The Call Read online

  The animals are snarling, and Nessa has a horrible realization: They know I’m here! She panics, pulling herself past and away until the noise fades and she finds herself at the window of another bathroom.

  She is exhausted, her own breath as loud as any animal’s growl.

  This is where she is most likely to be caught. Then she’ll spend a full day in the Cage with no food and nothing to do but reflect on how weak she’s getting and on how she could be Called at any moment.

  But she calms her breathing and manages to force the window open. Minutes later, Nessa is in the boys’ dorm. Here she stands among their snores. It would be worse than the Cage to be found here: It would mean disgrace and so much ridicule she might pray for the Sídhe to rescue her from it! Her muscles are trembling, her legs won’t cooperate as she tries to move quietly. Count the beds: one … two … and three.

  This shadow is Anto, who needs to forget her if either of them are to have a chance at life. Her nostrils twitch with the smell of the medicine they gave him for his injuries. She hears his soft breathing and strains to see the shape of him under his quilt. She thinks, as the sweat begins to chill on her skin, how warm it must be in there. But all she does is slip the paper under his pillow.

  The climb back is so much harder.

  “You’re a fool,” Megan told her after the last time.

  “If I was a boy, you’d say it was romantic. Like Romeo on the balcony!”

  Megan rolled her eyes. “I’d say no such thing! That was the stupidest film ever. It wasn’t even in English. I don’t know what that was.”

  Nessa loses her grip and whimpers like a child, but her other hand manages to hold on at the cost of a scraped knee. When she reaches the window where the dogs were patrolling she sees something strange: Five of the animals are lying down there together. All of them appear to be asleep, except … except their eyes are open. Is that normal? But she is too tired to worry about that now.

  The first thing she does on making it back to the girls’ bathroom is to lie on the floor for ten minutes. The linoleum feels like a carpet to her. She imagines Anto’s face in the morning when he finds the note she has left for him:

  And it’s a long time since I’ve slept

  Awaiting the taste of his kisses

  He won’t understand a word of it, for the lines are in Irish. But if he can track them down in a country that hasn’t had internet access for twenty-five years, he’ll find they belong to a poem by a long-dead girl: “Young Man with the Braided Hair.” And maybe he’ll remember that his own hair was braided once.

  There’s nothing else she can give him. Or herself. The giddiness threatens to bubble up again into laughter. But it’s time to seal herself back into the bottle. She actually lost her grip at one point! She nearly fell! This has to be the last time. It was a one-off. A second one-off.

  Back in the dorm, the shapes of her friends are all around her. One of them moves. Seems to settle. The bed is suddenly flat, and Antoinette, the generous, the lovely, the foolish, is gone.

  Antoinette was dreaming of home. Her father was one of the first people to survive the Call, but he has been eating ever since, and at the age of forty the doctors have told him he’s well on the way to a heart attack. It’s one of the reasons Mother, another survivor, doesn’t live with him anymore. She moved in with another woman, but she always says, “I’m not gay. It’s just that I’m in love with Gillian. I love your father too, pet, but he wants to die and I want to live. And you too. I want you to live most of all.”

  They’ve had this conversation more than once, and Antoinette always ends it with promises to stop smoking, to train harder. Above all she must study Sídhe—it was Mother after all, the famous Michelle McManus, who overheard enemy speech and remembered enough of it that when she came back, the scholars were able to figure out what it was …

  For a second, Antoinette thinks she’s still dreaming. She opens her eyes and the entire sky is filled with whirlpools of faint light. Silver spirals turn sluggishly in the sky, brighter than stars but weaker than the moon. Her nose is already running with a burning, bleach-like stench.

  They’ve been warned about this from their first night in survival college, when they wake up naked and alone in the middle of the woods. As Mr. Hickey is always repeating in hunt-theory class: Even in your dreams, act as if your life depends on it, because one day it will.

