There were practicalities to consider—work, her house, the animals and their care. Her heart gave a sick heave, for Phouka would no longer need care. The construction company only had a few minor projects going at present and she could leave those in Frank’s more than capable hands. Gert would look after Rusty and Paudeen for her and Pat would drop by the house now and again to make certain all was well. For the first time in months she felt a longing that didn’t contain Casey’s lack. She wanted to go home to her own country and just be for a little while and breathe the salt air of the eastern seaboard.
“I’d like that,” she said.
Chapter Fifty-six
The Dreaming Coast
JAMIE’S COTTAGE WAS reached by way of a narrow, sandy lane that ran between great tall old firs, the scent of which perfumed the interior of the car as they pulled up the lane. With that smell came a rush of childhood memory for Pamela, for all her summers had been spent in such places.
The cottage was a traditional Maine shingle, silver-grey with storm and time and surrounded by a tangle of thyme and lavender and wild beach roses. Cottage was, of course, a misnomer of sorts in the typical northeast tradition of downplaying all material possessions for fear of being thought grand. Grand wasn’t how she would describe this house but rather elemental, as if it had grown onto those rocks, naturally and slowly over many years, like a seed from a fir tree had germinated into a dwelling. Across the front and sides was a huge wraparound porch which hung like an aerie over the rocky incline to the sea.
She wasn’t prepared for the interior, but felt only a sense of immense light and wind when she put Isabelle down in the open entryway and let her scamper off across the floor behind her brother and Kolya. The entire inside of the cottage had been gutted and opened up to its beams so that the ceiling lofted overhead like a great honey-gold gull. The kitchen was tucked into one corner of this great room, fitted out with a deep ceramic sink and counters made from slabs of slate. It was into the living area that she was drawn. For facing out over the sea, the entire wall, floor to ceiling, was glass, and it had the effect of flight, as though one could step through the glass and sweep up into the limitless sky, wing above the waves, and never come to roost again. Two large chairs faced each other next to the windows, a small table between, heaped with books and paper. On the south wall was a vast stone fireplace, blackened with long use and an ancient hod filled with split pine to one side. A battered brass telescope gazed, three-legged, out to sea and books were crammed in the shelves—beautiful shelves, made from long shanks of driftwood and anchored invisibly to the walls.
She walked to the windows, a strange fear shimmering out through her veins, and yet an exhilaration as well that fizzed like a geyser in her blood. She never could maintain her defenses near the sea, here there would be no hiding from it, no cowering away from the sight of all that water so beautiful and entirely without conscience. She wasn’t sure she could manage it and felt the bird of anxiety flutter in her chest. Jamie was opening a door, and she could hear the swell against the shore, the boom of the wind as it flew into the cove and flooded back out. The scent of ozone quickened her senses and she stepped onto the old porch, closing her eyes so that she would not panic. She had not been near the sea since Casey disappeared, she had not dared it, and for a moment she felt a white hot blaze of fury at Jamie for bringing them all here for if anyone understood what the sea meant to her it was he.
She took a breath and opened her eyes and felt as though the ground had disappeared from beneath her feet. The wind streamed at her here, rich with the scent of salt and marine life; it lifted her short curls clear up and fluttered them out with strong, silken fingers. It was like standing on the prow of a ship, with nothing to shield one from either sky or ocean, the planet no longer a fixed point in a chancy universe but rather what it truly was, a watery oasis in constant flux, spinning in a mad dance with a golden star.
She chanced a look below to a small beach, a crescent of sand, sheltered by large dark boulders rimed in salt and deep-green lichens. Dark-pointed balsam fir, mysterious and old as the rocks ran right down to the shore, wind-bent and salt-traced, heady with the scent of bleeding sap on this hot day. Low-slung schooners and gaily-colored dinghies slid past her view and further out, the blazing white sails of a clipper rode the round of the horizon.
