The Feral Child (4 page)

Chapter Five

It seemed like only a few minutes later that
she felt herself being shaken awake.

“Maddy. Maddy, wake up,” Granny was saying.

The room was dark, and wind and rain were smashing against her window. Granny was grinning like someone had stuck a coat hanger in her mouth.

“What’s the matter?” Maddy asked, while nearly dislocating her jaw with a huge yawn. George dipped his back and stretched his legs before jumping off the bed and padding out to the kitchen.

“It’s Stephen—they found him!”

“Where?”

“On the castle grounds. Poor little fella was wandering about in his pajamas crying for his mammy—not a mark on him, thank God.”

“Can I go and see him?”

“No, darling, not yet. The doctor is taking a look at him, and then he needs to get some rest. You’ll see him tomorrow.”

“What time is it?”

“It’s eight o’clock, but don’t worry about getting up—I think after the night we have all had, we could do with a day off.”

“Eight o’clock? So it took half the village four hours to find Stephen on the castle grounds? They’re not that big.”

Granny rolled her eyes. “They were looking in other places for him too, and he is a small child. Can you not just be grateful he’s back, safe and sound?”

Maddy looked at Granny for a second and decided not to push it. There was someone better able to answer her questions. She heard the front door open.

“That will be your grandfather. Get up, and I’ll make us all a fry.”

Granda was stamping his feet on the welcome mat and easing his rain-sodden coat off his shoulders when Maddy walked into the room. She waited until Granny had switched the radio on in the kitchen and the bacon and sausages had begun to sizzle before she spoke to him. She didn’t want Granny to hear this conversation. Granda was stretching his long legs out in front of the fire, his tired head beginning to droop on to his chest.

Maddy sat in Granny’s chair and said, “I told the truth last night.”

He looked up at her warily, his eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep. “Oh?”

“Yes—
everything
. About the way this boy looked, about what he
really
is, about how it all ties in with those stories you tell.”

He shifted in his chair and looked into the fire.

“No one believes me. You need to tell them I wasn’t lying.”

He still didn’t look at her. All he said was, “You can’t tell faerie tales to the police, Maddy. It’s not right.”

He couldn’t have hurt her more if he had slapped her in the face. She stared at him with her mouth open, her eyes filling with tears. He could have told everyone she wasn’t a liar; he could have stuck up for her.

A tear spilled down her cheek, but she dashed it away with her palm. She glared at him and felt the welcome taste of molten anger ooze up from her belly. She got up and walked over to him. She leaned down and hissed in his ear, “I’ll tell you what isn’t right. You knew what I met last night. You could have sorted him out. You could have stopped this happening to Stephen.”

He flinched, but he still would not meet her eye. Maddy stormed to her room and began to get dressed. She yanked her anorak on and banged her bedroom door behind her. She pulled the house keys off the hook so violently she almost yanked the wooden key holder from the wall.

“Where on earth are you going?” Granny was standing in the living room with her apron on and a
spatula in her hand. “Breakfast is going to be ready in ten minutes.”

“You can stuff your breakfast. I’m going to see Stephen.”

“Don’t you dare speak to me like that, young lady. Get back here right now!”

Maddy slammed the door shut behind her so hard the windows rattled. It was only half a dozen steps from her grandparents’ front door to the Forests’ house, but it was raining so hard that Maddy’s hair hung in rats’ tails by the time she knocked. Granny wrenched their front door open and hissed, “Get back in here,
now
!” Maddy glared at her and shook her head. Granny started to step outside, but just then the Forests’ front door opened, and Maddy shot into their hallway.

The massive shape of Mr. Forest loomed over her as he shut the door. Maddy cringed when she thought of how she must have sounded last night. Remembering the look on Mrs. Forest’s face, she held her breath, waiting for his reaction, but his face split into a huge smile.

“Maddy, love, have you come to see Stephen? That’s good of you. He’ll like that.”

Mrs. Forest appeared out of the kitchen, still dressed in the clothes she had worn last night. Her face was tired but happy, and she grabbed Maddy and gave her a huge hug that squeezed all the breath out of her.

“Maddy, thank you, thank you, for being awake and seeing Stephen go off like that. What would we have done if you had been asleep?”

“Ummm—”

“The doctor is with him right now, but he won’t be long. You can go to his room and see him then. Will you have a bite to eat while you’re waiting?”

