by A. L. Knorr
I sat back in my chair, chin in hand, for I don't know how long. The residual I had seen didn't come with a caption announcing the date, but Mailís's diary was pretty clear. The last entry had come shortly before she'd been reported missing. It was more than unsettling, it was disturbing, not the least of which was my connection to her. She'd become a Wise, I was becoming a Wise. I'd walked the bridge with Jasher, and he'd kissed me. She'd walked the bridge with Cormac, and he'd kissed her. She disappeared. And I... I was still here, for now.
She had been excited about life, about to get married, was madly in love, had been gifted by the fae. Had the papers gotten it wrong and she'd transformed fully into whatever it was she (and I) were becoming? They'd never found a body. Maybe she had morphed into a faerie and disappeared into the earth? I sighed, not really believing that. It didn’t look good.
Nausea clenched at my stomach. On the outside, becoming a Wise seemed like a blessing - the ability to capture the healing forces of nature and channel them is pretty spectacular. But where did it end? Revelations had been happening regularly and frequently, each one more astounding than the last. I was on a runaway horse without bit or bridle. When and where he stopped was anyone's guess.
My fingers had grown cold, and my heart felt small and wrung out. By the time I thanked the librarian for her help and found my way to my bike, I was sick with fear. Toward what kind of fate was I barreling?
Chapter 26
The rain had finally stopped by the time I left the library. Everything was wet and dripping. I wiped off the bike seat, threw a leg over, and headed in the direction of Sarasborne.
My stomach grumbled, and my eyes felt heavy. My mind continued to roll around the possibilities that these things happening to me would continue to grow and change. The idea that Mailís had taken her own life was mind-boggling.
As I pedaled, I realized I’d missed the turn-off for the bike path to the house. Shrugging, I took the road instead. The cool wind rustled the leaves of the oaks lining the road, and whipped my hair into my mouth. I picked up the pace, eyeballing the gathering clouds on the horizon. The rain wasn't over, this was just an intermission. Just time enough to buy popcorn and licorice before the show started again. A flash of light flickered several times in the undersides of faraway clouds. The last hill before our driveway was within sight, so I stood and bore down on the pedals to get speed.
What is it they say about most accidents happening close to home? It certainly rang true for me that day. I was cresting that last hill when a farm truck going in the opposite direction (driving like he was an emergency vehicle on a mission instead of a rickety rig hauling a load of sheep) loomed abruptly, materializing from wisps of fog. The sight of the truck snapped me back into the present so hard I got mental whiplash. My scream was echoed by his horn blast as I swerved toward the ditch. The wind from his passing whipped my clothes and every loose particle of dirt on that road blew into my eyes. The bike wobbled and I knew I was going to fall - funny how that moment of realization is more terrifying than the actual event. I fought to keep my eyes open but they were so grit-filled that it was simply impossible. The handlebars turned, the front wheel slammed sideways, and over the bars I flew, landing in the mud in a tangle of limbs and metal. I skidded painfully along the gravel, sacrificing several inches of skin in the process.
The driver of the truck yelled something in Gaelic but didn't stop. I lay there on my stomach, eyes stinging and watering. The right side of my jaw, my forearm, my right knee, and both palms burned like someone was holding a lighter to my skin. I'm not sure how long I lay there before I dragged myself upright. "Bloody hell," I swore. Okay, maybe my cursing was a little worse than that. It took me several minutes to get myself back on my feet, brushed off, and limping home. The entire right side of my body ached, and my abrasions stung. Adrenalin had flooded my body and made my legs feel weak and my hands shake. The pain sucked, as it always does. I won't go on about it, just know that there was blood. Maybe I had to bleed before I could learn what I had to learn, and isn't that always the way?
