Exit Unicorns

by Cindy Brandner

  Long ago, the Riordans had originated in Connemara and still to a certain extent claimed it as their ancestral home. It was a land suited to such men, wilder, less pastoral, harder and less forgiving than the rest of Ireland, a land that refused to be tamed or give much comfort to the inhabitants thereof. The first of the Riordans, it was said, emerged from the sea onto rock and swore he’d never put a foot in water again. Legend surely, repeated with a smile and a bit of drama, from one generation to the next, but oddly enough not a man of them had any fondness for the sea. Living on an island one learned to deal with it, to understand it well enough that it couldn’t take one’s life easily, to use it for practical reasons and harbor no romance whatsoever about it in one’s soul. It was neither friend nor foe merely a great implacable fact that must be regarded with respect and a certain amount of fear. The sea was like a woman, a tricky business, never quite understood but respected for its vagaries. Rock on the other hand, which was what the vast majority of Connemara consisted of, could be depended upon, would change only minimally through countless seasons of rain and sun, it was something a man could stake his life upon. And so the Riordans had, though perhaps they had loved the land too much. At first in a very literal sense, for they ploughed it, cultivated it, brought forth food and sustenance from a barren wasteland. Of late in an interpretation that was purely figurative. The land on both counts had betrayed them, taken their lives with as little emotion as the sea would have.

  Casey’s pilgrimage here today was a personal one, an homage to ancestors and a long postponed apology to a father he’d never had a chance to say goodbye to. It was a trip he’d been avoiding since he’d come home, but had decided on this first Saturday in September that the time to face his ghosts was long overdue.

  The day, somewhat like his mood, had been one of sporadic showers, heavy oppressive cloud and now on the brink of evening had sprung out in glorious sunshine, soft cross-hatched clouds in watery pinks, lavenders and melting yellows, painting the sky. Light, mellowed by the pull of night, danced tender-footed on leaves, was caught in the clasp of water and mating became strings of diamond. It was enchanting, if somewhat soggy.

  “You might,” said an annoyed and exhausted voice behind him, “have told me we’d be jumping fences and pulling through haystacks all day, at least I could’ve dressed for it.”

  “Now how was I to know ye’d turn up lookin’ like ice cream on Sunday,” Casey gave a mild look over his shoulder.

  Of the verbal sort there was no reply, but a pebble, deliberately sharp, pinged off the back of his head seconds later.

  “Ouch, what the hell was that for?”

  “For inviting me,” she answered, looking a little less forlorn than she had a moment previous. She was, like the naiads, inappropriately clad and soaking wet.

  “Where are we?” She halted beside him, shivering.

  “Don’t exactly know,” he replied bemusedly, taking his coat off and settling it around her shoulders without even looking sideways.

  “You don’t know?” her tone was incredulous. “You’ve made me march about in grass up to my backside all day, sit through a deluge of rain buried in suspicious smelling hay and you don’t know where we are?”

  “I will when we get there,” he answered and set off once again after studying the rock formations in the distance.

  “If you won’t tell me where, can’t you at least tell me why we’re going and what we’re going to do when we get there?” she asked, grumpily keeping pace with him.

  “Who, why, when, where, what, yer full of questions aren’t ye? Have ye ever considered there aren’t answers for everything an’ that some things must be taken on faith?”

  “Are you asking me to trust you?” She irritably brushed a piece of hay out of the neck of her dress.

  “Have I given ye any reason not to?”

  “Point taken.”

  They walked on some further way as the sky abandoned its grasp on the day and a soft, subtle shading began to occur, casting shy phantoms before it.

  Just when she thought she might have to throw herself into a hedgerow for a rest, Casey suggested that they stop while he regained his bearings.

  “How can you get yourself righted if you’ve no idea where we are?”

  “It’s a feelin’ I’m lookin’ for more than an actual landmark, though there ought to be a twisted oak an’ a stream...” he trailed off, peering distractedly through the gloom.

