"Queen Elizabeth the murderess, daughter to the devil himself, Henry the Eighth, has new plans for invading Ireland. Living here as you do on the rocky western edge of our land, you haven't yet seen too many of the English soldiers. But news of their approach is always on the air, and getting stronger. They're determined to establish English control, limiting all forms of Irish independence."
"The devils," a few men muttered.
I followed my brothers as they stepped into the room, giving grave and respectful nods, extending their hands and introducing themselves.
"Emmet Leahy," replied the man who got up from the stool and stood before us like a tower. Though there were certainly tall men in Donegal, this one had to be half a head taller than the tallest.
When we sat, Emmet Leahy continued to speak. "The rebellion has ended in the south with the murder of the earl. Clanawley is now a wasted land."
"I'd like to join the mercenary army!" said Donal.
"So would I," Fingal said.
Emmet Leahy smiled at them. "I admire your spirits, young men, but there is something we need more of in
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this area right now. We must be organized. We need a faction, a steady meeting where news can be shared and plans made."
"We will be in charge of that," Donal volunteered.
Da appeared, and my brothers introduced him to Emmet Leahy.
I sat in the corner, rocking Ishleen, and the conversation continued about how the faction might work. That was when I had the vision for the first time. I saw myself in the dress, walking through an elegant interior blasting with drafts of cold wind, calling out to Mam, who called back to me from some vague distance.
Now and then I'd blink my eyes and focus on the real world. Da, my brothers and Emmet Leahy leaned forward in their chairs, facing one another. Donal was the one stoking the flames of the long conversation with his endless questions.
Indulging the dream a second time, I saw the seamstress from Muldoon's. In the vision she had delicate white feathers at her temples growing directly from her hairline, just as the woman who had given me the bottles had. As I was imagining this, Ishleen stirred. I lifted her up so she could look around the room, and a bit of soft white down floated from her blanket and drifted on the air around us before dropping slowly to the floor.
From that hour, Donal and Fingal stopped their brooding and their harsh tempers. Everything that had ever engaged their hearts and imaginations about Irish
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rebellion was suddenly given specificity and immediacy. Here was an opportunity to forge a path, and they threw every bit of themselves into it with great energy and seriousness.
Before we left Killybegs, I asked Da if we could stop again at Muldoon's Fine Imports. My heart raced as we approached the quaint facade with the tiny lights twinkling within. But I found the door locked fast. I knocked hard again and again, but no one answered.
Da smiled at me and said, "You must really like looking at those dainty things, Maeve."
"Yes, Da," I said, staring through the dim windows.
"We'll come back again sometime," he said.
Confused by my reluctance to leave, my brothers looked ponderously at me. I wanted to tell them, but I knew they'd think I was madder than ever. I missed Mam intensely.
When we were well on the road back to Ard Macha, and my brothers were talking excitedly to Da about Emmet Leahy, I whispered, "Mam, I'm going to find you. I'm going to bring you back to us somehow. You must be so tired of shivering with cold."
I could not get the dress out of my thoughts. Two days later, I took Da aside and told him about it. "I'm sure it costs dearly. I don't know how much, but the woman there was very kind, and perhaps she could work out some special arrangement with us. Could you just come with me, Da, to look at it?"
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I knew better than to tell him I had imagined myself rescuing Mam from the cold place where she was prisoner.
"All right, love," he said. "We'll go and have a look."
The following week, Da took me back to Killybegs. Muldoon's Fine Imports had closed down. Every glimmering curiosity, every scrap of thread, was gone.
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***
CHAPTER 8
***
Ishleen grew into a little enigma: a fairy of a creature with a head of wild wheat-colored curls, shot here and there with red. She crawled early and walked early, driven by curiosity and an impatience to be engaged in the world.
When Ishleen was four and I was nineteen, she was fascinated by fire and the sparking of the embers. With great concentration and an awed silence, she watched the black-encrusted kettle above the flames come to a trembling boil.
Being small, she did not really understand what was wrong with Mam and spoke to her just as I did, combing her fingers through Mam's hair. When we sat out near the beach, she decorated Mam with tiny seashells and sometimes with gorse flowers or maidenhair ferns.
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Not only did Ishleen speak gently to Mam's inert body, but she addressed the air itself when we were far from Mam, in the same way I did, thinking Mam might hear.
Ever since I had seen the dress in Killybegs, I drew pictures of it with a piece of sharpened charcoal. Paper was scarce, so I used the blank back or front pages of the books Donal hoarded near his bed. But when there were no more blank pages in those, I took to drawing the dress again and again over the written text, and this Donal refused to tolerate.
One bright windy morning, while pushing Mam's wheeled chair out near the ruins, I discovered a wall of smooth flagstone that set my heart racing. I took out the charcoal that I kept with me always and began to sketch a life-size version of the dress on the wall before me. I gave Ishleen a piece of charcoal, too, and she set to scribbling with it on the wall near the ground. Seeing the life-size drawing of the dress filled me with euphoria and expectation.
