Free Stories 2016 Page 13

  “Uh, how?” The way he’d come in had vanished. And she would get her wish and bleed him to death if he tried to push his way out. At the very least he’d rip his clothes apart.

  “Oh, just show her your blade. She has no liking for cold steel, and doesn’t want her trees cut or burned,” said the phooka.

  The sloe-dark eyes of the Launtishee were angry, but she had retreated back among the thorny branches. They bent away from her, and Edmund hastily followed, before they bent back.

  “Leave me alone, changeling child,” she snapped.

  “Happily. Just let me out.”

  She made a growling noise in her throat, but the branches parted, and Edmund rushed past her. He didn’t quite know what had happened to his life, but he didn’t want any more strangeness. Reality had been hard enough to cope with.

  And a few moments later he realized that life hadn’t got any easier. She hadn’t put him out into the lane, but into the field beyond. There was a withy gate, of course. But there was a large flock of white geese between him and it. They were already waddling toward him, honking and hissing, necks outstretched in outrage.

  “She’s always a vindictive old crone,” said the phooka…who abruptly was no longer a hedgehog, but a swaybacked old pony. Black, of course, and still with the strange eyes. “You could ride on me. You’d be safe.”

  Edmund was off-balance from the happenings of the last little while, but not that off-balance. “No fear. I know your reputation. Just stop pestering me.”

  But he was too busy fending off the attacking geese to see if the phooka-pony had listened.

  And then it got worse. The owner of the geese, a stout farmer with a blackthorn shillelagh came at a panting run to see what had upset his geese. “You thieving young rogue,” he yelled, not waiting for any explanation, but joining his geese in the attack.

  Edmund had no choice but to run, the geese and fat farmer after him. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the sway-backed pony whickering with wicked laughter.

  While they were chasing him, the phooka kicked open the gate, and the geese lost interest in chasing Edmund and streamed towards the gate—the farmer in hot pursuit, swearing and yelling. The phooka was actually rolling—as a pony might, but making noises which sounded more like it was choking. Edmund didn’t wait to find out—he ran out of the gate too, into the lane, in opposite direction to the geese and the farmer.

  Fortunately, that was the direction he needed to go. Once he was around the bend, he stopped running and tried to compose himself, walking. At least the rain had eased up for a bit.

  He still had the jewel, clutched in his fist. So he put it in his overcoat pocket and tried to think what to do next. The original plan of passing as a young Anglo-Irish gentleman—which was what he had been, before he’d joined in the rebellion—and catching the mail coach to Dublin hadn’t involved getting grass-stains on his knees and rips in his overcoat, to say nothing of the mud and blood.

  Besides, it seemed that they were looking for him. Informers and traitors were everywhere. He was tired, damp, and evening was coming on. It wasn’t winter yet, but some of the leaves were starting to turn. Shelter, a chance to clean up, and to decide on what course he should follow was what he needed now. He just didn’t have very much money. A cottage, a bit of water…well, the best he could see was a stone byre with a turf roof. Perhaps there’d be a cottage beyond. He’d no sooner stepped inside the gate than he heard the thudding of hooves again. It could be the phooka…but he didn’t want it either, so he stepped inside the empty byre.

  It had a small gap between the stones where the moss-chinking had fallen out that he could peer out of. It wasn’t much of a view but it did allow him to see the white-over-red horse-hair plumes of the Fifth Dragoon Guards—and hear what they said. “That fat old fool farmer said he’d run this way, but there’s no sign of him, Jim.”

  “Ach, it’s another quarter mile to the cross. He’d have to have run like the wind to get there, but we’d better check. Then we’ll come back and search. The rest of boys will walk up, and we’ll have him between us.”

  They rode on, and Edmund hastily began to look for escape, or a hiding place. But there was nothing. Beyond the byre was open commonage, and not even a nearby copse to hide in. On the far side of the byre there was a narrow gap into which some fence-hurdles had been thrust to keep them from the weather. There might be space for him there.

  As he tried to push into it a sleepy gravelly phooka voice from his pocket said: “Have a care, Prince. You nearly squashed me.”

