"S-so you're guh going back to Galway then?" I slipped down into the hollow next to Ciarán. I'd seen a lot of him over the last few weeks. We'd spent time together as friends. He seemed to welcome the company, but got edgy if I moved too close. He still didn’t trust himself. I was trying to be patient.
"Aye, it's time I reckon." He kept his gaze focused on the horizon.
"I'll miss y-you." I kept my voice steady.
"You know why I have to go?" He hung his head, staring at the heather.
I nodded. I did know. Hitting me, even though it hadn't really been him, had left deep scars on his mind. He'd always thought he wasn't like his dad. I still maintained that he wasn’t but he kept saying that there must be some of that darkness in him for Clayton to work on or he wouldn't have become possessed. He wouldn't have been weak enough to succumb to Clayton and the Pattern. I wasn't so sure. I thought so many people were pulled in this last time, all with their own hates and envies and desires feeding it, that no one could have resisted it. That if Ciarán had been less strong, he wouldn't have been able to resist it enough to stop himself hurting me worse. Long enough for me to release Clayton. None of that made a difference to him when I said it. I thought this might be a Pattern that he had to break on his own.
And I didn't want to spend our last day together having the same old argument. The last six weeks had been weird but good. We had more in common that just initial attraction.
Of course I wanted to lose him even less now.
"I see them now, you know," Ciarán said. "Not like you can but glimpses here and there."
I smiled. I had seen them too. We had already had one tourist in the post office talking about the man and woman in old fashioned clothes he'd seen standing on a ledge on the moor. Hardiman and Kate might become quite the tourist attraction. Though I was at a loss as to how a show like ‘Most Haunted’ was going to document the entire moor.
Arncliffe felt different though. A shadow had been lifted.
"I br-brought you something." I held out the package.
"Your Mam's copy of Wuthering Heights? I can't take this!" He said, wrapping the paper back around it.
"Call it a l-loan then. So y-you'll have to come back." I gave him a crooked smile.
He nodded, seeing through the present to the message. I had always liked the fact that I never had to explain myself to Ciarán.
I never found out what clue Mum was leaving me. I'd well and truly missed that. But when I went back to my attic after I knew Amy was out of danger, the book was lying open on my desk. Maybe because I knew Haze and Kate so well by then the passage leapt out at me, clear and sharp as diamond.
‘My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath…..He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.’
A love that was terrifying in its depth but all the more enticing because of that. I thought I understood. Love could be just a destructive as hate if it became poisoned or twisted. There was just a faint, lingering scent of rosemary and violets. Mum wasn't there anymore. She'd moved on. I'd felt sad but it was a clean sadness. No poison in the wounds this time. I wouldn't stop missing her, but I didn't have to be wary about loving her either.
We sat in silence, Ciarán and me, thinking our own thoughts. His hand crept around mine without either of us saying a word. Perhaps Kate was right and some people were meant to be together in life or death. A small secret part of me hoped so.
"I'm going to miss you too, Em," Ciarán said at last, his eyes very bright. "Sure you don't want to read this?" There was a hint of his old teasing tone in his voice as he waved the book at me.
"Email m-me the high-lights." I shoved him playfully, and then met his eyes.
I didn’t know which of us moved first but suddenly I was pressed against him with his arms wound around me, pulling me in closer, tighter. As if we could melt together and never be parted. His lips were warm, soft at first and then more urgent. We hadn’t kissed since that terrible night. Now I felt as if we might dissolve the bedrock beneath us. As if I might fly up in flames. My heart thundered again toward that distant finish line. Veins of fire ran over my skin where his hands touched me. He tasted of sweet heather and sunlight. And sorrow, because this was goodbye. I knew that. His sadness tugged at me but I would not give in.
I threw my soul into that kiss, smothering the future with the perfect now. Tomorrow didn’t matter. Living with everything you’ve got in the moment did. And the moment was full of Ciarán. His strong hands, his warm mouth, his hard chest beneath my hands.
Beneath us, I felt the faint, charged hum of the earth. Part of an even greater Pattern, just as we were. But that didn’t matter right now. I would hold on to this, hold on to him in this one moment. It would be enough.
"Be seeing you." He whispered much later.
I nodded, not trusting my voice with the lump in my throat.
He would be back. After sorting things out with his mum. After he'd healed a bit. We'd stay in touch. And one day he'd come back. I would catch up at school. Play the piano and violin. Maybe even apply to university or go to speech therapy. I could wait. However twisted Hardiman was, his love for Kate, and hers for him, was real. If they could wait for over two hundred years, I could wait a few months.
The hollow cooled after Ciarán left but I sat there for a while, cradled by the heath. The evening sun warmed my face. There was a world of possibility out there and I wasn't excluded from it anymore. For now I'd enjoy the moment. I’d savour the memory of that kiss. And I would live with everything I had in me, because I belonged to the earth too.
I Belong to the Earth (Unveiled Book 1) Page 63
