Fionn and the Legend of the Blood Emeralds

by Tom O'Neill

  Dark looked away.

  Curtain was on his third coffee when The Red returned with his gloves no longer white. They were torn and covered in a mix of black clay and stinking goo. He had burrowed into the fresh grave. He said to Curtain in a ridiculous accent, ‘There’s the slug, Smokey. The autopsy revealed the victim had trauma to the lateral segment of the frontal cortex of the equine lobe. I tried to resuscitate the victim but it was no use. In medical parlance, the victim’s brain is entirely banjaxed. And to tell the truth, the skin and eyes are not looking too curable either.’ He placed the filthy bullet on the plate of fig rolls. Dark’s mam, who had come back in to see what the noise was about, had to leave the room with her hand over her mouth.

  Connie asked Dark to wash the thing and put the biscuits out on the sill for the robin.

  When the agriculture officials arrived in a fleet of cars the next day, Curtain was back. He met them at the door in full uniform and told them he couldn’t allow them in. That there was suspicion of a rare African disease on the premises. They could confirm with Dr Cannon in the University Hospital, but they were asked to keep it under wraps for now, so as not to cause undue alarm.

  They didn’t need any persuading. But if they had, the sight of Connie staggering to the door looking like some kind of Ebola-eaten giant would certainly have done it. He greeted them warmly, with his hand extended. But they were already getting into their cars. He shouted after them that he couldn’t help them out on this occasion but told them they might want to make a call at a neighbour’s place. He was very troubled that the man was burying fallen animals against all regulations. He relayed The Red’s precise instructions as to where they could find Milly.

  Jim Curtain took the bullet away with him. It needed no effort to persuade the district judge to issue search warrants for all of Saltee’s premises – apparently she had been looking for any excuse, not pleased with the persistence of a herbal shop on ‘her turf’. When Curtain arrived at Greystone Manor with a team from Dublin, Trevor Saltee was absent, departed suddenly to attend to business in Hungary.

  ‘He’s not going to stay away, is he?’ Dark said to Connie, one humid July evening. They were in the kitchen finishing the banana bread that his mam had taken out of the oven only an hour before. She had gone to town to get snacks and sparkling wine. She was arranging a delayed surprise party for Connie’s recovery – she had waited even longer than Dark to fully believe in it.

  The Red, Curtain, the neighbours and other old friends would soon be here. The Red was bringing his mother’s melodeon and Queenie had promised to sing some of the strange old songs that she said she had learned from an ancient travelling woman: old keening airs of the Kill hills, which Dark’s mam thought ‘haunting’. Dark was planning to be in his room with his Skype headphones firmly in place by the time the first arrived – always Sandy the Englishman with the walrus moustache: even after all his new age traveller years, he was still more punctual than anyone from west Cork.

  ‘Maybe not, Art,’ said Connie, rooting in the freezer for more ice-cream. ‘But why would we let that gnaw into our good days?’

  ‘I know. “Worry is not obligatory,” and all that,’ said Dark.

  ‘Right,’ said Connie, laughing.

  Dark looked out the window and saw Sandy’s Morris Minor approaching. He would soon be stretching out on his mat in front of the Aga, with a mug of hot chocolate made by Connie. Dark went to his room. He had his daily call coming up. He was now agreeing with Kevin about their connection being too laggy. Her lips would move half a second out of synch with her words. But neither of them would suggest leaving the video off.

  He had prepared lots of things to talk about tonight, in case nervousness made him go back to being quiet. He was nervous because she was coming tomorrow to spend the afternoon. She and Kevin. They had agreed to come here to start the band. Now he was starting to think that maybe Kevin had been right. That taking her out here and letting her see how he lived and letting her meet Connie might be a bad move.

  At two o’clock the next afternoon, the black BMW inched its way disapprovingly along the potholed lane. Kevin’s dad was bringing both of them. He did not stop to chat.

  ‘Like wow, dude,’ said Kevin, when Dark turned on the lights in the barn. ‘Why didn’t you show me this outfit when I was here before?’

  Dark ignored him. That was the best way with Kevin and his selective memory.

  Connie brought them a slab of coke to put in the bar fridge. He slapped Kevin on the back, shouting, ‘Hey, young Dowd, a good man. I knew you’d come back to us.’

  When Dark introduced Ciara, he didn’t say anything terrible. He just smiled and quite politely said, ‘Welcome, little darling’. He went to leave and then hesitated, glancing at the drum kit. Dark knew what he was thinking. He loved showing off his interpretation of Keith Moon’s My Generation drum solo. But kindly, he refrained. From the doorway he said, ‘Helen says you all are to come in for her famous salmon quiche at five. It’s fairly gruesome but don’t say anything. There’s pavlova for after.’

  So now they were doing something. Whatever that would be. Dark still hadn’t mastered the drums. Kevin knew how to do some quite impressive things with his guitar. But he did them all too delicately, like he was working on one of his Java puzzles. And as for Ciara, she had claimed she was not able to sing so often that Dark was preparing himself for it to be true.

