I looked at him in horror. “No! Dad! No, no, no, you can’t! Please, Dad. You don’t understand. Not this weekend!”
He frowned at me. “Why? What’s so special about this weekend?”
“I…” I flopped back in the seat and closed my eyes. “Dad, just…please, not this weekend.”
I glanced over at him and he was smiling. “Who is she?”
I turned away. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“The girl Muller was trying to kiss and the girl you are supposed to be meeting this weekend. Who is she?”
I sighed. “Ciara Fionn.”
He cocked his head. “Michael Fionn’s daughter?”
I shrugged. “I guess. She said he’s some kind of political figure.”
“He’s a leading consultant on environmental issues. He works for the European Commission. He’s a gray suit, but he is a very powerful man.”
He started the car and began to pull away.
I asked, “So can I see her?”
“Not this weekend, son.” He eased into the traffic and accelerated. “I’m sorry. You have to learn that your actions have consequences, Jake. Take a rain check till next weekend.”
“But, Dad—”
“It’s final, Jake. No means no.”
* * * *
That night over dinner the atmosphere around the table was tense. We ate in silence. I couldn’t stop thinking that if I didn’t see Ciara that weekend, it might be weeks before I got another chance. But after a while, I noticed that Rosie’s face was rigid and she wouldn’t raise her face from her plate. Dad kept glancing at her and appeared decidedly worried. Finally, she laid down her knife and fork and looked straight at him. Her face was not a reassuring sight.
“George, there is something I do not understand.”
He smiled nervously, “Yes, honey?”
“As I understand it, your son took on the captain of the American football team, a young man of six foot six, built like the proverbial brick—”
“Yes, honey.”
She paused, eying him sternly. “A very tall, powerfully built young man. Your son took him on, in spite of considerable risk to himself, in order to defend a young lady who was being molested by this lout. A lout who is also, by all accounts, the school bully.”
Dad smoothed his hair and loosened his collar.
Rosie turned to me and said, “Is that right, Jake?”
I looked at Dad and said, “Pretty much.”
“So, your son,” she went on, “behaved like a perfect gentleman with admirable courage, and is now, no doubt, Ciara Fionn’s knight in shining armor. And for this he is being punished?”
Dad sighed. “Rosie, it isn’t that simple. You just can’t go into a school like the Anglo-American and, on your second day, start beating up another kid—even if he is the captain of the football team…”
“On the contrary, George, ‘simple’ is precisely the adjective I would use.”
“Rosie, please, honey. Jake has to learn discipline, and he has to learn obedience. I’m sorry—”
She cut right across him. “I see. Well, thankfully, George, rather than this foolish, pseudo-military nonsensical claptrap you seem suddenly to be spouting, your son seems to have assimilated the values I have always admired so much in you when you are not trying to be General Westpoint Wally. And he has behaved exactly as I would hope you would have behaved in a similar situation—not according to the stupid rules of some fossilized institution but according to his own judgment and a heroic heart!”
“Um…Rosie, honey—”
“However”—she snapped out the word and it was like she’d slapped him across the face—“your father has made up his mind, and he is your father, so we have no choice but to abide by his decision, however reactionary and Stone Age it may seem to us. It is a shame, because I was going to take you both to see Stonehenge tomorrow. But now you won’t be able to come. Your father and I shall go, Jake, and you will be left home alone. I hope you’ll be able to use the time productively.”
I swear she winked at me then. Dad didn’t see because, as well as turning scarlet, he was staring so hard at his plate that he couldn’t have seen anything but his food.
He said, “We’re going to Stonehenge?”
“Yes then Avebury. It’s fascinating, and I was really looking forward to showing Jake. They are among some of the most ancient, mystical places on the planet.”
He glanced at me then back at Rosie. “Well, I guess, if it was educational—”
“Nope! You have decided and that’s final. We can take Jake some other time.”
She stood up, collected the plates and went out to the kitchen. We stared at the table a second then we peered at each other.
