Troubles may ofttimes be so dire that they cannot get better. But they are never so dire that they still cannot get worse. -- Sharon Kay Penman, Falls the Shadow

People have always liked to give names to the places they live. It makes their villages and towns seem more like a community and less like a random collection of houses.

But giving names to things gives those things life. They cease to be inanimate objects or abstract concepts, and they become something comprehensible and almost tangible. Death is easier to fear when it has a definite form, instead of being a simple cessation of life. And so the Grim Reaper took shape in people's minds, and became an understandable symbol of something that could not be understood. A doll is just a collection of cloth and stuffing, but when a child gives it a name it becomes their friend and companion.

A group of houses is just a dot on a map. But give it a name, and it becomes a place. A village. A home.

Given enough time, it becomes a person.

Armagh and her brothers and sisters had become personifications when enough people had called them home for long enough. They had their own personalities and goals. But even when they rarely saw each other, they were all aware of each other's presence at the edges of their consciousness. None of them had ever completely disappeared.

Until sixty years ago.

To this day no one knew what had happened to Belfast. One day she had been there, and the next she'd disappeared. Everyone knew who was responsible. Ballymena and some of the others had set out to make some of the Irish invading their towns disappear in retaliation. But for years the towns had had to live without their queen.

The only thing more unsettling was her sudden return.

Belfast reappeared as suddenly and inexplicably as she had left. She said nothing about where she'd gone or why. She acted as if she'd last seen her siblings six days ago, not sixty years ago. But the malice and cruelty that always clung to her like a cloak had intensified. Instead of being like a cloak, it was now like a second skin. And she made her displeasure known.

All over Belfast -- the city -- people dropped dead. The official cause was a heart attack, even though none of the deceased had ever had heart trouble before. Buildings cracked and fell. Officially, it was because of structural instabilities. Streets suddenly ran into places they had never gone before. People woke up to find the view from their houses had changed. Workers found their places of employment had relocated without warning. There was no official explanation for any of this. It was much too strange.

The personifications knew what was causing this. Or rather, who.

Belfast, the personification, was angry. For some reason she was unable to bring her wrath down upon the people who had captured her. And so her rage had nowhere to go, and instead she vented it upon the people unfortunate enough to be nearby.

Armagh trembled to think what would happen unless someone did something soon. But how could they do anything when their queen refused to tell them what was wrong? Belfast would never answer another personification's questions.

There was only one solution.

They would have to find someone else to investigate this.

~~~~

Dani's first idea had proved useless. She hadn't tried it yet, but she suspected her second idea would be just as useless. The police were unlikely to let her investigate the murder scene herself, after all.

And how was she to go to Enniskillen without raising the children's suspicions? Not to mention the police's?

She puzzled over this as she placed a pot full of macaroni cheese on the stove. Then it hit her. Her mother's fiftieth birthday was coming up in a week. Dani had already sent a card. She hadn't visited on any of her parents' previous birthdays since she moved out. She had learnt that in the interest of staying sane, her parents were best kept at arm's length. But what could be more natural than taking the children to visit their sort-of grandmother on her birthday?

~~~~

The children made their own plans. Those plans also involved visiting Enniskillen.

"We could get a bus," Elias suggested.

This suggestion was crushed mercilessly by his siblings.

"Get a bus?" Rosie repeated scornfully. "And where would we get the money to get a bus? Dani would want to know why we suddenly wanted our pocket money early. And we're too young to get a bus on our own!"

"Not to mention, we'd be gone for hours," Amy said. "Dani would want to know where we were. And what bus driver would let all of us on his bus?"

It was a problem. A real problem. Teenagers in books always had an easy time investigating mysteries. But in real life...

"I have an idea," Julie said. She had listened to everyone else's ideas with the sense of superiority that came from believing she was much smarter than them. Now she was going to set them all straight and leave them awed at her intelligence... or so she thought. "We can get Hotaru to investigate for us."

This suggestion did not receive the ringing acclamation she had expected it would.

Kevin and Imogene rolled their eyes in unison. Jack snorted. Everyone else looked at her as if she'd claimed "snow is white" was the greatest scientific discovery of the age.

"She already is investigating," Elias said in the pitying tone he always used when he thought his sister was being more than usually stupid. "But she might miss something. The police always have more than one detective examine a crime scene."

Julie refused to give up so easily. "If we give her a list of things to look for--"

"Do you think the murderer would be helpful enough to leave lots of clues lying around?" Amy asked, raising an eyebrow. "The police would have caught them ages ago if they did."

At this point Max decided that he had been silent while everyone else talked for long enough. "I hate this detective thing!" he complained, folding his arms and pouting. "It's boring! I want to do something fun!"

The children's attempt at being detectives seemed to have come to a dead end.

Until Dani made an earth-shattering announcement.