I couldn't tell if I was more upset over Mailís's supposed suicide, or my fall, but it was the vegetation that cleared my head and made way for the residual I was about to see. As I passed a cluster of plants in the ditch, their healing properties clarified in my mind. Feeling compelled by some otherworldly power, I reached my fingers out and touched the leaves. Immediately, my mind was flooded with knowledge. Arnica had the power to diminish inflammation and bruising, and comfrey would knit together not only broken skin but also bones. The vegetation hummed under my fingertips and I could no more stop myself from drawing in their power than I could have prevented my fall. The nutrients within each plant condensed and entered my bloodstream, compounding many times over.
I say it was easy, but that isn't giving you the true sensation. It was a very strange feeling - a bit like trying to suck a thick gel through a straw. But as I sucked, my body filled with a beautiful energy, and it felt as though my cells and my blood were dancing. The pain of my wounds and the throbbing of my bruises faded. I looked down at my arm, watching the torn skin stitch back together as though by unseen needle and thread. Small stones were expelled as the wound mended and closed itself. A sprinkling of dirt and bits of gravel fell into the grass.
Understanding that the root of the plant was one of the most powerful parts, and under the impression that I needed to touch it, I knelt and began to dig, eager to see if the beautiful feeling changed or increased when my hands got tangled in the root. Mailís had written about the supercharged power of roots.
As my fingers raked the soil and clumps of earth filled my palms, I was startled by movement in my periphery. There was no sound to warn me, and so you can imagine what it did to my heart to look up and see the ghostly forms of two people having an argument at the end of the Sarasborne driveway. It took me a moment to recognize Mailís because I was beginning to know her by her chevron dress, but here she was wearing a solid dress in a dark color. The images in a residual come in black and white, so maybe her dress was navy, or brown, but to my eyes it appeared black. She had a high-necked collar with a ring of lace at the top, and a ruffle on her chest in the shape of a V. I was so startled that it took me several moments to register what I was seeing. Mailís and Cormac were having some kind of confrontation, and speaking with great passion. It was like watching a silent movie - dramatic, overstated, only this had far more authenticity than any film I'd ever seen.
I became a statue as I watched the scene play out before me - a still of a girl digging in the dirt in the ditch alongside the road. I came alive only when a residual horse came barreling into the scene from behind me and shocked me into movement. A man I didn't recognize rode into view on a workhorse with no saddle and a bridle made of rope. The man wore a dark jacket, and a black hat that hid his face. Everything about him spelled urgency. He pulled the horse up to where Cormac and Mailís stood. The animal tossed its head and reared low. The way the man was hunched made me realize it was raining the day this took place, and when I looked closer at Mailís and Cormac, I saw their hair was curly and damp, their skin shiny with wetness.
The man on horseback spoke to Cormac, who listened, with an arm held out toward Mailís. She had a hand hooked around his elbow and her eyes were wide and frightened. As they listened to the rider, Cormac's face hardened and Mailís began to cry. She was shaking her head, even as Cormac used the rider’s arm to swing up behind him. As the horse wheeled, hoofs throwing clumps of dirt, Mailís collapsed to her knees. Neither of the men looked back as the horse galloped back the way it had come and disappeared from my view.
Mailís covered her face with her hands and bent her forehead to the earth. As she splayed her hands out on the ground in front of her and her fingers curled into the mud, displaying an agony that even her face could not rival, the residual blinked out and the figures of Cormac and Mailís appeared once again. The scene began anew and I saw the beginning that I had misse
d.
Cormac's face was away from me but it was clear the two were talking. As the conversation progressed, Mailís became more and more upset, shaking her head, her mouth pulled down. By the time the horseman appeared again, she was a piteous creature.
I felt wrecked. I watched the residual a half-dozen times, tears streaming down my own face, hands still in the dirt. It wasn't difficult to make some sense of what I was seeing. Cormac had broken Mailís's heart, just like I had thought he might. He left her literally in the mud, weeping and broken and alone. What their words were to one another, and what news the rider came to deliver I couldn't tell, but her agony was as clear as a full moon on a cloudless night. I didn't know how long she lay there after he left her because the residual reset itself before she got up, but a big piece of the puzzle had found its way to me.
