The Hunter's Moon (6 page)

He beckoned to her.

After all that had happened, Gwen knew without a doubt what she had only suspected the day before. Flinging her knapsack into the car, she plumped down in the front seat to confront the leprechaun.

“Now don’t be leppin’ on me as if I’m to blame,” he said quickly. “Fair’s fair. Ye got what ye came for. I’m here to lend a hand.”

With a crunch of gears, he moved the old car into traffic. Perched on two telephone books, white and yellow pages, he peered over the dashboard like a child at the wheel.

“I’ll get ye to Busáras in plenty of time to break your fast. Your bus leaves at ten o’clock sharp.”

“And where am I going, if that’s not too much to ask?” Gwen said archly.

At the same time she was feeling a huge sense of relief. The cavalry had arrived. All was not lost. And behind her relief was the rising thrill of excitement. Was this an adventure or what!

As if he could read her mind, the leprechaun chuckled.

“Ye were looking for somethin’ and now it’s found ye. Make the most of it. The fairy court is on its summer circuit of the country. Ye’ll have to be fleet-footed and quick-witted if ye want to find your kin.”

“Is she all right?”

“Right in the head? Is that what ye mean?”

“Is she safe?” Gwen persisted, annoyed with his antics.

“That’s a quare word. Is she safe and sound, are ye askin’ me?”

His cackle was disturbing. Despite his small size, there was something sinister about him. He was like the ventriloquist dummies that always gave her the heebie-jeebies.

“Sound in the head and safe in her bed,” he continued. “Have ye any right to demand that, after barging into secret places without so much as a by-your-leave? If it’s safety and soundness ye wanted, ye’d have been better off follyin’ the Yankee trail to Killarney and all that blarney. There’s only one thing the fairy folk ask of your kind and that’s to be left alone. Ye broke more laws than your own when ye slept in the mound.”

Gwen shifted uncomfortably at his tirade. The leprechaun had gone red in the face, stealing the righteous indignation that had helped her be so bold.

“We didn’t know,” she said lamely.

“Ye did too,” he retorted.

He was relentless. Gwen slumped in her seat. She knew Findabhair wouldn’t have let him browbeat her into silence, but she wasn’t Findabhair. With a sigh, she looked out the window. The countryside was speeding past in a multicolored blur. The car was going incredibly fast for something so old. As if it had wings.

“Okay. We did know what we were doing. Sort of. I guess we have to take the consequences. What happens next?”

“That’s the spirit,” said the little man, in a friendlier tone. “We all love a contest and ye are two fine girls, strong and true. We’ll get great sport out of ye.”

Gwen flinched. Hardly a comforting thought. And now an even less pleasant one struck her.

“Were you the one who drove our bus off the road?”

His wicked chuckle answered the question before he did.

“A tidy bit of manhooverin’ that.”

“You could have killed someone!”

“Well I didn’t, did I? So give yourself a rest. The two of ye were way offtrack, like Wrong-Way Corrigan. I had to set ye’s right agin.”

He started to fiddle with the antique radio in the dashboard. Gwen was surprised that it worked and more surprised at what it played. The Dropkick Murphys’ frenetic rendition of “The Rocky Road to Dublin” ricocheted off the windshield and around the car.

Then off to reap the corn
,

Leave where I was born
,

Cut a stout blackthorn

To banish ghosts and goblins
.

A brand-new pair of brogues
,

Rattlin’ o’er the bogs
,

Frightening all the dogs
,

On the rocky road to Dublin
.

“Aren’t they the boyos?” said the leprechaun, bobbing his head to the music like a crazed noddy dog. “Asha, it’s not much of a rocky road these days, is it? With all these fancy carriageways.”

One-two-three-four-five

Hunt the hare and turn her

Down the rocky road

And all the way to Dublin

Whack fol lol dee dah
.