Unseen in the background, Fate was quietly arranging events so they would cause the most worry and inconvenience imaginable.

~~~~

"Enniskillen?" Several voices cried in unison. "We're going to Enniskillen?"

"Yes, we're going to Enniskillen," Dani said patiently. "From the looks on your faces, you'd think I'd said we were going to the moon!"

Everyone looked at everyone else. Everyone saw their own amazement reflected in everyone else's faces. A few of the younger children were about to ask questions, but the older ones knew better than to look a gift horse in the mouth.

"Are we going on Saturday?" Kevin asked with an air of nonchalance.

Dani shook her head as she put slices of lasagna on their plates. "No, on Monday. I've spoken your teachers and told them it's your grandmother's birthday." Her face twisted into a wry grimace for a split second. "You'll have to bring gifts for her."

Max, who had yet to learn the word "tact", just had to open his big mouth. "But I thought you don't like your parents!"

All the children cringed. Dani almost dropped Imogene's lasagna on the floor.

"Max!" she said in the sharp tone she only used when they'd truly angered her. "You mustn't say such things!"

If Max was older or wiser, he would have known to stay silent. Instead... "Why not? It's true. And you said we should always say what's true!"

Dani closed her eyes. Her mouth moved in the way it always did when she was counting to ten. Or maybe she was praying for patience. The children were never quite sure which it was. "Max. There are some times when telling the truth is rude, mean-spirited, or just plain unnecessary. Use your common sense!"

Uh-oh, Cathy thought. She's basically told him he can avoid telling the truth if he thinks he doesn't have to.

From the looks on her siblings' faces, they thought the same thing.

~~~~

Monday came, as Mondays always do. For once the children looked forward to this Monday. Instead of school, a holiday awaited them. And they would have a chance to actually be detectives on the scene of the crime! ...Or so they thought.

First they had the drama of the journey.

Dani went out to start Sennacherib while the children were at their breakfast. She turned the key in the ignition. Chug-chug-chug went the engine. But it didn't start properly.

She looked at the dashboard. No wonder it wouldn't start! There was no diesel in the tank.

This was not an auspicious beginning to the day.

By the time the children had piled into the van, Dani was bitterly regretting ever deciding to make this trip. She could have sworn there was more fuel in the van the last time she drove it, and the trip to the garage and back with a heavy carton of diesel had not put her in a good mood. And now the children were talking nineteen to the dozen and doing their best to deafen her.

She turned around in the driver's seat and held up her hand for silence.

"Everyone, go back inside and go to the bathroom," she said. "I don't care if you've already been or if you think you don't need to go. I don't want to hear 'Please, I need the loo!' when we're miles from the nearest town."

There was the expected grumbling, but everyone filed out and went back inside. Two queues formed, one outside the downstairs bathroom and one outside the upstairs bathroom. Dani checked that everyone had their birthday gifts with them or in Sennacherib, and double-checked to make sure no one had forgotten anything.

Finally everyone was back in the van and ready to go.

Dani had just backed out of the driveway when there was a shriek from the backseat. Her foot slipped off the clutch, bringing Sennacherib to a shuddering halt.

"What happened?" she asked sharply, turning to see if someone had fallen out of the van.

"Jack took my hat and he won't give it back!" Amy shouted, trying to grab the hat her brother was dangling over her head.

Dani closed her eyes. "Jack. Give her back her hat."

At last they got on their way. For over an hour they drove, along country roads and through small villages. Dani kept a mental list of all the villages they had to drive through before they reached Augher and turned towards Fivemiletown.

They were through Augher and on their way to Clougher when Julie spoke up.

"Are we there yet?"

It was a question that had brought untold misery to countless generations of parents. Dani was no exception. She gripped the wheel and prayed for patience.

"No. We aren't there yet," she said as calmly as possible. "And asking won't make us get there any faster."

They drove on, through Fivemiletown, through Brookeborough, towards Maguiresbridge. And then Noah just had to add his voice to Julie's.

"When will we get there?"

Dani's temper frayed. "I don't know. And I don't want to hear anyone ask that question or any variation on it for the rest of the journey."

What's happened to me? Part of her wondered. She had never been short-tempered before. But having to deal with these children had left her snapping and growling at very little provocation. Perhaps it was a natural side-effect of raising children.

Finally they reached Enniskillen. By then Dani had bitterly regretted every decision that had led to this trip. It wasn't that the children were pestering her with questions. It was the simple and undeniable fact that a large group of children, in a confined space, for a long time, were loud.

Added to this was the fact at least eight different conversations were being held at the same time, and you had a racket that would drive anyone to despair.

Dani pulled into the car park beside the bus station, backed into a space, and put on the handbrake. She sent a prayer of thanksgiving heavenward. The first part of today's ordeal was over, and the children would finally stop talking for a while.

How wrong she was.

She should have learnt by now that children never stopped talking. Ever. They were chattering away when she left to get the ticket, and they were still chattering when she returned. The eight conversations from earlier seemed to have turned into eighty.

With a heavy heart Dani led the way to her parents' house, approximately a quarter of a mile away. The children talked the whole way. If she had been paying more attention to what they said, she might have been suspicious about why they all seemed to be talking about schoolwork.

But Dani's thoughts were focused on the upcoming meeting with her parents. She didn't pay much attention to what was happening around her, beyond keeping a vague check on where each child was. None of them were missing, so she was satisfied.

Niall and Janice O'Shannon were exactly as obnoxious and embarrassing as Dani remembered for her not-exactly-happy childhood.

She pasted on a fake smile as she rang the doorbell. Her mother answered it.

"Danielle!" Janice cried with a smile almost as fake as Dani's as she ushered them all inside. "How nice to see you. And all your adoptees, too! Dear me, if I didn't know better I'd think you were one of the children!"

Niall poked his head out of the living room long enough to say "Hello, Danielle", then disappeared again.

Dani ground her teeth and kept smiling. She had faced eldritch abominations, hungry vampires, and children throwing tantrums. She could cope with her parents without blood being spilled.

Probably.