The Changeling (23 page)

Kneeling in the prow of the boat, Aoife felt her sadness lift as the boat rushed on. The speed was exhilarating, almost like flying. Her red-gold hair streamed behind her and the material of her T-shirt thrummed against her skin, drying in the wind and sun. This must be what a motorbike rider felt, burning up the outside lane, blood pounding with speed and power. She clutched the locket tight in her pocket. Somehow it was pulling her on – and it was getting stronger, the feeling of it, as if she were getting closer to her destination. And that destination must be Falias, because that was where she wanted to go.

Shay’s hair and shirt were drenched with spray; he shouted at her over the noise, ‘You’re amazing! I wonder how many powers do you have?’

She shouted back, ‘Ultan said we get one each.’

‘But you have so many—’

‘Then he must be wrong: we do get more.’

‘Or you are special.’ He said ‘special’ with a very warm, wide smile at her, his eyes running over her face. But then he turned his head away, saying, ‘I mean, especially good at this magic thing.’

At the back of the boat Caitlin was screaming in outrage, ‘
Slow down! Slow down, you stupid boat, you’re going to kill us!
’ and hammering her fists on the black, tarred sides of currach as if this could get its attention, and Ultan was howling, ‘
I’m going to be sick!
’

Shay looked at Aoife, eyes dancing now, laughing.

And then he was gone.

The currach had up-ended over a waterfall. Aoife clung desperately to the side of the boat as Ultan, with a high-pitched scream, nose-dived past her down the roaring face of the cataract. Caitlin came tumbling after him, but managed to get a grip on Aoife’s leg and hang on. A microsecond later the currach toppled even further forward and plunged down the deafening drop. Below, Shay was disappearing into a wide blue pool, in a clean dive. Ultan vanished after him, with a mighty splash. Caitlin and Aoife rode straight down the waterfall in the boat, both yelling, Aoife clinging to the side and Caitlin clinging to her, until it crashed prow-first into the boiling foam and sank, taking both of them with it.

Thrown out of the currach, Aoife drifted underwater, half stunned, waiting for her downward momentum to slow before heading upwards. The deep pool swirled warmly around her, sunny, creamy blue with bubbles and – this far beneath the surface – blissfully quiet. The currach, now levelled out but upside down, was settling on the floor of the pool beneath her. A couple of metres above was a wriggling cluster of legs – long ones in jeans surrounding short, plump ones in electric-blue trousers: Shay dragging Ultan to the bank. Caitlin’s book and kitbag came floating past her towards the surface.

Caitlin?

On the point of swimming up for air, Aoife realized that the girl was nowhere in the water. She must be under the boat.

Lungs straining, Aoife dived downwards and seized hold of the rim of the currach, exerting all her strength to roll it onto its side. As it tilted, the changeling girl came floundering out – eyes bulging, mouth bubbling.

Instantly Aoife kicked towards the light, but it was like trying to swim up through mud – Caitlin had seized her around her neck from behind, and every time she tried to prise her loose, the big, strong girl gripped her tighter. Aoife struggled on until the open air was only a metre above her, thin yellow sunbeams striking through the water. She
had
to breathe in the next few seconds or her head would explode . . . She seized in desperation at the intangible straws of light . . . They slipped through her fingers, and the surface got further away.

Bright pictures began flashing through her head. Autumn in the field behind the small stone house. The ash tree outside her window, leaves bursting off in gusts of wind. Her Facebook page, full of messages regretting her death. Her guitar, plastered with stickers, a ribbon tied around it. In the kitchen, her mother, dark blonde hair scrunched up into a ponytail, sitting at the table poring over photographs. In the back room, James reading, looking up to find her there . . . Smiling at her with tear-filled eyes that reflected an empty room.

Carla, darling Carla, in bed, face pressed into the pillow, pale, sick and forlorn . . .

Oh, she would never get home. She would never see any of them again.

No, she had to try – she had to get home.
Keep trying. Keep swimming. Think of Shay.
Shay, his mouth so curved, his eyes so green . . . Shay, floating like an angel towards her through the blue sky, reaching for her . . .

Aoife held out her own arms and opened her mouth to welcome him, and cool water poured into her lungs, putting out the fire.

