The Keeper (2 page)

Chapter 2

Pearse Station

A
T FIRST, Oisín didn't notice the ravens in Pearse Station. He was far too busy looking furtively at the Book of Magic. He turned it over and over in his hands like a pebble, waiting for it to do something. Maybe the Book would make him fly. Or turn Stephen into a rhinoceros. Or maybe it would just flip through its pages again. Instead, it remained perfectly still in his hands, as if it was the most ordinary thing in the world.

It wasn't, though. The Book was special and he was its Keeper. Oisín could feel its magic like a small pulse coming from its pages. He wasn't sure what being a keeper meant, but he liked the sound of it. It made him feel that it was OK to hold the Book, even when a small pang of guilt in his chest told him that he really should tell Granny Keane about it. She had said they could keep any book they wanted, so technically he wasn't stealing it.

Oisín had
meant
to tell her. But first Granny Keane had been very busy bundling her books together so she could sell them in town. Then they had been traipsing across Dublin looking for a second-hand bookshop that might want some of Granny Keane's unique selection. Even when they were having lunch in the Powerscourt Centre, it hadn't seemed like the right time. Now they were sitting on a bench in Pearse Station, waiting to take the DART home to Raheny. Oisín thought that he should say something. But something kept his mouth shut, some sense of a secret that was his alone.

Oisín was trying to decide what to do when he noticed a raven with green eyes. The Book of Magic shifted slightly, and something clicked in Oisín's brain: it wasn't the first raven he'd seen that day. There had been one staring in the window in Eason's bookshop on O'Connell Street. He'd seen several ravens perched on Daniel O'Connell's statue across the road and even more sitting on the steps of the Ha'penny Bridge. He'd even seen one by the piano in the Powerscourt Centre, as if it had every right to be there amongst the pots of tea and lemon squares. Now that he thought about it, all of them had the same eyes, as green as grass, which he was sure ravens weren't supposed to have. A strange feeling came over him, as if somehow they knew about the Book.

‘I think I might give my sandwich to the birdie,' said Sorcha. ‘He looks hungry.'

Oisín turned to his sister. Sorcha was not a big fan of Granny Keane's banana curry and chickpea sandwiches.

‘I don't know if he'll be able to eat that,' Oisín said quietly. ‘Why don't you have a few more bites and then I'll finish it?'

It seemed like the sort of thing an older brother should say, even if the sandwiches weren't exactly his favourite kind either.

‘No, the birdie looks hungry! Here you go, little birdie. Ow! He
pecked
me!'

Oisín sprang to his feet but the raven had already gone. Sorcha looked down at her ankle where the raven had pecked her. Her face faltered as if she couldn't decide whether or not to cry.

‘Don't worry, Sorcha,' Oisín said, putting his hand on her shoulder. He hadn't read a book about comforting little sisters, but this was always what his mother did.

Sorcha's lip was still trembling, though, and Oisín knew he only had seconds.

‘Here, why don't you sit down and I'll get you some Maltesers?'

Maltesers were Sorcha's favourite sweets, so she nodded her head and limped back to the bench. Oisín was sure his mother would have been fretting about tetanus shots if she'd been there, but Granny Keane didn't seem too bothered. She was staring into space, a box of books that nobody wanted to buy on the bench beside her. Stephen was playing a game on his mobile phone, hoping that none of his friends had seen him walking around town with his granny.

Oisín's hands shook as he put the coins into the vending machine. The next DART train was twenty minutes away, according to the electronic display. Oisín wished it was coming sooner. He was feeling strangely uneasy, as if somebody was watching him. Yet the train station was almost completely empty. There were a few workers, newspapers twitching in their hands. Spanish tourists leant against the wall and gazed up at the glass roof, hoping that the sun would reach them. Everybody looked quite normal.

It was the Book of Magic. That was why he was feeling so strange. He'd have to tell Granny Keane about it before they went home.

