August, 2011; London, England
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Every third week or so, Northern Ireland is brought low by something that isn't quite homesickness, but more a yearning for the simpler days of his childhood, when neatly folded clean clothes appeared miraculously in his chest of drawers at regular intervals and he never ran out of socks.
This affliction generally strikes him whenever his stipend is running out and he's been surviving on baked beans on toast, cheese sandwiches, and other variations around the theme of cheap white bread for several days. Then, even England's charred roasts and granite-like fruit cake seem as though they would be ambrosial in comparison, and he begins to long for his brother's company.
The last dregs of his bank account are then routinely spent on travelling to London, where England will welcome him with lectures about his fiscal irresponsibility, but, more importantly, a cup of tea, endless supply of biscuits, and an offer to wash as many loads of laundry as Northern Ireland has managed to cram into his suitcase.
Even though these visits don't fall on a particular date with any regularity – Northern Ireland's concept of budgeting is an extremely flexible one, and highly dependent on the number of video game releases that interest him month on month – and Northern Ireland always forgets to call ahead, England is usually standing by and prepared to greet his arrival, nevertheless.
Today, however, Northern Ireland has not only had to let himself into England's house, but put the kettle on, too. The water within it takes over two minutes to boil, suggesting that it had been flat cold, which Northern Ireland finds slightly perplexing. He's familiar enough with his brother's routines to know that he should have recently prepared his post-lunch brew, and taken it into the dining room to drink whilst he frowns over the Sunday paper and reads articles he finds particularly aggravating out to his fae.
Equally perplexing, then, is that the dining room has not only a dearth of England, but also signs that he might have been called away unexpectedly. There is no Times spread out across the table, the outer edges of its pages crumpled by angrily clutching hands; no pen set aside, unsheathed in readiness to do battle with the crossword. It's as if he was never there.
Northern Ireland checks the library afterwards, just in case England has suffered from a fit of spontaneity so violent that no one room could contain it, and then the living room and study. He cautiously peeks into the parlour.
All of them are empty.
Anxiety mounting, he hurries up to the bedrooms, taking the stairs two at a time. The only thing stirring in any of them is one of England's fae: a squat, rotund thing with a pale face that is permanently twisted into the expression of a being cursed with perpetual heartburn. Northern Ireland thinks England had named it George.
Northern Ireland just calls it fucking creepy, like the rest of his brother's magical menagerie. There's something horribly unnatural about the way it moves – how they all move – as though its joints are strung with elastic instead of set like hinges, and its legs don't bend but flap and curve over its taloned feet as it scurries towards him.
Northern Ireland takes a step back from it as it nears, and then a second, much larger one, when it grabs hold of his trouser leg. It's dug its claws too deeply into the fabric to be so simply dislodged, though, so all he accomplishes is dragging it along with him as he moves
"Get off," Northern Ireland growls. "We have an arrangement, remember? You don't touch me, I don't flatten you and then flush you down the fucking toilet. That ring any bells?"
'George' displays no hint of either recognition or contrition. It simply chatters its pointed teeth at him and then parts its thin lips in its usual vacant, humourless grin.
Northern Ireland looks down at it, considering whether or not he should attempt to physically break its grip. On the one hand, it would bring his arm into biting range, and it always turns his stomach when he's forced by circumstance to touch any of the fae's slimy slug-like skin, in any case. There is no other hand. As ideas go, it's nothing but shite from beginning to end.
"Look, I was just trying to find my brother," he says instead, aiming for the soothing tone that he's often heard England employ whenever one of the little bastards has sunk its teeth into him and he can't shake them loose. "I'm sorry I disturbed you, or trespassed on your territory, or whatever the hell else it is that you think is worth breaking a thirty-year-old pact for. Let go of me, and we'll both forget it ever happened, okay?"
He offers 'George' as close to a smile as he can manage, and it rewards the effort by extending its claws until their tips graze against Northern Ireland's skin. Thus secured, it extends its free hand and points a hoary finger towards the window, gibbering more high-pitched nonsense all the while.