He was kissing her, which was strange when, before, he had flinched from her touch. His lips withdrew. She could feel the solid warmth of his hands pressing on her heart. His mouth back again, on hers. She didn’t have any urge to kiss him back – his mouth felt different from how she had imagined.

Now she could hear his voice nearby, raised over a constant noise of thunder. ‘Breathe into her, then push. Get the water out. Harder. Breathe—’

‘I’m
doing
it.’ Ultan, on the verge of hysteria.

‘He’s making a pig’s ear of it, hey?’

Ultan snarling, ‘Hey, who nearly drowned her in the first place, hey, hey, hey?’

Stomach spinning, Aoife jerked into a sitting position and vomited a belly-load of water in one, two, three body-clenching waves. It was several minutes before her body had finally finished convulsing; then she sat shivering weakly with her forehead on her knees. And finally opened her eyes. Her first thought was that she really
was
in heaven now, floating in the middle of a rainbow. But a moment later she realized that she was sitting on a marble ledge beside a massive waterfall, which was pouring into the deep pool from which she had been rescued, then out again over the far edge. The air was thickly misted with rainbow-coloured spray and Ultan’s round brown stare was hovering centimetres from her own. He shouted above the roar of the water, ‘Are you right now? Just as well yon lenanshee’s after swimming like a fish, even if he doesn’t dare kiss girls. That was me giving you the aul kiss of life by the way – don’t be worrying that you’re going to start changing into a wrinkled old crone or anything.’

‘That’s great.’ Aoife rubbed her mouth with the back of her hand. ‘Thanks a mil.’ Shay was crouched behind Ultan, smiling rather madly at her like he didn’t know how to stop. She smiled at him. ‘Thanks for pulling me out.’

He grinned even wider. ‘Not a bother.’

Ultan said, ‘Hardest job was persuading Caitlin to let go of you, she’s that scared of the water . . .’

Sitting with her knees pulled up and head down, the changeling girl snarled, ‘I’m not scared, I just don’t
like
it, so stop going on at me about it. It’s all right for you. You never drowned thinking you was a devil child going to hell.’

Ultan fell silent, pulling a guilty face.

Shay stood up and went to get the purple blanket out of Caitlin’s kit; he dropped it around her shoulders. She shrugged angrily – ‘Don’t touch me, lenanshee boy!’ – and he moved away, walking through the blinding spray to look down over the edge of the ledge.

Aoife followed him; standing beside him, she felt her heart clench with shock at how high they still were. The waterfall down which they had fallen was only the first of many. After this first pool there was a second waterfall, which fell into another pool, and then a third, a fourth . . . Five in all, before the river became horizontal again, winding calmly away through a dark green hilly forest. A thin white line – a road? – ran alongside the river, and the forest was dotted with clearings in which there were tiny earth-coloured structures – maybe houses and farms.

And only a few kilometres away, a massive rose-quartz pyramid rose straight out of the forest, shining white and crimson like blood-streaked snow, and glinting in the sun as if every door and window were made of gold. It was so brilliant to look at, it hurt her eyes.

She turned to Shay in wild excitement, shouting over the thunder of the falls: ‘Falias! We’re nearly there!’

He shouted back, with a look of desperation, ‘Yes, but how are we going to get down?’

‘There has to be a way!’ But the face of the marble cliff down which the cataracts thundered was utterly smooth – apart from the ledges of marble that framed each pool. ‘We’ve got the rope in Caitlin’s kit – maybe we could lower ourselves down the side of the waterfalls, from pool to pool. Even if it’s not quite long enough, we could sort of swing and drop into the water.’

‘Not a bad idea . . .’

But when Aoife really looked, she saw that it was a terrible idea. The second waterfall was much bigger than the first, maybe fifty metres, and the rest were easily as much again. ‘No, I’m an eejit, it’s too dangerous – and even if it worked, it would only do it for the first drop, because we couldn’t bring the rope with us.’

‘It’s all right – I’d lower each of ye, and then dive with it.’

She turned to Shay in horror. ‘Are you
crazy
? You’d be killed!’

‘Sure, didn’t I do it already?’

‘But the first waterfall wasn’t so high, and the pool was really deep! You can’t dive fifty metres into a pool that might be much shallower than this one – it’s like suicide!’