  She rises onto her knees. There’s a ringing in her head. I’m not ready. I’m not ready. Oh, please, God …

  She is in a slight dip in the ground. Around her lies a carpet of what must be slicegrass. It tears at the skin of any who walk on it. But plenty of stones break the surface, and less than a dozen paces farther on, the grass gives way to an ankle-high bonsai forest whose trees can’t harm her much at all.

  Years of training are coming back to her.

  And then a terrible screech tears through the chill air, with a sound so sharp, so bitter, that every tooth in her head aches with it. The dogs. The dogs are coming, and the first lesson Antoinette was taught at her first class on her first day was this: MOVE!

  She stands, naked and goose-pimpled. She hops from rock to rock, the toughened soles of her feet feeling nothing, not stumbling until the dog howls again. But by then she has made it into the bonsai forest and is already clambering up and over the top of the first of the small hills, spitting from the bitter taste of the air.

  The silver landscape falls away in front of her like a scroll with a map drawn on it. Fairyland in its entirety: lakes of red fire, the only color here, spewing and bubbling in the distance; forests growing terrible fruits; tornadoes that look like a giant’s fingers digging into the soil; scattered lightning; burning rains and murderous flora of every kind.

  And Antoinette thinks, as a million have before her, We banished them here. No wonder they hate us.

  It doesn’t matter that the event happened thousands of years before Antoinette was born. To the Sídhe, it is very real.

  And so is the dog.

  It screeches again, causing the hairs on the back of her neck to stand up. Is it closer already? Is it onto her? Another cries out far away to her left.

  Antoinette runs, plunging and sliding down the hillside. Each breath of the acrid air hurts her lungs. She ignores it. If she can avoid them for a day, or thereabouts, she will return home alive and never have to see this awful place again. She has been trained for it, to run that long in rough terrain. She skids, falls forward, and rolls perfectly to her feet. It’s almost fun!

  Halfway down, dark flecks of ash start falling from the sky, obscuring the view ahead and hopefully foiling the pursuit too. She is within ten steps of a stand of knobbly grey trees when something flies past her ear and thuds into a trunk. The whole tree shudders and Antoinette sees an arrow buried in the bark. A black liquid spurts from the wound.

  At the top of the hill she has just left stands a Sídhe bow-woman, half-hidden by the falling ash. There is no doubt that she is young and beautiful—nobody has ever seen an elderly Sídhe. Nor is there any doubt as to her intentions, for she has already fitted another arrow.

  Antoinette flees.

  It is some time before she sees anybody else, but she does not stop. Her breath is rasping in her throat. Why … why did I smoke? Why? Why? Why?

  In spite of her parents, in spite of the four Calls she has personally witnessed up to now, she has never really believed this day would come. Not for her. Not Antoinette!

  Panic has made her run too fast and now her limbs are wobbly with fatigue. What if she finds somewhere to hide? A number of survivors have managed that. Keeping out of the way until their time was up, but that will only work if she can throw the dogs off the scent.

  Lucky for her, her path soon crosses a stream. She steps into it, walking along its slippery bed, pausing to cup her hands and drink. The water here is safe enough in small quantities. Appalling parasites make their home in it, but she won’t be here long enough for them to do her any
real harm, and nothing that is not her own flesh can return home with her.

  In the end, it is not the parasites that drive her from the water but the “fish,” with their disturbingly familiar shapes. They are gathering in a … a gang near to one bank and swimming hard with tiny limbs to keep up with her. They seem to be mustering their courage for something, an attack maybe. So she staggers back onto dry land just in time to hear the dogs again, howling loud enough to make her jump with an involuntary cry of alarm. They’re so close! How did that happen? Oh, God! Oh, Crom and Dagda and Lugh!

  But they don’t have her scent. They can’t know where she is, and right beside her is a small pile of rocks surrounded by plants she thinks she recognizes as being mostly harmless. With no time to double-check, she slides in among the bushes.

  Spider trees, she realizes now. They latch on to her, but they are young specimens and she should be able to break away easily when the time comes. The important thing now is to control her breathing to—

  The first of the “dogs” comes into view. She wants to cry out when she sees it, or to weep.

