Selkie's Song (Fado Trilogy)

by Clare Austin

  “So you’re gonna rape me?” she said with the last bit of vitriol she could manage.

  Ty shook his head. “No, beautiful. I’ve never forced a woman, and you’re not going to be the first.” His lips suckled a path from her ear to her collar. “You’re going to scream for more.” As though the earth agreed with him, lightning split the grey curtain of heaven and thunder followed like a hound of hell on its heels.

  “You can’t tell me what I will or won’t do,” she said, but doubted her own veracity.

  “Then, you’ll have to make a liar out of me.”

  His mouth came down on hers. Muireann stiffened and struggled to be free of him but his lips were persistent. He licked and probed with his tongue as his hands tugged at her jumper and slipped up against the bare skin of her breasts.

  Electricity from his touch seared her more than she could imagine being struck by a bolt from the sky. Wetness poured into the vault of her sex. She was losing her battle against his intrusion.

  “Please, Ty,” she pleaded, but wasn’t sure if she wanted him to stop or continue.

  His fingers were at the button of her jeans.

  Muireann should have stopped the progress of his fingers, but her hands lacked strength…or will. “You aren’t this kind of man.”

  “You railed at me for being a ‘nice guy.’ Have you changed your mind, again?”

  Before she could answer, his lips met hers. This time she blamed her response on surprise. She opened her mouth, her tongue dueling with him, battling for a last bit of control.

  “You’re gonna give in to me, Muireann. It’s just a matter of time.” His voice softened as he coaxed her jeans over her hips.

  She couldn’t. She wouldn’t. Not under these circumstances.

  A chill hit her skin as her shirt was yanked free of her jeans, but the cold was quickly usurped by Tynan’s warm lips trailing down her breastbone. When his tongue circled her naval, Muireann’s legs melted under her.

  “You like that?” he asked and lowered her to the damp, mossy floor. The stones chilled her back for a moment, but the heat of Tynan’s touch soon warmed her. “I want you, Muireann,” he whispered with hot breath into her ear and then teased her lobe with his tongue.

  The echo of her pulse obliterated the howl of wind outside the old walls. Heaven’s fury was a weak call compared to the wail of accusations her heart demanded. Muireann’s body instinctively pressed into Tynan’s insistent searching hands, but her need to hold onto control contradicted every nerve ending that burned with desire.

  She shivered and her unruly body pressed into him, feeling his hardness with the arch of her pelvis. Random thoughts spun like dust devils in her head. Just one more time. This time on his terms. Would it be so bad?

  Muireann’s hands crept up Ty’s back and tangled in the hair at the base of his neck. She pulled him to her and tasted his lips with a soft touch of her tongue. He took advantage and opened his mouth to her.

  Barriers of defense began to crumble, stone by stone, as weak as the walls of the old fortress. Whatever barricade Muireann had planned to save herself from Tynan’s advances was as ephemeral as whitethorn blossoms against the gale winds of a summer storm.

  In a dizzy dream, she melted into him and heard a moan of pleasure. It couldn’t have been from her own throat. Could it?

  Ty lifted his head and stared at her with dark danger in his eyes. “Don’t play with me, beautiful. I’m a wiser man than I was yesterday.” His cold words stunned her back to reality. She stiffened with rage and tried to roll out from under him. “Let me go,” she hissed.

  Ty’s hold loosened but his jaw clenched. He closed his eyes, exhaled, and released her. His concession held an unexpected sting.

  Muireann’s limbs had a flyaway feel, light and useless. She had her freedom, but it left her empty.

  Ty couldn’t take back the cruel words. A wave of self-loathing hit him with a chilled rush. The aftermath of hurt and rage left his stomach in a Gordian knot.

  Too late for boldness.

  He stood and offered her a hand to help her from the floor. “I’m done with you, Muireann. I can’t play your games.” Anger at her duplicity drained away and only pain remained.

  Muireann wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her shirt and stood trembling against the stone wall. “I said I was sorry,” she said in a voice so soft Ty had trouble hearing through the din of the storm. She turned away and pulled up her jeans, wobbled, and he thought she might fall. Ty reached for her, but she backed away and sat on an old bench by the ruined hearth. “What did you mean? You said you were ready to give up everything. What did you mean by that?”

