Exit Unicorns

by Cindy Brandner

  In his childhood, God had been a permanent fixture, a tree with long roots and innumerable rings, solid, there, always. Now He seemed more distant, a spark of fire in the heart of a storm. When his child’s heart had begun to grow and ask for deeper answers to the great unknowns his father had tried to give him an answer that would quiet the fever, even if only for a little while. He’d taken his wedding ring off and placed it in Casey’s palm.

  ‘What do ye see?’ he asked.

  ‘A ring.’ Casey replied, going for the obvious.

  ‘Deeper than that, what do ye see?’

  He thought for a moment, furrowing his brow in concentration.

  ‘Yer overthinkin’ it, don’t think just tell me what it is.’

  ‘A circle.’

  ‘Aye, and a circle is?’

  He began to get a glimpse of what his father was trying to say.

  ‘Unending.’

  ‘In every ending there is a beginning an’ in every beginning the shadow of an ending. All of life is a circle. D’ye think it’s a mistake that the universe is constructed in circles? That in all creatures there is such symmetry? Look at the perfection in a bird’s wing; it’s a feat of engineering that’s pure genius. Every artist leaves his signature somewhere in his work, even if it’s not at once apparent. God’s signature is in a bird’s wing or a baby’s tiny fingers. It’s everywhere if ye’ll only have the sight to see it.’

  ‘An’ if I need more Daddy?’

  His father had clasped the back of his neck, hugged him in the awkward manner of two grown men and said,

  ‘Then look up son, an’ see His face. It’s there in the light of the stars.’

  He put his hands together, bowed his head onto them and began to pray, “Our Father who art in Heaven, Hallow’ed be thy name...” he sighed, it was no good, he couldn’t feel the words anywhere other than in his throat. “Ye’ll excuse me God, but it’s my own Daddy I want to talk to an’ this seems as good a place as any other to do it in.” He cleared his throat feeling oddly nervous, “Well, Daddy, I hardly know where to begin. It’s been an eventful few months, aye? Makes it a little hard for a man to think clearly. We always thought when the revolution came it would be glorious, but it isn’t, it’s just confusin’ as hell. The house burned down an’ I thought I’d lost my wife in the fire, an’ for the hours I believed her dead nothin’ mattered anymore, nothin’ I’d ever believed true, not even freedom. There’s a man dead an’ I wished him so, I committed murder in my heart a thousand times an’ then it happened an’ I was relieved, though I felt cheated because I wanted to do it myself. What does that make me, Daddy? I don’t know what’s wrong an’ what’s right anymore. An’ I miss ye, there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t wish I could come to ye an’ have ye tell me what to do. I still don’t understand why ye had to leave, Daddy, ‘cause ye never said ye know, ye took our burdens but ye never shared yers. I wanted to know ye as a man, I wanted to see ye eye to eye an’ watch ye hold yer first grandchild, I wanted to make ye proud. I wish ye could know my wife, ye’d like her, she’s lovely in so many ways, she’s like a dream I never want to wake from. An’ she’s afraid an’ unhappy an’ she wants to leave Ireland, but I don’t know if I can Da’, I just don’t know if I can. Who am I away from here?”

  He waited in the silence, felt the flickering heat of the candles waver under his breath and opened his eyes to the flame. “It makes no sense Da’, for he’s a grown man but how do I leave Pat here? How can I keep an eye on him from across an ocean? But how do I stay an’ watch my wife become a shadow of herself? Why can’t ye be here to answer my questions? Why? Oh please,” his clasped hands had become clenched fists against the altar rail, “please can ye answer me.”

  He could hear the soft hiss and bubble of wax as it succumbed to fire, could feel his heart slow itself as if it too awaited something, sensed the silence and the weight of expectation held in it. He looked into the candle flame, right down to the blue heart of it and wondered if it would serve his memory always and if it would bring back seasons and holidays, people and moments. For even without him spring would come, fine and misted on the heels of winter. The bogs would open in furrowed cuts and bleed black under the tender sun and the ground would yield up its must, a sighing breath of ages to the sweet blue above. And if he were not here to see it? To smell and feel the itch of it in his hands and feet. Would his memories survive, pocketed and sealed like a young grape? Or when he opened them carefully in chosen hours, would they give only a bitter wine, scented with dust and disuse? And who would remember him? Would he just become another boy who went over there and never came back?

