Bansi O'Hara and the Bloodline Prophecy Page 7

  ‘And you never know – maybe if we get there first, the Dark Lord’ll know somehow – could be the whole of Tir na n’Óg’ll know as soon as it happens. And maybe once they’re of no use to him he will let them go.’

  Granny glared. ‘Or maybe he’ll . . .’ She stopped, unable to bring herself to finish the sentence. The unspoken words, kill them anyway, hung in the air.

  Tam shrugged again. ‘Maybe he will. I’m not saying for certain we’ll get them back for you, missus. But if we try, then we might. And if we don’t try, then we won’t.’

  Bansi took a deep breath. She felt shaky inside; but the faces of her parents filled her mind and spurred her on. ‘Let’s go, then,’ she said.

  ‘Bansi! No! I forbid it!’ Granny ordered, shocked. ‘How could I look your father in the eye and tell him I’d let you go off to the land of the Good People?’

  ‘Granny, I don’t think I’ve got any choice. If I don’t go, you’ll never get the chance to look him in the eye. We’ll never see Dad or Mum again.’ She turned to Tam. ‘Do you need to do any magic to open the gate?’

  ‘Not from this side,’ Tam answered. ‘We just have to enter the stone circle during the twilight of dawn. But if you’re willing to do this, then we’d better get going. Listen.’

  In the distance, a cock was crowing.

  Bansi had long since made her decision. ‘Give me a minute,’ she said. ‘Wait for me downstairs.’

  Granny followed her into her room. ‘Bansi, it’s madness,’ she said, stepping carefully round Mrs Mullarkey, who was still lying peacefully where she had fallen. ‘You can’t go!’

  Bansi pulled her jeans on and reached for a turquoise fleece. ‘I’ve got to, Granny,’ she said. ‘It’s our only chance of getting Mum and Dad back.’

  ‘Please, sweetheart. I . . . couldn’t stand if it I lost you as well as your father.’

  Bansi’s eyes grew warm as the tears began to well up. ‘Gran . . . I have to. I’m sorry.’ She stepped forward and put her arms around her grandmother.

  Granny enfolded her in a warm embrace. ‘I love you, darling. And I’m sorry as well.’ Tears welled in her own old eyes as she let go and turned to leave.

  ‘You don’t have anything to be sorry about, Granny. I love you, too.’

  The old woman smiled ruefully at her as she closed the door.

  As Bansi was putting her trainers on, she heard the key turn in the lock.

  ‘Granny! No!’ Suddenly frantic, Bansi reached the door too late. ‘Granny!’ She twisted the handle, pulled with all her might, but in vain. ‘Let me out!’

  On the other side of the door, a tear ran down each of Eileen O’Hara’s wrinkled cheeks; but the old woman’s face was resolute. ‘I’m sorry, love. I’m so sorry. But I can’t let you. I can’t.’ She slipped the key into her cardigan pocket and started down the stairs, wiping her eyes.

  In stubborn desperation, Bansi looked around the room. Her eyes fixed on the shattered window frame; and beyond it, the branches of a tree.

  Downstairs, Granny O’Hara squared up to Pogo.

  ‘Go! Get out! You’re not taking my granddaughter anywhere! I wish I’d never set eyes on any of you! You go back to wherever you came from, and you just rescue my son and his wife!’

  Pogo scowled. ‘Without your granddaughter, we’ve no chance of that.’

  ‘Aye, and if you take her, I’ll have no family left at all, will I? Get out!’ Furious, beyond reason, she aimed a kick at the little man, who skipped nimbly out of the way.

  * * *

  Upstairs, Bansi was carefully opening what was left of the window, taking care to avoid the jagged shards of glass that protruded from the broken frame. That done, she bent to pick up the poker and thrust it like a sword through her belt. Climbing onto the sill and balancing like a gymnast, she poised to jump. She stared at the tree branch, mentally measuring the distance she needed to clear.

  She leaped.

  Below, Tam looked up and grinned.

  ‘You realize you’re condemning your son to death?’ Pogo asked harshly.

  ‘Don’t you dare put that on me, little man! Don’t you dare! I will not be made responsible for what you people have done to my family! And I will not lose my granddaughter as well as my son!’

  ‘Ready?’ Tam whispered, as Bansi clambered down through the branches and dropped lightly to the ground. She nodded, not trusting herself to speak; a lump was rising in her throat. ‘Just turn your back, then.’ He noticed the poker hanging at her hip. ‘And keep that thing away from me.’

