They had gone sideways, had the Tuatha. They could not bear to leave Ireland, and so they had gone just one over - or two, or five. It was still Ireland, but it was also a little bit closer to the far side of Reality, where, as Nita knew, lay Timeheart. She had been there several times, for brief periods. It looked different ways, depending on where and when you were. She had seen it look like a city, like the ocean, like the depths of space. What it always was, regardless of your viewpoint on it, was that place, that other universe or dimension, where the physical universe was as it would have been, had the Lone Power not taken exception and created something that the other Powers had not intended: entropy… death. The Powers simply moved into that universe near Timeheart that looked most like Ireland. But much coming and going had forged a link, broadening the road from a little track into a highway that it was easy to stumble on to. All of Ireland had become a place where one could suddenly go sideways. This to-ing and fro-ing of the greater and lesser Powers between Ireland that was, and their version of Ireland - Tir na nOg, as they called it, the Land of the Ever-Young - was very dangerous. But it wasn't a thing you could just stop: at least, Nita couldn't. And as for her. . .
Well, she had gone sideways, and it hadn't hurt her… but then she was a wizard, and apt to such things. If something like that started happening to ordinary people, though, people in the street who were standing waiting for a bus, and suddenly found themselves in the middle of a Viking invasion - or something worse. . .Nita shuddered.
The problem with being sent somewhere by the Powers that Be to do a job is that, frequently, they leave it to you to find out what the job is. Nita flipped through the book to the directory pages and saw that, yes indeed, she was on active status, and her aunt's address was listed. There was an address for a senior wizard as well, with an asterisk and a note saying, "Consult in case of emergency."
Well then, Nita thought, if they've put me on my own on this one, I suppose that's what it is. Must be something that having Kit around wouldn't help. The thought made her ache. Were the Powers trying to break up their partnership? Or on the other hand, was this just the kind of solo work that even a partnered wizard had to do every now and then? Well, either way, she was not going to refuse the commission. She shut the book as the bus bounced into Bray.
It was not a very big town, its main street about half the length of the main street at home; and as usual, everything continued to look small and cramped and a little worn-out by her standards. She berated herself inwardly. Just because you're used to everything looking slick and neat and new, doesn't mean that it has to be that way here. Aunt Annie had mentioned to her that Ireland had been in economic trouble for a while, and there just was not the money to spend on a lot of things that Nita took for granted.
She got off in the middle of town, across from the big Catholic church, and had a look around. There was a sign there that said Leabhlair poblachta, public library. She grinned a bit. Finding libraries had never been one of her problems.
The library was two buildings - one older, which had been a schoolhouse once, a big square granite-built building, very solid and dependable-looking, all on one storey; and the newer annexe, built in the same stone but a slightly more modern style. She spent a happy two or three hours there, browsing. Nita had had no idea there was so much written in the Irish language - so many poems, so many poets: humour, cartoon books, all kinds of neat things. And structurally the language looked, and occasionally sounded, very like the Speech. But she tried not to be distracted from what she was there for.
She picked out several large books on Irish mythology, and began going through them in hopes of correlating what Tualha had told her with what she had seen in the manual. Mostly she found confirmation for Tualha's version - the terrible eye of Balor that burnt everything it saw: many strange tales of the old 'gods and goddesses', the greater and lesser Powers that Be. As usual, the Powers had their jobs divided up. Among many others, there were Govan the smith and beer-brewer, Diancecht the great physician of the gods, and Brigid of the Fires, hearth-goddess and beast-goddess, artificer and miracle-worker; bard-gods and carpenter-gods, builders, charioteers, cooks and warriors.
And then there were the stories of the saints. When they came to Ireland, so many miracles attended them that Nita seriously wondered whether the stories she was reading were not in fact new versions of the tales about the Powers, transferred to the saints to make them 'respectable' to the new religion. Bridget's stories in particular were interesting, though there was confusion over whether the person they were happening to was the old goddess in disguise, or the new, mortal saint. Her miracles seemed to be of a friendly, homey sort, more useful than spectacular: she mended broken things and fed people, and said that her great wish was that everyone should be in Heaven with God and the angels, and should have a nice meal and a drink.
