“You’re fierce fast,” he answered. “And I think I stepped in the stream back there.”
“Ah, yer a fine, fine singer, Colin Doyle, but a poor tramper.” She laughed again and patted the rock next to her. “Come and sit. The sun’s nice.”
He sat beside her and she leaned into him. The sun dappled the ground, and the stone was surprisingly warm. He was nearly sweating after the climb, despite the chill of the day. He put his arm around Maeve’s shoulder, enjoying the feel of her against his side. It felt right; it felt natural. “Where are we?” he asked. She raised an eyebrow. “I mean, where’s this place? It feels old, somehow. I thought I’d explored most of the Head, but I’ve never seen this before.”
“Yeh don’t know how to look for it,” she answered. “I do. But it’s interesting what yeh say, that this place feels old. I like that.” She moved away from him so that his arm dropped, leaving his side cold. She shaded her eyes from the sun. “It’s been two days. So have yeh been thinking about yer visit to Inishcorr?” she asked.
“I have, and it seems everyone else has as well,” he told her. “The entire damn town has been giving me their opinion.”
One shoulder lifted under the sweater, then fell. “I care nah about the town’s opinion. Only yers.”
“Maeve, I still don’t know where we stand. I’ve enjoyed being with you, I’ve loved the time we spent together, and yeah, maybe there could be more between us if things keep going. Being with you was wonderful, and I’d like it if things kept going between us. But right now, I don’t think I really know you well enough to give you more of an answer than that. I want to know you better. I feel like we could share more. I guess . . .” He hesitated, feeling guilty over what he’d actually been thinking the last few days. His hand reached into the pocket for his grandfather’s stone, as if the answer might be there; her gaze followed. “I guess I’m willing to stick around to find out what’s possible with us. Is that good enough?”
“Are yeh willing to stick around?” she asked. “Even if it means yeh have to deal with the crap the locals are going to give yeh?”
She was staring at him, and he had to look away, remembering how he tried to convince himself to do exactly the opposite, with nearly the same words. “I thought about leaving,” he admitted. “But I haven’t.”
“Not yet yeh haven’t.” She said it flatly, so that he couldn’t tell what she meant by the comment.
“What about your people?” The rejoinder was reflex. “Some of them seemed less than thrilled about me.”
“Like Niall?” She leaned closer to him again, her arm sliding between his arm and side. She laid her head on his shoulder. “Niall doesn’t hate you specifically. He would hate anyone I chose to be with. An’ he’s just one person. The other night—well, yeh saw how m’people responded to yeh in the pub. I remember hearing lots of applause, and seeing everyone watching yeh, all mesmerized. Yer quite the bard, Colin, and Niall . . . he’s jealous of yeh more than anything.”
“Of me?”
“It’s more complicated than yer thinkin’,” she told him, and shook her head. “’T’ain’t just the relationship. He’s afraid I’ve made a wrong choice with yeh, but I know I haven’t. Yeh see, sometimes two people care about the same thing deeply, and yet differ completely on what needs to be done about it.”
“And what is it the two of you care about?”
“Inishcorr,” she said, “or rather, not the island but the people there: Niall for his people and me for mine. We’re the Last.” Her voice capitalized the noun.
“The last of what?”
She didn’t answer. Instead, she lifted her head to his and gave him a long and lingering kiss. When it ended, she stood. From a leather pouch tied to the belt she wore over her skirt, she took a small metal flask. She unscrewed the top, then poured a small amount on the mound behind the rocks. “For the fairy folk,” she said. She took a small sip from the flask herself. He watched her face. There might have been a small grimace, but she licked her lips afterward and extended the flask to him. “Here, have a drink.”
He took the flask and sniffed at it, then drew back, his eyes widening. “Wow,” he said. “That’s got a kick. Potcheen?” She nodded. He put the lip of the flask to his mouth and tilted it, listening to the gurgle of liquid inside. The swig was larger than intended, and he swallowed fire that burned all the way down to his stomach, making him gasp for air. “That’s smooth,” he said in a strangled voice. He drew in another breath. “Just a little stronger than I expected.”