  Bansi turned. There was a movement behind her; she felt herself abruptly lifted away from the ground. Suddenly, without quite knowing how, she was astride the back of a huge night-black horse. It tossed back its great head, rearing and stamping frighteningly.

  Granny and Pogo were glaring furiously at each other, both breathing hard and too angry for words, when from outside there came a wild neighing. Both heads turned.

  ‘Right, well, I’ll be off then,’ Pogo said hurriedly. ‘Um, thanks for having us, missus – I’ll see myself out.’ He bolted for the door.

  ‘What on earth . . .? Now just wait a moment!’ Granny barked, giving chase. ‘Where do you think you’re—? Oh, my . . .’

  Her voice faded weakly. There, standing right in front of her house, was the biggest horse she’d ever seen; an enormous black stallion with burning yellow eyes. Pogo was scurrying nimbly up its flank; and already sitting astride it and holding on for grim death was her son’s daughter.

  ‘Bansi!’ she yelled. ‘Get off that thing at once!’ She snatched up the iron skillet, which had fallen on the gravel beneath Bansi’s window, and glared furiously at the horse; the great black beast reared and whinnied like a thing possessed. ‘Put her down!’ she screeched. ‘Give me my granddaughter!’

  The horse reared once more. Sparks flashed as its hooves struck the ground. Suddenly, nightmarishly, it was bearing down on her.

  Chapter Ten

  ‘No!’ screamed Bansi. Before her, Granny gripped the skillet with both hands and raised it to shoulder-height, ready to strike the horse even as it ran her down.

  At the last moment it leaped, high into the air. Bansi felt her stomach lurch; she looked down to see her grandmother standing dazed, skillet lifted uselessly, far below. For an instant, time seemed to pause . . .

  With a heavy jolt, they landed. Gravel spun beneath gleaming hooves. Down the driveway and across the road they hurtled, hurdling the hedge on the other side. Across fields and hills they raced, faster and faster, with Tam never seeming to draw breath or grow tired. The moonlight shone down coldly from high above them, but already the stars were fading against the coming morning. On the horizon a thin, bright line shone through the dark blue.

  * * *

  Granny didn’t pause for more than a moment. Taking the key from her pocket, she raced up the stairs and unlocked Bansi’s room. Nora Mullarkey was still lying there, sleeping peacefully on the floor where she had fallen.

  ‘Iron,’ Eileen O’Hara muttered. ‘That’s what’ll do it. I hope.’ Feverishly, she knelt and placed the skillet on her friend’s chest. Taking hold of her hands, she pressed them against the cold metal.

  ‘Wake up,’ she muttered. ‘Come on, Nora! Wake up!’

  There was no response.

  ‘Nora, please!’ She lifted the pan and touched it gently to the sleeping face. Nora Mullarkey let out a loud snore.

  ‘Nora! Come on, you silly old fool!’

  Again she placed the pan on Mrs Mullarkey’s chest and laid the wrinkled hands on it.

  Nothing.

  Eileen O’Hara looked out of the window. From where she knelt, she could see the hint of an unwelcome glow beginning to creep over the eastern hills. She moaned softly, thinking of her son now lost to her, and her granddaughter as good as.

  ‘I’ll thank you not to call me a silly old fool, Eileen O’Hara! And to keep your old kitchenware off my best cardigan, come to that!’

 
; Granny turned. Nora Mullarkey was sitting up, a harsh, if slightly woozy expression on her face, the skillet held loosely in one hand as the other absently rubbed her shin.

  ‘Nora! Thank goodness! There’s still time!’

  ‘Time for what, you daft old haddock?’

  ‘The . . . the Good People – they took Fintan and Asha, and then Bansi went after them on a big magic horse . . .’

  ‘A big magic horse–?’ With a gasp, Mrs Mullarkey clasped one wrinkled hand to her mouth. ‘You don’t mean to tell me she’s ridden off on one of their steeds?’

  ‘Aye – well, I think it was the boy, the púca – he turns into things . . .’

  ‘A púca? Oh, my goodness, Eileen!’ Her eyes began to well with tears of sympathy for her friend. ‘I am so, so sorry! Bansi was such a lovely wee girl . . .’

  Granny stood suddenly, eyes blazing, and glared down at her friend. ‘What do you mean, “was”? She is a lovely wee girl, Nora Mullarkey!’