There was a lot more material, and Nita did her best to digest it. And then digestion came up to be considered seriously, since she hadn't had any breakfast. It was partly out of cowardice; she had woken up afraid to hang around the farm for long, lest she should look at some common thing and abruptly find herself back in time, or sideways in it. I'm really no safer here, though, she thought as she stepped out of the library, looking up and down the little street which ran parallel to Bray's main street. This calm-looking landscape with its little terraced houses ranged across the way, and the van unloading groceries for the supermarket around the corner, and the people all double-parked on the yellow lines, all this could shift in a moment. A second, and she might find herself outside the Stone Age encampment that was here once long ago: or the little row of wattled huts that the Romans came visiting once, and never left - their bones and coins had been found down by Bray Head: or the great eighteenth-century spa where people from Britain came for their holidays, promenading up and down the fine seafront. No, there was nowhere she could go to get away from things.
She went up to the main street and looked around for somewhere to get something to eat. There were some tea shops, but at the moment she felt like she had had enough tea for a lifetime. Instead, near the bridge over the Dargle, there was a place with a sign that said AMERICAN STYLE FRIED CHICKEN.
Hmm, Nita thought, her mouth watering as she made for it, we'll see about that.
She went in. As she ordered, she saw a few heads turn among the kids who were sitting there: probably at her accent. She smiled. They were going to have to get used to her for the little while she was going to be here.
She got herself a Coke and settled down to wait for her chicken to be ready, gazing idly over at the kids sitting at the other table. They were stealing glances back at her, boys and girls together: a little casual, a little shy, a little hostile. In that way, they looked almost exactly like almost everyone she knew at home. They did dress differently. Black seemed to be a big favorite here, and a kind of heavy boots that she had never seen before. Everyone seemed very into tight torn jeans, or just tight jeans, or very tight short skirts, all black again; and black leather seemed popular. She felt a little out of place in her quilted bodywarmer and her faded blue jeans, but she grinned back at the other kids and paid attention to her Coke again.
A couple of minutes later, two of them came over to her. She looked up amiably enough. One of them was a boy, very tall, with very shaggy dark hair, a long nose, with dark eyes set very close together, and a big wide mouth that could have been very funny or very cruel depending on the mood of its owner. The girl could have been his twin, except that she was shorter, and her hair was marvelously teased and ratted out into a great black mane. At least parts of it were black; some were stunningly purple, or pink. She was wearing a khaki T-shirt with a wonderfully torn and beaten-up leather jacket over it: black again, black jeans and those big heavy boots which Nita was becoming rather envious of.
"You a Yank?" said the boy. It wasn't entirely a question. There was something potentially a little nasty on the edge of it.
"Somebody has
to be," Nita said. "You want to sit down?"
They looked at her and shuffled for a moment. "You staying in town?"
"No, I'm out in Kilquade."
"Relatives?"
"Yeah. Annie Callahan. She's my aunt."
"Woooaaa!" said the boy in a tone of voice that was only slightly mocking and only slightly impressed. "Rich relatives, huh?"
"I don't know if rich is the right word," Nita said.
"You here looking for your roots?" the girl asked.
Nita looked at her hair, looked at the girl's. 'Still attached to them, as far as I can tell. Though finding them around here doesn't seem to be a big problem."
There was a burst of laughter over this. "Come on and sit with us," they said. "I'm Ronan. This is Majella."
"OK."
Nita went with them. She was rapidly introduced to the others, who seemed to alternate between being extremely interested in her, and faintly scornful. The scorn seemed to be because she was an American, because they thought she had a lot of money, because they thought she thought they were poor, and various other reasons. The admiration seemed to be because she was American, because they thought she had a lot of money, and because she could see the big films six months earlier than everyone else. "Uh," Nita said finally, "my parents don't let me go and see all that many films. I have to keep my schoolwork up all the time, or they don't let me go out."