Maeve laughed at that, and the sound seemed to linger in the air, reverberating like the strike of a gong. He thought he could almost see her amusement, like a winding line of fireflies emerging from her mouth, except that he’d never seen fireflies in Ireland, and certainly never ones bright enough to be seen in the daylight. The light about them had changed as well; the sunlight was the rich gold of late afternoon, and the grass under his feet was a saturated emerald that throbbed and ached in his vision. “Maeve?” he called out, trying to find her in the dazzling vision. His voice sounded too low, and he saw his voice as well, an umber wave that rippled out from him, foaming white at the edges like a great sea wave. “Maeve?”
He couldn’t see her, though he swept his gaze around the glade, but heard her call back to him. “Don’t worry,” her voice said. “Just let it happen.”
“Let what happen?” he asked. The umber swell crashed and broke around her.
Dark laughter answered him, coming from unseen dozens of throats all about him. The light dimmed, as if storm clouds had hidden the sun. He looked up, but everything was confused and fuzzy, and he felt as if he were falling. His arms flailed, and hands grasped at him while low voices murmured words he couldn’t understand. He could feel his body being pulled, dragged along the ground by his feet as the world went abruptly dark around him. He tried to kick at those pulling him, but his legs refused to work. Stones and dirt scoured his back, and his head bumped against something hard and solid, like he’d been taken down a series of steps. Yellow lights flickered across his vision and more voices filled the darkness, deep and laughing. They spoke in Gaelic, not English, so fast that he could understand none of the words. A face—the face of an old hag—looked down at him, and he felt her hands sliding across his face, the dry, scaled skin of her hands like fine sandpaper. “He was born with a blue caul,” the old woman said to someone. “An’ the voice is the one that’s needed. ’Tis good, that.”
Voices answered her, and he squinted, trying to see them. “So what?” a male voice shouted back. “That doesn’t mean shite. Not with him. His grandfather was much the same, and that di’nah work.”
“Niall?” Colin called out. He tried to focus on the shapes in front of him and failed. Behind them, he glimpsed a huge room lit fitfully by guttering, smoking torches, the spots of light receding well into the distance. The walls were rough stone, though with gleaming and polished half-pillars carved into them at a separation of several strides. The ceiling was lost in darkness above. The room could have easily held thousands of people, but Colin could only see a few dozen gathered here, moving in the twilight darkness, though perhaps more were lurking in the shadows further out in the hall. “Maeve, where are you?” Colin called, but there was no immediate answer except for a susurrus of laughter from those around him, as if he’d said something amusing.
“You dare call for Her in that manner?” the hag said. “That’s not her name. That’s a new name, and t’ain’t hers. T’ain’t her true name.” She stood at his feet as he struggled to sit up. She spat on the tiles between them. But a shadow moved behind the hag, and she glanced over her shoulder. The hag bowed to someone in the shadows and slid away. There was a fluttering of wings, and he thought he saw a huge raven descend from the air into the misty shadows of the hall, but even as Colin pushed at his glasses to see more clearly, from the mist a human figure emerged: tall
, spectral, its face hidden by the hood of a cloak that might have been red, but appeared black in the dimness. Behind the figure, a white-horned bull stamped its feet in shadow, snorting and angry.
“So yeh can hear us, mortal?” he was asked. It was a woman’s voice, and he thought at first it might be Maeve’s except that this voice sounded older and deeper, as if time and a hard life had roughened and scrubbed away any lightness it had once held.
“Of course I can. I’m not deaf.” More of the sinister laughter billowed from the shadows in response.
“Do yeh know who I am?” The figure swept back her hood, and he was looking at Maeve-but-not-Maeve. This face was much older and more careworn, and other visages seemed to cross her face like clouds chased by winds.
“The Morrígan,” he said. The name came to him; he spoke it without thinking, without knowing why.
