“I understand. I truly do. But I don’t like having to lie to . . .” She chose her next words carefully. “. . . someone I believe I love.”
There. The hook is set, even if you’re no longer certain that you want to land this fish and see him gutted and cleaned for the table. The words had come too easily, and the conviction in them had been too real. She wanted to take them back. She wanted to tell Colin to flee, now, before he was snared too tightly in Inishcorr’s affairs, before their relationship held him fast. She wanted not to be the Morrígan, but just a mortal person—to be Maeve and no more than that. Yeh were ensorcelled, she wanted to tell him. That first night, when yeh met me. I cast my spell and caught you, the same way I caught your grandfather . . .
She smiled, plainly, despite the thoughts fighting in her mind. Once, she’d felt the same about Rory. She’d thought she’d captured him . . . and yet he’d left her. Left her and the others, back when there was still time and hope.
Now there was very little of either.
She saw Colin struggle to return her smile. “Maeve . . .”
“Nah,” she told him, wagging a finger in his face. “What I just said doesn’t obligate yeh to say anything in return. In fact, please don’t, because if what yeh say ’tis anything like what I want to hear, I won’t—I could’nah—believe it now. Save it for when I can.”
He nodded. “Okay, I will,” he answered. He looked down at himself. “I’m soaked to the knees, my clothes are filthy with mud, and I’m sitting on my ass in a wet field. Quite the dashing figure, aren’t I?”
She laughed and kissed him hard and quickly. “Yer my hero,” she said. “And hey, how many men can say they made love to a goddess, even a mostly forgotten one?” She rose to her feet and extended her hand. “Come on, hero,” she said. “Let’s get yeh some dry clothes.”
This time, he took her hand.
24
A Blindness Lifted
“HERE,” MAEVE SAID, handing him a sheaf of thick papers embossed with an Irish harp and foil letters across the top proclaiming National Parks & Wildlife Services: Parks & Reserves Unit. “Read this; it will tell yeh a lot of what’s going on, and why everyone’s on edge right now.” She sat down at the table across from Colin. Keara, as promised, had brought supper to Maeve’s cottage and set it on the table, then taken her leave once again. Colin took up the papers, leaning back in his chair and sipping from the mug of tea in front of him. He settled his glasses on his nose and scanned the words, glancing occasionally at Maeve.
She’d been strangely quiet during their walk back from Fionnbharr’s mound (which she told him was named Cnoc Deireadh), deflecting his questions with promises to answer later. His own head was a whirl of confusion: the revelation of Liam, witnessing the transformation in Maeve, seeing Fionnbharr. Part of him still wanted to refuse to believe any of it. He especially wanted to disbelieve the talk of him being caught up in some mythical conflict.
Yet . . . he could still remember the Maeve of last night. He could remember the taste and smell of her, the gentle caresses and lovemaking, her sighs as they made love. That Maeve had been real and solid, and there had been nothing imaginary about his feelings for her—and, he could hope given what she’d said to him, her feelings for him.
He scanned the words on the paper, trying to make sense of them against the confusion in his heart. The words kept wanting to bleed together into an indecipherable gray. He forced his eyes to focus. “This is saying that Inishcorr is the property of the NPWS, and they are giving you two weeks to vacate the island—as of three weeks ago. One of the people who signed this is Superintendent Dunn—as it happens, I met him just before I came back here.”
Maeve gave a laugh at that. “I’m not surprised. He’s a decent enough man, Dunn, but he’s all bound up in rules and regulations and what he thinks is his duty.”
“And this is the third notice they’ve given you? You’ve not given them any response to the others?”
“I went and talked to Dunn a while back,” she told him. “I told him that we weren’t going to leave. He wasn’t happy.”
“It appears not. They’re threatening to forcibly remove you this time. ‘By any and all means necessary.’ That doesn’t sound good.”
“Aye,” she said finally and—to Colin’s mind—far too calmly. “We won’t allow them to remove us. We ca’nah. We’ve been pushed as far as we can be. ’Tis here we will stand, no matter what. Finally.”
“Maeve, they’ll put you all in jail.”
