Anna weighed her options. She could look at the situation from two angles and think thoroughly about each one. If these people were an isolated, fundamentalist cult who wanted to believe it was 1844 and had for some reason drugged and kidnapped her, that was one thing. If she’d been kidnapped, it had been a seamless event, marked with so much perfection and coordination that it was as if Anna had been plucked like a goldfish from a pet store’s fish tank. What did she last remember? Driving to New Jersey to pick up Joseph from the detention center, the long, miserable drive home, collapsing in bed, then waking up and seeing Joe in the living room. What then?
To ground herself, she made herself slow down to remember each detail of her house. New stainless-steel fridge with double doors, a stack of mail and newspapers, her espresso machine that she rarely used, the stove top and the oven, butcher block counter space, the sink with the arching faucet, and her garbage disposal, also rarely used. Yes, all the appliances, all the electricity running through her house behind the wall boards, in between the wall studs; electricity and outlets where the electricity exited to her appliances.
Electricity was everywhere in Anna’s house. Anna looked outside and saw no power lines. Then she sat on a bench outdoors for hours and heard no planes, no hint of engines anywhere. But if these people were throwbacks of some sort, people who wanted to prove they could live naturally, without electricity, without the gas-powered compromises of daily life, then there was an upside to all this. She could eventually escape. It would only be a matter of time. In fact, she could test this theory out and tell Glenis that she was going for a walk.
The other possibility was that this was the past, that she had looped back 164 years and she was standing, flesh-bound, amid people, sheep, houses, birds, and smoke from a time before. Just as Glenis insisted, this could be 1844.
Anna had read every issue of Discover magazine since she was a teenager with their scientific sound bytes of information. She had tried to understand string theory; what she’d come away with had been a sense that time undulated like a ribbon. And hadn’t she wished as a child that she could step into the past or float into the future? As a teenager, she had wondered about going into the past wearing very cool clothes from the present; would people twenty years ago perceive that her clothing was innovative and brilliant, or would they treat her like a painted bird? Would they gawk and turn on her, plucking out her eyes and her bright feathers? There were tests for everything, and Anna could test out her options.
She walked to the front door, where Glenis sat braiding a child’s hair. Glenis sat on the front step, and the child squatted on the ground between the folds of her mother’s long dress. The girl had taken her father’s dark hair, not her mother’s thick, reddish hair.
“Glenis, I was not alone on the ship. I traveled with my nephew. I need to look for him.”
Glenis tied a piece of yarn around the child’s braid.
“Would that be Joseph? You talked about him when you were sick. Seems the lad was in a bit of trouble. And you’re only now asking about him? I’d say your head is still in the worst of fogs.”
“No, my head is beginning to clear. I’d like to see where I was found. Can you take me to the place where I was found?”
“You’ve only been up for one full day. You’re pushing it if you think you can walk all the way to the beaches and the cliffs.”
Anna wanted to protest; she felt the weight of her mother, her brother, and her missing nephew press hard on her shoulders, and she knew she needed to look for Joseph immediately. She needed to assess the situation, look for shreds of information about him. That’s what she was thinking when the ground rushed up to meet her.
“Tom, she’s down again! You were right; it was too soon for her to be up.”
And Anna felt strong arms lift her and carry her back into the cottage. They returned her to a bed, where she sank into a troubled acceptance of time.
Chapter 9
Taleen was there when the boy was brought in, fresh from the ocean, naked and sweet. She’d never seen a boy so lovely and smooth. She took him to be not yet a man; his shoulders hadn’t broadened, and the hair on his face, although darkening, was soft and thin.