Why did Cormac break Mailís’s heart? He'd had such love on his face, that day they kissed on the bridge. My mind only had a single, feeble clue - and that was the name of the girl in the diary. Aileen the Flirt.
By the time I got to my feet and dusted my hands of soil, I had made up my mind to go back into town. I had another question to ask the librarian now. The residual faded away as the earth left my palms, and I mounted the bike, wheeled it around, and went back in the same direction the residual horse had carried Cormac and the other rider - back to Anacullough.
Chapter 27
If the librarian was surprised by my reappearance so shortly after I'd departed, she didn't show it. What a pro. I walked up to her desk, hair disheveled, hands still dirty from digging around in the ditch, fingernails black.
"Are you alright?" She gave my grubby appearance a cursory once over. She had neither alarm nor judgement in her expression. I suppose when you get to a certain age, it takes more than filthy hands to elicit a reaction.
"Apparently, I'm not finished," I said. "This time, I need the wedding indexes." I was physically tired and emotionally exhausted, but the need to know had sunk its hooks deep. There was no way I was going to stop now, not when my own fate might be tied to it.
"I see." She took off her bifocals and propped them on her head. She got up and circled the desk. I followed her toward the stairs. "Whose wedding are we after?"
"Aileen O'Sullivan. That would be the anglicized way to say it. I'm sorry I don't know how to pronounce it the Gaelic way." My hands were shaking as I grabbed the banister, whether from hunger or shock, I didn't know. Probably both.
The librarian halted on the stairs and swung back to me, her mouth in an 'O'. "Ó Súilleabháin?" she said. "When would this wedding have taken place?"
I frowned, thinking. "1935?"
"My dear," she put a withered hand on my shoulder. "Aileen Ó Súilleabháin is still alive. She's as ancient as the hills, but for mental stamina she'd put any college kid to shame. If it's the story you want, there won't be a better source than the horse’s mouth, so to speak. She lives at the pensioners home and they're open for visitors all day most days."
I felt the blood drain from my face. I opened my mouth to protest but I didn't know what to say first. That it was impossible that it was the same Aileen, that I wouldn't know what to say to her, that I didn't feel right disturbing an old lady's peace, that I might strangle her if she admitted to stealing Cormac away from Mailís. Mailís's anguished face rose to my mind, her body as it collapsed like a puppet whose strings had been cut, her hooked fingers dragging in the dirt of the road.
"Go on, dear. I don't know her well, but I know she's a kind lady. It would probably make her day to have a visit from a curious lass such as yourself. Besides," she looked at her watch, "we're closing up soon. Sunny Valley is only three blocks east of here."
I found myself escorted brusquely but somehow kindly through the foyer and to the front doors. By the time I found my voice, I was standing outside and facing the right direction. "Sunny Valley has a public washroom just inside the front doors," the librarian added. "Maybe just a quick wash-up before you go to say hello." And with that, she disappeared back inside and I found myself closing the distance between me and one of Mailís's contemporaries.
I left my bike in the bike rack and went on foot, which allowed me to cut down a pedestrian walkway that bikes weren't allowed on. A pattering of rain had begun again. I pulled my hood up over my head and bent against the raindrops.
Sunny Valley was a low yellow brick building with a wheelchair-friendly ramp leading up to the door. I brushed my wet hood back and opened the swinging doors, stepping into the common room where a nurse was crossing the floor.
"May help you?" she asked, hugging a clipboard to her chest and cocking her head. "You don't look like one of our regulars."
"I'm not, I'm looking for Aileen O'Sullivan. Is it alright if I pop in and visit her a minute?"
"You must be here to say happy birthday," she said, smiling. "We've had a lot of visitors for her today. She's actually out at The Criterion Café right now, having a little birthday celebration. Everyone is welcome, so don't be afraid to go find her there."
The Criterion was eight blocks away, and I was pooped. But I had come so far, I couldn't fathom giving up. I thanked the nurse and left.
