The Invasion Read online

  ‘Ouch!’ cries the giant. ‘I have an ouch!’ Oh, Crom! Anto recoils at what he’s done. The whole left side of its body is a crumpled, bleeding pulp of flesh.

  And the crow-woman screams at him, ‘How dare you! You brute! You nasty brute!’

  She dives at his eyes while Anto swats her away, queasy from the stench of blood and the harm he has inflicted.

  And now the first giant, the one without the door frame, wraps him with two arms that might as well be bands of steel.

  ‘Crush?’ it asks.

  Something lands on Anto’s shoulder. He can’t move. Even his left arm has finally met its match.

  The crow-woman’s ‘feet’ are human hands, and the feeling of her perching there is exactly that of his own mother squeezing his shoulder in encouragement.

  ‘Good boy, Malcolm,’ says the crow-woman, ‘Good boy. Yes. Crush his heart, but if you damage his face, whatever will I have for my supper?’

  It will be quick, Anto thinks. Goodbye, Nessa. Goodbye, my love. I know you weren’t a traitor.

  The creature’s muscles begin to flex. Not even a second remains before it brings its strength to bear, but that splinter of time is the boy’s entire world. The giant’s sharp sweat overwhelms his nose; the heat of its body is like a hearth at his back, and its breath wheezes slightly, and bubbles too as it prepares to obey the loving commands of the crow-woman.

  But then a shot goes off and Anto is spattered with warm gore. The crow is gone, the grip loosened so that he tumbles to the icy earth. Another shot. Crow-women wail in terror and despair. ‘My boy! You hurt my boy!’

  And suddenly Liz Sweeney’s angry face is right above Anto’s. It is one of the most welcome sights he has ever seen.

  ‘I need you to help me with Aoife,’ she says, spitting the words at him. ‘Stupid cow is alive.’

  ‘You … you came back for me?’

  ‘Well, you came back for her. What is it about that sterile heifer? You fancy her? You know she’s not into boys, right? Oh, come on. Be quick about it.’

  Aoife lies trembling on a pile of her own smouldering clothing. They pick her up between them, while crows fly overhead, some weeping for their ‘lost boys’, some still calling the alarm. But the swarm of monsters that earlier filled the road beyond has petered out.

  They leave the crows behind, pushing through bushes and trees while Aoife shivers violently between them.

  ‘Wait,’ says Anto. ‘This is far enough. Nobody’s following. Let me give her my coat.’

  ‘Don’t be an idiot, it’s too big. And where will you loot another to fit around your arm? She can have mine. The little twist already made me waste the last two bullets in the gun, and now this! Bah! By Crom, it’s cold.’

  But she’s gentle in wrapping the coat around Aoife, and she winds the girl’s feet in bandages to keep them warm. ‘Of all the people to survive the Grey Land,’ she mutters. Then her heroic brow creases. Perhaps Liz Sweeney is realizing that she’s the last Year 5 who has yet to be Called. It could take her any second now. Or it might drag the tension out over another two years. ‘Bah,’ she says again. ‘But at least we can be sure Aoife’s no traitor.’

  ‘We can?’ asks Anto.

  Liz Sweeney looks at him scornfully. She has such a proud face. Strong too. Free of doubt. ‘The Sídhe don’t need anyone else. They’ve already won, haven’t they? The king has let them in.’

  ‘If they’ve won, how come I’ve only seen one of them since the invasion? They should be … I don’t know … enjoying this. Taking a bigger part in it. Instead they send monsters to do all their work for them.’

  She sneers. ‘Scared, I’d say.’

  Anto can’t agree. ‘They’re never scared. Only happy.’

  As though she is listening, Aoife shudders. But her eyes are screwed tightly shut and she mutters prayers to herself. Who knows what she’s seen?

  ‘We need to keep moving,’ Liz Sweeney says. ‘The others will have gone on, thinking we’re dead.’

  But at that very moment Nabil appears right beside them. ‘No more talking,’ he whispers, but his brown eyes are shining. Then he shocks Anto by hugging them both. ‘You are heroes,’ he says. He throws Aoife over his shoulder as though she weighs nothing and leads them off to where the others are waiting two fields away.

