The Crow of Connemara

by Stephen Leigh

BY THE TIME THEY REACHED the cottage, Colin seemed to have largely recovered. She let go of him as he trudged—slowly—alongside her. Through the gray tendrils, faintly, Maeve could glimpse Niall leaning against the door of the cottage with his arms crossed, waiting for them. “How’s Keara?” Maeve called to him as they approached.

  “Exhausted,” he answered, pushing himself off the doorframe and opening the door so they could step inside. He glanced at Colin once, his gaze unreadable, then back to Maeve. “Your favorite cailleach will be good for naught but rest for a long time after this. The effort is damn near killing her and might actually manage it—not that yeh’d stop her from making that sacrifice. Such things are necessary sometimes, aren’t they?” With that, Niall’s gaze flicked over to Colin again.

  “We are all of us in Keara’s debt,” Maeve said calmly. She watched Colin closely in case he was about to collapse again, but he slid onto one of the chairs from the kitchen table and sat. Maeve went to the hearth and crouched down in front it. “But it’s almost done now,” she said as she rekindled the banked ashes and put another turve on the fire. “Yeh can tell her and Aiden that. A few hours more, that’s all.”

  “An’ where have yeh been, Maeve?” Niall asked. His breath gusted out, gray against gray.

  She stood, the iron poker still in her hand. She leaned on it as if it were a cane. “Colin and me were makin’ certain that Fionbharr and the others will stand with us.”

  “An’ will they?”

  “They will.”

  Niall nodding, glancing sidewise toward Colin. “An’ the spell to open the gate?”

  “I’ll be starting that as soon as I can, and that’s going to require the rest of yeh keeping the Naval Service away from us while we do it. In fact, I need to talk to everyone about that: can you get those who’re capable of it together at the tavern?—everyone but Keara and Aiden. We need to make plans, because as soon as the fog’s gone, things are going to happen fast. Why don’t yeh get the others together for me?”

  Niall was still glancing toward Colin, as if he expected him to speak, but Colin only stared back at the man, his face carefully neutral. The peat fire crackled loudly behind Maeve. “Give me an hour,” Niall said finally.

  Colin glanced at the clock above the hearth, and his eyes widened slightly. Maeve looked as well: impossibly, it was late afternoon; they must have been hours under the mound. Yeh know time runs differently there . . . “Make it an hour and a half,” she said. “At the pub. I’ll be there by six o’clock.”

  Niall shrugged. “As you wish, Morrígan. Six o’clock. And then?”

  “Then?” Maeve repeated, with a short laugh. “For us, we live or we die. Right here.”

  Niall gave a faint nod. He stood there, silent, for a moment, then slowly turned and went to the door. “Six o’clock,” he said again, his hand on the handle as if waiting for Maeve to say more. She only stared placidly at him. He pushed the door open and left.

  As the door closed again behind Niall, Maeve let the poker drop; it clanged against the stones of the hearth. She swung the teakettle over the fire for the water to boil, then went to the cupboard and took out black tea, two mugs, and a tea ball. She opened the ball and stuffed tea inside it, closing it again. When she heard the water began to bubble, she put the tea into the pot and brought it over to the table. Colin was watching her the entire time, but neither of them spoke. “Have some tea,” Maeve said. “It’ll revive you.”

  “And what about me?” Colin asked as Maeve sat at the small dining table in the front room. Through the haze of Keara’s fog spell that had invaded the cottage, she watched him push his glasses up his nose even though they didn’t seem to need the adjustment—such a familiar, habitual gesture. A mortal gesture. “What happens for me?”

  “I make yeh this promise, m’love,” Maeve told him, staring down at the teacup between her hands. She was weary from the pretense of displaying false confidence in front of Colin, Niall, and the others, from the confusion of not knowing what she was going to do next. “I won’t ask yeh to do anything that yeh don’t want to do.”

  “Then how are you going to open the gateway?”

