Clanwe Yashpack E-Book

Tony O'Gallagher

• Herausgeber: novum publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 357

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Meet Tony O'Gallagher, a regular guy living in Northern Ireland. He enjoyed time with his friends, time at the local pub, and time playing bridge. He participates in a conversation — about someone who wants to build a house near a stream of water — with friends at the pub. The fellow wants someone who can divine water near where he wants to build a bungalow house. Several days later, Tony is sitting at the site then says a strange phrase he had just heard about from an ancient friend. Once he says, "Clanwe Yashpack", he meets a most unusual and completely unexpected person. And this is a dramatically life-altering event for Tony. And now his life has changed and will never be the same again. He meets people and does things he never thought he would do. What happens next is anybody's guess.

Leseprobe

Imprint

All rights of distribution, also through movies, radio and television, photomechanical reproduction, sound carrier, electronic medium and reprinting in excerpts are reserved.

© 2024 novum publishing

ISBN print edition:978-3-99146-346-7

ISBN e-book: 978-3-99146-347-4

Editor:Samantha Acker

Cover photos: Sebastian Sikora, Ruslan Galiullin | Dreamstime.com

Cover design, layout & typesetting: novum publishing

www.novum-publishing.co.uk

Prologue

I am 214 years old, although people tell me I have the appearance of a man in his sixties. Understandably, I have frequently been asked about the reasons for my longevity. After all, I am more than 80 years older than any other human being on the planet. Usually, I try to avoid answering the question directly. Often, I explain why I do not think genetics play any great part. I point out that my father died at age 59. My mother was just 70, and two of my grandparents died before they reached 60. My children and grandchildren have all predeceased me with none of them reaching 85 years of age. Just one of my great grandchildren is still alive having reached 92 years of age. If pressed, I waffled on about eating a healthy diet, getting plenty of exercise and drinking the occasional glass of red wine. The healthy diet and exercise are essentially true, but the bit about the red wine is very much an understatement.

The real reason for my longevity is well-known to me but, until now, I have been unwilling to divulge it for two reasons. Firstly, it was always most probable that people would not believe me and would dismiss me as either a fantasist or as someone suffering from senile dementia. Secondly, I was afraid of the consequences for some very good friends of mine. But circumstances have changed, and I am now prepared to tell all.

Strange as it may seem, the whole matter has its origins in my not possessing a television. Following a relationship breakdown, I moved into rented accommodation where I lived alone. Before this, I had watched very little television other than news or sports. So, I made the decision not to have a television. In due course, that led to the receipt of a letter each month from the television licensing people threatening dire consequences if I was found to be watching or downloading programmes without a licence. These I ignored because, even if I were to inform them that I did not have a television, they would come to check anyway.

I still watch television occasionally. If I wished to watch a particular sporting event, I watched it in the pub. So, it was then when I happened to be in the Phoenix in the evening that it all began.

Liverpool was playing in the Champions League that evening. During half-time, a chap called Billy McConkey arrived at the bar. Billy described himself as a businessman, and he certainly was involved in various ventures. Whether all of these ventures were legitimate was very much open to question.

Whatever about his business activities, Billy’s generosity was never called into question. By all accounts, he paid his employees well, and he was known to buy rounds of drinks for the entire bar.

Billy enquired if anyone knew of a water diviner. He explained that he had purchased a plot of land on which he intended to build a home. He had been informed that an underground stream was suspected to be running through the plot, and he wanted to track its course so that he would not receive any nasty surprises whenever the foundations were excavated. There was also the possibility of sinking a well or using the stream to feed a pond or small lake. Billy’s enquiry provoked much discussion. Some of the bar regulars expressed great scepticism regarding water divining. Others said they had an open mind on the subject. None of them knew of any water diviners. All were amazed when I stated that I could divine water.