  She didn’t care though. ‘Just letting you know,’ she said, ‘even if my singing chases the crows away, I’ll be coming here every Saturday from now on until you tell me not to.’ Dark did not foresee that happening.

  Kevin wanted to do some more practice on his own. So he said. He nodded disconcertingly as he told them to go for a walk. They went anyway. It was a dry day and she said she didn’t mind walking down the fields. Dark borrowed his mam’s boots for her and took her to the bog and across it to the river. They went along the bank to his fulacht fian and sat in there comfortably while he caught himself sounding like Connie with an elaborate explanation of how it had been used for cooking. At least he had the sense to talk in the past tense.

  After some time a grey blue bird flapped down on the opposite bank. She looked at them cuddled there, first with one eye and then the other.

  ‘That’s strange,’ said Ciara, ‘I thought I heard that bird make ... I don’t know ... something like a kind of disapproving sound.’

  ‘Pay no attention. It’s just the wind,’ said Dark, who thought it was more like a laughing sound. He pulled Ciara’s crocheted cap down over her ears. ‘Anyway, maybe it’s time to get back.’

  He would have liked to tell Maire Fada what he really thought of her and her lies. But he didn’t want to give her any opening to resume her speech and terrify Ciara. In his hurry to get away, he forgot his jacket.

  At the kitchen table, slowly chewing quiche, Kevin announced that he wanted to name the band, ‘The Uncouths’.

  That was okay with Dark, but Ciara was worried that her father might think she was making a joke of him.

  That night, the house was quiet except for the rain pounding the roof. It was heavier than he had ever heard. The house was warm and it felt good to be inside on such a night. In his room he was starting back into League of Heroes, when Connie knocked and stuck his head in.

  Dark was slightly irritated.

  ‘Something for you, before I forget,’ said Connie, unzipping the inner pocket of his leather jacket. ‘Something to add to your collection of junk. I went back to the bog.’

  Dark was amazed. Connie had clearly gone back to the coordinates where the spike had made a hollow sound. With nobody suspecting that he would be strong enough to be out digging anything, he had gone back alone and dug next to the buried ogham stone.

  ‘Why did you need to do it on your own?’ asked Dark. ‘With Saltee away, there was nobody to see us.’

  ‘It’s not just Saltee who was interested,’ said Connie.

  It took a minute for th
is to sink in. ‘The Red?’ Suddenly Dark was scrabbling through his brain. Recalling all of The Red’s ‘jokes’ about not wanting to let Connie die while he owed him some favours. Trying to think whether he had given him any information in response to his casual questions shouted over Bee Gees music on the trips to Cork. ‘But I thought he was your friend?’

  ‘He is,’ said Connie, laughing. ‘And of course there are some friends you can completely trust. But the red man is not that kind. Nobody is perfect.’

  The thing that Connie put in Dark’s hand was wrapped in newspaper. It felt no bigger than a saucer. It seemed a small thing for all this to have been about.

  ‘This was all you found in the chamber? The only possessions the man had stashed away after all?’

  ‘There was something else,’ said Connie, with the worried look of a parent warning about heroin. ‘A container of toxic things. Things you do not want to run your fingers over.’

  ‘A bronze bucket?’ asked Dark, remembering the goblins.

  ‘By the way, I trust you to never again go to the hiding place on your own,’ said Connie, not smiling now.

  Dark wondered how he knew.

  ‘Especially not now with those things there. It is said that anyone who has ever held one of those stones became obsessed with thoughts of getting more of them and of all the fancy things they could bring. Think of Trevor Saltee and the madness of greed that swamps any decent impulse he might ever have had. There were many before him.’

  ‘Though there are some who are immune to the blood emerald,’ said Dark, casually. He now knew what the red stone from his inner pocket was. And he knew what he was going to do with it. He was going to give it to Ciara. He was certain she too would not be affected by it.

  ‘Not that I have heard of. They affect anyone they touch,’ said Connie, looking very worried. ‘How do you know about them?’

  They did not affect Dark, he was quite sure. And they wouldn’t Ciara. He would show that. She could hold it forever and not be affected by it – only admire it.

  ‘What are you not telling me?’ asked Connie.

  Dark suddenly remembered. The jacket was still down at the river. He had to fetch it immediately. Yes, for the emerald. Connie obviously didn’t know there was one missing from the bucket. So it could do no harm to keep it. But also he needed to retrieve his piece of the brown bowl. He had a place for it now. There was a velvet-lined cutlery box with old marbles in it. That was where he would keep the piece of bowl after he had cleaned it properly. He had to go now. ‘I have to run out for a minute,’ he said. ‘I left my jacket down the field.’

  ‘Not in this downpour.’

  ‘I have to,’ said Dark.

  ‘Okay, where is it? I’ll go on the tractor to get it for you,’ said Connie.

