AUTUMN’S AT ITS tipping point. Ripe and gold is turning manky and cold, and the first frost isn’t far off. In the early 2030s the seasons went badly haywire, with summer frosts and droughts in winter, but for the last five years we’ve had long, thirsty summers, long, squally winters, with springs and autumns hurrying by in between. Outside the Cordon the tractor’s going steadily extinct and harvests have been derisory, and on RTЙ two nights ago there was a report on farms in County Meath that are going back to using horse-drawn plows. Rafiq trots ahead, picking a few late blackberries, and I encourage Lorelei to do the same. Vitamin supplements in the ration boxes have grown fewer and further between. Brambles grow as vigorously as ever, at least, but if we don’t shear them back soon, our track up to the main road’ll turn into the hedge of thorns round Sleeping Beauty’s castle. Must speak to Declan or Cahill about it. The puddles are getting deeper and the boggy bits boggier, too, and here and there Lorelei has to help me with the pram; more’s the pity I didn’t have the whole track resurfaced when money still got things done. More’s the pity I didn’t lay in better, deeper, bigger stores, too, but we never knew that every temporary shortage would turn out to be a permanent one until it was too late.
We pass the spring that feeds my cottage’s and Mo’s bungalow’s water tanks. It’s gurgling away nicely now after the recent rains, but last summer it dried up for a whole week. I never pass the spring without remembering Great-aunt Eilнsh telling me about Hairy Mary the Contrary Fairy, who lived there, when I was little. Being so hairy the other fairies laughed at her, which made her so cranky she’d reverse people’s wishes out of spite, so you had to outwit her by asking for what you didn’twant. “I neverwant a skateboard” would get you a skateboard, for example. That worked for a bit till Hairy Mary cottoned on to what people were doing, so half the time she gave people what they wished for, and half the time she gave them the opposite. “So the moral is, my girl,” Great-aunt Йilish says to me across the six decades, “if you want a thing, get it the old-fashioned way, by elbow grease and brain power. Don’t mess with the fairies.”
But today, I don’t know why, maybe it’s the fox, maybe it’s Hinkley, I take my chances. Hairy Mary, Contrary Fairy: Please, let my darlings survive. “Please.”
Lorelei turns and asks, “You okay, Gran?”
WHERE DOONEEN TRACK reaches the main road we turn right and soon pass the turnoff leading down to Knockroe Farm. We meet the farm’s owner, Declan O’Daly, hauling a handcart of hay. Declan’s around fifty, is married to Branna, has two older boys plus a daughter in Lorelei’s class, owns two dozen Jerseys and about two hundred sheep, which graze on the rockier, tuftier end of the peninsula. His Roman brow, curly beard, and lived-in face give him the air of a Zeus gone to seed a bit, but he’s helped Mo and us out more than a few times and I’m glad he’s there. “I’d give you a big hug,” he says, walking across the farmyard to the road in stained overalls, “but one of the cows just knocked me over into a huge pile of cow shite. What’s so funny,” he mock-fumes, “young Rafiq Bayati? By God, I’ll use you as a rag …”
Rafiq’s shaking with silent giggling and hides behind me as Declan lumbers over like a manure-spattered Frankenstein.
“Lol,” Declan says, “Izzy told me to say sorry but she’s gone on into the village early to help her aunt get her veg boxed up for the Convoy. You’re coming for a sleepover later, I am informed?”
“Yes, if that’s still okay,” says my granddaughter.
“Ach, you’re hardly a rugby squad now, are ye?”
“It’s still good of you to feed an extra mouth,” I say.
“Guests who help with the milking are more than—” Declan stops and looks up at the sky.
“What’s that?” Rafiq squints up towards Killeen Peak.
I can’t see it at first but I hear a metallic buzzing, and Declan says, “Would you look at that now …”
Lorelei asks, disbelievingly, “A plane?”
There. A sort of gangly powered glider. At first I think it’s big and far, but then I see it’s small and near. It’s following Seefin and Peakeen Ridges, aiming towards the Atlantic.
“A drone,” says Declan, his voice strained.
“Magno,”says Rafiq, enraptured: “A real live UAV.”
“I’m seventy-four,” I remind him, sounding grumpy.
“Unmanned aerial vehicle,” the boy answers. “Like a big remotecontrol plane, with cameras attached. Sometimes they have missiles, but that one’s too dinky, like. Stability has a few.”
I ask, “What’s it doing here?”
“If I’m not wrong,” says Declan, “it’s spying.”
Lorelei asks, “Why’d anyone bother spying on us?”
Declan sounds worried: “Aye, that’s the question.”
“ ‘I AM the daughter of Earth and Water,’ ” recites Lorelei, as we pass the old rusting electrical substation,
“And the nursling of the Sky;
I pass through the pores of the oceans and shores;
I change, but I cannot die.”
I wonder about Mr. Murnane’s choice of “The Cloud.” Lorelei and Rafiq aren’t unique: Many kids at Kilcrannog have had at least one parent die as the Endarkenment has set in. “Oh, I can’t be lieveI’ve forgotten this bit again, Gran.”
“For after the rain …”
“Got it, got it.
“For after the rain when with never a stain,
The pavilion of Heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams—”
“Um …
“Build up the blue dome of air …”
Unthinkingly, I’ve looked up at the sky. My imagination can still project a tiny glinting plane onto the blue. Not an overgrown toy like the drone—though that was remarkable enough—but a jet airliner, its vapor trail going from sharp white line to straggly cotton wool. When did I last see one? Two years ago, I’d say. I remember Rafiq running in with this wild look on his face and I thought something was wrong, but he dragged me outside, pointing up: “Look, look!”
Up ahead, a rat runs into the road, stops, and watches us.
“What’s a ‘convex’?” asks Rafiq, picking up a stone.
“Bulging out,” says Lorelei. “ ‘Concave’ is bulging in, like a cave.”
“So has Declan got a convex tummy?”
“Not as convex as it was, but let Lol get back to Mr. Shelley.”
“ ‘Mr.’?” Rafiq looks dubious. “Shelley’s a girl’s name.”
“That’s his surname,” says Lorelei. “He’s Percy Bysshe Shelley.”
“Percy? Bysshe? His mum and dad must’ve hatedhim. Bet he got crucified at school.” He throws his stone at the rat. It just misses and the rat runs into the hedgerow. Once I would’ve told Rafiq not to use living things for target practice but since the Ratflu scare, different rules have applied. “Go on, Lol,” I say. “The poem.”
“I think I’ve got the rest.
“I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again.”
“Perfect. Your dad had an amazing memory, too.”
Rafiq plucks a fuchsia flower and sucks its droplet of nectar. Sometimes I think I shouldn’t refer to Цrvar in front of Rafiq, ’cause I never met his father. Rafiq doesn’t sound upset, though: “The womb’s where the baby is inside the mum, right, Holly?”
“Yes,” I tell the boy.
“And what’s a senno-thingy?”
“A cenotaph. A monument to a person who died, often in a war.”