He said, “What just happened?”
I shook my head. “I have no idea, Dad, but I can see why you’re crazy about her.”
He nodded then smiled. “Right.”
I smiled back. “Yeah, enjoy Stonehenge.”
“Right…”
Chapter Six
Ciara picked me up from the small jetty at about eleven the next morning in a small white rowing boat. She was wearing denim shorts and a white blouse, and the sun was dancing on her hair. She had her back to me as she was rowing, but she paused to turn and wave, and her smile was everything I could have wanted it to be. What Rosie had said… She was smiling at her knight in shining armor.
When she arrived, she had a picnic basket with sandwiches, drinks and a basket of strawberries in it. I laughed when I saw it and showed her the one I’d brought along. It was almost identical.
“Well,” she said, winking at me, “I’ll have yours and you can have mine.”
“Sounds like a deal to me.”
I don’t remember what we talked about. It wasn’t really important. I think we spent a lot of time not talking, just looking at each other and smiling—or maybe not even smiling. I never felt so comfortable or so happy as I did sitting in that boat, just watching her gently pull on the oars with the sun on her hair and her green eyes smiling at me.
I know she talked about the birds and that was bewitching, because she spoke about them not like an expert but as though she knew them—each one—individually and personally, and I’m pretty sure she called some of them by name. When I think back, it was almost like a dream. I know she also talked about the fish in the same way, but hard as I tried, I couldn’t remember the exact words she used.
Eventually, we came to a small island in the middle of the river and she eased in among reeds and weeping willows until the boat was invisible from the banks. Then we climbed out and tied the boat to the trunk of a tree. We ducked through some matted branches and came out in a clearing. In the middle, there was a ten-foot standing stone. The grass around it was slightly paler and shorter than the deep green grass in the rest of the clearing and there was an abundance of small daisies and clover.
She sat down cross-legged at the foot of the stone in a single, fluid movement and I sat opposite her. She held my eye, smiled and handed me her picnic basket. I took it and she held out both her hands for mine. I placed it in her hands and she appeared quietly pleased.
“We have exchanged food. That makes us friends.”
“Weren’t we friends before?”
She thought about it a moment then let go of my hand to open the hamper and look inside. “No, we wanted to be, but we weren’t. But now”—she pulled out a large strawberry and bit into it—“we have defied the ‘Laws That Be’ for each other. You defied the school, I have defied my father and we have exchanged food. I think that makes us friends now.”
I told her I had also defied my own father and explained what had happened at the school the day before. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I refused to give them your name. And Brutus didn’t want you involved either, because you’d confirm my story.”
She reached over and took my hand again. “I’m so sorry, Jake. You’re so good to me, and you barely even know me.” She suddenly
giggled. “You’re like a knight in shining armor or a fairy-tale prince, and all I give you in return is trouble.”
I shook my head and kept hold of her hand. “Tell me about your dad. Why does he keep such a tight hold on you?” I smiled. “Not that I wouldn’t like to have a tight hold on you myself from time to time.”
She gave my hand a gentle smack. “Behave, Mr. Norgard.” Then she became serious. “Jake, I think I should get this over with as soon as possible. You need to know. You deserve to know.”
My heart gave a sick jolt. I said, “You already told me you haven’t got a boyfriend.”
She raised her eyes to Heaven, but she kept hold of my hand. “If only it were that simple, Jake. Sure, all I’d have to do is leave him.”
My heart gave another jolt, but of a different type this time.
“It’s a lot more complicated than that. There are things about me that you can never know—things I can never tell you. I really like you, Jake. I do. I feel something special, hard to explain…”
“I feel the same, Ciara.”
“But what I feel and what I want just don’t come into it. Whatever I might feel, we can never be anything more than friends—and even that is pushing it.”
“What kind of things, Ciara?”
She laughed out loud and reached out her free hand to hold mine with both of hers. “Well, that would be telling you, wouldn’t it?”
