Chapter 9

Snakes in the Snow

OISÍN felt as if he were back at school. Stephen was surrounded by a group of admiring children, dying to hear about his bare-handed climb up the mountain. Oisín was sitting with the Book of Magic, almost as invisible as when he’d turned into the wind. The only people who weren’t listening to Stephen’s story were Lysander Quicksilver and his friends – and Antimony, who continued to watch Oisín carefully.

‘But how did you get to the mountain?’ Caoimhe asked.

‘Your mum gave me that air bicycle of hers,’ Stephen said.

It looked as if he was tiring of his fame. Every time he spoke, Nuala and Noreen, the two curly-headed girls, repeated what he had said as a question.

‘You got here on an air bicycle?’ they gushed excitedly. They seemed incapable of speech that didn’t end in fits of giggles.

‘I knew Mum was up to something,’ Tom said. ‘Probably why she didn’t notice our plan: she was too busy thinking about helping you. But why didn’t you just ride that thing up to the top of the mountain?’

‘It’s not the most stable device,’ Stephen said, in a tone that suggested his feelings about magic hadn’t changed all that much.

‘You know, nobody’s ever climbed Sliabh na Gaoithe without magic before,’ the boy with the magic football said in a tone that suggested he had a new hero.

‘Well, I wouldn’t recommend it,’ Stephen said, rubbing snow into the many cuts on his hands.

‘You wouldn’t recommend it?’ Nuala and Noreen chorused.

‘No,’ Stephen said, walking away to get some fresh snow and a little bit of quiet. For a second, Oisín thought Stephen was coming over to talk to him. Maybe now that Oisín had climbed Sliabh na Gaoithe, Stephen would have some respect for his brother. Instead, Stephen glared as he walked past. Oisín braced himself and approached Stephen, hoping the right words would come.

‘What’s up, Windboy?’ Stephen said, not looking up from his cuts. ‘Did you have fun with your little book?’

‘I just want to help Sorcha,’ Oisín said carefully.

‘Yeah, well, I hope she’s having as much fun as you are,’ Stephen said, dusting snow off his jeans. He walked away, looking like he wished Oisín was as easy to shake off.

Oisín swallowed and imagined the kind of patterns a snowball would make on the back of Stephen’s head.

Tom came over, his goat horns still on his head.

‘He’ll get over it,’ he said hopefully.

‘Being an idiot is not something you get over.’

‘At least the plan worked. You’re part of Eachtra’s crew now, whatever Fitzfeather says.’

‘Yeah,’ Oisín said, feeling strangely empty.

He didn’t want to disappoint Tom, so he asked about Lysander and his cluster of friends to distract himself.

It was clear they were some sort of group. All four boys were dressed identically in pale blue shirts, dark grey trousers and indigo blazers, which were stitched with the same almost-invisible threads as Madame Q’s dress. They were also all standing in the same way, with their hands in their pockets, their noses in the air and their striped ties loosened just enough to show that they were far too cool to be bothered with young kids. There was only one girl and she looked like a female version of Lysander: tall, with sleek blond hair, a pale blue blouse, a grey pleated skirt and a stylish silver scarf that flapped around in the wind.

‘Who are they?’ Oisín asked.

‘Quints,’ Tom said, spitting out the word as if it was dangerous. ‘They’re Madame Q’s special crew. Usually some of the older teenagers help out the younger ones. Just our luck to get stuck with Quints.’

‘That red-haired girl said she wanted to be a Quint,’ Oisín remembered.

‘She’s just the type,’ Tom scoffed. ‘Quints usually come from the richest families and my granda always said that the Gaultneys have more gold than good in them. She’ll have to wait a while though: Madame Q only ever has five Quints at a time and most keep coming back until they’re eighteen.’

‘Do you know these ones?’ Oisín asked.

‘Sort of,’ Tom said. ‘Sometimes they stay with Madame Q on our island during the year. Those two are the Washington twins: Ben and Brad. Their family owns most of the magic islands off America’s east coast.’