Billy asked if I would undertake the work stating that he would pay well. When asked, he said the plot was just over three acres. I told him that surveying a plot of that size would take quite some time and was just about to suggest a fee of £300 when Billy offered a fee of £500. We agreed to meet at 9.30 the next morning so that Billy could take me to the land in question. When he asked if there was anything he would need to bring, I told him I would need a couple of cans of spray paint of any colour except green.

Chapter 1

Billy gave me a quizzical glance when I climbed into his SUV. In addition to a rucksack containing a packed lunch, I was carrying two wire coat hangers which I had straightened out into straight rods. He had been expecting me to have a forked piece of hazel. His questions kept coming. How did I learn to divine water? Why did I have metal rods? Was I a seventh son of a seventh son?

My answers surprised him. For the first 63 years of my life, I had been blissfully unaware of my ability. It so happened that the installation of a water metre at a friend Brigid’s house in County Louth indicated that there was leakage in the system within the bounds of the one-acre property. Brigid had brought in Johnny, who is a water diviner, to trace the route of the connection to the mains. This he did using two straightened wire coat hangers. He held them loosely by their ends around waist height, parallel to each other pointing straight in front of him as he walked slowly. When he came over the water pipe, the rods swung so that they crossed each other and pointed downwards.

After Johnny had left, I took the rods and, out of curiosity, imitated what he had done. To my amazement, I got the same reaction from the rods, although others who tried did not. I still do not know how the rods work or why only a small minority of people can divine water.

Billy’s plot was in an idyllic location. It was gently sloping and overlooked a broad valley. Behind part of it rose a high steep hill whilst the rest was in front of a col between that hill and a lower neighbour. The view from in front of the col was breathtaking, and it was there on that side of the plot Billy wished to build. He marked the circumference of his proposed house which, in my estimation, covered just over 4,500 square feet. “So, it is not going to be a small bungalow?” I asked. “Who said anything about a bungalow?” replied Billy. “If it is two storeys, it will be some house,” I remarked. “Not two,” he said. “Three, or, more accurately, four, if you count the garage and wine cellar, I will have under part of it.” It emerged that he intended to have two full storeys and a third extending to around half the width of the lower two with a roof terrace occupying the other half.

Such a building, however well designed, was most unlikely to comply with planning regulations, but Billy was confident he would obtain planning permission. Aware of Billy’s shady reputation, I referred to brown envelopes. He laughed and said, “Suppose, just suppose, a hypothetical situation exists. Suppose a Chief Planning Officer has a gambling problem. He has an account with a bookmaker who has permitted him to run up a debt of enormous proportions. He is way out of his depth. Now, suppose that bookmaker submits a planning application. Can you really see it being refused?”

The picture was now clear. Billy had a majority stake in Winbig, a local chain of bookmakers. His behaviour, whilst not actually illegal, stank to high heaven. Still, it was none of my business. Whilst I was not happy about going along with such activity, there was probably nothing to be gained by backing out of our arrangement. The thought occurred to me that I could expose the situation to the authorities or the media. But, aside from not relishing making enemies of Billy and his associates, it was quite possible that all I would achieve was to make a fool of myself. Billy probably had yet to submit the application. After all, the application would need to specify the precise location of the planned dwelling, and Billy was using my services to avoid picking a location affected by the underground stream. Besides, he could probably find some other water diviner or even use a few test boreholes. I would just have to hold my nose and do what I had agreed to do.

So, I told Billy I would start by checking the proposed site of the house and then cover the rest of the land. Although no expert, I did not expect the stream to interfere with the site, but I did not tell Billy this lest he decide that he no longer needed my services. Just as I was starting, Billy received a call on his mobile. After a brief cryptic conversation, he informed me he had to head off to sort out a problem, but he should be back within an hour or so. Off he went. I was aware that the “or so” could well prove to be longer than the hour but I was not concerned. It was a beautiful spring morning. I had my lunch with me and, if needs be, I could walk home in a little more than an hour.