She seemed to taste the sound of that, as if she’d taken a sip of whiskey and was rolling the liquid around her tongue. The bull behind her stamped its feet, its hooves drawing sparks from the stone tiles. “Aye,” she said finally. “The Morrígan, Morrígu, Mór-ríoghain . . . Some say that I’m actually three people: Badb, Macha, and Anand. I’m sometimes seen as a young woman, as an old hag, as a crow. Many names, and many forms. I was loved.” She smiled at him, but there was no affection in that gesture. “And feared. Once.”
“But not now?” Colin asked. His mouth was dry; the words tasted like ash and dust on his tongue.
“Now?” she repeated. “Now there are so few of us left, and ’tis my fault. I convinced them to stay when the others left.” She waved an arm at the hall behind her, and where her hand pointed, a beam of cloudy light swept across the creatures there. He saw them and knew them somehow as they drifted in and out of the light: Selkies, the seal-changelings. Pucá, the goblins. Failinis, the war-hound. The fear-forta, the emaciated “man of hunger.” Abcan, the dwarf poet. The merrow, human above the waist and fish below. The sluagh, the spirits of the evil dead. The neamh-mairbh, the “walking dead.”
And dozens more. The gods and demigods: Danu, Dagda, Cromm Cruaich, Brigit, Boann, Aengus, Lugh, Epona, more . . . Their names came to him as the Morrígan’s light swept over them. They were others as well, but nearly all of them seemed to be slumbering in niches in the hall.
They were with him here, all the creatures of myth and legend and tales. He glimpsed them in the sweep of light from the Morrígan, and they were gone as quickly. “We are the Last,” the Morrígan said. “We are the remnants, and we are dying.”
“Dying? Why?”
The Morrígan didn’t answer. She closed her hand and the light died, leaving purple-and-green ghosts chasing themselves across Colin’s eyes. Her hand reached out, and though he drew back, she was quicker. Her skin felt cold and dry; the caress of a dead lover. “Yeh might open the door again for us,” she said.
He shook his head. “I don’t understand. What door?”
“Yeh have the cloch,” she told him. “The cloch that Rory took. Yeh have it, and now yer the one who must use it.”
Involuntarily, his hand went to his jean pocket, and he felt the lump of his grandfather’s stone there. The touch of it was icy, and it seemed to throb. The Morrígan’s gaze was on his hand, and she nodded.
She was turning from him even as he guiltily took his hand away from the stone, and all was fading with the sound of soft earth falling like rain. The creatures had all left. Only the Morrígan was still there, her cloaked back to him as she, too, started to leave. She stopped, her hand lifted again, and she spoke without turning. “Yeh have to believe me, Colin. Yeh have to believe in me, and yeh have to give me what yeh have freely.” The Morrígan’s voice was fading like the cavern. “Do yeh believe?” she asked, but her voice trailed off into the soughing of the wind and the rustling of leaves.
The wind had picked up; the tops of the trees around the glade in which they were sitting were swaying as if in time to some unheard music. Colin rubbed at his eyes; the flask from which he’d drunk the potcheen was lying on the grass beside him, and Maeve was sitting next to him, her quiet gaze on him. His eyes burned; his head was pounding as he rubbed his temples. The dream was already fading, more distant and unreal with every passing second. He couldn’t seem to hold onto the images; already he was forgetting what he’d glimpsed. “Damn, what did you give me?” he asked. “One little drink put me out. That’s never happened before.”
“I thought Yanks could hold their liquor better,” Maeve answered gently. “Good thing there was nobody here who wanted to take advantage of yeh.” He couldn’t read her expression, whether that was a smile that touched her lips and crinkled the lines at the corner of her grass-green eyes, or something else entirely.
“I’ve been drunk, I’ll admit, but I’ve never passed out before, and certainly not from one little swig. What was in there?”
A shrug. “A dream,” she said.
“Well, it worked. I had the weirdest dream ever. Sorry, I didn’t mean to fall asleep on you . . .” He blinked; his eyelids felt terribly heavy, and his pulse throbbed in his head.
“So what was weird about yer dream?”