Conor had followed her out onto the porch and stood now against her leg, her small stalwart son, his eyes straining out to sea already. She could feel the tension in his frame, the pull the water exerted on him. Moored near the small sandy spit was a blue dinghy, its sails a bright red, bobbing merrily on the light waves that rippled under it. Conor’s sight was trained on it unerringly, and Pamela felt a sick lurch at the thought of her son out on the water and yet many of her best memories from childhood involved sailing.
“I thought,” Jamie said, coming to stand on the balcony with them, “that if your mother approves I might teach you to sail this summer. Would you like that, Conor?”
Conor turned his face up toward Jamie, dark eyes filled with a wild excitement. He nodded to Jamie, made mute by the idea of his own boat and learning to ride upon the waves on his own power.
Pamela looked at Jamie, the fear and anger plain in her face.
“I’ll be very careful, we’ll go no further out than the point, and I’ll tie his boat to mine. It will all be fine. At first we won’t go in any deeper than I can stand to pull the boat around with him in it.”
Conor looked up at her, dark eyes pleading. “Please, Mama? I want to go sailing.”
She nodded at him, and then looked back at Jamie. He interpreted her expression correctly.
“It will all be fine, Pamela. You’ll see.”
She didn’t reply saving her words for later when Conor was not present. Jamie continued, his tone light, as if she were not glaring daggers at him.
“The house is for you and Conor and Isabelle, there’s a cottage down the laneway; it used to be an artist’s studio, that’s where Vanya, Kolya and I will stay.”
“Jamie, I can’t take over the main house.”
“I asked you here, Pamela, with the express intention of you having the house for the summer. You’ll want the privacy from time to time, and it’s a good place to…” he hesitated, as though changing his words internally, before speaking them out loud. “To just be quiet, if that’s what you want. When you don’t, Vanya, Kolya and I will all be a little down the road. In fact if you yell, we’ll hear you.”
By the first night, Kolya was a permanent resident of the main house. There was no way he was going to tolerate being in such proximity to Isabelle and yet be parted from her for heaven only knew how long. Any absence to Kolya seemed one of permanence, for he stuck himself gamely to Pamela’s leg and refused to be budged. At which point Pamela interceded on his behalf, pointing out to Jamie that both babies would be more likely to sleep if put in the same room together rather than in separate abodes.
The summer advanced on that note, with both households moving in a small migratory circle, back and forth, depending on the weather, the various moods, the meals and who was preparing them and that day’s particular adventures.
Conor took to sailing as she had known he would, with a love for the ocean and the vessels that moved upon her which she understood all too well. True to his word, Jamie was careful with him and never let Conor out from under his watchful gaze. Still frightened and traumatized from Phouka’s death, Conor wasn’t keen to take chances and so slowly she found herself relaxing and realizing that Jamie, with his unfailing instincts about others’ needs had realized the sea would help Conor heal from the experience with Phouka.
The days quickly took on a pleasing rhythm. She rose early to swim before the children woke. The water held an aching cold to it reminding her of her childhood summers along this coast and the freedom that only water could give her. The water was and always had been her natural element. When she was small she had dreamed of being a mermaid and had
thought if she swam enough, that one day she would awaken to find scales, blue and iridescent, growing on her legs.
By the time she returned to the house each day, Jamie would have a fire going in the great hearth and coffee brewing. When the mornings were clear and achingly bright they would sit on the porch, coffee in hand and chat quietly, or merely watch the morning sailors slip by on the breeze. And so they swam and sailed and built castles in the sand and hunted seashells and other flotsam and jetsam of both sea and forest. At night, by the fire, they would tell stories and roast marshmallows and make blanket forts for the children, where Pamela occasionally found herself sleeping, quite uncomfortably, through the night with all three children gathered round her.
Often on the nights when she couldn’t sleep she would wrap herself up in a blanket and sit out on the porch simply listening to the sea and watching the moon float high overhead, the firs dark sentinels against the backdrop of the stars. Jamie’s light was usually on in the cottage down the lane, burning deep into the wee hours. He took care of business at night when it was quiet and he could work uninterrupted for long stretches of time. The time difference between Maine and Ireland made work that late at night a matter of practicality, he told her. The truth was Jamie found sleep just as elusive as she did. Nevertheless, it was a comfort, knowing he was there, just a stone’s throw away.
