The Fire Opal

by Regina McBride

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  damp from all the concentrated squinting. A few droplets had frozen into tiny crystals on her eyelashes. She turned away from me and began again to ply her needle.

  "When our mothers' ghost souls are free of the ice, these dresses will help them each have a separate image. Their particles will all stay in one place, and the dresses will be their engines of transport," Gudrun said.

  "Transport?" I asked.

  "Yes. There are many things you don't realize about the power of dresses, especially when they are enhanced by ethereal thread. Each daughter contributes thread from her own soul for her mother's dress. You will learn."

  "I will try," I said nervously, afraid at how much they were all depending on me.

  "What is the first task you have?" Gudrun asked as we stepped through the curtain again, back into the presence of the ghost souls in ice.

  "I am supposed to find Danu's Fire Opal and bring it to her at the Holy Isles."

  Phee gestured excitedly to Gudrun.

  "The ash girls," she said. "Somehow you must go to them. Phee says they can help you find the Fire Opal."

  "How do I do that?" I asked.

  Just then we heard a massive boom and crash, as if thousands of pieces of glass were breaking all at once.

  Wheeta went out to see and came back quickly. A strong blast of wind had knocked down the chandelier in the empty ballroom.

  "You should go back to your room," Gudrun urged.

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  I looked at Mam and Ishleen pulsing softly behind the facades of ice. I ached to stay longer with them, but Gudrun rushed me out of the chapel. "Someone is bound to come."

  I quickly went into the room where I was staying and closed the door.

  The blue fire in the grate had dwindled, and one of the coals was whistling. When I looked at the carved face on the mantel, I saw that it had changed its expression, no longer with set teeth as if pronouncing the letter S. The lips were now round and pursed, as if they and not the coal were the source of the whistle. I had the distinct feeling that the face was watching me suspiciously.

  I listened hard at the door but heard no one come to inspect, and found that curious. I tried to sleep but felt painfully restless, and finally, in the middle of the night, I got up again, thinking I might go see Mam and Ishleen and listen for the soothing vibrations of their presence. I was crestfallen when I found the chapel door locked. I wandered again through cold, snaking corridors until I found the place where pristine, decoratively carved ice walls and perfectly sheened floors gave way to a dark and primitive passage, the ground dirty slush.

  Though my heart was banging so hard that my rib cage shook, something propelled me forward. The sound of Uria's breathing and heartbeat had been steadily amplifying the closer I got, and an unsettling odor, something vaguely rancid, intensified on the frigid air.

  Still, a curiosity edged with horror drove me. I pushed on a rough stone door, and it groaned open. The tunnel

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  before me was dim. A silhouette of what looked like some kind of stone embankment about six feet away from me suddenly moved, and I stopped in my tracks. Before I could discern what it was, light issued from five places deeper in the passage: five bodiless human heads were staring wide-eyed at me, frowning and furrowing their brows. Insect legs unfolded from beneath them and they began to move forward--quivering, uncanny spiders.

  They halted suddenly as the embankment shifted, and a large, hunched creature turned and looked directly at me. His head was rough and human-looking, but his flesh looked as if it were made of stone--dark, damp marble veined with cloudy white streaks. He breathed audibly and noisily, like an asthmatic, sputtering clouds of condensation issuing from his mouth as he did. He was chained there at the rocks, forced to be a guard at the door of Uria's lair. As he gazed at me, I experienced the shocking certainty that I knew him, and that he also recognized me. For a few moments, he focused on me and did not move. The pity I felt for him in that moment eclipsed my fear of his monstrous form, and I thought that if that moment could have gone on a little longer, I might have figured out who he was.

  His lower body shifted suddenly and awkwardly, and he rose up onto four stiff, spindly legs. From the waist up he was a muscular human male, but he had the lower body of a deer or a hind, a kind of bizarre centaur. Standing at his height, he had to struggle to balance himself, but when at last he did, he reared back slightly and

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  opened his mouth wide, his eyeballs rolling. Terror shot through my spine like a needle.

