When the Old Man faded, Arthur was lying on the soft bed of leaves and looking up at the old yew tree again. He sat up, alarmed, beginning to realise it was daytime. He’d be late for the feeding and all.

He could hear other voices calling from a distance, maybe beyond the far ditch of the Rocky Field.

He climbed to his feet. He had a terrible pain in his stomach and his mouth was as dry as if he’d been chewing sloes. He pushed out through the bushes and whistled because he felt too weak to shout loud enough for anyone to hear from that distance.

A huge figure burst through the far ditch of the bog. Arthur was very confused. Even with his blurred vision, the figure could only have been Connie.

Connie came running in great steps, water splashing as he missed the rushes. Another man ran more carefully behind him. Brian.

As they reached him, they stared at him for a moment, not seeming to know what to say.

Then Connie said, ‘It’s, eh, good to see you, bud.’

‘Oh, thanks be to Jaysus, thanks be to Christ,’ Brian kept saying.

Arthur’s eyes were slow in adjusting to the daylight. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘The bold gardaí couldn’t find you so they let me out to look for you!’

‘But I’m only an hour or two late,’ he said, trying to assess how high the sun was. ‘And it’s Saturday. So I’m not even missing school.’ The mention of the guards in all this was beyond him.

Brian looked at Connie.

‘Actually it’s Friday, Art. You’ve been missing for a week.’

Arthur didn’t know how that could be. But he couldn’t think about it. He was just so thirsty. Getting water was about all he could think of. Before they could stop him, he was on his knees scooping up from a pocket of black bog-water. When he stood up again his legs buckled.

Connie lifted him up. Arthur didn’t have the strength to object.

‘Let’s get you back,’ said Connie. ‘There’s someone above in the house going to have the happiest day of her life. Jesus Christ, you’re gone massive! Skinny and all as you are, it’d be easier to carry Brian.’

When they got into the kitchen, his mother stared blankly, her face grey. Then she collapsed and Brian caught her before she hit the floor.

When she recovered she couldn’t stop kissing Arthur and giving Connie the occasional kiss too and saying, ‘Oh, God. Oh, thank you.’

She was hardly coherent for a while, touching him as if she didn’t believe he was real.

Then she said, ‘I’m sorry Art. That night you went missing – I stayed up late and thought more about the idea of leasing the farm and your reaction to it, and I realised what a mistake it was. I went in to wake you to tell you it was OK. But you were gone. It felt like after all the time you and I had been treading our way carefully along a difficult cliff path together, I forgot for just a second and let go of your hand, let you slip away, and the world had finally come to an end.’

Connie called an ambulance.

Arthur said, ‘I’m fine. I’m not sick.’

‘Just in case,’ said Connie.

‘Should I call the guards?’ said Brian.

Arthur had had some water and Lucozade. Connie wasn’t letting him drink as much as he wanted. Just a little at a time. And then some chocolate. And cookies. He got a little bit sick but then ate more.

By the time the ambulance men came, Arthur was standing again and feeling OK. They took his temperature and his pulse and said he was grand.

His mother kept holding his hand. He found it all quite hard to take on board, because as far as he was aware, he had seen her only a few hours before.

Not long after, the Garda inspector from Macroom came into the kitchen where he and Connie and Brian and his mother were sitting around the Aga with other neighbours who had gathered in to share in the good news. She was accompanied by the guard that Arthur remembered from the fire-extinguisher incident – the one who said he was Connie’s friend.

By now, his mother was feeding Arthur stew and tea and ice-cream and chocolate – anything he asked for. And Pumpkin, who seemed to have grown much sleeker, was licking his legs.

‘God save all here,’ said the inspector.

Arthur was bracing himself for a bollocking.

‘Will yis have a mug of tea?’ asked Connie.

‘Seeing as it was Her Ladyship here who took you off the last time, Connie, and me who had to interview Arthur at school, I’d be afraid of what the two of you might put in it,’ laughed the guard.

‘We McLeans don’t hold grudges,’ said Connie, adding a drop of Powers whiskey into each cup before he applied the tea.

‘And so, now, tell me, where were you all this time, young man?’ asked the inspector, getting serious and turning to Arthur.

