The Switchers Trilogy Part 39

'Thanks.' Kevin took it and was about to put it into his mouth when Tess realised what he was doing.

'Watch what you're doing,' she yelled.

Kevin dropped the sausage, an expression of horror on his face. 'You tried to trick me,' he said.

Declan shrugged. 'Why shouldn't I? That's what I am, it's what I do.'

Tess expected to feel as horrified as Kevin, but part of her was beginning to be enchanted by Declan. His abilities seemed limitless; his power excited her. Not only that, but in comparison with Kevin's awkward, gawky frame, Declan was graceful and handsome.

'You said you'd show me,' she said. 'How to Switch other people.'

'I will,' said Declan. 'I'll show you more than that as well, if you come with me.'

'Where?'

Declan nodded towards the crawl-hole. 'Out there. To where the night is waiting for us.'

'Careful, Tess,' said Kevin.

'You could come with us, too,' said Declan. 'If you eat fairy food you become fairy, Kevin. You could be what you once were; experience your old powers again, keep them forever.'

Tess could tell that Kevin was interested. 'Why not, Kevin?' she said.

He shook his head. 'There has to be a catch,' he said. 'I'm not sure that I want to stay here forever.'

'You could be a rat again,' said Tess.

'A rat?' said Declan. 'Is that what you like best? A rat?'

Kevin looked sulky and didn't answer.

'I could sort that out for you if you wanted,' said Declan. 'Turn you into one for good. Would you like that?'

Kevin shrugged, but Tess knew that he was tempted.

'You don't have to decide right now,' said Declan. 'Have a think about it while we're gone.'

And before either Kevin or Tess could answer, Declan had become a hare again and vanished out of the crawl-hole.

'Don't go, Tess. What if he tricks you?'

'He won't,' said Tess. 'I'll be OK.'

Kevin nodded wistfully. 'You're your own boss,' he said. 'But promise me one thing?'

'What's that?' asked Tess.

'Promise me that you'll come back before dawn. Before you make your final decision.'

Tess nodded, sobered by the reminder of the short time remaining to her.

'I promise,' she said.

From the skies high above the woods, Tess and Declan could see Uncle Maurice and the others walking across the fields towards home. The gra.s.s was covered with dew and the three who were walking left straggly trails behind them as though they were in no hurry. The fourth one, little Colm, was already fast asleep, secure in his father's arms.

Beside her in the high air, Tess could sense Declan's sadness, despite the disdainful look in his eagle's eye. Somehow she knew that it wasn't only his brother he missed, but the other things as well; the life he would never lead as a farmer, the children he was unlikely to have. As though he sensed her intuition intruding upon him, he banked on the wind and drifted down to a nearby field, where cattle lay sleeping in the gra.s.s.

'Go on,' said Declan, when they had taken on human shapes again. 'Turn them into pigs first. It's good practice.'

'But how?' said Tess.

'Why ask me?' said Declan. 'How do you Switch?'

Tess knew what he meant. Although Tess could Switch as quick as thinking, there was no way she could have explained to someone how she did it. It was one of those things like wiggling your ears; you could do it or you couldn't. And when she thought about it like that, she realised that she did know how to change the shapes of other things as well; she had just never realised that she could.

The cows didn't know what hit them. One moment they were happily sleeping and the next, one after another, they were all turned into pigs. Tess laughed delightedly, and then the pigs were sheep, bleating anxiously and gathering themselves into a defensive group. But Tess wasn't finished yet. In fact, she was just beginning to get the hang of it. It was the same process as Switching; the combined use of will and imagination, and she was already regretting all the lost opportunities.

The sheep became goats, and then half of them became kangaroos. Then, while they were still staring at each other in astonishment, some of them became hyenas and began stalking the others.

'Careful,' Declan warned. 'We don't want to cause any damage.'

He was right. Things were beginning to get out of control as goats and kangaroos began to panic and spring out over the walls and away. Before they got too far, Tess Switched them all back into cows again, which is how the farmer would find them the next morning; scattered around in different fields with no evidence to show how they had got there.

'I can't believe I never discovered this before!' said Tess, turning a rock into a tractor and a field full of round bales into an igloo village. 'I could have had a great time! I can just see it, too. All those times my dad drove me mad reading the paper, I could have turned him into a sloth or a slug or a tortoise or something. And my mum, droning on. A queen bee!'

Declan came along behind, returning Tess's transformations to their original selves.

'There's a girl at school always copying what everyone else says,' Tess went on. 'I'd love to turn her into a parrot.' As she spoke, Tess changed a hawthorn bush into a j.a.panese paG.o.da and a steel gate into a large patchwork quilt. 'And there's a boy who's really horrible to his poor little dog. I'd turn him into a toad and let the dog eat him!'

With Tess Switching everything in sight and Declan changing everything back again, they made their way across the fields until they had come to the road, a half mile or so from the farmhouse.