  Unwarily he put his hand to the pocket, and got his fingers prickled again. “You! What are you doing here?”

  “Resting. Using my magics even on the minds of geese is hard work in full daylight. Do you need help, Prince?”

  “Every time you ‘help’ things gets worse. The farmer told the soldiers,” said Edmund, torn between anger and fear.

  “Ah, that is the curse of being half-human, Prince,” said the phooka. “The price of your soul. Magic for yourself will be turned against you. It is the way of faerie magics and humans. By the way, I pushed the key down into the lining of your coat. It’ll be safer there, and it was uncomfortable for me to lie against.”

  “I don’t care about your comfort! They’ll kill me if they catch me. Or torture me.”

  “Now a bit of comfort would be a generous reward for servant who has worked so hard to help you,” said the phooka. “Not as much as fine ale or strong poteen, but surely deserved, for the hard work of misleading the farmer and his geese.”

  Suddenly suspicious, despite the situation, but noticing the change in his tone and remembering the gleeful rolling phooka, Edmund said: “You liar. You enjoyed that.”

  “’Tis a truth. I did,” admitted the phooka. “Not that I enjoyed the Luantishee, mind. She was dangerous. And I broke her binding of you. That was some of your blood she used in the ogham. A black curse indeed that would have been. She wanted you for her tool in this bloody war.”

  “What?”

  “Straif. The ogham. The symbol she drew. It’s a kenning for blood. And a kenning for the Blackthorn. Dark magic, Prince. Dark fortellings. The banshee foretells death, the Luantishee, strife, damage and pain. You got out lightly. And now I hear the dragoons a-coming.”

  “I have to hide!” Edmund pushed at the gap—but there was no way he’d fit into it.

  “They’ll see your track on the grass, anyway, Prince,” said the phooka, who had by now ambled out of his pocket, a black hedgehog looking at his efforts, with unholy amusement.

  Looking back Edmund could see the truth of this—his muddy tracks on the wet grass were painfully obvious.

  “I need to get clear. I have a message to deliver to Dublin.”

  “So it is for others that you need to do this?” asked the phooka.

  “Well, they’ll kill me. And take your precious jewel,” said Edmund, incurably truthful, looking around for any way to escape. Perhaps he could jump into the lane while they looked in the byre?

  The phooka blurred and grew. And became the little shaggy black swaybacked pony with phooka eyes. “You could ride. It’s not easy to be catching the phooka.”

  “I heard a voice,” said someone in the lane.

  Edmund had no time for second thoughts and scrambled hurriedly onto the phooka’s back. Of course he could ride, but bareback, with no stirrups or reins?

  He didn’t need them. He could have used a saddle to cling to, instead of the Phooka’s mane. It wasn’t a horse, no matter what it looked like.

  It just stood there, waiting, as Edmund dug his heels in and yelled at it to run. The first Dragoon came through the gate, the man stared, and started laughing at them.

  That, plainly, had been what the Phooka had been waiting for. It jumped like a scalded cat, from a standing start, onto the sod roof, leaped across that and between two more Dragoons. And then the chase was on.

  The Phooka was definitely the least comfortable thing Edmu
nd had ever ridden. It was more like bestriding a drop of water on a hot oiled griddle than riding. All he could do was cling on for grim death.

  It was also, plainly, teasing the dragoons. It would let them almost catch up, before leaping sideways over a stone wall—and then slowing to an amble while the Dragoons found a gate. Then it lead them at a breakneck gallop down the field, letting them almost catch up before skittering sideways in a way that no polo-pony could, let alone a heavy cavalry horse. The phooka had one soldier fall at the next fence. Edmund felt it was nearly him off too, but he seemed stuck to the phooka’s back. They careered wildly through the slashing bushes and trees of a small wood.