Walking slowly up and down with the rods was quite relaxing. Each time I turned, I shifted about two feet across the site. I had already formed the view that it was most unlikely I would find the stream in this part of the plot, but it was safest to make certain. Even if I found a stream elsewhere in the plot, that would not be a guarantee that a second stream, either a tributary or fully separate from the first, did not exist. So back and forth I walked until my rods suddenly jerked upright so that they were vertical and became very warm, almost hot.

That really surprised me. It was something I had never previously experienced. So, I took a couple of steps backwards and walked forward again. The same thing happened. I tried to move forward, but the rods seemed to be against a solid barrier. I tried walking forward holding the rods hanging loosely at either side of me but again they swung upwards. Setting the rods on the ground, I had no problem walking forward.

After marking the spot, further attempts to walk on parallel tracks revealed that the barrier followed a straight line that intersected with one proposed side wall about halfway along and with the proposed back wall about one-third of the way along. I wondered what I would find if I approached the barrier from the other side and discovered I could take the rods through, provided I carried them in one hand. When I approached from several feet away from the first barrier, a second one revealed its presence running parallel to the first about five feet away from it. Curiously, if I approached from less than five feet away, the first barrier did not seem to exist.

If one looked along the direction of the barriers, one would be looking through the col, so up I went and surveyed the next valley. It was then that a realisation dawned on me. On the far side of the valley was Knocknashee – the hill of the fairies. That is where there is a reputed fairy fort. There is not much to see other than an old hawthorn tree standing in the centre of a circle of standing stones, which is about forty feet in diameter. Despite its description as a fairy fort, I had never heard about any tales of reputed fairy activity at the spot.

But what, if anything, lies in the other direction? Trusting that Billy would not return too quickly, I set off in the other direction. I had not gone more than a quarter mile when I came across an old hawthorn tree standing in the middle of a field. Almost certainly, any local would tell me it was a fairy thorn.

I recalled as a child hearing stories about a house that had experienced problems because it was built straddling the route between two fairy thorns, or so the story had gone. Could a similar fate befall Billy’s planned creation? The thought caused a shiver to run up my spine. It is a brave, perhaps foolhardy, man who will interfere with any fairy thorn or the route between the two of them. Legend has it that the fairies tend to exact revenge. I was not the one who was going to build across the route or live in the house, but I was associated with the project. Billy must be persuaded to move the site of the house.

That might prove easier said than done. For a start, Billydefinitelydid not believe in fairies. One night in the Phoenix, the talk had been about ghosts. Billy had been quite vehement in dismissing the possibility of their existence. “Ghosts, vampires, werewolves, poltergeists, fairies, leprechauns! All a load of total shite!” had been his contribution to the discussion. Worse still, persuading Billy that a fairy pathway crossed the property would in no way help the situation. Billy’s instinct would be to try and profit from the situation by turning the fairy road into a visitor attraction. If Cooley could profit from leprechauns, then Billy could profit from fairies. That could well bring down the fairies’ wrath on all concerned.

While walking back to Billy’s land, it occurred to me that the solution might lie in persuading him that there existed some other problem within the site. So, I erased as best I could the marks outlining the fairy road and then drew a circle with a diameter of around fifteen feet towards the other end of the house. This was going to be where the “problem” lay.

Locating the underground stream proved straightforward. It was pretty much where I expected it to be. It was also sufficiently far away from his planned site to allow a fresh site to be used between the stream and the original site, thus avoiding any interference with the fairy road.

Billy arrived back just as I was finishing marking the route of the stream. His initial reaction was one of delight because the stream would not interfere with his site. He was much less pleased when I drew his attention to the “problem” ground. My story was that I was finding a strange reaction by the rods over that area. It was a lot weaker than that from the stream, and I really did not know what the cause was. All I could offer by way of explanation was, of necessity, speculation. One possibility was an underground deposit of a metallic ore with magnetic properties. This would not cause any problems with the construction of the house but who knows what effect it might have on electronic equipment. Many items, including computers, televisions, game consoles, alarms and security cameras were likely to be affected. Another possible explanation was that there was soft or swampy ground beneath the surface that could cause problems with construction.

