William Shakespeare sure knew a thing or two about writing. He could coin a phrase or rhyme a couplet like nobody’s business. But everybody knows that. What less people know is that he was also involved in the occult.
He didn’t practise magic himself, but he definitely moved in the same circles as those that did. This is why, when he wrote A Midsummer Night’s Dream, he got so many details almost correct.
And by “Shakespeare”, I mean the actual guy who wrote the plays; not the glove-maker’s son from Stratford who got to put his name on them.
“OK, who else was a wizard?” asked Sam.
She was sitting cross-legged in the middle of my bed with a sheet wrapped around her, toga-style. Her red hair was tousled and she had to keep tossing her head to get loose strands out of her face. All-in-all, it was a very distracting sight as I tried to pack.
“There’s been loads of them.”
“But none in charge? I can’t believe one wizard hasn’t used their powers,” and here I could see the sheet move as she wiggled her fingers pseudo-dramatically under her toga, “to become king or president or whatever.”
“Magic doesn’t really lend itself to holding onto power. It’s too unpredictable.”
“Not even Dev? I always wondered how he hung on for so long.”
“Not even Dev,” I said as I hunted for clean socks.
It was so early on the first day of May, it was basically still April. Sam had insisted on staying over, despite me telling her about my early start.
“What about Padraig Pearse? Or any of the founders?”
“Not that I know of,” I said.
“Oh,” she said, deflating a bit and wrapping the sheet tighter about her. “Some of them were poets and-”.
A long forgotten memory bubbled to the surface. “Actually, Roger Casement might have been a magician. Nobody’s quite sure.”
She giggled. “He had a bit of that going on.”
“He spent years in Africa. We think he might have studied with shaman there. Shamans? Shamen?”
“Maybe Shawomen.”
“Quite possibly.”
“What about the writers, then? James Joyce must have been occult. Finnegan’s Wake is a spell to induce madness.”
I dragged an old gym bag out from under my bed and checked its zippers before packing it with the cleanest clothes I’d been able to find. “No to Joyce or O’Casey. Maybe to Jonathan Swift. Yeats knew all about everything, but never practised.”
Sam considered this then suddenly jumped up. “What about Bram Stoker? He was from Dublin. Is Dracula based on your boss?”
I grinned. Everyone who learned about the department pondered this question sooner or later. “Stoker was living in London for years before he wrote ‘Dracula’. The Magistrate has assured me that any similarities to anyone living or dead or none-of-the-above is purely coincidental.”
“Your life is so weird. Like look at this.” She grabbed my gym bag and pulled it over to her. “Socks and underwear and t-shirts and a water bottle.”
“You’ve dated people before who took work trips.”
“To Brussels, yeah. Or- or- London. One guy went to Singapore twice a year. I’ve never met anyone who packed an overnight back for Tír na nÓg.”
“It’s not Tír na nÓg,” I said, taking back the bag.
“Oh come on, it’s totally Tír na nÓg.”
“It’s a little bit Tír na nÓg.”
“You could go and then not come back for a hundred years,” she said, adopting an exaggerated pout.
“If that happens, will you wait for me?”
“Probably not a hundred years.”
“Oh, I’m relieved. I’m not really into older women, and I was worried what the staff at the nursing home would think.”
She tried to blow some more hair out of her face before giving up and smoothing it back with her hand. “Is it actually safe, though? You haven’t said much, but I’ve heard some people went but never came back.”
“That happened twice, forty years ago, and we’ve not made that mistake again. We’ve been playing it safe ever since.” This was technically true, but concealed an omission so large it instantly dried my mouth of all saliva. My plans for this morning’s trip were so far from ‘playing it safe’ I was still unsure if I’d have the courage to go through with them. I desperately tried to change the subject before she pushed further. “Eugene Lambert was a magic user.”
She laughed again. “The puppet guy?”
“That’s him. Pretty powerful too, in his prime.”
“Did you ever arrest him?”
“No, he was before my time. But I did arrest a pretty famous actor last year for trying to use a home-made glamour to dodge paparazzi.”
“How famous?”
“Oscar nominated.”
“Irish?”
“Of Irish descent, but I’ve been sworn to secrecy about it.”
“Oh, you’re mean.”
I sat next to her on the bed and opened a drawer on the bedside locker. Despite the trip I was going on, and my plans for it, this was the part of the day I was most nervous about. “Would a mean person give you this?” I reached inside and pulled out the spare key to my flat and held it out, so it dangled on its chain.
