The Pooka levered himself to his feet. His body was sore but no longer wracked with pain, and the burning glede upon his neck had cooled a degree or perhaps more. He yawned hugely and shook himself from ears to tail. “I’m alive,” he said. “Which comes as a pleasant surprise. As to the rest, I wish I were back in Erin, deep in a nice bog, and a rainy night descending.”
“And so do I, trickster. So do I.” For a moment, Maeve allowed her true face to show through the glamour, gaunt and fierce as a mewed hawk. “Now wake your mortal, trickster. I’ve the floor to sweep and the charms to make for any iron-sick Folk who chance to wash up at my door the day.”
So the Pooka nudged Liam O’Casey with his nose and gave him to know it was time to be up and about.
Liam awoke with a foul mouth, a griping in his belly, and an aching head. Dunking his head in a barrel of stale water did something to resign him to a new day. A five-cent beer and a slice of soda bread hot from the oven did more. Thus fortified, Liam O’Casey set out into the April morning in search of employment.
Madra came with him.
Left to his own devices, Liam might have stopped to pass the time of day with someone, preferably a mortal like himself, who might give him advice a mortal could use. As it was, he could only follow Madra, trying not to get knocked down by a heavily laden cart or trip over a feral pig or run into a pushcart or one of the hundreds of gray-faced men on their way to work. He was hot and out of breath when Madra stopped in front of a big square clapboard warehouse.
Liam looked up at the sign: GREEN’S FINE FURNITURE. EST. 1840. EBENEZER GREEN, PROP.
“No doubt it’s slipped your mind that I’m a horseman, Madra, not a carpenter.”
Madra heaved a sigh. “There’s a stable behind, you great idiot—I can smell it. Go on in now; it can’t hurt to ask.”
Liam brushed down his jacket, straightened his cap, and walked into the warehouse. The place was busy as an ant’s nest, with an army of roughly dressed men running about with raw lumber and finished furniture, while a burly man in a loud silk waistcoat over his shirtsleeves and a porkpie hat shouted orders. Presuming this to be Ebenezer Green, Liam approached and greeted him in his best English.
Mr. Green turned a pig-eyed glare on him. “Speak American, Paddy, or git out. Better yet, do both. This is a Know-Nothing shop. We don’t do business with Micks and such-like trash.”
The man’s voice was flat and loud, his accent unfamiliar. His tone and look, however, were as clear as the finest glass goblet.
“I’ll be bidding you good day, then,” Liam said. “Mr. Know-Nothing, sir.” Then he turned on his heel and marched out.
“It seems a strange thing to be bragging of,” he said as he and Madra left Green’s Fine Furniture behind them.
“He certainly knows nothing about horses,” Madra said. “Did you see his nags? Like harrows they were, draped in moth-eaten hides. You’re well out of there.”
The next stable Madra found was attached to a hauling company near the docks. It was run by Cornelius Vanderhoof, who, like all Dutchmen, didn’t care which language a man spoke as long as he was willing to take a dollar in payment for ten hours of work.
“I’ve no need of a stableman,” he told Liam kindly enough. “I have two horse boys, and that’s all I need.”
“All boys are good for is to feed and water and muck out,” Liam said. “I’d care for them like children, I would.”
Mr. Vanderhoof shook his head. “Come back in May. I might have work for you, if you can handle a team.”
And so it went all the weary day. One livery stable proprietor had just hired someone. Another offered Liam fifty cents to shovel muck. Another shook his head before Liam even opened his mouth.
“It’s April,” he said. “Nobody will be hiring until summer. You’re Irish, right? Why not carry bricks or dig foundations like the rest of your countrymen?”
“I’m a horse trainer,” Liam said, hating the pleading note in his voice.
“I don’t care if you’re the king of County Down,” the livery man said. “Ostlers are a dime a dozen in these parts. You want to work with horses, take a train west.”
As they emerged from the livery stable, Madra broke the heavy silence. “It’s getting on toward dusk. Shall we be heading home?”
Liam looked at the heavy carts piled high with crates and boxes lumbering over the rutted streets, at the ragged, gray-faced men plodding homeward in the fading light, at the street children, dirty and barefoot, lingering by pushcarts in hopes of a dropped apple or an unwatched cabbage. His ears rang with the rumble of wheels, the squeak of unoiled axles, the shouting and swearing and laughter.
“I have no home,” he said. “Just now it seems to me I’ll never have a home again.”
He waited for Madra to call him a pitiful squinter or prescribe a pint or a song to clear his mind. But Madra just plodded down the street, head down and tail adroop, as tired and discouraged as Liam himself.
Being immortal, Folk do not commonly find time hanging heavy on their hands. A day is but an eyeblink in their lives; a month can pass in the drawing of a breath. The Pooka had never imagined being as aware of the arc of the sun across the sky or the length of time separating one meal from the next as he had been since his life had been linked to Liam’s.
Today had been a weary length indeed.
At first, the Pooka had simply been glad to be alive and reasonably well. Maeve’s charm itched, but it was a healing itch, and he felt some strength return to his limbs. He kept running up to railings and barrels and iron-shod wheels just to touch them and sniff them and prove once again that they had no power to hurt him.
The encounter with Ebenezer Green shook him. Had he been on his game, the Pooka would have nosed out what manner of man Green was before they’d even crossed the threshold.
But the Pooka was not on his game. A whole day on the town, and he hadn’t tricked so much as the price of a drink out of a living soul. The fear grew on him that Maeve’s charm had cured his iron-sickness at the expense of his magic. What he needed was something to knock him loose from the limited round of mortal concerns he’d been treading since Liam had freed him from the poacher’s trap. He needed a bet or a challenge or a trick. Something tried and true, for preference not too dangerous, that would put him on his mettle and bring Liam a bit of silver.
“Liam,” he said. “I have an idea. Tomorrow, as soon as it’s light, we’ll take ourselves up out of this sty to wherever it is the rich folk live. You shall sell me as a ratter for the best price you can get.”
“Shall I so?” asked Liam wearily. “And what if no man needs a ratter or will not buy an Irish one?”
“There’s always a man wants to buy a dog,” the Pooka said confidently.
Liam shook his head. “I will not, and there’s an end. What kind of man do you take me for, to sell a friend for silver money?”
“Oh, I’d not stay sold,” the Pooka assured him. “I’d run away and meet you at Maeve’s before the cat can lick her ear.”