  The creature was once a human woman. Now she pads along on all fours. Her back legs bend the wrong way. Her jaws have grown thick and large with massive teeth that don’t fit properly together so that the mouth can never fully close, and a constant stream of drool hangs down from her chin. Her paws are still recognizably human hands. Her all-too-human breasts hang down, catching on rocks and bushes so that Antoinette aches to see it and wishes she could do something to help.

  The creature is panting and whining quietly to itself. “Catch,” it says distinctly. “Catch and master will love me. Catch. Catch.”

  A nearby spider tree grabs hold of it and the monster explodes into a frenzy of savagery until its “paw” is once again free. Then it passes on by, leaving Antoinette to force back her feelings of pity and disgust. She dares not move, and soon enough two more dogs pass, both male, with tangled beards and lolling tongues.

  Something stabs her in the leg. There it is again! Harder this time, and it is only with the greatest of self-control that she stifles a yelp. Tiny people are running around her feet. Like the dogs they move on all fours, but they rise now and again to poke at her with matchstick-sized spears. Their voices are too high for her to hear, but they are organized and they definitely think they can take her.

  She jerks a hand free and sweeps them away as gently as she can, but that’s foolish because already there are little numb patches around the wounds they have made. Poison! They’re using poison!

  She pushes away, more violently now, feeling the grip of the spider trees holding her in place as dozens and dozens of the tiny tribesmen gather for a charge. She has absolutely no choice in the matter; she lunges to her feet, ripping herself free. She staggers from her hiding place and something, or someone, splats sickeningly under her feet.

  And just down the path, less than fifty feet away, is a gang of grinning Sídhe.

  Their surprise gives her the chance she needs to run off the path and into the woods. But soon they’re sprinting after her, crying delighted encouragement, one to the other. Never, never in her life has Antoinette heard so much innocent joy in a voice.

  She runs completely without thinking, faster than she has ever run in her life. A horn sounds behind her, and then the handsomest man she has ever seen charges in from the right. He has glittering skin, huge eyes, and a spear that points right at her heart.

  She slides under his attack. Turns perfectly—Nabil would be so proud—twists the shaft from his grasp. Don’t let them touch you! Never let them touch you! But even as she is remembering the warnings, her body acts of its own accord and shoves the point of the weapon right into his belly. A mortal wound. She has killed someone, a Sídhe, but a person.

  He cries out joyfully. “Oh, well played, thief!” He slides back against a tree as the blood comes. “A feisty one! I nearly caught her!” His face is already growing paler.

  The shadows gather and again she flees. She has nearly reached the end of the trees and she can hear the dogs again.

  Beyond the last of the trunks lies a sight that almost kills her. It looks like a field of cabbages, but these are human heads. Hundreds and hundreds of them, laid out in a grid. The bodies cannot be seen, but here and there a hand has broken the soil.

  The eyes of a man right by her feet swivel toward her.

  “Help me,” he croaks in English. “Help me.” And all the others hear and it becomes a chorus of desperate pleading, so loud that not even the howl of the dogs can break through it. But the Sídhe are coming and there’s nothing Antoinette can do for these people, nothing.

  She runs for her life, wasting precious time to avoid standing on the heads and hurting them. The Sídhe have no such qualms, and Antoinette cries out in pain as the first arrow clips her shoulder and a voice calls, “Be careful not to kill the thief! We have hours yet to enjoy her!”

  Antoinette’s limbs will not carry her much farther. She knows this, she knows it, but can’t stop running. She looks for cover, for somewhere to hide or to make a fight of it. She’s killed one Sídhe already; she might be able to take some others if the dogs will leave her alone. In the distance a tornado seems to be coming this way. Such events have saved survivors in the past. She swerves toward it, knowing it may rip her to shreds, but willing to take the gamble. She is only encouraged in her choice when the Sídhe behind her cry, “No, thief! Not there! Don’t go there!”