They were indeed on the road to Dublin, as Gwen could see from the signs along the motorway. Pushing well over a hundred kilometers an hour, the little car kept pace with the speeding traffic. As they overtook a tractor-trailer hogging the right lane, the little man made a rude gesture at the driver.

“Them articulated lorries think they own the road.”

The truck driver blasted his horn.

“Up the yard!” roared the leprechaun.

They approached the capital city through the spacious grounds of Phoenix Park. Deer grazed on the green lawns. Few strollers were about. As they passed Áras an Uachtaráin, the palatial home of the Irish President, the little man doffed his hat.

“Your store of happiness to ye,
Mná na hÉireann
!” he shouted in a fulsome tone.

Gwen caught a glimpse of his pointy ears before the cap was clapped back on.

“A grand lady she is, our Mary,” he said. “She believes in us, ye know, as do all truehearts, not like the rest of them blackguard politicians.”

The Triumph shot out of the park like a bullet and into the early morning bustle of Dublin City. Pedestrian lights seemed irrelevant to the leprechaun as he plowed through intersections, scattering the crowds.

“You’d make a good cabby in New York,” Gwen commented, gripping her seat.

“Heh? What’s that?”

But all his attention was on the road as he switched lanes with abandon. Swerving past a double-decker bus, they flew down the quays, the River Liffey a brown streak. They had just begun a death-defying race with an overloaded milk van, when the traffic on O’Connell Bridge brought them to a halt.

“We’re early,” the leprechaun muttered, glancing at the clock that hung over the Harp Lounge. “How about a jaunt round the oul town? Show you the sights? I’m an urban elf meself.”

“I’ve done the Dublin Bus Tour,” Gwen said quickly, hoping it would deter him.

It didn’t. For the next twenty minutes, she endured the most bizarre sightseeing excursion imaginable. Dashing through the thousand-year-old city at breakneck speed, the leprechaun shouted out names of various attractions that Gwen knew couldn’t be right.

As they headed up the broad thoroughfare of O’Connell Street, they passed a modern sculpture cum fountain. It depicted the River Liffey’s goddess, Anna Livia, lounging in a narrow concrete trough.

“That’s the Floozy-in-the-Jacuzzi!” roared the leprechaun.

Just beyond the fountain a new monument soared into the sky, the elegant metal needle called the Spire.

“Stiletto-in-the-Ghetto!”

After an illegal U-turn at Parnell’s statue, they drove back across the Liffey, past the venerable Trinity College, and into Grafton’s shopping street mall. The little man had begun to sing, completely out of key.

In Dublin’s fair city
,

Where the girls are so pretty
,

I first set my eyes on Sweet Molly Malone
.

“Tart-with-the-Cart!” he announced, as they passed the buxom brass of Molly Malone beside her wheel-barrow of cockles and mussels. “Alive, alive-oh!”

Gwen closed her eyes. Traffic was banned from this street, but they were weaving around the pedestrians.

“You’ve missed the Time-in-the-Slime,” the leprechaun remarked, “the clock that was counting down to the new millennium. It was just under the water line at the bridge. Wonder where it went. Maybe it flew.”

He chortled away at his own joke, and didn’t seem to notice that he had long left his passenger behind, figuratively.

By the time they came to a stop, brakes screeching, in front of the Central Bus Station, Gwen was utterly bewitched, bothered, and bewildered.

“Here ye are now,” he said. “Go west, young woman, to Galway Town. Make your way to the Burren in the County of Clare. There’ll be a banquet tonight at twilight. Carron is the nearest human habitation. Use your wits and ye’ll find it.”

He hauled her knapsack out of the car and leaned it against the glass doors of the station. Gwen didn’t move. Though she couldn’t say she liked the leprechaun, he was her only link to the fairies.

“Couldn’t you drive me there?” she pleaded with him. “I’ll pay for the gas, for your time.”

“Sure what would I want with them bits of paper? Isn’t it always becoming less with that deflation business?”

As he opened the door to hurry her out, his eyes suddenly narrowed with a greedy gleam.

