The Irish government has sent two envoys to the Otherworld that never came back. This happened in the years 1980 and 1981, our first two years under a new Taoiseach.
Now, I’m not saying that the Taoiseach in question was to blame. There’s certainly no evidence that he loaded the envoys with questions designed to benefit him directly. Especially as he had all minutes of the Special Cabinet Meeting shredded afterwards.
But the third time was indeed the charm and all subsequent envoys from him were sent with the same standard list of inoffensive questions that each Cabinet has used ever since.
I stepped back out onto the grass of the Park, facing the way I had come from. I wasn’t aware of having done a full about-turn, but stranger things had happened when gateways were involved. Everything was as I’d left it a moment before, but for the absence of Cormac and the cars from the Department of Foreign Affairs.
I turned around to examine the gateway. The ribbons and markings that Cormac had spent his morning on were gone. And, while I couldn’t be sure, the leaves budding on the trees above me seemed larger and more open. Was that three days’ growth?
The lack of a welcoming committee worried me. It wasn’t far to the department, but I didn’t want to leave before Donnelly emerged from the gate. Assuming he was behind me, he should not be more than a few minutes.
While I waited, I checked my bag. The changes of clothing I had brought were all there, un-used. I gave the clothes I was wearing a quick check. They didn’t seem stained or sweaty. I dug a bit deeper to find that the smaller bag I had hidden smuggled in was empty. My plan had worked?
I reached into my inside jacket pocket for my notebook. It was gone. I tapped my other pockets. It wasn’t there, either. I tipped my gym bag onto the grass and started rummaging through the pile of clothing and scattered belongings. It was a quick search and it confirmed what I had known right away. My notebook - my only record of what had happened in the Otherworld - was gone.
I sat in the dewy grass, head in my hands, watching the gateway. Donnelly did not emerge and it was now well past sunrise.
I heard the beeping of a car horn after a few minutes and I turned towards the road. Cormac had driven up onto the curb and over the footpath. By the time I stood, he was out of the door and running towards me.
“Vic! Jesus, you made it!”
“What’s going on? Where’s Donnelly?”
Cormac stopped just short of hugging me. “He came out about a week ago. We were worried when you didn’t follow.”
“A week? How long was I in there?”
“It’s been almost a month. It’s May 30th.”
“Fuck,” I said, turning to stare back at the gateway again.”
“What happened in there?” Cormac asked.
“I have no idea,” I said. “But I’m pretty sure I made a huge mistake.”
When we got back to the Department, Amina Ogbonna was manning the front desk with Valentina Symonenko. Putter squealed when she saw me and lifted the hatch in the desk to run out into reception, though she probably could have ducked under it with less effort. She gripped me in a tight hug, then released and punched me on the chest.
“How dare you worry us!” she said, her mild Nigerian accent much stronger with the admonition. Sometimes you just can’t help it when you’re channelling your parents.
“I’m sorry, Putter,” I said. “Time got away from me.” I waved to Symonenko. “Hi Val.”
She nodded in greeting, perceptibly, which meant the same from her as a hug did from Putter.
“Is the Magistrate still awake?”
“High Summer,” said Cormac. “He doesn’t sleep a lot these days.”
“I should go check in,” I said, before a thought occurred to me. “You still have my glamour?”
“It’s back at your flat,” he said. “You want me to go get it?”
“No need, it’s my next stop after here. I have a hoodie in my desk that’ll do for the walk home.”
As summer waxed and the number of sunny hours in the day got longer, Sir Arthur slept less and less. As paradoxical as it seemed at first, it made twisted sense once you realised that the sun could affect him even when it had set. This far north on the globe, there was a point in mid-May when the sun would disappear below the horizon but not so far that its rays wouldn’t still reach the upper atmosphere. This is called ‘Astronomical Twilight’ and it was almost as bad for vampires as the book series with a similar name.
They would still sleep during the day if they could and wake at ‘night’, but had trouble regaining their strength and would move like jet-lagged travellers until the end of July when Ireland would start getting proper sunsets again.
I descended the staircase and followed the tunnel to Sir Arthur’s library. He was indeed awake, sitting in the chair facing his desk that was usually reserved for visitors. He had a large leather-bound book open on his lap and a smaller one open on top of that. The text in the smaller book was a series of runes unreadable to me, but the top floor of this pyramid of learning was a sleek electronic tablet displaying those same runes in what seemed to be a translation tool.
Sir Arthur glanced up as I entered and smiled briefly. “Mister Grey. Welcome back.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said as I stood to attention.
“At ease, man. You’re not a soldier.”
