The Light-Bearer's Daughter

by O. R. Melling

  “How about a midnight snack?” she suggested.

  They padded down the stairs in their pajamas. It was three o’clock in the morning, the usual time for Dana’s night terrors. Some were worse than others. The really bad ones were always treated with hot cocoa and a bite to eat.

  Their terraced house was small and narrow, with two bedrooms upstairs and a living room, kitchen, and bathroom below. The living room was Gabriel’s work space, cluttered with his instruments, amplifiers, and computer. The sofa and television were crowded into the kitchen along with bookshelves, appliances, table and chairs. When weather allowed, they always ate in the backyard.

  Dana poured milk into a small pot, while her father popped brown bread into the toaster and set out their assortment of jams—homemade marmalade, blueberry, black currant, and plum.

  “It’s been a while since you rode a night mare, eh?” he ventured.

  “Yeah,” she said with a shrug.

  She leaned over the stove to watch the pot. Her hair got in the way and she pushed it back. It was tangled from all her tossing and turning, and her eyes felt puffy. The gas flame flickered blue and orange. The milk began to bubble. She tested the temperature with her finger. The last trails of the dream wormed through her mind, but she thought about the Lady instead and the wish she had promised.

  “Look, Dana,” her father began carefully. She could hear the remorse in his voice. “How about we agree just to try it? Maybe a year or two? If it doesn’t work out … if you’re really miserable … we’ll come back. I swear.”

  Without stopping to think, she asked the question that burned in her mind.

  “If we move to Canada, Gabe, how will she find us?”

  It was like a great soft blow. He almost staggered back. When he spoke at last, he fell over his words.

  “Dana … sweetheart … I thought … We’ve been through all this. You know very well … Your mother’s not coming back.”

  Her features hardened.

  “You don’t know that! Things change. Anything can happen!”

  His dismay was obvious. She was upset herself that they were talking about it. She felt the memory of a stone in the pit of her stomach. Neither of them had spoken of her mother in years. Dana remembered exactly when she stopped asking about her. It was Mother’s Day. She was six years old. For some reason she had got the idea into her head: this is the day missing mothers come home. Without explaining to her father, she had taken a bath, put on her Sunday dress, and brushed her hair. Was Gabe uneasy that day? Did he suspect? All she could remember was sitting on the front step, hour after hour, looking hopefully up and down the street. There were no tears when the day ended, but a stone had dropped inside her, cold and heavy. Whenever Gabriel mentioned her mother, Dana would turn her head away. Eventually he stopped raising the subject altogether. As far as Dana was concerned, her mother didn’t exist.

  The meeting with the Lady in the woods had changed all that. No sooner was the wish proffered than hope surged through Dana and shattered the stone. I’ll find her at last!

  Gabriel was floundering. Even as he measured out his words, she recognized the tone: the one he used in the days when she still begged him to search for her mother. She must be lost, Da! Like the time on the beach when I couldn’t find you! We’ve got to go look for her!

  It was not his way to avoid the issue. He always told her the truth. What else could he do?

  “You know the story, kiddo. But I’ll keep telling it to you as long as you need to hear it. It all happened a long time ago, before you were born. Your mother and I were madly in love, but we were very young. Kids really, both in our teens. Way too young to marry. We rented an old cottage in the Glen of the Downs. You were born a year later. We were poor but happy. Your mother grew vegetables, made her own bread and just about everything else we ate. Okay, we were hippies. I played in pubs, took on a few students, even busked in the streets. We got by, and it was a good life, believe me. And you were a great baby, always laughing.”

  His face shone as he remembered.

  Then his features tightened.

  “It was like a bolt out of the blue. That’s the only way I can describe it. I left a happy home that morning and when I came back for lunch, everything had changed. Changed utterly.”

  Dana put her hand on her father’s shoulder. He didn’t cry. Like her, all his tears had been shed years ago, but his body was clenched as if in pain.

  “I found you in the house alone, crying your heart out. She was gone. Without warning or explanation. Not even a note. The police thought maybe an accident, maybe something worse. They searched the glen, the mountains, the bogs, the lakes and rivers, but no sign of her. In the end, they called her a runaway and closed the case.”

