Part 38 (1/2)

'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 s.h.i.+ne 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.'