She shook her head. “Neh, they won’t. They ca’nah take Inishcorr if they ca’nah get to it.”
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
“Can yeh go under Cnoc Deireadh with Fionnbharr?” she asked him.
“No. Well, not without some digging equipment. Give me a good backhoe, and maybe . . .”
She laughed, but her amusement seemed more sad that anything else. “Even then, ’twouldn’t work. The world under the mound isn’t a place yeh can dig to—nor will Inishcorr be. There are other ‘lost’ Irish islands; Inishcorr will join them if need be. Become part of them.”
“And how will that happen?”
“I don’t know yet,” she told him. The sadness seemed to fill her then. She looked away, closing her eyes hard, then back again. “We’ll figure it out. Yeh’ll help figure it out, and I’ll help you.”
He shook his head at that. “Maeve, I’ve no clue what you’re talking about or what you expect me to do. None. You—everyone—seems to expect something from me and . . .” He sighed, putting the NPWS notice on the table. “Right now, all I feel is lost. I’m sorry. I’m not Cúchulainn—not anything close. I’m not a warrior and I’m not strong. I’m a decent musician and, I hope, a halfway decent person. That’s all.”
A smile came and vanished, like a spring snow. “Yeh are all and everything I want.”
“What you want, or what the Morrígan wants?”
“Both,” she answered. She pushed her chair back and came over to him, crouching alongside him and leaning her head on his shoulder as his arm—almost of its own accord—went around her. “And for this moment, let’s just be Maeve and Colin, and forget the rest. Can we do that, for at least this evening?”
He wanted to shake his head, wanted to say “no,” but he couldn’t. With her touch, his mind eased and the confusion receded. “We can try,” he told her, and he turned into her embrace.
The pub at Inishcorr harbor was busy that night. Maeve had wanted to go, had wanted Colin to bring his guitar. “Yeh’ll be feeling more yerself if yeh play a set or two with Keara and the others,” she’d insisted.
He thought she might be right. The guitar case felt familiar and comfortable in his hand as they walked toward the pub, and he heard the strains of Keara’s fiddle, somebody playing bodhran, and two voices in harmony singing “Dark-Eyed Sailor.” When the two entered the pub, the song was ending, and Keara waved at Colin from the little stage in front. “Colin! Get your guitar and a pint, and bring yer sorry arse up here!”
“G’wan with yeh,” Maeve laughed along with several of the patrons. “I need to talk with some of the others.”
“All right. Save me a seat, then.”
“Promise.” She gave him a quick kiss and a pat on the rump. He grinned back at her.
Colin snagged a Guinness from the bar, the foam still settling, and took his guitar up to the little stage. He put the Guinness on one of the stools there, laid his case on the stage, and took out his Gibson. He took a sip of the stout and placed it on the floor next to him as he sat on the stool, the curve of the Gibson’s body comfortably over his thigh. “Give me a ‘G,’” he told Keira, and tuned his guitar as she played the note. “What do you want to play first?”
“How about ‘Cliffs of Dooneen’? Yeh know the verses?”
“Some, not all,” Colin answered. “Enough, I’m sure.”
&
nbsp; “Then let’s do it . . .” With that, Keara launched into the melody with her fiddle, and Colin followed with the guitar, and the bodhran player played softly along, accenting the beat. After a verse and chorus instrumentally, Colin began to sing:
You may travel far from your own native land
Far away o’er the mountains, far away o’er the foam
But of all the fine places that I’ve ever been
Sure there’s none can compare with the cliffs of Dooneen
Colin felt the world shift around him before the first verse had ended. It began with a pulse from his grandfather’s stone in his pocket, a lance of raw fire running through him. He drew in his breath with the next line, and it seemed that the pub around him became somehow thin and semitransparent, and past it, he saw another land entirely: tall, rounded mountains blanketed with green bracken and girdled with oak forests, misted valleys between, a sapphire sky pillowed with clouds, and in the distance, a line of green-blue sea frothing at cliffs. With the vision, he felt a pulse of homesickness, as if this were a glimpse of a world to which he belonged, even though it was no place he’d ever seen before.
