A fast shuffle is all we can manage now. Aodh is limping, and I pick her up and carry her, bent over my shoulder. It cannot be comfortable, but she is still except for her breathing, in a half faint. I know I cannot bring her far.
Nic is behind us, but still moving. I’ll need to put Aodh down and get myself between her and the skrake, but I want to hold out as long as we can, until we’re on the beach or a little closer at least. I can hear shouts, but I haven’t the heart to turn. It’s all I can do to put one foot in front of another with Aodh weighing me down. Maeve’s voice is in my ear, telling me to stop my whinging. Why did you ever leave the island if you were going to give up here? I keep going. I try to gauge how much energy I can keep in reserve for what must come next.
We keep moving, the three of us.
The two of us, and Nic not far behind.
At last, at long last, here is the beach. Aodh collapses on to the sand, and I look for the skiff. For a few sickening moments I cannot see it, but there it is, half hidden behind rocks and in the mist, where another person left it, ages ago.
I scream at Aodh to come and help me, and now that she has her breath, she’s able to get up and get it moving with me down the shore. Between breaths, I tell her to get into the boat, to put her hands to the oars. To row southwest. Go fast, then go slow and easy, save your strength. Find the big cliffs on the edge of the sea, I tell her. Listen for the waterfall, you’ll hear it, and row due west. Go under the broken bridge and you’ll see the island at the other end.
Be safe there.
Find our ghost town and ghost house. Be alone forever.
No.
Not alone.
I get Aodh into the boat and tell her to wait as long as she can. She cries and blinks at me uncomprehendingly, but I’m gone, tearing back off up the beach, my wet feet heavy and pinching.
I find Nic sitting in the middle of the road, looking on calmly. Her hair flows over one shoulder, her eyes are languid now and without fear. She is surprised to see me. There is a skrake, a single one ahead of all the others, closing in.
“Come on,” I shout, pulling at her hands.
She shakes me off. “There isn’t time,” she says, her voice even, and the skrake has a third of the distance between us covered already.
“There is, there is!” I get my hands under her arms and tug till she’s up, take her hand and half pull her along until she’s running with me. She’s not quick, but she’s not winded anymore. I just need to get them away; we just need a little more time.
“Nic!” Aodh’s thin voice carries across the beach, and Nic hears her and moves faster. We get to the shore, but that skrake, it’s on us.
There isn’t a moment to lose, not a second.
“Get in, get in,” Aodh shouts, and awkwardly Nic gets into the boat.
It’s the look on her face as she sits and faces the shore that stops me: a stillness comes over it, with her eyes—they’re blue, I notice for the first time—looking over my shoulder at something. Her hand, reaching to help me in, stops in midair, and her eyes come to meet mine, and I feel it then, the rotten meaty breath on the back of my neck.
Nic and Aodh scream, and I begin to push, using the last of my strength now to get the skiff moving and into the water, but I can’t, it’s too heavy on the sand. I shout in frustration and shove. I give it everything and then it gives and it’s moving.
Get ready, Maeve says in my ear.
I turn round to meet it, and it flattens me into the sand and water.
I’d forgotten, nearly, how strong they were, how weighty. I can’t breathe. The water is cold and merciless, up my nose and stinging my eyes.
Suddenly, with a thwack, it’s off me and I’m up.
Standing unsteadily in the skiff, Nic has an oar in her hands, a smudge of brownish skrake blood staining the paddle.
The skrake is moving again, up before I can blink, and it’s going now for the boat. I dive at it, grab it around the middle, and hold on.
“Go!” I yell, my voice garbled and my mouth still half full of saltwater.
“No!” cries Aodh, still holding out her hands toward me and the skrake, but Nic, her eyes on mine, sits down hard. She begins grimly to pull.
It is all I can do to hold on to the skrake. Nic hit it so hard, I can feel the blood welling down out of the side of its skull over my arms, into the cold clean water. I hold on for dear life.
I watch them go, the mist swallowing them up.
The skrake shakes and shudders and turns at last its attention to me.
I get ready.
I let it go suddenly, spring away toward the beach, and get down in a guard position. It comes for me, and I leap, my knife in my hand already, and I go for the wound Nic made in its skull. I get my knife in there and the skrake goes down. Half in the water I keep it there, down, my knees on its arms, and I take my knife and I keep stabbing till it stops moving, and then I look about me again.
It’s only a miracle the rest of the horde haven’t caught up with me yet. What new trick did Cillian pull out of that bag?
I get up off the skrake and back onto dry sand to get ready. I look behind me once more to the sea. To turn my face once more toward home, to Mam’s bones in the ground there.
The little boat is making good progress, rowing hard as they can. Still in sight, but farther than anyone could swim quickly. Nearly safe.
I tried, Mam, I did.
I can hear the rest of the horde. I make sure my knives are free and easily to hand. Just two left, then my dagger.
I finger the missing sheath and wonder did the knife I gave Cillian do him any good.
I blink away tears and try to think of something good, something I can take with me. I think about my mother’s humming and running with Danger to the fingers on the beach at home. The way it feels when the curve of my leg lands just right in a kick. I think of Maeve, every day of my life, making me safe, and making me strong. For this, maybe. One life for two. For three, with luck.
I think about the soft look Cillian had while he slept.
My breath slows, and I take one good lungful, in and out, and then another, and with my eyes still closed I bring a knife smooth and easy up as far as my ear.
In just about every way, I think dying will be easier than living.
“Come the fuck on,” I say, though only moments have passed, really, and the first of them is nearly in range.
