The Snowmelt River (The Three Powers)

by Frank P. Ryan

  The way he saw it, it was a matter of logic. If there really was some magical wormhole on top of the mountain, and if Ogham was the key, he’d be the one holding the answers.

  The Three Sisters

  So it was that sensuous July metamorphosed into early August, a time of tottering sandcastles and incoming waves of change—eleven days, to be precise, in which the four friends were summoned again and again by the mountain, their hearts and minds seduced by enchantment until they had no choice but to heed the call. And then, all of a sudden, the waiting was over. It was that beautiful sunny morning in mid-August when Alan had kissed Kate for the very first time. They were cycling away from the Doctor’s House, heading over the second of the stone bridges with the Comeraghs directly ahead of them, riding into the sunrise in silence. And his heart was still racing from the excitement of the kiss even as he stood on the pedals to push against the upslope of the approach lane, rattling and swaying through the green-painted gateposts, past the blacksmith’s forge, with its smoke-blackened tin roof, heading for the red-brick garages, still retaining the old wooden horseboxes. Standing by the gates was the flatbed truck, its hinged splats hand-painted in camouflage shades of brown and pea-green. Now, at the sight of it, the real implications of what they were planning was at once exhilarating and frightening.

  Mo was waving to them from the open door of the dairy.

  Kate abandoned her bike and ran to hug her friend. Mo’s face was dimpled with a nervous smile. She murmured, “Guh-Guh-Guh . . . Guh-Guh-Grimstone wuh-wuh-will be buh-back tomorrow.”

  “Oh, Mo, I’m a complete bundle of nerves.”

  “I’m muh-more tuh-terrified of whu-whu-whu-what will huh-happen if we don’t escape!”

  Kate’s heart missed a beat with Mo’s choice of the word: Escape!

  Leaning against the pear tree, Mark welcomed their arrival with a cheeky smile. How jealous Mark would be if he knew about the kiss! Alan turned away from the glimpse of tousled fair hair, as if embarrassed by it, then joined Kate and Mo in entering the den to gather up precious possessions.

  Mo was the first to come back out, her backpack in place, clutching the bog-oak figurine and her precious notebook. She looped the figurine around her neck on a shoelace but she kept the notebook in her hand. Making a final tour of the den, she inspected her altars of skulls, starfish and sea urchin shapes, her piles of feathers and gemstones—a treasure trove that had grown into a continuous sweep around all four walls.

  “Jeepers!” murmured Kate, overcome with the excitement. “I hope you lot remembered to bring some money.”

  Mark, who was still leaning against the tree, remarked, “Hey—you think the Irish Euro will be legal tender where we’re going?”

  “I don’t care,” laughed Kate. “I know that it’s legal here. So let’s all empty what we’ve got onto the grass and count it.”

  Dutifully they sat in a circle and emptied their pockets. Kate was impressed to find that they had gathered more than thirty Euros between them. She gazed at the pile of money with awe before Alan gathered it up and stuffed it into the pocket of his jeans. There was a moment of silence in which all four looked exceedingly nervous yet impatient to be off.

  Mo broke the tension with a giggle.

  Kate and Mark slung their backpacks over their shoulders. Wordlessly, they all came together for a team hug.

  Alan hauled out three battered-looking plastic drums, opaque and weightless, and lifted them onto the bed of the truck. Mark took pictures with the camera on his phone. Mo twirled in a circle that took in the entire sawmill yard, holding aloft her triple-headed talisman. Finally, Alan loaded the Spear of Lug onto the truck, placing it carefully along one of the long sides and hiding it under a layer of logs. His preparations complete, he brought out a small, flat silver flask embossed with the American bald eagle that had belonged to his father. He filled the cap with the throat-burning poteen he had lifted from his grandfather’s cabinet.

  “Girls first!” He passed the capful to Kate.

  The two girls coughed after mere sips of the fiery liquid, then passed it on to Mark who threw a capful back in one swallow, screwing up his eyes and gagging, then farted loudly and solemnly, like a drum roll.