“Sorry, sir,” I said as I tried to relax. It was never easy in his presence. “I understand Donnelly made it back a week ago?”
“That’s right. I have scans of his notebook about here, somewhere,” he said, glancing about. “There, under the Hughes.” He pointed to a thin sheaf of papers on the corner of his desk, pinned by a book about the early church.
I lifted the book and withdrew the pages. Each was a large digital photo of a single page from a notebook. I flipped through them. “Only four pages?”
“The rest of the pages had been torn out. I don’t suppose yours fared better?”
“Mine didn’t make it back at all,” I said, flipping through the pages. “‘A long winter’, ‘drops and recovers’, ‘no deaths’ and ‘209’?”
“Quite perplexing, no?” the Magistrate asked, putting his books to one side and rising to stand beside me. “The first three seem to be the answers to the questions we sent him off with. This fourth one, though… Any idea what it could mean?”
I flipped the page over as if the back of the photograph could shed more light on the mystery. “No… Could it be a year? Did anything happen in 209 AD?”
He gestured towards the books lining every wall with a wide wave. “Lots of things happen every year. But nothing in 209 that significantly concerned Ireland or Queen Mab.”
“It could be an apartment number? Hotel room number? It fits the format.”
“I knew Mister Donnelly was a promising diplomat, but getting the Queen of the Fae to slip him her hotel room number on a first visit would be quite an achievement.”
I knew High Summer was affecting Sir Arthur when he started making jokes. “Without some additional context, it’s really hard to say. I’ll speak to him tomorrow and compare notes, if that will help.”
“A good idea,” said Sir Arthur. “Now, I have to try and sleep and you need to go find your young lady and apologise for missing her birthday.”
The realisation hit me like a ton of bricks. “Shit. It was last week, wasn’t it?”
“As far as I understand. As excuses go, you have a good one, but you may want to consider buying flowers on the way home.”
I retrieved my phone and keys from my desk and donned the large hoodie I kept for emergencies before leaving. It was still early enough that the streets were mostly deserted and with my hood up and hands tucked away, I just looked like a big guy with an unfortunate skin condition, or a smarter-than-average rhino who had taught myself to walk upright as part of a daring zoo escape. I kept my head down and walked quickly until I got back to my flat.
I descended the stairs and let myself in. The light that filtered through the ceiling-level glass brick windows did little to illuminate the living room. I had a sense of something unfamiliar, and I could see a light shining through the open bedroom door.
Inside, Sam was sitting in my bed, just where I’d left her more than four weeks earlier. She was wearing an old t-shirt of mine, and had her legs folded up inside it as she read a book balanced on her knees. The light I had seen came from the bedside lamp, and she seemed to have been crying. She did not look up as I pushed the door open silently.
“Wanderly Wagon.” I said from the doorway.
She jumped, twice. First, almost out of her skin, and second to her feet. “Vic!”
The t-shirt she wore came from a warehouse job I’d had and lost more than a decade ago. It hung almost to her knees and had holes around the collar and under one arm. The company’s logo had fallen off years earlier, though the company name was still visible; readable in the lighter fabric it had once covered. Her eyes were swollen and her nose was red and running. And I had never seen her look more beautiful.
“I told you it was Tír na nÓg,” I said. “I’ve only been gone four weeks yet you’re a whole year older.”
She ran towards me, and I stepped forward to meet her at the edge of the bed. Standing like this, she was just about six inches over me. I put my arms around her waist while she put one hand on each of my shoulders. “I knew you’d be back,” she said after she kissed me. “What happened?”
“I wish I knew,” I said. “I stepped in this morning and stepped right out again, as far as I’m aware.”
“Fucking Tír na nÓg,” she said. “Fairies making my man miss my birthday.”
“Sir Arthur said I should bring flowers. But nothing’s open yet. I’ll make it up to you later.”
She laughed and kissed me again. “You’ll make it up to me right now,” she said.
Afterwards, I walked to the kitchen to get us some water and I identified the unfamiliar sense. It was the smell of fresh paint.
“I thought you were joking about redecorating,” I said when I returned to the bedroom.
“And I thought you were joking about the mould above the fridge.”
“At least there’s no throw pillows.”
“They’re ordered from Amazon. They’ll be here day after tomorrow,” she said.
We had breakfast at a bistro near Christchurch that she liked, and she filled me in on news I’d missed. It seemed the world was spiralling down the proverbial plughole at its usual speed, though Sam’s office was busier than ever, hunting down funds hidden from recent international sanctions.
We got our coffees to go and took a stroll along Merchant’s Quay. I’d told her everything about my morning and she’d told me everything about her month, so we walked in silence, enjoying the sunlight and the summer passers-by.