I studied her face. She looked real sad but resigned. I had no doubt in my mind from that moment on that she felt the same as I did, but there was an obstacle in her life—something that I had to shift out of the way.
I said, “Is it your dad?”
She shrugged. We were right up close now, with our knees touching, holding each other’s hands. “He doesn’t help, but he isn’t the problem. He’s the way he is partly because of the problem.”
A terrible thought struck me. “Are you ill? Is that it? Because I don’t care. I’ll do anything…”
“No, Jake! No, no, it isn’t that. I’m not ill.” She drew breath and closed her eyes. “I-I would so love to tell you, of all people, because for some reason, I trust you in my heart. But I can’t. It’s no good.”
I thought for a second longer, staring down at her hands and stroking her fingers with my thumbs. They were long and fine. I could imagine her playing the harp. Finally, I said, “I also have a secret.” I looked up and held her eyes with mine. “It’s a pretty crazy secret. You probably wouldn’t even believe it, but I’ll tell you if you tell me yours.”
She let go of my hand and touched my cheek, and there were tears in her green eyes that made them shine like emeralds.
“I can’t.”
I heard my words and it was like another me was talking through me, from far, far away. “Ciara, whatever it is, however impossible, I swear to you that I will overcome it. There will come a day when there are no secrets between us. You know that, in your heart.”
She was quiet a long while, while she touched my face with her fingers. Eventually her face cleared and she changed her expression and smiled as though she had just seen me for the first time and was happy. “My knight in shining armor. My prince.” And she leaned forward and so softly that it was the gentlest, sweetest thing I had ever felt in my life, she placed her lips on mine and kissed me.
Next, it was like waking from a dream with a violent start. There was a wild rushing of a thousand wings. The air seemed to go crazy, like a tornado had hit us out of nowhere. Above the flapping and the turbulent air there was a wild screeching and twittering. I looked up and saw that the sky our heads had gone black with a huge, dense cloud of birds of all sizes and shapes. There were a million starlings, finches, robins, blackbirds, ravens and even seagulls whirling in a huge vortex just a few feet above us. And they were all screeching at the same time in a nightmarish cacophony.
Then Ciara was grabbing at my arm, shouting over the noise, “We have to go! We have to get out of here now!”
She stumbled to her feet, dragging me after her, knocking the hampers flying. I was shouting, “What the hell is going on?” But she ignored me and we crashed through the undergrowth back toward the dingy. As we pushed the boat back into the water, all I could hear was the crashing of the birds against the branches of the trees and their insane screaming. However, we were only a few feet into the water, so I tried battering at the trees to scare them off, but Ciara was grabbing at my arms, screaming at me, “Leave them alone! Leave them alone! Get in the boat!”
We heaved the boat into the river and leaped in. I grabbed the oars and she shouted at me, “Downstream! Go downstream!”
Then we were grabbed by the current and were easing past the island with the massive flock wheeling above us. I looked at her as I rowed and she was staring up at the birds, like she was scanning and listening to them.
I shouted again over the din, “Ciara! What the hell is happening?”
She stared at me wide-eyed, like her mind was racing and nothing she was thinking was anything she could say. Finally, she just mouthed, “Just row.”
I heaved on the oars and, moving with the current, we began to pick up speed. The birds churned the air, making their terrible noise, but they didn’t come any closer and they didn’t touch us. They just held their distance while Ciara stared at them and seemed to scan the sky and the riverbanks beside us. I went to speak but she held up her hand, cocking her head from side to side, as though listening to something.
Then the river exploded. Ciara screamed. Two massive torrents of water erupted into the air, raining on us and rocking the small boat so violently that I thought it would capsize. I heaved on the oars, but the river was boiling so fiercely that we made no headway. Then the two vast columns of water collapsed and crashed down, drenching us to our skin. I pulled on the oars again, trying to make for the bank. Ciara was scrambling to sit next to me. Her hair was matted with water and she was wiping her eyes. She grabbed the right oar, I had the left then we froze, gaping, because we were staring at the things that had burst out of the river.