When he got back to the bench, Stephen and Sorcha were in the middle of an argument.

‘Ravens don't have green eyes,' Stephen said, not looking up from his game.

‘This one did,' Sorcha protested.

‘It couldn't have.'

‘It did.'

‘What kind of bird did you say pecked you?' Granny Keane said, sitting forward suddenly on the bench, as if she was waking from a dream.

Usually Granny Keane's voice was quite light and airy, as if it belonged to somebody much younger than a lady in her eighties. People who saw her long wispy hair and bright turquoise beads sometimes thought she might be a little odd in the head and so she was always able to get a discount at the market or to convince the police that she could never have been speeding. Every now and then, though, her voice had a sudden sharpness, as if she was all too alert. This was the quality her voice had now.

‘What kind of bird was it?' she repeated.

‘A raven,' Oisín answered in a small voice.

‘And what colour did you say its eyes were?'

‘Green,' Oisín and Sorcha said at the same time.

Nobody could fail to notice the effect these words had on Granny Keane. A shadow flickered across her face, as if she was remembering some deep, forgotten sorrow. Her own big green eyes pulsed with a strange emotion, and Oisín thought he had never seen her look fiercer.

Are you OK, Gran?' he asked as she looked far into the distance.

It took a moment for Granny Keane's eyes to return from the place in the past where they had been. When they did, they focused on Oisín as if seeing him for the first time. She stared not at the packet of Maltesers in his right hand, but at the little book sticking out of his hoodie pocket.

Oisín pushed it out of view and sat down on the bench, handing Sorcha the Maltesers. Lots of feelings were tugging at his insides, but he couldn't give up the Book. Not yet.

When Granny Keane eventually spoke, it wasn't what Oisín expected to hear.

‘Have any of you heard of the Morrígan?'

None of them had.

‘Don't they teach you the old Celtic stories in school?'

‘Some of them,' Oisín replied.

‘Just the boring ones,' Stephen added. ‘They're all about silly swans turning into children or old guys falling off horses. I don't know why we bother with them. Dad says that Irish will be obsolete in a few years – that means extinct.'

‘Thanks, Dictionary-dot-com,' Oisín said under his breath.

‘Remind me to thump you later,' Stephen growled.

Granny Keane ignored the pair of them.

‘They never teach you anything useful at school,' she fussed, sounding a lot more like a regular granny than usual. ‘Of course you haven't heard of the Morrígan.'

‘What is this Morrígan thing?' Sorcha asked.

‘She is the Great Queen of Battle Madness,' Granny Keane said.

‘Is she a giant?' Sorcha asked.

‘It's not her size that you need to worry about,' Granny Keane said. ‘Something as small as a pea can hold all the trouble in the world.' She looked back towards Oisín and he had a strange feeling that she was looking right at the Book of Magic.

‘What is she like?' Sorcha asked, her small eyes huge.

‘She's the Queen of Shadows,' Granny Keane said and, once again, something strange and sad seemed to shift across her face. ‘She feeds off all the despair of the world: all the bad thoughts and broken promises, all the little lies and unkind truths that make our world go round. She skulks in the shadows of the world, and when somebody is feeling at their lowest, she creeps over and makes them feel worse.'

Oisín shivered, thinking of some of the times he had felt sad. The day when Stephen's friends shoved him into the hedge at the bus stop and everybody laughed hadn't been great. Or when his best friend Jack had moved to the country three years ago, that had been a hard one. Or the day when Jack came back to visit last year, and was full of stories of his new friends and seemed like the kind of person Oisín would never have been friends with anyway, that day had been even worse. Oisín pulled down the sleeves of his hoodie, starting to feel cold all over. He couldn't imagine the kind of creature that would want to make you feel worse on your lowest day.

‘Where did she come from?' Sorcha asked, captivated.

Sorcha usually loved to suck all the chocolate off Maltesers before eating them, but she hadn't even opened the packet yet.