  And then the memory came, quiet, light-footed, his father and himself on a lonely, moonlit path, walking, talking. A summer night, a ribbon of road, the smell of hawthorn, soapy and sharp, the sound of the sea in the distance murmuring soft, summer things to the moon, full-bellied and tinged slightly gold with autumn’s approach. He’d reached the same height as his father early in the summer and showed signs in his large hands and feet of becoming larger and broader. It had been odd and not entirely comfortable at first to find himself looking directly at his Daddy and not up into his face. Uncomfortable and frightening. But that night he’d felt comfort in his father’s voice, in the warm smell of him. They’d gone fishing, the three of them and after Pat had fallen asleep, facedown in a book, they’d left their places by the fire and walked, a man and his son as they would never walk again. And Casey had found, in the quiet of the night and the burn of moonlight the courage to ask his father about his mother.

  “Do ye miss her?” he asked abruptly, blurting it out without any parameters for his father to fix upon. But Brian understood, he always did.

  “Do you?” he answered back.

  “No,” Casey said quickly, too quickly.

  “Well, I do,” his father had said, “or at least the part of me that was once eighteen an’ mad about her does.”

  “You still love her?” Casey asked in disbelief.

  “Casey, she gave me two sons that I’d die for, of course I still love her. The part of me that was once a young man married to her is still a part of me and will always belong to that time, doesn’t mean I’m going to rush over to England an’ beg her to come back.”

  “Did ye love her always?”

  “From the first time I saw her I knew it was different an’ when I held her it was like the first time I had good whiskey in a crystal glass. I knew the difference then between something consumed merely to warm my belly an’ something to be savored for its depth an’ quality. The first woman ye love, an’ I don’t mean calf-love, but love down to the marrow of yer bones, divides time. She’s a defining moment, everything else in yer life came before or after her. She’s sacred in an’ of herself.”

  “I don’t want to love someone like that,” he said vehemently.

  “Someday ye will laddy an’ it’ll have little to do with what ye do or do not want. Ah look,” Brian turned his face up into the night, “there’s the Pleiades, that means Orion is down just below the horizon, waitin’ for the dawn.”

  Casey looked up at the cluster of stars that were the Pleiades, fuzzy with luminosity. Orion was the blind giant of the winter skies, cursed to stumble alone and unaided across the vast ocean of night, but on the cusp of the seasons the seven sisters of the Pleiades, soft-skinned, waited to guide him home.

  “Only when ye go to the edge of all the light ye possess an’ enter into darkness can ye truly begin to see son.”

  “An’ what do ye suppose Orion found in the dark woods?” Casey asked softly.

  “His soul an’ the courage to turn his face to the sun in the dawn. Even a warrior needs to know when to lay down his sword an’ head for home.”

  The candle flame flickered, as though it had been brushed gently by a passing breeze, threatened to gutter out and then steadied itself around its clear
blue heart.

  “Thank you, Daddy,” Casey whispered into the fire.

  “Are ye ready?”

  “I am,” she said, trembling, uncertain what outcome she was hoping for.

  “Right then,” he took a deep breath and looking her full in the eyes, flicked his thumb upwards. The penny flew, an arc of sunshot copper, tumbling, toppling, tipping on the ascent, hanging for a hair, a half-breath of eternity and then plunging heart shot into descent, stumbling, lurching, pitching, tilting, sprawling and then impact, mineral to flesh, conductor to vessel, electricity to heat.

  “What does it say?” her voice was strangled, caught between what was and what might be, on an edge place where the spinning planes were dizzy with regret and hope. “Well,” she prodded, impatience and irritation making her palms slick and her teeth chatter.

  He looked at the penny for a long time, a bright circle against fragile flesh. In its circumference lay the answer to what? Happiness? Happiness could be found and lost and found again regardless of what streets they called home. Or could it?

