“What does that mean?”
“I think it means that they did sped-up covers of ‘The Fields of Athenry’.”
“Of course.”
“But that made me think about what Aunt Sylvia said about every culture having its own White Lady. Maybe the Housekeeper is an Irish form of that.”
“Like an Irish folklore thing?”
“Yeah. Think about it. Irish people immigrate with this story about a deadly witch demon, country musicians turn it into a song about tarot cards, someone makes the tarot cards, the cards make their way back to Ireland. And to you, in the Chokey. It is, to quote a certain mother who loves to repeat herself, all part of the cultural exchange.”
“You know, you’re very hard on your mum, considering she’s objectively the coolest mother I’ve ever met.”
Fiona cocks an eyebrow. “You know, you’re very hard on Joanne, considering she’s the coolest sister in the world.”
“I take your point.”
“Thank you.”
We hear people shuffling into their seats and the sound of Miss Harris’s voice. We get off the pipe and dash into the classroom, the lyrics wedged firmly back in Fiona’s journal.
She nods and waits for us to take our seats before she starts talking.
“Girls, I’m sure it won’t have escaped your notice that the weather has been … bizarre lately.”
She purses her lips as thirty girls lean forward in silent, desperate attention.
“We’ve heard this morning that there is forecasted to be black ice on the roads by this afternoon, and many of the bus routes will be closed. In the interests of your safety and your transport …”
You could hear a mouse’s fart in this room, it’s so quiet.
“… all schools have been instructed to close.”
The class descends into giddy chaos. Books are flung into bags and high, hyper laughter envelops us. Fiona throws her arms around me in victory.
“A day off! A DAY OFF! On a flipping WEDNESDAY.”
She does a little victory dance.
“AND tomorrow too, maybe, if it keeps up! If the black ice lasts, we won’t be able to get INTO school, not to mind out of it.”
People are texting their boyfriends at St Anthony’s, trying to arrange a meet-up. I hear one girl arguing with her boy about whose house they’re going to go to, and whose parents get home from work the latest.
A red flush climbs into my face as I listen and suddenly remember that I now have someone to meet up with. I have a boyfriend. Or I think I have a boyfriend. We didn’t actually discuss it.
Fiona nudges me. “Let’s see what Roe’s up to. We can show him these Housekeeper lyrics.”
She sees my red face and her eyes go wide. “Oh my God! Did something finally happen?”
“It … did.”
“Holy crap! What a day! Tell me everything!”
I tell her everything, and half an hour later, we’re all sitting in Bridey’s drinking milky tea and eating too-sour apple tart. It feels weird to be eating apple tart at 10 a.m. Weirder still to be sitting opposite the boy whose tongue was in my mouth twelve hours previous, and who also happens to be having the same dreams as me.
“She’s alive,” Roe says flatly. “I know she is. It’s the way the shoe was pointing, the way it was just sailing down the river. It was like it knew where it was going. Lily’s alive.”
“Not that I don’t believe in … uh, the inherent value of dreams,” Fiona says politely. “But what are we supposed to do now?”
“We’ve got the dreams. We’ve got the song,” Roe says, practically. “I feel like we need someone who can … I don’t know, interpret them.”
“Sylvia’s out,” Fiona grumbles. “I got a big lecture over dinner last night about how I put too much pressure on her, and how it’s not good to turn to the occult when you’re feeling desperate. Sylvia says it makes people do crazy things.”
“People, or me?” Roe asks.
“You, I suppose.”
“Everyone wants to be protective of the little boy with the missing sister,” he says, rolling his eyes. “I’m not even allowed to mention the river to my mum.”
The river again. I remember my project from primary school, where I made a map of the different ports of the Beg river: what they were used for over the years; where the grain was shipped out of Ireland during the famine, where people boarded ships to America… Coffin ships, they were called. You either made it to America or you died on the way, and often you were so illiterate that you weren’t even able to write to tell your family which it was.
Then, something clicks.
“We’ll say it’s for a school project.”
They consider it.
“Sylvia won’t buy that,” Fiona says. “She’s onto us already.”
“No, someone else. She can’t be the only one who knows about supernatural stuff. And really, it’s more of a folklore question than a magic question.”
“Who then?” Roe asks, and I see him fiddling with the string around his neck. I can’t help smiling every time I see it.
I know exactly who.
We practise our story, making sure we don’t sound like desperate teenagers. Which, of course, we are.
The door of Divination has a bell on a red ribbon attached to it, and it tinkles lightly as the three of us enter the shop. The woman in the balloon pants is there again.
“Maeve Chambers!” she says, and I’m slightly unnerved by how instantly she recognizes me.
“Hello!” I say cheerily. “I didn’t think you’d remember me.”
She looks from me to Roe and back again, smiling softly.
“Of course I remember you. You have three ‘e’s in your name.”
“Right. Well, my friend Fiona is doing a project on folklore and I thought you might be a useful person to speak to.”
“Well, of course. Fiona, I take it?”
She gestures to Fi, who already has her refill pad and a pen out.
“Hi,” she says sheepishly. “I’m doing a project on shared mythologies. Like why some cultures have shared folklore. Like hellhounds. Do you know, everyone has hellhounds?”
“Sure look it,” chuckles the shopkeeper. “Dogs are trained to be so vicious
