A Wizard Abroad

That was the Tuatha de Danaan, the Children and People of the Goddess Danu. They tried to parley with the Fir Bolg, but the Fir Bolg were sick with the battle-sickness of their Fomor blood, and would make no parley. So there was a great fight at the Plain of the Towers, Moytura. The battle came out a draw, and both sides drew apart and waited for a sign. And the sign came, sent by the One: the young hero-god, Lugh the Allcrafted. He told the Tuatha to bring the four treasures of the people of Dana, the Cup and Stone and Sword and Spear they had brought with them when they first came there from the Four Oldest Cities. Seven years he reforged those treasures with the power that was in him. Then the Children of Danu went forth to battle once more at Moytura. Lugh went forward with the Spear called Luin, and with it destroyed Balor of the Deadly Eye, and the Fomori.'

Tualha stopped, panting a little. Nita made a list in her head. 'That's, let's see,' she said,'six invasions. If you count the Tuatha.' 'It'sall invasions,' said Tualha, 'from the land's point of view.'

Nita thought about that for a moment. 'You may have something there. So then who threw the Tuatha out?'

Tualha laughed at her. 'Sure, you're joking me,' she said. 'They're still here.' 'What?' Nita said.

A leaf went by Tualha on the breeze. She jumped at it, missed spectacularly, and came down on the ground so hard that Nita could hear the breath go out of her in a squeak. Nita couldn't help it any more: she burst out laughing. 'I'm sorry, I really am,' she said, 'but I think you need some practice.'

Tualha looked at her scathingly. 'When you're a cat-bard,' she said, 'you get to choose. You get to be fast, or you get to be clever. And no offence, but I prefer clever. Not sure what you prefer, Shonaiula ni Cealodhain,' she muttered, and scuttered off.

Nita chuckled a little, then got up and made her way back the way Tualha had gone, through the area between the riding school and the stables. As she went she noticed a sort of burning smell, and put her head quickly into the stable-block to make sure that something flammable hadn't fallen into the hay. She couldn't see anything but one of the grooms leading a chestnut horse out. In the concreted yard, she found the source of the burning. There was a small pickup truck out there, and a square steel box about half a meter square had been unloaded from it.It's a forge, Nita thought, as the little woman standing by it pulled at a cord hanging out of one side, and pulled at it again, and again, like someone trying to start a lawnmower.

The comparison was apt, since a moment later a compressor stuttered and then roared to life. That pushes air into it, Nita thought, and then.. The woman standing by it went around to one side of the portable forge and applied a blowtorch to an aperture there. How about that, Nita thought. Portable horseshoeing..

Nita went down to have a look as the chestnut horse was led up to the forge to be reshod. The woman standing by the forge had to be about sixty. She was of medium height, with short close- cropped white hair and little wire-rimmed glasses, wearing jeans and boots and a T-shirt. Her face was very lined and very cheerful, and her accent was lighter than a lot of them Nita had heard so far: in fact, she sounded like an American who had been here for a long time. 'Ah, you again,' she said to the chestnut as the groom led it up and fastened its reins to a loop on the back of the pickup truck's tailgate. 'We'll do better than we did last time. Ah,' the farrier said then, looking up immediately as Nita wandered over. 'You'll be Miz Callahan's niece.'

'That's right,' Nita said, and put her hand out to shake. She was getting used to the ritual by now,

and was becoming relieved that no-one was in a position to offer her any tea.

The farrier held up her hands in apology: they were covered with honest grime. 'Sorry,' she said.

'I'm Biddy O'Dalaigh. How are you settling in?'

'Pretty well, thanks.'

'Have you seen this done before?'

'Only on TV,' Nita said. 'And never out of the back of a truck.'

Biddy laughed. 'Makes it easier to get a day's work done,' she said, rooting around in a box in the truck and coming out with a horseshoe. She looked critically from it to the horse's feet, then bent down to push it into the aperture of the furnace-box. 'Used to be that all the farms had their own farriers. No-one can afford it now, though. So I go to my work, instead of people bringing it to me.' Nita leaned against the truck to watch. 'You must travel a lot.'