  Casey looked up but she couldn’t read what his eyes said, couldn’t even hazard a guess from the leaves and shades and intonations of iris, pupil and cornea. His eyes were merely dark and deep as night and like night kept their secrets close.

  Will ye go lassie go?

  he began, voice soft, yet oddly flat.

  O the summer time is coming

  And the trees are sweetly blooming

  And the wild mountain thyme

  Grows around the mountain heather.

  His voice picked up in strength, a rich shiver piercing his throat, his eyes still dark as night, but a night of soft breezes and stolen kisses.

  Will ye go lassie go?

  “Where am I to go, man?” she asked, moving into the circle of his arms.

  “Why to Boston lassie.”

  “Yes,” she said and shivered as his lips moved across her face, “I’ll go.”

  “An’ will ye take me with ye?” His lips were on her ear now, soft with demand.

  “Always, Casey Riordan,” she said body arching towards his, “I’ll always take you with me.”

  And heard the penny drop to the floor and roll away so that she never was to know if it had really come up heads at all.

  Chapter Forty

  I Shall Call You Hope

  “Damn,” said Dannyboy Kilmorgan, stubbing his toe for the third time in as many minutes, “it’s as black as the underskirt of a nun’s habit up here.”

  “There’s a clearing ahead, just over this last set of rocks, that’s our destination.”

  “Will ye not tell a man why yer after draggin’ his ancient arse up hills in the pitch dark?” The question, asked for the third time, was becoming less polite with each uttering. From the man in front there was no reply.

  Ahead of him, the trees thinned and he saw a bare suggestion of light, shifting and small but there. Above, night’s cauldron had spilled an uneasy brew of roiling, dark cloud, piling up over the sea in heavy banks. Dannyboy shivered.

  The clearing sat above the treeline, arcing out over the sea, a small naturally ringed area, with trees blocking off the long steep hill, boulders cutting it off at the sides and a long perpendicular fall into the sea effectively sealing off the fourth side. At present, the area was lit with torches rammed between rock and into ground. It looked, Dannyboy thought, like the scene was set for some pagan sacrifice. But the man who stepped lightly into the ring of fire was not pagan, though Dannyboy would have preferred a naked, howling savage, all things considered.

  “What the hell are ye doin’ here?” he snarled.

  “It’s alright, Dannyboy,” Jamie said, “the Reverend is here at my invitation.” Jamie turned his attention to the man who stood unmoving, lit by brimstone’s light.

  “Mr. Kilmorgan,” Jamie continued politely, “is here in his capacity as referee and to ensure,” he smiled charmingly, “that I don’t kill you.”

  “Your ambition,” replied Reverend Broughton, “is admirable, though I wouldn’t count me out just yet.”

  “There are gloves if you’re afraid of bruising your manicure,” Jamie drawled, “but I prefer bare knuckles.”

  “As you wish, Lord Kirkpatrick,” Lucien replied genially, his eyes like two chips of ice. “And what are the rules by which this little match is to be governed?”

  “Mr. Kilmorgan as our referee will cite the rules, so as to be fair,” Jamie said unbuttoning his shirt in a leisurely manner.

  “Alright,” Dannyboy said uneasily, “are ye quite certain about this, Jamie?”

  “Oh very certain,” Jamie said.

  “Well then we’ll go with the basic rules, ye’ll both be familiar with them.” He picked up a stick and drew a square in the middle of the clearing. “Ye’ll start here an’ return to face one another after every fall. Ye’ve thirty seconds after each fall to return to the square, otherwise yer beat. No hittin’ a man who’s down an’ that includes,” he gave them both a sharp look, “bein’ on yer knees an’ no hittin’ below the belt,” Dannyboy took a deep breath, “To yer separate corners gentlemen.”

  Dannyboy followed Jamie to his own corner, a junction of two large boulders and said in a strained whisper, “Are ye daft? Have ye seen the man fight? He knocked Gilly unconscious.”

  “You wanted me to get off the fence,” Jamie said coolly, “I’m getting off. If you don’t like the manner I’ve chosen to do it in, don’t watch.”

  Both men entered the staked out center a moment later, one white, one gold, both lean, Jamie the taller of the two.

