Exit Unicorns

by Cindy Brandner

  “Don’t,” she cut him off abruptly, “I can’t talk yet about it, I don’t have the words for it.”

  He nodded and a moment or two of silence followed where he could hear the ticking of the clock and the small sounds of her breathing as though they’d been magnified a thousand times.

  “Will ye allow me to take ye away?” He could feel her stiffen slightly even across the distance between them. “Not away from that,” he said, “but perhaps away from this, just for a few days or so.” He indicated the walls around them, though he meant the city as well. He waited long minutes, each a mute agony of loud, angry ticking on the clock.

  Just when his despair had mounted to the place where he thought he’d have to say something, anything to break the silence, her hand, palm up, impossibly white and fragile, laid itself upon the table, giving her answer.

  “Aye then, we’ll go,” he said roughly and put his own hand, dark and hard, large enough to cradle the head of a baby or to break a man’s neck, into hers and then wept as though his heart would never cease to break.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Casey Riordan, Will You...?

  Like a dithering serpent winding far above the sea and far below the sky, the Lonely Road wound through the rocks and rills and improbable greens of Kerry. Kerry, lost to the Atlantic more surely than any other county, was a place of magic, a land that time had forgotten, a place where the forgetting came easier, as if the gentility of the land itself absorbed the sting of memory. It was for this last reason that Casey brought Pamela to a tiny cottage that stood so precariously upon a cliff that it seemed half inclined to tip into the sea.

  The cottage, hidden from the road by a steep hill that cut sharply away from the narrow road, was submerged in ivy. Its small front windows looked seaward, its back sheltered by a half-crescent of salt-blasted pine. It had belonged to Casey’s grandfather Brendan once upon a time and now was in the possession of the local priest.

  “I’ve my Daddy’s key,” Casey explained, “Father Terry has never used the cottage anyhow; he only keeps it out of some sort of respect for my family. I’ll go down an’ clear it with him in the mornin’,” he added to her uncertain look.

  But in the morning, they were locked in by one of those dark, heavy spring storms the Atlantic is infamous for. All day the rain pounded down and they were kept occupied by the appearance of a number of leaks. By evening, the floor was littered with an array of pots and buckets, tins and cups and a steady plinking informed them that the storm had no intention of receding. Casey, never comfortable for long in small spaces, announced his intention of going for a short walk after supper and Pamela, bidding him a drowsy farewell, settled by the fire with a copy of Dickens’s Old Curiosity Shop.

  She awoke some time later, with the odd sense of having slept for a very long time, though a glance at the clock assured her that only two hours had passed since she’d nodded off. The steady plink of dropping water had subsided into an occasional and irregular splatter.

  As it was Casey’s habit to disappear for long periods of time, Pamela did not worry about him until an hour after full dark had descended. He was, after all, not used to wandering the cliffs and rocks in this area. The thought of him smashed to bits on the rocks where the tide relentlessly surged was enough to drive her out of the half-doze she was lost in by the fire.

  The storm had abated and the wind had died down to a soft thrum instead of the banshee wail it had assumed earlier in the day.

  She called his name twice trying to push back the small thump of panic that began to uncoil in her stomach. She had, in the last few days, allowed herself to depend on him totally, he had become the calm in the center of her own personal storm. Even his movements had an economy, a fineness, a perfect control that said he would do nothing, say nothing and allow nothing to frighten her.

  “Over here, darlin’,” he stepped out of the shadows of a huge rock, twice as high as himself and three times as wide. She had to resist the urge to run to him, she didn’t want the worry in his eyes to become any deeper.

  “What were you doing?” she asked when she was safe within the circle of his arms, the beat of his heart sounding out a rhythm of comfort and security.

  “Havin’ a bit of a smoke an’ watchin’ the stars fall down.”

  “The stars fall down?” She peeked over the rough wool of his sweater, inhaling the smell of male sweat, cigarette smoke and peat, all like mother’s milk to her now, all facets of him in his myriad parts that made up a most satisfying whole.

