“Water’s cold.” Mahon trailed his hand down onto its silvery surface.
“That it is,” Aidan said.
“Why?”
“Reckon it comes down out of the hills,” he said. “At least, it did back home.”
Donough grinned at them. “This ain’t home, but still a sight better than it’s been.”
“An undeniable fact, on the face of it.” Aidan paused. “Still have dreams?”
Donough’s vast face tautened. “Time to time. Fading now. That’s one of the sad things.”
“How do you mean?”
Donough considered. “You hope that you can take the things you love with you, in here.” He thumped his chest over his heart. “Or here.” He tapped his head. “But days come and go, and slowly, it all just seems to drain away. Not sure I’d recognize me own mum, if I saw her dancin’ down the street.” His slablike shoulders sagged. “And that feels like I’m killing her all over again.”
Aidan searched for something to say. In business or farming, Donough moved and thought slowly, but in matters of the heart, he sometimes rose to a strange and almost poetic clarity.
“Uncle Donough,” Mahon said, clutching at Donough’s thick, sun-bronzed arm with one small, pale hand. “Don’t be sad.”
Donough pressed his lips together. “No, little man. Happy to be here.” He looked out over the trees and lake, and inhaled sharply. “This ain’t me land, but it is me family, and that’s for sure.” He smiled, and tousled Mahon’s fair hair.
Trust a child to know what to say, Aidan thought. Jesus in heaven, he’s so like me. Ma, Da … if only you could see.
Suddenly, Mahon’s attention was caught by a tiny figure standing at the shoreline. “Look!” the boy said.
Aidan shaded his eyes. “Who’s that?” Whoever it was, they were waving their arms at the coracle.
“Can’t see,” Donough said, squinting.
“Snow Elk,” Mahon said, and clapped with glee.
Snow Elk was a Ouachita brave from a neighboring valley. Aidan glared good naturedly at the boy. “Me sight can’t be fading just yet,” he muttered, and began making his way toward the shore.
Donough craned his head. “Who’s with him?”
Aidan looked at Mahon. “Little eagle-eye?”
“Looks like a white man,” Mahon said.
Aidan paddled toward the shore. “Don’t see the Ouachita as much as we did even a year ago. These black folks won’t stop until they drive the brown men into the western sea.”
“There’s another sea?” Mahon asked.
Donough stood and craned his head left and west, as if searching for the other body of water, rocking their boat comically.
“Sit, you great lumbering oaf. You’ll drown us all.”
Donough sat, chuckling. “Tell us about this western pond.”
“This land goes on for two thousand miles. Maybe more.”
“No!” Donough and Mahon said at once, and then shared a laugh.
“And on the other side of it, there’s an ocean. I’ve just heard of it. It’s wide and wild, and there are yellow men camped about.”
Mahon shook his head. “Yellow men. Brown men. Black men. White men.”
“Who knew the good Lord had so many colors to paint with, eh, boyo?” Donough said.
Pulling hard, they reached the shore in a few minutes.
Aidan signed a clumsy salutation. “Snow Elk. Greetings.”
“Wasaamu Alakum,” Snow Elk was bronzed by sun and blood to a tone halfway between white and black. His skin was thick and wrinkled, especially around his dark brown eyes, those wrinkles appropriate for a man who had seen at least forty winters—a withering burden of years given the harshness of his life.
“Waalaykum salaam,” Donough replied.
Several warriors accompanied Snow Elk, and they brought forth a quavering white man in ragged, stained pants. His chest was bare and scratched, his back bore half-healed lash tracks. His ragged, shoulder-length black hair was streaked gray with mud.
“And who is this one?” Aidan asked.
Haltingly, Snow Elk answered. “He came to our village, begging food. We fed him. The shadow men offer reward for turning him in. We do not like the shadows.”
“More about these Ouachita to love,” Donough whispered.
“Will you care for him?” Snow Elk asked.