  My trespassing clearly disturbed Uria herself. Her breathing grew loud and uneven, and the drumbeat of her heart pounded in my nerves and eardrums.

  Somehow I managed to turn and run. When I reached the familiar corridor, I saw doors creaking open and closed. I rushed into my room and shut myself in.

  A tiny cold particle hit my cheek, and I turned, trying to find the source. Several more fell and drifted on the air of the room, and soon a snowstorm began all around me, driving down at a slant from some mysterious source.

  I got into bed under the canopy and closed the bed curtains around me. Uria's hectic breathing continued. The racing heart would slow down, only to speed up again to a gallop. The hotter her temper, as evident in her breathing and heartbeat, the colder the air.

  All at once the breathing and heartbeat came to an abrupt stop. I heard something unidentifiable then that terrified me: a metallic cranking and almost whirring noise that seemed to be approaching from a distant corridor and coming closer and closer, then stopping just outside my door.

  I wrapped the blankets around me, shivering violently, my teeth chattering so hard I thought they'd break. After an interminable pause, the loud thing began to clank again and whirr, then continued on its way until I could no longer hear it.

  When it felt safe, I moved the curtain and looked out

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  into the room, the snow flying like furious birds. The face over the mantel wore a surprised smile, as if enjoying the storm. It opened its mouth suddenly and tried to catch a snowflake on its white tongue.

  I heard the clanking, squeaking thing return and held my breath as it stopped again outside my door. When at last it continued on its way, I let go a deep sigh, finally recognizing how exhausted I was.

  Uria's breathing and heartbeat resumed, at first hectic and loud, and gradually growing calmer. The snow thinned out until only an occasional sparkling fleck wandered the air. White drifts were gathered in every corner, and a thick white blanket covered the floor.

  I lay back as the air took on a more temperate climate, and then I sighed deeply and closed my eyes. When I opened them a few hours later, the snow was gone and the floors were damp.

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  ***

  CHAPTER 17

  ***

  It was Mrs. Cavan who opened the bed curtains in the morning and brought me a tray. I drank the hot tea and ate the warm oatcakes and boiled eggs so quickly that I had to catch my breath when I finished.

  The face on the mantel had a placid, vacant look to it, and Uria's breathing was soft--quiet, even--her heartbeat slow and steady. There was clearly no threat on the air, and that heartened me greatly, as if it had all been a passing nightmare.

  "I heard that you were wandering around last night," Mrs. Cavan said.

  "Yes. I couldn't sleep."

  "I don't want you doing that again," she said sternly, and focused threateningly on me. She inhaled deeply through her nostrils. "Come with me! I have ordered

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  dresses to be made for you. The seamstresses have been working on them since before dawn. You need to be fitted, and the hems need to be measured. And, of course, a ceremonial dress is being created for you for tonight's performance of 'The Canticle of Fire,' when you will first be in the presence of Uria's emanation and possibly introduced to her, depending upon her mood."

  I followed Mrs. Cavan a long way down a windy corridor. By day, the light was di
fferent on the barge, but still drained of the warmer colors, as if the spectrum in this world of ice could not include them. A cool, glimmering sun outside penetrated the ice walls, so a hallucinatory light imbued with pale blue flooded the interiors.

  "It's getting too warm around the barge," Mrs. Cavan said. "Soon it will enshroud itself with cold fog."

  "How does it do that?"

  "Through the engine. The entire barge is carefully regulated from within."

  I thought of the mysterious ash girls below.

  She opened a large door and beckoned me into a more shadowy region of the barge, where four form-fitting long-sleeved shifts stood on dressmakers' forms, each at various stages of completeness.

  All were lovely at first glance, but as I moved among them, I felt a shiver of dread. Only one, the palest of the lot, a dull golden yellow imbued in gray, looked complete.