There was a general groan of agreement over this. "There's no escape," said Ronan.
More detailed introductions ensued. Most of the kids lived in Bray. One of them lived as far out as Greystones, but took the bus in 'for the crack', she said. Nita blinked a bit until she discovered that crack was not a drug here, but a word for really good conversation or fun. Nita was immediately instructed about all the nightclubs and all the discos she should go to. "How many discos do you have here?" she said, in some surprise. It then turned out that 'disco' was not a word for a specific kind of building, or a specific kind of music, as it was in the States, but just a dance that various pubs or hotels did once or twice a week. Several of them were no-alcohol kids' discos, highly thought of by this group, who went off into enthusiastic discussion of what they would wear and who they would go with.
"You got somebody to go with?" said Ronan.
"Uh, no," Nita said, thinking regretfully of Kit. He loved to dance. "My buddy's back in the States."
"Her buddyyyyyyV Nita grinned a little: she was now beyond the blushing point. Her sister had been teasing her about Kit for so long that this was a very minor sort of salvo by comparison.
"Aren't you a little young for that?" one of the girls said, clearly teasing, to judge by the young guy massaging her shoulders at the moment.
Nita arched her eyebrows. "Let's just say that in my part of the world we make up our minds about this kind of thing early."
"Whooooaaaaa!" said the group, and started punching one another and making lewd remarks, only about half of which Nita understood.
"So if your buddy's there, what are you doing here?" said Ronan.
"I know!" said Majella. "Her parents sent her away to separate them because they were - ahem!" And she shook her hand in a gesture intended to be slightly rude and slightly indicative of what they were doing.
Nita thought about this for a moment, and thought that the simplest way to manage things was to let them think exactly this. "Well, yeah," she said. "Anyway, I'm stuck here for six weeks."
"Stuck here! Only stuck here! In the best part of the Earth!" they said, and began ragging her shamelessly, explaining what a privilege it was that she should be among them, and telling her all the wonderful places there were to see, and things to do. She grinned at this at last, and said, "I bet none of you do those things."
"Oh, well, those are tourist things," Ronan said.
"Thanks loads," said Nita.
They chatted about this and that for a long while. Nita found herself oddly interested by Ronan, despite his looks: maybe because of his looks. She didn't know anyone at home who managed to look so dark and grim, no matter how punk they dressed: and there was an odd, cheerful edge to his grimness that kept flashing out, a certain delight in having opinions, and having them loudly, in hopes that someone would be shocked. Ronan's opinions of anyone who wanted to colonize Ireland, from the English on back, were scathing. So were his views on people who thought they were Irish and weren't really, or who weren't Irish and thought they should have something to do with running the country, or thought that the Irish needed any kind of help with anything at all. The others tended to nod agreement with him, or if they disagreed, to keep fairly quiet about this: Nita noticed this particularly, and suspected that they had felt the edge of his temper once or twice. She grinned a little to herself, thinking that he would have a slightly hotter time of it if he tried it on her. She rather hoped Ronan would. It was amazing how long a couple of pieces of chicken and a few Cokes could be made to last; fortunately, the people running the shop didn't seem to care how long they stayed there. Eventually, though, everybody had to leave for one reason or another: buses to catch, people to meet. One by one they said goodbye to Nita, and headed off, Ronan last of them. "Don't get lost looking for leprechauns, now, Miss Yank," he shouted to her over his shoulder as he made his way off down Bray's main street.
She snickered and turned away, looking at the number forty-five bus pulling up across the street, and thought, Naah… Ill walk home. It was only eight miles, up the promontory of Bray Head and down the other side, through extremely pretty countryside.
