Charlie was too shaken to protest Sully’s exit. He grabbed for the album cover, wildly searching every square inch of it, hoping to find something that would explain Sully’s desperate actions.
“Oh Sweet Jaysus, no,” he gasped, as his glance fell across words he could hardly make out, they were so small. In the liner notes was the dedication from the artist: To my wife, Adara Faraday, with gratitude, Gillean.
“It was him ya gave yer wings for—Gillean Faraday.”
Charlie watched sadly as Sully’s figure grew smaller in the distance. He seemed determined to walk to the other side of the earth.
“And ‘tis him who ya love. Oh, Sully lad, why didn’t ya tell me?”
~~~
It was going on twenty-four hours since Charlie’s disastrous attempt to cheer Sully with the music of Gillean Faraday. Long after the watery, orange sun had dipped below the horizon and the cool wind of evening once again stirred disembodied flower petals, Sully continued to wander the perimeter of Charlie’s home. The night birds, wheeling low around Sully’s head, kindly persuaded him with their delicate flight that it was time to go back and face the real music of his new friend’s concern
But once inside the cottage and bombarded with Charlie’s calculated and cautious questions, Sully found himself mute. When he tried to speak, his mouth opened but no words would come. Half-formed sentences, images and feelings swirled inside his head like the cloudy river of his perpetual nightmare, leaving the taste of brine between his teeth. He could only look down at his hands that had been torn open once again, the shredded bandages leaving fragile layers of exposed skin. They served as the only explanation offered. As always, his eyes, at least, were able to get across his suffering. Charlie ceased his inquiries and set about re-dressing Sully’s hands, then sent him off with a tablet, for a good night’s rest.
~~~
After spitting into the sink, Sully reached for a towel to wipe his mouth. His existence was a series of battles beginning when he woke in the morning and continued unabated until he fell into a drug-induced sleep at night. Even the most minimal of tasks, such as brushing his teeth, was a complex set of newly learned behaviors. Having been previously human for only seven years, he had been afforded insufficient time to know what this unfamiliar state consisted of. And if Gillean was any indication of the evolution of man, Sully deduced that one could walk this planet for over forty years and still be clueless as to how to live a fulfilling life.
If anything, Gillean showed Sully that the older a person gets, the more he loses the sense of his own heart. As a child, Sully knew differently. Despite his father’s beatings, Sully still dared to dream of another kind of love. He was forced to grow up quickly in his seven years, and learn how to protect himself. Now that he was a man, once again he was denied the benefit of growing naturally into his twenty-five years. He welcomed the pain from his burned hands. It was oddly comforting. The visceral memories of pain were familiar enough to him. It was the emotional ordeal of being a lost and lonely man with an untried moral compass that Sully felt he could not undertake.
Staring at his unshaven face in the mirror, he was stunned by the image in the misted glass. At first glance, Sully thought the marked disparity between what he’d imagined and what he saw was due only to the scruffy dark beard he allowed to grow. He did not trust his worthless hands to hold a razor. This was the one thing he refused to let Charlie do for him. But his shock was due to something more than just facial hair. He rubbed his sleeve over the medicine cabinet and leaned in to get a closer look. The man gazing back was like a familiar stranger, someone met in passing, causing one to think, I know him!
Harrowed green eyes which threatened to spill over at any moment with tears and awful secrets dared him with their naked veracity to look deeper. Even his pale, sunken cheeks hidden underneath black hair could not disguise the character of his face. It was the same one he remembered as a child. Gone were the similarities to Gillean that had existed when Sully had been a re-encounter. He was now indeed his own man with a distinct past, however tangled and unusual. It showed in the appearance of the distressed, broken little boy who had defied the natural laws, and grown into an adult.
In spite of everything—the pain, the fear and the enervating incomprehension—he laughed. He was riveted by the grin reflecting back at him. He could recall the few times in his brief life when he had laughed. He assumed this was what he must have looked like. He gingerly stroked the mirror with his hands, as if touching his reflection would make it seem more real to him. Stepping back, still watching his movement in the glass, he touched his face in awe. Words that still could not cross over into the spoken form begged the question from the safe harbor of his mind.
“Who the hell will save ya, Sully?”
Lovers Cross
“This is not about yer husband, is it?” The woman eyed Adara’s tiny gold ring. “Ya want to know about the spirit, the one you asked me to summon before?”
“Yes, please. I did make contact with him. Even my son was able to communicate with him.” Adara nervously folded and unfolded her hands in her lap. “But he—Sully is his name…” A flash of a smile turned her lips upwards. “…he has left us, and I fear something bad may have happened to him.” Her eyes clouded.
The traveler listened silently as Adara thoughtfully disclosed her story like Tarot cards. The woman’s hands, wrinkled and dotted with age spots, held on to Adara’s. “I need ya to think of him. Think only of him,” she directed.
“Alright.”
Adara closed her eyes. Her mind led her to the image of the last time she saw Sully. The picture was so clear, not like the foggy visions of months gone by. She could see the way his eyes entreated her for a promise, hear the hushed, reverent tone in which he spoke about her children, and his promise to return.