‘I was down in the rath. I fell asleep or something.’

‘You can’t have been – my lads looked in there twice and they were sure there was no one there.’

‘It’s the truth, though,’ said Arthur.

‘We even had sniffer dogs,’ she continued. ‘They came on nothing more down there other than a peculiar den, maybe a very small fox den, but with no smell or sign of a fox anywhere around.’ She laughed. ‘Come to think of it, one of the dogs came out yelping after sticking his nose in the den, whatever was in it. Maybe a mink or something. But you’re not going to tell me you were hiding down there, now, are you?’

That was an odd question, Arthur thought.

‘No, Guard.’

‘It wouldn’t fit a lad a quarter your size. You must have been away with someone. Who took you away?’ she insisted. ‘You don’t have anything to fear from them. We will deal with them.’

Arthur didn’t answer.

‘Hmmm? You’re probably still in shock. Maybe I’ll ask Guard Curtain here to call out to you another day and you can tell him a bit more. Would that be OK, Helen?’ said the inspector to Arthur’s mother, finishing her tea and whiskey.

‘The main thing,’ intervened the younger guard, ‘is that although you put the heart sideways in all of us, you are alive. And that has given every man and woman out there a great lift today.’

‘Well, that’s true enough,’ said the inspector. ‘And I suppose, what harm? You’re back and you’re not going to give us all any more frights like that, now, are you?’ She was looking very sternly at Arthur.

‘No, Guard.’

‘And you should be very thankful to Guard Curtain here, by the way,’ she said as she was leaving. ‘He was the one that persuaded me to look for Connie’s release so he could help find you.’

Guard Curtain winked at Arthur as he left.

‘You’re some cur,’ said Connie with a note of praise, when things calmed down and the gardaí had all left. ‘I’ll give you that. You do know that the good inspector thinks it was all a ruse to get me out on early parole?’

The next day, when he was alone with her, Arthur vowed to his mother as he had already done to himself never to do anything that might cause her such grief again. When he had seen her ashen face, it was like getting a glimpse from the grave of how his death would have destroyed her. He loved her and didn’t want even to think about it again.

With Connie back, things got better on the farm. Connie was the same as before, as if nothing had happened. Arthur, too, was nearly the same as before, as if nothing had happened.

Connie was teaching Arthur the drums, and had bought him an electric guitar. The two of them made a lot of noise in the milk-tank shed after the evening milking.

School was a mixed bag. Arthur still didn’t see why he couldn’t be at home minding the three extra calves Connie had given him as a reward for springing him from jail. And he was still being ignored by Sullivan and falling completely off the scales on most other subjects too. He didn’t hate going to school so much, though. Other teachers were OK. He was doing well in Irish with Mrs Moriarty. Mr Kirwan had heard about the door incident and wanted him to try out alongside final-year lads for the first hurling team. And on his first day back, after the others were done asking him where he’d been and if he was alright, Ciara came over to him and touched his hand, kind of accidentally, for a few minutes as she sat next to him on the wall. That had felt very nice. She and he talked nearly every day now.

But then the social worker came back. Connie opened the door. He didn’t know that Arthur was sitting on the sofa under the stairs and could hear everything

‘I want to talk to Arthur McLean. You must be the uncle. May I come in? The name is Malley.’

He didn’t sound nearly as officious as when he’d been talking to Arthur’s shy, nervous mam. Arthur disliked him even more this time.

‘Afraid not, friend; we don’t need what you’re selling.’

Arthur was very relieved to hear those words. He wasn’t ready for more questions about his home and his mother. But he was hoping Connie was not going to get in trouble with Malley for stopping him coming in.

‘Look,’ said Malley, still in an apologetic tone, ‘I’m sure you mean no harm, but you should understand that you are not going to help the boy’s case by obstructing me in my work.’

‘Arthur is fine. He is happy as a pig in shite when he’s at home. If you want some real work, why don’t you go and investigate old Magill. He’s been tormenting the children of this area for two generations.’

Malley was sounding shaky now. ‘You may as well know, we get regular reports from his principal and from concerned neighbours. And we know that he ran away from home for a week. We are not in the business of ignoring a cry for help. The boy’s chances of being left in this setting are already highly unfavourable.’