At the same time, he heard his voice swell, booming in the room, his tones as rich and colored as that of a cello played by a master hand. With each line, his voice gained depth and power, and he could see everyone in the pub turning to him, their conversations dying forgotten, leaving only the song and his voice.
Take a view o’er the mountains, fine sights you’ll see there
You’ll see the high rocky mountains o’er the west coast of Clare
Oh, the towns of Kilkee and Kilrush can be seen
From the high rocky slopes round the cliffs of Dooneen
When the song ended, two more verses along, there was a reverent silence, then a deafening roar of applause and approval. Colin grinned into the applause; the energy of their approval filling him, as nourishing as a gourmet meal. “Another!” someone shouted. “’Tis grand, that! Yeh have the gift, yeh do!”
Keara was tapping on her fiddle’s body with her bow. She leaned toward Colin. “I’ve never heard the like. Never. An’ I saw the far land. I saw it, even if them out there di’nah,” she whispered to him. “I saw it without a spell. Maeve is right about yeh. Yer the one to help us.” She ran the bow over the strings, calling forth a new melody. “So, how about ‘Castlehyde’?” she asked. “Can yeh do that again with it?”
Colin lifted his shoulders in a helpless shrug, the grin still on his face. He saw Maeve watching him. She smiled as his gaze snagged hers, and she nodded to him, as if she, too, had seen what he’d seen.
“Don’t know,” he said to Keara.
“Then let’s find out.”
He found he could. Again, as he began to sing, his grandfather’s stone responded with searing heat that found its way into his body and his voice, that while he was singing caused the air in the pub to shimmer and call forth another vision that slid over reality like a ghostly mask only to vanish as quickly as it had come.
He wondered if they could all see it.
The visions would come again with the next song, and the next, as well, and if those in the pub didn’t seem to notice them as he did, as Keara evidently did, they could all hear the power that had been given to his voice, and to that they responded.
An hour or so later, the musicians took a break to tremendous applause and cheers for Colin. Colin was still reeling from what had happened, the applause filling him with heat and light. He put the Gibson in its case, hugged Keara, and headed for the bar to get another pint. He could see Maeve in the far corner of the pub nearest the door, now in deep conversation with Liam, Aiden, and a few others. “Another pint, thanks,” he told the bartender.
“After that, yeh deserve it an’ more,” the bartender told him. “That was sometin’.” He shook his head. “I never heard the like.”
“Thanks,” Colin told him, beaming. As the barkeep turned to the tap and Colin leaned against the bar, he heard a voice behind him.
“So now yeh know all about us? Yeh think that because they call out yer name when yeh sing, that because yeh can make them think of another place, that yer all special?” Colin turned to face Niall. The man was standing a little too close for Colin’s comfort—though that was usual enough in Ireland. His face still bore the vestiges of the beating he’d taken at Regan’s: a touch of purple under the eyes, the shadow of a bruise on his cheek. Colin could smell alcohol on the man’s breath. “Liam said Maeve made him show yeh his skin,” Niall continued, his words slightly slurred and his accent heavier than usual. “I would nah have done it, no matter what she said.” He shook his head. “Yer just a pretty boy, and not the one we need. Maeve’s made a mistake and ca’nah admit it, ’specially now that she’s shagging yeh.” His dark eyes looked Colin up and down. “Yeh don’t look to me like yeh could beat fecking snow off a rope.”
It might have been the two pints he’d already had, or perhaps the long and strange day, or perhaps the residue of the power and fire from his grandfather’s stone. Colin could feel the muscles tightening in his face. “Y’know, Niall, if I ever find your sealskin on the beach, I might just take it and burn it.”
Niall sniffed in disdain. “Boyo, the problem with yeh is yer all mouth and no trousers.”
Colin could see Maeve over Niall’s shoulder, glancing in their direction with a worried look on her face. “Look, just let me by . . .”
Niall didn’t move. “Yer going to hide behind the lady’s skirts? Are yeh that scared a’me that yer brickin’ it?”
He knew that Niall was deliberately goading him. He knew that he shouldn’t respond, that he should just press his lips together, grab his pint, and slide past him, knowing that Niall probably wouldn’t do more than make another comment to his back.