The two American teenagers certainly looked like they were from a very rich family. Ben had a silver calculator with tiny diamonds for buttons and Brad had a variety of gleaming gadgets. Oisín had the impression that he was trying to show them off: one moment he was rocking back and forth on a silver skateboard, the next he was playing with his special sunglasses, which had a comb as part of their frame.

It seemed that the other Quints weren’t that impressed with Brad’s toys. A tall Quint snatched the silver baseball that Brad had started to toss up and down.

‘Leave my croíacht alone!’ Brad shouted, but the boy had already rolled it across the snow. Brad skateboarded after it, looking like he was used to this treatment from the other Quints.

‘That’s Raqib Paro,’ Tom said, as the tall boy high-fived Lysander. ‘His family have an adventuring air-balloon in the Himalayas, but they wanted him to come here. They’re some sort of chemists. And then there are the Quicksilvers.’

Tom pointed at Lysander and the girl who had to be his sister.

‘Their family has a second castle on this island. They’re worse than Caoimhe: think they know everything and don’t mind telling you.’

‘How come there are so many magical siblings here?’

‘There’s supposed to be a special bond between siblings,’ Tom said, as if his sister were proof that this couldn’t be true. ‘Magic is stronger when they’re together.’

Oisín was thinking that Stephen would be another exception to that rule when he realised that the Quicksilvers were coming towards them.

‘All right, Pipsqueaks,’ Lysander said in his superior tone, ‘you are fortunate enough to be in our group.’ He took in Tom’s horns and smiled. ‘Perhaps the pack animal can lead the way.’

‘You’ll have to forgive my younger brother,’ the blond-haired girl said swiftly. ‘He hasn’t quite perfected the Quicksilver charm.’

She turned to Oisín and flashed him a dazzling smile.

‘I’m Cassandra Quicksilver. It’s a pleasure to have you in my group.’

Oisín shook her hand. She had the same piercingly blue eyes as her brother, the same flecks of silver glittering in them like snow in the sun. There was something else, a sort of cold in her handshake, that made Oisín shiver for a second. Cassandra pulled away and turned to Stephen, who was also in their group.

‘Here, this will help your hand,’ she said, wrapping her scarf around his scars like a bandage.

Stephen grunted a sort of thanks, Cassandra’s smile seeming to override any objections he had to using magic.

‘Are you supposed to be in charge?’ Antimony said, folding her arms and tapping her foot. ‘Or should I just lead the way?’

‘Your mother was Ngozi Ogoni, wasn’t she?’ Lysander said, looking at Antimony like she was a juicy fish he’d just caught.

‘So what?’

‘She was one of the finest druids of this century. You’re lucky.’

‘Yeah.’ Antimony didn’t seem to know what to do with a compliment and flicked her dreadlocks so they covered her face. ‘Can we leave before my feet break off?’

The walk to Eachtra was slow going. There were several snowy mountains to cross and the afternoon sun made everybody tired. Oisín began to miss the Houlihans’ bumpy van and wondered why the younger children weren’t allowed to use magic to get to Eachtra.

‘It’s part of the tradition,’ Cassandra Quicksilver said briskly, melting snow into drinking water with her croíacht, a tiny silver telescope. ‘Being part of Eachtra is as much about hard work as adventure.’

Medb Gaultney didn’t agree.

‘My father will be appalled when I tell him we had to walk to Eachtra. He was going to send me to one of those summer camps on the American islands, but we thought Madame Q would be horrified to lose me. He’ll definitely be having a word with her.’

The good thing about Sliabh na Gaoithe was that the wind drowned out most of what people said, so Oisín was able to ignore Medb’s complaints. He was glad of the walk to distract him. Tom didn’t like the Quints, the Quints didn’t like the Houlihans, everybody knew who Antimony’s parents were, but Oisín had no idea what had happened to them. It was all too bewildering to think about. At his school, Oisín didn’t have any friends any more, which made things easier. He’d just sit with a book and read during lunch and he wouldn’t have to worry about who was fighting with whom. Now he had been plunged into another world without really understanding the rules. Even the thought of starting secondary school in September seemed less daunting. Perhaps because there was less chance of getting killed at St Paul’s, no matter how hard Stephen tried.

