Thin Places

by Lesley Choyce

  Seamus simply said

  Brendan

  your son

  needs to see this through.

  And then he took a breath

  and added

  no matter how foolish.

  Down and Out in Ballyconnell

  Two more days of scouring the coast

  and nothing to show for it

  but a sunburnt nose

  and diminished spirit.

  So I decided to enter

  my first Irish public house:

  The Yeats Tavern

  named after the poet

  in Drumcliff.

  The man behind the bar looked me over

  when I asked for a pint of Guinness

  and was about to turn me down

  when a young man of about twenty

  sat down beside me.

  He looked sunburnt too and tired

  and gave me a curious look.

  Tom

  he said to the bartender

  Give this gentleman his pint.

  It’s on me.

  I thanked him and watched the ritual

  of the slow and steady

  pouring of the dark beer.

  Thanks

  I said to both Tom and the sunburnt guy.

  You looked like you needed it

  he said.

  I’m Alfie.

  He held out his hand.

  Declan

  I said, shaking it.

  Declan, I detect in you unhappiness.

  He had that Irish way

  of pronouncing every syllable with precision.

  I took my first sip of Guinness

  and I think I frowned.

  It was bitter.

  I don’t know what I was expecting.

  You detected correctly

  I said

  and this made Alfie laugh.

  He ordered himself a Smithwick’s.

  From away then?

  he asked.

  Yes.

  What brings ya?

  At first I didn’t know what to say

  knowing it would sound silly.

  A quest

  I said finally.

  Ah, yes.

  The plot thickens.

  Is it fame, fortune, or salvation?

  Not really.

  Then it must be a woman

  he asserted.

  I didn’t want to go there so I said

  I’m looking for a beach

  and he laughed.

  Lots of beaches about.

  This one is special.

  Every beach is special.

  Alfie explained that he was a surfer

  and he had given up working for Google in Dublin.

  I moved west, here to the coast

  and never looked back.

  I said

  I’ve been to every beach around

  but I haven’t found the right one

  the one I’ve seen in a vision.

  A vision quest, is it?

  Name the beaches you’ve been to.

  So I pulled the road map out of my back pocket

  and pointed to them one by one.

  Alfie studied the map

  and then pointed to a spot.

  You missed one

  he said.

  Streedagh.

  I was there this morning.

  Waves head high and glassy

  and not a soul around.

  Some of the best waves I ever surfed.

  I wanted to ask more but was afraid

  I’d discover yet another dead end.

  And then Alfie finished his Smithwick’s

  in three long gulps

  shook my hand and was off.

  Let me know if you find

  what you’re looking for.

  End of the rainbow and all that.

  Streedagh

  There were horses grazing in open pasture land

  by the dunes.

  They looked like they had been expecting me.

  I got out of the car

  and breathed in the cool salty air.

  There was a cluster of houses at one end

  but beyond that

  the beach stretched out

  for what looked like several empty miles.

  I put on a jacket and began walking.

  The Sand, the Sea, the Sky

  At first it seemed

  that it was just

  another beach.

  But as I walked

  I felt

  something.

  A presence.

  Three times

  I stopped and turned around

  expecting some thing

  someone

  to be there.

  But it was all in my imagination.

  I was a guy alone on a beach

  with an addled brain

  walking to nowhere.

  The Cove

  I had almost decided

  to turn back

  when I came to a small

  rocky cove.

  In the dunes

  was the ruins of

  an old

  stone building.

  I angled toward it

  and touched a thick lichen-covered stone wall

  or what was left of it

  now only shoulder high.

  A cottage

  someone’s small

  primitive hut really

  long, long since

  abandoned.

  I knelt down

  expecting maybe

  to find some relic

  some scrap or tool

  but nothing.

  And then as I stood up

  and turned around

  looking out onto the cove

  and beyond to the mountains

  and a distant shore

  I recognized the view.

  This had once been

  the home

  of that sad lonely soul

  that fisherman

  and his little boy.

  Night

  Each time I tried to leave the spot

  something tugged me back.

  I had this feeling

  that if I left

  I could never return.

  Or if I did return

  the ruins would be gone.

  So I sat in the chill salt air

  huddled by the stone wall

  my knees to my chest.

  I watched

  as the sun set over the sea

  and the stars came out

  a canopy of a million points of light.

  I felt giddy at first

  in expectation of what I didn’t know.

  Giddy, then a little fearful.

  Wild creatures were about.

  I could hear them

  but I couldn’t see them.

  And then

  cold

  and bored

  and tired

  I fell asleep.

  And while I slept

  I felt a new wave of overwhelming sadness

  a paralyzing sense of loneliness

  beyond what I had known before.

  It felt like some kind of heavy weight

  pressing down on me

  and it would not go away

  until I felt

  the warmth

  of the morning sun

  on my face.

  Morning

  She was the first thing I saw

  when I opened my eyes

 
; sitting directly in front of me.

  You found me

  she said.

  I was afraid you wouldn’t.

  Her arms were wrapped around her knees.

  So was I

  I said.

  I knew you were here

  in Ireland

  and I wanted so much

  to come to you

  but I couldn’t.

  I needed to stay close

  to here.

  Why?

  Soon

  she said.

  I’ll explain soon.

  I leaned forward and inched across the sand and stone

  on my hands and knees

  and then

  I touched her face.

  Checking to see if I’m real?

  I felt her cheek with my fingers

  touched her brow

  and then ran my fingers through

  her long dark hair

  as she closed her dark eyes

  and reached out to touch my face.

  And then she leaned forward

  and kissed me.

  I sat upright and then pulled her toward me.