  “We’ve been walking in great bloody circles all day and you’re looking for a tree with a hump in its back? Are all Irishmen mad or is it you in particular?”

  “Me in particular most like, why do ye ask?”

  “It’s only that we’ve passed a tree like that twice,” she said wearily, shucking off her shoes and standing first with one bare foot and then the other in the wet grass.

  “We passed it twice an’ ye didn’t say anything?”

  “I didn’t, if you’ll recall, have any idea what we were looking for.”

  “Where was it?”

  “Ten minutes back that way,” she gestured, a tired elliptical motion that indicated both sky and sea but not land.

  “Where?” he asked more patiently.

  She sighed and taking her shoes in one hand set forth across the field they stood in, towards the thickening skin of night to where clouds curdled in blackened piles over the sea.

  “There,” she said as they crested the top of a hill. Below them lay a small valley, a precipitous gouge in the land, as though a giant with a sharp hand had scooped out a handful of earth and flung it away. In the last of the light, a tree could be seen at its lowest point, a narrow stream hissing past its roots. The tree was indeed hunchbacked, gnarled and knotted to such a degree that it seemed it had been lifted whole from Eden and transplanted here. Or Eden itself, an Eden of stars and Samarkand, of dark voices and wily serpents, of comforting apples. Of eastern fruit easily bruised, the apricots that last but a moment in a season.

  “That’s the one,” Casey whispered and taking her hand firmly in his own, began the climb down into the valley. They picked their way through rock, slid with frightening velocity down a thirty-foot drift of loose shale, waded through a patch of bramble bushes and came out cursing on the brink of the stream.

  “Where are we?”

  “We’re on my great-granddaddy’s land,” Casey replied.

  “How can you be certain?” she asked looking about as if she expected the ghosts of ten dead generations to come piping across the fields.

  “The tree looks right, but I know one way to be sure.”

  Up close, the tree was even more formidable. Leafless and stony, it seemed an iron fist of earth erupting from the ground, weathering eternity. Casey took his hand away and dropped to his knees at the tree’s roots and began to scrabble in the dirt.

  “What is it, Casey?” she peered over his shoulder, unable to discern much of anything.

  “It’s our rock,” he whispered and though he faced away, she could hear the tears that stood at the gateway of his words. She knelt down beside him and saw clearly what his hands, dripping with earth, had revealed. A long, thin wedge of slate, obsidian in the night, clear as a mirror under the moon, inscribed with the only tangible legacy Casey’s family had left behind.

  She read the names aloud in a reverent whisper as Casey’s fingers blindly traced them.

  “Cathal, Kieran, Daniel, Brendan—” and as Casey softly trembling ran his fingers across the terrible blank spot, “Brian,” she whispered.

  “Aye,” Casey said, “Daddy. The son always comes and carves the name of his father here, so that our family wouldn’t merely pass away into legends that can hardly be believed. I meant to come here after he died but I just couldn’t, I was too angry. I thought putting letters to stone would make it real, that my Daddy would be no more than a name on a rock, just another de
ad Riordan when there were already so many of us.” He took a hard breath and when he spoke again, his voice was darkly gritted with the pain, skinned over with a fragile translucence, that his father had caused him by losing his life. “But then after all dead is dead and there’s only so long one can deny it.” His head dropped down into his soil smeared hands and though she heard no sound, she saw clearly the tears that fell and shone on the names of all the men that had left him a history that would surely engrave his name here one day, carved with an inevitability that marked him out for violence and death the moment he was conceived. She shivered, a tremor running fine and electric along her bones, the weight of years landing on her suffocatingly. History, Jamie had said in an unguarded moment, could kill a man more certainly than a well-placed bullet. She understood now what he’d meant and could bear it no longer. She ran back, unseeing, the way they had come, feeling water spray coldly up her side when she stumbled into the stream, the cold didn’t matter, nothing mattered but getting out of this place. She reached the bottom of the hill and was about to plunge upwards, uncaring of sharp, piercing rocks and long, brutal falls when Casey caught her from behind and pinned her roughly in his arms.

