The White Horse Trick (26 page)

But there was, as Aengus Óg pointed out, one snag.

‘No ploddies.’

‘There might be,’ said Pup.

They pushed further on into the jungle, but soon they had to admit that Aengus was probably right, and that they were the first people to see this place. There was something too clean and fresh about it all – it was impossible to believe that it had ever been seen by anyone else.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Jenny said after a while. ‘It doesn’t mean we can’t have our children. It just means we’ll have to stay and look after them.’

‘Stay and look after them?’ said Aengus. ‘Are you mad? It’s all very well for you teenagers, but do you know how old I’ll be if I stay here for fifteen or twenty years?’

Jenny took a guess. ‘Forty-five? Fifty?’

‘No,’ said Aengus. ‘But anyway, it’s impossible. Can you imagine what my father would say if I came home older than he is? My life wouldn’t be worth living.’

‘Don’t be so touchy,’ said Jenny. ‘It happens all the time.’ She turned to Pup. ‘Did you know that Aengus Óg is JJ’s grandfather? Which means that I’m his aunt as well as his foster daughter. And he’s seventy and I’m seventeen. Do you know how complicated that gets sometimes?’

‘Well, you stay, then,’ said Aengus.

‘Hang on a minute,’ said Pup, who had been nibbling
on some interesting cherry-like fruit. ‘Two parents can bring up more than one child. Once they’re on their feet, we can just treat them like a family. Take it in turns to come over and look after the whole lot of them for a year or two.’

Everyone agreed that this was an excellent idea, and so the little party stayed. While they waited for the babies to arrive, they set about building a new rath to replace the one the glaciers had erased, so that they would have a marker to help them remember where they were in this new and strange land, and where it connected to their own rath in Tír na n’Óg. First they built the circular bank in against the side of the hill. Digging earthworks without tools was a tedious business, but the fairies worked languidly, taking long breaks to wander through the forest and eat their fill of the vast array of fantastic foods that grew there. Gradually the rath took shape, and when the bank was finished they began work on the souterrain. But the fairies are not known for their industry, and by then everyone was getting fed up with working, so instead of building a proper underground chamber with stone walls and crawl-holes, they just dug a tunnel to connect with the fluid wall beneath the rath in Tír na n’Óg.

By the end of the first year, each of the seven couples had produced a baby, and by the end of the second year all the babies were crawling and some of them were walking. Since food was easy to come by and required no effort to
prepare, everyone agreed that two people would be enough to take care of them.

Jenny and Pup volunteered to take the first shift. Now that the fort was finished and the other parents were gone there was no need to stay in the same place, so the young couple and the seven children roamed the forest, going wherever their fancy took them.

So when the púca came across the fort, it was empty, but that offered him little in the way of consolation. It was leaking some of the strangest and nastiest music he had ever heard, and he reacted in the way any keen gardener does when he discovers that dangerous vermin have invaded his patch. He shuddered and stamped and swore and blocked up the hole with the first thing that came to hand, even though he knew it was useless. He had made some mistakes, he now realized. He had become complacent, too busy creating exotic and beautiful things. He ought to have made some of his snakes venomous again, like last time. He should have covered the forest floor with deadly spiders and poisonous plants, as protection against the fairies.

He resented them coming in and making free with the fruits of his creation, but when he had calmed down a bit, he had to admit that he couldn’t see what serious harm they could do. They were all too frightened of time to stay around for long. His best bet, he decided, was to ignore the fort and hope the pests would go away.

Tír na n’Óg was in a state of total pandemonium when Aengus got back. Aisling was playing a nocturne on the piano, but apart from a pair of old men who were trying to dance a set to it, no one was listening. The Dagda was striding around with a bassoon in one hand and a hazel rod in the other, trying to herd everyone who had instruments into a quiet corner of the rath. A group of ploddy children were dancing on the steepest part of the hill, a game that required a lot of falling over and laughing. Aidan Liddy, his hands over his ears, was crouching in the middle of a crowd of soldiers, all banging drums and blowing whistles.