It was a long, easy walk down, taking her about an hour to get down to Greystones. She strolled down into the town. It was a more villagey-looking street than Bray's, and smaller: a couple of banks, a couple of food shops, two small restaurants, a newsagents where you could get magazines and cards and sweets. Various other small shops… a dry cleaners. And that was it. After that, the town was surrounded by big old houses, and estates of smaller ones. And then the fields began again - in fact, they began almost as soon as you had left the town. Nita strolled by the tiny golf course, looked down to Greystones' south beach beyond it; walked past a cow with a blank expression, chewing its cud. "Dai," she said to it. It blinked at her and kept chewing.
The road climbed again, winding a bit, up through Killincarrig. Everything has names here, Nita thought. Ifs amazing. Every piece of ground… Aunt Annie was right. I really must get a map out. There may be one in the manual …
There was. She consulted it as she went up the road. At the top of the road, another crossed it at a T-junction: she turned left. That way led towards Kilquade and Kilcoole and Newcastle with its little church.
This road climbed and dipped over a little bridge that crossed a dry river; up between high hedges. Birds dipped and sang high in the air. The sun was quite hot: there was no wind.
There came a point where there was a right turn, and a signpost pointing down between two more high hedges, towards Kilquade. Nita took it, making her way down the narrow road. The houses here were built well away from one another, even though they were quite small; some were larger, though.
The road dipped and broadened, curving around in front of St Patrick's. Nita stopped and looked at it for a moment. It was quite normal. A little white-painted church, with the tower off to one side of the building, and the bell with a circular pulley to make it go. There was a big field on one side, and visible behind it a hedge, and beyond that, some of Aunt Annie's land, another field planted with oilseed rape and those bright yellow flowers. The hum of bees came from it, loud. Nita stood still and listened, smelled the air. No broken stained glass, no fire, no blackening.
She turned and looked off to her right. Well behind her, she could see Little Sugarloaf, which she had passed on her walk. And just beyond it, Great Sugarloaf, a very perfect cone, standing up straight, a sort of russet and green colour this time of year; for in this heat, the bracken was beginning to go brown already. I wonder, she thought. Sideways…
Sh
e had done it without wizardry yesterday. She stood there for a moment, and just looked. Not at Sugarloaf as it was, but as it could be; not this brown, but green.
Nothing.
Nothing… But it was green.
Her eyes widened a little. She looked at the nearby hedge. There were no flowers. She looked over her shoulder in panic at the church. The church looked just the same, but it was earlier in the year, much earlier. I wonder, she thought. How far can you take it? Do you have to be looking for anything in particular? Most wizardries required that you name the specifics that you wanted… All right. What does it look like? she thought. What does it look like for them, for the Sidhe?
She looked at Sugarloaf again. What does it look like? Show me. Come on, show me…
There was no ripple, no sense of change, no special effects. One minute it was Sugarloaf, green as if with new spring. The next minute - it was a city.
There were no such cities. No-one had ever built such towers, such spires. Glass, it might have been, or crystal: a glass mountain, a crystal city, all sheen and fire. It needed no sunlight to make it shine. It shed its light all around, and the other hills nearby all had shadows cast away from it. Nita was not entirely sure she didn't see something moving in some of those shadows. But for the moment, all she could see clearly was the light, the fire; Sugarloaf all one great mass of tower upon tower, arches, architraves, buttresses, leaping up; an architecture men could not have imagined, since it violated so many of their laws. It was touched a little with the human idiom, true; but then those who had built it and lived in it - were living in it - had been dealing with the human idiom for a while, and had become enamored of it. “They're still here," Tualha had said, and laughed.
Nita blinked, and let it go: and it was gone. Brown bracken again, plain granite mountain, with its head scraped bare. She let a long breath out and went walking again, back up to the last hill that would lead her up to her aunt's drive. "That simple," she said to herself. "That easy… " For wizards, at least. At the moment. But it shouldn't be that easy…