  Taaft has scowls for both Anto and Liz Sweeney. ‘You got lucky,’ is the most she can manage, and Liz Sweeney hangs her head as though deeply ashamed. Clothing is volunteered by the students to replace what Aoife has lost. The wind is rising and all seven of the children are shivering, although they have squeezed together like penguins with Aoife right in the centre.

  Behind them, the shelling has come to an end. To the west, fires spread through the centre of town. Nabil suggests they return to a shop that they looted on the way in. ‘We need to get Aoife at the shelter,’ he says.

  ‘In the shelter,’ Taaft mutters. ‘Can’t you ever learn English?’

  ‘Can’t you learn Sídhe?’

  ‘The enemy’s tongue?’

  ‘The children’s tongue.’

  ‘Ha! It’s more an advantage to the Sídhe we speak their garbage language than to us. Always has been. They’d never have got a king without it!’

  ‘They would,’ says Liz Sweeney, although it’s not like her to contradict her hero, Taaft. ‘They’d make another envoy like the one with three heads at the school …’

  Everybody knows the smart thing is to stay put and wait for darkness. But they’ll lose Aoife and possibly some of the others to cold if they do that. Instead they cross open fields to a nearby farm. And here they find the first signs that the evacuation of Longford wasn’t as smooth or as easy as it first appeared. A dozen giants lie broken on the ground, along with great numbers of sniffers, centaurs and other monsters the group has yet to encounter. How, Anto thinks, did that thing with the hooves even walk?

  Inside the barn, dead soldiers lie scattered about among bails of hay.

  Andrea stares, fascinated. ‘Why do all of them have gunshots to the head?’

  ‘You must be stupid,’ Liz Sweeney tells her. ‘They shot themselves. Any who didn’t will be a monster by now.’

  ‘They were brave,’ says Nabil. ‘And they left us their guns. You can have one each.’

  Taaft can’t believe it. She laughs and shakes her head. ‘Oh, you messed-up frog. I don’t care that you showed the kids how to shoot, but you gotta know they’re more likely to blow off their own feet than to hit a Sídhe, right?’

  ‘They deserve a chance,’ is his only reply. ‘Here, my friend,’ he says to Anto. He hands the boy a pistol. ‘Better for your arm than a rifle.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Anto turns to find that Aoife is awake and that she’s staring right at him. She’s not fully herself, he can see that. She gapes at him, a look of utter sadness on her face. And when she speaks her voice is far too loud, as though she is unaware the enemy is hunting them.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry, Anto. I saw … I saw Nessa. I think I was meant to. I think they … wanted me to. I saw her!’

  He can only stare back, his heart lodged in his throat. But this is far, far too important and he forces himself to speak.

  ‘Is she … is she alive?’

  Aoife tries to answer him, but she’s sobbing too much. The best she can manage is a nod. Yet, he can tell that this is not good news.

  ‘Have …’ His arm aches with the pain of its making. Blood pounds in his ears. ‘Have they turned her into …?’ He waves outside to where the dead monsters lie.

  ‘It’s worse.’ Aoife is hoarse now after her earlier outburst. ‘She almost had me. I saw. I mean, it was her. Definitely her. The way she walked was the same, but …’

  ‘What?’ Tears run down his face.

  ‘The whole thing was a trick. She was pretending to save me. But then I saw her skin. At the last minute. Her eyes are bigger than they were before. And her skin … Anto, her skin glitters.’ Her v
oice rises to a screech. ‘It glitters!’

  The Lowest Ebb

  Anto has been particularly stupid. He ran when Aoife told him what she’d seen. He had to get away from it. And so here he is, outside, alone. Exposed to every danger.

  Far overhead, beautiful voices sing in harmony. Angels, Niamh calls them, although the creatures making the music are hideous to behold, with their bat-like wings and a trailing skirt of tentacles. They could so easily swoop on the foolish boy. But these two already carry prisoners, trussed up like presents for their Sídhe masters.

  Anto doesn’t care anyway.

  He stumbles in between vast rusting sheds, his back aching from the weight of his arm. He doesn’t want to think about her, about Nessa. He can’t. Anything but that.

  Behind a window are twenty-five-year-old election posters for the crisis government. Nobody has voted since. Ministers die in office, to be replaced by somebody almost as old as they are. They sign orders. They decide who gets medicine and who does not. They apportion guilt without courts, and sometimes … sometimes they get it right.