  “Jaysus, will ye stop!” he took a ragged gasp, “Did ye not hear me yellin’ for ye to stop?” He fought to catch his breath, never lessening the iron grip he held on her.

  “Let me go,” she spat out, “I can’t breathe.”

  He loosened his hold a little and she twisted violently in a vain attempt to get away.

  “Damn it,” his voice rose in anger, “are ye crazy, woman? Ye’ll break yer damn leg an’ then we’ll be in a fix, not to mention we’re trespassin’ on someone’s land here. I’ve no wish to have Pat out here chisellin’ me own name in stone because some farmer shot me for an intruder.”

  “I thought you said it was Riordan land.”

  “It was, a long time ago. The Riordans haven’t owned so much as a pot to piss in much less land for close to fifty years now. Please,” his tone softened, “if I let ye go will ye stand for a minute and tell me what scared ye so bad back there?”

  “You,” she said, voice exhausted, “you scared me, it’s as if you can see your own name there, already written into legend while you go off in a puff of smoke. How could you leave Pat alone? If you die there’s only himself to sacrifice and don’t think he’s beyond it.”

  “Is Pat the only one I’d be leaving behind?” His breath stirred the downy curls at the base of her neck.

  “Does it matter? You’d leave us both behind anyway; you’ll do what you must. Men always do, don’t they?” she said bitterly, ceasing to struggle.

  He turned her gently but firmly in his arms, so there was no chance of her bolting and forced her eyes to meet his own.

  “And what is it ye know of men, darlin’?” Casey asked, his eyes so dark, so fathomless, reflecting the pale beginning moonlight and revealing nothing to her.

  “Enough,” she said defensively.

  “Aye,” he said, bending and softly touching his lips to her own, “perhaps ye do at that.”

  She melted to it, yielding against all instincts except for the very oldest one of all.

  His lips were warm and sweet. ‘I will take care,’ they seemed to say. She did not want hesitation though, she wanted something irrevocable, something they could not return from, a place where she was far, far away from the no man’s land she’d existed in all summer.

  She took his hand and placed it on her breast, he groaned low in his throat and tried to pull it away, she kept it firmly there.

  “Darlin’ I can’t—ye musn’t,” and then on a shaky exhalation, “Lord, girl do ye know what yer doin’ to me?”

  She tipped her head back into moonlight and met his eyes squarely, “I know,” she said softly. “It’s what I want. Take me back there.”

  “Back where?” he looked truly confused for a moment.

  “Back there to your rock. Tonight I want you to choose the living. I want you to see there are choices that won’t end with you nothing more than a name carved in rock.”

  He closed his eyes, struggled within himself for a moment and nodded, “Alright.”

  He led her back by the hand, her heart pounding so hard it hurt.

  He helped her with her clothes, face dark with hunger there under the moon, in a primordial garden. She helped him with his and he stood naked, silver then black then silver again as clouds chased the moon and never quite caught it. She was shaking with nerves and buried her face in his chest when he put his arms around her.

  “I don’t quite know my way,” she said, a small giggle rising toward her throat, “I think I need a map.”

  He chuckled, “I can point ye in the right direction.” He let out a laugh that was half gasp, “Though I can see yer not one to wait for explicit instruction.”

  “Don’t laugh,” she rubbed her cheek against his shoulder, smelling the heat of the soft skin where muscle met joint and separated limb from body.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered and took her face in his hands, thumbs stroking the quivers out of her jaw. She closed her eyes and allowed her skin to feel him, giving her four other senses rein. Her fingers traveled sightless, muscle here, scar there, hair coarse and fine, the cool translucency of eyelids and the feathery brush of lashes.

  He took her hands in his own, lacing their fingers together and kissed the back of each of hers. “I want ye to be certain of what yer doin’ here,” he said, voice slightly hoarse, “because it’ll not look the same to ye in daylight. It never does.”