  Gabriel gazed out the kitchen window. Dawn was creeping through the sky to light up the backyard. The wild roses trailing over the shed blushed red in the dimness.

  “And that’s when we moved here,” Dana murmured, ending the story the way she used to when she was little, “to Wolfe Tone Square in the town of Bray where we lived happily ever after, just you and me.”

  Yet something in her voice implied that the ending was no longer satisfactory.

  “Why can’t I remember her, Gabe? I try to picture her in my head and I can’t.”

  “You were only three. But you’ve seen the photos.”

  Dana’s mouth twisted wryly. How intently she had once studied those few fuzzy pictures taken with a disposable camera! Always searching for clues and memories. There was one of the wedding at the Registrar’s Office. Her mother wore a dress of green lace with a string of pearls, and a sprig of honeysuckle in her hair. There were several of the celebration back at the cottage, all their friends laughing and drinking, mostly young musicians and artists. Dana’s favorite had always been the one of herself as a baby in her mother’s arms. Yet no matter how hard and how long she had stared at those images, the pretty young woman with the strawberry-blond hair remained a stranger to her.

  “I mean a picture in my head. Of her looking at me. I can do it with you, even from way back. I shut my eyes and there you are, smiling at me.”

  Dana closed her eyes. Her face lit up, reflecting her father’s love for her. But when she opened her eyes again, they glinted darkly.

  “When I try to do that for Mum, nothing comes. Nothing’s there. Gabe, did she hate me? Is that why she left?”

  For the second time that night, he was speechless. A deep shudder passed through him. He reached out to grip her arms, his voice shaking and urgent.

  “Jesus, Dana, how can you think that? We went over this again and again when you were little. All kids blame themselves if their parents leave or split up or even die! You’ve got to believe me. It wasn’t your fault! It had nothing to do with you! How could it? You were an innocent baby! A three-year-old! Maybe I was fooling myself and I was doing it all wrong, but the way I remember it, the three of us were happy. Really happy. I can tell you this for certain—she loved me and she loved you.”

  “Then why did she go?”

  Dana’s demand was almost a wail. They had arrived at the point inevitably reached whenever they went this way: a dark place of defeat and unknowing. A dead end.

  Gabriel sighed and shook his head.

  “Like I said, we were very young. Just kids. Maybe it was too much for her. The truth is, honey, I can’t answer that question and I’ve given up trying. I don’t know why she left. I guess we’ll never know.”

  he giant roared like a wounded beast in the night, maddened beyond all sense. The mountain closed around him like a tomb. The weight of stone bore him down. Tripling in force, the spell worked its magic with more songs and more words to tighten his bonds.

  Seothó, a thoil, ná goil go fóill,

  Seothó, a thoil, ná goil aon deoir,

  Seothó, a linbh, a chumainn’s a stóir.

  Hush, dear heart, no need to cry,

  Hush, dear heart, no need for tears,

&n
bsp; Hush, my child, my love and treasure.

  Now an image flickered in the darkness of his mind. A great bonfire burning on a distant hill. He strove to draw nearer, to see more clearly. The night sky was dusky with the warm breath of midsummer. Was it he who stood in the flickering shadows, surrounded by creatures of every kind? Not only animals but elemental beings of the woods and the waters, shimmering like the stars above. He was laughing with the others, yet he did not join the circle that danced around the flames. His eyes were constantly watching the sky.

  Then he raised his arms, for he knew the time had come, and he let out a cry that flew like thought.

  Let her come to me now, she for whom I have waited so long!

  ana was beginning to panic. More than a week had passed since the meeting in the woods. The Lady had told her to wait for a sign, but time was running out. The airplane tickets were booked. In less than a month, she would be leaving for Canada.