It's at times like these – and only times like these – Northern Ireland wishes that he'd listened a little more closely in the past when his brothers started droning on about magic. Maybe they'd be able to translate what 'George' is trying to tell him, but as he's carefully maintained his ignorance about such things, it remains nothing more than meaningless noise.
"You want to go outside?" he ventures, experimentally and none too confident of achieving any success. The list of human words 'George' appears to understand probably wouldn't even stretch the vocabulary skills of the world's most taciturn parrot. "You heard something out there? Saw something? Some kid's fallen down a well? England –"
At the name, 'George's screeching reaches a crescendo and then suddenly cuts out. In the resounding silence afterwards, it disentangles itself from Northern Ireland's trousers and stands looking up at him expectantly, shifting its meagre weight from its left leg to its right and then right to left, over and over again.
It looks as though it's desperate for a wee, but Northern Ireland suspects that whatever's troubling it is most likely not toilet-related. His best guess is that something untoward has happened to his brother, though he knows better than try and confirm that with 'George'.
"Go on," he says. "Take me to England."
'George' scampers down the stairs, through the kitchen, and then scratches at the back door like a cat, making a soft, lost whimpering sound all the while.
"He's out in the garden, then," Northern Ireland concludes aloud, more for his own benefit than the fae's. Saying the words makes them seem like a promise, somehow, and therefore something he cannot walk away from in good conscience.
And he needs that, because walking away is precisely what he wants to do. The fae are not easily rattled by commonplace incidents and accidents, and England is even less easily harmed. When 'George's distress is added to England's absence, the inescapable conclusion is that his brother has been laid low by some manner of magical devastation that Northern Ireland is completely ill-equipped to deal with.
Still, with Ireland, Scotland, and Wales all hundreds of miles away, Northern Ireland is all England's got. He takes a deep breath, steels his nerves – and would gird his loins, too, if he wasn't improperly attired for such an undertaking – and takes hold of the door handle.
Then he pauses, thinks better of it, and peers out of the kitchen window to get the lay of the land first.
To his relief, the garden is neither beset by a rain of occult fire, nor overrun with eldritch horrors, only the fat grey squirrel that has claimed the number three slot in England's nemesis list due to its habit of raiding his bird feeders.
Beyond the thieving rodent, England's roses bob their heavy heads and his washing flaps lazily in the breeze. Nothing appears out of place save for a single dark spot at the farthest end of his precisely manicured lawn. That looks, Northern Ireland thinks, rather like a Clue.
It becomes no less portentous as he warily approaches it, but ever more disturbing, because proximity provides the revelation that the dark spot is comprised of England's shirt, shoes, underthings and trousers, discarded in a tangled heap.
Northern Ireland's head fills against his will with a whole host of possible explanations for his discovery, each more dreadful than the last.
The least horrendous of these, and therefore the one he dwells on the longest, is that England has been abducted by the very aliens that America volubly insists have been visiting earth for centuries for the express purpose of fucking around with livestock and sticking things up people's arses. As Northern Ireland has never been able to reconcile such behaviour with the advanced level of technology and civilisation that would seem to be a prerequisite for interstellar travel, he's never been especially convinced by such stories.
Much more convincing is the idea that England had stripped voluntarily. For a man who is as zealous as a puritan when it comes to ensuring his modesty sober, England is remarkably eager to expose his skin given the slightest opportunity when he's pissed. Nevertheless, whilst his brother's alcohol intake and drinking habits are hardly the healthiest, Northern Ireland has never known him to be exhibitionist-level drunk at one o'clock on a Sunday afternoon except in the most trying of times.
Of course, if he hadn't undressed himself, someone else might have done it for him. If America or Portugal had happened to drop by, then... Northern Ireland's mind makes a protective loop back around to the alien's, sparing him the full horror of completing that particular thought. He rotates through this unproductive mental cycle several times before eventually managing to wrench himself out of it.