  But there’s a new ruler now. At least in Sligo there is. The lowest of the low. Worse than any minister with a red pen denying medicine and food to the old and the sick. Worse than the Sídhe themselves …

  The posters blur in his vision and a great, wracking sob tears through his chest. There’s no escaping Aoife’s terrible news. He can’t deny it any more. The king, it seems, was not the only one to betray Ireland. ‘Nessa,’ he whispers. He pushes at the sides of his head, as though he needs to protect the world from the madness within. His gut churns, nausea creeps up his throat. ‘My … my Nessa. My heart.’ And his lips grimace and twist like tortured worms until, eventually, they spit out a new word for her, for the only love of his life. ‘Traitor. My girl is a traitor.’

  But then he jumps, because a voice answers him from the shadows. ‘Yes, a traitor! I bet she slept with all the boys.’

  One of the little crows hops onto the creaking roof of the nearest shed. This one has a man’s face, no bigger than his right fist, wearing a scraggly beard. ‘You are right to weep for her,’ it says. ‘Tears. Bitter, bitter tears.’

  ‘I don’t know how I can feel this way,’ Anto says, ‘after the … the terrible things I have seen. Friends killed. The whole country dying and … and no way home.’

  It cocks its head, the human eyes blinking rapidly. ‘That’s good.’ It has such a kind voice. So understanding. ‘That’s very good. It means the end is near.’

  ‘I know.’ Inside, behind Anto’s grief, lies a yawning emptiness.

  ‘There’s really no point,’ the birdman continues. ‘You should kill yourself.’

  Why not? Anto thinks. He has nothing. No future, certainly, and no past he wants to revisit. Nessa has poisoned all that. And what of the present? In his mind’s eye, he sees the soldiers back at the barn where the others are. Each one dead with a single shot. They were smart. He should be smart too.

  He draws the pistol at his belt, studying it in the grey light. It will be quick. His hand won’t even shake, he’s sure of that, for he feels nothing, is nothing.

  The bird waits. It must know there’s a movie reel of horrors playing in his skull, doing its work for it. But the poor creature just can’t leave well enough alone and it whispers. ‘You think you’re at your lowest ebb, my boy, but you’re not. It’s going to get worse, a lot worse.’

  Anto looks up. ‘How?’ But he knows the answer.

  He’s a freak: a boy with a mouse’s heart, who would prefer to trip over rather than crush an ant. And seeing this in him, as one of their jokes, the Sídhe pumped his arm full of spite. He’s no better than a weapon now. Only good for violence and pain.

  And suddenly, impossibly, Anto laughs. ‘You are a funny little thing, aren’t you?’

  ‘I … I’m just doing my job.’

  The boy stands, and it seems that all his sorrow and guilt slide off his shoulders to smash themselves on the rubble below. He flexes a massive fist. He has seen it break walls and doors. It has shattered bones like eggshells, with neither feeling nor conscience. And all the while, poor, pitiful Anto, the ‘nice guy’, the vegetarian, the pacifist, has fought to contain its evil.

  He laughs again; he can’t help it. How simple it all is. It is time to give in. To accept the gift of the Sídhe and embrace the pleasures of destruction rather than hiding from them.

  No more mercy! No more holding back! The Nation needs warriors not whiners.

  ‘Thank you,’ he tells the bird. Then his unnatural left arm wrenches free a piece of the drainpipe and, before the crow-man can flee, he has smashed the creature to a pulp. He’s breathing hard, he’s grinning. He’s alive again. Alive.

  When finally he turns to leave, he finds Liz Sweeney standing right behind him. He has no idea how long she’s been there.

  ‘How much did you hear?’ he asks. Not that it matters.

  The girl looks at him with her head cocked to one side. Her fine, athletic frame displays caution, but no fear. No need for that when she carries her new rifle as though she was born with it. Liz Sweeney, he realizes, is a warrior too, worthy of respect.

  ‘I heard enough,’ she says at last.

  ‘Enough for what?’

  ‘It’s good you got over that traitorous sow.’