Arthur curled up on the sofa. He had never even thought of that.

Connie just laughed and then started talking in a fast, quiet tone that Arthur hadn’t heard before.

‘First, your reports from neighbours are from one neighbour only. Am I right? Do yourself a favour and go ask any other neighbour. Second, Arthur didn’t run away. You have no basis for saying that. Third, I need you to go back to your office and write a report that says Arthur McLean has the best, most loving, most hard-working mother who ever stood on hind legs. Because that is the simple truth. And then you close the file on Arthur and move on to someone who does need your help. Fourth, and it’s really most important you understand this, nobody is going to take Arthur McLean away from his family.’

‘I hardly think it suitable that a man in your position should be telling me how to do my job. And I don’t like what sounds like veiled threats. What if I were to have a word with your parole officer?’ Malley’s voice was squeaky now.

Connie laughed again.

‘So you don’t like to hear threats, only to make them. Well, don’t view this as a threat. It is merely a sincere and entirely factual description of the situation you have walked into. I failed my beloved brother’s son once. Every day I was away pained me as much as the day Seán died. It won’t happen ever again. Have you ever seen the Nine Stones on Mount Leinster, Joe Malley? No? Well there is a circle of old friends surrounding Arthur now, each as hard as those granite rocks. If you open your eyes you might see them looking back at you. You need to watch the hedge when you are out walking or look in the eyes of the guard who stops you on the road home or maybe take better note of who works at the cubicle near you in your office. Or listen more carefully to the little foreign doctor who is working in the A & E the next time your wife goes in with bruises.’

‘That’s not only insane, but scurrilous.’ But Joe Malley now sounded like a scared kid.

Connie continued as if Malley hadn’t spoken.

‘I’m only trying to tell you something that you need to know. You have no business here. Anyone who tries to come between Arthur McLean and his family will rue the day. This is not a threat. It is a plain statement of fact, the kind that it is better to know in advance than to find out afterwards.’

‘I’m going now.’

Connie changed tone as if he were talking to a neighbour.

‘How do you find the new Passat on the juice, Joe?’

‘Jesus!’ said Joe Malley as he shut the car door.

Arthur heard the car turning on the pebbles and starting to head off. Then the car stopped and Malley was back. Connie hadn’t moved from the doorway.

‘What’s that in the laneway?’

‘I see nothing,’ said Connie.

‘There’s a huge, orange truck roaring up the lane towards me with a crazed midget looking out the window, swearing at me and giving me the finger.’

‘I can’t see any orange truck.’

‘It was there a minute ago,’ said Malley, sounding desperate. ‘Where is it gone? Jesus Christ. It was straight in front of me. What’s going on?’

‘Don’t you worry about that at all,’ said Connie calmly. ‘When you go home, have a nice cup of tea. Then remember to write that report and close that file. And just forget about us. And do take better care of things in your own home from now on, won’t you, Joe?’

Malley went. His car never left first gear as he crept down the lane.

Connie came back inside, humming away to himself as if nothing had happened. He still didn’t seem to notice Arthur on the couch. He had a quick chat with the dogs, then picked up his jacket and headed off out for the evening.

The next day, Arthur’s mother said to them, ‘Look, will ye both be on your best behaviour because there is going to be a fellow, that social worker guy, calling in on us. In fact I thought he was supposed to come yesterday.’

Arthur kept looking at his breakfast cereal. Connie kept studying the Racing Post.

‘Do you hear what I’m saying?’ she continued. ‘I just need you both to make a little effort so we can get this guy off our backs. OK?’

‘OK, Mam,’ said Arthur.

‘Yes,’ said Connie. ‘We’ll try our best. Won’t we, Art?’

He winked across at Arthur.

There were no follow-up visits from Malley.

Magill hadn’t gone away, though. Arthur’s mam was still avoiding returning his texts. And Arthur didn’t even need to intercept his letters, as she was dumping them herself. Arthur couldn’t work out why she was avoiding him, because he knew she was worried about how he was doing in school.