  “Jaysus, Mary an’ Joseph,” Dannyboy muttered, swiftly crossing himself, “help the lad get through this. Right then on the count of three gentlemen we’ll commence. One,” he said, his own battered hands curling instinctively into fists, “two,” the two men took up their stance, fists held at face level, knees slightly bent, left shoulders canted inwards, “an’ three,” Dannyboy said on an explosive breath.

  Lucien launched his attack immediately, coming out in a flurry of hard right jabs aimed directly at Jamie’s head. Jamie parried them easily, with a forearm that was no more than a blur of up and down, inside, outside movement. Dannyboy was relieved to see that the boy had kept his form. Jamie had always been a graceful, quick fighter with lightning reflexes. However, Lucien was as quick and fast and Dannyboy had witnessed his devastating left hook in his fight with Gillybear.

  Jamie’s face, in the ripple and flicker of firelight, was impassive. He was taking the other man’s measure and gauging his own stamina, while he made light annoying taps to the sides of Lucien’s head.

  Lucien, on the other hand, had pure, no-holds-barred, aggression in his corner. And was the possessor of a cunning Jamie just didn’t have.

  “You seem a little tense, Lord Kirkpatrick,” Lucien said aiming a hard right into Jamie’s solar plexus, “forget to take your dram of hemlock today, did you?”

  Jamie parried the right effortlessly, “I do hope you found my medical records pleasant reading.” And then sent a short and deadly jab into Lucien’s chin, causing the Reverend’s head to snap back sharply.

  “Ready to fight now are you?” Lucien said, shaking his head a little and then dancing away. “Then let’s fight,” and so saying feinted with his right and brought his left around from the inside. It caught Jamie a glancing blow just below his temple and Dannyboy hissed sharply. Jamie didn’t miss a beat, he danced away, buying a precious few seconds to clear his head and find his feet.

  “Did you enjoy your time away?” Lucien asked amiably, bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet. “The accommodations were a little severe to be certain, but it was the best I could do on short notice.”

  “I’m not overfond,” Jamie replied, “of rooms without windows,” and shot a blow that landed with a whomp in the Reverend’s midsection.
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br />   Dannyboy had to credit the man, he only buckled slightly, but when he came back there was a sheen of perspiration on his forehead and an annoyed light in his eyes that hadn’t been there before.

  “I should think, Lord Kirkpatrick, that a man with so many secrets to keep,” Lucien’s voice was slightly thicker than a moment before, “would be uneasy with too many windows.”

  “For you, my life is as an open book,” Jamie said and caught a crunching straight right aimed at his head on his left shoulder, Lucien followed it with a left cobra strike to Jamie’s face, splitting the skin above his right eye and effectively blinding Jamie on that side as blood poured out of the cut. He then pressed his advantage with a cascade of rights to Jamie’s ribs. Jamie reeled slightly then danced back out of the reach of the Reverend’s blows. Lucien had taken the offense and had the upper hand, Jamie on the defense was fighting at a disadvantage, too much of his energy would be consumed by fending off blows, rather than delivering them. Dannyboy felt slightly sick.

  “Feeling unsteady, Lord Kirkpatrick?” Lucien asked breathing lightly through his mouth, “Perhaps it’s because the air up here is so very thin.”

  “As I,” Jamie said, wiping away a black stream of blood, “am the only one breathing it I don’t seem to notice.”

  “Ah yes, that’s right,” Lucien said in a mocking sympathetic tone, “your paramour left you for that big Fenian lout, didn’t she? Strange creatures, women, there’s no accounting for their taste. You should have bedded her while you had the chance, it’d hardly have been a difficult task, her morals being what they are.”

  Jamie’s response was a right hook that Lucien caught with his left wrist and countered with a right jab that whanged home into Jamie’s jaw. Jamie wobbled slightly and shook his head as though dazed. Dannyboy felt as if his breath were stuck hard under his ribs.

  “They tell me she didn’t cry on the train,” Lucien said with a thin smile, “that she asked for no quarter after they had begun. It made them treat her much worse, you know. But one has to admire such stoicism, doesn’t one?”