'Haven't you had enough, yet?' Declan asked. 'There's other things I want to show you before daybreak.'

'Daybreak,' said Tess. 'Oh, my G.o.d. I keep forgetting.'

'There's still plenty of time,' said Declan. 'But I want you to meet the others.'

'The others?'

'Of course. You don't think we're the only ones, do you?'

As a last trick, Tess turned a thoroughbred brood mare into a donkey and, just for the h.e.l.l of it, Declan left it as it was. Then the two friends made owls of themselves again and lifted into the darkness.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

DECLAN RODE AN UPCURRENT towards the top of the crag, where he landed and Switched to his golden, fairy form. Tess followed and became human. Side by side they sat for a while and watched the moon slipping down towards the horizon, then Declan turned to Tess and said, 'Want to try the weather?'

Without waiting for a reply, he stood up and held out his arms like a conductor in front of an orchestra. Tess stayed where she was. She thought it was a joke. Even when the first clouds began to appear from beneath the setting moon and creep across its face, she put it down to coincidence. But a moment later she had to reconsider.

Like a speeded-up film the white clouds advanced, obscuring the moon and rapidly covering the sky. The night became darker, and Tess dimly remembered something about the darkest hour being just before the dawn. But it didn't stay dark for long. First, a few faint pulses of light began to bounce around among the clouds. Gradually they grew stronger and more brilliant until suddenly a streak of lightning leapt from the clouds and struck the ground nearby. There was a cracking sound that could only have been made by a rock splitting.

'Woah, woah,' Tess shouted. 'Steady on, now!'

But her words were swallowed by a mind-numbing boom of thunder right above her head. She ducked instinctively and turned to suggest to Declan that they get out of there. It was clear, however, that he had no intention of moving.

The expression on his face was ecstatic, as though the chaos that he was creating in the skies around was divine music. He turned to her and smiled a brilliant smile. Again a bolt of lightning struck nearby, and then another and another, but Tess no longer feared that they would harm her. There was a smell of burning vegetation, but when she looked down towards the woods at the foot of the crag below them there was no sign of fire.

It seemed indeed that the lightning storm was confined to the top of the mountain. Tess wondered whether anyone was awake at that hour and watching. It must have been a spectacular sight. And no more extraordinary, she mused, than a lot of unexplained things that happened in human life.

The rain began, bucketing down out of the firework skies. Declan whooped and turned his face up to the downpour. And when she stopped resisting, Tess began to enjoy it as well. So heavy was the deluge that in no time at all the top of the mountain was awash with run-off, and small streams began to develop and join together to make larger ones, which raced for the edge of the crag and launched themselves over.

Suddenly, remembering lizzie's words, Tess knew that wild blood did indeed run in her veins. With careless delight, she Switched into a salmon and flipped and flopped herself into the nearest stream. The water lifted her and rushed her towards the edge until, with heart-stopping speed, it catapulted her out over the edge of the crag.

She turned in the air; head over tail in empty s.p.a.ce. As she fell she knew the delirium of recklessness, of trust in her own power, of the thrill of the moment. Below her the trees were emerging out of the darkness. Any moment now and she would smash into their branches, become fish-cakes, a surprise delicacy for the rats. In the nick of time she spread eagle wings and soared away, every feather vibrating in the rain-filled air. Out and away she swung, while above her the downpour ended and the clouds quietened and rolled away and dispersed, like a flock of sheep released from a pen.

The moon reappeared, sinking behind the horizon,. For a few minutes Tess drifted, enjoying the sense of freedom and grace that the ma.s.sive wings gave her. Then she flapped lazily upwards until she reached Declan's side again.

Back in human form, Tess was so wet that tiny streams dribbled from her hair and from her cuffs, but the excitement still ran so high that she didn't care at all.

'What next?' she asked.

'You have to learn to ride,' said Declan.

'Horses?' Tess was reminded of the unfortunate brood mare and hoped that her owner liked donkeys. He would probably think that a neighbour, or someone who bore him a grudge, had changed the animals over for the mischief of it. The more she thought about it the more Tess realised that life was full of inexplicable happenings. And in their insistence on concocting 'logical' explanations, people tried to force their world into the confines of a set of laws that made it seem much smaller and less interesting than it really was.

Even when it clearly didn't fit. For now a wind was rising in the west. But this wind was not caused by changing pressures in the earth's atmosphere. This wind was Declan's, and it was summoned by a combination of will and imagination which, the old people knew, was called magic.

Declan's wind was warm and brisk. Tess wrung out her hair and her sleeves and spread out her arms to dry. But there was no time for that. Under Declan's silent command the wind began to twist and turn and, like some restless animal, it brushed against Tess and knocked her off balance. She sat on a rock and watched as Declan sent it whipping across farmland, swirling through the trees below, and howling above and between the surrounding hills. Then he brought it back where it waited at his feet with a strange quivering that made Tess's eardrums vibrate.