I told Billy I would like to investigate the matter further. If I could replicate the rods’ reaction, that should give me a good idea as to what the problem was. Firstly, I would like to try the rods over different pieces of soft or swampy ground. One area where there was a large area where the ground varied from just a little soft to very swampy was the great bog beside the Newry-Portadown canal. The other theory might prove more difficult to investigate, but I thought I should be able to set up experiments with magnets of various strengths. I did not tell Billy that I was already aware that power lines, whether overhead or buried, elicited a strong reaction from the rods. I wanted him to believe that swampy ground was the cause of the “problem.” The nonsense about a magnetic deposit was designed to muddy the waters. By way of demonstration, I faked a weak reaction over the ground within the circle and then showed him a much stronger reaction over the stream. I had a moment of panic when Billy asked if he could try using the rods to see whether or not he could divine water. I could not very well refuse and so I was distinctly relieved when Billy got no reaction from the rods over the stream. Had he done so, the lack of any reaction over the ground within the circle would have occasioned me major difficulty.

Billy really did not want to move his site. It afforded a better view than anywhere else on the plot. He took the line that neither possible cause presented an insurmountable problem. If it was swampy ground, then the site could be piled if necessary. If it was some sort of magnetic deposit, then the foundation and subfloor could incorporate some sort of Faraday cage that would eliminate the problem. He reckoned that it need not involve much more than incorporating steel mesh reinforcing into the founds and subfloors. He added that, even without a Faraday cage, only a small portion of the site was affected, leaving plenty of room for electronic equipment within the rest of the house. There was no effective argument I could deploy to convince him the site needed to be moved. Additional expenses did not appear to present any problem. I was also aware that if I tried too hard to persuade him to move the site, it could well arouse suspicion. Once I had made him aware of a potential problem, how he handled it was up to him.

Having handed to me twenty-five twenties, Billy dropped me home. That night, I found sleep very elusive as I tried to come up with some solution to the situation in which I found myself. The £500 which had first appeared to be easy money now seemed poor compensation for my present trouble.

Chapter 2

In the days that followed, I tried to push the matter to the back of my mind. If I was going to fall foul of the fairies, there was nothing I could do to prevent it. But my thoughts kept returning to the subject that led me to researching the evidence for the existence or otherwise of fairies, especially at Knocknashee.

My efforts brought me into contact with Ciaran Donnelly, a local historian who had given a talk on fairy folklore a couple of years previously. He was quite delighted at my interest in the subject and invited me to his house one evening. He had little useful information to offer regarding the fairy fort at Knocknashee. Yes, he could find references to the fairy fort in old records and documents dating back centuries, but that, in itself, meant very little. The name, Knocknashee, is a corruption of the GaelicCnoc na Sí, meaning hill of the fairies, commentators could well have referred to a fairy fort without any other evidence whatsoever. Certainly, references to fairy activity in the area are fewer to the extent of being nonexistent. Ciaran told me I might have had more success if I had started my enquiries a couple of years earlier and proceeded to recount what he knew about Mickey McAteer.

He had first heard about Mickey from his Uncle Alec who, like other locals, regarded Mickey with more than a little curiosity. On first impression, Mickey was a typical bachelor farmer with a cottage and around forty acres. He did not farm the land himself. Instead, he let all the land on conacre. He claimed to be the last of his line, which could very well have been true. Nobody in the locality had any memory of Mickey’s parents or of any siblings of his. Stranger still, nobody had any memory of Mickey as anything other than a middle-aged man. Alec had told Ciaran of walking to primary school and seeing Mickey leaning over a five-barred gate smoking his pipe. He looked the same then as he did when Alec started drawing the old age pension.