He knew that. He started to move, and Niall pressed a hand against his chest, pushing him. “Niall!” Colin heard Maeve call in warning, but Niall ignored her and pushed at Colin again.
The shove seemed to click something over within Colin. He let all the anger, frustration, and confusion of the day take him.
He slammed his pint glass down on the bar, and he swung.
Colin’s fist hit Niall square in the nose. He heard a distinct crack and saw blood smear across Niall’s cheek as the man staggered back. Niall howled and threw a wild roundhouse punch in Colin’s direction. Colin blocked Niall’s fist with left forearm, though he winced with the force of the contact, and struck again, this time sweeping his fisted right hand across Niall’s chin. He felt the contact, jarring his arm and splitting open the skin of his knuckles. Niall went down, suddenly, to his knees, his eyes glazed and his mouth open, his bottom lip drooling red.
By that time, hands had grabbed Colin from behind, and another of the islanders stepped between Niall and Colin as two other patrons helped Niall to his feet. Niall was cursing, spitting blood, and trying to lunge at Colin, but the others held him and dragged him away. “C’mon,” one of them said. “Yer bloody bolloxed, Niall. Let’s take the air . . .” The door to the pub opened, and they escorted him outside, with Niall still shouting obscenities and fighting their restraining hands.
The hands around Colin relaxed, one of them slapping him affectionately on the back as he looked at his right fist. Blood was smeared over it, his own and Niall’s. His knuckles throbbed. His left forearm was going to have a nasty bruise tomorrow. He saw Maeve making her way through the crowd around him. In front of him, she put her hands on her hips, shaking her head. “I hope yer feeling proud of yerself now,” she said, but a smile lurked in the corners of her lips.
“Actually, I am,” he told her. “Niall’s done nothing but act like an ass toward me, and he deserved that.”
“And yeh think that come tomorrow he’ll come up and give yeh a big hug all friendly-like, now that yeh’ve shown him what a real man you are?” Sarcasm rode heavily
on her words.
“No,” he admitted sheepishly, then added with a smile: “But it still felt good.”
Maeve shook her head again. “Boys,” she said. She took his hand in hers. “Let’s get yeh cleaned up. Why don’t yeh get yer guitar and we’ll walk back to the house? There’s been enough excitement tonight.” She hugged him then, lifting on her toes to whisper in his ear. “I thought yeh did just grand, all around.”
He grinned at her.
He didn’t sleep well that night. His dreams were wild and touched with violence and strange mythical characters. He awoke as false dawn was painting the horizon, slid from bed without waking Maeve, and left the house. He walked up the path toward Fionnbharr’s mound. The air was still; mist-ghosts writhed and rose from the dewed ground. He strode through them, the cold wetness leaving droplets on his woolen pullover and beading his glasses so that he had to wipe them clean more than once. The mist seemed to cling to him with insistent fingers that didn’t wish to let him pass. He thought he could hear a constant whispering around him, words in Gaelic that drifted just on the edge of comprehension.
It seemed he couldn’t leave his dreams behind.
He shivered.
He half-expected to see Fionnbharr standing inside the circle of stone around Croc Deireadh, but the hawthorn stood lonely, its branches swaying in the ocean breeze, the leaves rustling softly. He remained carefully outside the ring of stone, walking uphill around them until he stood at the sea cliff, at the head of the path down to the beach. Fifty feet or more below him, waves battered at the rocks there, foam making lacy patterns on the gray-green water as it surged away, then in again.
Colin sat on a mossy rock at the top of the cliff, his thoughts as chaotic and torn as the waves below him.
The previous day . . . it had been nearly too much to process. Seeing Liam transform from seal to human and back; the blubbery soft fur of his sealskin; Maeve’s insistence that she was the Morrígan or at least some shadow of that ancient goddess; the way she’d changed her appearance; Fionnbharr of the aos sí and his hints of death and violence; the way his grandfather’s stone had reacted to the music last night; the way his voice had morphed into something he’d never heard before; the glimpses of another world he’d seen as he sang; his fight with Niall . . .
The Crow of Connemara Page 26