After a brief silence, the old woman jerked her hands away. She stared intensely into Adara’s face. “How can this be?” she uttered.
Adara opened her eyes in panic.
“What? Tell me!”
“No, I don’t believe it can be so.”
“Where is he?” Adara demanded
“What is he?” The gypsy half whispered with apprehension.
She hurriedly got up from the table and exited the camper without another word. Adara grabbed for her purse and followed.
The woman focused on the gathering of trees that acted as a home, albeit a rugged one, for the travelers. The lush forest was ever willing to provide shelter, unlike the judgmental people in town.
“I don’t know how, and I don’t know why, but he has crossed a bridge into a world he should never have come to.” The traveler spoke as if seeing the mythical and precarious destination.
“What do you mean crossed a bridge? He’s not dead. I won’t believe it if you say so.”
“That’s just it, missus. He’s not dead, but alive. He is a livin’, breathin’, human bein’ like you and me!” Her trembling evidenced her fear.
Adara could hardly contain her joy and relief. “You act as if this was a bad thing! I was so worried.”
“Ya don’t understand. ‘Tis not what is supposed to be. This once free spirit is now confined to earth by the darkest of forces.” Her voice crackled a static-ridden oracle. “He’s changed, missus. Oh, he’s changed. I’m afraid he can never go back now.”
Trying not to let the gypsy’s fear infect her optimism, Adara said, “I’ve got to find him. Don’t you see? Can you please help me?”
“I don’t think ya should.” She took Adara’s hand, stroking the modest ring Gillean had given her on their wedding day. “Go back home. Speak with yer husband. Ya can’t save the one ya seek. He’s made a choice. No one can help now. Leave him be, missus. ‘Tis not your fight.”
“My husband? What has he to do with any of this?” She pulled at the ring, releasing it from her finger, and placed it into the woman’s hand.
“I don’t need this now, and it doesn’t matter if you tell me where
Sully is. You told me the most important thing—that he is alive.”
She reached into her purse and extended a hundred Euros to the anxious tinker.
“I hope this will be acceptable compensation for your help. Do take care. I’ll find him myself.” She made ready to leave.
“Wait.”
Adara turned around impatiently.
“I’ll just keep this safe for ya, for the time bein’. Ya can return for it anytime.”
“That won’t be necessary.”
“Ya mean to find the lost one, and if there’s nothin’ I can do to stop ya, the least I can do is tell ya what I know.”
“I’d be grateful.”
“Look for him in the place ya would least expect his other to be.”
“His other?”
“Excuse me. I meant the other, yer husband. Ya will find what ya search for in a place yer husband would never go—an intersection.”
“Intersection?”
“The rest is up to you. I can’t say any more. Good luck to you all.”
The woman quickly stepped back into the camper, and for the first time in her life, she locked the door.
~~~
The Meeting of the Waters!
After sitting in a café for hours staring into the busy street, her tea and biscuits hardly touched, the words came to Adara. They described the only place matching the tinker’s description. It had to be where she would find Sully. Adara remembered the name as the title to an old Irish air.
The Meeting of the Waters was where the Avonmore and Avonbeg rivers came together to form the river Avoca, the dark wooded river valley of the Vale of Avoca. This secretive place was in County Wicklow. Gillean once said he would never step foot there. When they were first dating he thought it clever to visit the many locations in Ireland that had inspired the great writers and poets. He claimed that perhaps there was something to what his father had always been on about—the significance of places in people’s lives. She remembered a conversation from years past. Although it seemed like a lifetime ago, Gillean’s words were as retrievable as if he had spoken them only yesterday.
“We’re not going to the Meeting of the Waters,” the twenty year old had declared. His fiery eyes punctuated his feelings. “The very idea gives me the creeps.”
“I’d have thought you would want to experience something that inspired Thomas Moore,” Adara offered, amused at how panicked her lover had become. Gillean was not one to share his weakness, unless he thought it would serve him. “You know Moore is considered the national bard of Ireland. Something you aspire to.”
“Good Lord, I do not,” Gillean had protested. I don’t want to perform in these nowhere, provincial venues anymore. Bard of Ireland, please! As if that was something to aspire to. I’d have thought you know me by now. And I’m not going to the Vale of Avoca.”
There must have been something deeper to Gillean’s resistance. Moore was reputed to spend hours at the Vale composing his poems and music. Perhaps this threatened Gillean’s sense of confidence. But at the time she didn’t wish to recklessly dive into the nebulous undercurrent coursing through Gillean Faraday.
“It sounds romantic to me.” Adara tried one last time to convince him with her light kisses.
“Yeah, well, perhaps true love can be found there, but I’m not going.” He was adamant, even pushing her away.
Shortly after that heated discussion, she and Gillean broke off their romance for a time. He went on the road as an opening act for a major British band, refusing to be weighed down by a commitment to any one person. She had decided the unpredictable musician was not worth the drama.
