I couldn't, Michael thought, now bursting to tell his secret. They weren't there. And he was filled with an exhilaration which almost giddied him. He skipped on the dew-wet grass, making the chickens flutter nervously.
'Watch out there, clumsy! Go, get lost and I'll see you later.' And she soothed her brood with soft words. Uncle Sean said that Rose had a name for each of the hens, though she denied it indignantly. Michael was not sure. She called them strange things under her breath sometimes.
He scampered away, the wet grass beginning to be felt through his old shoes. It would be hot today, and there would be dragonflies by the river.
Someone was limping up the long slope towards him with a pitchfork over one shoulder, a bucket in one hand and a cloud of blue smoke trailing behind him. When he saw Michael he waved and sat down on the sward, spearing the pitchfork into the ground. It was old Mullan. Michael joined him. The grass was ablaze with buttercups so that they sat in a gently swaying yellow sea, and the pollen was already beginning to powder their legs.
Mullan scraped a match across one boot heel and sucked the dim flame into his pipe. It was an applebowl Peterson, a beautiful thing, the brown of the wood so deep it could nearly be a dark scarlet. Even the scrapes and dints it had received over the years had mellowed, becoming part of the shape. The mud and blood of the Somme had left no mark. Mullan was an old Inniskilling Fusilier, though Michael's grandmother said he was an old Blow. He was the only one of the hired hands she would let sit by the range after dinner, however.
'Well, Mike,' he said, puffing contentedly. He was also the only person who called Michael that, and he liked it. He felt it was a grown-up's name. 'What have you been up to? I saw you come in last night, muck to the eyebrows and your face as white as a sheet. You looked as though you'd seen a ghost, so you did.'
Michael plucked a buttercup and watched it reflect a gold light on his palm.
'I fell—down by the river where the slope is. I fell all the way down it.'
'Ah.' Mullan thumbed his bowl with a fireproof digit. 'Odd place, that dip, when the evening is coming on. It gets dark down there so quickly you can be caught out. And you notice the sheep never drink there, though your grandfather cleared that hazel.'
Michael raised his head, surprised. They didn't, either.
'And there are never any birds there,' he said. 'Why is that?' Mullan smiled. His chin was as bristly as a nettle stalk and his eyes two glints of blue in a maze of folds and wrinkles. He had been born in another century, before aeroplanes or cars or two great wars, before Ireland had been split in two. When Pearse had been on the steps of the GPO he and his comrades had been in the trenches in the spring rain.
'There are places,' he said, 'that are just plain odd. Ordinary places that are a wee bit different, so the birds shun them and people feel uncomfortable there. There are places like that all over the country, or there were when I was a boy.' Somehow he made that sound a very long time ago. Another age.
'What are they?' Michael asked, wide-eyed. 'What's wrong with them?'
'And did I say there was something wrong with them? There are differences, maybe; wee things you can feel now and again, at the right kind of day. At dusk or dawn. And if you sit still long enough in them you'll maybe see something—something out of the corner of your eyes. Fairies, Mike. The Little People.'
Michael was disappointed. The things he had seen by the river were most definitely not fairies.
'Aren't they supposed to have wings and stuff, and pointy ears?'
Mullan chuckled, his humour a spit of blue smoke. The Peterson gurgled happily to itself.
'Oh, aye. Wings and things—like dragonflies, shiny and buzzing.' And he began to laugh.
'You're making fun!'
'No. Not me. I'm dead serious.' But he continued to wheeze.
Michael reddened and the old man stuck out a hand. 'Hold on there. Wait a minute! He coughed and spat something semi-solid into the buttercups. 'Jesus. No, listen, Mike, I'm not mocking you. I'll tell you a story. Listen to me ... ' For Michael had half stood up, his eyes outraged. Mullan's hand grasped his forearm and brought him down to earth again in an instant's mist of buttercup dust.
'You're just laughing!'
'Remember the field across the river, the one below the bridge?'
Michael nodded suspiciously.
'Well Pat—your grandfather—he found an old sword there once that the Romans had left behind, and it had writing on the blade he couldn't read.'
'I know that. Everybody does. It's in the museum in the city. Sure there's nothing to do with fairies in that.'
'Aye, but your grandfather told me that when he found the sword it was lying on the grass, just lying there, and that he could swear there were things watching him from the trees at the river. It was near dark, and he was so sure they were there that he was going to go and see, for he was thinking it was trespassers or the Campbell boys—they're a bad crowd—but something put him off. He had old Demon with him, except he wasn't much more than a pup then, and the dog was snarling and growling and carrying on something desperate; and damned if he would go into the trees, even when Pat threw him a kick and cursed him up and down. So your grandfather picks up the old sword and says to hell with it, and runs—runs, Mike—back into the house with the dog whining at his heels. So what do you think of that, then?'