Biddy nodded and walked around to the front of the horse, stroking it and whistling to it softly between her teeth. 'All over the county,' she said. 'A lot of horse shows and such.' With her back to the horse's nose, she picked up its right forefoot and curled it around and under, grasping it between her knees. With a tool like a nail- puller, she went around the horse's hoof loosening the nails and prising them up one by one, and then changed her leverage and knocked the shoe completely up and off. With another tool, a smaller one with a sharp point, Biddy began trimming down the rough edges of the hoof. 'Tell Derval,' Biddy said to Aisling, the blonde groom who had been handling the chestnut,'that he won't be needing the surgical shoes any more; the hoofs cleared up.'

Nita was surprised. 'Surgical horseshoes?' she said.

'Oh yes,' Biddy said. 'Horses have problems with their feet the same as people do. Tango here has been wearing a booster until this hoof grew back straight — he hurt his foot a few months ago, and that can make the hoof go crooked. It's just an overdeveloped toenail, after all.' She patted Tango as she got up. 'We're all better now, though, aren't we, my lad? And you'll have a nice run tomorrow.' She reached into the truck and came up with a pair of tongs. 'This one's in the hunt?' Nita said.

Biddy nodded. 'He belongs to Jim McAllister up on the Hill. Jim's a great one for a mad ride, though I don't think he cares about the fox at the end of it.' She rooted around in the forge, stirring and rearranging the coals in it. Nita peered into the opening of it. 'Lava rocks?' she said.

'Oh aye, like in the barbecues. They work as well as charcoal unless you're doing drop forging or some such.'

She turned her attention back to the hoof, scraping its edges a bit more. Then Biddy picked up the tongs again. 'Here we go, now,' she said, and took hold of the hoof again. With her free hand she plucked the horseshoe out of the furnace and slapped it hard against the hoof, exactly where she wanted it. There was a billow of smoke, and a stink like burned hair or nails. Nita waved the smoke away. 'Foul, isn't it,' Biddy said, completely untroubled. After dunking the shoe into a bucket of cold water, she dropped the tongs, then took a hammer out of another belt loop, reached into a pocket for nails, and began fitting the shoe, tapping the nails in with great skill, each nail halfway in with one tap, all the way in with the next.

Nita watched Biddy do Tango's other three shoes. Then another horse was led out, and Nita turned away: this kind of thing was interesting enough, once.Maybe I'll go down to Greystones, she thought. Aunt Annie had told her that the bike was out in the shed behind the riding school, if she wanted to use it and no-one else had it. Ormaybe I won't. It was strange, having nowhere familiar to go to, and no-one familiar to go with. Being at loose ends was not a sensation she was very used to: but she didn't feel quite bold enough at the moment to just go charging off into a strange town. I wouldn't mind if Kit were here, though…

Nita wandered back the way she had come, back to the field where the jumping equipment lay around. She climbed over the fence and walked out into the field to look at it all; the odd barber- striped poles, the jumps and steps and stiles, some painted with brand names, or names of local shops.

The wind began to rise. From this field, which stood at the top of a gentle rise, you could see the ocean. Nita stood there and gazed at it for a while. The brightness it had worn this morning, under full sunlight, was gone. Now, with the sun behind a cloud, it was just a flat silvery expanse, dull and pewter-coloured. Nita smelled smoke again, and idly half-turned to look over her shoulder, towards the farrier's furnace.

And was rather shocked not to see it there at all. or anything else. The farm was gone.

The contour of the land was still there — the way it trended gently downhill past the farm buildings, and then up again toward the dual carriageway and the hills on its far side. But there were no buildings, no houses that she could see. The road was gone. Or not gone: reduced to a rutted dirt track. And the smoke. .

She looked around her in great confusion. There was a pillar of black smoke rising up off to one side, blown westward by the rising wind off the sea. Very faintly in this silence she could hear cries, shouts. Something white over there was burning. It was the little white church down the road, St Patrick's of Kilquade, with its one bell. She stood there in astonishment, hearing the cries on the wind, and then a terrible metallic note, made faint by the distance: the one bell blowing in the wind, then shattering with heat and the fall of the tower that housed it. A silence followed the noise. then faint laughter, and the sound of glass exploding outwards in the force of the fire.