I launch myself toward them, hands flying, rage sparking.
I get the palm of my hand to its face and push and feel beneath my skin its teeth knock together hard. I’m on its back, and we fall forward together on top of Cillian, pinning him down against the road, the small weight of me and the bigger weight of the skrake crushing him. I maneuver an arm till it’s tight around its neck, and I pull viciously. I need my other arm to keep it tight and in place, but I can’t reach for my knives this way and I can’t get it off him.
I try to get my knees into its back so I can pull harder, I want to pull its head off its moldering skrake shoulders. It flails backward with its arms, trying to dislodge me. We’re free of Cillian. He’s on the ground now, lying still, and in the back of my mind somewhere, this is worrying, but I’ve my hands full.
The skrake has me caught by the hair, and it pulls hard. I grit my teeth against the pain and hold on tight. There’s a tearing, wrenching sensation, and it feels like the skrake has taken off a good portion of my scalp, but it’s off-balance, and using my feet, I propel myself away from it. I land, and I roll awkwardly but stand well (Maeve, did you see?), my hands going to my knives as the skrake turns to face me, losing interest now in Cillian’s crumpled form on the ground.
It is, it’s her, of course it is.
It’s Maeve.
My heart within me withers and dies.
She’s so changed from what she was: wirier, stronger than ever, covered nearly head to toe in muck. It’s on her face and in her hair, her clothes are caked in it. Yesterday’s rain, she’d have been out in it. She could have caught her death, my brain prattles stupidly.
Maeve, Maeve.
I’m on my knees on the ground, looking helplessly at her, and as I do, her eyes flicker and come to life; the haziness over them is blinked away.
“Orpen,” the skrake says.
My mouth opens and closes, and I’ve decided I’ve nothing to say to her till I hear the words coming out of my mouth.
“What were you at?”
“Orpen.” Her voice is cracking.
“What were you at that Mam had to get between ye? You were a team.”
I get to my feet and feel my own power course through me, the rage. I use it.
On the ground, I can see Cillian moving.
“Orp—”
She doesn’t finish getting my name out, her voice plaintive and wheedling and utterly unlike her, before she comes at me. I don’t have the time or space to throw, so I swing my leg in a good solid arc for a roundhouse, the power of my anger bubbling up through my hips, crackling in my fingertips, gathering in the muscles of my legs. The bridge of my foot sinks into the hollow beneath Maeve’s cheek just so, and I swing on through, and she stumbles off to the right under the weight of my strike.
I take two steps back so I can bring a knife level with my ear, and it’s gone, flying through the air. It lands straight and nearly up to the hilt in Maeve’s neck. She lets out a noise, a cry that is somewhere between scream and gurgle, and falls forward, landing on her hands. Maeve’s eyes, though, her eyes never leave me.
She comes for me again, screaming, legs pushing off hard against the ground. I let fly another, but it’s too late. She’s on top of me, pinning me down and snapping at my throat. One hand is on my shoulder, claws digging hard into my flesh, and the other is on my head. I’ve one arm free, just about, and I reach for another knife, my last. It’s farther down than the others, and though I can touch the hilt with my fingers, I can’t quite grasp it. Another moment and Maeve will bite into my head and there’ll be an end to it, but I shift my hips a little and my fingers just about grab on to the knife, and then thwack, her head is thrown to one side.
Cillian is standing above us, a branch of wood in his hand, and he raises it again. I get a glimpse of his terrified face before Maeve gets to her feet to bring back one arm in an arc and fling it through him in a powerful sweep that’s nearly graceful. Cillian is too slow to duck, too ignorant to block, and she gets him the full force in the face. He doesn’t even let out a cry. There is a dull, damp noise where her fist makes contact and a flash of blood before Cillian falls.
She’s on me again before he hits the ground, but I’ve my knife. Her teeth are gnashing wildly, and she’s so close now, it’s easier to believe she’s just a skrake. My third knife sinks slowly upward into the soft part of her neck under the jaw. Maeve cries again, and as she opens her mouth wide, blood gushes out.