  Mrs Mullarkey flushed with embarrassment. ‘Well, yes, of course, Eileen . . . what I mean is, you’ll miss her so much . . .’

  If Granny’ eyes had blazed before, they were now on the point of explosion. She leaned forward angrily, her face reddening fiercely. ‘Miss her, Nora?MISS her? We’re not going to miss her; we’re going to find her!’

  Mrs Mullarkey’s mouth fell open in astonishment. ‘Talk some sense, Eileen! You know where they’ll have taken them – to . . . to the place they come from! It wouldn’t be safe to try and follow them, now would it . . .?’

  Granny furiously stamped her foot on the floor.

  ‘Not safe? This is my family, Nora! My wee boy! His wee girl and her mother!’ The foot stamped again, and again with every exclamation. ‘They’re not safe! And if you think I’m going to sit here and wait while they’re in mortal peril off in Faeryland, then—’

  ‘Have you no sense, Eileen O’Hara?!?’ Mrs Mullarkey cried, leaping to her feet. ‘Using that word, after all you’ve seen? Do you want that wolf-creature and all its friends howling at the door?’

  ‘I DON’T CARE!!! They can all come, every blessed faery in the world – no, I will not stop saying it, Nora, faery faery faery! – and when they all come then I’ll beat them black and blue with an iron horseshoe until they tell me where my wee Bansi is!’

  ‘Stop it, Eileen! Foolishness won’t bring them back!’

  ‘No, Nora, and nor will cowardice, neither! All these years you’ve always made yourself out so brave and fierce, striking fear into the heart of every shopkeeper in Ballyfey, and here you are, too scared of the faeries to help when my family’s in mortal danger!’

  ‘I am not scared!’

  ‘You are too, Nora Mullarkey! You’re a big frightened chicken, that’s all you are! You’re too scared of the faeries to even say the word!’

  The challenge hung in the air between them like a slap in the face. In the sudden silence, it echoed like a cymbal.

  Mrs Mullarkey drew in a slow breath. For a moment her face was a rigid mask of anger. Then, ‘Faery!’ she yelled. ‘All right, Eileen O’Hara? FAERY! FAERY, FAERY, FAERY! I can say it louder than you, because I’m not scared!’

  ‘You can not say it louder, Nora Mullarkey, because for all your pretending to be brave, you’re still frightened the faeries will come and get you!’

  ‘If the faeries come here they’ll get a taste of this frying pan where it hurts most!’

  ‘Load of rubbish, Nora Mullarkey! First sign of a faery and you’d be out that door, dropping my frying pan behind you! You’re a coward! Otherwise you’d come with me to help me rescue my wee Bansi!’

  Mrs Mullarkey looked scandalized. ‘Eileen O’Hara! You must be losing your mind, or your hearing, or something of the kind! Not go? Why, if I don’t go to save little Bansi, then who will? I couldn’t expect a frail wee old lady like yourself to, that’s for certain.’

  Granny O’Hara nearly hit the roof.

  ‘Frail? Nora, that’s rich, coming from someone who’s seen much better days! In fact, you must forgive me, I was forgetting how fragile you are these days, I couldn’t possibly ask you to go–’

  ‘Fragile??? That’s it, Eileen O’Hara, out of my way! I’m getting in that car and I’m off to . . . to Faery land this very minute!’ Mrs Mullarkey turned and dashed down the stairs. Granny quickly followed, trying to overtake just as they reached the front door, with the result that they spent several seconds jammed side by side in the doorway, struggling like cats in a sack before popping like corks into the dimness of the garden. Glaring at one another, they hurried to the green Morris Minor, wrenched open the doors and flung themselves in.

  Moments later they leaped from the car again and ran for the nearby garage. With more speed than you would have thought possible, they produced several battered old boxes and loaded them into the boot.

  It was only a few minutes afterwards that Sean McKnight, startled from sleep, instinctively threw himself sideways at the roar of a familiar engine on the road outside, and fell out of bed. As he clutched his forehead in agony, he could just make out the sound of two elderly ladies yelling their heads off at each other. It sounded, though he couldn’t be sure, as if they were shouting about fairies.

  ‘They’re away with the fairies, the pair of them,’ he groaned.

  Like a great shadowy ghost Slieve Donnan loomed over Bansi in the grey half-darkness.