  There were moments when Dana wondered if it had really happened, if such a thing were possible. The leaf she was given in the cave had already dried and crumbled to dust. Was it just make-believe? Her own wishful daydream? And what if it wasn’t? A trace of fear always mingled with her hope. She knew these matters were beyond the ordinary. She recognized their nature from the stories she had grown up with; all those tales of a half-glimpsed world beyond the veil of the visible. A world that was both beautiful and perilous. Didn’t the Lady herself speak of danger?

  Dana knew she would go regardless. Having caught hold of a long-lost dream, she wasn’t about to give it up. She had begun to think of her mother again. Early memories were trickling in. That time she found the box of clothes in her father’s wardrobe. Was she four or five? The dresses and skirts were mostly light cottons with flowered patterns. Crushing the fabric against her face, she had inhaled the lingering scent of apples, as she sobbed her heart out. Then there were the times she had lain in bed at night, listening to the sound of a sweet voice in her head. Hush, dear heart, no need to cry. Hush, dear heart, no need for tears. Her pillow was always damp when she woke in the morning.

  And there was something else. Behind the snippets of memory, Dana sensed the shadow of some terrible moment; an event both monstrous and hidden. Too amorphous to recall, it only left her baffled.

  She wished she had someone to talk to, but her best friend was in Spain on holiday and her soccer gang were useless. They would only make fun of her. No one believed in magic at their age. Gabriel did, of course, or so he always said, but he was the last person she could turn to. Hey, Da, I’ve got to go off into the mountains on a dangerous quest!

  Things were already tense at home. Since her father held a Canadian passport, he had to prove his right to take Dana from her birthplace. Officially the mother’s consent was required. Notices had to be posted in newspapers and public places to allow her the chance to come forward to claim her child. It was harrowing for him. Though he didn’t involve Dana, she knew what was happening and she could see the haunted look in his eyes. Under normal circumstances, she would have been tormenting him about the move, but she wasn’t able to. He looked too miserable.

  It was Sunday when she found him sitting alone in the kitchen staring at the wall. His eyes were red and she knew he had been crying.

  “Let’s go out for dinner,” she suggested. “Take my pocket money for the month. We should celebrate your new job!”

  She had to turn away quickly. It was obvious he was about to cry again.

  The Hanuman House was their favorite place in Bray, not only because it served delicious food, but because they knew its owners, Aradhana and Suresh, who had arrived from India only a year before. Two flights of stairs led upward to an airy dining room overlooking the stone bridge that crossed the River Dargle. The walls and even the ceiling of the restaurant were painted with scenes from the Hindu epic the Ramayana. Dana loved looking at the pictures that told the story of the hero, Rama, who saved his beautiful wife, Sita, from the evil demon, Ravanna. In the evening, when candles were lit at the tables, the murals seemed to come alive. The flickering light made the figures breathe and move, while the music of tambours and sitars swept softly through the room.

  Aradhana was on duty that night, not her plump and jocular older brother. Slender and graceful, with great dark eyes, she mirrored the mythical beauty of Sita. The silk of her red sari, threaded with gold, rustled as she walked. Her long dark braid was plaited with jasmine. This was how she dressed for work. When they met her on the streets or in the shops, she was usually in jeans and a T-shirt, with her hair in a ponytail.

  Dana and her father were also dressed up. Gabriel wore beige linen trousers and a faded blue shirt. Both his head and his silver earring gleamed in the candlelight. Dana sported her best clothes, bought for her Confirmation: a denim skirt that fell to her ankles, a yellow blouse with embroidered sleeves, and high-heeled sandals. She caught the critical look of a girl her own age who sat at another table, and shrugged it off. Fashion was not something she understood or cared about.

  “How is my Irish Barbie this evening?” Aradhana asked as she brought them to their seats.

  Dana would have hated to be called this by anyone else, especially since she had never owned a doll, but it somehow seemed less objectionable coming from Aradhana. And Dana wasn’t the only one the young woman charmed. Gabriel always acted oddly around her. When Dana once teased him about being too cowardly to ask for a date, he had answered seriously, “My girlfriends don’t last. You know that. Radhi’s special. I wouldn’t want to wreck our friendship.”