  “Slievenamon—my bum salutes you!”

  The other three chorused, in unison—“To Slievenamon!”

  Mark donned a leather parka over his T-shirt while Alan slipped into the faded brown all-weather denim jacket that had been his last present from his parents. Like Kate, Mo wore a pullover with her T-shirt and jeans. Alan left the others to put their packs on board the truck while he headed back to the main house. It was the moment he dreaded. Padraig was sitting in the leather armchair, in the room with the photographs of Mom growing up. Alan felt hopelessly inadequate, holding out his hand as if to formally shake Padraig’s.

  As his grandfather climbed stiffly to his feet, Alan felt himself tremble with emotion. He threw his arms around the tall figure and hugged him.

  When he had recovered his voice, he spoke huskily. “I’m really sorry, Grandad, but you know I’ve got to do this.”

  Padraig was stiffly silent.

  “I have to do it—for Mom and Dad. If these people, these unknown forces, had anything to do with their deaths—!”

  “Sure I’d feel exactly the same as you do if I were in your place!” Padraig took a step back and took a firm grip of Alan’s shoulders.

  “That nutcase, Grimstone—you know he’ll be back tomorrow. Things could get pretty mean when he finds Mark and Mo gone.”

  “I’m capable of taking care of myself.”

  “You know he has spies here in the town. Maybe we should leave the truck and just take the bikes—make it look like another beach trip?”

  “The truck it must be. You cannot arrive at the mountain already exhausted. Conserve your strength for what you will face there.”

  Alan nodded.

  “So long then, Grandad!”

  “You take care. I’ve already lost too many of those I love. I couldn’t bear it if I lost you too!”

  When Padraig came out to wish the others farewell, Kate kissed him on his white-stubbled cheek. Mo just stood in front of him and trembled. She pressed her notebook into his hand.

  “Ah, you know I cannot accept it, Mo. It’s too precious to you!”

  But Mo just hugged him once and then spun away, running madly toward the truck.

  Mark also stood there a moment, overcome with emotion, and then, awkwardly, he reached out and shook Padraig’s callused hand before hurrying after his sister.

  Padraig gazed after them all with his watery eyes glistening.

  Mark helped Mo clamber into the back of the truck, then joined her among the logs. Alan raised the flatbed sides and fixed them into position before yanking himself up into the cab. He couldn’t help but smile at Kate’s excited face as he reached across the bench seat to throw open the passenger door for her. Then Kate suddenly howled with laughter, scratching at the boyish stubble that prickled Alan’s cheeks.

  “I bet you’ve forgotten to bring a razor!”

  “Damn!”

  That provoked a round of laughter.

  “All ready?” He called back through the broken window into the bed.

  “Aye, aye, Cap’n!”

  Alan’s eyes met Mark’s in the rearview mirror.

  The sound of the revving engine, Mark and Mo high-fiving in the back, the stench of diesel—suddenly they were off, the logs and passengers alike bouncing about on the bare metal floor as the truck lurched and swayed down the slope of the rutted track.

  Alan slowed as he approached the gates. He squeezed his head and right arm out through the open window and gave a final wave to the solitary figure in the yard, continuing to watch Padraig in the side mirror until he disappeared as they passed out through the gate posts. He thought, Take care of yourself. Don’t get yourself hurt. Be safe until I return.

  They trundled through Irishtown, where the houses hugged
one another in pastel-washed single-storied terraces, until the stony bulk of the West Gate straddled the road. They cheered as they squeezed through the medieval walls and onto broad O’Connell Street, then the Narrow Street, past the Main Guard and by the Old Bridge. Although Slievenamon was still twenty miles away, it towered over the graveyard where Alan’s Irish grandmother was buried.

  They made their first stop at a gas station on the Carrick Road. Here, just about the only place that was open this early on a Sunday morning, they topped up the diesel and bought some cola, potato chips and chocolate. They got beyond the town boundary, rattling along the tree-lined banks of the River Suir. As if knowingly approving, the river coursed by them, mile after mile of broad, slow-moving current. It was a chilling reminder that at least once a year somebody drowned in its waters: a careless child or even an experienced swimmer, underestimating its flows and currents, so it seemed that the ancient sacrifices continued to this very day in homage to its darkling majesty.