  Conflict tied his tongue and his legs were stone pillars refusing to step toward her. He had not quite given her the truth. It wasn’t an almost. O’Fallon’s was out of his reach as of today. He’d waited too long. There would be no going back to Boston with his plan intact. He’d banked everything on the hope she loved him as he had loved her.

  As he loved her now.

  Muireann shivered and wrapped her arms tightly around herself. Her jumper was soaked. In the heat of his anger, he hadn’t noticed the wet floor stones. His jacket lay where he’d tossed it on the remains of an old sideboard. Ty grabbed it and forced himself the few steps to where Muireann sat, head down, her hair a curtain of mahogany silk hiding her face.

  “Here,” he said and slung the jacket over her shoulders. “If you die of pneumonia, I don’t want it to be my fault.”

  She didn’t look up. “Are you going to tell me what you meant?”

  Tynan’s throat burned with the need to tell her what she’d meant to him. His jaw ached with the effort of holding back the words his heart dictated.

  He let his eyes scan the room and listened to the ravenous cry of the wind. He could imagine a family, huddled here, by this hearth, a seanchaí weaving tales to keep the children occupied and unafraid. An ordinary family. Not kings or chieftains as Muireann had dreamt or hoped. Of that there was no proof. This was simply a fisher’s cottage, like thousands of other dwellings that spotted the rugged coastline.

  “I thought this might be something special,” he whispered. “You might say I banked on it. On your word about it.” Just like he thought her attraction to him was real. Now he knew that too was a game, a ruse to get what she wanted. Fresh anger heated his blood.

  “It is,” Muireann asserted. “I thought you were too.”

  A choked laugh tried to escape Ty’s tight jaws. “Yeah, special because I’d be out of here in a couple of weeks and you and your mates could have a good old joke on the tourist from Boston.”

  Muireann shook her head in protest. “It wasn’t like that. I never wanted this to happen.”

  “No, I’m sure you hadn’t planned on my ever finding out.”

  She stood, hands out to him in a pleading gesture. “It just happened. Can’t you see? It was too late to stop. I was…well, I am attracted to you.”

  “Attracted? That’s a word for it,” he said with a shake of his head. “I’m more than attracted, Muireann. Maybe I’m not your run-of-the-mill kind of man. I don’t fuck around.”

  Her head snapped back as though he’d slapped her. “I don’t ‘fuck around’ either. And I resent the tone you’re taking with me.”

  “Resent it all you like,” he growled.

  Ty stood and walked the few meters to the remains of the door. He looked out on hues of grey and black. The sky blended with the sea in an unending sheet of colorless clouds and water. Wind stung his eyes as he looked west.

  He wondered if he could get to his car and turn on the radio, perhaps pick up a weather bulletin. But the storm was so thick he couldn’t even pick out the little red car for the drenching rain and debris flying through the air.

  Tynan turned away from the scene outside. The old cottage gave enough shelter that they could stay the night if needed. He didn’t think it was safe to try to get to the car or drive even if they could make it without being bashed b
y blowing detritus.

  He faced Muireann. She sat in her defeated pose, defiance carried off by the wind. He sat next to her on the old stone bench but didn’t touch her. The silence between them was louder than the din of the gale outside.

  Muireann’s hand crept across the void between them and touched the back of his. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  His heart thumped hard at the feel of her fingers on his hand, but he quashed the spark that might ignite his hope. “Looks like you’re stuck here with me for a while,” he replied and allowed himself to sneak his arm over her slumped shoulders. “Soon as it quiets down out there, I’ll take you home.”

  Ty felt the tight muscles in her back relax, and he drew her into his body for warmth.

  “Why are you being nice to me?” she queried.

  A laugh rumbled up from his chest and he couldn’t hold it back. “Damn. I just can’t help myself.” He looked down at her face. Muireann was smiling.

  “The wind’s stopped,” she said.