Oisín looked up at the sky and ignored the chatter. It was perfectly clear, not a cloud or a raven in sight. Yet Oisín couldn’t shake the uncomfortable feeling that somebody was watching him. He tried to observe the rest of their small group, wondering if any of them had designs on the Book. Everybody was pretty busy keeping one foot following another.

Eventually Cassandra Quicksilver ran to the edge of a snowy cliff and clapped her hands in delight. Oisín looked at the vessel in the valley below.

‘That’s Eachtra?’

‘No, Pipsqueak, it’s the Taj Mahal,’ Lysander said.

Oisín had never been to the Taj Mahal, but he had a feeling it would look less strange than Eachtra. Eachtra was shaped like a ship, with masts made out of telegraph poles and bright sails that looked like they were stitched together from lots of different bedsheets. But it also looked like Eachtra was built to move on land when it needed to: huge bicycle wheels came out of portholes on the hull and a dozen brightly coloured horses stood on the ground, as if it was no problem at all for them to pull a giant ship. The horses looked like they came from a merry-go-round and Oisín had a hunch there was something magic about them.

‘Mum says a lot of leftover things from the Milesian world end up here,’ Tom said, grinning at the sight of Eachtra. ‘I guess they use them all somehow.’

There were certainly a lot of ordinary objects in unusual places: umbrellas were twirling as fans, enchanted toothbrushes cleaned the multi-coloured windows and frying pans scooped snow off the deck. Oisín was positive that one of the socks making up the ladders down the side was the Spiderman sock he had lost in the wash years ago.

‘We’re nearly there,’ Oisín whispered to the Book of Magic, which was flapping its pages excitedly as if it could feel the pull of the magic.

‘All right, calm down,’ Oisín whispered, feeling odd talking to a book as if it were a pet.

It didn’t seem to have any effect. The Book of Magic continued to writhe in his hoodie pocket. Oisín had a familiar feeling that something strange was about to happen. He looked down at Eachtra but everything seemed peaceful: the horses were chewing clover and there wasn’t a bird in the sky. And then it happened.

‘The ground is moving!’

Oisín looked down, expecting Medb Gaultney to be exaggerating. Instead, he saw that the snow was shifting under his feet. Flakes of snow started to clump together like grains of sand, twisting this way and that into thin, narrow ridges.

‘Snow-snakes!’ Tom shouted, stepping back.

‘Away from the edge!’ Cassandra screamed, pulling Oisín and Medb backwards.

‘Give me my scarf!’ she shouted at Stephen.

Oisín wasn’t sure why Cassandra Quicksilver was worried about her appearance when the snow was shifting under their feet. He felt a shape slither under his foot and backed away. The Book of Magic flapped uncontrollably.

‘We have to run,’ Medb Gaultney said, shaking as several shapes darted past her underneath the snow.

‘Stay still,’ Lysander shouted, but Medb had already started to move. The snow-snakes were not happy to be disturbed. One emerged from the ground and reared up, ten feet tall and terrifying, with ice blue eyes and a darting icicle of a tongue pointed right at Medb Gaultney.

SNAP!

A thin silver rope whooshed through the air and sliced into the snow-snake. The snake dissolved instantly, crumpling to the ground in a shower of powder.

Oisín looked over to see Cassandra whipping her scarf through the air like a weapon.

‘Stay still,’ she shouted, smashing another snow-snake with her scarf. Another flash of navy and silver filled the air. Lysander had turned his tie into a rope and lassoed a snow-snake as it coiled up behind Caoimhe.

‘Got one!’ Stephen shouted, diving to the ground and thumping a snake with his fist. It hissed at him, squirming madly and thrashing its tail through the air.

‘Idiot,’ Lysander shouted. ‘You’ll only make them angry. Don’t move!’