  “Aye, here look,” he turned her in his arms and with a forearm snugged around her used the other arm to point out into the dome of night, “it’s a bit odd, the really good meteor showers come in August, there generally aren’t too many to be seen this time of year, we’re on the wrong side of the sun, so to speak. But there’ve been three or four spectacular ones in the bit of time I’ve been out here, ah there did ye see that?” His arm swung in a smooth arc towards the northeastern sky and she bent her face into the night the last drops of the storm, carried in off the sea, touching her hair and running down her skin. The sky was shot with long streaks of silver and gold, splitting and spilling into the basin of the ocean, the whole horizon breaking and tremoring before them, light tearing from zenith to ground and then fading as if it had never been.

  “It’s like the sky is bleeding itself,” she said wonderingly, wishing that she could catch stardust in her hands and hold forever the image of the faint white lines that crisscrossed each other in the sky.

  “Tis hard to believe that they,” Casey indicated the last flicker of light drowning far out in the Atlantic, “are made of the same thing as this,” he rubbed her hand softly along the worn surface of the rock. “The sun is anvil, the stars are forge and earth the cauldron beneath. My Daddy told me that once an’ I could never believe that I was made of the same things as that amazin’ fire in the sky, but I can believe it now.”

  He rubbed one finger down the side of her neck and kissed her as softly as a bumblebee pulling nectar from a flower. She shivered, anticipation running quietly through her veins. “When I look at ye, Jewel, when I touch ye an’ ye are so fine as not to be believed, then I know that ye are made of stardust an’ I’m afraid I’ll wake up an’ ye’ll be no more real than those falling stars. An’ I know,” his voice lowered to a smoky whisper, “there’s nothin’ ye could ever ask of me that I could refuse.” His face was buried in the hair at the nape of her neck and he moved restlessly, inhaling and absorbing as would a blind man.

  She let her head fall back on the stem of her neck, like a half-broken flower defenseless and crying for water in the midst of some primordial desert. His hands stroked the length of her back in one complete motion, up from the soft swell of buttock until his hands were on either side of her head her hair raining through the hard strength of his fingers. She swayed slightly, feeling as insubstantial as if she stood on the edge of a cliff and the ocean below waited to embrace her. She almost fell when he released her and she felt as if someone had dashed her with freezing water.

  “Oh, Christ, Pamela, I’m sorry, I just—I almost,” he ran one big hand through his hair in frustration, “I wanted so badly to have ye just then, I could see myself takin’ ye down on the ground an’ makin’ love to ye until neither of us could think anymore an’ neither of us could see what—” he stopped suddenly at the look she could not prevent from flooding her face.

  “Oh darlin’ don’t, I didn’t mean...” he trailed off and shook his head like a dog flinging water off its back, as if in the violence of movement itself he could forget and shake loose all the memories that did not even have the dignity of being his own.

  “So neither of us could see what happened on the train,” she said, “It’s alright, you can say it, we can’t spend forever avoiding it. But you didn’t see what happened on the train and I’m grateful as hell that you didn’t, though I’m wo
ndering if you’d be better to know instead of imagining in your head. Perhaps if you knew the truth of it, you could let it die. I’m not some damned piece of china, Casey, yet you approach as if I’ll splinter and cut you to pieces. Now, man, tell me are you not touching me for my own sake or are you not touching me because you cannot bear to?” She felt all the anger swamping her that she’d avoided since the wretched night on the train and found it was quite a relief. “Because let me tell you if you’re doing it for my sake, don’t.” She put her hands up to her face and rubbed it hard, feeling less numb by the minute, the rain had begun to fall again and it coursed in hard needling streams down her skin, soaking the heavy cotton of her blouse.

  “I don’t know what ye want, I don’t know how to treat ye, I’m afraid that ye’ll never enjoy my touch again,” he said despairingly.

  “Do you think I lied to you all that time in your bed? Do you think I felt nothing? I’m not made of stone boy, but I’ll not break and bleed when you touch me.”