“Actually, I think Granny was making breakfast—”

“Ah, you will,” Mrs. Forest carried on. “Sure, a little bite to eat won’t spoil your appetite for breakfast, a growing girl like you. You need all the help you can get.”

Mrs. Forest herded Maddy through the sitting room to the kitchen at the back of the house. It was warm and bright, and steam fogged up the windows. Mrs. Forest bustled about making Maddy a ham sandwich and added a slice of jam sponge cake to the plate.
It’s obviously never too early for cake
, thought Maddy. As Mrs. Forest chattered away, she leaned over with a towel and gave Maddy’s hair a quick rub to stop it dripping rainwater down her neck. Maddy was trying to eat the sandwich and she almost choked, but Mrs. Forest talked on regardless.

“. . . not a scratch on him, he’s a lucky little devil, wandering around the grounds with no shoes or socks on. It’s funny because he’s never sleepwalked before, but the doctor says it’s a childhood thing, and he should grow out of it. Imagine him opening his window fast asleep, though, and just climbing out! I’ve never seen him do that wide awake . . .”

Maddy listened, a cold feeling settling in the pit of her stomach. The bread turned dry and lumpy in her mouth.
Sleepwalking?
she thought.
They think Stephen was sleepwalking?

“What about the boy who was outside the window last night?” she asked.

“Oh sure, Maddy, you were doing a bit of sleepwalking yourself last night. You just got your dreams mixed up, that’s all.” Mrs. Forest laughed. “Faeries indeed! Your granda is going to have a hard time living that one down in the pub.”

She heard heavy footsteps in the hall and the sound of men’s voices. “That’ll be the doctor,” said Mrs. Forest, before rushing into the hallway to talk to him. As the doctor and Stephen’s parents stood by the front door, Maddy quietly eased herself up from her chair and slipped into the little boy’s room.

She pushed the door back, not knowing what to expect, and let out a sigh of relief when she saw Stephen’s little figure sitting up in his bed. The rain poured down the window, and it made the blue walls look as if they were underwater, as the patterns of the storm played over every surface.

“Stephen?” she whispered. He didn’t look up. She walked into the room and sat on the end of his bed.

“Stephen, are you OK?”

He looked up at her then, and Maddy caught her breath at the sight of him. His face was thin and white, his eyes dark holes sunken into his head. His hands were little blind spiders that plucked at his duvet, so pale that every vein stood out a cold blue. It was weird. It was like he was . . . fading.
He’s just tired
, thought Maddy.

“It’s OK, you know. I saw it all,” said Maddy. “I know you weren’t sleepwalking. You can tell me what happened.”

The hands stopped their plucking then. Somewhere in the depths of his eye sockets were two pinpricks of light that focused on her face. He was listening to her now.

“Say something, will you?” Maddy offered him a little smile. “You’re beginning to freak me out here.”

The hands began to pluck again, and the little lights in his eyes shifted away into blackness. The smile died on Maddy’s face. This just wasn’t like Stephen.

She leaned forward to touch his hand, and as she did so, the iron cross that hung around her neck slipped loose from her V-necked T-shirt and swung in front of Stephen’s eyes. Maddy watched in horror as his face crumpled in on itself. He opened his mouth wide and hissed at her, baring sharp yellow teeth. She froze and felt her skin go into goosebumps all over her body. She slid back cautiously. The creature in the bed began to pluck at the duvet again.

“You’re not Stephen, are you?”

The lights flickered in its eyes as the creature in Stephen’s bed, wearing Stephen’s favorite dinosaur pajamas, looked straight at her. Then it began to laugh, a dry, rasping wheeze that would have sounded more at home in a graveyard than in the chest of a three-year-old. The wind outside whined in sympathy.

Maddy tried to look calm, but her legs shook as she got up and walked backward toward the door. She felt
for the cool brass knob, keeping her eyes on the creature. Her body hummed with tension as she imagined the creature leaping for her, ready to sink those yellow teeth into her throat. But its eyes were dull again, and it stared listlessly out the window.

“Don’t get too comfortable, pal. You’re not staying,” she whispered, as she wrenched the door open and bolted into the hallway, slamming it shut behind her.