Aengus Óg had had enough of orchestras and ploddies. Snatching a kitten up under his arm, he sneaked across to where JJ and the others were sitting around with their instruments.

‘Let’s go down to the quay,’ he said. ‘Gather up the old crew and get back to the old ways.’

Keeping a close eye on the Dagda, in case they should be spotted and commandeered for some other occupation,
the musicians spread out through the crowds and passed on the message to the dancers. Then, their instruments hugged close to their chests, they set off down the road towards the village.

The children were ten years old before Jenny and Pup became exasperated by the job. They longed to go home and they were angry that no one had come over from Tír na n’Óg to take a turn. They loved the children as well as fairy parents could, but they felt time dragging at their spirits and they were ready for a respite.

One of them was going to have to go and get some of the other parents, but there was, they both knew, a great danger in that. Visits to Tír na n’Óg were never simple, and even if one of them went right now, and even if they remembered what they were doing when they got there, there was still no telling how much time would pass on this side before they came back. In the best case it might only be a couple of hours. In the worst it might be decades, or even centuries.

They drew straws and Pup drew the long one, which meant he got to go home, and Jenny was left with the short one, which meant she had to stay. And although the seven children were quite good company now and full of conversation, she still felt lonely when Pup was gone.

* * *

Pup lay on the bank and listened to Aisling’s nocturne. There was a lot of other noise going on and it wasn’t always easy to hear the piano, but the bits he did hear were beautiful and lulled him into a pleasant daze. He might have gone right off to sleep if the Dagda hadn’t come along.

‘It isn’t working, it isn’t working,’ he said. ‘Make them read the music. Show them how to do it.’

Aisling sighed and stood up. ‘It isn’t that easy,’ she said.

‘Of course it is,’ said the Dagda. ‘If you can do it, anyone can do it!’

Aisling shook her head. ‘Thanks very much,’ she said.

‘And you,’ said the Dagda to Pup. ‘What are you doing lounging around there?’

‘Erm,’ said Pup, trying to remember just what he was doing there. ‘I’m looking for a mother.’

‘Aren’t we all?’ said the Dagda.

‘Or a father,’ said Pup. ‘To take a turn in minding the children.’

‘The children will be fine,’ said the Dagda. ‘Come along with me now. I’ve a job for you.’

He was right. The children were fine. They were teenagers now and growing more independent by the day. They were inclined to go off exploring on their own or in pairs, and Jenny allowed them to, providing they all came back at night to whatever rendezvous was agreed. She had
resigned herself now to seeing the project through, and had given up on the prospect of getting any help. But there wasn’t all that much longer to go, and she had to admit that the children were much more fun now that they were developing minds of their own.

In the evenings they gathered and made camp, and stayed up late into the night. Jenny sang the tunes and taught them to dance, and she carved crude whistles from reeds and taught them how to play. When they were tired of music, they quizzed her about Tír na n’Óg and asked to be filled in on their heritage and their stories. So she told them about the magical land where no one grew old and no one died and no one ever went hungry. And although the children had no experience of old age or death or hunger, they nevertheless developed a longing to see the land where they belonged, and they were as impatient as Jenny was for all the growing up to be over and done with.

One day the púca was up in his favourite part of the forest. It was in the foothills, beside a river, overlooking the canopy of the trees below. The place was his nursery, where he brought on young creations and experimented with new ones. On that particular occasion he was trying to perfect a f lying cat. It was quite a challenge because he didn’t want to use feathers this time, and the problem was that all his early efforts had turned out looking too much like bats. He wanted to find a new method of flight entirely, one that he could extend, over time, to the spotted bears and the wallabies and the lovely multicoloured snakes and lizards, but it was proving to be a knotty problem.

He looked up from his work. He could hear voices and he swore beneath his breath. He had located the little family of fairy folk a long time ago, but had decided to leave them alone and stay out of their way. He knew about fairies and their need to borrow time, and he knew roughly how much of it they needed to grow up in. True, they had large appetites and tended to spoil as much food
as they ate, but then so did a lot of the forest creatures. There was enough for everyone, and as long as human beings didn’t get established here, there always would be. The púca had designed things that way himself, after all.

