The Switchers Trilogy Part 38

'Because he's your brother,' he said. 'He's your brother and for twenty years you have lived without him, and missed him. And because he misses you every bit as much. That's why he wants to sell the land, to forget about you, not to have you haunting him every day of his life.'

'Haunting him?' said Declan. 'What do you mean, "haunting him"?'

'I've seen you,' said Tess. 'We all have. Sitting at his windows in the shape of a cat, flying over as a raven.'

'How else do you pester him, Declan?' asked Kevin. 'As a wild goat, perhaps? As a hare?'

Declan opened his mouth to speak, but what came out was more like a howl.

'He betrayed me! My whole world. He left me here alone and took over the farm. He might as well have murdered me!'

'No!' Orla had been listening quietly, but she couldn't contain herself any longer. 'Daddy wouldn't do that. He loves you, Uncle Declan, he told us that. It's why he gets so angry all the time. He's only half alive without you!'

And for all his power, for all his wealth beneath the hill, it was suddenly clear that Declan felt the same.

Tess agreed to go with Declan to be an observer in his talks with Maurice while Kevin and the others stayed behind in the sidhe. Declan went ahead and dived into the low tunnel as a hare. Tess followed. But as soon as they emerged into the second hallway, Declan stopped. He was staring at the exit which, Tess could see, was wide open. On the other side of it, Uncle Maurice was standing in the moonlight, head in hands.

Tess froze, but Declan Switched back into his boylike form. After a moment, Tess joined him.

'It's hard to believe that he can't see us,' she whispered.

'Could you see into the rock, from out there?' said Declan.

'No. But I can see out, now.'

'It's different from this side. It doesn't matter what we do; he can't see in.'

To demonstrate his point, Declan skipped along the hall and did an energetic jig just feet from where his brother was standing. Tess watched, breathlessly. Declan was a strong and graceful dancer, as skilled as anyone she had seen in any of the Irish dancing shows that had recently become so popular. He grinned at her and winked, then turned and made insulting gestures at his brother.

But Uncle Maurice might as well have been blind for all the notice he took.

'Why?' asked Tess. 'Why can't he see or hear us?'

'Glamour,' said Declan. 'There aren't so many sidhes like this left now, but once they were all over Ireland. We hid them; not with any actual thing, but with illusion. The door exists only in his mind, as it existed in yours before you succeeded in breaching it.'

'But if he was a Switcher himself, why doesn't he know that?'

'Because he doesn't believe any more. He has denied the past as well as the present.'

As Tess watched, Uncle Maurice struck at the invisible barrier, first with one fist and then the other. From her perspective, it looked as though he was. .h.i.tting unbreakable gla.s.s.

'Are all the doors the same?' she asked.

'They work on the same principle, yes. But some are gra.s.sy hill-sides and some are in the ground. Wherever they are, they work in the same way; by deceiving the mind of the onlooker.'

At that moment, Uncle Maurice sighed loudly and turned away from the door. Without pausing for an instant, Declan transformed himself into a barn owl and, with a shrill shriek of alarm, went bursting out of the opening.

More quietly, Tess followed. As she swept up through the trees and joined Declan circling above them, she could see her uncle on the ground below, shaking his fist after them. She was glad that he couldn't see little Colm's predicament inside the hill. Angry as he was now, that would have made him mad with fury.

Still in owl-form, Declan circled above the trees and Tess followed while Uncle Maurice watched on helplessly. Not until he got tired of craning his neck and sat down despondently on a mossy rock, did Declan alight. For a while he sat in a tree, looking down, while Tess waited on a nearby branch. Then, as though he had finally plucked up courage, he dropped on to the ground below and Switched. Choosing her spot carefully, Tess glided down from the trees and Switched behind a broad trunk, from where she could look on unseen by either of the others.

In the moonlit clearing, Declan's clothes had a quite different appearance. Without colour their sheen was silvery-grey, so similar to the surrounding light that it was not easy to see him at all. Except that, when he moved in a certain way, a gleam of bluish light would suddenly shine out for an instant, then vanish again, reminding Tess of the mysterious flickerings that she had seen from her bedroom window.

It was some time before Uncle Maurice became aware of his brother's presence. When he did, his jaw dropped. Seeing them together, Tess realised why it was that Declan had seemed familiar to her when she had first set eyes upon him. The family resemblance was quite remarkable; the two boys must have been stunningly similar when they were the same age.

When they were the same age. How could they have once been the same age and be the same age no longer? Tess was trying to get her mind around the paradox when Uncle Maurice spoke.

'It really was you, then, all along?' he said. 'The raven and the cat and the brown hare. I was never sure.'

'It was me,' said Declan.