Maddy almost ran out of the house, eager to be gone before any of Stephen’s family stopped her. She didn’t think she could talk to any of them right now, not until she figured out what was going on. But Stephen’s father poked his head around the kitchen door as she reached for the door handle.

“Are you off already, Maddy?”

“Yeah, umm, I think Stephen is a bit tired . . . probably best if I come back later,” she said.

“OK, we’ll see you soon.”

She was letting herself out when she thought of something and turned back to him.

“Mr. Forest, you worked on the faerie kingdom on the castle grounds, didn’t you?” she asked.

“Yes. I’ve heard how much you like playing in there,” he said with a wink. “That was some time ago now—it’s held up well over the years.”

“Did local people make all the stuff that’s in there?”

“Some of it. Some of it was already there, like the caves.”

“What about the faerie mound?”

“No, no, that was already there. The grounds around the castle used to be stuffed with things like that,” said Mr. Forest. “Some even say there’s a barrow of an ancient king, stuffed with treasure. They’re always chucking out tourists who are scanning the grounds with metal detectors and trying to dig the place up. But I believe there’s a treasure there as much as I believe in the ghosts that haunt the castle.”

“So no one created that mound with a backhoe then?”

“No, we just put a sign on it, and the gardeners tidied it up a bit. Saved us a few days’ work, I can tell you. Why do you ask?”

“No reason.” Maddy smiled at him. “Tell Stephen I’ll be coming back for him, very, very soon.”

He looked puzzled—perhaps she overdid the threatening tone—but he smiled a goodbye as she closed the door. Maddy stood on the Forests’ doorstep with her head tipped back and tried to stare at the raindrops as they hurtled toward her eyeballs. She thought of the creature in the house, and that familiar, comforting feeling of anger on the boil begin to swirl lazily in her stomach.

I’m getting Stephen back if it kills me
, she thought.

Chapter Six

Granny was waiting for her when she walked
back in. Her coat was buttoned up to her throat, her sensible walking shoes were on, and her black leather handbag hung from one wrist. She looked armored up and murderous. She didn’t wait for Maddy to try to say sorry.

“I will not be spoken to like that, young lady,” she snapped, her fingers whitening as they bit down on her black leather gloves. “I don’t deserve to be treated in such a disgusting way by you—have you anything to say for yourself?”

Maddy lidded her eyes and leaned against the door jamb. “Sorry.”

“That doesn’t sound very sincere.”

Maddy shrugged. Granny clenched her jaw in anger, but Maddy thought her eyes looked a bit watery too. Shame pricked her skin, but she looked away.

“Are you at least going to tell me what’s got you so riled up?”

“Why don’t you ask
him
?” Maddy pointed at Granda with her chin. He was sitting in his armchair, buried behind the local paper.

“Are
you
going to tell me what’s going on?” she snapped at him.

He just grunted and rattled the pages as he turned them.

Granny took a deep breath. “Right then. It’s Halloween tomorrow, and we’ve got visitors coming. I’m going to do the shopping, and when I get back, the two of you had better have sorted this out.”

Maddy squeezed up against the TV table as her grandmother reached past her to open the door. She looked down at her then, with one hand on the lock. Her eyes really were full of tears, big fat ones that huddled against the red rims of her eyes, waiting to overflow and streak her powdered cheeks.

“I know you’re angry, love,” Granny whispered, “but you’re not the only one who’s hurting.”

Maddy looked down at her feet then, a lump rising in her throat. But then the anger woke up and poked a finger in her ribs.
I lost everything
, she thought resentfully.
Parents, school, friends, my whole life. What does she know? And now, thanks to Granda, my life here isn’t going to be worth living.

She could feel Granny’s eyes on her, but she didn’t trust herself to look up in case she started crying. That had happened before, and it just got so messy and embarrassing. Granny placed a hand against her cheek and waited a moment. Maddy kept staring at her scruffy sneakers, and she felt Granny’s sigh sweep over the crown of her head before she stepped out the door, closing it gently behind her.

Maddy stayed where she was, waiting for Granda to say something. The ticking clock boomed in the tense quiet while the fire snapped and growled. He just carried on reading the paper.

Eventually Maddy stomped into her bedroom and pulled a box of books out from under her bed. She had loved myths, legends, and faerie tales when she was little, and her parents had bought her loads of books about faeries. She dug around until she found a collection of Irish myths and folklore, and she flicked through the pages until she found what she was looking for—stolen human children and changelings.