‘What’s the alternative? We have to get to Falias. I say let’s do it.’

‘
No!
’

‘If you have a better idea—’

Aoife shouted, over the roar of water, ‘Kiss me!’

Shay flinched back, eyes wide. ‘No—’

‘Yes, kiss me! Kiss me like you were going to kiss me in the boat – properly, so I can really fly! I want to be strong enough to fly with you! Kiss me properly!’

‘I can’t do that to you.’

‘You can! One time won’t hurt me, I’m sure of it!’

He stared at her. Then smiled very oddly and said, ‘No, it won’t work.’

‘
Why not?
’

‘I would have to have a
grá
for you, like my mother for my father.’

‘Then . . .’ Her voice faltered. ‘But you . . .’

‘Aoife. There’s no point. I have no
grá
for you at all.’

Aoife closed her eyes and opened them again. He was still looking at her. His eyes were the dark green of the forest so far below. She said coldly, ‘Kiss me.’

He said, ‘No.’

She darted forward, brushed her lips across his mouth, turned and jumped.

She wasn’t flying properly, but she was gliding – arms extended for balance, skiing on her stomach down a long transparent slope of air, over the powder-blue waterfalls towards the dark green woods below. It was so exciting that she found herself screaming mindlessly, like she was on a roller coaster at the fair; her wet clothes were rippling against her body, quickly drying out in the rushing mixture of wind and sun. Minutes later, the dark forest came rising to meet her. She dropped her left hand, tilted, rolled in the air and managed to right herself just before she tipped into an out-of-control spiral which would have sent her headfirst in among the trees. Instead, she glided in low over the dark red-berried branches, and landed gently on her feet on the road she had seen from above.

CHAPTER EIGHT

She had landed just in time – she could feel the last drop of power from that brief stolen kiss draining away as her bare feet touched the earth. At once, Aoife knew that she had done a terrible thing. She had abandoned Shay, with no way of getting back to him. And now he would try that crazy stunt with the rope, and get himself killed . . . As she raced back down the road towards the falls, she threw herself repeatedly into the air, desperate to fly. Each time she remained afloat only for a few hopeful seconds before drifting leaf-like down again.

At the foot of the mighty torrent, the last waterfall pounded deafeningly into the final pool – pale milky blue streaked with white, heaving in smooth swells like molten marble before funnelling through a gap in the rocks and becoming a wide, fast-running river. Nearly two hundred metres above her Aoife saw the tiny white lip of the highest pool. It was impossible to see what was happening there, so far above.

Aoife screamed, pointlessly, at the top of her lungs, ‘
Shay!
’ The woods to her left shook in a gust of wind, and black crows went screeching up in their hundreds – thousands – blanketing the sky like sudden night.

Why had she jumped?
Why?

Not just the need to be home – it was anger.

Standing there like a fool, asking him to kiss her. And he:
There’s no point. I have no grá for you at all.

Anger that she had assumed that he really
did
have a
grá
for her, and was only hiding it from her, restraining himself . . . Anger at herself, for being so stupid. When he had offered to kiss her properly, in the boat, it had only been so that she could fly home ahead of him. He was being kind, and she had misunderstood. Stupid.
Stupid.

The vast black flock of crows drifted down again, and the sun poured like honey through the stilled, bright air.

Behind her, the dusty white road looped round a bend.

A road meant people. From far above she had seen clearings dotted through the forest, with round structures that were surely houses. Whoever lived in them could help. Aoife turned and raced back up the road. Round the bend was another corner, far ahead. She hurried on. The road was stony and rutted as if used by vehicles; the river alongside her babbled wide and shallow over stones. The crows crowded along the dark green branches above her, gazing down with gold-rimmed eyes – all the trees were yews, dark-needled, red with poisonous berries.

Corner after corner, and nothing in sight . . . Maybe she would have to run as far as Falias itself. But which way? She couldn’t see the pyramid city from the ground. She slipped her hand into her pocket and took hold of the locket. At once the invisible string jerked at her, this time so unexpectedly hard it made her gasp, as if it might nearly wrench her living heart out of her chest . . . Not onwards, but to her right, into the woods. At the same instant, dogs startled her by barking somewhere nearby, a cacophony of deep-throated baying. Dogs meant a farm. And a farm meant people.