Colin shook his head and sat up; the movement caused his head to pound more, and he groaned. Maeve leaned over and rubbed his temples; he closed his eyes at the touch and let it drain away the pulsing of the headache. “Thanks. That feels good . . .” Colin tried to remember the dream: the Hall, the Morrígan, the others . . . “I don’t know. It must be this place—I think I was under the fairy mound, and I was talking to the Morrígan. At least I think I was.” He opened his eyes and stared hard at Maeve. “She looked like you.”
“Did she now?”
“Yeah. And there was something about a caul,” Colin added. “Some old woman in the dream said I was born with one. I’ve heard about cauls—something to do with the amniotic sac?”
“A caul is real enough,” Maeve told him, still massaging his temples. “Sometimes a babe is born with what looks like extra flesh draped over his or her face and body—and aye, it’s actually part of the amniotic sac. A long time ago, being born with a caul was supposed to signify that the child had the gift of being able to access the Otherworld. Those born with one were thought to be especially blessed by the old gods. Not all that long ago, here in Ireland, yer caul might have been preserved as a charm, though in the States, they’d just dispose of it. Ask yer mother or someone who witnessed yer birth; she might know if yeh had a caul.” She lifted her hands away from his head. “There; does that feel better now?”
Colin titled his head from side to side, listening to his neck cracking at the motion. The headache had receded to a distant tidal pulse. “Yeah. Much better.” He found her hands and clasped them in his. “I don’t know why I’d have someone talking about a caul in a dream considering I haven’t thought about the term in forever. I must have dredged it out of my subconscious.”
Maeve tilted her head. “That’s one possibility.”
He closed his eyes again. Opened them. He was beginning to feel somewhat normal, though he vowed never to take another shot of that potcheen if Maeve offered him one. “Listen, we haven’t talked much about . . .” He lifted a shoulder. “. . . us,” he finished. “I’ve been thinking about that a lot, though. Lucas kicked me out of his group because of it, I think.”
“Did he now? I’m sorry, Colin. I know how much yeh enjoy playing music; I know that’s the reason yeh came here. But I’m not particularly surprised.” Her hands squeezed his. “Out on Inishcorr, yeh could play all yeh want. They’d be happy to have yeh there, and Keara and the others know most of the old songs—more of ’em than Lucas. Our memories are long out there, and deep. There are plenty of houses there for yeh to take and fix up, if yeh want.” She paused. Began again. “Or yeh could stay with me, if yeh’d like.”
He pulled his hands away from hers; she seemed to let go only reluctantly. “
I appreciate that. I do. It’s just . . . It feels like you’re saying I have to make a choice between Ballemór or Inishcorr, that if I’m with you, I can’t be here, too.”
She held his gaze, unblinking. “Yeh know what they’re like here. Do yeh think that’s a wrong assessment?”
“Maybe not,” he admitted. “But I don’t have to like it. I don’t like being told there’s only one way, and that’s the way I have to do things. I like being with you, Maeve. You know that, right? But . . . I don’t know . . .” He exhaled, hard, and with the next breath, the world seemed to snap back into focus around him again. The glade was just another glade on the Head, no longer imbued with strange, saturated colors. The stones around the mound were just stones, and the mound itself just a frost-upheaval in the sod. “Look, give me another few days. Let me talk to Lucas again, and think about what’s best for me right now. Is that fair?”
Maeve rose to her feet, her skirt swaying. She brushed her hair back from her face as she looked down at him. “It’s fair; in fact, I’ll give yeh over the weekend. I’ll have the Grainne Ni Mhaille moored on Beach Road next Monday morn when we come over for supplies. We’ll stay there until noon. If yeh want to come back to Inishcorr with me, then be there. An’ if yer not, then I’ll just wish yeh well.” She turned and started walking back down the trail, not waiting for him as he rose, brushing dirt from his jeans. She turned back to him. “I thought yeh might be the one for me from that first night I saw yeh,” she told him. “Yeh have to believe me. Yeh have to believe in me. Do yeh?”
The Crow of Connemara Page 22