Once liberated from his inertial paralysis, he continues his investigation by gingerly nudging at the pile of clothes with the toe of his trainer. They fail to melt through the rubber on contact, and no swarm of flesh-eating beetles bursts free of them, which helps him discount two of his more fanciful explanations for their presence.
The shifting of fabric does reveal a page torn from a magazine, however. The singeing around its edges does lend credence to the prospect that England had spontaneously combusted, even if his intact clothes do not. Given his brother's normal reaction when rubbish blows into his garden, Northern Ireland wouldn't be surprised if his blood had finally reached its literal boiling point at the sight of that single scrap of paper.
"Master Kirkland!" rings out suddenly and very stridently, distracting Northern Ireland from his contemplations.
Given the tone and form of address, he doesn't need to turn his head to know who's demanding his attention, but he turns it all the same, because Mr Featherstonehaugh will doubtless complain about his bad manners and the deplorable state of today's youth at tedious length if he doesn't react with alacrity.
The man in question is scowling over the fence he shares with England, his moustache bristling with indignation.
"How can I help you, Mr Featherstonehaugh?" Northern Ireland asks him with what he had thought was perfect politeness, but the man's glare only sharpens in response.
"Where's your brother?" he asks brusquely.
Northern Ireland wishes he knew. "He's just popped out for a bit," he says. "I'm sure he'll be home soon."
Mr Featherstonehaugh harrumphs in disgust. "A likely story. I've been knocking on his door every half hour since eleven o'clock this morning and seen neither hide nor hair of him."
"I can pass a on message to him, if you like."
"You can pass on more than a message, my lad." Mr Featherstonehaugh ducks down behind the fence for a moment, and then reappears clutching a black and tan Jack Russell terrier, which he holds so far outstretched from him that Northern Ireland's first thought is that it must have rolled in fox shit, as dogs are wont to do. "You can give him this. I presume it's his."
Northern Ireland shakes his head. "He doesn't own a dog," he says, with a certain amount of residual bitterness left over from the many decades of begging and pleading on his part that had gone cruelly unsatisfied in that regard.
"I can't think who else's it could be. It was in his garden, barking incessantly. I thought the poor little thing had been abandoned."
Mr Featherstonehaugh's mouth twitches slightly. Northern Ireland thinks he might be attempting to smile, but the necessary muscles must have become so atrophied over his many years of disapproving of everyone and everything that crosses his path that his efforts come to naught.
"That's awful," Northern Ireland says, dashing forward to take the dog off Mr Featherstonehaugh before his obvious pity gets the better of him and he decides to keep it. He can't imagine that England would turn a stray back out onto the street, especially one that had wandered onto his property in search of shelter. With any luck, he'll feel obliged to keep it. "Here, I'll take it inside and give it something to eat whilst we wait for Arthur to get back."
Though the dog had huddled docile and quiescent between Mr Featherstonehaugh's hands as they talked, its tail starts wagging so forcefully when Northern Ireland reaches out to take it from him that its entire body quivers in sympathy with the movement., almost as if it recognises him.
That impression only intensifies when it gives an excited yip and swipes its tongue, just once, against the underside of Northern Ireland's chin. Although Northern Ireland normally resists anthropomorphising animals, he can't help but think it looks embarrassed after the lick, its ears drooping as it tucks its muzzle down against its chest.
There are two splotches of tan on its forehead that give it the appearance of having thick brows also drop down low, shadowing its eyes. Its green eyes. Northern Ireland has never seen a Jack Russell with eyes that colour before.
Scotland and Wales had once tried to engage Northern Ireland in a conversation about transformation magic, but he'd succeeded in ignoring most of it, save for one small detail, which had piqued his interest solely because the same concept had been raised in the Discworld book he was reading at the time.
"No matter what form a person takes, their eyes always stay the same colour," Wales had said. "It's often the only way you can tell that they've been transformed at all."
"Oh," Northern Ireland says. "Shit."