Maeve crossed to Jamie’s side without answering. “Where are the children?” she asked. Jamie indicated the wagon. Maeve crossed to it and called:
“Come out, boys.”
There were gasps when the group climbed from the wagon and moved timidly to the center of the clearing. Their shaven heads made them look like so many undersized convicts. The sheriff surveyed each one grimly.
“All right, Proddy, pick out your youngster and let’s get out of here,” he said shortly.
Jesse Proddy moved with alacrity. “Sure … sure, Sheriff. Line up here, boys—let me have a look at you.” He began peering into the faces of the children. “I cain’t rightly tell which one he is … offhand.”
“You mean you can’t recognize your own child?” Father Kerrigan snapped.
“I ain’t seen him for two years,” Jesse whined. “He’s growed some … and they all look alike without no hair.”
Maeve and Jamie looked at each other with a flickering of hope. “If you can’t tell which is yours it’s a dead certain cinch nobody around here is gonna help you,” Haynes snapped. He was rapidly growing tired of the whole affair.
“Help me, Father,” Jesse pleaded. “You know which ’un he is.”
“Help you take that child back to the kind of nameless existence you gave him before? It would be a mortal sin. You’ll get no help from me, Jesse Proddy,” the priest answered sternly.
“Where are you, son? Speak up, little Number Seven … it’s yore pappy, remember?” Proddy was going plaintively from boy to boy. He passed Kevin by time and again.
Travis Bunn stepped forward, his dark eyes lit with a wild cunning.
“Didn’t you say the boy couldn’t talk?” he said to Proddy. The hope that had been glimmering in Maeve and Jamie’s breasts flickered and died.
“Yeah … that’s right,” said Proddy.
“Then he ought to be easy to find,” continued Bunn. He looked toward Maeve and Jamie, savoring his victory. “Just line them up and ask each one his name. The one that can’t answer—he will be yours.”
“Sure! Now why didn’t I think of that? Line up there, you kids, and tell me your names.” Proddy shuffled them into line.
Some instinct helped Kevin to place himself last. He had listened with sickening terror as the full realization of what was happening came to him in the wagon. Maeve’s eyes sought him out. Her hands were clasped and her lips moved as if in prayer. Beside her Jamie stood clenching and unclenching his great fists. Father Kerrigan’s eyes followed Proddy as he moved from child to child.
“Tell me your name, little feller?” Jesse would say cajolingly. “Dennis? That’s fine. Who’s next?”
Kevin’s eyes went back to Maeve. He wanted to cry out comforting words to her. “We’ll always be together—in your heart and mine,” he would have said if he could. “The man who is taking me away won’t be able to keep me. When I’m grown up I will come to you. I know the roads you travel, and the groves where you pitch your tents. I will find you and Jamie. For you are the mother and father of my choice.…”
Jesse was only two boys away. “Can you tell me yore name, little feller?” he was wheezing.
Kevin wondered if he shouldn’t step forward and end the suspense. Maeve’s eyes were closed and she was praying openly now. He thought of Owen Roe Tavish and the memory of the old man’s promise about the time of petition came back to him. “When the time comes that you need it most—at the most important moment of your life—sure I’ll have it for you.”
I’ll never need it more than I do right now, Kevin thought.
As if in answer, he heard a rumble of wheels and the muffled thunder of galloping hoofs. Against the dark background of the trees, he saw the strange coach Tavish had described to him. The same little man in the green coachman’s coat and hat was on the box; the same four black horses drew the coach; and the same two dogs coursed between the rear wheels. There was only one difference. Now the coach was occupied! Leaning from the window and waving merrily was Owen Roe Tavish.
“Kevin lad, the time is now. Say your prayer … the hour of petition be’s in it. Hurry … speak what’s in your heart.”
The boy felt himself borne upward in a great surge of relief. Owen Roe Tavish had not failed him. He opened his mouth to cry out his thanks, only to discover that Jesse Proddy was already standing before him. “Didn’t you hear me, Number Seven? I said I done recognized you. It’s yore pappy … come to take you home,” his father was saying.
