Page 59 of Heart of the Wren
“The water is so calm,” Carol said.
“You’re in another world now,” I said. “The rules are different here. Call out to her.”
“Clíona! We want to talk to ya,” Carol said.
A distant rumble of thunder was our answer. And then a chirp.
A sparrow landed on the rock, outside the glowing circle. Then a robin. Then a goldfinch. They hopped and pecked at the ground.
“I don’t…” Carol said.
I kept hold of her elbow. “Wait.”
Another chirp drew our attention to the emerald sea where a small brown bird darted over the waves, wings beating frantically. It flew around our heads, making us duck out of the way. It rose up and dived, over and over, until coming to rest on the rock, where I noticed the cream stripe behind each eye. It picked at its feathers.
“A wren,” I said, whereupon the other three birds immediately assailed it, tearing feathers from its body, gouging out its black eyes and leaving behind a bloody, twitching lump.
Carol shrieked and suddenly the birds were gone. As were the sea and the rock on which we stood. The kitchen had returned, where I still sat and Carol still knelt.
She fell back, aghast. Eddie raced to her side, crossing the circle. I moved my hands in the air in front of me, tracing an invisible ring, then I clapped once to close the magic circle and declare the working over. “So mote it be.”
“What happened?” Eddie asked.
Carol rose, turning around and around, brushing herself down. “Did you see them? The birds? And the sea. And, and, and the rock, and the waves?”
Eddie cupped her face in his hands. “What are you on about? You two have been sitting there in silence for the last five minutes. I thought you’d fallen asleep.”
“Did it work?” Lorcan asked.
Before I could answer the lights in the room dimmed, flickered, and went out.
“Are you sure you didn’t just make things worse?” Bullseye asked. “It feels like you just made things worse.”
Lorcan and Eddie fished some candles from a drawer. In the candlelight, the five of us huddled close together.
Carol breathed heavily, her breath turning to vapour as the temperature in the room plummeted. Eddie held her tightly for warmth.
I paced around, inside the chalk circle. “A wren… a wren…”
“The king of all birds,” Carol said.
I eyed her sideways.
“It’s the Wren Day song,” she said. “It’s today. St Stephen’s Day.”
The distant and familiar drumbeat of a bodhrán pierced the silence. I pulled up my sleeves. The fine, gingery hairs on my forearm lifted, my ears prickled, and my insides rumbled. Taking a candle, I hurried to the front door and flung it open. The flurry of snow had settled into a wafer-thin blanket on the farmyard. With the floodlight blasting, the whole farm took on an otherworldly glow.
The others quickly joined me.
Eddie pointed to the arched bridge. “Who’re they?”
A number of figures moved slowly forward. Spiky edged, rustling, hopping from foot to foot, they inched closer and closer until they came into the glare of the floodlight. Two figures wearing masks of straw, and a third clad head to toe in the stuff, decorated with ribbons. A walking haystack. Mairead was with them, banging her drum. Or the goddess Clíona in Mairead’s form.
Bullseye shouted and balled his fists. “Bloody kids from the village. Get out of it, ye little shites! I know your mammies!”
Carol grabbed his arm. “Daddy, stop. They not from the village.”
I backed us all away. “And they not kids.”