  One of the Dragoons managed a shot at them, but it was hopelessly wild, even if it made Edmund hunch down desperately. That was just as well, because the phooka had led them into a boggy, reedy, swampland, and was lofting hoof-loads of mud at the Dragoons. With a whicker of derisive phooka laughter, it let them nearly catch up, before leaping prodigiously into a swaying thicket of reed, higher than Edmund’s head. There were a couple of wild shots again, but plainly the Dragoons had no idea what they were shooting at, seeing as Edmund could see their backs as they struggled on. There were two now. The Phooka had circled around them, and was waiting again. “Go. Let’s just get away,” begged Edmund.

  “Best if we leave them down and their horses scattered,” said the phooka. “Besides, black mud goes well on their uniforms.”

  And he seemed to make sure that they were covered in it.

  Eventually, when the last man had fallen into a stream, and the phooka had chased his tired horse off, Edmund expected the phooka to stop.

  It just kept going into the dusk, not by lanes or the coach-road, but by jumping hedges and walls, through fields of grain, bogs, rough grazing. It was seemingly tireless.

  “When are we going to stop?” gasped Edmund through rattling teeth.

  “It’s Dublin you wanted to reach, and now in the twilight and nightfall, 'tis easiest for me.”

  “That’s…impossible.”

  “Not for the phooka.”

  Edmund might have argued, but he was hard pressed to breathe, let alone talk.

  It ended, much, much later, as riding a phooka always did, in the mud. By then Edmund was almost too exhausted to care, and actually quite grateful to have a soft landing. He just lay still for a while. Eventually, he pulled himself up. The sky was paling and the phooka was standing, patiently, looking at him. “Why did you do this to me?” Edmund asked, plaintively. Every bit of him hurt.

  “You asked to me to bring you to Dublin. We are less than mile from the city’s outskirts,” said the phooka. Even in the dim light Edmund could see it that was grinning, a very un-horse-like grin.

  “Yes, but you didn’t have to throw me into the mud!”

  “It is traditional. And how else would a human—even a half-human alight?”

  “You enjoyed that. You could have just stopped.”

  The phooka shook its shaggy head. “I am your servant, by the geas laid on me by your father, King Finvarra. But I remain a phooka. It is my nature. I’d say the king bore a grudge against your mother. She was a human, but very wild. The king philanders, but does not tolerate it in his lovers.”

  “Look, this is all a terrible mistake. I know who my father was. I miss him…terribly.” It hurt enough to crack his voice, still.

  “Do you share the visage of this man?” asked the Phooka, his gravelly voice strangely gentle.

  Innate honesty forced Edmund to say no. He hated doing so, felt it a betrayal—but it had been said, often enough. Mostly in Irish by the servants. Most of them assumed his mother had, somehow, had him from another man. “But it happens. I don’t have to look like him. He was…a true father to me. I loved him. I won’t believe it.”

  “Believe it or no, you were changed as babe. Taken into the best house the fair folk could find, near at hand to Cnoc Meadha, the shoulder mound of the king of Faerie, of the endless green fields of Mag Mell. The one you were changed for is dead, as the Luantishee said, not to be summonsed by the rites and burning of blackthorn twigs. So now, you can return.”

  A part of Edmund wanted to say that he did not believe any of this. But…he’d ridden the phooka.

  “And it’s further that we are now from the mound. But you have the key. Transact your business and I can transport you. I will even try just to stop, if you order it, although, yes, it was my small pleasure, my reward for the service I rendered,” said the phooka.

  Edmund sighed. “I’m so tired I can’t think.”

  “There is a barn you could sleep in,” said the phooka. “It’ll be some time before anyone is about, barring the watchmen.”

  So Edmund followed the creature, and found some hay and lay down and slept. He had no idea for how long, but when he finally awoke a streak of dusty sunlight was coming in through a hole in the roof. So he got up. He was not surprised to find there was a lump in his overcoat. A lump that snored and had prickles. The phooka seemed to like being a hedgehog.

  Dublin was busy. It was back to commerce as usual with the rebellion here, suppressed. The streets were full of everyone from lavender-sellers to coal-men—and soldiers, rather too many of them, and gentry and their children escorted by maids or governesses. Last time Edmund had been there, he’d been one of them. It all seemed quite normal, but Edmund got a constant feeling of tension. Of people watching each other. Of sidelong glances.