Mickey mostly kept to himself. Indeed, he would not be seen around the locality for weeks at a time, even months. Even on the rare occasion when he visited McGeough’s Pub, there was little conversation to be had with Mickey. He sat in a corner, and his replies to any attempts to start a conversation with him tended to be monosyllabic. The locals regarded him as an eccentric old boy and, while they harboured a great deal of curiosity about him, for the most part, left him alone. However, one night, Mickey consumed more than his normal quota of drinks and became quite intoxicated. In his drunken state, he told the assembled company that he was friends with the fairies, had visited them and that he could speak a little of their language. He uttered a few phrases which, for all his listeners knew, could have been Swahili, Double Dutch or just plain gibberish. Most of those present watched and listened with mild amusement, but a couple of them started to take a handout of Mickey by coming out with their own pieces of gibberish, claiming to speak Leprechaunese.

At this, Mickey became ferociously angry, roaring at them that the fairies would punish their insulting behaviour. He cursed them roundly and stormed out of the pub. There followed his longest absence from the locality of around three and a half years.

Ciaran said that he had been fascinated when he heard all this from his uncle and had resolved to interview Mickey as part of a project on folklore on which he was then engaged. However, the interview proved difficult to arrange because Mickey seemed to spend more time away from the cottage than he did living in it. On numerous occasions, he had called to find the cottage deserted. Eventually, he heard that Mickey had been seen a couple of days earlier and, approaching the cottage, saw smoke coming from the chimney.

When he knocked on the door, he was surprised when it was answered by a woman. She explained that she lived a couple of hundred yards down the road. She had seen Mickey the previous day, and he seemed quite unwell. Overnight, he had become worse and was suffering from a very high fever. The doctor had been there and wanted Mickey to go to hospital but he had refused. He had nobody else to look after him, and she was being a good Samaritan, trying her best to tend to him and make him comfortable. But he seemed to be getting worse and was now delirious. She asked Ciaran if he would be kind enough to sit with Mickey for an hour. She needed to go home to get a few things done, including feeding the chickens.

Ciaran agreed as it would have been heartless not to. As he sat by the bed, he listened to the ravings of the man lying in it. But as he listened, he gradually realised that the ravings were remarkably lucid. He heard a detailed description of what Mickey had seen as he watched King William and his army pass by heading southwards. Having studied the Williamite campaign in Ireland, Ciaran was struck by how closely Mickey’s description tallied with what he knew. It was quite amazing that this man knew so much about William’s army. Then the narrative switched, and Mickey recounted details of a spell spent working on the canal from Portadown-Newry. This had been built during the 1730s, and, again, Mickey’s account accorded with the very detailed research Ciaran had conducted into the relevant historical documents. Ciaran was well acquainted with all historians in Northern Ireland and had never come across Mickey in historical circles. So how did this man know so much?

Whilst he was pondering this, Mickey opened his eyes and stared at Ciaran. His talk seemed to become incoherent, but a certain phrase seemed to recur. It sounded likeclanwe yashpak. After a while, the talking stopped, and he seemed to drift into sleep.

In due course, Ciaran heard the neighbour re-entering the cottage. As he was rising from the chair, he noticed a yellowing scrap of newspaper on the bedside table. Written on it in pencil were two lines. One wasclanwe yashpak, and the other read: “Always strive for the greater good.” Wishing to investigate this strange language and, thinking he was doing no harm, he took the scrap of paper with him as he left the cottage.

The following morning, he received a phone call from the neighbour informing him that Mickey had passed away in the early hours. She said that it was likely that his neighbours would come together to organise his funeral, and Ciaran asked that he be informed of the arrangements once they were known. A few days later, he had attended one of the more unusual funerals he had witnessed. No family was present, and nobody had any idea of the age of the deceased.

Ciaran’s research into the strange language had proved fruitless. He had contacted the language department of several universities but not only did nobody know the language, but nobody could even hazard a guess as to what it might be.