“He is our responsibility now,” Aidan said. “I thank you.”
Snow Elk took a step, and then turned around. “Be careful,” he said. “The shadows do not like your village. There may be war.”
Aidan shook his head as Snow Elk and his people retreated into the forest. “Takes two armies to make a war,” he said. “Otherwise, it’s just a killing.”
“Then we better make us an army,” Donough said.
“Been tryin’,” Aidan replied. “Come on,” he said to the refugee. “Let’s get you fed.”
With an hour’s notice, a formal council was convened in the crannog’s longhouse, with one main question to answer: what to do with the runaway?
The refugee might have come from as far as Wichita City. He was frightened, hungry, and exhausted. “Please,” he pled, kneeling before them. “Help me.”
“What is your name?” Aidan asked.
“Me mother named me Simon. Me master named me Kufu.”
“Here, we’ll call ye Simon.”
Sophia’s face was compassionate but unyielding. “We can give you food, and shelter for the night—but not here. There is a place we can take you.”
“But why?” asked Simon. “Ain’t ye my people? Help me.”
“We cannot,” Sophia said. “The townsfolk would love an opportunity to bring us low. And if we helped you, and were discovered, some of us would be returned to slavery. I’m sorry. Food, and shelter, and a map to Vineland. And that is all.”
“Take ’im for food and drink,” one of the others said. “This needs talkin’.”
Simon was removed. Sophia turned to the man who had spoken. “So, Eric. What do you need to say?”
“We can ’elp him more than that. I’m not so sure it ain’t our duty.” Some of the others murmured assent.
One of the other men stood. “There’s the river, if you understand me meaning.” Indeed they did. His inflection lent the word special significance. In this context, the term river meant no body of moving water. Rather, it was the escape route north or west to the unincorporated territories, maintained by black abolitionists and free whites. Or at least so it was rumored. An absolute condition of its use was silence as to the particulars. The few whispers Sophia had heard detailed blindfolds, clandestine meetings, frantic escapes, bribery, and occasional violence against the ubiquitous slavecatchers. Any black found guilty of abetting the escape of slaves could be jailed. Whites could be executed.
“Do you know where to find the river?” she said in challenge. “If not, don’t talk about it. There’s nothing positive to be done, and loose talk hurts us all.”
An older Irishman named Niad stood up. “I denne understan’ why we canna keep ’im. Blend ’im in. We all look alike to the stinkin’ shadows anyway.”
“Because we’re out here alone,” said Aidan. “We already have problems with our black neighbors—”
“Fock ’em! We ain’t slaves no more!”
“No,” said Sophia. “But this man is. Would you dare our neighbors to fall on us with all their guns and soldiers? It would be difficult to imagine something that would cause us greater grief.”
“But we are strong!”
“Sophia is right,” Aidan said. “We are strong so long as we remain within the law. If they ’ad a single reason to attack us, they’d tear us a new hole faster than ye can say ‘jump.’”
“There are tales,” Sophia said, “of other freedmen’s camps burned to the ground, its members returned to slavery, on mere suspicion of harboring a runaway.”
“This is the truth,” said another of the men. “I came here from Azani
a, and I tell you that there was a settlement there where every man, woman, and child was returned to slavery for harboring. And worse, it was a ’belly did ’em in.”
“What?”
“It’s the truth. Renegade whites—not Irish, I’m proud to say.” He spat on the ground. “Deliberately set out to trap freed slaves, for gold. Hellish thing, but real. Seen it with me own eyes!”
Niad grunted. “I heard such, but never thought it true. Damn!”
There was a great deal of muttering and low cursing before order was regained.
“Even if it weren’t true,” Aidan said, “just the rumors keep us in line. We haven’t much, but we have each other. In time, we’ll grow, and maybe one day we’ll be strong. Right now, we have to be careful as mice in a cat barn. Not forever, but now.”
And that was, for the time being, that.