"Mam," I whispered, and turned the wheeled chair so that she faced the dress. "I've seen myself wearing this dress and rescuing you."
I visited the drawing every day and added to it. If the rain partially erased the drawing, I drew it again. Since it had not fully faded each time, it began to take on many layers, growing more and more dimensional.
Though it thrilled me to see the drawing become vivid,
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it frustrated me as well. It seemed so real, but it wasn't there at all.
And even worse than that, Mam had gradually begun to speak to me less often and was quieter when she did, as if her energy were fading. And to my horror, along with the smells of guttering candles and ice, an unpleasant odor sometimes accompanied her, something vaguely rancid.
I would speak obsessively to the air, hoping for an answer from Mam, while serving the dinner or stoking the embers. My brothers had grown so used to it that they'd taken to calling me "Mad Maeve."
At first Da barked at them for it, but over time, he stopped.
None of them understood what was happening to me, and I didn't, either. I only knew that I couldn't bear the idea of losing Mam.
It was just at this time that Tom Cavan, who'd been gone several years, was seen near dawn one morning in Ard Macha, carrying a spade and a lamp, his body and clothes covered in damp peat. That day I heard that the bog where the local men cut turf had been desecrated, and that the sky had been thick with vultures circling overhead. I went down there with Da and my brothers to look. Rough clods had been dug up and carelessly piled and scattered.
"He was clearly in search of something," Da said.
"Some other ungodly relic, most likely," Donal said, "but for what purpose, it is impossible to know."
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The closer I got to the bog, the more distinctly I could smell rot on the air. It was the same smell that had been there when Tom had unearthed the armor years before. I was stunned when I realized that it was similar to the rancid odor I had gotten a vague whiff of recently, when Mam's presence had come.
"He found something," I said sudd
enly.
"How do you know?" Da asked.
"I recognize the odor."
Da and my brothers banded together with the local men and knocked on the Cavan door that day, but Mrs. Cavan said, "If he came to Ard Macha, he's left again, for I haven't seen a hair on his head."
As they were leaving, Mrs. Cavan called out after them, "If you see him, send him directly to me. I miss him something desperate." She made the sign of the cross.
No one saw him after that. As far as anyone knew, he was gone again.
Something was going on, I was certain. It was the rancid odor that terrified me for Mam, and I decided that I had to do something. I had tried to figure out where Mam's self, or spirit or soul, was but had not been able to. The one thing I had in my power to do was to get a dress or make one, as similar to the dress in my vision as possible.
I pleaded with Da to take me to Killybegs, to any shop at all where I might buy sewing supplies, hoping to find the delicate metal fabric that had formed the dress at Muldoon's.
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"It's about bringing Mam back," I said. "How, Maeve?"
"I saw it in my mind," I said. "I was wearing a dress like the one I saw that time, and I was rescuing Mam."
He looked at me with an expression of surrender. "I worry about you, Maeve, as I once worried about your mam. But in the end, she was right about Ishleen. I'm going to trust this desperate feeling in you."
Da took me to a shop in Killybegs, but there was no metal fabric like it, and the people we asked said they'd never heard of such a thing.
I had to settle, in the end, for a strong silk with metallic sheen.
It cost Da dearly.
Though I had little skill at sewing, for two days and two sleepless nights, I struggled my best, cobbling together a dress as similar to the one at Muldoon's as I could.
I finished it in the middle of the night when everyone was asleep. It fit me like a poor replica of the original. Still, I wore it outside. Carrying a lamp, I wandered the ruins and the surrounding shore where I'd once seen the mysterious woman who had given me the bottles.
For six hours or more, I went to every place I could imagine the woman might come, but nothing happened. I found myself growing more and more despondent over the hours, all my certainty draining away. I felt lost, my task hopeless.
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As I went back in the direction of the hill, it began to rain. Just as dawn was breaking, I saw my father and brothers come out dressed for the downpour in their hooded oilcloth coats, getting ready to fish. I was soaked in my homemade dress.
They stood still when they saw me in my despondency. Somehow they seemed even more appalled than usual.
I swept past them and went inside, where I found Ishleen awake.
"Mam," I pleaded to the inert, wistful figure whose eyes looked hopelessly past me into some unknown vision. "What do I do?"
The hope that had gripped me now for so long regarding the dress was utterly gone, and I wondered about my own sanity.
I sat down before the fire, shivering in the soaked dress, and cried. Ishleen touched my shoulder. When I did not stop crying, she went and opened the door. Miraculously, the sun had come out and was lighting the world, a clear day in high summer. I got up and looked out. The sea where my father and brothers were casting their net was as calm as new milk.
I took the dress off and hung it outside on the line to dry in the clement air. As it stirred there on a faint breeze, the poorly crafted garment looked sad and deflated, the bodice caved in, the shoulders and arms slumping unevenly. Silk, I realized, should not get wet like that. The sheen was gone, the cloth pocked and wrinkled. What had I thought I could create? And even if I had created
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something close to the majestic dress at Muldoon's, what, then, would that have meant? I felt as though I had fallen from a great height.