  “I’m certain, Casey,” she whispered, “are you?”

  He gazed down at her for a long moment, the fine hair on his arms gilded silver, his skin washed with a frail light. “I’ve been certain since the moment I first saw ye, I’ve only been waitin’ for ye to come to the same conclusion.”

  It was simple then to fall, fall into empires forgotten with the grace of lilies dropping. To feel a hand so fine on her skin, like the skirling of spectral leaves from trees long dead, to touch and sense his blood thrum beneath the skin and know her own pulsed only a breath away. To not be certain where one ended and the other began. Skin, slicked and salted, tasting like blood to the tongue.

  His lovemaking had a grace and tenderness she knew would not be found in a smaller man. It was as if he was afraid to break or bend her and yet could not stop himself from doing just that.

  The pain was small, a little sputter of fire deep inside, overwhelmed by a heavier, harder tide that pulled and bore her above the pain, even as it touched the fringes of it.

  She breathed him, in that moment he became essential to her. It seemed as if she had known this before and could live no longer without it. The sand-fine rub of his chest hair on the finer still skin of her breasts, the line of his backbone, a rope of large pearls strung by sheathes of long and glittering muscle. Blood to bone and back again, the grass and rock beneath seemingly created for the purpose of questing, writhing bodies. Graceful and graceless, laughter and tears that he took away with his lips and winged kisses. To know him as a lover was to know him finally as a man.

  And what he asked was everything, with broken breath and silent occupation, everything and all. The prize, lotus-wreathed and redolent with musked promise, was the beginning of love.

  ‘Will you, can you, are you able?’ These things said with each thrust, with breath so hard it condensed and gelled and rolled like shattered stone down between their bodies. Over hard, over soft, unstrung and scattered across the ground, nascent and whole with a blue-white light. Fallen from heaven and made of the stuff of stars.

  Later, hours or minutes, neither knew nor particularly cared which, the sky began to lose the stars and there was a faint pulse in the air and ground which said the clock, even for lovers, would begin to turn again.

  Casey lay full length on his stomach, eyes heavy-lidd
ed with exhaustion and intimacy. Pamela, propped on one elbow, traced looping nonsensical patterns on his back.

  “They hurt you very badly.” It was a statement but one of the sort that required answer.

  “Aye,’ he said sleepily, “but I’m still alive so the bastards didn’t get what they wanted.”

  “Who did it?” she asked, fingers splayed and moving in circles across the flesh of his back, flesh knotted, milled and ground, then fleshed again into long, runnelling grooves, luminescent and finely grained as a baby’s skin in the faint light.

  “Don’t know exactly, screws or fellow inmates, was just a group that took me from behind one night an’ decided to carve a warning into my back. Opened me up an’ poured acid into the cuts. I couldn’t even scream for the pain was so bad it seemed to just paralyze my throat.”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t die,” she said in horror.

  “I wanted to, I truly did but I eventually healed in more ways than one an’ I must say in view of the last hour or two I’m glad I did.”

  She pressed her lips, wet with tears, into the grooves, following the path, smooth as silk, that a knife had once taken. He groaned aloud as if the action were causing him fresh agony.

  Certain things in life are irrevocable and we know them in the moment. The subconscious sees them, snatches them up and knows it’s too late, though we foolishly think we can take them back as if love can be restored to the giver by patching over the hole it was ripped from. The heart, much as it may dumbly beat on, knows this. Love is irrevocable, it cannot be taken back. Stars may fall from the sky, men may walk on the moon and toast may burn in the morning but love will always exist in the moment it is given. Irrevocably. So memory takes what it can, washes it softly and makes a gift of first mornings under blue-bled skies, of warm September suns and the first knowledge of physical love. Memory makes it sweet for youth, for girls confused by love that can’t be contained to one person and boys who lost childhood under the cut of knives and concrete walls.