Also by Cindy Brandner
Exit Unicorns (Book 1 - Exit Unicorns Series)
Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Book 2 - Exit Unicorns Series)
Flights of Angels (Book 3 - Exit Unicorns Series)
Spindrift
Cindy Brandner
Starry Night Press
Copyright © 2013 Cindy Brandner
The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system without the prior written consent of the author is an infringement of the copyright law.
Cover design by Stevie Blaue
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Published in Canada by
Starry Night Press
Rev. 12/01/2013
Table of Contents
Praise for Exit Unicorns
Praise for Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears
Praise for Flights of Angels
Spindrift
Another Man’s Country
Grain by Grain
Athalia’s Shoes
Chapter One- Home
About the Author
For my Grandmother,
Violet Brandner
Acknowledgements
I’d like to thank the following people for their help on these stories—my indefatigable editors, Tracy Bhoola and Denise Ferrari and my proofreaders—Sandy Meidlinger, Sarah Shipley, Jackie Helus and Maria Gordon. I so appreciate the time and care all these ladies took with my stories. My husband, Patrick Roy who always sees my work through its final stages and puts up with my anxiety as each of the books enters the world.
Thank you to Margaret Bihr for introducing the word sehnsucht to me, it was something I had felt all my life, and was very happy to finally have a word to describe it.
Last but never least, this collection of stories is to say thank you to my readers both old and new for their patience in waiting between the big books, may this help a little to tide you over until the next installment.
Spindrift
Spindrift usually refers to spray, particularly to the spray blown from cresting waves during a gale. This spray, which"drifts" in the direction of the gale, is one of the characteristics of a wind speed of 8 Beaufort and higher at sea.
In the autumn, the sea turned green off the coast of Inis Mor, shedding its summer cloak of foam-crested blue, to become a plaintive maiden with the black of winter deep in her bones. Today her lament was long and deep, a great tidal shushing against the dark rocks below.
Brian Riordan had spent the early afternoon without a name, without responsibility, wandering the high cliffs of this headland. He had long loved these islands, his great-great-granddad had lived here for a time during the Famine. The blood of his family was here, pieces of their history and their very survival had once depended upon the isolation of this island.
Inis Mor spoke to something deep in his blood, in every mood, in every weather. He loved the fury of the waves as they hit the tiered cliffs, lashing up through blowholes, arcing into rainbow spindrift—the very breath of the sea. He had seen this island in all her moods, walked the cliffs during the full moon, when the Atlantic beyond was a shimmer of mercury, like a woman whose body beckoned away always to far horizons. He had been here on fine days, when the sky was all, and vast tumbling clouds opened like room upon room, in some airy palace. He had stood against the wind on storm days, watching the sheets of grey sweep in from wherever it was they came—America, or Tir Na Nog, or a drowned city of round towers and ever-tolling bells. He had seen the sea surge green and angry half way up the three-hundred-foot cliffs, sending its spray to fly above the ancient fort of Dun Aengus. He had seen the breakers sweep in, like lines of galloping white stallions, line upon line upon ever-spiraling line.
Time was writ large on these islands, the long escarpment of limestone that was part of the greater Burren area in Connemara. A man could see the edge of it here—time, the world, all the lost lives, tiny skeletons that had drifted down, down, down until they came up into being again as these worn limestone hills, these great sea-mossed cliffs, the drifting soul of the planet when it had been one land surrounded by one sea. Rain and the sea had inscribed themselves upon this land, so that one could read it as a pre-history book, and man had followed those boundaries, natural as the air, to bound his fields and lay down his roads.
It had given these islands something different, a focus that being surrounded on all sides by the sea provided, a toughness of spirit and an oral tradition of storytelling and history that was still as strong today as it had been hundreds of years before.
“We’ve always been plagued by a love of the land, it’s long been our greatest strength and our greatest weakness too.” His father had said that about their family long ago. Aye, he had always loved the land, and the more difficult the land, the better. It was a love that had been passed to his oldest son, for the lad was forever digging in their wee handkerchief of a yard, and burying the seeds that he always had in his grubby pocket. Last summer, they had an oak come up in the middle of the sandbox. They had transplanted it out in the countryside and he had taught his son to seed to the scale of their yard.
The walk down from the headland wasn’t long, though there was a thread in the wind now that he didn’t particularly like. A man could smell a storm and there was one making its way in on the Atlantic. The storms out here could be fierce enough that a man would have to lie with his face on the land, digging his fingers into rock crevices and scant bits of earth, and pray to the old stone gods that he wasn’t ripped from the ground and flung out to sea as a sacrifice to the water gods. Still, there was time for the ferry to get across to Galway where he had left his car yesterday, and make his way to Belfast. He would be home for a late supper with his boys and his wife.