Aidan crept up behind Sophia as she and one of the other women sang to the children at fireside. The evenings were generally a time for stories and fables: “The Children of Lir,” “The Llanfabon Changeling,” and “The Sea-Maiden” were all favorites.
Tonight they sang of one of the terrible creatures of this alien land, the hunting apes called thoths, which the Irish equated to the gruagach of legend. Not for the first time, Aidan reflected that those titillated by horror were least likely to have ever experienced it personally.
Deep within the forest dark
Lies a beast with baleful bark
Feasting on an infant’s soul
Cross its path and pay the toll….
When they reached the familiar refrain, the others joined in.
“Aire!” they cried. “Gruagach! Aire! Gruagach!”
What amazed Aidan was the fact that despite Sophia’s personal encounter with the abominations, she still managed to wear a mask of playful terror, imagined dread. Such a feat would have been beyond him. He had no idea where she locked away that horror, how she could make light of images that still gave him night terrors.
He remembered what the apes had done to Brian McCloud, once the handsomest man of Dar Kush’s tuath. For the sin of desiring freedom, his golden face had been ripped away.
Pass not through the village gate
Sun has set and day is late
If you walk alone at night
You meet black and gray and white….
He wanted to leave, but found himself hypnotized by his woman. He had a glimmering of how she did it, that deep within her heart there was a room where she had been taught to hide her feelings and emotions, proper training for a pleasure slave. And if such a place existed, then it was difficult to imagine the manner of horrors crouching there in the darkness, awaiting her inspection.
An incredible skill, purchased at unspeakable cost. He knew some of that penalty, what she had paid to be the remarkable spirit she was.
What price they both continued to pay.
Run, hide, stay inside! Listen unto me!
Dark sport is the court of the Unseelie!
The children were laughing, giggling with delight at the horrid images. Aidan was simply transfixed, lost in memories, admiration, and sadness.
Sophia was bringing her song to a conclusion and had slowed her pace, every image generating a different dancers posture, so that one solitary woman seemed an entire company of mimes.
I have saved these words for last
Learn them well and hold them fast
Never venture from your bed
Else your very soul is … dead!
As the stars crept from cover that evening, Aidan and Sophia returned to their own home. In many ways life with his dearest was sweeter than he had ever known. Already, his son was abed. She served his dinner, and they ate in silence. She knew her man, knew his moods and expressions, and his silent withdrawal did not offend her in the slightest.
“I wonder what Kai would have done,” he said finally.
“You still miss him?” she asked.
“How could I not? He was my brother.” He tore a fistful of fresh hot bread from the loaf and bit it in half.
“He was your master.”
“Aye. And the truest friend I’ll ever have.” He wiped the remaining hunk around the edge of his stew bowl and groaned with pleasure as he chewed. Simple fare, but a feast of plenty. “Some of the burdens we carry haunt us.”
“Kai?”
Aidan nodded his head.
“Nessa?”
He flinched. The mention of the twin sister ten years gone never failed to savage his emotions. Time healed some wounds. Small wounds. It seemed the larger ones never healed at all. “Still,” he said, and peered into the fireplace. The logs crackled, but the fire’s warmth seemed to stop at his skin. “Sometimes, not often, I wonder what life might have been like, had I stayed on at Dar Kush.”
Sophia turned away.
“No, darlin’,” he said quickly. “It’s different if you were raised there. Children expect to be controlled. Not until you become a man do you truly understand what it means to be a slave. At times life was good. At times, Ghost Town was the best home in the world. When I forgot about Eire.” He paused, considering. “Not many of those moments, but they existed.”
She looked at him with startled curiosity. “How could you have ever forgotten?”
“I wouldn’t have. But if things had been different, if I had decided to stay …”
“If we had decided.”
“Yes. We.”
“I couldn’t have remained, Aidan,” she said, chewing slowly. “Too many memories. You weren’t forced into … some of the situations I faced.”