One morning it got a little crazy. Magill was waiting at the postbox which was conveniently near the speed limit sign where his mam normally dropped Arthur. Posting a letter at ten to eight in the morning!

As Arthur got out, Magill came straight over and sat into the front seat.

‘I know you are a very busy young woman,’ he said, ‘but we do need to talk.’

What could Arthur’s mother say at that point? Arthur got into the back so she wasn’t left alone with Magill. She pulled the car in off the road.

‘You know, we don’t have to carry on like this. I’m sure a…nice…young woman like you has better things to do than sitting getting an earful from me every other day.’

Arthur could see his mother turning pale under the gaze of Magill.

Suddenly he realised why his mother had been so freaked out by all the text messages. And why she had been trying so hard to avoid a meeting with his principal. He couldn’t absorb it. This leathery goat who was leering at his mother had a grandson in sixth year!

‘Not to say that I don’t enjoy meeting you,’ he laughed smarmily. ‘Quite the contrary. But I am certain there are…more pleasant things we could be talking about.’

‘OK,’ said Arthur’s mother, in a resigned tone.

Magill continued: ‘What I mean is, you and I could work together to sort this problem out and make young Arthur here less of a worry for us.’

‘What did you have in mind?’

‘There are treatment programmes available these days.’

Arthur felt a chill sweep over him.

‘What do you mean?’ said his mother.

‘Well, there are other young lads taking medication and doing very well. You wouldn’t believe me, would you, if I told you that two of the quietest boys out there on the school grounds used to be hooligans too.’

‘Give Arthur drugs, you mean?’ said Arthur’s mother. ‘No, thank you. We’re against…I’m against that.’

‘Typical,’ muttered Magill, dropping his head in his hands and abandoning the smarm.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Of course, it’s always the ones most in need of a strong hand that think they know better than the professionals,’ fumed Magill, his manner returning to normal. ‘Well, young lady, let me tell you some home truths then. This smart alec here is making poor Miss Sullivan’s life impossible. She is only trying to do a day’s work – which I trust you can relate to. Do you work at all yourself, or are you depending on State handouts like so many of the single mothers we see coming in here these days?’

His mother squirmed. She was no good at defending herself.

Arthur could hear a familiar voice behind him speaking angrily: ‘Listen here, you fat little badger fart, that’s no way to talk to a widow woman, who works harder every single day than you’ll ever work in your life.’

But nobody else heard it.

The principal continued: ‘The other children are now giving her backchat too and one or two of them are swearing at her. Ciara O’Connor, one of the quietest girls from one of the slightly better families in this godforsaken backwater, ups and says to Myra Sullivan yesterday, “Miss, I think you are basically a mean person and I don’t care a damn what you say to me from here on.” Did you ever know the likes of that? The poor woman is only trying to give these children a better way of living than their parents.’

‘Has Arthur been rude to this teacher, Mr Magill?’ his mother asked meekly.

‘Well, not directly, but some of these other children have.’

‘So. I’m sorry to hear that, but I really don’t see how I can help.’

‘Miss Sullivan says that Arthur is putting them up to it and staying in the background himself, looking out the window. They all watch your boy now and take their lead from him.’

‘Specifically, what are you saying?’ his mother said.

The principal became angry.

‘Specifically? Specifically, is it now? Aren’t we getting very grand? Do you not understand what I am saying, woman? I hope you are not taking his side. That is what has half the children ruined. Parents. “Oh, my little Johnny would never do anything wrong…” ’

His face curled up like a nasty little bronloider’s, for all the world, when he said this.

‘I was just asking what you meant.’

The principal shouted, ‘I’m saying that he is the ring-leader, the root cause, the wily fox … He is behind all the ructions. Now do you understand that?’

‘I really don’t like your shouting. I don’t think it’s right to be talking like that about any person, young or old,’ his mother said.

‘But what would I expect? As if he wasn’t a gurrier already, coming from the inner city, and then to bring him into that house to be further tutored in blackguardism by a notorious jailbird the likes of Con McLean. Do you want him to end up like his uncle? Is that what you want? Con was just like this when he was here. Always quietly daydreaming, in a world of his own, you’d think, never wanting to spend a minute at his books, and up to a power of mischief at the back of it. You couldn’t beat sense into him and believe me, I gave it a good try.’