  “Tell me then,” he said hoarsely, “tell me what to do, tell me an’ I’ll do it.”

  “Will you? I don’t think so. You see, all I can think is that I want you to push me down on the ground and take me with no more emotion than a beast in the field, I want you to do everything to me that they did as hard and rough as it was then so that I can erase them in my mind, I want you to lay claim to every inch of me and touch me everywhere, every bit of skin and hair and help me scour them off.” She was breathing hard as if she’d run miles, “Now do you think you can do that for me, Casey Riordan? Do you think you can hear every word they said and know every way they used my body and repeat it so that I’m yours. Even if it makes no sense to you, even if it disgusts you in the very marrow of your bones can you do it for me? Can you love me that much? Because that is what I ask of you Casey, that you love me more than your own darkest fears, than your worst imaginings of what happened that night. Can you do it?” She pulled awkwardly at the buttons on her shirt, finally yanking at them in frustration, sending buttons in all directions and then pulling her shirt off and tossing it in a sodden heap on the ground, then she dropped to her knees in front of him and fumbled just as angrily with his belt, resisting his attempts to pull her to her feet.

  The rain had begun again, a swift sweep of it coming in hard off the sea.

  “It’s the first thing he did to me Casey, does it help to know?” She yelled against the rain that tore and spit and ripped at her skin. “Will it make you able to touch me again, if you know this?”

  “Jaysus woman have ye gone mad?” he stumbled backwards and yelped as he fell to the ground but she followed remorselessly.

  “Pamela, stop, this isn’t—”

  “Isn’t what,” she said tugging at the zip on his trousers, “isn’t what you had in mind? Well that night on the train wasn’t what I had in mind either.”

  “Yer not in yer right mind, an that’s to be expected,” he said managing to struggle back in the mud far enough to elude her hands and holding up his own in protest as if he were dealing with a mad creature of some sort.

  “Not in my right mind is it? Perhaps not. But,” she smiled in a sly sort of way, a sudden shaft of moonlight biting through a gap in the rain clouds and providing just enough light for him to see her, “Jamie knows all of this and seems able to bear it.”

  “Damn ye,” Casey roared, “if this is what ye want then this is what ye’ll get.” He pulled his sweater off in one quick motion and was over and above her in a movement so fast there was no time to react. He looked positively mad, glowering like some pagan beast, water dripping from his hair into her face, one knee shoved brutally between her own.

  “Do ye want me to continue then? Do ye want to tell me all they did? How they took from ye? How they hurt ye an’ made my brother watch so that he’ll never be a whole man, if that’s what ye need to heal, then I’ll do it. Damn ye woman I’ll do it!”

  “Then do it,” she said and reaching up bit him sharply on his bottom lip, he let out a muffled yell and ground his mouth into her own. It was nothing like a kiss, it was power and rage and hurt. She could taste his blood running into her mouth along with the rain, cold and pure, mixed with the hot iron and salt of the blood and let it drain into her throat, welcoming it as part of the sacrifice he was making. She pulled his hair and slapped his face when it seemed that he might succumb to the gentleness that was his instinct with her, goaded him with hissed insults mixed well with the things she’d heard herself on the train, face pushed down in the dirt, then tilted up into the cheap hard lighting, like some poor, dumb creature.

  But the rain ceased and suddenly the quiet made too loud their gasps, grunts and curses and Casey collapsed on her, his need still burning through him like fire, scorching his skin, evaporating the rain off her own.

  “Pamela, I can’t, I’m sorry darlin’ I just cannot take ye without feelin’. Even if ye think ye need it, I cannot.”

  His head lay on her breast, water dripping from his curls where it ran to form a small, silent pool in the hollow at the base of her throat.

  “Aye man, I know,” she whispered, lifting a scraped and stinging hand to stroke his head and back, “but I love you for trying.”