  “There may be another way.” By far her best strategy would be to lie to Colin and use him despite the promises she’d made. The spell required a “willing victim” who would give the necessary blood and life. She had listened to the voices inside the cloch before Rory had stolen it from her, and they had told her what was needed to open the gateway. The voices insisted that the chosen sacrifice didn’t have to completely understand what was required to be “willing.” Lying to Colin would guarantee that she could save her people and those who had trusted her . . . at least all of them except Colin himself. The old Morrígan would have done exactly that without flinching: give Colin a comforting lie (“Just a nick to give me what little blood I need and no more . . .”), then slit his throat from ear to ear and use his gushing, dying life to complete the spell, all without any regret or guilt.

  Cúchulainn and Medb would have concurred with that assessment of the Morrígan’s trustworthiness. Odras, whom the Morrígan turned into a pool of water, would agree. The Dagda, whom she once loved, knew well how the Morrígan could deceive, as did Lugh himself. But that old Morrígan felt very far away at the moment, centuries away.

  Maeve closed her eyes and gave a huff of exasperation. Strands of Keara’s fog billowed away from her with the exhalation.

  “There may be another way?” she heard Colin say.

  She was too exhausted to do more than shrug. “’Tis all I have now.”

  “Is it going to be enough?”

  She tried to laugh, tried to be offhand about it. It was nearly too much of an effort. “Going to have to be, is it nah?” She sighed, pushing back from the table. “I have too little time, and you’re exhausted. Why don’t you lay down for a bit? I’ll wake you up.”

  He shook his head. “I couldn’t sleep, and I’m feeling better anyway. What do you want me to do? How can I help?”

  His eagerness tugged at her, making her regret her thoughts. “I’d like to hear yeh sing something. Yer guitar’s still in the bedroom. A song will clear my head best.”

  “What would you like to hear?”

  “Do you ever write yer own songs? All I’ve ever heard yeh play are the old tunes.”

  He shrugged. “I’ve written a few. I don’t think I’m much of a songwriter, though.”

  “I don’t care. Play me one.”

  In the bedroom clouded with Keara’s fog, she reclined on pillows piled against the headboard of her bed and watched him take the guitar from its case. Her eyes half-closed, she listened to him tune up, feeling the bed move as he sat near her feet. She remembered the voices inside the cloch, and she imagined them mocking her now, railing at her, giving her suggestions that she wasn’t certain she could use. “Okay,” Colin said finally. “This is something I jotted down not long after I met you. I call it ‘Slip Away’—let me see if I can remember it . . .”

  Colin strummed a few chords in a minor key, then started to sing. The voice . . . She could still hear the bard’s energy underneath the melody, but it was mostly just Colin’s own voice.

  I felt you watching me from across the room

  Felt through the crowd the pressure of your gaze

  I didn’t know what made the air spark between us

  All I know is that we both sensed it, we both felt it

  You gazed at me while you were talking to him

  Your smile over his shoulder said more than words

  Without hearing your voice I heard your mind, I heard your heart

  I wanted to move, should have moved, but with one last look you turned away

  I saw you at the door, alone, your keys dangling in your hand

  I would have called your name had I known it

  You would not look back, just w
alked away into empty night

  By the time I reached the door, I found that you had slipped away

  I saw your face for many hours after

  All the promise in your eyes and all the promise in your smile

  Heading home, I wondered if I’d gone to you and spoken

  Was this our chance, our moment? Did I let it slip away?

  Just slip away . . .

  He strummed a final minor chord, then leaned the Gibson against the mattress. He smiled at her. “Now you see why I stick mostly to singing other people’s stuff.”

  “I liked it,” she said. “A sad melody, and a sad thought. Was that us, yeh and me? After the first time we met?”

  “Partially, yeah, though it’s mixed in with a few other times when I regretted not speaking to someone, all conflated. After what I was told about the Oileánach following that gig, well, I didn’t figure we’d be talking again, and the song just kinda came to me while I was noodling on the guitar, thinking about things.” His hand rested on her calf, stroking her leg. “I’m glad all of it turned out to be wrong, that you didn’t slip away from me.”

  “Even now? With all this? Even though I dragged yeh arseways into this hash?”