  Alan pulled the truck to a creaking halt on the riverbank about half a mile after Carrick, where young willows dangled their drooping leaves over the water. It seemed as good a place as any to fill the first of the plastic drums with water from the Suir.

  After helping Mo through a gap in the hawthorn hedge, Alan followed her down the bank into the shadows of the trees, watching as she pressed the neck of the container below the surface. Mo turned for a moment and looked fearfully over her shoulder. He saw the expression on her face, the prickling of worry in the dark pools of her eyes. For a moment, as he leaned down to pull her back, he thought he saw a shadow at the periphery of his vision, as if a darker mass was congealing out of the shade of the trees. They started back toward the truck.

  Then as they reached the hedge, an instinct prompted them both to look back. A figure was silhouetted against the bright reflecting water. Mo left Alan with the container as she tore through the hedge, calling out a warning to the others. A creeping horror prickled Alan’s skin as he paused to take a second look. The figure really was there, shrouded by a black hood and cloak. The figure seemed to reach out as if to close the distance between them. Alan had to suppress the instinct to abandon the container in his panic to run back to the truck.

  Kate murmured, “What was that?”

  “I don’t know!”

  With a clattering roar of the cantankerous old engine and trailing clouds of smoke, Alan accelerated along the Carrick Road, only reaching out to take Kate’s hand when they had put a mile or more of distance between them and the stopping point. Her hand felt cold, the fingers stiff and crabby with fear.

  After they had traveled a few miles farther, Mark tried to cheer Mo up, telling her jokes in his Homer Simpson voice. Mark was so clever with his jokes and his voices that Mo, although not exactly laughing, appeared to take comfort from his attempts.

  All four talked to each other through the missing rear cabin window.

  “Duh-duh-do you think that Puh-Padraig is really a duh-druid?” Mo asked as the truck took a left turn and headed north.

  Alan shook his head. “I don’t really know.”

  “I muh-muh-mean, he saw it all from the buh-beginning. Buh-buh-before any of us ruh-realized . . .”

  “Yeah, Mo! Now I wish I’d talked a lot more with Grandad.”

  Kate screwed her head around so she could talk to Mo directly. “Wasn’t it mind-blowing when we all started dreaming the same dreams!”

  Alan rubbed at some scratches he had picked up from going through the hawthorns, meanwhile wondering if Mo was right, and that maybe his grandad really was a druid. If so, a druid’s grandson was driving this truck, illegally as it happened, since Alan was well under the official license age. Mark suddenly cut through Alan’s thoughts, pointing into the air behind them with a trembling hand. He cried out, “The watcher! The watcher!”

  Kate paled and she clutched at Alan’s hand.

  They passed through minor roads that were so enveloped by trees that they were effectively driving through tunnels. The sky that had been so limpid earlier had given way to gathering clouds and although the truck would sometimes emerge from shade into sparkling sunshine, it was never long before the shadows swallowed it up again. Alan knew some of the byways from helping his grandfather deliver loads, but he quickly lost track of the narrow and winding lanes, which, at times, were no more than single-track shortcuts. Kate did her best to follow the route on her crumpled map. An hour or more passed of weaving through flat farmland with scattered, gray-walled cottages surrounded by fields of crops. Then a shout from Kate announced that they had arrived at the second of the sisters. They had reached the Nore, close to its headwaters, where it was little more than a stream below gentle rapids, white spray flecking the currents over glistening black rocks.

  This time it was Kate’s turn to fetch the water.

  “You go with her, Mark,” Alan called up to him.

  But Mark had already climbed onto the roof of the cab, holding up the harmonica, ready like some kind of warning siren, and shading his eyes from a sudden appearance of the sun.

  Alan snorted with irritation.