The scrap of newspaper had been more informative but just as puzzling. Extensive research had finally revealed that it came from a copy of the Belfast Newsletter dated 4 October 1794. How had Mickey come by a piece of newspaper over 200 years old? Its possession would normally suggest that Mickey had been some sort of historian, but Ciaran was unaware of any such activity on Mickey’s part. Add in that no historian would ever dream of writing on such an artefact. On the other hand, his detailed and accurate knowledge of William’s army and work on the canal in the eighteenth century must have come from somewhere. It was all a bit of a mystery.

I asked if Ciaran had been able to establish just what age Mickey had been. Ciaran stated he had spent considerable time researching this question. He had visited the Registrar’s Office at Stranmillis University College and pulled a few strings to obtain direct access to the register. His uncle had known Mickey for at least sixty years, so he could not have been born later than 1950 and, given that Alec remembered Mickey as a middle-aged man in the late 1950s, it seemed likely that Mickey had been born sometime around 1900. Nevertheless, Ciaran searched the records from 1922 to 1955. Finding nothing, he headed to Dublin to the search facility at the Irish Life Centre and searched backwards from 1922 to the earliest available records. Again, he found nothing. Unsurprisingly, there were several entries in each jurisdiction for Michael McAteer, but none of them appeared to be the right person. With all of them, he had been able to check the baptismal records in the local Catholic church. Such records are always noted with details of any marriage in a Catholic church anywhere in the world. Each Michael McAteer had been married.

It was certainly not impossible that Mickey, unbeknownst to his neighbours, had married but, whether or not he had, he was becoming a real mystery man. I speculated on the possibility that he had been born somewhere in Great Britain or even overseas. I had searched in vain for any record of my paternal grandmother’s birth both in Ireland and Scotland. There was a possibility that she had been born on the family tea plantation in India. Could something similar explain the lack of records for Mickey?

But, if he had been born elsewhere, how did he come by his farm? Ciaran had checked with Land Registry and there existed no record of him purchasing it so it would seem to have been inherited.

Ciaran and I chatted late into the night over a couple of glasses of single malt. I casually enquired as to the existence of any other fairy forts in the locality. He stated that there was nothing other than a few fairy thorn trees. He did not mention any fairy highways, so I reckoned the was no local knowledge of what I had found.

The following day was spent trying to make some sort of sense out of the things Ciaran had told me. Several questions bugged me. Why did nobody have any memory of Mickey’s parents? Why did Alec remember him from his schooldays as a middle-aged man when he still looked like a middle-aged man over sixty years later? Why was there no record of Mickey’s birth? What was Mickey doing with a small scrap of a newspaper from over two hundred years ago? Did the strange words have any meaning, or were they just part of the ravings of a delusional man?

It was difficult to construct a coherent answer. The best I could come up with was that Mickey’s birth had simply not been registered. Such things were not completely unknown. He was only around forty years old when Alec was at school, leaving him to be just over a hundred years old when he died. His parents had died when he was in his mid-teens, meaning that one would need to be in one’s mid-nineties to have any possible memory of them.

It was not great. I was aware that it stretched what was possible to the limit, and I would not have liked to have to convince anybody it was the right answer, but the other possibilities were worse. That a whole townland had suffered collective amnesia? That Mickey had been over 125 years old? One positive feature of my theory was that it might be possible to establish that, at least, part of it was correct. Counting back from 2017, Mickey would have been born circa 1912. A search of death records for the period between then and 1930, or even as far as 1935, might well establish that he was orphaned at an early age. It then struck me that there might be another angle of approach. The census records for 1911 should show who was living in the farm cottage at the time.

A phone call to Ciaran revealed he had not checked census records. He had simply been curious about Mickey’s age, and, having started with birth registers, just kept going. I also enquired if he had checked for any grave for Mickey’s parents. He replied that he had. Mickey had been buried in a new grave since there was no record of any grave of any relatives of his. There is a McAteer family plot in the cemetery, but they are a quite separate family.