He was on Inis Mor for a meeting. This morning’s gathering, the last of this year’s session, had become fairly heated amongst the various participants. It was a yearly event, this meeting, and one he did not particularly look forward to. It was held in out-of-the-way corners of the country by necessity. It was about rebuilding an organization that had lost many of its ideals, that hadn’t really been the same since the Civil War of 1922 and the fallout of that—the bitter fighting of brother against brother and the killing of spies and informants. It was about finding the ideals once again, and forming a vision from them that could sustain generations to come. Or at least, that was what it was meant to be in theory; what it had devolved into was a deal of squabbling to the point where one man had drawn a pistol on another, and Brian had spent a nerve-wracking twenty minutes talking him out of shooting his colleague. The walk along the headlands had been to soothe his own wrung out nerves and melt down the time until the ferry left.
He spared a thought for his wife, it was likely he was going to get a chilly shoulder when he got home, as Deirdre was no man’s fool and knew exactly where he’d been these last few days. She didn’t like this side of his life, nor would many women, he supposed, but Deirdre hadn’t been born into a Republican world and had not come to an understanding of it during their marriage. His mother had recognized this and told him straight when he had announced his intention to marry Deirdre.
“She’s cut too fine for this life, son, so be certain of what yer doin’, before ye take her down that path with ye.”
He thought his mother had perhaps been right, and he had been naïve, for things had not been smooth at home of late, for both he an
d Deirdre had simply been very quiet for some time now. Quiet enough that the boys eyed them warily and Casey, their oldest son, had asked why he and mam were angry at one another.
“We’re not angry, son,” he had said. Even at six, Casey looked dubious at this answer, but he’d gone off to play soon enough. It was the truth though, they weren’t angry, he thought, only sad somehow.
He always thought of Deirdre with a nostalgic haze when he was on Inis Mor, for he’d brought her here early in their courtship. It had been late spring and the island covered with a fine haze of mauve storksbill and wild pansies, with scented echoes of violets ghosting about. Yellow wall pepper puffed through and over the ivy, falling sweet down the low stone walls, and the sky had been a great yearning arc of blue above their heads. Their every footstep had raised a cloud of scent and he had been dizzy on the nearness of this dark-eyed girl, the like of whom he had never encountered before in his life.
They had lain in the field of flowers, with the intoxicating scent all about them, the sun watering the very air with that clear delicious light that only exists in the spring. They had spoken of everything, their dreams and hopes, poetry and prose, the great Aran writers—Synge and O’Flaherty, they had spoken every flibbertigibbet notion that crossed their minds that day, for it had been a pet of a day altogether. In the distance, they could see the small rolling balls of wool that were the young lambs, born only a month previous, and hear the lowing of cows calling their new red calves to their sides. The entire world had pulsed and throbbed with life, blood singing in every cell, and the running light of the sea seemed the very breath of the spinning world.
He had told her he loved her that day, unable to keep the words to himself any longer, fearing at the same time that it might be too soon to say them and yet, say them he must. She had been quiet, holding his eyes with hers, her fingers still threaded through his own. She was as clear in his mind’s eye now as she had been that sweet spring day—her pretty cotton dress rumpled from the grass, her skin fine as the translucent petals caught in her dark hair. There was a vein visible in the hollow of her throat, pulsing softly and him aware of her down to the very last detail, like she was a part of himself that he would die without, should it be taken away.
She had taken a deep trembling breath, and he had steeled himself for the worst, for her to politely tell him she didn’t feel the same, that their time had been lovely but was over now. He had never felt so nervous and miserable in his life, he was certain of it. And then she had said, ‘Thank goodness, man, I thought you were never going to say it.’
The relief had been so profound, that he had laughed out loud and she had looked at first puzzled, then when he couldn’t stop, offended, and finally she had joined him in his laughter. They were married two months later.
Maybe that was why he felt so sad now, for he could no longer find a trace of that young couple; they seemed like a lovely story he had once read. Not like the husband and wife with two young boys, who no longer talked of anything that mattered, and who no longer walked on scented ground, with the ghosts of violets beneath their feet.
He was pulled out of his reminiscences by the sound of a chicken. Ahead of him there was a young boy walking, slim and straight-backed with said noisome chicken running rather madly down the road behind him. The curious behavior of the chicken caught Brian’s attention and held it, so that he watched with some amusement as the bird resisted all efforts by the boy to get rid of it, flapping his arms, shooing it away and even speaking to it with a gentle frustration. In due course, as they continued their amble down the road, the chicken was joined by a donkey, two cats and a dog. He wondered if the boy was some sort of Pied Piper to the animal kingdom, or had his pockets stuffed with bacon, though he supposed the charms of pork were somewhat limited in their appeal to chickens and donkeys.
He came out upon the harbor to find the mist gathering in gossamer folds above the sea, draping itself along the lee of the land. He saw with dismay an empty berth where the ferry ought to be, and the outlines of said ferry far in the distance, chugging happily off toward the mainland, some thirty minutes early by his reckoning. The boy, surrounded by chicken, donkey, dog and cats was looking with equal dismay at the diminishing outline.
There was a radio playing in one of the boats, Percy Mayfield was asking the universe to send him someone to love. Brian followed the sound along the slick rocks that constituted the harbor. The sound came from a fishing boat that had seen far better days. It was a faded blue, sitting a bit low in the water. The man in the boat had likely seen better days too. He was one of the grizzled old Island men, who had seen more than his share of rough weather; such men were born with the sea in their veins, and understood the anatomy of a wave the way other men knew the contours of a woman’s body. He was looking up at Brian, hands full of rough, oily rope. He looked over his shoulder at the ferry, which was little more than a speck on the horizon and then back at Brian.