“Come on!” I shout, and the feel of my voice in my throat makes me stronger. If I fight like I have never fought before, I could bring down a couple with me. I could aim for their legs, mangle them just, slow them down. I bring down my hands, flexing my fingers, trying to get more blood into them after our afternoon of running.
The skrake limp and sprint, climbing over one another, arms outstretched already for my flesh, and in their overgrown fingernails, I can feel the meat of me being torn from my bones with ripping, tearing, jagged teeth.
It’s very real, now, my own death. I am terrified.
I see seven and probably there are more running behind them. I close my eyes, and the back of my eyelids shows me a noisy picture of skrake devouring Cillian, tearing into the soft tender flesh of his belly while he screams. I breathe deeply, in and out, trying to quell the shake in my fingers.
I am not frightened, I think. I’m furious.
I know where to put the anger, anyway. I feel it flexing along my muscles like fire.
I breathe once more. In. Out. I try to appreciate the feeling, to savor it.
It’s raining. How long has it been raining?
Then the first is in range. Even as I lift my hand, I think I could have raised it five seconds earlier; I have already made a mistake here. I aim at the nearest skrake, let fly, and hit the eye. It squirms and falters but doesn’t stop.
There are way too many.
I remember I don’t have to beat them, I just have to slow them down, make them forget to go looking for anyone else a while. Give them time. Pull hard, I think. I find the anger and the fire.
Fight hard, Maeve tells me.
They come faster now, and I reach again for a knife—I’ll just have my dagger—but before I can get it away, oh so quickly and all at once, they’re on top of me, their fingers—their claws—reach for me, and one goes for me hard, lands on top of me.
The air is throttled out of me as I fall backward onto the hard sand.
I think of my mother as I feel teeth bite down. My toes curl in pain, and I can taste blood in my mouth, and I scream and push the skrake hard, feeling my own skin and gristle rip and tear and burn.
I become aware of other noises, but they’re far away, unimportant. The only reality is the burning pain in my ear, the blood rushing in my head, the death waiting for me.
The weight of the horde, the mass lifts; after a moment there is just one. Someone is shouting—two people, more.
There are people, I think, but my thinking is hazy.
Too late, too late, I am already dead.
I was dead the moment I left the island. I knew it really even as I left, and still I had to go. Isn’t it good enough for me?
I can’t get this skrake off me. It’s annoying me now, even if I am done for. I maneuver a knee up into its chest and I push, and with the weight of it off me, I gulp the air into me and reach for my dagger. The stink is all over me. I get my dagger to its throat and sink it into the skin. I cut and press while nails and teeth scrape and clench. The skrake is weakening. I cut harder, faster, till it stops. Its weight becomes slack, the teeth give up their gnashing, but I keep cutting, tearing through leathery muscle and tendons and then bone and gristle. The blood is everywhere, my own blood flowing hot and fast down my neck.
With a great heave I push the last of it, its dead legs and arm off me and lie on the ground. The sky is above me, just the same, rolling gray and white and wild. The sea shifts and whispers and looks inviting.
I roll shakily and get to my feet, facing the enemy, my dirty knife ready, but even as I do, I cannot help looking again to the sea. It takes me a moment to find them in the mist—they’re far off, nearly out of sight. Nearly safe.
I want more skrake blood on me.
My legs are shaking beneath me, and it’s hard to take in what’s happening. Shock, Maeve says. Rest, with your legs a little above your head. Keep warm. I can see what’s happening but it’s far away. There are people on the beach, dark figures. My eyes go to one of them, then another, and with a thud of my heart, I let myself think for a moment it’s Mam and Maeve, working toward me. It is them, it is. I blink again and they’re gone, and I let myself fall down as far as my knees. Cold water from the wet sand seeps up my legs. This is death, I think.
There are shapes on the ground too. Skrake. Their bloody bodies make dark red patches on the beach. Some are still moving, but others are only a tangled mess, mixing with the rain into dirty pink puddles. My eyes, though, my eyes will not stop coming back to the pair fighting. The way they move together, there’s something in it, something too familiar, something I know well for myself.
I drag an arm across my eyes, forgetting it is covered in blood. I’m afraid for a moment, but then I remember, I’ve been bitten. It doesn’t matter now. I blink through the rain and look around for something to put my knife through.
The figures on the beach come into better focus. There are more—women, I can see now, battling the skrake—ten, twelve of them, working in pairs like the first two. Familiar. I am dying, and maybe this is what happens. Hallucinations, my mind mumbles.
All around me, women fight. I move through them—I must have stood up again, I don’t remember. To my left, I see a skrake reaching for a woman, trying to hold on to her by her short hair. The knife in my hand jumps from it as if of its own accord and flies, hitting the skrake between the eyes. A perfect shot. It twitches and lets go, and the woman looks around wildly for whoever threw the knife, meets my eyes, nods, turns back to finish things.
Good, I think. Good.
I can’t focus on anything, my eyes want to be everywhere but the pain of being bit makes my eyes cloudy and unfocused. Even still, I can see the way the women move, fluid and perfect. One skrake is down, and they’re working on another, the one with my last knife in its head, one holding its arms while the other reaches for the throat.
There’s a thud, and a feeling of discomfort in my knees and nose, and the scene in front of me doesn’t look quite right. I have fallen to my knees again, I realize a moment later. I watch everything and understand nothing.
All the skrake are on the ground now, and the women are picking their way through them. One has a weapon that looks like a walking stick but has a long, curved blade at the end of it. As I watch her, she makes a practiced movement with the blade and a twitching skrake at her feet lies still.
At last I can make sense of what I’m watching.
These are banshees.
They fight just like Maeve and Mam did.
They look just like me.