This information made me rethink my plans. The parents had not been buried in the local cemetery, and I had no way of discovering where they had been buried. Their Christian names were unknown, so any search would be pointless. This left the census records, which were easily checked online. In 1911, the only person recorded as living in the cottage was a Michael Christopher McAteer. Similarly, in 1901, only Michael Christopher McAteer was in residence. This simply could not be Mickey! The earliest age at which he could possibly have been living there alone was twelve, and that was stretching credulity. This would mean that he was born no later than 1889, putting him at 128 or older when he died. This was impossible to reconcile with him looking like a man in his sixties when he died. The only explanation that I could think of was that Mickey’s father had been widowed before 1901 or had maybe never married. Shortly after 1911, he fathered an illegitimate child whose birth was registered using the mother’s surname. His father died when Mickey was around twelve or thirteen, and then Mickey took over the farm whilst adopting McAteer as his surname. His mother died shortly afterwards and was buried in her family plot.

I was happy with this theory until, just as I was dozing off in bed that night, the question of his father’s grave, or absence thereof, reared its head again. Where was he buried? The awful thought came to my mind that Mickey had resented his father. Illegitimacy carried quite a stigma in those times. Or perhaps his father mistreated his mother. Perhaps the resentment was sufficiently strong to drive Mickey, once he had acquired the physical strength, to murder his father and bury him somewhere on the farm.

Once again, I had a theory based on improbabilities and, this time, no realistic prospect of testing it. I might be able to divine water, but I doubted whether my rods would be of any use in detecting buried human remains which, by now, would consist of just bones and teeth. If I were to suggest to the authorities that they excavate up to forty acres, my sanity would certainly be called into question.

Mickey would just have to remain a mystery.

Chapter 3

Life settled back into its normal routine until, three weeks later, I was accosted in the street by Billy. “What sort of a complete eejit are you anyway?” he demanded. “I paid good money for a guy to sink a few boreholes in that circle you drew. But if you go down about fifteen feet, you meet solid rock. Soft ground, my arse! I also got him to check the area with a magnetometer. It didn’t register the slightest flicker. Did you think I came up the Clanrye in a bubble? All that is saving you from me handing you his invoice is that he found the stream exactly where you marked it.”

I tried to explain that all I had said was that I had gotten a weak reaction with the rods, but Billy was not interested. So, as far as he was concerned, some fanciful notions of mine had cost him money, and he was not best pleased. I had to admit to myself that he was much closer to the truth than he could possibly realise. Even though I had acted with the best of intentions, I did not like the fact that I had cost Billy money.

The encounter unsettled me. Was this fairy highway going to continue to haunt me? I decided that I might as well discover as much as possible about the feature. At present, it was only an assumption that it ran from the fairy fort to the fairy thorn trees. It needed to be mapped for its entire length.

But I needed to be careful how I went about the task. I could not mark the route on the ground. If Billy, or anyone he had hired to do any work at the site, spotted any marks, their suspicions could be aroused. I would be a prime suspect and what explanation could I possibly offer? So, off I went to Waterstones and had them order in the relevant Ordnance Survey map in the six-inches-to-a-mile series.

So, I arrived at the fairy thorn trees one morning carrying a packed lunch, the map, my divining rods and a borrowed battery-powered Geiger counter. I had absolutely no idea whether the feature was likely to be radioactive. There seemed no harm in checking it out. The local rock is granite so there would be some low-level background radiation, but the level of this could be checked away from the fairy highway.

My rods revealed that the barrier encircled the fairy thorn trees, enclosing an area around forty feet in diameter. From this circle emerged the fairy highway bounded by two barriers running parallel to each other about five feet apart. Nowhere along the entire length of the barriers was there any sign of abnormal radioactivity. At the fairy fort, the barrier enclosed a circular area this time over two hundred feet in diameter. As I proceeded, I stopped every so often to draw the line of the barrier as accurately as I could on the map.