John Carrol, a master cooper, had found him on the long stretch of Tramore’s beach. He’d said that the fairies had rallied him from a perfectly good sleep, chattering around his window until he’d gotten up, lit his lantern, and walked the two miles to the sea. When he was later asked why he’d walked directly to the shipwreck beach, as it was called, he couldn’t say, but when he’d gotten there, he’d found the boy rolled like a seal in broad bands of seaweed, with his white skin gleaming through. The boy had been deathly cold and would not waken. John Carrol had taken off his coat, placed the boy in it, and carried him like a child until he’d gotten to the Mitford estate, because Taleen’s mother, Deirdre, worked in the kitchen and everyone knew she was the most heralded liaig in Waterford County. She could save a calf who had not taken a breath, and she could save a mother whose blood had all but emptied out in childbirth. She would know if this boy could be saved.
John Carrol unlatched the kitchen door and was himself ready to drop from the weight of the boy. A pot still hung over the banked fire. He knew the master of the estate was away; all the Irish knew when he left, and they sighed a collective breath of peace when he was gone. But even if he had been home, he would not have heard John Carrol call to Deirdre, for the master slept two levels higher than the world of the servants. John Carrol placed the boy on the table, and the coat fell open.
“Deirdre, come quick; this one’s about to die from cold and the cursed water!”
Deirdre appeared at the door followed by her bright-eyed daughter Taleen. The pair came and stood in the doorway, looking at the naked boy with the gleaming skin and the dark hair. Before the woman could say a word, Taleen, a thin rail of a girl, walked straight to him and placed her hands on the soles of his water-wrinkled feet. The boy shuddered and gasped like a fish taken from the ocean.
Deirdre’s hand flew to her heart. She said, “Oh darling, I wish you hadn’t done that. It’s too soon for you. But now it’s begun.”
Taleen was five years old when she’d first heard the word “sight.” She’d overheard her mother say, “The child has the sight.” She’d wondered who her mother had been talking about. What was this thing that another child had, and could she ever have it?
After their supper of brown bread and butter, Taleen had asked her mother about sight.
“What is it? Can you wear it or eat it? If it’s to be eaten, does the child share some with other children?”
Her mother had wrapped a good quilt around the girl. The spring had been wet and cold, and the part of the house where they lived took all summer to warm up; the warming had not yet even begun. They lived off the grand kitchen of Master Mitford, deep at the bottom of the house. Their sleeping room was close to the kitchen, and Taleen’s dreams were filled with scents of hard sauces and stews and every sort of potato and the game birds that simmered all day after a hunt. Even wrapped in her quilt with her Mum squatted next to her, Taleen smelled the essence of a full day of cooking that hung off her mother like a gentle cloud.
“You’re old enough now,” her mother had responded. “You’ll remember what we talk about. The memory sets in good and strong at this age. It’s you I was talking about, it is you, my dear child, who has the sight.”
Taleen had pulled herself to sit upright, and the quilt had fallen off her shoulders. “I’ve got it? But where is it? Is it packed away?”
“No, not except that it’s packed away in you, waiting to be practiced like a fiddle. Do you remember when you told me Sunday that the egg man wouldn’t be coming because he’d taken ill with the fevers? That’s the sight. Or when you knew that two pups from the wolfhound’s last litter would be born still and without breath? That’s the sight. Not everyone can see those things. You get to see them first before the rest of the folks. Although I�
�ll tell you, I’ve never seen the point of it. Sight passes from mother to daughter—to the seventh daughter exactly, and that is who you are. When people know you have the sight they’re after you day and night to tell them this or that: will he love me, will the babe survive, and will the crop be overflowing or disastrous this year? We get to see what’s happening a bit before the rest of them. If only they’d wait, they’d see it too. People don’t want to wait.”
Taleen had listened intently, for the tone of her mother’s voice had been altogether different than it had ever been before.
“Do you mean to tell me that every other person couldn’t tell about the dead pups in the litter? They couldn’t see the sad eyes inside the mama’s belly? And you’re saying it’s only you and me that see such things?”
“Yes, that is what I’m saying, and there’s more, little one, even though I would give my best boots to not have the sight on some days. My sight comes more with the body, and that is how I can tend to the sick ones. The lungs and the stomach, the aches in the muscles, that’s where my sight has settled. We must wait and see where it settles for you. The sight will settle in its proper place when you are older.” And Deirdre had wrapped little Taleen back up in the quilt and let her newfound knowledge soak in.