Arthur spoke: ‘I’d rather end up like him than like you anyway. I don’t want to end up buried alive.’

Mr Magill reddened with rage. ‘What more need I say? Your son and brats like him are the reason they never should have taken the stick out of the classroom.’

‘No more,’ said Arthur’s mother.

Arthur saw that she bit her lip to hold back the tears.

Finally satisfied that he’d struck home, humiliating her as was his daily amusement, Magill switched back to being Mr Smarm.

‘Well, my dear, as I’m trying to tell you, if you cooperate with me instead of trying to pull away from me, all sorts of good things could happen.’

He opened the door and stepped out.

‘There we go. See you again. See you, Arthur, and do try to remember what we’ve discussed.’

That night he heard his mam talking to Connie. She wasn’t telling him anything much about Magill, but she was saying, ‘I just don’t know what to do, Con. He’s so far behind. And that lousy cow Sullivan just gives him zeros. He’s not that bad.’

She was sobbing a bit, Arthur thought, and he didn’t want to be hearing that sound ever again.

‘They say he’ll probably only get into the woodwork and technology stream next year.’

‘And what’s wrong with tech? It didn’t do me any harm.’

His mam said nothing.

Then Connie said quietly, ‘Listen, isn’t he happy enough, Helen? That’s the main thing. Don’t worry about anything else. Everything else will fall into place.’

‘Do you think so, though?’ she said.

The next morning, she said she couldn’t drive Arthur to school, as she had an early meeting. Arthur understood. He could have cycled the seven miles, but it was very wet and the bike had no reflectors. She asked him would he wake Connie to ask him for a lift.

Left to his own devices, Connie considered it an unnatural act to get out of bed before midday. His cows were never milked before one o’clock and the evening milking usually started when Connie came back from wherever he went gallivanting at about midnight. So it wasn’t an easy job to raise him. There was no point in calling, because he wouldn’t even hear the loudest shout above his own snoring.

But he didn’t get cross about the cold water trickling through his hair and beard. As the first drop reached his open mouth he said, ‘Mmm, that’s a grand drop, Missus.’

The rest of the contents of the jug had to wash over his face to make him sit up. He didn’t swear much. It almost seemed he was pleased to be asked.

When they sat into Connie’s old Land Cruiser – he called it the Queen Mary – before he started the engine, he said to Arthur, ‘Any idea why your ma doesn’t want to drop you off today?’

Arthur hesitated. Connie was looking straight at him. ‘I think it’s Magill. I think he might be freaking her out a bit.’

Nothing more was said about that. Connie slowed and hooted as he drove past Trevor Saltee’s gates.

‘If I have to be up at unholy hours,’ explained Connie, ‘I don’t see why he should have a lie-in.’

He didn’t stop at the speed limit sign. Or at the gates. He drove the thirty-year old Land Cruiser, with the exhaust hanging off it and doors held tight with baler twine, right into the school grounds, where only teachers’ cars were allowed. Right up to the front door.

Magill picked up his courage and came out to tell Connie, ‘You there; you there, get out of the grounds; you can’t come in here with that contraption.’

‘“You there”? That’s not very polite,’ said Connie, opening the door and stepping out. ‘Pretending you don’t remember my name after beating the shite out of me every day for four years.’

‘Keep your distance, you great oaf,’ said Magill.

‘Come here to me,’ said Connie, laughing. ‘I don’t want to hurt you at all. My brother’s wife tells me she believes you are an amorous man.’

Magill was retreating towards the door, but not fast enough. Connie got him. By the ears. He lifted his two feet off the ground, and held him right up at eye level. There he dangled for what seemed like ages, kicking and saying, ‘Don’t, don’t hurt an old man, Cornelius, let’s all be sensible, let the past stay in the past, please.’ He was almost squealing.

Several of the other early people gathered around.

‘I’m not going to hurt you at all,’ Connie repeated. Then he pulled the principal closer to his bushy beard and it looked as if there was going to be a head butt. But instead Connie gave Magill a big kiss and then dropped him.

