A Wizard Abroad

Aunt Annie heading off with a rake over her shoulder, probably to do something about the new potatoes she had just planted. They were a rare breed, something called 'fir-apple potatoes', and Aunt Annie raked and weeded them herself every day, and wouldn't let anyone near them.

Nita grinned at this and went inside. She was just in the act of making herself another sandwich in the kitchen, when the phone began to ring. Nita ran for it, picked it up, and as she had heard others do, said, 'Ballyvolan.'

'Is Mrs Callahan there?'

'No, she's not. can I take a message for you?'

'Yes, please. Tell her that Shaun O'Driscoll called, and ask her to call back immediately, it's very urgent.'

'All right.' Nita scribbled the message down, and said, 'I'll see if I can catch her; she just went out. Bye.' And she ran out across the gravel yard, vaulted the fence, and headed into the field. Far away, over the hill of the second field, she could see her aunt walking towards the little rise in the middle of it. Yelling at her seemed ridiculous at this point, so Nita just ran after her as quickly as she could, puffing. She still ached.

She was rather surprised to see her aunt take the rake off her shoulder, and bang the wooden end of it on the ground. She was even more surprised when the little hill split open, and her aunt walked into it.

Nita stood very still for a moment, and her mouth fell open.

Oh, no! she thought. And she remembered Tom's voice, from not so terribly long ago, saying to her father: 'Well, you know, Ed, it'syour side of the family that the wizardry comes down from.'

My dad's sister… My aunt's a wizard!

Half torn between terror and laughter, she ran after her, towards the gaping darkness in the side of the hill.

5. Faoin gCnoc / Under the hill

The chasm was deeper and wider than it looked.Is this happening in the real world? Nita thought, and paused for a moment to try to see with double vision, as she had seen the other day. True enough, mere daylight vision showed her a smooth hill — no crack; nothing. But then no-one in the house had seen her aunt. She had. Nita was seeing sideways where her aunt was, and this was sideways too. Not as sideways as it might have been, of course.

'Aunt Annie,' she said, not loud, but urgently, and loud enough to carry. Ahead of her, her aunt stopped in shock, standing there with the rake. She looked back at Nita and said, 'Oh, no.'

'Aunt Annie,' Nita said, grinning a little in spite of herself, 'whatdid they tell you about why they'd sent me here.?'

Aunt Annie's mouth opened and shut, and then she said, 'When I get my hands on Ed. I'm going to rip his head off and hand it to him.'

'They couldn't exactly tell you,' Nita said, immediately wanting to defend her father. 'It's not his fault.'

'Maybe not,' Aunt Annie said, 'but Nita.! I had no idea!'

'Actually, I was hoping you wouldn't,' Nita said, wryly. 'I don't usually try to advertise it.' 'But how can yoube here?' Aunt Annie said. Then in she shook her head. 'Never mind that now. That you're here means you're intended to be. I've got business. Let's go and see them.' 'Them?'

'Be polite,' Aunt Annie said. 'And follow my lead.' Nita was entirely willing. She followed her aunt into the hill.

It was not a hill. It was a city. It was like the one that Nita had seen crowning Sugarloaf, but smaller, more intimate. It could not, of course, be inside the hill. It was two, three — ten? fifty? — universes over from the 'real world'. Broad streets, airy; shade, the sound of running water, stone as fluidly formed as if it had been clay once, or flesh — all paused in mid-movement, possibly to move again some day. There were echoes of thatched houses, and of old castles, and of castles no human being could have imagined, hints of architecture Nita recognized as extraterrestrial from her travels — apparently the builders had had connections elsewhere.

The light was different too; harder, sharper, somehow clearer than the light that rested on the fields around Aunt Annie's farm. Things seemed to have sharper edges, more weight, more meaning. Nothing here needed to glow with magical light, or anything so blatant. Things here were too busy beingreal… more real even than the 'real world'. It was a slightly unnerving effect. 'Oh, and one other thing,' her aunt said. 'Don't eat or drink anything here.' Nita burst out laughing. 'There had to beone place in Ireland where no-one was going to make me drink tea or eat anything,' she said.

Her aunt looked at her cockeyed, then laughed. 'Well, you keep thinking of it that way.' They walked on among the high houses. 'Where are we going?' Nita said.

'To talk to the people who live here,' said Aunt Annie. 'I do have certain rights. This is my land — I am the landowner. .' She chuckled then. 'As if anyone in Ireland can really own land. We all just borrow it for a while.' She looked sidewise at Nita. 'Where were you last night?' 'I was out with some very very large things that should have been wolves, but Weren't,' Nita said. 'Oh, by the way. There was a phone call for you. A Shaun O'Driscoll. .' I

'I just bet,' said Aunt Annie. 'The Area Supervisor. Well, we'll see him shortly, but I need to deal with these first.' 'These people. .'

'You know the name,' her aunt said. 'We don't usually say it. it's considered impolite. Like shouting at someone, 'Hey, human!'.'

The Sidhe, Nita thought. The people of the hills… the not-so-little people. 'You see them often?' Nita said.

'Often enough. 'Good fences make good neighbors,' as the poet says. However, every now and then, when you share common ground, you need to have a good long chat over the fence. That's what this is about.'

They came to the heart of the city. There were twelve trees in a circle, and three bright chairs under the trees, seemingly resting on the surface of a pool of water. Or rather, the chairs on either side of the central one were true chairs; the central one was a throne. The trees moved in the wind, and the shadows thrown by their branches wove and shifted on the surface of the bright water in patterns that seemed to Nita to be always on the edge of meaning.

People stood around and watched from under the shade of those trees; tall people, fair people, with beautiful dogs at heel. Handsome cats sat here and there, watching; unconcerned birds sang rainbows in the trees. Nita tried to look at a few of the people, and found it difficult. Not that they were indistinct. They were almost too solid to bear, and their clothes and weapons, in an antique style, all shone with certainty and existence.

The chairs on either side of the throne were filled; the throne itself was empty. Aunt Annie walked straight towards the throne, across the water. Nita watched with professional interest. She knew several ways to walk on water, but she felt safe in assuming that the water here was more assertive, and didn't mind being walked on without more active spelling. She headed out after her aunt. Aunt Annie stopped about three meters away from the central throne, acknowledged it with a slight nod, and then looked at the person sitting in the right-hand chair. 'The greeting of gods and men to you,Amadaun of the People of the Hill in Cualann. And to you, lady of this forth.' The lady bowed her head. 'To you also, Aoine ni Cealodhain, greeting,' said the man in the right- hand chair. 'And greeting to you, Shonaiula ni Cealodhain.'

Nita was slightly out of her depth, but she knew how to be polite. She bowed slightly and said, 'I am on errantry, fair people, and the One greets you by me.' 'This we had known,' said the woman in the chair.

'Then perhaps you will explain to me,' said Aunt Annie, 'why my niece was chased halfway across my field last night bythat one's hunt. I thought we had an agreement that if you saw any power of that kind waking, you would warn me so that I could take appropriate action.' 'We had no warning ourselves, Aoine,' said the lady.

'I would then appreciate your view of what's happening here. It's most unusual for you to have no warning of so major an intrusion, and that you didn't means we have trouble on our hands.' 'Trouble rarely comes near us, Aoine. But it would be true to say that the past is becoming troublesome. We have had a messenger at our gates. one of the Fomori.' 'And what did this messenger say?'