  ‘There!’ Pogo pointed to an indistinct shape on the hillside, growing closer by the second. ‘That’s the stone circle, around the ancient oak. Now make sure you hang on tight. We have to enter the circle together if we want to arrive together.’

  Bansi chewed her lip and made no reply. She wound her fingers into Tam’s mane and concentrated on the relentless pounding of his hooves against the soil.

  ‘The devil!’ Nora Mullarkey exclaimed, as Eileen O’Hara – a little calmer now – reached the end of her explanation. ‘So he used my own name against me! Well, he’ll not do that again! Hang on, Eileen, I’ve just got to make a wee detour!’

  The dark green Morris Minor Traveller swerved suddenly and made off down a narrow lane, its driver heedless of her passenger’s protests.

  They were higher now, and Bansi could make out the shape of the stones around the ancient tree a little below the hilltop. To her eyes, they were shimmering and glowing – much as the whole hill had appeared to do on the previous evening. She shuddered, half tempted to leap from the horse’s back; but then a picture of her parents came into her mind, and she clenched her jaw and sat firm.

  They had almost reached the stones – the ground was levelling out under the pounding hooves – when a movement in the great oak tree caught her eye. It was a bird on a low branch – a raven. Black ragged wings flapping like a danger flag, it cawed harshly in wild alarm. Bansi’s stomach chilled; turning, she caught a glimpse of movement. Something large and grey broke from cover, moving at speed, closing on them from behind. She tried to shout a warning.

  Too late. As Tam leaped, so too did the wolf. Propelling itself in a great arc that intersected theirs, it tore Bansi from the horse’s back. She had one confused glimpse of Pogo staring in horror at her; saw the gleaming hooves strike the earth within the faery ring. The great stallion, bearing its tiny rider, disappeared.

  A second later she, too, struck the earth, hard, and everything went black.

  Chapter Eleven

  Eileen O’Hara heaved an impatient and anxious sigh as the door of the big old house at last opened and Nora Mullarkey hurried out.

  ‘If we don’t get there before dawn I swear I will never forgive you!’ she grumbled anxiously, as her friend settled back into the driver’s seat and gunned the engine. ‘Making social calls when my wee girl’s in danger!’

  ‘We’ll get there, all right,’ Mrs Mullarkey assured her tersely as the little car jerked and shot forward. ‘I was only a couple of minutes. And that was no social call, I can tell you. I’m ready to face that wolf-boy now, and he won’t get the
better of me this time.’

  Eileen O’Hara rolled her eyes despairingly. ‘What could a few minutes with the parish priest have possibly done to make any difference at all?’

  Nora Mullarkey glanced disdainfully at her friend, oblivious to how wildly the car swerved. ‘Eileen, you’re the big-mouth that blabbed my name in front of one of the Good People. Do you think I’m going to go spilling my secrets to you now?’

  She jerked the steering wheel savagely. The car skidded sharply as it swerved round the corner to rejoin the main road.

  Time flows differently in the Other Realm; so it may have been just then, or it may not, that a dark shadow in the gloom of a great and ancient stone ruin suddenly opened like a flower. In an instant it had bloomed and blossomed into the shape of a tiny brown man riding a huge black stallion, which emerged at a canter and swiftly brought itself up short. Even as it stopped, the horse was already changing back into a tousle-haired, handsome, wild-looking boy. Pogo slid down from Tam’s shoulder and stood by his side.

  One by one, other figures began to emerge from the gloom, until the two were surrounded by a motley collection of faery beings. Some looked almost human, but others were odd and otherworldly in appearance. There were little people – some of them brown, although not brownies, others green, grey, or even purple; some reached to Tam’s waist, while others were no bigger than his finger. There were hunched and twisted goblins; tall, stately dryads; squat, dwarfish creatures with burning red eyes; slender, willowy elves with delicate blue complexions. Silently they pressed in around Pogo and Tam.

  ‘You failed, then,’ said one, a goblin with wrinkled skin the colour of mottled stone.

  ‘Ah, well, now, I wouldn’t exactly say “failed”,’ Tam began cheerily.

  ‘What would you say?’ the goblin retorted. ‘You were supposed to guard the child – to stay near her and protect her. So where is she? Maybe she’s fulfilled the prophecy already, and we’re all safe? Hah!’ He spat derisively on the broken stone floor at Tam’s feet. ‘Or maybe you just changed your minds? The mortal realm too much for you, was it?’