  ‘Down by the river,’ said Dark, ‘in the fulacht.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Connie. ‘Forget it then my friend. Brian was just on the phone. The Brown River burst its banks an hour ago. Your coat is gone.’

  Dark felt like a part of himself had been torn away.

  ‘It will be out in the Atlantic by morning, taking a ride on the gulf stream. Who knows where it will end up?’ said Connie, laughing. ‘But hey, what’s the matter? Don’t worry about that old coat. It has gotten too small anyway. We’ll get you a new one tomorrow.’

  Dark could not respond. He didn’t have bandwidth to try to think about any of this now. He prepared to put it in that bulging folder of his brain where he stored all the things he might try to figure out later. Or might not bother ever reopening. He tore the newspaper wrapping from the saucer-shaped object that Connie had given him.

  As the business page from the Irish Times fell to the floor, he took seconds to realise what he had. He was for an instant back in the confusion. There in his hands was the bronze breast plate. The one that had been given by the woodcutter for Matha’s black pony. Even in the tarnish, every detail was perfect. All around the edges was the numbingly intricate spiral engraving. In the middle of the plate was the relief of a great stallion rearing high.

  He didn’t know what to say to Connie. They wouldn’t talk again about these things, that he knew. Connie just looked at him and went back to the kitchen as the sound of a car crunched its way up the fresh gravel on the lane. Dark put the plate to warm inside his shirt as he turned to respond to the buzzing of Skype. Ciara smiled at him with her green eyes and hair that was blacker than night.

  Dark lay awake long after the sounds of talking had disappeared from the front rooms. He waited for the sounds of silence after his mam and Connie had said goodnight loudly but before they left the kitchen to creak across the boards to their rooms.

  In the silence, he thought he could hear merriment in the distance. The rain had stopped. Sounds travel crystal clear in the freedom of night. He imagined he could smell the fire, though that was impossible from so far away. He sat up and he thought he saw Etain’s face at the window. He opened it and climbed quietly out to cross the yard and stood in the back field getting soaked to the bone. She wasn’t there. He saw yellow eyes ambling across by the far hedge, stopping occasionally to look at him. He remembered words about the night time.13 Dark felt no fear of the wolves or of any of the other peoples. But the rath wasn’t calling him, so he went back inside, into his own home.

  HELP WITH NAMES AND WORDS

  A chroí

  Endearment (from croí, heart). Pronounce a-hree.

  A mhic

  Endearment (form of mac, son). Pronounce a-vick.

  Aillén

  One of the Tuatha dé Danann who every year lulled the residents of Tara with magical music and then burnt the place down; his unsociable habit was halted by Fionn Mac Cumhaill.

  Amadán

  Foolish person.

  An Bean Maire Ní Corghrian

  Mrs Mary of the Herons (see heron, below).

  Aoibhín

  Pronounce eve-een.

  Aoife

  Pronounce eefa.

  Baile

  Settlement, territory. Pronounce bal-ya.

  Baile Dróna

  Respectively the clan territories of the feckless Dróna (near latter-day Durrow), the scurrilous Théig (area of today’s Tullow), and the harmless Ceinnselaigh (near Carnew).

  ...Théig

  ...Ceinnselaigh

  Baile Lugdach

  The territory of the Lugda clan, in the north west.

  Báirinn

  The king’s fairy woman. Pronounce bawr-inn.

  Banbh

  Piglet (also the surname of a clan in this book). Pronounce bon-of.

  Bandraoi

  Woman of magic, possibly good, possibly not.

  Bealtaine

  The first day of the summer quarter of the year, the first of May. Pronounce bal-thinna.

  Bodach

  Lout.

  Bodhrán

  Traditional percussion instrument: a large diameter goatskin tambourine. Pronounce bow-rawn.

  Bolcán

  King of France whose daughter fell in love with the young Fionn Mac Cumhaill, leading to a bloody battle in Ventry in which Bolcán became insane.

  Boreen

  Narrow, unsurfaced road or lane.

  Bothán

  Small cabin of mud or thatch. Pronounce buh-hawn.

  Brega

  One of two middle kingdoms that existed between Laigin (Leinster) and Uladh (Ulster).

  Brehon

  Anglicization of breitheamh, a judge or interpreter of the ancient body of ‘Brehon Law’, the complex rules by which disputes were resolved and wrongs righted in most of Ireland until the seventeenth century.

  Brígh Ambui

  A woman of great wisdom, perhaps a Goddess. Pronounce breeg ambwee.

  Brigid

  A Goddess.

  Bulián

  The noxious yellow flowering weed, ragwort. Pronounce bool-e-awn.

  Cáel

  A young Fenian warrior who had fallen in love with the fairy (Tuatha dé Da
nann) woman, Créidhe; he died on the last day of the battle of Ventry and her lament for him rings through the ages.

  Cailleach

  Witch, hag.

  Caoimhín

  Kevin. Pronounce Keeveen.

  Caoineadh

  Crying, keening. Pronounce kween-oo.

  Cenél

  Chieftaincy or family lands.