  Now Dana watched wryly as her father puzzled over the menu to keep Aradhana beside him. Enquiring after various dishes, he requested her opinion on this one and that, knowing full well what he meant to order. He and Dana always ate the same meal: white basmati rice with vegetables cooked in a balti sauce, peshwari bread stuffed with nuts and raisins, and two frothing glasses of mango lassi.

  While Gabriel dragged out the process as long as he could, Dana left the table and wandered over to gaze at the murals. There was Rama with his great bow, shooting arrows that never missed their target. His skin was sky-blue, a sign of his otherworldly nature as he was the son of a god. At his side stood Sita, the daughter of a king, who fell in love with Rama the moment she saw him. It was when the couple were exiled in the forest that the ten-headed Ravanna, half demon, half human, abducted Sita. In his fiery chariot, he carried her away to the island kingdom of Lanka. Only after many adventures and the help of the monkey-god Hanuman did Rama defeat the demon and rescue his wife.

  As Dana gazed at her favorite scene, the reunion of Rama and Sita, an old woman hobbled up beside her. Leaning on a blackthorn stick, she wore a long crimson skirt and a black shawl with a green fringe. Wisps of smoky gray hair framed a narrow face that was wrinkled and whiskery. Her eyes were like two black beads.

  “Is breá an tráthnóna é,” she said to Dana. “A fine evening indeed.”

  “’Sea,” agreed Dana politely. Educated in a Gaelscoil, she was fluent in Irish. “Conas atá tú, a mháthair?”

  The old lady didn’t answer the question but clutched Dana’s hands.

  “You must come, my child! You must come to the mountains! I will meet you there.”

  Then she scurried away with surprising speed out of the restaurant.

  Flushed with excitement, Dana returned to her table. The sign she had been waiting for!

  “Gabe, I need you to take me hiking in the mountains.”

  “Since I’ve nothing else to do.”

  She knew that face. It wasn’t open to negotiation. But by the time Aradhana brought their dinner, Dana had a plan.

  “When’s your next day off?” she asked the young woman.

  “Dana—” Gabriel started, but she was too quick for him.

  “Didn’t you say you’ve never been to Powerscourt?”

  Aradhana nodded. “There are many places I would like to visit, but first must come the business. No time for holi
days just yet.”

  “But you get a day off,” Dana pointed out, and she turned to her father. “Let’s take her on a picnic, Gabe! To the waterfall. Give you a break from the packing. A little farewell party.”

  “Packing? Farewell?” Aradhana’s voice quavered. She avoided looking at Gabriel. “Are you going away, my Irish Barbie?”

  “Not that I want to,” Dana said, appreciating the unexpected support. “He’s dragging me off to Canada!”

  Aradhana’s face brightened.

  “Ah, Canada. It is a wonderful place. Many Indian people live there. I have cousins in Toronto.”

  “That’s where we’re going!” Gabriel said, surprised and delighted.

  Dana frowned. The two were staring at each other as if they had been rescued.

  “Are you emigrating so?” Aradhana asked softly.

  Gabriel shook his head. “I’m going home. My parents are Irish, but I was born in Canada and grew up there.”

  “You are like me, then. In two places also.”

  Dana heard the wistfulness in her voice. It was the same tone Aradhana had used when she spoke of the Indian community in Canada. There wasn’t much of one in Ireland. Was she lonely? Was she homesick? Who else did she have besides her brother and the few men on staff, all older and married? Dana felt a pang of guilt for using the young woman as bait to get into the mountains. But the plan had succeeded. Gabriel was already enthusing about the picnic. As soon as Aradhana named her day off, the date was confirmed.

  It was later, when they were eating their dessert of deep-fried bananas drizzled with cream, that Dana spotted the young couple waiting near the takeaway counter. At first glance they looked like any teenaged pair, entangled in each other’s arms. The girl was dressed in the briefest of skirts with a skimpy pink top. Her blond hair was piled on top of her head. She kept laughing as her boyfriend nuzzled her ear. He was tall and lanky, in tight jeans and a black T-shirt. The leaf-brimmed hat was nowhere to be seen, and his red-gold hair fell over his shoulders.