‘Oh, my Lord Jesus Christ preserve me,’ said Magill in utter confusion and disgust. ‘Oh, sweet mother of the divine Jesus, what are you after doing?’

He put his hand to his mouth and literally ran inside, pursued by the lunatic laughter of Connie and all the lads in the yard.

Connie shouted in, ‘Come on back out here Magill, you good thing you. You taste as sweet as mouldy rosebuds.’

Every day after that, Magill hid inside whenever he heard the Land Cruiser approaching. Connie would give a few revs of Mary’s fine old diesel engine, before driving off with all the bystanders shouting, ‘How’ye, Connie,’ and ‘Good man, Connie.’

One afternoon, Arthur took the familiar trip back down to the rath – even though he had been strictly forbidden to ever go near the place again. When the Old Man appeared, he said, ‘It’s good to see you again, a mhic.’

It was daytime and the Old Man was on his own. No Conán. Or Etain. Or Bal.

Arthur said, ‘There’s a favour I wanted.’

The Old Man started talking as though he hadn’t heard Arthur. He was looking away.

‘In case we don’t see you again for a while – do you remember I was telling you before about how Mac Cumhaill was always guided by the spirt of Cumhall, never forgetting, never letting go? Well, that wasn’t entirely true. There were occasions, only two, when the guiding voice was lost to him and those were days of dark regret. Days when Mac Cumhaill made grave mistakes. One of those times involved a terrible mistake with Diarmuid, a man who was almost as close as a son to him. It’s why you never saw the spirit of Diarmuid wander with his old friends. That’s a story I won’t ever tell you. The other of those days was when Fionn Mac Cumhaill let his guard slip and had his own son taken when the boy was only eight. Taken to another world. The darkness that descended that day was blacker than the moonless night. His heart nearly burst with the wish to be able to tell the boy he was still ever looking for him and thinking about him; that he would see him now and then in a lone young deer that sometimes edged down to the waterside on winter evenings when Fionn Mac Cumhaill sat alone on the banks of Lough Derg, staring out across its choppy grey green expanse; that their spirits were still united and that he was certain they would meet again.’

Arthur stared quietly back. He had never seen an old man weeping openly, making no attempt to stop the tears that were flowing in streams from him, and sobbing like a child. Arthur didn’t know what to say. He preferred things and people to be as he knew them. Not to change. He looked at his feet and waited a while. Then the Old Man, back in his old voice said, ‘Now. What was it you wanted to ask, a mhic?’

Arthur asked if he could call the wren again.

Dreoilín appeared and said, ‘Arthur, is the lack of worry starting to wear off? I’ll polish it up for you.’

Arthur surprised himself and spoke up, just as Dreoilín was about to again cure him of caring a damn about the school work or anything.

‘I was wondering, would it be possible this time for you to do it for me, the school work, if that wouldn’t be too much trouble?’

‘Well, it’s not exactly much more trouble,’ said the bird, ‘but what difference would it make to you? Having no worries is the same feeling whether it comes as a result of having done tasks that seek to enslave you or as a result of having stopped caring about them.’

‘I understand. And thank you for that.’

‘So, what’s the problem?’

‘It’s my mother. She…well, she is kind of a bit worried about me, I suppose,’ Arthur said, slightly embarrassed. ‘So I brought some of my books down in the rucksack today.’

Arthur was sure he saw a smile drift across the Old Man’s face.

‘But, doesn’t she know,’ said the bird, ‘that you’re doing more important things?’

The Old Man intervened.

‘Dreoilín, you’re wasting time arguing with this man. Why don’t you just do as he has requested?’

‘Sure, what would I know about algebra and ox-bow lakes?’ said Dreoilín.

‘I thought you were supposed to be the greatest magician,’ said the Old Man. ‘If you can’t do it, why did you offer to do the work for him?’

‘I’m not that good. I can’t put what’s in those books into that head,’ he said nodding towards Arthur, ‘or maybe I can do it this once. But when you get back from whatever yarns this old chancer takes you on today, there will be someone in your own house who will be able to help you with all of your work every day.’