Hovering fifteen or twenty feet above us in the air were two vast yellow emoticons, smiling at us. The left one opened its mouth and a speech balloon appeared out of thin air. It said, “LOL.” And as I stared at it, the right one changed. It suddenly had on a red bandana, an eye-patch and an arm had sprouted from its side holding a cutlass.
I screamed, “Row!” and we both worked the oars. The current seemed to have grown stronger and we were moving fast along the river with the giant emoticons speeding after us. The pirate was gaining, and as it approached, it raised the cutlass and slashed down, slicing into the water and missing us by inches.
Ciara glanced over her shoulder and shouted, “Tree cover! Your side! Twenty yards!”
I missed a pull so we swung to my side just as another swipe of the cutlass missed our stern, and we both shouted, “Heave! Heave! Heave!” as we pulled on the oars. We were approaching the trees and the second emoticon, who’d just been bobbing along till then, suddenly morphed into a hot-air balloon with purple and blue stripes. His yellow face leered out of the basket in an Austrian World War I spiked helmet. As my jaw dropped, he produced a spherical black bomb with a fuse and hurled it at us. It landed with a clatter at our feet in the row boat. I lunged for it, grabbed it with both hands and hurled it into the river. Behind me, Ciara was struggling for my oar.
I yelled, “Duck!” and there was another vast explosion of water that drenched us in torrents.
The boat was now half full of water. It was heavy, low and sluggish. The two emoticons, now two insanely grinning faces, opened their mouths and a shared speech balloon appeared with the letters, “LMAO!” As we pulled on the oars, inching under the tree cover toward the bank, they changed again, this time into two gigantic cartoon sharks. They plunged into the water, maybe forty feet away.
In unison, we shouted to each other as we heaved on the oars, “Pull! Pull! Pull!”
We heard the keel grind on the mud
and grit of the shore and we leaped from the boat onto the sludge of the bank, just as the water erupted again and the two sharks smashed into the boat, ripping out chunks of wood and chewing it into splinters.
I pushed Ciara toward the trees and shouted at her, “Find cover! Run for your house!”
As she staggered back toward the trees, I lunged for one of the oars, swung it over my head and brought it crashing down on the nearest cuddly Jaws. Its eyes swiveled in a circle and stars spun over its head as its tongue lolled out. I felt a hand grab my sleeve and I could hear Ciara muttering, “You feckin’ eejit!” as she dragged me back toward the trees after her.
Then we were running, dodging trees and jumping over branches.
I said, “Which way?”
She stopped and held up a hand. “Listen!”
I listened. I couldn’t hear anything.
She said, “This is bad! This way,” and she pushed me to the right. “We have to try to make the road.”
Then I heard it. It was like muffled thunder coming up from the ground. We ran. The trees were growing denser and the first autumn leaves were turning to sludge on the moss. I kept slipping and falling and Ciara kept stopping to help me up.
I kept snapping at her, “Keep going! Don’t stop!”
And she kept muttering, “Feckin’ eejit!”
Then we broke into a clearing and they were on us. Ahead of us was an eight-foot yellow pirate with a parrot on his shoulder. Behind us, a ten-foot yellow troglodyte in a leopard-skin Speedo was wielding a huge club with a nail hammered through it. I bent and picked up a stout branch from the ground and leaned close to Ciara.
I said softly, “I’ll draw their attack. You make for the tree cover.
I sprang at the giant yellow pirate. He bellowed an unearthly noise and swung his giant cutlass at me. As I dodged left, it hammered the ground, throwing up splintered branches, stones and grit. I lunged forward, ramming the pointed end of the stick into his knee. The monster bellowed and I rammed it again in a place no man should ever have a pointed stick rammed. His eyes shot out on stalks. Smoke and fire blasted from its ears. He leaned forward and his tongue sprang from his mouth with a jagged speech balloon that said, “OMG! WTF?”
The Dreaming Spires Page 5