In the weeks after the revelation, Taleen had asked her mother about everything, to figure out which was sight and which was how all the rest saw the world.
Does Miss Fiona see that her back tooth must come out? No. Did Master Mitford know that his best horse would lose a shoe on a journey to Limerick? No. Did the farmers know that this crop of potatoes was plump and abundant? Aye, oh yes, they did.
And so it was, ten years later, that Taleen was dressed and waiting and the fire was ready when John Carrol brought the boy, plucked from the sea as if he had been a creature spurned by the ocean and spit out. The kitchen was warm; a chicken broth was already prepared, and there were two quilts to wrap him in. After the boy began to breathe again, jolted by Taleen’s touch, Deirdre ordered two men to lie next to him, one on either side, to wrap their arms around him and draw out the cold.
Taleen stood at the boy’s feet. She laced her fingers between his toes, a thing that she had never done before, but she knew that she should, that she could tie him to this place, twine her fingers around his toes to bind him to her so that he could never leave her.
Chapter 10
Wherever he was, it was not the Essex County Detention Center, and it was not home. Miracles did happen; he had wished and prayed in the detention center that something would save him from the wreck of his life. Never in a million years had he imagined that he’d have ended up in a jail in New Jersey. Everyone at home would know; he’d get kicked off the wrestling team and his father would kill him. Wait, there was something else about his father. What was it? And something about Anna. But before he could fully remember, those thoughts rushed to the back corners of his brain, where they turned dark and quiet, humming a sticky tune that lulled him back to sleep again. He dreamed of the gravel base that his father had put in the trench of new stone walls, then the meticulous layers of rocks wedged into each other as if they had waited all their life to go together. Buried like the gravel, no rubble, that’s what his father had called it.
When he awoke, he smelled food and heard the murmur of voices. A rough blanket rubbed his neck. He ran a quick hand down his torso and realized he was naked. With a firm grasp on the blanket, he sat up. He was in a bed of sorts, a scratchy, noisy bed, as if the mattress was stuffed with, wait a minute, straw or corn husks. In front of him was a small fireplace, where a smoky fire smoldered.
The voices came from the next room. Joseph stood up, wrapping the blanket around him, and tiptoed to the door. He pressed his ear against the door in an attempt to hear what the people were talking about, but a sudden dizziness took hold and he fell against the door, which clattered on the hinges. All the conversation on the other side of the door stopped. Joseph caught himself and pushed away from the door. He stepped back and prepared for the worst: more trouble, even if this wasn’t jail or home.
The door creaked open and he was hit by a gust of air that brought the full scent of warmth and light. As he breathed in the smell of food and his lungs expanded, his chest felt hard and fiery all at the same time, and he coughed a dry, painful bark.
“You breathed in half of the Atlantic, lad. Your lungs are going to feel like they’ve been torched by fire pokers for a few days. But you’ve cheated the devil, deprived him of one more soul, so he’s off sulking in the bogs, waiting to catch the next poor bloke.”
Joseph stopped coughing. He rubbed his chest, as if it would help, and stared at the man who’d spoken to him. Joseph took in the accent; the man was like a guy in the movies. The clothes looked different—even Joseph knew they weren’t right. The shoes; the shoes were wrong. No running shoes. This guy wore leather shoes, and they had a buckle. A woman with a long dress and an apron stood behind the guy. Next to the woman was a girl who had the biggest eyes he’d ever seen, blue eyes rimmed with dark lashes and a half smile, like she knew a joke or a secret. She was thin, swimming around in her long dress like a trout. If Joseph just walked across the room, he could pick her up in one arm, he knew he could.
The woman turned to the girl. “Taleen, you’re needed upstairs. We’ll look after the lad.”
The man moved toward him. “I’m Finn. I’m not the one who found you, that was John Carrol, but I’m the one who made sure you could stay here with the best woman in the country to look after you.”