Arthur took out his English copybook. To his amazement, the synopsis of Hamlet was all written in his own scrawl. And in the maths book, the algebra was all done. And what’s more, he didn’t need to revise for the upcoming Irish test because it all suddenly looked as easy as if he had been speaking the language all his life.

He was still staring down in confusion when the Old Man stood and said, ‘A daytime welcome can quickly wear thin in the home of the sí. But you will always be welcome here any night that you decide to come back to us.’

Then he and Dreoilín were gone.

When Arthur went home, there was no one there except Connie who had come into the kitchen to make himself a thick sandwich with cheese, crisps and ketchup. He made a second one for Arthur.

‘I don’t suppose…’ started Arthur. ‘There wasn’t anyone else in the house when you came in?’

‘What are you on about, bud?’ said Connie.

‘Nothing.’

Later, when his mother came home, Arthur said, ‘Maybe if I wanted help to do a bit of the school work now and then, you’d be the one that they said could help me?’

His mother let her handbag slip onto the floor. She started talking really fast. ‘Arthur, love, yes. That’s the…those are the most wonderful words…Yes, I’ll try, of course. Who said? No, but I’ve always been hopeless at explaining anything… It’s not me who should help you… But hold the thought… I think it might be Connie.’

‘Connie?’ Arthur was surprised. ‘But I thought you said Connie only got as far as the woodwork and metalwork in school?’

‘Connie?’ she laughed. She picked up a letter from the table. It was addressed to Dr Cornelius McLean. ‘Why do you think they call him that?’

‘I dunno,’ said Arthur. ‘I thought it might be some of his friends having a laugh. You know the strange names they call each other.’

‘Connie did the tech alright. And then got into UCC. And then on a scholarship to Berkeley. Some big degree in ancient archaeology. They made him a professor. The youngest ever. And he was writing for newspapers and playing in a band and things were really starting to go great for him. And then one day shortly after…well, immediately after Dad’s funeral, he threw it all in. He said the only work he was interested in was here. And he came back to run the farm full-time and fell back in with his old, strange friends and got himself into all kinds of shenanigans that you don’t need to know about. And, well, you know the rest.’

‘Ancient archaeology?’

‘Old buildings…Old bones…The ways people used to live…Don’t ask me.’

Arthur never asked Connie about any of that. He preferred him the way he was. But the next day he asked Connie if he wouldn’t mind helping him try to figure out some maths. He was so far behind that he didn’t understand any of it. He was expecting Connie to laugh at him or tell him a joke. But Connie seemed delighted. He opened Arthur’s maths book as eagerly as he would the Vintage Tractor Trader. His voice even changed when he was at the books.

He said, ‘Hmmm. Now let me see. Let me see. Let me see. Oh, Christ. How do they always manage to turn simple, clear and beautiful ideas into a hotchpotch of unutterable horse shite?’

He scanned through Arthur’s books in less than an hour.

Then he closed them and said in what was going to be a very familiar tone, ‘Now, you see, bud, there’s very little to this. Don’t mind the book. All you need to understand about algebra is this…’

After that, in the afternoons, before doing any school work, Arthur rambled around the farm with Connie. He learned how to milk the cows. He found out how to poach the river on Tuesdays when Trevor was away down at the mart making notes on what everyone was getting for their cattle. He learned how to tickle the trout and remove them from the river without ever a hook being stuck in them for sport. He shot pigeons and trapped magpies. He was often sent on dusk raids to rearrange and relocate objects on Trevor Saltee’s very tidy farm. These missions included knocking down perfect stacks of hay bales and moving cows from one end of the farm to another. They were carried out not out of any vengeance – Connie didn’t have that in him. It was purely that Connie delighted in how Trevor would hop from one foot to the other when he came into the yard in a rage, yelling, ‘You wouldn’t happen to know anything about my flipping cows at all, I suppose, Con McLean?’

‘I am hard set to mind my own, Trev, let alone keep an eye on yours,’ Connie would roar across the yard, laughing like a madman. ‘Will you come in for a drop of tea, like a civil man, and not be standing there looking out of your mouth at us?’

Trevor would leave, muttering in rage, but afraid to say any more to Connie.