It was hard not to move when the ground was wriggling below you, though. Soon it seemed as if there were hundreds of snow-snakes swarming towards them. Everybody fought to keep them off. Lysander and Cassandra swirled silver ropes, Antimony shot fiery snowballs from her slingshot and Stephen rolled across the ground like a commando, intent on punching every snake he could. Even Nuala was knitting a rope to attack them with.

Oisín was determined to be helpful. He pulled the Book of Magic out of his pocket. The pages flapped backwards and forwards uselessly. Oisín searched his brain, but he couldn’t think of anything he could do. He could turn into wind again and escape, but that wouldn’t help the others and he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to run. He could try, he supposed.

The only problem was that he couldn’t move his leg.

Oisín looked down and saw his fears confirmed: a thin snow-snake was winding its way around his leg. He tried to wrench it free, but the snow-snake was locked firm. While he was trying to free his right leg, another snow-snake had latched onto his left one.

Oisín gasped as he was tugged down to the ground. He felt his arms being pulled to the side, as two more icy snakes wreathed around them. The Book of Magic dropped to the ground. Oisín willed it to open, but it sat there quite happily, as if it didn’t mind at all if its Keeper was eaten by snow-snakes. It wouldn’t take them long. Oisín was already sinking into the snow. He tried to call for help but a small snow-snake had slithered across his mouth, binding it shut. He shook his limbs desperately, but that only seemed to make the situation worse, helping the snakes as they dragged him under. Soon only his head was above ground, the Book of Magic resting serenely on the snow, as if it was happy to mark his grave. Oisín looked around but everybody else was busy fighting the other snow-snakes. He was all alone.

The snow-snakes tugged hard. Oisín had one last glimpse of bright blue sky before his head was pulled under the snow. It was a horrible feeling. Cold snow shot up his nose and into his ears. He tried to struggle but kept on being pulled further and further into a world of white, until he wasn’t even sure which way was up any more.

Liathróidí tine.

The muffled words seemed to come from very far away. The fire was very real, though. Oisín gasped as searing balls of fire scorched into the snow. The snow-snakes scattered in seconds. Oisín felt a hand yank him onto the surface and saw the last person he had expected to save him standing over him: Antimony, her slingshot in her hand and a scowl on her face.

‘Where’s the Book?’ she said quickly.

‘Here,’ Oisín said, pulling it up from the snow.

It had stopped moving. The snow had too. It lay perfectly still, like a child in a deep sleep. Oisín stared at it, wondering why the ground had attacked them. Was it all because of his Book? Why hadn’t the Book helped him when he had needed it?

‘Let’s go, Pipsqueak,’ Lysander said, fixing his tie. ‘Perhaps you can all work on not dying before you set foot on Eachtra. I have a bet on how many of you will get eaten by the Enormous Octopus and I’d hate to spoil my odds.’

Nobody said anything for the rest of the journey down the mountain. Everybody seemed to feel shaken until they reached Eachtra. It was hard to feel anything other than wonder the first time you arrived at Eachtra, even if you’d just been attacked by snow-snakes. Oisín couldn’t decide where to look first. There were the crimson and gold horses that pulled Eachtra and looked like they belonged in a fairground. There were the strange portholes made up of scraps of coloured glass and plastic. The rooms inside looked even more interesting: Oisín glimpsed a room full of pipes which looked like the mail room. Another room seemed to be the kitchen and had several druids stirring mistletoe berries into large cauldrons. One porthole was filled up with a giant eye, belonging to a creature that Oisín suspected he didn’t want to meet.

‘Come along now, we’re already late,’ Cassandra said, pulling Tom away from the horses and ferrying the rest of them up the sock ladders. Oisín had to climb several rungs at a time to keep up with the Quicksilvers and was out of breath by the time they reached Eachtra’s deck. They had climbed up by the stern, where a twisting silver tower curled elegantly towards the sky. Lysander slipped inside it and Oisín spotted him talking to Madame Q.

Up at the front of the ship, Mrs Fitzfeather and Angus Óg were addressing the other groups. A large wooden statue of a bird was at the prow of the ship, looking out towards adventure. Oisín noticed tiny statues of birds beside it, stretching around Eachtra’s rim, like gargoyles in a cathedral.