“No.” He closed his eyes, hoping not to resurrect the evil memories. “I don’t know how you survived them, and still had heart enough to offer me.”
She reached for his hand. “How did you? All those years of companionship with a ‘friend’ who could buy and sell you.”
He gazed at her with a face that was younger, and more naive, than that she kissed at night. “I loved him, Sophia.”
“So did I, a little.” She gazed at him across the table. “But not as I love you. I knew you would come. I had to believe it. I saved my heart for you.”
He came to Sophia and embraced her. She cringed, then tensed and gasped, turning partially away. He cursed to himself, instantly recognizing his mistake. “Sweet? I’m sorry.”
She pushed her closed fist against her mouth. “No. I’m sorry. So sorry.”
This hurt bitterly. Malik’s sexual domination of Sophia had made their own lovemaking a very fragile thing. Aidan could not simply approach his woman. Rather, he had to wait for Sophia to come to him. And as frustrating as that was, it was not so terrible as once it had been, when her eyes might go dead and cold in the very midst of passion. The old wounds were healing, but never fast enough for him. Never.
“Still,” she said. “Not always.”
He sighed. Rarely did he initiate discussion of this aspect of the past, but here it was before them, and he was unable to avoid asking a question that had been asked before, answered before, in a dozen different ways. “It was very bad?”
“Not that he hurt me. Physically,” she clarified. “Malik was not an evil man. But …” She seemed to be choosing her words carefully. “But I was first raped when I was fourteen, Aidan. I was trained to hide myself away, and I did. Until I met you.”
He stroked her shoulder, and she relaxed a bit.
“And with you,” she continued, “I glimpsed the girl I might have been, had I never been kidnapped. Never forced against my will. I began to feel again. Really feel. And when they took me away from you and gave me to Malik, I tried to hide.”
“And couldn’t?”
She shook her head. “No.” A tiny voice. “I couldn’t. I tried. He tore through my barriers. It wasn’t until I started fighting back, when I seduced him to aid the rebellion, that I regained any scrap of control. I couldn’t wait for him to initiate. I had to be the aggressor, Aidan. I had to arouse him, to force him to sex me
on my terms, not his. And when you were taken away, when you went to war, for those weeks Malik and I were engaged in a battle of our own, with my soul as the prize.”
Aidan considered. “When I saw him last … before Kai killed him, he seemed … not wholly himself.”
Sophia set her jaw. “No. I found his weakness: pride. He became obsessed with mastering me. Malik forced his body to perform more than it should have. Many times a day. I believe he used herbal potions to force erection.”
It was Aidan’s turn to wince.
“I am sorry, my love,” Sophia said, and stroked his face with the back of a smooth hand.
He caught and held her hand. “No. Please continue. I need to know.”
She nodded. “He was broken inside. What he had seen and done in the name of country, of Allah, of personal honor, had made him brittle. I used his own pride to attack him. Pride in …” She groped for a word.
Without thinking, Aidan offered, “His sword?”
She gazed at him, and then somehow, impossibly, they began to laugh, melting into uncontrollable guffaws until tears streamed down their cheeks. They held each other so tightly they could barely breathe. “My love. All wounds heal, in time. I will heal. Every day I feel it to be more true. Be patient with me?”
“We have all the time there is,” he said, and kissed her.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The dying firelight danced shadows against Aidan’s closed eyes. At length his lashes fluttered a bit, and a few breaths later he began to moan….
Memory’s mirror had clouded.
Occasionally Aidan dreamed of fishing, and returning to O’Dere Crannog. In night-fantasy’s lens it was always empty and dust-swept.
In slumber-play he was a grown man, striding the streets of his childhood. “Ma?” he called out. “Da?”
Never was there an answer.
He looked down at his hands, which had transformed into a child’s hands. Small. Soft. Boyhood, sweet and terrifying, had returned. “Anyone here?” he called out, voice high and thin.
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