There he was, in a folk tale from Connemara. Sean Rua, Red John. He had said his name was John. A wicked sprite who masqueraded as a boy and carried off children.

She walked back into the living room with the book held open in her hand. She put its spine on the top of
Granda’s paper and shoved down as hard as she could, tearing the newspaper from his fingers and leaving it a crumpled heap in his lap.

“What’s got into you?” he yelled, his face going red.

She glared back at him and tapped the page of the book with her finger.

“Read that.”

He glanced down at the book and the red leaked out of his face. But then he shoved it off his lap and started trying to smooth the pages of his paper flat. Maddy clenched her teeth to try to keep her temper.

“Are you not even going to ask me why I want you to read that page?” she asked.

“I don’t have time to play games with you, Maddy,” he growled. “I’m tired. I’ve been up half the night looking for Stephen.”

“It’s a shame you didn’t find him then,” she said.

He went very, very still when she said that. She cocked her head to one side and watched him. He looked uncomfortable and stared into the fire. Maddy sat in Granny’s chair and waited for him to say something. The silence stretched out between them.

“You know that isn’t Stephen next door, don’t you? You also know why that faerie asked me if I could See him now. He’s threatened to blind me—do you know that?”

He flinched, but he still didn’t speak.

“I need to know what’s going on,” said Maddy. “He might come back.”

Granda sighed then and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Just wear the cross and keep away from the mound.”

“You need to tell me why I should even listen to you.”

He glared at her. “Because you have the Sight, Maddy. It makes you special. It means you can see faerie folk, and they don’t take too kindly to it.”

“What will he do?”

“They will either try to blind you, or if you have a special talent, they will take you as a pet. Neither of them is a nice option. You need to stay safe.”

“This is rubbish,” said Maddy. “If I’ve got the Sight, how come I didn’t see faeries before?”

“You did, when you were a baby. Your mother had the Sight, and she learned to stay out of their way, but when you were born and she saw you reaching out to them whenever you were outside, she decided to take you and your father away,” he said. “That’s why she went to London. Faeries can’t live in cities; they can’t stand all the iron.”

“I don’t remember Seeing faeries before.”

“Your mind has taught you not to See things you are convinced do not exist. That fright you got the other night and my telling you the rules must have opened it up a crack.” He smiled thinly. “It’s nice to see something gets through to you.”

“Can you See them?”

“Yes. It runs in the family. But I pretend not to See them. I wear iron—” he lifted his shirt to show her a
dull cuff on his wrist—“and I stay home when the sun goes down, as much as I can. They’re stronger when the light fades.”

“Can Granny See?”

“No! And I don’t want you to upset her either, talking about what you can See. The Unsighted in this world are better off not knowing about these things.”

“You knew that thing wasn’t Stephen when you found it, didn’t you?”

He looked ashamed, but he nodded.

“What is it?”

“A faerie changeling,” said Granda, looking faintly sick. “One of their own that is weak and ill. They take human children and put the changelings in their place. They don’t like dealing with their own problems too much.”

“What do they do with the human children?”

“Who knows?” said Granda. “They keep them as servants, pets . . . No one knows for sure.”

“How many people in the village have the Sight?” asked Maddy.

Granda looked at her warily. “A few. Dr. Malloy for one; Sheila who works at the castle gift shop . . . There are about twenty of us, I’d say.” He smiled at her sadly.

“Enough for a rescue party,” said Maddy. “When you go after Stephen, I’m coming with you.”

“Rescue party . . . ?!” Granda looked at her, surprise widening his eyes. “Maddy, nobody sets foot in the realm of faeries, and no one comes back.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “Stephen is gone, love.”

She stared at him in horror, and then her eyes hardened with anger. “We’re getting him back, or else I go next door and I tell Mr. and Mrs. Forest exactly what’s going on.”

“What are you going to tell them, Maddy? That he’s not their son? That they’ve got a faerie changeling in the house? They won’t believe you, and even if they did, it wouldn’t do them any good to know the truth. Stephen is gone. Let them be happy with what they think is their son—you’re only going to break their hearts.”

“But they’ll know!”

“They won’t. They’ll only see what they want to see. They might think he acts strangely, that he doesn’t thrive the way he should, but they will learn to live with it.”