  It had, replaced by an eerie stillness. No birdcall pierced the void. The usual fragrance of wet grass after the rain was undetectable in the air. Ty peered through the opening in the roof for a hint of blue sky, but all he could see was achromatic clouds frozen in flight, their puffy bellies gravid with condensation.

  He rose and took Muireann’s hand in his. The echo of their footfalls was the only sound as they stepped to the opening in the wall to look out onto the paddocks that lay between them and the cliffs.

  The sea was a sheet of uneasy calm where it met the western horizon. Ty had never seen anything like it and it gave him a clench of fear in his chest. The air smelled stagnant and lay heavy, a damp, woolen blanket, carelessly thrown upon the suffocating earth.

  Muireann leaned into him and he could feel her tremble. He slipped his arm around her shoulder. “I’ve never seen it like this before,” he said and couldn’t dismiss the thought that their short affair had been so much the same. Beautiful, buoyant in the beginning, a firestorm of excitement and passion. He didn’t need to analyze it to know where he had gone wrong. His heart had been too open, too vulnerable, and completely undiscerning.

  Mark one up for the most naïve man in Erin. Perhaps the world.

  The trouble was, she still felt fabulous in his arms. Leaving this place would be painful.

  No use courting foolishness, he admonished himself, but he closed his eyes and breathed in the scent of her hair. Ty was tempted to stay like this forever, content to have her body, if not her heart.

  An indistinct hum, a change in the smell of the air, a darkening of the clouds—he wasn’t sure which came first, but the hum became a rumble and the rumble a roar so violent he instinctively pulled Muireann to the corner of the old house where the walls were most sturdy.

  “What’s happening?” she shouted, but her voice was sucked into a vacuum where it couldn’t escape.

  Ty’s arms felt like they were being pulled from his shoulders and he was catapulted back with a violent crush of wind that circled, pulsed, and snarled as though hell itself had risen to engulf them.

  Stones tumbled from the top of the walls and he shielded Muireann with his body. He snugged them back into the shallow fireplace where the masonry was most substantial.

  A whitethorn branch, big as his arm, split from the tree and whipped past. Ballinacurragh’s keepsakes scattered like the fragile dreams they represented. Muireann started to push Ty away. “I’ve got to save those. Let me go.”

  His grasp tightened. “You’re not going anywhere. We might be safe here…not out there,” he shouted.

  Then the fabric of the firmament ripped with a sound that chilled his core. Like the earth had given up its soul to the devil, a tearing scream split the atmosphere with such dissonance he was sure the planets had plummeted into the sea.

  A cry pierced the air. Though Ty knew it was only a manifestation of the wind, it sounded like a woman’s voice, as though the earth were being torn from heaven’s womb.

  He had heard the tales of the bean sí, the wailing fairy woman who came for the souls of the dead. He hadn’t given the stories credence, until now.

  He knew by the change in Muireann’s stance, she had heard it too. She looked up at him, eyes wide with fear.

  Like a wounded beast, the sound retreated. Muireann trembled in Ty’s arms but he held tight to her. Her body shook with sobs. “It’s going to be all right now. Whatever that was, I think it’s passed,” he said and hoped he was right.

  She stepped back and looked up through the open roof timbers. “Blue sky,” she said with awe in her voice. The sun shone on her face and Ty could see stains of tears mixed with dust on her cheeks.

  “We’re a right mess,” he said, and offered her his shirttail to wipe her eyes. “A branch got you here.” He blotted a drop of blood from her ear.

  “The fairy tree,” she whispered. “Everyone’s keepsakes…they’re all gone.”

  “Maybe not,” he tried to reassure her. “Let’s take a look.”

  Ty took her by the hand and climbed over a new pile of rubble that blocked the doorway. Branches, nettles, and bracken torn from the sod, a piece of a road sign and the door to Muireann’s van, lay in an incongruous heap where the wind deposited them against the old stone garden wall. A few yards away the red hire car lay on its side against the berm like a dead ladybird beetle. “Stay here,” he commanded and started toward the car.

  “No…Oh, no,” she cried.

  He looked over his shoulder as Muireann rounded the corner of the cottage. She stopped, feet planted in the muddy ground.

  “What?” he called. His eyes widened as he took in the surreal scene.