Sometimes during those sleepless nights she would find herself uneasily replaying the last conversation she’d had with Noah.
“Ye’re goin’ where?”
“To Maine,” she said. She felt she owed it to Noah to tell him, being that he had done a great deal on her behalf and because she wanted him to know she wouldn’t be able to house any on-the-run men for the next two months.
“With yer man on the hill?” His disapproval was evident, and she bristled at it.
“Yes, with Jamie and Vanya and the children. It’s not a romantic getaway or anything, he’s my friend. The truth is I want to be away for a while. I think it will do me good. It’s along the same stretch of coast where I spent my summers in childhood, and I want my own children to experience that.”
Noah nodded, his gaze narrow and shrewd as if he was hearing all the words behind what she was saying, all the things that were impossible to say. Now that she had made the decision to go, she was desperate to leave and be away from the darkness in this land.
“Do ye think he’s asked ye to go away for the entire summer out of the goodness of his heart?”
“Yes,” she replied hotly, “maybe you can’t understand that, but it’s how Jamie is.”
Noah shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not—but I’ll tell ye this, he’s still a man an’ ye’d be served well to remember it.”
“He doesn’t see me that way,” she said, even though she knew it wasn’t quite true. Noah had known it, too.
“Ye’re a fool if ye believe that,” he said, and leaned toward her giving his words more emphasis. “Ye spoke of not carin’ to have men’s desire, but ye have his an’ I think ye know it. Question is, what do ye plan to do about it?”
Sitting here now in her blanket with the sound of the sea at her feet she shivered. She had made a deal with him and he had not called her to account on it. There was, as of yet, no horse to train, and so she wondered what it was Noah would ultimately ask for as his due. A woman couldn’t make a deal in blood and not expect to return it in like coin.
A little voice in the back of her head would always give her the same answer to her question.
“It’s what the devil always asks for, Pamela—your soul.”
The stories of Barsoom began easily enough. Vanya had been caught up in a stash of old Edgar Rice Burroughs novels he’d found on Jamie’s shelves and Conor, wondering what the story was about, had asked Vanya to tell him. Vanya’s explanation had been simple, but the only word that stuck for Conor was Rice’s rather baroque name for Mars—Barsoom. He had demanded that Vanya tell him all about Barsoom, right down to the particulars of its sand. Vanya did his level best, but Conor, having had the benefit of more than one natural storyteller in his life, was not satisfied with Vanya’s rather terse descriptions. He wisely parked his small self at Jamie’s feet that night with the request that he describe Barsoom.
Jamie had eyed the small boy and then had laid a finger alongside his nose and tapped it three times, as though weighing the gravity of his listener. Then he nodded, as if he had found what he sought and began… “On the far side of Barsoom, beyond the great Dunes of Karnam, lived a boy named Fledge who carried within him a warrior’s heart, though his outside gave no hint of this for he was a tattery beggar of a child, with no home to call his own, and neither kith nor kin to ease his way through his world…”
So had begun a nightly ritual with Conor seated on the floor by Jamie’s feet held rapt by both the timbre and rhythm of Jamie’s voice and also by the trials and travails of Fledge, with whom Conor was very familiar from the hedge tales Jamie had told him throughout the winter and spring. For Fledge had many, many things in common with Conor, including his wild dark hair and his love for water—of which there was a great dearth on the far side of Barsoom. And though Jamie had started the tales for Conor, each one of them slowly entered the dark, enchanted realm where canyons went miles deep and three moons glowed in the evening sky. Pamela would sit next to her son, feeling the anticipation in his small body each time Jamie began with the words, ‘On the far side of Barsoom…’
Isabelle began to climb up on Jamie’s knee each evening, tucking herself into his side and gazing up at his face as he spoke, occasionally reaching up to pat his cheek as though to encourage the flow of his words. Kolya, never far behind Isabelle, took possession of his father’s other knee. Vanya would slide his lissome form down beside Pamela, for they had come to find an ease with one another that was of great comfort to both. There was Fig, a nod to their absent friend Shura, Fledge’s stalwart, if rather short, companion, who followed him through every adventure and fought at his side with great valor and a true heart. Fig also had a regrettable tendency to quote Roofi, the famed Barsoom mystic, at every possible and impossible opportunity. Each of them was woven into the story, though their characters were not always recognizable at once. The Sea Princess of Elysium, trapped in a thorn-encased tower at the mercy of an evil enchanter, was a regular feature of the story for more than two weeks before Pamela recognized herself in the remote and caged figure. Releasing the Princess was part of Fledge’s journey, but the crystal key which would have opened her tower lay at the heart of a labyrinth guarded by a most dread monster that could change faces at will. Algea was the name of this monster, and while the rest of the audience was unaware, Pamela well knew that Algea had been one of the daughters of Eris, the Goddess of Strife and that her specialty was pain. Whether the infliction of it, or the relieving of it, Pamela did not know.