“But what about Stephen?”

“I told you, Maddy, he’s gone. Stolen children go into the mound, and we can’t follow.”

“Why not?”

“Because we can’t. We wouldn’t last five minutes in their world. You can’t fight anyone as old and powerful as the Tuatha de Dannan and the other faeries.”

“Who are the Tuatha de Dannan?”

“The old ones, the Shining Ones, the Gentry, the ones we tell stories about that you laugh at. We call them faeries now, but we used to call them gods when they ruled Ireland a long, long time ago. Faeries like Sean Rua are bad enough, but they are nothing compared to the Tuatha de Dannan, and they are the ones who rule
Tír na nÓg. I’m telling you, Maddy, it can’t be done. It’s why your mother took you away. She didn’t want you to be one of the stolen ones. Go after Stephen, and you’ll be starting a fight we can’t win, and God knows how many people will suffer then. We’ve lived with the faeries this long because we’ve learned to protect ourselves from them and make sure we don’t cross paths with them too often. Draw the attention of the Tuatha, and nobody is safe. I’m fond of Stephen, but I won’t risk you or your grandmother for him. And his father would say the same, if it were you that was missing.”

Maddy leaned forward and put her head in her hands. She stretched the skin on her face with her palms while she stared at the floor. She couldn’t believe this. Faeries existed, they had stolen Stephen, and Granda, her strong, sort-anything-out Granda, was just going to sit by the fire and hope the faeries didn’t notice him.

She got up and walked to the window to watch the rain. It hadn’t stopped since Stephen went missing. It was lighter now, a constant soft rain, as if the leaden sky was weeping. The dark clouds were spreading out from Blarney Castle, stretching long black fingers toward the village. As she watched, the clouds became slightly thicker and blacker and spread their shadow a little farther, but the rain never got any worse. There were no dogs barking, the birds roosted miserably
with their sodden feathers fluffed into balls, while the saplings were bending almost to the ground under the weight of water.

“Was it like this before, when the others went missing?” she asked.

“What?”

“The weather.”

Granda looked at the window, then he got up and steered her away by the shoulders.

“No, this is different,” he said, his face grim. “But the Samhain Fesh is almost upon us, when they are at their strongest. It will be over soon, and then we can all get back to normal.”

“Except for Stephen, of course,” she snapped. She shrugged his hands off her shoulders, furious at his weakness, at how little he seemed to care.

“Maddy, you have to let this go. It will send you mad otherwise.”

“No, I won’t! You’re actually just going to leave him? Would you leave me if they took me?”

His jaw dropped, and she could tell she had scored a point.

“Of course not! I look after my own, because it’s all I can do,” he shouted. “I thank God it isn’t you, and I look away, like plenty of others have done in this village.”

“How many times has this happened exactly?” asked Maddy, her voice shaking with shock and anger.
“How many other children have you Sighted let go into the mound and done nothing to help?”

“That’s enough now, Maddy,” he said. “There’s nothing more to talk about.”

“No, because you should be
doing
something!” she yelled.

“WHAT CAN I DO?” Granda shouted back. “Do you want me to go marching into the Garda station and start telling them faerie stories? What do you think will happen then, Maddy? Do you think they’ll say, ‘Oh, right so, now that you’ve told us, we’ll just go and swap the changeling for Stephen and arrest any faeries that come back into Blarney’? They will think I’m mad, Maddy, an old man who’s gone soft in the head. There’s plenty of Sighted sitting in mental hospitals who will never be free again because they tried to tell people about the faeries, and that’s not going to be me. Because what do you think will happen to your granny if the faeries find out I’ve tried to tell people about them? She can’t even see them coming, Maddy. I have to keep my own family safe. There’s nothing I can do for Stephen now.”

Anger flooded Maddy’s head and pressed against her eyeballs. It turned her breath so hot it scorched her lips as she glared at him. “I’m not going to drop this,” she said.

“Yes, you are,” said Granda.

“You need to stick up for your friends,” said Maddy. “You taught me that.”

Granda looked back at her, his bloodshot eyes wet with unshed tears. “There are some fights, Maddy, you have to walk away from.”

She shook her head slowly. “No, you’re wrong. If I let Stephen go, that’ll be just as bad as you and everyone else in this village who have turned a blind eye for years,” she said. “I couldn’t live with myself.”