I went back in and lay down in the box bed, leaving my chores and responsibilities on hold, and fell into a heavy sleep.
Later in the day when I awakened, the dress had gone missing from the line. I did not go in search of it, and in some perverse way was relieved by its disappearance.
"Probably the wind has blown it away," I said to Ishleen, though it had been a still day with only mild breezes.
A week later, Tom Gavan's mother, short and bent and wearing a flowered scarf on her head, came to our door.
"I'm taking a pony and trap into Dungarven tomorrow, Maeve, to buy fabric to make new curtains. Wouldn't you like to be coming along?"
I was surprised by the kindness of the gesture. Mrs. Cavan had never offered to help me with Mam or Ishleen. I knew she had always resented me for having told her husband about Tom's transgressions, and I knew she felt I was responsible for his having been sent away from Ard Macha. But maybe, having heard that my spirits were low, she'd softened to me.
"Thank you, Mrs. Cavan," I said. "I would like to come."
When I told Da about it later, he said, "I've a few
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emergency coins stashed away. Why don't you take them and buy yourself some small trinket?"
I hugged him. He'd been worried about how sad I'd been lately.
The shop in Dungarven reminded me of Muldoon's Fine Imports. Both were situated on rough-and-tumble wharves, where rope, tackle, leather and farm supplies were sold. The shop was, as Muldoon's had been, an anomaly encased in its own mist.
A bell rang when we opened the door. The shop matron looked up at us in acknowledgment, but was busy speaking to two other customers dressed in lavish clothes, a mother and a daughter.
Mrs. Cavan went directly to some little glass bottles while I veered away toward a mirror, which I approached nervously. We had no mirrors at Ard Macha; in the past few years I had seen only the faint smear of my reflection at home in the copper pot, so it was always distorted. The self looking out from the other side was different from the reflection I'd seen years before at Muldoon's. My cheekbones were more prominent, my features were no longer soft but defined, and all over my nose and cheeks there was a light dusting of small freckles. There was something grave about my expression.
Gradually, the longer I looked, the less I thought of the reflection as being me. This image, I thought, gave the impression of someone formidable and complicated. I felt envious of this other in the mirror, as if she lived in
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the atmosphere of glimmering lights, an entirely different, more powerful and elevated existence than the one I lived. And as I stared at her, she wore the metallic dress and was standing in a vast frozen room. I heard a chandelier tinkling in the cold around her. The vision dissolved suddenly, leaving me in confusion.
I left the mirror and approached the bottles of scent, watching with absorption as the mother and daughter, wearing an elaborate system of scarves and jackets, huddled and gasped over the various perfumes, applying them to their wrists and squealing as they smelled them. The intense, almost cloying scent of flowers distressed me. The hems of their skirts were embellished with frills of lace, and I wondered why they would expose such fine lace to the certainty of mud. How did they manage to remain protected from it? That such a thought would occupy my mind made me think of how out of place I was here.
I moved off and looked at creamy ovals of soap displayed in a cut crystal bowl. With a tentative and trembling hand, I stroked the rounded surface of one of the soaps.
Suddenly Mrs. Cavan was at my side. She peered closely into my face and squeezed my wrist.
"I have a confession to make, Maeve," she said. "I didn't really come here for fabric. I've come for only one reason. I'd like to buy you something."
I gazed at her, hardly believing my ears.
"You're so lovely a young lady, and I think you deserve to have something nice. You see, Tom is coming home."
For a moment I did not understand the connection.
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"Why is he coming back, Mrs. Cavan?" I asked. "He doesn't like to fish or work the ground." She rem
ained quiet, looking at me. I suddenly understood what was happening, and my heart dropped.
"Tom has done well for himself. He sent me the money to buy you any gift you like. Even if it's a dress, I'm happy to purchase it for you. He says it was you who inspired his success. He no longer needs to fish or work the ground. He has wealth, and you know he's had his eye on you since you were children. You are nineteen and he is twenty-one, both good ages to marry. So," she said, "pick out a gift."
"You're too generous, Mrs. Cavan, and as much as I'd like to, I can't accept." I gave her an unwavering look.
Her eyes flashed, and I knew she registered my reluctance in regard to her son.
"There are other local girls who would be thrilled--"
"I know there are," I said plainly, unmoved. "Maybe he should ask one of them."
She took a deep breath and seemed to decide not to let this dissuade her. "I saw you looking at this," she said, pointing to the oval of cream-colored soap I had touched. "You'll at least let me buy this for you."
She asked the shop woman for a single cake of it, and I watched as it was wrapped in tissue paper and placed in a pale lavender box embellished in gold ribbon.
"I'll pay for it," I said, and pulled out the coins from my pocket, placing them on the counter. The shop woman looked at them, then narrowed her eyes at me. The corners of her mouth strained.
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"It's fourpence ha'penny for this soap," she said, giving me a condescending look. "This soap is French!"
Mrs. Cavan laid a shilling on top of the coins, and the hard look melted from the woman's face.
The Fire Opal Page 6