'You want to try?' he asked.

'OK.' Tess stood up again and took hold of an imaginary pair of reins. But it was not as simple as it had looked when Declan did it. At her first command the wind lunged away so powerfully that Tess was almost dragged over the edge of the cliff and Declan had to come to her rescue. More delicately, she tried again until, gradually, the wind began to respond to her wishes. She circled it first, like a horse on a lunge rein, round and round the flat mountain-top. Then, when she was confident with that, she sent it bl.u.s.tering off to the sea, so that it returned damp and salty and sounding of gulls. And then, just as she was beginning to feel confident, Declan said, 'Are you ready to ride it?'

Before Tess could reply, he rushed forward and disappeared over the edge of the crag. Tess's heart stopped, but he was only gone for a moment. When he reappeared he was astride the invisible wind, tossing backwards and forwards on its restless force as he waited for her.

'Come on, Tess!' he called.

Throughout her life, there had always been steps Tess was afraid to take. She realised now as she looked out over the immense drop below that there would never come a time, no matter what she decided to be, when there would not be another step that required courage, and then another. But there would never be another night like tonight, when there was so much to learn in so little time.

The knowledge that she could save herself by Switching gave her courage. She called up her wind and, at the same time, launched herself out over the edge.

And fell. Down, down towards the trees below. In a panic she grabbed at imaginary reins and yanked hard. Instantly, her descent began to slow.

'Up!' she yelled.

And up she went, rising with swift and certain power until she pa.s.sed Declan on a level with the crag.

'East!' he shouted.

Tess banked as though she was riding a motor bike, and beneath her the wind responded. Left and right she leant. Left and right the wind turned. Declan was lost in the night ahead, but suddenly his clothes gave off a blue, moonlight gleam, and Tess sped off in pursuit. As she caught up, the two breezes buffeted around each other and gave their pa.s.sengers a b.u.mpy ride, but after a while they settled. Side by side, Tess and Declan raced through the night sky.

Not since she and Kevin had been dragons had Tess experienced such a sense of exhilaration. Beneath them the country was laid out like a map, but not a map of towns and roads and rivers. What they were seeing was a fairy map, made up of ley-lines and sidhes and the strongly radiating focal points of magical power.

'Scenic route,' said Declan, indicating the glowing shapes of Tara and New Grange far below. They veered north and, in a surprisingly short time, overflew the prehistoric site of Eamhain Macha.

'Where are we going?' asked Tess.

'The gathering,' said Declan. 'I just thought you'd like a little look around on the way.'

'What gathering?' asked Tess.

Declan didn't reply but turned towards the west again, and soon they were dropping down to an area where it seemed that dozens of lines of energy came together and caused a warm, inviting radiance.

'It's Ben Bulben,' said Tess, as the unmistakable profile of the Sligo mountain revealed itself in the moonlight.

Long before they landed on its broad back, Tess could see the fairy hordes gathered there.

'Many of the sidhes have been desecrated,' said Declan. 'But there are still a great many undiscovered. This has always been a favourite place of our people.'

Tess hung back, intimidated by the numbers that were gathered below.

'Come on said Declan. 'You won't feel a bit shy when you get there. Believe me!'

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE.

AND HE WAS RIGHT. ANY Shyness that Tess might have experienced evaporated as soon as she arrived. That night, on Ben Bulben, Tess moved among the people of Danu who come from the Land of Eternal Youth. She danced as she had never danced before, even in her imagination. For the first time in her life, she was home.

Crowds of them were there, the eternally young, all glowing with the soft, vibrant energy that was a property of Tir na nog. They welcomed her with ceremonial gifts; a torque of heavy gold that fitted around her neck; a ring of the same material, broad and bright. The women were beautiful and the men were handsome, but none was more handsome that night than Declan, and it was with him that Tess chose to dance.

On top of Ben Bulben and under it the party went on, and if people can never reveal or remember their visits to fairyland it is because the people and the places are not of this world and cannot be described in its terms. Lizzie's words, remembered there, were not in the slightest bit puzzling, and less pa.s.sed on her regards to the people of Tir na nog. For these people were, she realised, her ancestors. These were the immortal ones who still lived on beneath the green fields of Ireland and would live on there as long as there were wild and unpopulated places for them to inhabit. They were older even than the ancient mountain beneath their feet, and would remain long after it had been swallowed by the sea. On top of Ben Bulben and under it, Tess discovered what it meant to have wild blood running through her veins, and she celebrated it with reckless delight. She danced without stopping and Declan danced with her until, like a discord, a different light began to appear in the sky.

Tess stopped and, reluctantly, Declan did too. Around them the dancers whirled on and away, and vanished into the night as though they had never been.