And Connie wasn’t going away as much as he used to. Lots of nights he stayed home now. Often the friends would visit and talk till the early hours. Arthur’s mother seemed not to mind them as much and would sometimes stay up playing cards with them and listening to their bull-shit. Other times it was just the three of them in the house and Arthur would hear Connie teasing his mother about whatever TV programme she was watching or her telling him about some of her work stuff. Arthur didn’t know if something was getting going between his mother and Connie, but if it was, he wouldn’t really mind now.

One very cold December day Connie said to Arthur, ‘I see you’re not going down to the rath anymore.’

‘I do still, now and again,’ said Arthur.

‘You’ve had enough of the sí and all those people?’

‘I thought you didn’t believe in them.’

Connie looked at him questioningly and then said, ‘A mhic, I think you already know that they walk among us. It took me longer to accept. I ran off to search the world for scientific explanations. But I always knew that I am part of it and it is a part of me. I had to come back where I belonged – at the gateway of the worlds.’

He had never addressed Arthur in that way before. Arthur went quiet.

‘Com’ere, I have a couple of things you might like to see.’

‘What kind of things?’

‘You have to first let me know that you’ll be OK.’

‘What would that involve?’

Arthur knew Connie well enough now not to assume any task was going to be too easy.

‘It would involve hiding your knowledge well and not ever ever telling anyone, under any circumstances, ever.’

‘OK.’

That would be no bother for Arthur, as there were a lot of things he’d been hiding well and not telling anyone about for a long time now.

‘Seriously now,’ said Connie, looking very intently at Arthur, ‘if they know, they will come to try to take these things away and lock them up in a vault to be studied by people who won’t understand anything.’

Connie looked all around to make sure there were no cars coming down the lane, no sign of Arthur’s mam at the windows, no sign of Trevor at his lookout post on the Brown Hill Field where he sometimes stood with binoculars, trying to catch Connie doing something illegal. Then he nodded to Arthur to follow him out to the back of the hayshed into his tractor workshop.

He started removing stacks of dead batteries, buckets of burnt engine oil, and armfuls of blue baler twine, all from the bin where he kept stuff he was reluctant to dump in case he found a use for it some day. Then he lifted the massive steel bin from its spot. There was a dirty carpet offcut covering the floor under it.

‘Pull that back, Art,’ he said.

Arthur did. The floor underneath was completely clean. There was a steel door in the middle of it.

‘What’s that?’ asked Arthur.

‘What does it look like?’ said Connie.

‘It looks like the same kind of safe you keep the shotgun in’.

‘There you go. Here are the keys.’

Arthur was just as anxious to cut to the heart of this matter, as he was entirely curious now. He put a key into each of the locks and opened the cabinet as he had watched Connie doing with the gun safe. It looked empty at first.

‘Put your hand in,’ said Connie.

That instruction worried Arthur. Knowing Connie and his tricks, his hand could touch anything from warm cow-dung to a nest of pet rats. And all there would be after that would be roars of laughter from Connie. On the other hand, this door definitely hadn’t been opened in a long time. If it was a trick, it was a very elaborate one.

He looked into Connie’s face. There was no trick here. He was absolutely quiet and his mouth was serious for once. He actually seemed to be shaking.

‘Go on,’ he said, almost whispering.

Arthur did. He felt something cold like metal. There were two objects. He could feel what they were. He ran his fingers over the fine curves and ridges. Heavy enough for the size of them. He held his breath and lifted them out. Under the bright lights of the tractor workshop, there was no doubting it. The long scabbard had all of the intricate engravings. The sword handle was still perfect. The large ruby remained in the heart of the magnificent shield, proud of the dent where it had protected its owner from a falling tree. The bronze that connected ancestors still duskily reflected the lights of the shed. Arthur felt a cold shiver move across his shoulders.

‘We’ll have to find a new place for these,’ said Connie, ‘and there’s more. You are now a part of it. They live among us and they also live through us. That’s a weight on your shoulders, but I think you are able for it.’

Arthur didn’t feel any weight. This brought everything together. Even before Connie spoke, Arthur knew what he was going to say.

‘This is not the end, a mhic. It’s only the beginning.’