I can feel her body tense and twitch above me, and there’s more blood now, hot and rancid, flowing on to my face. I turn my head aside but push the knife deeper upward into the head. She spasms hard and gurgles again—I feel her teeth snap by my ear—but when she lurches forward, the knife only goes deeper, and the snapping becomes slow and sullen. The knife is all the way in, and I begin to work it from side to side, doing as much damage as I can to whatever the blade can reach. I pull it out a little and there is a hiss of foul air, and I work it back in, the handle slippery in my fingers. The knife hesitates against a rubberiness, and I pull harder against it and feel something give, and warm black ooze runs down my fingers. It’s not till I shove the knife up hard into her ear, or what’s left of her ear, that she stops struggling at last.
I nearly don’t want to move out from under the weight of her, but I do, wriggling little by little till I can get my arms out and then dragging myself away. I rest with my forearms flat against the ground, breathing deep and spitting. I hope I will be sick, but there’s nothing left in my stomach, only bile. I feel nothing.
When I can move again, I crawl to where Cillian lies prone. It is hard to see him amongst the scrub and brushes, but he is breathing, in snuffling, uncomfortable starts. I shake him, and for long moments the numbness in me gives way to fresh fear, but then his voice sounds, a whisper in the gloom: “That was your Maeve, I’d say.”
Though I can feel the dirt under my nails and the itchiness of the blood and bile drying on my skin, the cooling air and the wind rustling the trees, I’m not there. My eyes are streaming. A part of my brain goes on back to Slanbeg and is there in the quietness of the island, and I stay with that. I stay there listening for the noises of Mam and Maeve.
There’s a voice I slowly become aware of, but it’s hard to tune in on and I don’t bother. I’d rather stay here on the ground, half in Ireland and half away, and numb. I turn my head away from Cillian and let the tears keep streaming and close my eyes. I’m not here, I could nearly say to him. I’m gone now. Let time go on and pass without me, I’ve no interest in it.
Cillian is doing something: moving, calling me. I turn my head and close my eyes against him, but he touches my hand and the feel of skin against skin turns something in me, and I fright away, crying out, thinking it’s something else, something new coming to get me. My thoughts make no sense to myself.
“Orpen,” Cillian whispers, and he has his hands up as if he thinks I’ll attack him. “Orpen, listen,” and there’s no other noise so I can’t help hearing it, then. Movements. Skrake moving through the undergrowth. Humans wouldn’t move like that. There’s more than one.
Good, I think viciously to myself.
“We have to move,” Cillian whispers. He reaches a hand out for me, but I flinch away and wrap my arms around my knees and put my head on them. I’m going nowhere.
“Come on!” Cillian hisses, putting his hands on top of mine and pulling them toward him, but I dig in. The shuffling sounds are getting louder, nearer.
“Just go,” I say. “Just go, I’ll be okay, just go.”
I don’t know what I’m saying.
Maeve is dead.
Cillian lets go of my hands, backs away slowly, his eyes full of terror, of near-panic. I recognize it, numbly, from far away. He looks over his shoulder, westward. “Just go, just go,” I’m saying, and I’m not sure if I’m saying it out loud or not. Cillian turns, runs a few steps, looks back again. His face is so full of fear.
I let myself take a big breath. It’ll be okay. Staying is easier.
Cillian is at Maeve’s body, gathering up my knives and wiping the blades hastily on his trousers. I watch through a film of tears, beaten. He hunkers beside me, and he puts his hands on my face, and I flinch away again but he doesn’t move off.
“She’s gone! She’s dead!” He’s saying the words right into my face, looking into my eyes with his. It’s too intense, it’s such an invasion, I could punch him. “You know she’s dead,” he’s saying, none too quietly. “She was dead the moment she got bitten. You set her free, Orpen. She’s free; she’s gone now.”
I blink slowly at him. Tears have made a track through the dirt on his face. His red lips and green eyes stand out against the grime—he looks wildly around us, expecting the skrake to be on him any moment. He is beautiful, I think dimly, without interest. My hands have found my knives on the ground beside us, and I pick them up, one by one, thoughtlessly. Cillian is speaking again, and I try to follow what he’s saying.
“Would she want you to stay? Would she want you to die here?”
There’s a sudden noise behind us, a snap and then the sound of teeth gnashing, and I flinch away from the noise and get to my feet without meaning to at all. Cillian has hold of me, then, and he’s dragging me and I’m up. We run together.