‘So, again, congratulations,’ Mrs Fitzfeather said. ‘It takes a lot of courage to climb Sliabh na Gaoithe. You’ll be needing much more over the next few weeks, though. We have a serious quest on our hands this year. You’re not children any more: for the next four weeks, you’re Wrens.’

‘What’s a Wren?’ Oisín whispered to Tom.

‘It’s just what they call the young druids on Eachtra,’ Tom said.

‘So it’s like being a cub or a scout or something?’

‘Er, maybe,’ Tom shrugged, confused. He was distracted by what was happening in front of them. Angus Óg had made a complicated hand motion and some of the tiny statues of birds came to life, fluttering from Eachtra’s side and flying over to the children. Each statue had an old shoelace attached to it, so it could loop around the children’s necks like a pendant.

‘Nice,’ a girl named Graciela Gambaro said as a tiny wren announced her name and fastened itself around her neck.

The wrens flew over to each of the children, chirping their names ceremonially. Oisín worried that he might not have a wren: he wasn’t supposed to be on board Eachtra, after all. Would it mean he couldn’t stay?

‘Any chance we could get a cooler bird?’ asked Dimitri Moran, the boy with the magic football. ‘Maybe a hawk or something?’

‘Wrens are the coolest,’ Orion Jones, an American boy with a flute croíacht said. ‘They’ve got one of the sweetest songs in the sky.’

‘They’re a bit small, though,’ Dimitri’s friend Pádraig said.

‘While other birds might be more powerful, wrens are the official king of the birds,’ Angus Óg said, ruffling his swan feathers with some irritation.

‘You should never underestimate small things,’ Mrs Fitzfeather said. ‘Many’s the time wrens have come to Eachtra’s aid. And besides, it’s part of the tradition here.’

Mrs Fitzfeather said ‘tradition’ as if it were a word not to be argued with. Not everybody was convinced.

‘Do I have to wear this ugly thing? I don’t think it matches my torc,’ Medb Gaultney complained.

Mrs Fitzfeather’s face turned red. She bustled over towards Medb, pulling her shawls around her. Then she caught sight of the two people behind Medb and her face somehow turned even redder.

‘Never in my life! What a business: Milesians sneaking up the mountain like stowaways! Jimmy Houlihan sent me a message and I can’t believe the cheek of the lot of you! You’ll have to go back!’

‘I’m not going back until I find my sister,’ Oisín said, hoping his voice sounded more confident than he felt.

‘I am the Captain of Eachtra and I say who comes aboard.’

‘Actually, you don’t,’ Madame Q said coolly, emerging from the silver tower behind them. ‘The Captain serves Eachtra. And Eachtra is bound by the geasa, the old customs of the Tuatha Dé Danann, to never refuse a child that has made it up Sliabh na Gaoithe in the given time.’

‘Yes, but in this case –’

‘There are limits to power, even ours. We can no more break the geasa than split the sky.’

Madame Q turned to Oisín with the sliver of a smile.

‘So it seems that I was right after all. We cannot have the Book without the boy.’

Oisín felt a different kind of cold rush over him, one unrelated to the snow wedged between his socks.

Mrs Fitzfeather looked as if she wanted to protest. Just then, two wooden wrens flew over to Oisín and Stephen and announced the two newest members of Eachtra’s crew. Warmth rushed over Oisín as the pendant settled against his chest.

‘I don’t want to be a wren-boy,’ Stephen said, attempting to wriggle away from his wren.

‘Being a Wren is nothing to do with that Milesian nonsense,’ Mrs Fitzfeather said grumpily. ‘On Eachtra we don’t hunt birds, we look after them.’

She rearranged her shawls and glared at Madame Q.

‘Well, I suppose there’s nothing I can do. You’ll both have to pull your weight, though. A bunch of the horses need delousing, as it happens.’

‘No,’ Madame Q said. ‘There’s something else we must do first.’

She turned to face her Quints.

‘Lysander, you know what to do.’