‘Have you heard of the Tuatha Dé Danann?' Granny Keane asked.

Oisín answered when Sorcha shook her head: ‘The fairy people. The first people in Ireland.'

‘Yes,' said Granny Keane. ‘The Morrígan was one of them. A beautiful young girl. But then something turned her heart hard and she moved to a far-off mountain. During the great wars of Ireland, she swooped around the battle field as a crow, with her two bitter sisters, Macha and Badb. The three of them perched on the shoulders of soldiers and gave them the courage to fight on. The Morrígan cheered on
both
sides. She didn't care who won. All she minded was getting enough skulls to decorate her room with.'

‘So she's a bird?' Sorcha asked.

‘It's just a silly story,' Stephen said quickly. He shot Granny Keane a sharp glance, but nothing could stop her once she had started.

‘She
can
look like a bird sometimes. She's a shape-shifter. Sometimes she looks like a wrinkled old lady. Sometimes she looks like a little girl. Sometimes she looks like the most beautiful woman in Ireland. No matter what she changes to, you can always recognise her by three things: the ravens that follow her, a terrible chill in the air around her and those green eyes of hers that will drown you in sadness.'

Even Stephen shuddered slightly. Oisín couldn't blame him. The temperature seemed to drop several degrees, as if the weather had decided that fine summer days weren't to be wasted on such stories.

‘Does that mean you're the Morrígan?' Sorcha said, gazing into Granny Keane's green eyes with fascination.

A smile returned to Granny Keane's face and she gave a little laugh. ‘Oh, no, dear. If I had all the power of the Morrígan, I wouldn't be trying to sell my books around Dublin.'

‘What about you? Why aren't your eyes blue like mine and Stephen's?' Sorcha said, swivelling around to Oisín and inspecting his eyes.

It was something that Oisín had wondered himself. He was small with freckles, green eyes and hair the colour of sand. Both Stephen and Sorcha had black hair, blue eyes and not a freckle between them.

‘It's complicated genetics,' Stephen began, but before he could explain what he had learnt about Mendel for his Junior Cert, Granny Keane had interrupted him.

‘Lots of people have green eyes, love. Your cat, Smoky, he has green eyes, hasn't he?'

Sorcha nodded slowly. It was hard to imagine Smoky getting enough energy to leave his basket, let alone plot an evil scheme.

Granny Keane patted Sorcha's hand. ‘I don't think you need to worry about any of us.'

‘Or worry at all,' Stephen said, standing. ‘It's just a story. Where is the stupid DART? Dublin Area
Rapid
Transit? A slug would get home faster!'

‘What time is it?' Granny Keane asked.

‘Almost five,' Stephen answered grumpily. He'd never been more ready to get back to his friends and his own house.

‘It's too early to be getting dark,' Granny Keane murmured. In the middle of June, the sun never set until after ten, and yet the station was gradually getting darker and darker.

‘Probably climate change,' Stephen said. That was what their father said whenever the weather went weird.

‘No, no, it's nothing,' Granny Keane said quickly, standing up as if she'd suddenly realised something. ‘Come on, let's get you a seat near the front.'

Usually they walked along the platform because it was easier to get a seat at the front of the train, but Oisín didn't think they needed to worry about that today. The few people at the station were leaving, whispering about the terrible state of train delays, the awful cheat of a summer where it started to get dark at five o'clock and how it was all probably something to do with the euro.

‘Gran, are you sure the train's coming?' Oisín said, looking up to check the clock.

The train was still twenty minutes away and the neon seconds were flickering along towards five o'clock. But as soon as Oisín looked up he saw at once what had bothered Granny Keane and what was causing the unnatural darkness. Hovering over the glass roof were several creatures, their black forms blocking all the sun from the platform. Not one, not tens, but hundreds and hundreds of ravens, all of them pecking their beaks against the glass and looking down with terrible green eyes.