“Have ye any gold on ye?”

“No,” she said forlornly.

“Away ye go, then. I’ve done me job. I was to point ye in the general direction and that’s what I’ve done. Good day to ye.”

He got back behind the wheel and turned the key of the ignition. Desperate, Gwen ran to his window.

“
Please,
” she begged.

The little man hesitated. Was that a hint of sympathy in his eyes? Or was it slyness? He cocked his head.

“Ye’ve me heart scalded with your moanin’, but I’ll say this for ye, you’ve got pluck. There wasn’t a squeak out of ye about the drivin’. I’ll give ye a word of wisdom. If you’re betwixt and between, trust the one with red hair. Now that’s more than I should be tellin’ ye. I’m off. I’ve shoes to mend.”

The Triumph Herald disappeared around the corner, along with her last hope of a direct route to Findabhair. Dejected, Gwen picked up her knapsack and walked into the station.

After all she had been through, it was unsettling to be suddenly faced with the ordinary. People sat on benches waiting for their buses, reading newspapers, or talking on their cell phones. Ranged around the station were a cafeteria, pub, newsagent, and ticket office. She felt disoriented, straddling two worlds, unsure of what was real.

The door of the cafeteria opened and the rich smell of bacon tickled her nose. She read the sign hungrily.
FULL IRISH BREAKFAST. €5.00 RASHERS, EGG, BLACK AND WHITE PUDDING, GRILLED TOMATOES, FRIED POTATOES, MUSHROOMS, AND BEANS. SERVED WITH BUTTERED TOAST AND A POT OF TEA
.

If she ate that, she’d be ready for anything! She checked the bus schedule. Plenty of time to eat, as the leprechaun had promised.

The waiter was a tall young man with red hair shaved on both sides of his head. His ears, nose, and eyebrow were pierced with tiny silver rings.

“The full monty?” he asked her.

“What?”

“D’ya want a big feed? Blood puddin’ and all? Gowan, be a divil.”

“Okay,” she said, laughing, “I’ll have a bit of everything.”

he bus left Dublin City behind and sped down the road on its way across Ireland. Gwen gazed out the window, alone and anxious. Was she waving or drowning? She kept alternating between a wild optimism that she could handle the situation and a despairing panic that she was in over her head. Mostly she was worried about Findabhair. The leprechaun had refused to say if her cousin was all right. What if she wasn’t? Though Gwen tried hard not to, she couldn’t help but dwell on the dark side of Faerie. A lot of the Grimms’ stories were truly grim. What about the mermaid who danced on knives at the wedding? And all those kids eaten by witches and giants? Fairy tales did not always end “happily ever after.” Nor did many of the modern fantasies she liked to read. Why on earth did she ever want to go on a quest? What could she have been thinking!

While her mind raced in frantic circles, her eyes rested on the country outside. Slowly but surely, Ireland worked its magic. A sudden rain showered the landscape. The faraway hills were veiled in gray. Then the downpour ceased as abruptly as it had started, leaving everything breathless and silvered. Hedgerows dripped sparkles of water. Puddles glistened at the side of the road. Now a splendid rainbow spanned the sky. Gwen was lulled by the beauty into a state of quiet bliss.

Though the bus traveled through towns and urban centers, the dreamy feeling stayed with her. The sight of bungalows, supermarkets, and gas stations only confirmed a notion that was growing inside her. There were two Irelands beyond her window, like layers of story on a palimpsest. One was a modern nation outfitted in technology, concrete, and industry. The other was a timeless pagan place that hinted continually of its presence. An old castle stood wedged into a terrace of new houses, a cloaked stranger in the crowd. High on a hilltop, above a factory, was a grove of sacred oak. A tractor plowed a field in the shadow of a stone circle. Behind the flashy hotel leaned a ruinous tower. Like a magician playing with colored scarves, the hidden land revealed itself in bright flashes and glimpses.