  I approached it warily, uncertain what about it and its unfinished sisters made me uneasy. Gudrun appeared from between two curtains at the back of the room.

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  "Why is only one dress finished?" Mrs. Cavan asked with a note of accusation in her voice.

  "I was trying to work on the ceremonial dress for tonight. I need the young lady for a few minutes for a fitting."

  "All right, then," Mrs. Cavan said impatiently. "I'll go and see to Tom, and then I'll come back for her. After the fitting, make sure she puts on the finished dress." She pointed to the dull ochre-gray.

  Gudrun beckoned me to follow her through the curtains, where the dress I had made stood in the process of being embellished and added to. Gudrun's additions had made it appear even more like the metallic dress in Muldoon's.

  "I want to speak to you," Gudrun said in an urgent half whisper. "Don't worry. Uria's not listening."

  "How do you know?"

  "I can hear it in the rhythms of her breathing. And when she is listening directly, you always know by the pulse of her heart, which you can feel just perceptibly as if it were under your own skin.

  "The dress must be completely in tune with you," she said. "As a seal is one with its thick, glistening fur, and a swan is one with her feathers and her wings, so should a woman be with her garment. This dress, which you must wear for every important action in Danu's name, must serve as your mode of navigation, your engine of transport.

  "I am making a special pocket in which to hide the Fire Opal."

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  We could hear the juddering echoes of Mrs. Cavan's returning footsteps.

  "Quick," Gudrun whispered. "I just want to warn you about those other dresses she ordered for you."

  I followed her back through the curtains and into the presence of the disquieting dresses.

  "She gave specifications.... They are all supposed to be dresses of oppression. This finished one," she said, pointing to the dull golden yellow, "is the least cruel. That's why I completed it first. The fabric is imbued with certain tinctures meant to keep you disoriented. Mrs. Cavan is looking for ways to hold a constant advantage over you. Clearly, she doesn't trust you."

  She pointed to each of the others, every one a darker gray than the one before it. "This dress is meant to constrict your breathing, and this one is meant to make you lethargic. The last one is the worst of all. It is meant to erase your memory."

  "Erase my memory," I repeated. "Why would she want to do that?"

  Mrs. Cavan's footsteps were now echoing closer.

  "Put on the finished one. Don't worry. Just try to keep your concentration as best as you can."

  Before I took off my dress I remembered the piece of mirror and Francisco's compass in the pocket. I took them out and slipped them into the pocket of the dull ochre dress, which Gudrun quickly helped me into. When Mrs. Cavan entered the room, Gudrun was busy fastening the back.

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  "Be sure these others are finished soon," Mrs. Cavan said coldly to Gudrun, who bowed her head in response.

  Stepping after Mrs. Cavan into the corridor, I immediately felt a wave of disorientation. I had to stop and lean with one arm against the icy wall to get my bearings.

  Mrs. Cavan turned and focused on me with a fascinated satisfaction.

  "The dress is a little tight," I said.

  "You just need to wear it awhile and it will adjust, I am sure."

  As I walked, the ground moved beneath my feet. The strange bluish pallor of everything was intensified by daylight. Shadows seemed to fall at suspicious angles. I turned once to look behind me and saw the corridors receding, as if the room we had exited only moments before was now a great distance away. Space seemed to shift unpredictably in this place.

  We stopped at an open door.

  "Go to him," she said, and pushed me in. It was the room of the awful tableau, the bodies of the Spaniards behind ice. Tom Cavan stood dramatically in the middle of the space with his back to me, holding two little black iron boxes. I walked in slowly, each hesitant footstep echoing my reluctance on the polished ice floor, and stopped about a yard away from him. I sensed Uria listening expectantly, her breathing arrhythmic with long spells of quiet, and I could feel the pulse of her heartbeat as if in my own body.