But he didn’t want them here, in this precious place where all the young and delicate things were growing up. So, abandoning the batty cat thing, he climbed down to the forest floor and went to investigate.

Jenny smelled his goaty musk before she saw him. And there was another scent in that part of the forest as well, a more pleasant one that she hadn’t come across since her own childhood.

‘I can smell apples,’ she said.

‘You can smell what?’ said the children. It was early in the morning and they hadn’t yet gone their separate ways but were having breakfast together as they strolled along.

‘Apples,’ said Jenny. ‘Look, there it is, see? That’s an apple tree.’

The tree was covered in fruit and the children admired their shiny roundness.

‘We used to have them in the old world,’ Jenny went on, ‘but this is the first one I’ve seen here. Apples are the best kind of fruit. You wait until you try one.’

The children stepped forward to do just that, but in a sudden rush of thundering hooves a huge white goat appeared from the undergrowth and barred their way. The children had never seen a goat before, but they were not
afraid of anything, because nothing in the forest had ever threatened them before. But Jenny retreated, and they followed her example – because she had seen goats before, and she knew that this wasn’t just any old goat. In fact she was fairly sure that she recognized him, and she wasn’t at all surprised when he stood on his hind legs and grew tall like a man. She felt a pang of anxiety and regret. They had a history, these two, and for part of that history the púca had been Jenny’s friend and teacher, and she had loved him very much.

But the ending hadn’t turned out so well. By her trickery she had helped Mikey get to the beacon and thwarted the púca’s scheme. She wondered if he would remember her. He did.

‘Surely not,’ said the púca. ‘Is it Jenny?’

‘It is,’ said Jenny. ‘Long time no see.’

‘Long time indeed,’ said the púca.

There was an awkward silence, during which Jenny mustered her powers, just in case. Apart from human ghosts, fairies were the only beings in existence that had power over a púca, but using it could be very dangerous, and Jenny hoped she wouldn’t have to.

The púca was clearly weighing up the situation as well. To Jenny’s relief, he opted for a peaceful approach.

‘What lovely children you have. And I’m very happy to see they are almost grown.’

‘Me, too,’ said Jenny. ‘You have no idea. But another year or two should do it.’

‘Good, good,’ said the púca. ‘I’m sure it has been very trying for you, having to immerse yourself in time in this dreadful place.’

‘No, no,’ said Jenny. ‘The place is beautiful, honestly. Fair play to you. A triumph of engineering.’

The púca was flattered. ‘Well, make yourself at home until they are finished growing,’ he said. ‘But there is one thing. This part of the forest is out of bounds. That apple tree is the best one I have, you see? There are a few more in there among the trees but the fruit is ghastly. I don’t seem to have the knack of this grafting business. The ploddies were a disaster, on the whole, but they did have their uses.’

‘They certainly did,’ said Jenny. ‘I wouldn’t have to be hanging around here like an eejit if there were ploddies around to do the child-rearing thing.’

‘Hmm,’ said the púca. ‘On balance I think the place is better off without them. Anyway, if you lot could keep your nasty little sticky fingers off my apples, I’d appreciate it. Do you think you could manage that this time round?’

‘No bother,’ said Jenny. ‘You hear that, lads? No one is to touch these apples.’

The teenagers nodded solemnly.

‘Can I trust you on this, Jenny?’ said the púca.

‘Absolutely,’ said Jenny. ‘Why wouldn’t you?’

‘Because you deceived me once before, that’s why.’

‘I did,’ said Jenny, ‘that’s true.’

‘And look what a mess that caused everyone.’

‘Well, I’m sorry about that,’ said Jenny. ‘But it’s given you a chance to make a new start, hasn’t it? And a lovely new start it is, too, fair dues to you.’ The púca took a bow, and Jenny went on, ‘So I promise not to touch your apples and I promise not to bring the children here again. Will that do?’

The púca knew better than to take a fairy at her word, and was trying to read between the lines. ‘I suppose so,’ he said at last.

‘So we’ll take ourselves off then, shall we? Get out of your hair?’