Eventually, we reached a quiet spot and stopped. I rested my arms on the wall of the river. Sam reached out and plucked the empty coffee cup from my hand, then walked towards a bin a short distance away with it. When she came back, she rested against the wall about ten feet away. Not far away, but far enough that I could have a moment alone. She seemed to have a sixth sense that told her when I needed one.
I stared at the river reflections for a few minutes. I think I had made up my mind from the moment I left the Magistrate’s library, but it still took an effort to speak it out loud, when I walked to her and she asked, “So, what now?”
“Now,” I said, “I'm going to find out exactly what happened in the Otherworld. I’m going to get my damn memories back.”
My first step after walking Sam to work was to find Jamie Donnelly. If his mind was as blank as my own, then the only record he would have would be the notebook pages I had already seen. But it never hurt to head to the source and see if anything was missed.
The Department of Foreign Affairs is located in Iveagh House. It’s a big old Georgian Mansion on Stephen’s Green that predates even our department. The government took it over more than a century ago and it has housed Ireland’s diplomatic wing ever since. If Donnelly was working in Dublin, he’d be there.
I introduced myself at reception and showed my badge. Muscle memory had me reaching for my fake Garda badge before I remembered they knew about the OSI, and so pulled out my official ID instead. The young man behind the desk directed me to a small waiting room and lifted the phone at his desk.
Iveagh House is gaudy. I believe that when Iveagh left it to the government, he did so on the condition that they did not add any taste to its decorations. What isn’t gilded has a chandelier dangling from it. The furniture is that spindly curved type with cushions harder than the wood below, and they didn’t look like they would take my weight, so I stood and studied a large age-darkened oil painting of some naval battle I doubted Ireland had any part in.
I didn’t have to wait long before Jamie Donnelly opened the door and stuck his head inside. His body followed and he closed the door. “Mister Grey! I’m glad to see you made it back.”
“I did, eventually. You got here a week ago?”
“The 22nd. Caused a hell of a stir in the Department.”
“I just got back this morning, and same.”
“Do you remember anything?”
“Nothing between stepping in and then out of the gate,” I said.
“Same,” he replied, and took a few steps closer. “Though I think I’ve been dreaming about it.”
“Oh?”
“Nothing specific. Just a sky with a lot of stars, and maybe a stone table? Or an altar?”
“Oh, good. Sacrificial altar,” I said with a smile. “I’m sure that was nothing.”
“What about your notes? Did they say anything?”
“My notebook didn’t make it back with me,” I confessed. “Though I saw some scans of yours. Have you figured out what ‘209’ means yet?”
He took out a small notebook, made smaller by the fact most of its pages were absent, and flipped through its pages. “Nothing I’ve been able to pin down.”
“Is there a room 209 here? In this building?”
“There’s not. I also checked the last two embassies I’ve been posted to. But this is interesting, see?”
He turned the book around, handed it to me, and pointed to the corner. Each page had a small watermarked page number that had not been visible on the larger scans I had seen. The pages with an answer to the three questions was sequential; pages 8, 9, and 10. The page with ‘209’ was page 17.
“This is all your handwriting?”
Donnelly nodded. “Though the gap in page numbers means if the Queen answered the three questions, the ‘209’ came later.”
“Maybe it’s just Past Jamie having fun with Future Jamie,” I said.
He grinned. “If so, Past Jamie was a bit of a dick. And it’s not really my sense of humour.
I closed the notebook and handed it back. “Anything else spring to mind?”
“Mind’s a blank, aside from the dreams,” he said. He opened the door and guided me back out through reception. “Though Simon Rabbitte has asked after you,” he added, “You should come back when he’s here.”
I spent the rest of the afternoon and the evening reviewing the records of previous envoys to the Otherworld. I had earmarked several cases when a wave of tiredness hit me and I realised it was almost midnight and I had no idea how long it had been since I had slept. Even assuming the trip had been instant, I’d been awake since before five.
I returned to my flat, collapsed on the bed and was asleep in a few minutes. I don’t often dream, but I dreamed that night of walking through woods below a sky with a seemingly infinite number of stars. I stopped before a large standing tree-trunk devoid of branches.
As I studied the wooden obelisk, a pair of eyes appeared in the dark. The tree was suddenly not a tree, but a large hooded and cloaked figure staring down at me.
I looked around to find myself surrounded by a thick mist. I could see no sign of any other trees, so it was just me and the hooded figure. When I looked back to it, the hood was gone. Staring down at me was the head of a wolf.
Comments