The woman sighed. “For the sake of us all, give the boy some clothing. He can’t come in like that.” She picked up a pair of trousers and a shirt from a chair. The chair clattered on the stone floor. Stone, he didn’t know anyone with a stone floor. Except once when he’d gone to work with his father….
“Here,” she said. “These will have to do.”
Joseph had gone to Sturbridge Village with his grandmother. She was a teacher, and every birthday had been a trip to someplace like Sturbridge, a reconstructed early American village, or Mystic Seaport, or the Science Museum in Boston. The last time he had agreed to go with her was when he was thirteen. He wondered if he had somehow landed in a reconstructed village, but that didn’t make sense.
The woman pushed the clothes into Joseph’s hand, the one that was not desperately clutching the blanket. “I’m Deirdre. You just saw my daughter Taleen. Can you speak? Have you a name?”
“Joseph, my name is Joseph. Where am I?”
Finn tipped his head to one side. “You were plucked from the ocean, found along the beach of Tramore, nearly drowned and frozen. You were the color of death, and the devil had his grips in you.”
“I was in the ocean?”
Deirdre and Finn exchanged quick glances. She ladled a steaming hot liquid from a pot hanging across the fire. “Aye, and you breathed in too much of it. That’s why you have the cough. Go put your clothes on, young Joseph, then come and have this soup. It’ll draw out the last of the ocean.”
He went back into his room, closed the door, and dropped the blanket. There were no underpants in the pile of clothes Deirdre had given him. He shrugged to himself and pulled on the pants. No zipper either. He buttoned the pants and paused, then pressed gently against the door, placing his ear lightly on the wood. He heard Finn say, “He’s not an Irish lad. We have to tell Mr. Edwards now. And he’ll want to tell Colonel Mitford. He’d not be interested in an Irish lad, but this fellow is from America. I know the accent from the sailors who come into Cork and Tramore.”
Joseph pulled the shirt over his head, buttoning the last few buttons near the top. The sleeves were long, but not long enough for his arms; the cuffs stopped a few inches from his wrists. Didn’t these people have T-shirts? That was all he needed. He was barefoot and saw no shoes in sight. What was her name, Deirdre, she’s the one who’d given him the pants and shirt. He opened the door to the kitchen because she had told him to come and eat the sou
p. Joseph sat down in a straight-backed chair and sniffed the bowl of soup. It smelled OK, like something weird that his grandmother might have made. Right now, he didn’t so much care who’d made it. His stomach felt hollowed out, like someone had suctioned out his guts. He stuck his spoon in the thick soup, finding chunks of potatoes. This would have to do for now until he could load up on pizza or a sandwich.
So where was he? He’d already considered Sturbridge Village. Or maybe a reality TV show, a survivor kind of show. Sure, that was it; people had signed up to live for a year in olden times to see if they could take it. Very realistic too. He liked the big fireplace, the iron pot hanging over the fire, the mountain of potatoes piled in the far corner. Oh no, this was too gross; a headless chicken with all its feathers still on it lay on a table.
Whatever this place was, he was going to try very hard not to get in trouble until he could figure out what to do next. He already had enough problems, like a police record.
Deirdre returned to the kitchen from a stairway on the far end of the room. She had a pair of boots and something that looked like knee socks, the kind girls wore.
“I don’t know if these will fit properly, but they were the best we could do. While you were mending I happened to notice that you have quite large feet. You spent three days sleeping and shivering. You ate the soup just fine, I see. You’re ravenous, no doubt, all lads are, but you’ve had nothing but a few sips of water for the entire time you’ve been with us.”
While she talked, Deirdre slowly circled him, as if she was scanning him all over, taking an X-ray, searching for something that she couldn’t quite see.
“Your soup was good. Thank you,” said Joseph, trying to remember every rule that his grandmother had taught him. Say thank you, say good-bye when you leave, offer to help clean up, carry groceries, and open the door for others. What else, what else should he do?
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