Satisfied that I had mapped the full length of the feature and that there was little more that I could discover, I unpacked my lunch. I ate it on a smooth rock overlooking a fertile valley. It was very pleasant. As I ate, I mulled over what I knew. Looked at from first principles, my knowledge was very limited. All I really knew was that I could detect some sort of barrier with my divining rods and that it was not even a proper barrier because, without the rods, it just did not exist. Nor was it there if I carried both rods in the one hand. So, was it the rods or was it me that detected a barrier? Whatever the case, it was only supposition that it had anything to do with fairies. It could be anything. Perhaps it was some secret military project. Who knows what new technology might be involved? Perhaps it was Ireland’s equivalent of Area 51. Maybe mysterious Mickey was just a delusional old man or just maybe he had been in contact with fairies. What was it he had spoken to Ciaran and written on the old newspaper? It took a few seconds for me to recall the words.Clanwe yashpak! Yes,clanwe yashpak! Without realising it, I said them aloud.

“Colhaboo.” I heard a voice behind me and turned to see a man about five foot four tall who had a very pale complexion and wore a silver-coloured robe that appeared to be woven from some sort of metallic thread. “I beg your pardon,” I said, “but who are you?”

“Call me Ixos,” he replied. “Please tell me who you are, what are those metal rods, and how is it you speak my language?”

To tell the truth, at this point, I could not tell whether this was really happening or whether it was part of some weird dream. I told him to call me Tony and gave a detailed description of water divining. “But do you not detect other things with your rods?” he asked. This question disconcerted me and, rather than answer it, I asked why he had said that. “My companions and I have noticed disturbances to the perimeter of our domain that would seem to have been caused by your divining rods. We would like to investigate the matter.”

Clearly, Ixos knew something of my encounters with the barrier, but just who was he? He did not appear to be in any way threatening. Indeed, his manner was very calm and relaxed. So, I described my experiences with the barrier both at Billy’s plot and between the thorn tree and the fort. I explained that I had never previously encountered anything of that nature and enquired as to what exactly the barrier was and who exactly Ixos was.

Ixos stated that he would answer my questions but, before he did so, he would like me to answer his earlier question about my knowledge of his language. He listened intently to my explanation thatclanwe yashpakwere words I had come across recently. I said that I believed that they translated into “always strive for the greater good”. I had no idea as to from what language they came and certainly did not know any other words from that language. Since Ixos pressed me for more information on just how I had come across the words, I outlined my conversation with Ciaran about Mickey.

The initial answers to my two questions left me just a little wiser. Ixos was a Carnacan. The barrier served to separate the domain in which Ixos lived from the rest of the world. It also protected from radiation emitted by the sun. The term Carnacan was meaningless to me. The bit about the barrier told me very little and did not seem very truthful. What use was a barrier if anyone could walk through it unless they happened to be carrying divining rods, which circumstance would so seldom occur as to be statistically insignificant? So, I embarked on a long series of questions. As the conversation continued, the realisation slowly dawned on me that Ixos would answer any question but would not volunteer information. Subsequently, I found that this was a character trait possessed also by his companions.

It transpired that a Carnacan was an inhabitant of Carnac, which is one of five planets orbiting a star which is part of the group we refer to as Cassiopeia. Carnac is of similar size to Earth and orbits its sun at a similar distance. Its surface has a greater proportion of land than Earth with land accounting for close to 60% of the total global area. The climate is broadly comparable to Earth’s, although slightly cooler. This is due to differences in the radiation emitted by the two stars. The population has been stable for the past couple of thousand years at approximately 4.5 billion. Life expectancy is approximately 160 years. Carnacan years and Earth years differ little in duration.

Carnacan scientific knowledge and technology are much more advanced than its terrestrial equivalent. One consequence of this is that there is no requirement for most of the population to engage in any work. So, the practice has developed whereby the first twenty-five years of life are spent in study. Then, there followed twenty-five years of service to the greater good. The rest of Carnacan life is spent in what humans call retirement.

Ixos and his companions had come to Earth as part of a research project involving the study of humanity. I wanted to find out more about this project but, at this point, Ixos terminated the conversation. Understandably so, because we had been talking for several hours having spent a long time on the barrier.