She looked at the key then back to my face before blowing hair out of her face again. “Is that what I think it is?”
“It’s so you can let yourself out and lock up later. And come back, if you want. When I’m gone. Water my plants.”
“You don’t have any plants.”
That was true. “There’s that patch of mould above the fridge.”
She took the key and threw her arms around me. “This means a lot,” she said as she squeezed.
I wriggled free of the hug and reached into the same drawer to fetch my glamour. “I’ll be late.”
“We have time,” she said with a wink.
“No, we do not. I’ll be back in three days. Try not to wreck the place when I’m gone.”
“I actually have some rather bold interior design ideas.”
“That’s what I meant,” I said as I slid my glamour over my head and my form shifted and flowed into its human appearance.
“The new codeword is Wanderly Wagon,” she said, putting my flat’s key over her head in the same manner. The codewords started as a joke when she found out others may be able to use my glamour and take on the my appearance. It had now become a tradition whenever we left with plans to stay apart for a few days.
“Understood,” I said, then kissed the top of her head. “Now go back to sleep. I’ll see you in three days.”
“Get out of my flat,” she said, lying back and closing her eyes.
“Any throw-pillows in here when I get back are all going in the bin.”
“I’ll add one for every year you’re late,” she said.
I went to the kitchen and took another bag from under the sink. I shoved it inside the gym bag and zipped that closed before I left.
About twenty minutes before dawn I arrived at the pre-arranged location in the Phoenix Park. Cormac was already there, preparing the gateway.
Gateways are necessary for travelling to the Fae Realm. They can only be found, not made, and we were lucky to have one this close to the city. They were made when two trees ‘planted by no known hand’ formed an unbroken arch. The ‘no known hand’ part was key. They needed to be naturally growing trees, or trees so old that the person who planted them was dead and lost to history.
There was one pair of old growth hazel trees in the park whose branches grew until they touched and almost intertwined that the government had used for a Gateway every year for the last five decades. Cormac was standing by one of the trees painting it with cold ashes, and did not hear my approach.
“Happy Bealtaine!” I yelled.
He jumped and smeared one ash rune. “Fuck!” He turned to me. “If I mess this up, you have to explain it to the Cabinet.”
“Ah, you’ll be grand. The runes are ceremonial.”
“Oh, thank you for the advice on magic, Mister Wizard,” he said, going back to his work. “This whole thing is ceremonial. Ceremony is important to Them.”
I watched him paint a few more runes before the silence of the morning was broken by the sound of car engines. Two dark SUVs approached along the road behind me with dimmed headlights. They pulled over when they saw us and four figures emerged.
“Game face on,” I said. “DFA are here.”
The delegation from the Department of Foreign Affairs looked around warily as they approached. It was still dark with just a hint of blueish-grey in the sky over the city, and Cormac and I were far from the lights of the road. I could see that two of the figures were Amina Ogbonna and Murtagh, so waved to them.
Putter waved back and Murtagh nodded in acknowledgement as they approached. I didn’t recognise either of the other figures. One was old and so out of shape he was already panting from the short walk. He was probably a former ambassador or senior civil servant working his last few years before retirement who’d been drafted into this. DFA protocols required a second person to make the trip to the gate. They didn’t say why, but we all knew it was in case the handpicked envoy chickened out at the last minute.
The envoy himself was younger. Surprisingly so. He seemed to be in his mid-twenties and he carried a large wicker basket up the gentle slope without problems, stopping only to let his companion catch up.
As the foursome arrived at the gate, Putter donned one of those LED flashlights you wear on a headband and began a short patrol of the area.
Murtagh nodded to me again, then spoke to the two DFA suits. “Gentlemen, this is Cormac Francis and Victor Grey. This is Simon Rabbitte and our Ambassador for this week, James Donnelly.”
Donnelly placed the basket down and extended a hand. “Call me Jamie, please.”’
“Vic,” I said, as I shook the proffered hand.
“You’re my escort into the great unknown?”
“That’s me, you’ve been briefed?”
“Thoroughly. Simon told me what to expect.”
I very much doubted that, but greeted Simon. “You’ve been before?”
“I went in ’96,” he said.
“No desire to return?” I asked with a grin.
“No, I can’t imagine why anyone would want to go twice.”
Murtagh cleared his throat noisily. “Vic actually went back in 2013. He’s the first in our department to volunteer for a return trip.”