  Moments later, the heads are behind her and she is running into a bare stretch of mud.

  A terrible wail of despair rises up from the hunters. This gives her the strength to surge forward, but the mud catches her, rising to her knees and then her hips.

  The Sídhe are in a wide circle around her, hopping from foot to foot in their elaborately tooled leather clothing, their gold chains, and holding their carved bows. One of them throws her a rope out over the muck.

  “Take it, thief,” he begs. “We wish only to play with you. We promise not to hurt you as much as usual.”

  They mean it. The Testimonies show that the monsters always keep their promises, and so, as the chilly mud rises to her belly button, Antoinette is tempted and terrified enough to reach for the rope. But then she imagines her parents seeing the state of her twisted remains and manages to turn away.

  She doesn’t change her mind again until the mud has reached her mouth, but by then the Sídhe have lost their chance.

  Three days after the bells have rung for Antoinette, they’re on a break from first-aid class. Squeaky Emma is sailing out the door. “I didn’t even look at her!” she says, and Aoife, trailing after, “I’m not saying that! I’m saying—”

  Their argument is drowned by laughter. Anto is entertaining Shawny, Aidan, and Cabbages with a story about his dog at home who will only drink from a baby’s bottle and insists on being held when he does. Nessa, pretending not to hear, thinks he’s got to be making it up. Like the tale he tells of the four-year-old sister who pees in her brothers’ room after an argument, or the one about his doddery granny re-creating an erotic dance from a rap video of her youth.

  “Nessa?” She represses the urge to jump. Mr. Hickey is at the door to the Year 5 break room. It is twice the size of the Year 6 break room and it has an ancient but working radio, so he has to shout. “You’re wanted in Ms. Breen’s office.”

  She wonders if there is a problem at home—her poor mam’s health has never been great—and maybe everybody else wonders that too, because Megan gives her hand a quick squeeze on the way past, and Conor grins at her from the corner his gang has taken over.

  She walks down the corridor and taps on the office door.

  “Come.” Ms. Breen raises her head. “You miss her, don’t you? Antoinette?”

  Of the many things Nessa might have been expecting to hear, this was not one of them. Her instinct is to deny her feelings, but how can she reject Antoinette? Of all people? In the end she freezes.

 
Ms. Breen sighs. “In any case, that’s not why you’re here. The thing is, you were the one who witnessed the Call. You were awake and in your dressing gown. Why was that?”

  “The toilet, miss.”

  “The toilet?”

  “What else would I have been doing?”

  Ms. Breen nods appreciatively at Nessa’s perfect Sídhe grammar, but it is not enough to distract her from her purpose. “The thing is, Ms. Doherty, somebody was seen climbing on the outside of the building and in through the window of that same bathroom. They must have come from the boys’ dorm before it.”

  “The outside, miss? Somebody was outside the building?”

  “No more messing, child. Was it you?”

  “I stick to the rules, miss. You know I do.”

  And Ms. Breen does know that. Of course she does. The child least likely to survive the Call is also the first to shave her head; the most attentive in every class for every subject; the coldest of them all, refusing to show so much as a flicker of feeling. Nessa’s behavior is impeccable. She has never spent a night in the Cage. But the timing of her “trip to the bathroom” is just too perfect.

  “You wouldn’t know anything about the dogs, would you?” Again no reaction. “Because, on the same night that Antoinette was Called, somebody poisoned them.”

  At last an emotion, and it is horror.

  “Yes indeed, Ms. Doherty. Only one of them died, but the others couldn’t be woken properly for over a day.”

  Nessa tries and tries to control herself. She’s thinking of the way the animals were so quiet on her return journey. She is a witness to a crime against helpless innocent creatures, no doubt about it. Perhaps her testimony might trap the culprit, but again instinct freezes her tongue. Eventually Ms. Breen sends her away. Neither of them can know that at that precise moment one of the remaining two boys from Year 7 is being Called. Nobody is with him when it happens, and nobody will find out for hours yet.