'Sometimes I thought there was nothing there at all,' said Maurice. 'Nothing except a figment of my imagination.'

He fell silent, but crossed the clearing slowly until he was close to his brother. There was no difference in their height, but one was a boy and the other a man. For a long time neither of them spoke, and Tess felt embarra.s.sed, a stranger eavesdropping on a highly emotional reunion. Then Uncle Maurice spoke again.

'I still can't believe that it's true,' he said. 'I'm so used to mistrusting my own senses. Everything was so confused at the time when you ... when you disappeared. If I tried to explain what had happened, people thought I was mad.'

'People believe what it suits them to believe,' said Declan. 'Sometimes when tourists come wandering around I go and stand right in front of them and they don't see me at all.'

'That's what I'm afraid of,' said Maurice. 'Sometimes I think that you must have died, and that I created the whole story in my imagination to save me from having to face the truth.'

Declan thought for a moment. 'I've forgotten,' he said. 'I have forgotten how it feels to have a mind that needs to discover truth, instead of one that creates it.'

Maurice nodded. 'I've forgotten the other kind,' he said. 'Or at least, I stopped believing in it.'

'Why did it matter to you, then?' said Declan. 'Why did you feel the need to sell off the land and get rid of me?'

Uncle Maurice shook his head, and Tess realised that there was something he was withholding.

'Why, Mossy?' Declan pressed him. 'Why couldn't you just let it be?'

'I could have, possibly. If you had let me. But you wouldn't, would you? You had to keep haunting me. You were always on my mind, Dec. I haven't known a moment's peace since you ...'

'Since I what, Maurice? What is your version of the truth? Since I disappeared? Since I went through with it? Or since you chickened out on our agreement?'

'Is that what you think?' said Maurice. 'All these years, you thought that I didn't have the courage?' He shook his head. 'It wasn't like that. It was just the opposite.'

'Oh, yes?'

'Yes. Until that moment it had all been a game, like all the other "what if" sorts of game. But when you made the change, when I saw you become one of them, then it wasn't a game any longer. It was for real. And then I knew that I couldn't do it. Because one of us had to stay with our mother and father, Dec. If we had both vanished for ever it would have killed them.'

Behind the trunk of the tree, Tess could understand all too well how Uncle Maurice must have felt. Her parents had always been a concern of hers, whenever she thought about her future life.

'So you took the decision, there and then, is that it?' said Declan. 'Without asking for my opinion?'

'I hesitated,' said Maurice. 'I hesitated and then it was too late. The moment had gone and the sun rose. I had missed my chance.'

'You hesitated and I was lost,' said Declan.

'But you're not lost, Decco. Don't you see? At that moment, at the moment when the sun rose, I became fifteen. A fifteen year old boy, destined to become a man and a father, and then grow old and die. But you ... You, Dec ...'

Maurice's words tailed off as emotion choked him.

Declan looked long and hard at his brother, and something seemed to give; some hardness in him seemed to melt away and allow s.p.a.ce for understanding to enter.

With a ma.s.sive effort, Maurice succeeded in gaining control of his emotions. 'It never occurred to me before now that you should feel aggrieved,' he said. 'As far as I was concerned, I was the one who had been left behind. Stuck in a black and white world, while you're out there in the colourful one.' He paused, and then, before his sorrow could silence him again, he continued, 'For ever, Dec. For ever.'

For a long moment, the two brothers stared at each other, and then, quite suddenly, the resentment that had stood like plate armour between them for twenty years dropped away.

'I'm sorry,' said Declan. 'I never thought of those things. I never saw it like that.'

'You're not as sorry as I am,' said Maurice.

The two brothers contemplated each other for a few moments, then Maurice said, 'Are you solid? Can I touch you?'

Declan stepped forward and held out his hand. Maurice took it, held it, then pulled his brother close and hugged him tight. When he released him and stepped back, Tess could see a new light in her uncle's eyes, as though years of bitterness had dissolved away, revealing him as he had been; youthful and hopeful and kind.

'I'll let the children go, Mossy,' said Declan. 'Will you keep the land?'

'You have my word on it,' said Maurice. 'As long as I live, I'll never sell it, nor touch it in any way at all.'

'If I trust you on that, will you trust me?' said Declan. 'Will you let the children visit me?'

Uncle Maurice laughed, a new kind of laugh that Tess had never heard him make before, light and exuberant.

'I will of course,' he said. 'And I'll come myself as well. Picnics with the fairies. You can be sure of it!'

The two brothers embraced again, then broke apart and shook hands. Then Declan took two steps backwards and melted away in the moonlight.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

TESS SCANNED THE SURROUNDINGS, trying to get a fix on where Declan had gone. But apart from a fresh breeze that was swishing around in the treetops, there seemed to be nothing moving. Uncle Maurice sat himself down to wait for the children and, after another minute or two, Tess returned to the sidhe.