  He laughed, once, and his amusement sounded clear and certain. “Yeah. Ultimately, the song’s about choices we wish later that we would have made, and how we need to seize those moments when they come or we live with the regret. Regret’s a lousy companion.” She saw his hand brush over the cloch in his jean pocket, protectively, before he lay back, his head on her belly. The motion made her yearn to hold it once again, to keep it. “What’s going to happen now, Maeve?”

  She stroked his hair for a long time without answering, closing her eyes again. Inside, the old Morrígan howled, churning her stomach. “I have to find another way,” she said finally. “There is one. I know.”

  They both lapsed into silence after that, as she continued to stroke his hair. His breath was calm and slow, and she wondered whether he’d fallen asleep when he stirred again. She opened her eyes to see him staring at her.

  “So . . . this blood magic and sacrifice you talked about—does the person providing the blood have to die?”

  “Aye,” she whispered, “but then maybe nah. When I had the cloch, before Rory—” she stopped, changing the word she would have used. “—took it, they told me what must be done to open the gateway, the spells and rituals I have’ta use. Yeh’ve heard the voices yerself now. They’re confusing, so many of ’em talking all at once . . . Some of them, at least, said that if someone offered himself freely, I might be able to bring him back afterward, in Talamh an Ghlas. There’s a chance. The cloch may have that power left in it.”

  “You might be able to,” Colin repeated. “Do these voices of yours believe that’s likely?”

  “No,” she answered simply and honestly. “They don’t.” She felt her tears welling, a drop spilling out to track down her right cheek. She saw his eyes follow its path.

  “Do you believe you can find your ‘other way’ in time, Maeve?”

  She paused. The lie, the old Morrígan and the voices of the cloch chorused. Give him the lie. “No,” she said. “I don’t.”

  She felt his head move under her hand: a nod. “That’s what I thought.”

  “Colin . . .”

  “No,” he interrupted. “Just listen to me. Back home, everyone told me how Dad died doing something he loved, something that meant everything to him, and how he wouldn’t have wanted to go any other way. And my mother . . . Mom kept saying how I was wasting my own life, that I wasn’t doing anything important or vital, just drifting, and that I should be looking at my father or Tommy or Jen and being like them.” He took her hand, strong fingers pressing hers. “That made me angry, but part of me, buried way down deep, agreed with them. I have been drifting. I was always looking for something that I was supposed to do. I thought it was just music, but now . . .”

  He lifted his head, stirring Keara’s fog, and his gaze found her own. “Colin,” she said, placing a finger on his lips. “Some of the voices back then . . . well, I remember now that they told me blood is required, but not so much. That’s the other way. I need to cut yeh, aye—that’s the ritual—but it would be just a slash on yer arm to give me what’s needed and no more. ’T would have to be deep and long, but it wouldn’t be yer death.” The lie . . . The Morrígan cackled inside her, a sound like a crow’s dry cough.

  “That would work?” She heard Colin laugh, felt him shrug.

  “’T would,” she said. “I’m certain. It has to.”

  “Then there’s no problem. I’ll do that, Maeve. I’ll be your key. I’ll take the chance.”

  The Morrígan shouted inside her, triumphant. The willing victim . . . Maeve put her other hand over Colin’s, clasping it. She pulled him up to her, kissing him, not caring that he saw that she was crying.

  She held him, wondering why the triumph felt empty and hollow.

  The Oileánach filled the pub; Colin could hear them inside as they approached with the white noise of a dozen conversations going all at once, though this time there was no music to enliven the gathering. All those conversations went quickly silent as Colin opened the door—creaking on its rusting hinges—and stepped back to let Maeve enter first. The unnatural fog blew in around her and Colin. Colin let the door shut against the fog, standing behind Maeve as everyone’s face turned to them. He saw expressions that ranged everywhere from hopeful to solemn to terrified. The room smelled of ale and desperation, of whiskey, hope, and fear.

