The Invasion by Peadar O'Guilin

Author:Peadar O'Guilin [Peadar O’Guilin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781910989661
Publisher: David Fickling Books Ltd
Published: 2018-03-13T04:00:00+00:00

Vengeance

Nessa is still alive, but not alone.

She clings to a lonely rock clustered with foul-smelling barnacles. A few hundred metres from where she hides is the shoreline of the Grey Land, and there a group of half a dozen Sídhe have formed a chain and are wading out towards her.

‘We felt your arrival, thief!’ cries one of them.

She’s tired enough that she slips a little, cutting her good hand on one of the razor-sharp shells that cling feebly to the rock. She still has her sopping, half-burnt prison uniform. How strange to be here with clothing!

‘What will you become?’ shouts another of the Sídhe. ‘A horse? I need one for the war! Or a mouse to feed our hawks?’

They seem to think she lies closer to shore than she actually does, and this might have something to do with the way she upended her boat. Perhaps it would have deposited her right in their laps if she hadn’t altered its course. But they keep moving out from their initial position and will find her soon enough.

‘The thief is not dead,’ one says, a man’s gorgeous baritone. ‘I can feel that much, and … and there’s something else.’ He raises his chin as though sniffing the air. ‘Something beautiful.’

‘Oh, yes!’ a woman replies, her hair glimmering with bits of glass and metal. ‘I can taste it even from here!’

Nessa’s breath quickens. She has nowhere to go. Nobody she can call on for help. She could swim directly away from the shore until she drowns. But what if one of them is a better swimmer than she is with her two broken fingers? They’ll catch her easily and turn her into something terrible. And the pain of it! An agony, a horror she will feel for ever, because it’s not like this is a Call that ends after a single day.

They’re still coming forward, arms outspread, smiles huge.

Behind them, the land gently rises away from the sea. Over there it is raining ash. Further left, a volcano spits angrily, blasting burning rock down on to the world, and Nessa realizes that she was wrong to think there was no safe place for her in the Grey Land, because she alone of all humanity can claim fire as a friend. If only she could get there!

‘She can’t breathe water,’ says the male Sídhe on the end of the line. ‘Not yet, anyway. She must be behind that rock. Yes! Yes! She is the beating heart of a promise. Can’t you feel it? The sweetness of it on the air.’ No further word is spoken, yet all at once the six of them are surging forward, four women, two men. They split after a few steps so that three of them can come from either side of the rock. They shout with joy while still several metres away. One man takes a hunting horn from around his neck and blows loud enough to raise the dead.

A lesser girl would have panicked at this stage

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