  He had to squeeze past Mo, her hands holding apart the barbed wire at the top of the slope, so he could run after Kate, who was thirty yards ahead, lugging the second of the plastic drums down the slope of tussocky grasses and birch saplings. By the time he got to her, Kate had already jammed the neck into the stream. It took longer to fill in this shallow water, and the Nore hissed softly, as if warning them to be quick. Alan found himself darting fearful glances back over his shoulder into every shadow under the small trees.

  The shadow loomed over them as the sun clouded over. Alan sensed it like a cold shroud spreading over the landscape, licking about them, discovering them, making the hairs on the back of his neck stand up as he pressed his lips into a taut line, willing Kate to hurry.

  Clammy, ghostlike tentacles wrapped themselves around his legs, as if trying to inhibit all possibility of escape, as Kate’s hand reached up with the container. He yanked it from her hand and together they ran. Lungs bursting, they reached the barbed wire at the top of the slope, struggling between the strands of wire that Mo was again holding apart for them. Suddenly the harmonica began to scream out a warning. Neither Alan nor Kate could bear to look back behind them. Mo was stammering incoherently and bleeding from multiple tiny scratches as they dragged themselves through the wire, hauling the water onto the back of the truck. They dove into the cab, slammed the engine into gear, and tore off with the pedal to the floor.

  They were all jittery and needed a break. Somewhere along the open farmland between Kilkenny and Carlow, Alan pulled the truck off the road onto a grassy track that led down into an abandoned quarry. Here, screened from the world in a bowl of shadow, they talked in hushed voices and shared the chips and chocolate and the first of the two bottles of cola. Over the rim of the quarry, the mid-afternoon sun hid behind gathering clouds. Mo held on tight to the talisman dangling on the shoelace around her throat.

  “Padraig did warn us that the gate would be warded.” Kate muttered quietly.

  “He did.” Alan nodded. “But I don’t think any of us imagined it would be as scary as this.”

  As they hurried on again toward the last of the sisters—the Barrow at its upper waters between Carlow and Athy—they knew the watcher was stalking them. The quiet lanes felt creepy as they hurried through them.

  In the deepening shadows of late afternoon, Alan pulled to a halt over a slope of marshy ground, where the road and river parted, making them fearful of the distance between them. No one hurried to volunteer.

  “Looks like it’s you and me, Mark!” Alan confronted Mark, with a challenging look in his eyes.

  Mark snatched the third container from the back of the truck and started down the slope. Kate wanted to go with him but Alan said no. “Stay in the cab. Make sure the engine is running. And Mo, you just sit tight in the back. We may have to get out of here in a hurry!” Then,
with a sigh of exasperation, he shouted to Mark to hold on so he could catch up with him. But Mark continued on his own.

  “Don’t be a jerk! I’m coming!” Alan hopped up into the back of the truck and grabbed the spear before vaulting back to the ground.

  But the fair-haired youth was already well down the slope, with a loping stride, so Alan had to break into a sprint to catch up with him, using the long wooden shaft of the spear as a prop against the boggy ground. The slope soon leveled off to a flat plain of clinging mud, with fouled rushes and giant weeds. Mark had to pick his way carefully now, doing his best to keep to the firmer humps of ground, using the empty container in places to stop himself from slipping into the mud. Following behind Mark into the dense shrub of pussy willow and overgrown oaks by the riverbank, Alan was startled by the silence. Other than the merest whispering of the water over slippery stones, there was none of the chatter of nature. And then, deep in the shadows, as Mark slithered down the bank to force the neck of the container into the murky water, Alan saw in the foliage above him an empty nest that had once been home to a family of wagtails.

  The broken bowl of the nest was littered with feathers. He saw other clusters of feathers still attached to some fragments of wing and splinters of bone scattered on the ground close to his feet. There were tiny flecks of bloodied flesh around the bones. Panic rose in his chest. His lungs felt waterlogged. His eyes lifted to the shadows between the trees. The hooded figure was only yards away and stiller than the stones. Its eyes had the unblinking glare of a pike.

  He called out hoarsely, “Mark! Don’t look up. Just pass me the container and let’s get the hell out of here!”