The bag concealed inside my gym bag suddenly felt very heavy indeed. “It really is perfectly safe, if you follow the rules. No reason not to make a second visit. That said, Jamie, you have been briefed on the rules?”
“No iron, nothing that tells time, no living creatures.”
“Those are nice shoes,” I said, pointing to his chukka-style footwear.
He seemed taken aback by the about-turn in conversation. “Thanks,” he managed after a few seconds.
“Italian leather?”
“I think so…”
“Are those heels glued on or nailed? What metal are the nails?”
He placed down the basket and raised one foot awkwardly to try and check the underside. It was still too dark to make out fine details like that, but it wasn’t too dark to see Murtagh concealing a smile with one hand. “I don’t know,” said Donnelly after a second. Panic was entering his voice.
“No problem,” I said. “Leave them with Cormac and get them back in three days. Going barefoot to the court of the Queen of the Fae may even win us a few points.”
He tested the basket carefully before sitting on it to remove his shoes.
“Well spotted, Mr. Grey,” said Rabbitte. He sidled close to me and lowered his voice. “Are you the… uhm…”
I removed my glamour and tossed it to Cormac. “Don’t lose that!” I said to him before turning to Rabbitte. “Yes, I’m the troll.”
He mouthed silently a few times like a landed fish. I could see Donnelly pause in the act of undoing his laces. “Oh, I heard your kind were immune to magic and spells and whatnot,” Rabbitte said.
“That’s mostly true, yes,” I said.
“So when you went, nine years ago, did they take your memories too?” he asked. “Did their magic work on you?” He had an expression on his face that I could not immediately identify, but coupled with the tone in his voice, recognised as fear. I sometimes lost sight of the way in which the world I lived could affect those who only existed on its periphery.
“Same as you,” I said, pointing at the gate. “My immunity doesn’t mean much in there. It’s their world and their rules.”
“You just stepped in-”
“And stepped right out again, yeah. Gifts gone and nothing to show for it but a few hand-written notes.”
“I always felt that they took more than memories,” he said and shuddered in a way that had nothing to do with the pre-dawn chill in the air.
He was clearly terrified of what lay beyond the gate and haunted by the gap in his memories from almost thirty years previously. The fact that he had volunteered to act as backup for this morning’s trip showed more bravery than I’d expect from a civil servant who needed to do nothing more than punch a clock until he could claim his pension.
I laid one hand on his shoulder, but didn’t know what to say. The best I could do was pat it reassuringly once or twice before turning to Donnelly who had now removed his shoes and was once again holding the basket. Out of his boot heels, he was even shorter than I expected, with his youthful face framed by short blond hair.
“You have the three gifts?” I asked.
He raised the basket slightly in response.
“And the three questions? With a pencil and notepad? You won’t be able to remember anything that happens in there, so you’ll need to note down the three answers.” This was all basic stuff, but it didn’t hurt to remind him. It also gave him a final chance to reconsider stepping through a mystical gateway into another dimension.
“All accounted for and ready,” he said, focusing his gaze on the wooden arch.
Cormac was just finishing the process of winding a ribbon around the place where the branches of the two trees met. He tied the two ends in a complex knot that seemed to turn itself inside-out so it vanished and the ribbon appeared to be one unbroken loop. He stepped back and took the whole thing in. “All done,” he said, glancing from his watch to the lightening horizon. “Gateway to the Otherworld opens in four minutes.”
Ogbonna turned off her headlamp, ceased her patrol and walked to us. “Perimeter clear,” she said without taking her eyes off the arch.
“Final check,” said Murtagh to both me and to Donnelly as he walked around us like a Drill Sergeant inspecting a two-man regiment. “No iron. No watch. No phones. Not even a clicky pen -- they can have steel springs.” He walked behind us and pulled at my gym bag. My heart leapt into my throat before I realised he was just checking to make sure the strap buckles and zippers were plastic and not an unidentified metal. “All clear,” he said as he walked to stand beside me facing the gate.
I watched the treetops brighten as the first rays of sunlight hit them. The shadow of the horizon made its way down the trees swiftly as the sun climbed into the sky behind us. In less than a minute, the light was illuminating the place where Cormac had placed the ribbon and the space on the other side of the arch changed in ways I can’t describe.
My conscious brain could still see the woods of the Park, as they had appeared for the last twenty minutes. But something primordial in me knew I was looking through to somewhere else.
“See you in three days,” I said to Cormac. Then to Donnelley, “Best foot forward,” and stepped into the Otherworld.
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