Chapter 3

The Underwater Train

O
ISÍN's head told him to run. The problem was his legs. His legs were rooted to the platform as if they had decided it was time he learnt what
scared stiff
really meant. Oisín looked at his feet so he wouldn't have to think about the ravens, but he could feel them looking down at him, could feel the hairs on his neck stand straight as soldiers. The Book of Magic could sense them too. It was squirming in his pocket as if it wanted to get out. Oisín wasn't sure if it wanted to get away from the ravens or to join them. Stephen and Sorcha hadn't noticed yet. Sorcha was happy with her Maltesers (she had reached the sucking-the-chocolate stage). Stephen was playing intently with his mobile phone. The air around them got colder and darker.

Just when Oisín's brain had almost convinced his legs that it was time to get moving, he felt Granny Keane's hand on his shoulder. Her face was smiling tightly but he could feel her hand shaking. He had to tell her.

‘Gran –'

‘It's the train!' Granny Keane said, without hearing him.

‘There's no train,' Oisín said. ‘The clock still says it's twenty minutes away.'

But when he looked at the platform, the train was right there, as if it, rather than they, had been waiting all this time. It looked like a normal DART train with the same green checked cushions and yellow stripe on the side. Something wasn't right, though. It was eerily empty and hadn't made a single sound as it reached the platform. Oisín was beginning to feel like he didn't have enough hairs on the back of his neck for all this strangeness.

Stephen didn't seem bothered. He hurried Sorcha into the carriage and waited impatiently for Oisín. Oisín's legs were still staying put. He couldn't leave Granny Keane alone on the platform, even though she was planning on taking the 130 bus back to her own house in Clontarf.

‘Why don't you come with us?' he asked.

A flicker of longing flashed across Granny Keane's face.

‘No, dear, I'm staying here,' she said, patting Oisín on the shoulder. ‘But you must go. Just remember –'

‘Come on!' Stephen said, yanking Oisín by the arm.

‘Wait!' Oisín said.

‘Don't worry about me,' Granny Keane said quickly, as if she knew what Oisín was thinking. ‘I can look after myself. But you must get on the train.'

Oisín looked into her deep green eyes. He had a thousand questions for her and he suddenly wished he had asked her about the Book of Magic as soon as he'd found it. What was it doing in her study? How could a book move? What was a Keeper? And what did it all have to do with the Morrígan?

Oisín struggled to find words to ask at least one of the questions, but before he could, Stephen pulled him into the train.

‘Come on, Slowslime,' he barked, pushing the door-close button impatiently.

‘Just remember your name,' Granny Keane said as the doors shut. ‘Remember your name.'

Before Oisín could ask what she meant, the train had started to pull off, and in a second Granny Keane was left behind.

Sun streamed into the carriage. Oisín had forgotten that it was daylight and was surprised to see Stephen's face illuminated. He was even more surprised to see how worried his brother looked. Stephen ran to the window and looked out. When he looked back in relief, Oisín realised that Stephen had seen the ravens on the roof all the time, but he hadn't wanted to alarm Sorcha. Or to believe it himself. Stephen liked things to be normal. Normal didn't include his loser little brother or a roof full of ravens. It certainly didn't include magic books.

‘What is that thing?' Stephen said, looking suspiciously at Oisín's Book of Magic.

‘Just a book,' Oisín said, his voice catching. He wished he hadn't pulled it out of his pocket.

‘Look, it's another birdie,' Sorcha said, pressing her nose against the window.

Stephen swallowed hard. Flying alongside the window was a raven with green eyes. Except these ravens were like ants. Once one appeared, it wasn't long before there was a trail of them.

‘They're flying us home,' Sorcha said excitedly, seeming to have forgotten about the raven that had pecked her.

‘Stay away from the window,' Oisín and Stephen shouted together.

Already, more ravens were appearing, blocking out the view of both Bram Stoker's house and Fairview Park with their dark, shadowy wings. Oisín wished the DART would go a little faster but it seemed, if anything, to be slowing down.