  She seemed to melt into my arms

  into me

  as we lay on the ground inside the ruins of that house

  alone in our perfect little world

  where language seemed obsolete.

  Rebecca

  This place?

  I asked.

  Why here?

  This is my home

  my history.

  I came ashore

  there.

  She pointed to the cove

  the water sparkling in the morning sunlight

  with perfectly sculpted waves rolling shoreward.

  Where did you come from?

  She pointed again to the sea.

  These ruins

  I said.

  This was the stone hut

  where that man stood

  with his son?

  She nodded.

  You planted that image in my head, right?

  She nodded again.

  Why?

  So you’d find me.

  The Past

  Part of me wanted to stop asking questions.

  I had found her.

  We were together.

  What else mattered?

  But my mind was filled with the need to know more

  to know everything.

  I went to the mountain

  I said.

  Knocknarea

  just like you showed me.

  Why didn’t you meet me there?

  I couldn’t.

  I needed to stay here.

  Who was the man I saw in the dream?

  He was my husband.

  Your husband?

  A wave like some kind of

  cruel electric shock

  passed through my brain.

  This made no sense.

  I couldn’t believe what she had just told me.

  And the boy?

  He’s your son?

  No. Not mine. His.

  I don’t understand.

  That was all a very long time ago.

  I still don’t understand.

  How long?

  Three hundred years.

  Time

  Are you some kind of time traveller?

  I asked.

  We all travel through time, Declan.

  But no. Not like that.

  Does this have something to do

  with the bridge you told me about?

  It was the connection I made

  with you.

  You were the one

  I was waiting for.

  Why me?

  It’s what I sensed in you

  what I felt.

  You were somehow

  not of this time.

  And you were searching for something.

  What was I searching for?

  You didn’t know what it was.

  And then I found

  you.

  There were several seconds of silence

  and then she smiled and said

  The truth is

  I found you.

  But how can you …

  How can I be so old?

  She looked to be sixteen, maybe seventeen.

  I nodded.

  Time is a strange thing, Declan.

  I’ll try to explain.

  Rebecca’s Tale

  I came from the sea.

  I was not the first.

  There were many like me.

  The man I introduced you to in your dream

  was Liam

  a fisherman

  whom I had seen at sea many times.

  He was a good man

  a kind man

  and then his wife died.

  I felt his pain

  so intensely

  that I chose to come ashore

  to change my form.

  He needed me.

  His son needed me.

  Belief

  This was three hundred years ago?

  I asked.

  Yes.

  And you were

  not human?

  I became human

  when

  I felt the tug

  an overwhelming need

  to save this man and his son

  from their loneliness and pain.

  In my world

  the world I came from

  such things are possible.

  What were you before you became human?

  You will not understand if I tell you.

  I don’t understand any of this

  but I do know I am here with you now

  and don’t want to lose you.

  And I do want to understand.

  I was a roane

  she said in that beautiful odd way of hers

  a selchidh.

  I lived in the Domnu

  the deep ocean

  with my kind.

  I was a seal.

  When we go through the change

  and come ashore

  they call us selkies

  Belief

  This was three hundred years ago?

  I asked.

  Yes.

  And you were

  not human?

  I became human

  when

  I felt the tug

  an overwhelming need

  to save this man and his son

  from their loneliness and pain.

  In my world

  the world I came from

  such things are possible.

  What were you before you became human?

  You will not understand if I tell you.

  I don’t understand any of this

  but I do know I am here with you now

  and don’t want to lose you.

  And I do want to understand.

  I was a roane

  she said in that beautiful odd way of hers

  a selchidh.

  I lived in the Domnu

  the deep ocean

  with my kind.

  I was a seal.

  When we go through the change

  and come ashore

  they call us selkies.

  Liam

  She told me of Liam

  truly a good man if ever there was one

  and how he accepted her as a gift from the sea

  how she adapted to his rough life ashore

  and helped rais
e his son, Fergus.

  But Liam grew older

  and Rebecca did not.

  Liam accepted this and loved her with all his heart

  but

  as Fergus got older

  he grew to fear her

  and thought she was a witch.

  Fergus moved away when he was twenty-one

  and never spoke to his father

  again.

  I watched as Liam aged

  Rebecca said

  and the sadness grew within me.

  I watched as he suffered

  from the hard work of hauling nets

  and dragging his currach ashore.

  I loved him very much

  and the pain I felt as he grew old and sick

  was the price I paid for saving him from

  his loneliness.

  Life at Streedagh

  They had lived very much alone at Streedagh

  and Rebecca was happy to live close to the shore

  by the sea where she had come from.

  If anyone passed by

  they would just see a figure in an old woman’s clothing

  bent over or with her face covered.

  Few cared about Liam after his son moved on

  and if anyone spoke of “his woman”

  they would say she was crazy

  and all were glad

  she kept to herself

  out of the way of society.

  When Liam died

  she buried him in the dunes.

  One day

  Fergus returned

  and blamed Rebecca for Liam’s death.

  He saw that still she had not aged

  and he spit on her

  then left

  and began spreading the rumours

  that she was a witch.

  Rebecca Speaks

  I had to leave.

  I had no choice.

  I could not go back to the sea

  even though

  I longed for the comfort of the deep.

  But I was in human form

  and could not change back

  until I found someone with whom

  I could create

  a strong enough emotional bond

  to save me from what I’d become.

  A wandering lost soul

  hiding from the world

  a world

  where I did not belong.

  I searched for a very long time.

  With my thoughts

  I spoke to some who

  I thought could help.

  But none could.

  And then you came to me.

  I saw you first in a dream.

  And then I found you

  and spoke to you.

  I believed that creating the bridge