“Wind is pickin’ up an’ they thought they’d best go before it turned nasty,” the man said, “or they might not go at all. I’m headin’ over t’de mainland, d’ye want a lift?”
He would have to chance it, there wouldn’t be another ferry until Tuesday, and this being Saturday he needed to find a way over. Deirdre would be fit to be tied if he didn’t get home tonight. The boat was old and creaky, and looked to be little more seaworthy than a sieve.
“Aye, I’d appreciate that,” Brian said, though he knew the words lacked a certain conviction.
“Can I come along too?” It was the boy, scabby flock still at his heels. “I need to get home tonight.”
“Are ye certain ye want to risk it, boy?” their erstwhile captain asked.
“Yes, I have to get home one way or another. Short of swimming, this appears to be the only way off the Island right now.”
“Come on the two of yez, we’ll need to go now before the wind makes shift from the west.”
They scrambled aboard, the boy first, Brian bringing up the rear, thinking that even on water, a boat ought not to feel quite so wobbly. The thrum of the motor, which bore some similarities to a sickly goose in sound, didn’t do much to reassure him.
As they pulled away, the chicken made an abortive attempt to fly from the dock, the donkey brayed and the dog howled, a plaintive sound that echoed eerily in the silky fog.
“Do you always have this effect on animals?” Brian asked.
“Yes,” the boy admitted. “It’s a strange thing and I can’t explain it really, it’s just something that happens. I think maybe they trust me.” He shrugged and gave a half smile.
Brian said no more, for the boy seemed somewhat discomfited. Not so much, he sensed, by the strange power he appeared to have over animals, but rather at having it witnessed by others.
He was a handsome lad, clad in rough trousers and a navy pea coat that had seen better days, a ragged muffler tied round about his throat. He looked like a prince in disguise though, for his profile had a certain elegance, rarely seen in someone so young. The hair that was visible beneath the poor boy cap he wore was of a remarkable color—gold, streaked with every imaginable variation on that hue.
In moments they were well out from the land, the boat chugging along with only the occasional wheeze, the sea foaming viridian around them.
“D’yez want some tea?” asked their captain, sticking his grizzled head out round the wheelhouse door. “There’s some here for the two of yez, should ye care to fetch it.”
Brian got the tea, poured it from a large thermos into two questionably clean tin mugs and handed one to the boy. Brian sniffed at the tea, it smelled like builder’s tea, boiled long and strong, but he wasn’t inclined to be fussy and raised the mug to his lips. The boy half-stumbled, catching himself on Brian’s elbow and sending the mug of tea into the churning water below.
“Oops, I’m sorry about that, my grandfather always says I need to watch where I’m going.”
The boy smiled apologetically; Bria
n could swear it was no accident that his mug was now floating in the sea for there had been a thinly veiled warning in the boy’s words. The wind caught at the gold hair, flicking it into his face, his green eyes sharp as the edge of a razor.
“Our fearless captain seems somewhat the worse for drink,” he said.
“Aye, I did think I caught a whiff of somethin’ when he offered the tea,” Brian said, watching the man from the corner of his eye. He didn’t approve of drinking while running a boat, but there was little he could do about it now. The man seemed competent enough. “Ye seem comfortable, despite the wind.”
The boy turned from the rail where he was now leaning and smiled. “I’ve done some sailing. My grandfather and I got caught in a bad storm off the coast of Africa last year. These waters don’t frighten me.”
“Aye, it would appear so,” Brian said, for the boy projected a strange calm. Just then a small slap of wind buffeted the boat, shredding the fog around them.
“The storm is coming fast,” the boy said, a strange look on his face. If Brian didn’t know better he might have thought it was a curious sort of joy.
They were too far away from the Island now to take shelter should the storm catch them out here. Ah well, he’d been through storms before, he would weather this one too.
Twenty minutes later, he was nowhere near as sanguine. The waves were building, one upon the next and the wind was a low howl in their ears, tearing at their eyes and skin. Storms could come up so fast that men were caught out even close to land. He had seen rough weather in his life, but no wind that came up this fast and furious. Waves were contrary creatures, beginning as small disturbances way out on the vast deeps, tiny cat’s paw patterns that dissipated as soon as they formed, but gave the sea purchase to create something larger from their transient form. They fed from the wind, and the harder the wind the bigger the wave, and the bigger the wave the harder it fell back to the sea, creating the design for the next wave which would be bigger yet. Wave height didn’t rise linearly with wind speed though, Brian knew, it rose four times, so that once waves got going, the wind didn’t need to be quite the same force as at the beginning. But in winds like this, waves became monsters, sometimes rogues that far exceeded the forces of their creation. There was no land in sight, the entire world composed of heaving water, thickets of foam forming on the cusp of each wave.
Spindrift (Exit Unicorns Series) Page 1