Free The Last of the High Kings by Kate Thompson Page A

when you came in the door.”
    Donal seized the unexpected opportunity. “Do you believe in ghosts, Mikey?”
    â€œI do, begod,” said Mikey, without hesitation. “I usedn’t to, but these days I do.”
    â€œHave you ever seen one?”
    The kettle had boiled, but Mikey ignored it. “Well,” he said, “that depends on what you mean by seen . You can’t see a ghost the way you can see you or me. You can’t look straight at them, like. You just—” He stopped, aware of the wide-eyed, earnest gazes of the two children. “Sure, what am I on about?” He went on. “Pay no attention to me now, you hear? I’m getting soft in the head in my old age.”
    He turned and poured water into the teapot to warm it.
    â€œYou can only see them out of the corner of your eye, can’t you?” said Donal seriously.
    Mikey put the teapot down and turned to face him. He reached for a chair back to support himself, missed it the first time, caught it the second.
    â€œCome here to me,” he said, in the sternest voice Donal had ever heard him use. “Did your father ever say anything more about that helicopter?”
    Donal colored, embarrassed by J.J. “I think he forgot,” he said.
    â€œAnd did you remind him?”
    Donal nodded. He wanted to tell Mikey what J.J. had told him, that he was only messing and had never really meant it, but he couldn’t find the courage.
    â€œGood man!” said Mikey, his spirits visibly rising.
    â€œBut you should talk to him about it yourself,” said Donal hurriedly. “Why don’t you phone him?”
    â€œI will,” said Mikey, turning back to the teapot. “Now. What about a tune?”
    Â 
    When Donal and Jenny got back home a couple of hours later, they found J.J. frantically trying to organize musicians for the céilí that night. Since most of his big tours happened during the summer, the house dances ran from September to May and then stopped for three months. The last one of the season was happening that evening, and J.J. had forgotten about ituntil now. He and Hazel normally played fiddle, with Aisling backing them on the electric keyboard, and more often than not, his mother, Helen, would come down from Dublin and join them on the concertina.
    â€œWhy didn’t she come down and then take Hazel back with her tomorrow?” he asked Aisling.
    â€œWhy didn’t you ask her to?” she answered.
    She took Aidan with her and went off to organize the food and drink, and J.J. phoned Flo Fahy, who was delighted to come along and join him with her concertina. And so it was that the céilí, like every céilí that had ever been held at the Liddy house, turned out to be a resounding success.

16
    Jenny didn’t think the archaeologists would work on a Sunday, but she went up to the beacon anyway, just in case. She waited for a couple of hours, even though it was pouring with rain, and when she was certain that they weren’t going to come, she joined the púka at the edge of the mountain, and together they descended into the woods.
    It was the púka who had told Jenny that she was wasting her time at school. The sum of human knowledge, he told her, was getting smaller and smaller, and school was one of the main reasons for this. The human habit of imprisoning their children in learning factories led to their being overloaded with information and deprived of experience. The study of nature had been reduced to an occasional discretionaryramble, and cut off from its source, human life was fast becoming safe, sterile, and completely meaningless. Jenny understood only about half of what the púka said, but that half was enough. What he taught her made far more sense than what they tried to teach her at school.
    Like the ghost. It was the púka who had told her about him and how she would be able to see him if she sat still for long enough and waited. It