  The branches of the whitethorn tree lay tangled at an unnatural posture. A fresh gash severed the earth and pale roots reached up to the heavens like broken hands in prayer. The grief in her voice punched the air out of Ty.

  Muireann knelt and started shoveling through the soil with her bare hands. He watched her vain attempt to protect the tree roots. Her efforts were fruitless. He knelt next to her and gently grasped her hands, but she pushed him away.

  “Wait.” She smacked his hands aside. “Look.” She loosened more soil and he could see what she was doing. Muireann wasn’t trying to cover the roots. She was uncovering something entangled in them.

  The sun was bright and his eyes took a moment to adjust to the darkness in the fissure beneath the savaged tree.

  Then he saw what she was so excited about.

  “Here,” he said and started to help her dig away the soggy turf. “What is this?” It appeared to be the top of a box, tied with rotted twine. “Let me see if I can lift it out.”

  Ty braced himself with his feet against the trunk of the tree that was now horizontal and reached into the hole to wiggle the box free. “It’s really wedged in here.” Sweat dripped from his hairline and stung his eyes. “The roots are grown around it.”

  Muireann dug dirt and roots from the sides. Tynan wondered if she was thinking the same as he. This box, whatever it was, has been here a very long time. Excitement skittered up his spine and made his ears buzz.

  Muireann stopped digging and brushed her hair from her face with a muddy hand. “Maybe we shouldn’t be doing this,” she said and put her hand on Tynan’s shoulder as to stop him.

  He gave a short laugh. “Too late.” He jerked the object free of its grave, and fell backwards. The box slipped from his hands and landed with a crash against a paving stone, jarring the top.

  “Don’t touch it,” Muireann said and pushed his hand away. “I mean, let’s open it…but very carefully.”

  Together they pried the already loosened lid free. When it was completely liberated, they stopped. The skin of Muireann’s cheeks paled in contrast to bright sparks of gold in her deep sable eyes.

  “Are you ready?” he asked.

  Two sets of hands working in unison lifted the cover away.

  “Mother in heaven,” Ty mumbled and looked from the
box to Muireann. “Is this—?”

  “Can it be—?” she started to ask.

  Muireann spread her fingers and reached into the box to feel the slick seal fur. It felt warm and almost alive. She snatched her hand away and shook her head.

  “I thought it was just a legend, a story.”

  Tynan grabbed Muireann’s hands as much to steady himself as give her support.

  “This should keep the bulldozers away,” he said.

  As he watched her, one tear and then another spilled from her eyes, caught the waning evening light and glistened like jewels on the pelt of the selkie.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The sun’s orb dipped toward the sea. Light fanned out, filtered through a cloud bank that formed on the western horizon and skimmed over the tips of wet rye grass on the hills.

  Tynan and Muireann carried their treasure into the shelter of the fortress walls and stared in silent reverence at the humble reliquary until a gust of wind blew a chill of reality over them. “We should get out of the weather before another storm hits,” Ty suggested.

  Muireann tried again, with no success, to start the van. When it had coughed, sputtered and died once again, she and Ty collected two blankets and a flashlight from the back. She leaned down and pulled something from under the front seat.

  “I’ve this for disasters,” Muireann smiled and held up two bags of crisps and a bottle of red wine.

  “You keep wine in the event of a disaster?”

  She gave him a playful grin and carried her emergency stash to the shelter of the fortress.

  They tucked into the recessed hearth where the floor was mostly dry, listened to the wail of seabirds and tried to think of something to say. Words rarely eluded him. This was one of those moments.

  “Ty, this isn’t proof,” Muireann insisted quietly.

  “It doesn’t need to be.” He knew it only needed to spark the interest of the community for whatever reason each individual might imagine.

  “But you said—”

  “You have to think of the potential here. Every Conneely and O’Malley in Ireland—maybe the world—will want to preserve this place.” He looked deep into Muireann’s eyes and hoped he was right. “Every person in the west of Ireland with a shred of Irish in his blood will want to tell the story. It will pull in tourists, ignite cultural and archeological interest. It’s better than finding old bones and stone carvings…It’s a seanchaí treasure trove.”