  Anto’s vision turns dark for a moment, his giant fist clenches. But he forces it to relax. She’s right, isn’t she? How can there be more tears? Even now? Angrily he blinks them away. He is a new man. He will make himself a terror for the Sídhe.

  ‘Did Nabil send you for me?’ he asks.

  Her face reddens. ‘No.’

  That’s when they hear the gunshots.

  For a moment Anto freezes, thinking he has abandoned his friends only for them to suffer a terrible attack. But the action is more distant than that. He sees a flash on the horizon and realizes somebody is fighting there. An advance, he thinks. The army is pushing the Sídhe back. Which means … which means if he and his friends can get there, they might find a way over to their own lines!

  If nothing else, it’s a chance for the new Anto, the weapon, to be unleashed.

  They run back to the barn together, excited to share the news. Nabil has already heard the shooting, however. He shakes his head sadly when Anto suggests it’s an advance by the Irish army.

  ‘No, my friend. It’s just another little group like ours.’ He points to the dead soldiers whose pockets are still being looted by the students. ‘Or like these. Left behind by the retreat. Well, the enemy has found them now.’

  ‘Let’s help them then!’ says Taaft.

  ‘Sarah –’ he touches her arm, and lowers his voice, but Anto is close enough to hear everything – ‘our duty is to keep them alive. All the children.’

  ‘It’s war now, you idiot. Don’t you see that? And here comes a gift, dropping right into our laps. Allies! Professionals. And with most of the fighting off east, the enemy will have their backs to us and their trousers down.’

  The others are all enthusiastic, waving guns that are too big and too dangerous for them. Apart from Aoife, who’s sleeping like the dead. Anto’s glad of that. The weak part of him – the pathetic lover boy that won’t give up on the dream of Nessa – is still hoping to make a comeback. All this old Anto needs is a word of hope from Aoife. Maybe she’ll say she imagined it all. Or lied for some reason.

  But Aoife keeps her eyes closed and the new Anto clenches his massive fist, ready for battle.

  Nabil stands blocking the door. ‘We can take them,’ Taaft says. Anto growls. Liz Sweeney grins beside him, gripping the boy’s normal arm in her excitement.

  ‘It is madness,’ Nabil insists. ‘All this hiding is hard, yes. But we have our duty, Sarah, our duty.’

  ‘It’s Sergeant Taaft to you, Froggy. Ma’am, if you prefer. Now step aside.’

  ‘Wait for dark. We won’t be seen from the air.’

  He won’t move, so she punches him hard,
once, in the stomach. He shows nothing. ‘We’re going,’ Taaft says. ‘Not you, Mitch. Stay with Aoife. Shoot her in the head if we don’t make it back.’

  ‘I can’t stop you,’ Nabil says at last. He hangs his head, as though deeply ashamed. ‘I’ll back you up.’

  ‘I know you will.’ Taaft shocks them all by kissing him on the lips, as though they were alone together with only God watching. Then she leads them outside.

  A Dozen Steps

  A mountain dominates the horizon, its shape as cruel as a crow’s beak, its summit a magnet for lightning, for spinning tornadoes and flocks of piranha bats in constant wheeling motion. Nessa wants nothing to do with the place. The Sídhe, however, have different ideas.

  She crouches next to a fire she has made, her bones already full of its heat, while her enemies giggle somewhere out of sight.

  ‘If they think they can drive me towards Dagda,’ she tells Fr Ambrosio, ‘they have another thing coming!’ She has burned several of the enemy in the past few ‘days’. The rest have learned caution, but not fear.

  The sound of their laughter merely heightens her loneliness.

  Oh, Aoife, she thinks. Why did you run from me?

  Nessa has slept three times since her old classmate appeared on her Call. If she had just waited! Another human. An actual human to talk to. Her arms flex. Nessa is not the hugging type. Far from it. But if she had Aoife here now, she would squeeze her half to death. Instead she has to swallow the sobs that would only delight her enemies.

  Fr Ambrosio clears his throat.

  ‘She ran because of your skin, child.’

  The girl refuses to look at her own hands, but she knows they glitter in the firelight. Her eyes, too, see deeper into the shadows than ought to be possible. They’re too large, belonging more to a cartoon character than a human.

  ‘The roots are changing you. You shouldn’t have consumed them.’