  Those same emotions crowded Colin’s mind, along with his own self-doubt about the decision he’d made. The world seemed to be rushing loudly around him, and he could only watch it. We Doyles have this sense of destiny, or a calling, of something that we’re supposed to do. Tommy’s words, which had been echoing in his head since his return to the island.

  “Well, Morrígan?” Niall was sitting at the end of bar next to Liam, half-empty pints in front of both and the leather bags holding their sealskins draped over their shoulders. Liam acknowledged Colin with a nod; Niall seemed to be ignoring his presence. “’Tis decided?”

  “’Tis,” Maeve answered. “Liam, g’wan and run up to Keara’s an’ tell her she can stop now. Her task is finished, and we’re all forever in her debt. With her spell ended, I can finally do me own.”

  Liam nodded, drained his pint, and slid his way past Maeve and Colin. The cold fog wisped around them again as he vanished.

  “An’ without the fog, the leamh will be coming ashore in short order,” Niall commented. Thick fingers prowled the lip of his pint, smearing the remnants of tan foam there.

  “Aye,” Maeve responded. “But the wind must clear the fog by itself, and ’twill take time for the murk to be dispersed enough that the leamh will move in. We can hope that the winds are calm today. But yer right: they’ll come, and we’ll need yeh all to hold them off as long as yeh can when that happens, to give me the time Colin and I need to open the gateway. Niall, if yeh can take your people out into the sea now and make certain the chain nets are up across the harbor to foul their propellers or at least slow them down . . . I want the bean-sí all awake and howling from the shore; that should give pause to any of the leamh who still have any belief in the Old Ways. Get the harpists out playing as they come ashore, again there may be a few who might think it to be Aoibhell’s harp and that they’re doomed to death, even though Fionnbharr believes she’s in too deep a slumber to be roused. In the meantime, I’ll gather what I need, and Colin and I will go to the mound; we’ll tell Fionnbharr that it’s come time for the aos sí to do their part. Lugh, at least, will come out with the aos sí. Then I’ll start the spell to open the gateway, an’ we go through.”

  “He agrees to all that, does he?” Niall asked, with a glare toward Colin. “He’s not going to make a balls of it?”

  Col
in startled. He’d listened to Maeve’s commentary without really hearing it, and now Niall’s mockery tugged at Colin’s own temper, and he answered before Maeve could respond. “Yeah, Colin agrees. So shut yer feckin’ gob, Niall.” He said the last sentence with a broad imitation of Niall’s own thick brogue. Nervous laughter followed from the others, and Colin half-expected that Niall would lunge for him at the taunt. He fisted his hands at his sides, bracing himself for the assault, but Niall only shrugged.

  “We’ll see if yeh really understand, then,” he said. “If yeh do yer job and we go through, I’ll pray yer soul finds Tír na mBeo.” He lifted his glass toward Colin and drank, then threw his glass against the wall behind the bar, narrowly missing the mirror and bottles there. Glass shattered as those closest to the wall ducked the shards and shouted. Niall laughed at the protests from the others in the pub. “We’ll nah be needing the glasses here after today, one way or t’other, and if a little cut bothers yeh, there’s likely worse to come this morning. Selkies, let’s go; the Morrígan’s given us her orders.”

  A half dozen of the Oileánach rose as Niall pushed away from the bar, all with similar leather bags across their shoulders. Niall nodded to Maeve as he passed. “I hope everything goes jammy for yeh, Maeve,” Colin heard him mutter. “We’ll need the luck, eh?” To Colin he said nothing at all. The others followed him out with glances toward Maeve and Colin.

  “What about the rest of us?” someone asked.

  “Yer job is to do whatever yeh can to delay the leamh and avoid them interrupting the spell, but don’t get yerselves killed in the process. The leamh won’t use deadly force if yeh don’t give ’em the excuse, so leave the real fighting to them that leamh weapons won’t easily touch.”

  Colin looked at the uncertain faces in front of them as, one by one, they left the tavern. He wondered if they were all thinking as he was, but he said nothing, nodding to each of them as they passed until only Maeve and Colin were left. “They won’t be using guns?” he asked her when they were gone. “You’re certain?”