a hundred other accounts. And so on. Hopeless, but somehow compelling. Thrilling even, because sometimes Seán thinks he is the first to recognize a geographical feature that will appear in the Mappers’ Newsletter.

  “Come in!” he calls when a knock sounds at the door to his little room.

  Ms. Breen does just that.

  Her ugliness is extraordinary. Like something the Sídhe made from an unfortunate captive, and when he first came to the college he always referred to her in his own thoughts by the names the students gave her, “the Turkey” or “Gobbler.” But nowadays he can’t hide from the fact that she is far more intelligent than he is, and so dedicated to the survival of the students that she has put herself in harm’s way for them more than once.

  When he thinks of her now, it is by her first name only—Alanna—and he speaks it with the deepest respect.

  As always when she enters his office, she spends a few minutes perusing the drawings on his walls—little more than single sheets of paper with hills and coastlines and caves and rivers. Each labeled with names of his own or those taken from the Mappers’ Newsletter.

  “You know this is pointless?” she says for the umpteenth time. “There’s a whole world over there.” She smiles as she speaks because she knows she is just provoking him and that even though he has tasted this bait again and again, still he will rise to it.

  “That’s not what the treaty said.” And by this he means the legendary agreement between the ancestors of the Irish and the Tuatha Dé Danann, whom they replaced in the Many-Colored Land.

  “We don’t know there really was a treaty,” she says.

  “Yes, but if there was, then there is good reason to believe that the Grey Land is no larger than Ireland. In fact, it may even be exactly the same size and shape as Ireland was back then.”

  Or it may not. The Book of Conquests is 1,500 years younger than the events it describes, and contains a great many elements that are easily, demonstrably false.

  Seán sighs and forces his fingers to unclench from around the pencil before they snap it.

  “What can I do for you, Alanna?” He doesn’t bother asking her if this is a social visit. She has no hobbies and exactly the same number of friends as he has. Her whole life is the college and the Nation.

  “Why adolescents?” she asks.

  “Why always the same question?” he responds, but then he sighs again, because she won’t leave him alone unless they play this out to the finish. “The Sídhe take them because they can. Because they are our future and because it breaks our hearts and our spirit to see them die.”

  But that is no answer at all, as well he knows. So he adds, “Alanna, you and I both know that it’s not just teenagers they take.”

  “Go on,” she says. They’re not supposed to talk about the others, but there’s nobody else present and clearly she’s come in here today to use him as a sounding board. So he gives her the rest of it.

  “They’ll take newborns sometimes, as long as th
ey’re less than a day old.” And he thinks of the panic that would cause if it were generally known! “But it’s harder for them to do that, a lot harder, because the window of opportunity for the … the Call is so brief.”

  “And who else?”

  “The dying, sometimes. The window is even shorter for them. The Sídhe have got to Call them within hours of death, but that’s even rarer than for the babies. It’s the old Gateway theory. When we cross certain thresholds in our lives, it puts us closer to their world. And since adolescence is the longest of these, it’s easier for them to … to find us.”

  She smiles and pulls up the office’s spare chair so that he knows she’s finally ready to get to the point. She fiddles with her pipe, but she never lights it outside her own office.

  “I’m an idiot,” she says, and he sits up, because he rarely hears anger in her voice. “Telling students to stay away from the mound wasn’t enough. How could I not know that? I was a teenager once myself, and I never left well enough alone. I should have had instructors guarding that stupid fence day and night. Teachers even! And now there’s been another Call that may be a result of the students’ presence in the forest. But”—and she licks her lips, the scholar in her fascinated—“one of the students came to me after, Vanessa Doherty.”

  “The polio girl? Nessa?”

  “The same. She’s spending her first night in the Cage, by the way. But listen, Seán, listen to what she told me.”

  He gasps as she describes the path up to the top of the mound and the door that waited there.

  “You think the path is actually part of the Grey Land? But no, no, you don’t! There were ferns and so on. Oh, Crom! The ferns she saw, were they the same as ours?”

  Alanna Breen grins. “I knew you’d get it, Seán. And so did Nessa, the smart girl, after she had recovered. That’s why she risked extra Cage time to tell me, because this is too important. The ferns, as you say, were the same as ours, except they were enormous. And these are the words she used, the very words: ‘It’s like I was shrinking,’ she said. Shrinking!”