  Getting to his destination wasn’t easy either. He had only a child’s knowledge of the city, and that did not include the address he sought. And people were reluctant to give him directions.

  That could have been the fear. Or the mud. Edmund had done his best to clean up at the shabby inn he’d stopped at to break his fast. It had been very run-down and dirty itself, but the better one he’d tried at, earlier, had turned him away from the door.

  By now he was tired and despondent, and all the noise and chaos of the busy city after the silences of the Wicklow Hills was hard. Eventually he muttered to himself. “They’re all scared. They won’t tell me anything.”

  “Then ask those who they fear,” said the phooka.

  Thinking about it, it was a remarkably good idea, Edmund realized. The soldiery on the streets would not expect someone they were looking for to ask directions from them.

  It worked, and after some more walking he found the house, a tall double-storied one on a respectable square.

  The stout housemaid who answered the door said: “Get lost yer filthy bhoy.”

  “I’ve a message for Master Colby!”

  “He’s not seein’ anyone. Now get off me clean step before I throw you off it.” And she slammed the door in his face.

  Edmund stared at it, dejected. To have come so far, and to fail!

  He must have said something about it, because the phooka said: “Give me the count of twenty, knock, and I’ll give her something to chase, and you can slip inside,” and as it said it, it slipped from his pocket. Only it wasn’t a hedgehog by the time it landed on the cobbles. It was a skinny-shanked, spiky-haired, feral-looking black cat, with phooka eyes. And it ran off up the street. Edmund counted to twenty, slowly. He was so absorbed in this that he barely noticed the yowling, shouting, barking chaos in the street. He knocked. Then knocked harder. She flung the door open. “You again! Be off or…” She never had time to finish that statement, because the phooka cat darted between her legs and down the passage—closely followed by what seemed like half the dogs in Dublin—some of them were being chased by their owners. The dogs bowled her over, and ran into the house barking furiously. The housemaid scrambled to her feet yelling and running after them. Edmund stepped inside, and edged down the passage. Now he’d probably be taken for a thief instead. He stepped inside the first door, trying to decide what to do next…

  Only to be met by slight, academic looking man, with a pince-nez balanced on his long nose, who was plainly coming to see what the noise was about. To his shock
Edmund realized that he recognized the man—but he’d been younger and more cheerful looking back then. “Good Lord! Young Edmund Carrol! You were in short-coats last I saw you, but I remember your face. Are they chasing you?” He sounded very worried by that.

  “Er. No sir. Some dogs and…a cat got in.” Edmund decided that explaining a phooka was not going to help.

  “Oh. That’s a relief. Informers seem to be everywhere,” he said going to the door and carefully latching it. “What brings you here, my boy? I was very distressed to hear about your father. A good man.”

  Edmund swallowed, found himself unable to speak, past the lump in his throat. Eventually he managed. “Message. From General Holt.”

  The man looked terrified and glanced around as if he expected to find an informer hiding under the table or listening at the window. Edmund drew the now dirty envelope out of the secret pocket in his shirt and handed it over.

  There was a lightness about doing that.

  The man read it. Looked at him. “Do you have any idea what this says?” he asked, peering at Edmund over top of his eye-glasses.

  “No, sir. I know things are bad, sir. The English press us hard.”

  The man walked over the fire-place and inserted the letter into it, and watched it burn. “The end of our hopes, boy,” he said, sadly. “Joseph Holt asked me to see if I could get you away to France, or even America. He doesn’t think they can hold much longer. Things are at a dire pass, unless someone comes to our aid.”

  He sighed. “Nothing more can be expected from France, and our resources are nearly exhausted. I’ll try to get you aboard the Darroway. She claims to be going to the Lowlands, but in truth her captain has carried others to and from France. But I fear she’s being watched. I knew your father well. It’s what he would have wanted for you.”

  Edmund bit his lip. He’d been out there, dodging patrols, fighting the guerilla war in the mountains. He knew the desperation, and how short they were of everything. “Sir. If…if we could raise money could that help?”