Now that her mind had dispelled the illusion that hid the door in the rock, Tess had no difficulty pa.s.sing through. Inside, she found that the easiest way to negotiate the dim hall was as a bat, and she was still in that form when she whisked through the crawl-hole. The moment she entered the second hall her hearing and her sonar perception were both a.s.saulted by chaos.

She needed eyes. As quickly as she could she Switched into human form and tried to make sense of what she was seeing. In the middle of the hall an enormous bear was throwing its weight around in what seemed like a terrible rage. Beside it, C3PO was trying to calm it in a terribly British sort of voice, while a jackdaw fluttered around its face in a way that was clearly intended to distract it. A few feet away, Kevin was in the process of overturning the table, and the piles of food were crashing to the floor. 'Help, Tess,' he shouted. 'He's gone berserk!' At last she realised what was happening. Little Colm had finally had enough of being thwarted. His hunger and frustration had become bear-sized, and so had he. It was a frightening situation, but Tess didn't realise just how dangerous it was until she saw what was in the bear's paws. He had succeeded in reaching the table before Kevin overturned it, and he was clutching a bear-sized fistful of sausages. The only thing preventing him from getting them into his bear-sized mouth was the persistent irritation of the jackdaw, which was in grave danger of being swiped by a flailing paw.

There wasn't a second to lose. Tess allowed her instinct to guide her as she Switched, and was surprised to find herself in the shape of a wolfhound. She was already springing forward as she took on the form, and an instant later her jaws clamped tightly around the bear's forearm. But she had underestimated Colm's power. With a bellow of rage, he swung the arm in a great arc, crashing her into Kevin and knocking him over before sending her hurtling through the air to the other end of the hall. It all seemed to happen infinitely slowly. Even as she was. .h.i.tting the wall and struggling to her feet she was watching what was happening in the fray. The bear knocked the flapping jackdaw aside. His paw, with sausages sticking out like fingers, approached his mouth. And then, when it seemed impossible for anything to stop the terrible progress of fate, the bear turned into a tree.

For a moment, Tess thought that the collision with the wall had jellified her brain. From the expression on Kevin's face as he scrambled to his feet, he was having similar thoughts. But beyond him, just inside the crawl-hole, Declan's smug expression revealed the solution.

'How did you do that?' asked Tess, testing out her bruised limbs as she walked towards him.

'I'll show you,' he replied. 'As soon as I have sent this lot home.'

Orla and Brian had returned to their own forms, and if they were surprised by. what had happened, they didn't show it. But Kevin was shaking his head in disbelief.

'I see what you mean,' he said. 'About the rules changing.'

Declan was picking sausages out from among the branches of the tree and eating them. 'He'll have to be careful, this one,' he said. 'He doesn't know his own strength.'

'He just gets hungry,' said Orla. 'He's good at home and at playschool. He understands.'

Declan nodded and, as soon as all the sausages were safely out of the way, he turned Colm back into a small and tearful human being.

'Don't worry now,' he told him. 'Your daddy's outside. You're going home.'

Colm did a red-booted dance of delight at the news, and Brian hefted him up on to his hip and hugged him. But Orla's face fell.

'Is he cross?' she said.

Until that moment Tess had completely forgotten about Orla's asthma. It was only now that she realised there hadn't been the slightest hint of a wheeze in her cousin's breath the whole time they had been inside the hill.

Declan was shaking his golden head. 'He's not cross at all,' he said. 'In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if he wasn't half so cross now as he used to be.'

Colm wriggled to be put down and headed for the crawl-hole. But at the point where he had become accustomed to turning into a pig he stopped and looked over at Declan.

'Go home, now?' he said.

Declan nodded. 'Go home, now,' he said.

And Colm was a red fox, scooting out through the small s.p.a.ce as though a pack of hounds was on his tail.

'Me too,' said Brian, and was gone. But Orla hesitated.

'Will you be back soon, Tess?' she asked.

'I ... I don't know,' said Tess. The question had brought back the terrible question of choice, and Tess knew that the ordeal of that night was very far from being over.

'I know it's your birthday,' said Orla. 'Maybe you'll come back and visit us anyway. Whatever you decide?'

Tess was surprised to discover a new respect for her young cousin. Maybe it was the illness that had caused it; the continual struggle for breath and for life, but the girl seemed wise beyond her years.

'I will, of course,' said Tess. 'Even if ...'

Orla nodded. 'Even if,' she said. And then she was gone.

'How did you do that?' Kevin asked Declan.

Declan shrugged. 'Desperate circ.u.mstances call for desperate measures. Like a sausage?'