The Light-Bearer's Daughter (14 page)

“Oh yeah?” she yelled at them. “I’ll get you! You’ll see!”

Picking out the smallest in the bunch, she tore after him.

“Run, Bird, run!” the others screeched.

But he hadn’t a hope. Dana soon caught up with him.

“You’re IT!” she roared in triumph as she grabbed him.

Whooping with laughter, Bird broke away and sped after the next target.

The chase was on. A wild game of tag on the windy bog. Leaping over hummocks of deergrass and heather. Jumping across hollows steeped in brown water. Splashing through pools choked with sphagnum moss. The soft ground or
bogach
that gave the land its name squelched underfoot and splattered them with muck.

Laughing hysterically, shrieking with the rest, Dana was utterly caught up in the fun. How wonderful it was to run and play! Not to have worries and responsibilities. Just to be a kid again. It was as if she were playing outside on her street. Sometimes as she ran among them, she didn’t see the boggles. They were Liam and Conor and Eoin.

She stopped to catch her breath, resting her hands on her knees. In that moment she looked around her, dazed.

“What’s going on?” she said, bewildered. “Where am I?”

“You’re home!” came a chorus of cries.

“Don’t be silly!” she argued, though her thoughts were slow and muddied. “I don’t … live … here!”

Several boggles came to tug at her arms.

“You does!” they cried together. “You does live here!”

Dana frowned. That didn’t sound right. And something niggled at the back of her mind. Something important that she couldn’t recall. Wasn’t it dangerous to play outside in the dark? Shouldn’t she tell Gabe?

“Gets back in the game!” one of them shouted.

“The fun! The game!” the others urged.

They were all clamoring around her now and she couldn’t think straight with the noise.

“Oh yeah. The game,” she said at last. It seemed such a relief to say it. “What are we playin’?”

“Leap frog!” someone announced, and they all cheered wildly.

Dana’s long legs made her the quickest and the best. She flew over the small huddled bodies lined higgledypiggedly over the ground. Her running shoes were soaked, her clothes dripping with mud, but she didn’t care. When the boggles declared her the winner, she punched the air with glee.

“They forgets real fast,” one remarked to another.

Dana overheard and felt a twinge of foreboding. In the back of her mind, she knew something was wrong.
So what
. If she was in trouble, she would face the music later. Right now, she wanted to play.

One of the boggles scrambled onto a bank of cut turf.

“I’s the King of the Castle!” he proclaimed.

Dana jumped up beside him and knocked him down.

“And I’s the Dirty Rascal!”

The games continued till Dana looked pale and haunted. Her lips were blue, her teeth chattered, and she was starving, yet she didn’t think to change into dry clothes or to eat any of her food. Her knapsack hung forgotten on her back, as drenched and bedraggled as the rest of her.

The moon had risen to etch the streaks of clouds with light. The landscape shone eerily. The air swarmed with midges and the iridescent flies named after dragons and damsels. The fragrant scent of bog myrtle wafted on an evening breeze. With the moonrise came a change in the boggles. Where their eyes glinted a coppery sheen by day, they now glowed like gold coins.

At last they called a halt for supper. A great bonfire was made with logs of bog oak, and everyone sat on stones around it. Dana’s clothes were caked and filthy, her hair plastered to her head. Oblivious, she joined the debates about who won which game and what could fairly be called a draw or an “undecided.” Sometimes she got the boggles’ names wrong, as she found it difficult to distinguish one from another. Each time she apologized, they waved away her regrets.

“You’s all looks alike to us,” Piper, the leader, told her.

“’Cept when you’s got color. We likes the brown ones best.”

Along with Piper and his bog asphodel, Bird was easy to recognize, as he was the smallest and had a beak for a nose. But she would never be able to tell the difference between Butterhill and Silverhill, who were twin brothers, or Snow and Twig, who were not related but looked identical. Then there was Underhill, who was no relation to the two other “hills” but was a cousin of Goodfellow, Light-bow, and Gem. Some had identifying markers. Green did indeed wear a vest of woven grass, while Stone had a little chain of pebbles around his neck.

When the fire was deemed hot enough, a big cauldron was placed at its heart. Ingredients for a stew were tossed in willy-nilly, whetting Dana’s appetite with mouth watering smells. She peered at the flora of the bog bubbling away: dark-purple liverworts as fat as worms, green and black bog moss, leathery bogbean with fleshy stems and hairy flowers, bottle sedge and pondweed with flat red leaves. She wondered a moment if it was safe to eat, but decided she didn’t care. This was no time to be fussy. She was ravenous.

While the bog bouillabaisse brewed, Dana shared out her chocolates. Since no one told them not to, they ate dessert first.