She remembered how shattered Ena, Mags and Jos had been when they received the news. Adara was greatly saddened to leave her job at the Teach na Si`. Gillean’s family had become like her own. But she hadn’t wanted to cause trouble for Gillean. His family branded him the black sheep. And with the break-up, Ena would be hot on his tail, complete with a solemn lecture on the imperative of embracing adulthood and abandoning his childish notion of being a singer-songwriter.
Gillean pressed on. Even when they were apart, Adara couldn’t help but admire his persistence in the face of impossible odds. He wrote her the sweetest, most comical letters during his time on the road. She saved them all, entirely certain that he would one day be a revered entertainer. During one phone call, she said how wonderful it would be when she would be able to tell the BBC that she’d known him when he was just a man with a guitar singing in a castle. So it would seem the same doggedness she once loved and admired in her husband was what was keeping him determined to have his own way with a new life now.
“Miss? Will there be anythin’ else?” The waitress was at Adara’s side calling her back to reality with her question.
“Oh! Sorry, no, nothing. Unless you can tell me how to get to the Vale of Avoca.” Adara reached for her wallet.
“Sure I can. “’Tis such a lovely place. Are ya a poet?”
“Something like that.”
Adara took out a pen, handing the girl a napkin and asking for directions as she placed a generous gratuity on the table.
An hour later, Adara’s Volkswagon was navigating the dirt roads that would deliver her to her destination. Taking in the loveliness of the vast canopy of trees and flowers growing any place they pleased, she glanced down at the makeshift map the waitress had drawn for her. So far the young lady had been spot on with her directions, assuring Adara she should make it to the Vale by early evening.
The sun had nearly set, and its warmth was still locked inside the fortress of the forest. She was about to switch on the overhead light to get a better look at her environs when she spotted a rugged man trudging along the side of the road, a wooden toolbox in one hand and a thermos in the other.
Adara pushed the automatic window release and drove slowly alongside, calling out in a muted voice so as not to startle him. “Pardon me please, sir?”
The man stopped as she put her foot on the brake.
“I’m sorry to trouble you, but I was hoping you could tell me if I am close to the Vale of Avoca?”
The man, who appeared to be twice the size of her husband, leaned in the car window. His eyes rested on Adara’s face, as if looking at an old photograph and trying to place the person in the picture.
“I’m looking for a friend of mine. I believe he may be there.”
The man nodded. “’Tis not too far. If ya don’t mind givin’ me a lift, me cottage is just outside the Vale.”
Not sensing any danger from the gentle giant, Adara released the lock. “Not a problem. Thank you for your help.”
“Aaah!” Adara’s appreciative passenger let out a tired groan as he slid into the plush seat. “Forgive me, I don’t get much occasion to ride in a motor car, and never one of such style!”
“I can see you must work hard.” Adara took her foot from the brake and coasted down the path. “But I wager you value the beauty here in a way most people of style never could.”
“I try to see the beauty and the ugliness of life. After all, without one how would we recognize the other?”
“That’s true indeed. You are a philosopher as well as a craftsman, I see”. Adara turned her eyes back to the road, not wanting to seem rude by observing her passenger too critically.
He laughed at her compliment. “I don’t know about that now. I live a simple life. And most people just regard me as Charlie.”
“Nice to meet you, Charlie. I’m Adara.”
Charlie showed no perceptible reaction. But his voice carried a note of something suddenly realized as he mused, “This friend yer lookin’ for, his name would be Sully, I believe.”
Adara’s heart pulsed, unable to contain the rush of excitement, hope, trepidation. She stopped the car in the middle of the road. “I hope we’re referring to the same…man: dark hair, green eyes.”
“That would be me house guest to be sure.” Charlie waved his hand as if to signal no further confirmatio
n was needed.
“But, how did he come to be here?” Adara forgot her wish to be polite. She regarded Charlie closely, taking in every aspect of the older man’s ruddy face, looking for reassurance that Sully was truly just a short car ride away.
The man’s expression was honest, lighting his azure eyes. “I think it best if himself explained it to ya.”
Adara took her foot from the break. It was all coming together as if some munificent, universal force was pulling on the sublime strings that connected Sully to her, drawing them ever closer.
“You must be much more than a craftsman, Charlie. You’re an angel.”
“Let’s hope Sully will think so.” He said the words under his breath, indicating for her to bear left.
Charlie didn’t say much as he opened the door of his cabin. He switched on a table lamp. Adara immediately swept the room with her eyes, looking for any sign of Sully. A pile of books lay on a small bed by a wood stove. One large hardback was open with its pages facing down on the blankets.
Adara gasped when she saw the author—Thomas Moore! A half-empty cup of tea rested in a mismatched saucer on the floor.
“You can try down by the water.” Charlie held the door for her and pointed towards the woods.
“Sorry?”
He rested a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sure ya don’t want to stay here and have tea with me right now; ya want to see Sully. You should find him down by the water, just past that patch of trees yonder.”
“Thank you, Charlie.”
“I want to prepare you,” Charlie cautioned benignly. “He’s gone through some tough times. He may not be the same as ya remember. I don’t want ya to be disappointed.”
“Sully has made me feel many things, but disappointment was never one of them.” She moved away from the bewildered angel and on toward the forest.
Blackthorns of the Forgotten Page 17