‘
Déan deifir
,' he whispered to the train.

It was what Granny Keane always grumbled when she wanted her bus to hurry up. The DART didn't seem to care, chugging along at its normal speed. But the Book of Magic did, shifting in Oisín's fingers as if shaking off a long sleep.

Stephen's eyes bulged.

‘Give me that thing,' he said, moving towards Oisín.

Oisín stood on the tips of his toes, trying to face Stephen eye to eye, which was hard, as Stephen was a lot taller than him.

‘Listen, Bookmaggot, I've got hurling practice tonight and I just want to get back home without any trouble,' Stephen said.

Oisín wished that the Book of Magic wasn't acting so strangely. It had started to flick through its pages, as if it was getting ready for something.

‘Give that thing to me!' Stephen said, lunging for the Book.

‘No!' Oisín said, ducking out of the way.

Stephen grabbed it out of his hands. Oisín caught his breath. In a moment, Stephen would see the inscription in the Book and then he'd never get it back.

‘It's
mine
,' he shouted desperately.

He didn't know why he said it. It wasn't as if he thought that the Book could hear him. It wasn't as though he expected the Book to do anything. But that's exactly what happened. It snapped its pages shut on Stephen's finger and leapt through the air into Oisín's hands.

Oisín could feel something changing in the air, the tiniest of shifts. From the look on Stephen's face, it seemed that he could sense it too. The DART slowed down to a standstill. The ravens crowded closer. There was a clicking sound, the small unlatching of a carriage. And then the train started to move very quickly.

‘They've gone,' Sorcha said, as the train suddenly shot through the cloud of ravens.

Oisín turned around. He could see the swarm of ravens coming after them. What he couldn't see was the rest of the train. Their carriage was running away on its own.

‘Goodbye, Killester!' Sorcha shouted out.

A world of trees, houses, washing lines and annoyed people waiting on Killester platform whizzed by.

‘It must be an express train,' Stephen said to himself, still trying to cling to a shred of a normal explanation.

The Book of Magic fluttered in Oisín's hands.

‘Bye, Raheny!' Sorcha shouted out as more disgruntled passengers were left on the platform at Raheny.

Stephen paced up and down the carriage. He realised with a jolt that they were the only people on it.

‘Bye, Kilbarrack!' Sorcha chirped.

‘We can get off at Howth Junction,' Stephen said, running his fingers through his hair. ‘The train will have to stop there.'

All the trains stopped at Howth Junction, no matter where they were going.

‘Bye, Howth Junction!' Sorcha called out.

Oisín gulped. Instead of following the regular tracks, the carriage had veered off on its own. Oisín ran to the front of the carriage and looked out the window. There were the same wooden slats disappearing underneath the train as it powered along, but they looked a lot older, as if they hadn't been used in a very long time. The carriage kept going, travelling so fast that they couldn't see the ravens behind them any more.

Stephen strode forward and tapped on the window to alert the driver. The driver's compartment was empty.

‘We're going to the sea!' Sorcha cried excitedly.

‘We're not!' Oisín and Stephen shouted at the same time.

Sometimes, though, seven-year-old sisters can see things more clearly than their older brothers.

‘We are,' Sorcha said stubbornly. ‘We're going up Howth Head.'

She was right. Somehow the carriage was cutting through fields, trees and roads, all the time getting higher and higher. Surprised cows raised their heads at the green blur that had shot by them, but it was gone before they could let out so much as a moo. In seconds, the carriage had cut a path through the bright pink rhododendrons of Deer Park and was rushing towards the summit of Howth Head. If the carriage didn't stop, they'd fly off the edge of the cliff, the sea hundreds of feet below them.

‘Stop!' Oisín whispered. He wasn't sure whether he was talking to the Book of Magic or the train. Neither of them was listening.