Just as I walked down the wheelchair ramp and onto the sidewalk, my phone rang. I picked it out of my bag and answered it without looking at the screen. "Hello?"
"Poppet?”
Liz was the last person that I wanted to be talking to at this point in time. I was tired, filthy, grumpy, scared, and just about at the end of my rope.
"Hello, Liz," I said. I got a chill from my own voice.
"You sound strange."
Irritation flared. "So do you," I said, abruptly. I wasn't actually paying attention to how she sounded, I was too distracted by my own problems. "Now is not really a good time, Liz."
Rain sprinkled into my face and I yanked my hood up again.
"You said that last time," she answered.
I couldn't exactly explain to my mother what was happening so I switched tactics. "I'm doing good. Is there something I can help you with?"
"Well..." She took a long pause.
I wasn't in the mood for long pauses. My feet were eating up the sidewalk between Sunny Valley Pensioners Home and The Criterion Café. I had a mission and speaking with Liz wasn't helping me accomplish it. I don't say that to excuse my behavior, just to gently remind you of my state of mind. So when Liz said, "I was wondering if you might like to come home early," I nearly went apoplectic.
I stopped dead on the sidewalk, rain dripping from the edge of my hood and into my face, running shoes soaked through. "Excuse me?"
She either didn't catch the fury in my tone, or she chose to ignore it. In either case, she barreled onward. "Yes. I was thinking that maybe it was a mistake to send you away for the entire summer. I've been so busy at work these past few months..."
"You mean years..." I seethed.
"Yes, years. Exactly. I've been thinking maybe it’s time that you and I spend a little one on one time together, before the summer is out."
On another day, under a sunny sky, and maybe when I didn't have thoughts of broken hearts, a woman abandoned on the road, and my own doom hanging over my head, I would have reacted differently. But Liz had chosen the wrong moment, the wrong words, and the wrong daughter to do a 180 on. The conversation from that moment on went something like this:
"Coming to Ireland was your idea."
"I know, but..."
"You couldn't wait to get rid of me." My voice was getting louder.
"That's not true..."
"You foisted me off on your sister." My consonants were getting sharper. I may have spat on the word 'foisted.'
"I didn't foist—"
"Whose letters you never even bothered to read."
"I haven't had—"
"Who adopted a boy, a nephew you haven't bothered to meet or even ask about."
"Now hold on, that's not fair."
"You have no idea what's going on here right now, w
hat you're interrupting." I yelled this.
"Well, if you’ll just tell me then I'll—"
"You call up out of the blue, without any sensitivity or respect for what's happening in my life."
"Georjayna... Poppet."
It's only fair of me to report honestly that she never once raised her voice, or sounded defensive or angry. Too bad I was too furious to notice.
"And expect me to drop everything, turn around, get on a plane..."
"Well, yes but, no."
"Because you've had an attack of conscience about having neglected your daughter since she was eleven, and you think now would be a good time to try and make up for it." These words I definitely spat, like rusty nails.
The line was silent.
"Do I have it about right, Liz?" All of the venom that had built up over the last six years since she’d made partner, all of the anger and frustration, came out on her name. It was pregnant to bursting with an ugly hurt-baby.
There was an odd sort of wheeze on the other end of the phone, and some urgent talking in the background, the sounds of an office. I heard Liz's voice but I couldn't understand any of her words. It sounded like she had her hand over the mouthpiece. She hadn't even been listening to me.
I glared at my cell, ground my teeth, hung up the phone, and kept walking.
Chapter 28
I pushed open the cafe door and the sound of a crowd buzzed in my ears. I beelined for their washroom and washed my filthy hands, scrubbing hard with the soap and digging under my nails.
Once I was somewhat presentable, I went to the counter and ordered a cinnamon bun and a cup of tea. I ignored the snotty look of the young girl behind the counter. I must have still looked like a vagabond, but I didn't care.
"Heated?" she asked, lifting her chin but dropping her eyes, looking down her nose.