The night that Jamie had described Fledge’s first encounter with the legend of the crystal key and the terrible frailty of said key which was the Princess’ only hope of release, Pamela had left the small circle and gone to stand by the windows where the susurration of the sea drowned much of Jamie’s words. She understood what he was trying to do—that in his own way, without confronting her directly, he was telling her there was a way out of this citadel in which she dwelt, where her heart was frozen in time, suspended, waiting for a prince no one believed could ever come back, except of course for the poor deluded princess.
Then came the night he told them of the Wandering Wastrel—the strange guide that Fledge and Fig hired, for he was rumored to possess a map that would lead the bearer through the labyrinth to the crystal key. The Wastrel had roamed from far to near in Barsoom and sang of the spheres of the Silk Road, that great arched pathway that ran through the stars and wound about planets and moons. The Wastrel had travelled it in a sailing ship, made from the wings of dragons and along the way he encountered all sorts of villains and vagabonds, but it wasn’t until he met up with Fledge and Fig that he decided
to abandon his lone wolf ways and join forces with other beings.
The Wastrel was both bard and minstrel, weaving spells with words and the silver notes of his magical lyre, which had come from a less than savory trade with a Saturnian camel shepherd. The trade involved many golden newts that had been left with the Wastrel by his father, a mysterious anonymous figure that the Wastrel had spent his life seeking, but never finding.
She understood that Jamie himself was the Wastrel. The Wastrel with his past that was a closed book, whose story was never told, and who deflected, with grace, each question that came his way. The Wastrel with his restless heart who wandered all the corners of the galaxy and yet had found no home.
All that summer they walked upon the carefully laid path of Jamie’s words, the slipstreams of silver stars, the waste ground of the Great Darkness that lay beyond the River of the Milky Way. He became a divine enchanter each night, donning a mad scarf on his head, a pirate patch over one eye, staging a mock sword fight with Conor and Vanya while Isabelle and Kolya ran amok round and round his legs. He adopted each character as he told their story, becoming the dark Ceresian witch woman who kept some dread secret in her cauldron, (that night he wore a Medusian wig, or rather a mop stripped of its handle) the scholarly and horribly tall Ionian book trader, (an ancient monocle was dug out from an equally ancient dress-up box and stilts were fashioned) and everyone’s favorite—the small drunken rug seller from Elysium, a character of sharp tongue and even sharper mind who wore gold hoop earrings and had a tatty stuffed parrot on his shoulder. Each one was a delicate thread in the overall design of this web Jamie wrapped them in each evening. All the denizens of Barsoom and beyond came to such vivid and full life that they lived and breathed with them, felt their pain, laughed with their joy and held their breath when they stood on the precipice of disaster. There was nearly a full-scale mutiny the night the rug seller contracted the Ganymedian Flu and was teetering on the brink of death. Jamie very wisely gave him a miraculous recovery the following night.
In the Country of Shadows (Exit Unicorns Series Book 4) Page 63