The carriage zigzagged through the gorse fields and kept climbing up the hill, not showing any signs of stopping. Sorcha looked out the glass window with a very serious face. Stephen jabbed at his mobile phone furiously, but it didn't have any signal. The edge of the cliff loomed. Stephen dropped his phone and held Sorcha's hand. He looked back and offered his other hand to Oisín.

Just as Oisín was about to take it, the pages stopped flapping and the Book opened at its centre. Three small words shone out clearly on the page, coming from the mouth of a bright speckled fish. It took Oisín a second to decide. He wasn't sure that he trusted the Book. He wasn't sure that the strange words wouldn't turn them into tadpoles. He wasn't even sure if he could read the small spindly handwriting. What Oisín was sure of was that he didn't want to plummet off the edge of a cliff without doing anything.

‘
Téigh faoin uisce
,' he read quickly.

It was as if the train knew what he was saying, like it was a horse waiting to be tapped on its flank. The train dipped sharply down on a ninety-degree angle, flinging the children against the glass. They were too amazed to scream. One after another, tracks appeared on the cliff-face, as if they were appearing just for them. The tracks continued into the Irish Sea, running along the sandy bottom until they disappeared from view. Oisín knew that the carriage was going to follow them and sure enough it did, plunging into the water and chugging along the seabed, as if this was a perfectly normal thing for a DART to do. It showed no signs of slowing down and the windows seemed happy to stay shut.

‘What's that?' Stephen asked.

Straight ahead was the strangest looking seaweed forest Oisín had ever seen. It looked like it was made of mist, and towered towards the surface. The tracks continued through it and the DART brushed through easily. The train was through the misty seaweed in under a minute but something seemed to have changed in the air. Oisín had a strange feeling, like when he entered somebody else's home for the first time and he caught the particular smell of the house. It was as though he had opened a curtain and now here he was, in magic's house. The Book of Magic settled into his palm, calm again.

‘Look at the fishies!' Sorcha said, running to the window.

She didn't seem too bothered about what had just happened. Stephen sat on the floor, in shock. Things were so not-normal he didn't know where to start. Oisín could understand why. It wasn't just that the DART was travelling underwater. It was that the fish that swirled around the carriage were some of the strangest he had ever seen. There were bright little minnows that flashed on and off like Christmas lights. There was a huge salmon with goat horns on its head and long yellow seahorses that stretched out their necks like trumpets. Oisín had wanted to be an oceanographer when he was eight and had read lots of books about the sea, but he had never seen any creatures like the ones in front of him now. A strange sort of thought crept up on him – that these were the kind of fish you could never find in the Irish Sea, maybe even the kind of fish you could never find in this world.

Stephen buried his head in his hands as the carriage made its way through a gigantic kelp forest. The seaweed was as high as Liberty Hall and just as strange as the fish: towering lavender and turquoise stalks that swayed with the current, prickly pink plants that recoiled as the train went past, bushy blobs of yellow seaweed that puffed in and out.

The DART pulled out of the seaweed forest and continued along the ocean bed, as if it knew exactly where it was going. After about ten minutes, it started to climb out of the water, pulling back into the air and stopping at a sandy beach. The doors opened slowly.

‘We must be in Wales,' Stephen said, struggling to keep his voice from shaking.

Oisín looked out the window at the strange island they'd arrived at. He'd never been to Wales but he had a feeling that it didn't have any palm trees. He knew Wales had mountains, but the white one in the distance looked much too big to be in the United Kingdom. And he was very sure that there weren't
any
volcanoes in Great Britain.

Stephen punched his fist against the window. He clung on to the one normal thing left: this was all his brother's fault.

‘You did this,' he growled, glaring at Oisín and at the Book in his hands. Oisín didn't bother answering. He hadn't meant to make the train go underwater. He hadn't meant for the ravens to see the Book. But he had a feeling that there was no turning back now.

He held the Book of Magic in his hands, and for the first time, he felt how heavy it was.