A Cage of Roots by Matt Griffin

drunk and fell to earth in a cacophony of snapping and creaking. Then a strange sound – the earth being ripped like paper – and the evergreens parted a minute later. Fergus marched towards them, carrying something huge on his shoulder. He arrived at the fire in ten long strides and dropped his burden down beside it, sending the flames flickering sideways in retreat. It was a massive, freshly hewn tree stump. It sat beside them, hunched on coiled roots still coated with muck. The wound, where the trunk was severed, was clean across, like it had been cut with a cheese wire.
    ‘Spent ages looking for the right one, and sure, wouldn’t you know, there was one only a few metres in. Typical.’ He sat by Taig with a thud, clapping dust from his enormous hands. ‘What are we talking about?’
    ‘Just telling them how I’m getting on in years, brother.’ Taig replied.
    ‘Ah, I see. Mad, eh lads?’ he said, apparently earnest, to the three stunned friends.
    Lann was inspecting the stump. ‘Well-found, Fergus. This will work. Oscar, Sean and Benvy. We three brothers are the sons of Cormac, warriors of the land of Fal – what you know now as Ireland. We are not Ayla’s uncles – we are her bodyguards, charged with protecting her from a fate that has hunted her for millennia. Ayla is not who youthink she is either. She is a person of great power, even if she doesn’t know it herself. Ayla, you see, is the only key to a great and terrible evil being unleashed on the world. We waited more than three thousand years for her to arrive.’
    Lann paused for a moment, and looked into the flames. ‘The Old Ones – men and women of sorcery – saved us all by banishing her, unborn, before her power could be used by their enemies. She would live, as she had every right to, but in an age when her ties to that great evil were severed with time. We were given the task of waiting. Three thousand years we have lived. It took only thirteen more to fail. For that, our hearts are broken, but we must get her back, and to do that we need you. We cannot go back alone.’
    Sean rolled his eyes and let out a short, disbelieving laugh.
    Benvy stood again. ‘You are all mental! I want to go now.’
    ‘This isn’t funny!’ shouted Finny. ‘We need to find her! I’m going.’
    The three friends were on their feet and setting off away from the fire when Taig, impossibly quick, was in front of them, with arms out wide to bar the way and shaking his head. Finny bolted to the side, but ran headlong into the wall of Fergus, who looked down at him, eyes glimmering light-green, and ordered through his beard: ‘Back, lad!’
    They were set before the tree stump.
    ‘See the rings, lads?’ Lann said. ‘As the tree grew, it surrounded its old self with the new. You can see the younger tree just by looking to the centre. Such is time. You can go back, you just have to “dig down to it”, so to speak. We know the places to dig.’
    Sean snorted. ‘Time-travel? You’re talking about time-travel? Let me tell you: time-travel can’t exist. Believe me, I wish it did! I wish all of this were true, just like in my books. But it’s bull!’
    Benvy and Finny stood boldly on either side of him, shoulders thrust back in challenge.
    ‘Total and utter …’ Benvy began, but she stopped short.
    There was a noise, low and faint at first, but gathering weight. It was a hum: deep-seated, ocean-floor-low. It pinched the pits of the friends’ stomachs and tugged at their ears. They looked to Lann and his brothers, and could tell instantly that they were the source of the noise. The giant men were barely visible now in the darkness, their right sides cast in orange from the blaze beside them, which glinted in their eyes like red stars. By now it was hard to tell one from the other; they were just impressions of the men, looming ever larger, black spectres revealed by the firelight.
    One of them bent down to the stump and began to run a long finger along the