At last the stew was dished out into wooden bowls. It was truly scrumptious. Though Dana felt as if she were eating the bog itself, the chief taste was “brown.” She was reminded of all the brown things she liked to eat, both sweet and savory: almond croissants, the crusty top of a freshly-baked bread, buttered toast, and peanut butter cookies; but also golden-brown fries, grilled mushrooms, HP Sauce, and the crisp skins of potatoes baked in the oven. They offered her grimy water to drink, but she declined. When she passed around the bottle of cola, they admired its color but spat it out.

“You probably don’t like chemicals,” was her comment.

“You does?”

“Yeah. Tastes great.”

They huddled around the fire, leaning against each other like a bunch of homeless kids with dirty faces. Dana was reminded of Peter Pan’s Lost Boys. Did that make her Wendy? Now that things had quieted down, she began to think.

“Right, lads,” she announced. “There’s something we’ve got to—”

Before she could finish, the boggles were on their feet.

“Time to dance!” they cried.

Skin drums and panpipes suddenly appeared. Up rose the wildest music imaginable, drumming and thrumming, trilling and thrilling. A contagious cadence that called to the blood.

Despite her protests, Dana was pulled into a ring and urged to hop and skip. The
Celebrate the Kidnapped Child Dance
entailed spinning her around again and again till she was hopelessly dizzy. She laughed so hard her stomach hurt.

For
The Dance of Lights
each had to pick a star and, while keeping an eye on it, twirl and whirl like a top. When the music halted, all came to a stop. Except the earth and sky, which kept on turning, leaving everyone to stagger around, whooping, till they all fell down.

Crack the Whip
had them holding hands in a long line and careering recklessly over the bog in sharp zigs and zags that left those at the end clinging on for dear life. This was the dance—which Dana knew as a game—that brought them to the crossroads.

She hadn’t noticed that they were racing along a road that bordered the bog like a river. It was the signpost that brought her up with a jolt. Having forgotten human things, she was so shocked to see it that she let go of the whip and went flying into a ditch.

Clambering out again, she ran back to the sign.

It pointed in four directions: Dublin to the north, Glendalough to the south, Blessington to the west, Bray to the east. Now she knew where she was. In the Sally Gap. Backtracked for miles! Completely the wrong way! Dismay and despair flooded through her. Her memory returned and, with it, everything she had forgotten as she played: her mission, her missing mother, and her poor abandoned father.

A familiar sound in the distance caught her attention as yellow headlights beamed over the landscape.

The boggles had also spotted the car. With whoops and war cries, the whip cracked back to descend on Dana.

“No, wait!” she pleaded, as little hands clutched hers.

“Stop!
Please!
”

Too late, she was part of the line once more as it scurried away, back into the bog.

The Triumph Herald stopped at the crossroads. Gabriel got out and looked around.

“There’s nothing here,” Aradhana called gently from the car.

“I’m sure I saw something,” he muttered.

He stared into the distance. His eyes were bloodshot, his face ravaged. Was he chasing shadows? But what else could he do? Rescue teams were searching the mountains and the police helicopter was out. Yet still no word of her. He was sick with guilt; sicker with worry. She had obviously run away to protest against the move to Canada. What if something terrible happened to her?

He wouldn’t, couldn’t rest until he found her.

But where could she be?

t was well past midnight. The bog lay still under the black dome of the sky and the cold eye of the moon. The silhouette of the mountains shadowed the horizon. Despite the hour, everything seemed strangely bright, tinted with moonlight. Dana lounged with the boggles around the campfire, watching the stars fall. Whenever one dropped from the heavens, they let out an
ohhhh
or an
ahhhh
as if they were watching fireworks. Then they would shout: “
What is the stars? What is the stars?
”

Though she joined in with enthusiasm, Dana was also thinking hard. In the lull between games, she had figured it out. By some kind of bog magic, she forgot who she was whenever they played. Only when she took a rest did she return to herself. She wasn’t worried. The boggles didn’t strike her as harmful or malign. But they were sly and mischievous, and she would have to outwit them.

Bird climbed into her lap and offered her a stalk of bog cotton. The tuft of white hair at its tip fluttered like a miniature flag.

“Say ‘for a year and a day I promise to stay,’” he begged her.

She smiled down at the big eyes like molten gold, then met the eager looks of the others around her. They were such funny little things. She really liked them. And there was a sad touch of loneliness in how much they needed her. Lost boys, for sure, homeless and motherless and longing for attention.

The boggles held their breath as she twirled the stalk between her fingers. At last she spoke in a solemn tone:

For a year and a day
,

I promise to stay
.

They were about to cheer, when she added quickly:

—No way!

But I promise the night
,

Without a fight
,

If you set me free tomorrow
,

Without tears or sorrow
.

Though we say good-bye
,

Our love won’t die
.

It was such a friendly rebuff, they couldn’t take offense. Some even applauded. But looks were passed between the older ones and Dana knew they were about to call another game. She would lose any ground she had gained.