  It was an exhausted silence that held them after that, as the wind wound down from a howl to a mild flirtation with grass and sedge. The sky deepened and softened, the moon rode in and out upon wispy clouds and then the world lightened and it felt as if the earth stretched a bit, yawned beneath them and slumbered for just a few minutes more. From the east, riding in the waves of faintly stealing gray, came the haunting and lonely cry of the curlew, come early and alone, to his northern home. And just before the sun, faint and misty, glimmered above the horizon, a last star fell to its silver death.

  “My Daddy told me that falling stars were the tears of God,” she said quietly, not wanting to disrupt the gentle hum of his breathing.

  “Mm,” he mumbled sleepily.

  “I like to think that someone up there cries for us sometimes,” she said and taking a deep breath added, “Casey, when you said that I could ask nothing that you could refuse, did you mean it?”

  “Aye, I did,” he said on the rise of a yawn, “why do ye ask?”

  “Because,” she shivered slightly, the warmth of his expelled breath touching the pebbled surface of her breast just as the sun pinked the sky, “because well—” she hesitated and he rolled his head up until his chin rested on her breastbone and she could see him, eyes dark in the morning light, dark but full of gentleness again, like ever deepening pools, circles within circles, warmth within heat, heat within fire.

  “Aye, what’s the question?”

  She pulled a bit of grass from his hair releasing a shower of dried mud and smiled with conviction for the first time in months.

  “Will you marry me, Casey Riordan?” She asked as the sun, throwing off its watery robe, stepped above the horizon and turned the world into a glowing ball of crimson.

  He pushed himself up off the ground with his arms, separating their skin and letting the morning air, chill and sweet, run the length of their bodies.

  “D’ye know, as mad as ye are woman,” he replied “I think I just might.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  The Past Come Back

  Father Terence McGinty, opening the doors to his church for Lauds, (which would be attended only by old half-mad Mag Ruffey in her bare feet and heavily shawled head, but nevertheless, being a servant of God, he would give the service and intone the prayers) saw for the first time in twenty odd years, smoke rising from the Riordan cottage. He crossed himself reflexively and muttered, “Strange bit of business that,” before sighting Mag Ruffey huffing down the hill, feet blue with chilblains, hands already fingering her rosary in anticipation. Mad as a bloody hatter this one and she’d have to be attended to, gently and patiently, as he had done for ten years now. He mad
e a mental note to discuss the advantages of footwear with her and looked longingly over at the blue-gray smoke spiraling lazily out onto the morning breeze. It would have to wait, he thought impatiently and smiling greeted Mag with his expected morning salutation, “Ah, it’ll be a terrible old beast of a mornin’ then won’t it Miss Ruffey?”

  An hour later and some small distance farther up the lane, Margaret MacBride rose from her bed and, out of long and painful habit, glanced out the north window of her kitchen. This morning though, she did not glance away as she normally would. Instead, she set the kettle down with a thump, spilling water in a small pool across the floor. She didn’t notice it (and wouldn’t until she stepped in it much later in the day) but instead gazed transfixed at the long thin column of smoke that unfurled in a long curling ribbon against a fiercely blue sky.

  “Jaysus, Mary, Joseph an’ the little green men,’ she said loudly to the china goose above her sink, “whatever can it mean?”

  By noon Father Terence, unable to bear his own nosiness any longer, fairly hustled Mag Ruffey out the door of the tiny church kitchen, shoving a thermos of hot cocoa and a sack of sandwiches into her arms and swinging the door shut with such alacrity behind her that Mag muttered, “Strange doin’s ‘bout here this mornin,” and stared at the inoffensive white door suspiciously for some moments before setting off for home.

  Father Terry meanwhile, uttering a rather unholy prayer that no needy parishioner would come along and detain him, flew through his humble abode, out the front door and down the lane with a speed that belied his seventy years. He made himself halt some yards away from the little drive that led up to the Riordan cottage and compose himself. He took a deep breath and seeing that smoke still rose steadily from the chimney, folded his hands into the recesses of his old wool cardigan and realized to his horror that he hadn’t changed out of his rather ratty soutane.