  Tom turned suddenly and faced me, elegantly attired

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  in his long velvet jacket with tails, white lace cuffs and a white lace cravat. His wavy hair had grown long and blew to one side in the gusts.

  In spite of myself, I saw with a shock what other girls must have seen when they looked at him. He was extremely handsome, almost unnaturally so. Maybe if he had stayed completely still, if he had not spoken, that spell would have lasted longer and I might have held back my breath in reluctant admiration. But he moved and then he spoke.

  "Welcome to your new home, Maeve."

  The sound of his voice flooded me with every terrible memory associated with him. I started to shake; my dislike, even hatred, of him overtook me. The floor moved and I swayed on my feet, and, even though I was cold, sweat broke out on my temples. I fought these waves of disorientation. The idea of submitting to him went against every nerve in my body.

  "My mother told me that she advised you against asking questions." His voice had an authoritative echo to it, and I realized that he was much taller than he'd been when I'd last seen him. I wondered if my senses were tricking me and this was all the effect of the dress, or if he had actually managed to gain height. He looked well over six feet tall. When I'd last seen him in Ard Macha, he'd been only about five foot ten.

  "She doesn't want you to be curious, but I think it's good. I want to tell you everything so that you understand the kind of power I have here."

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  I kept my eyes averted from his, feeling gripped by a wave of disorientation. This awful dress, I thought.

  "It flatters you nicely," he said as if reading my thoughts. I glanced at him. His eyes were tracing the contours of my form. His gloating, self-satisfied smile caused a rush of angry blood to heat my face. I discovered, to my relief and surprise, that the feeling of anger dispelled some of the disorientation.

  He kept smiling as he gazed at me. "You know I've always been drawn to the fire in you. It's always been my passion to see you blush and shake with frustration."

  He stared blatantly now, his eyes wide and his mouth slightly open with expectation, enthralled by any trace of my anger expressing itself.

  Another wave of rage washed away more disorientation. I found that it was better if unexpressed and only felt. This way it did more powerful work.

  He watched me with a dark, intrigued smile. Again, I was struck by his beauty. He seemed in his element in this cold light. I averted my eyes again.

  It occurred to me now that he might have known that the oppressive dress would inspire anger in me, and that I would be smart enough to discover that the anger was an antidote to the poisonous spell the dress exuded.

  "Why were you with English soldiers last night?" I asked.

  He focused on me and seemed to be considering whether or no
t he should answer.

  "Do you see all these figures behind the ice?" he asked.

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  "Spaniards from the armada ships. We have here the bodies of almost every Spaniard who tried to defeat the English in the Irish Sea."

  "So you are in league with the English invaders? You are a traitor against Ireland, happy to kill our Spanish allies?" The floor and everything around me was rock solid, absolutely still, and my senses clear.

  He stared at me with an uncertain smile. Then he opened a door that led out onto the deck and pointed at three vulture women perched on the rail. Others floated serenely in the air above the barge.

  "Uria's ladies, as I call them, swarmed the corpses and siphoned the ghost souls. It's a talent they have, siphoning souls out of bodies, living or dead."

  I was about to break in and accuse him of orchestrating this violence against my own mother and sister, but he cut me off.

  "You remember the first ship that crashed? We brought the three men still alive to my mother's cottage. One of those men you started fawning over, a kind of dark gypsy." He stared at me, feigning a laugh.

  My heart lurched with fear that he had Francisco's body here somewhere. "Where is that man? Is he in the ice?" I demanded.

  He narrowed his eyes at me. "No, he isn't here, but the ladies are intent on finding him. He can't have gone far. We have many of the others from the ship he was on." He pointed vaguely at the wall. "In a way, it's your fault. Perhaps if you hadn't mooned over him, I'd not have advised Uria that every Spanish life be taken. So you see, many of

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  these dead are your fault. Some of them, perhaps many of them, on the ships that followed that first one might have been spared, but you had to fawn over that gypsy...." He paused and glared at me.