For an instant Kevin thought all was lost. Then he heard a strange voice that seemed to come from somewhere deep inside him, speaking words he did not understand. “Cuevin moc Ruin is ainm dom, agus se seo mo baile,” it said.
Jesse Proddy’s face puckered with surprise and disappointment. He looked as if he were about to cry. Maeve’s eyes had opened, wide and incredulous, as if she had heard sounds beyond the range of human ears. The circle of men and women stood stunned—too awed even to cry: “Miracle.”
The long silence was broken by the sheriff. “The boy talked, but what he said I don’t know.”
Travis Bunn’s mouth hung slackly open, while his eyes darted wildly about. “I be cursed,” he muttered brokenly. “The boy spoke in the ancient tongue. ‘Kevin McRuin is my name, and this is my home.’ he said.” He began to laugh wildly … hysterically. Jamie started toward him but Maeve held him back. “No, Jamie, no. He’s that crazed—poor thing,” she cried.
Travis Bunn’s wild eyes sought and found hers. “Aye, Maeve,” he said slowly, “you may well call me geilt … I, who would have lain on your grave sod to shield you from the rain. Mad I am, for who could be sane and hate as I have hated. I’m going away now—into the ground. I’ll work no more spells. All the curses—Reversed Journeys … Turning the Anvil—they haven’t hurt you or him.… They’ve hurt only me.” His voice twisted and crumbled into a fit of sobbing. Covering his face with his hands, he turned and fled through the trees as he had fled five years before.
The sheriff beckoned to his deputy. “Let’s get out of here.”
They walked quickly toward their rig, tied near the road. “Hey … wait fer me,” Proddy called, trailing mournfully after them.
“I cain’t rightly figger it out,” he complained to the two men. “One of them kids should’ve been Number Seven. And what sort of talk was that last one giving me?”
The sheriff’s deputy spoke for the first time. “You heard what your runaway pal said. The kid was speakin’ Gaelic. Looks to me like you and him had sorta been drinkin’ out of the wrong jug.”
At the camp, in the wave of rejoicing, Kevin was aware only of Maeve and Jamie’s arms around him and their warm tears on his cheeks. Father Kerrigan was stroking his head.
“Break your camp and be out of this county before morning,” he ordered Jamie. “Skip the rituals and don’t come back until I send the word. Proddy is beaten now, but he may be back with his lawyer tomorrow.”
They were packed and on the road within an hour. Kevin slept soundly behind the seat in the softly creaking wagon. Beside her husband, Maeve sat proudly erect. “Sure now, Travis Bunn and I are even,” Jamie mused philosophically. “Had he taken the boy he’d have killed us both by inches.”
“Och, the poor, demented man,” Maeve sighed.
“’Twas a judgment on the creature,” Jamie assured her.
He was still trying to comprehend what had happened. “Do you know, if that shrieking gombeen in the barbershop hadn’t cut off Kevin’s hair, sure Proddy would have recognized the boy and been halfway home with him now?”
“Nonsense,” said Maeve. “’Twas a miracle—straight from Heaven. And miracles are not to be put off. If the boys had not all looked alike, then Jesse Proddy would have been struck blind—temporarily, of course. ’Twas the will of Heaven that Kevin stay with us.”
“Aye,” said Jamie, “there’s no other explanation.”
“Dear Tavish,” said Maeve thoughtfully, “I wonder if he knows?”
“Sure he’ll be standing the Seven Heavens upside down if he doesn’t,” Jamie replied proudly.
Abruptly he drew the horses to a stop. “Maeve darling … queen of my heart, a terrible and wonderful thought has just come to me. ’Twas no miracle that made Kevin speak. ’Tis but the last of my three wishes being granted! I now have a son that speaks in the ancient tongue!”
Maeve’s silvery laugh pealed out into the warm spring night: Hers and Jamie’s life together suddenly seemed to have completed a cycle. He was once more the boy she had loved and married; but more than that, he was now a man, too. Sure now the test of manhood is to be a child with children a man with men, she thought.
Just ahead—or was it behind—and around another bend in the road, another vehicle coursed their path. It was a strange, old-fashioned coach whose wheels left no tracks, and from the tiny buttons on the small, red-faced driver’s coat, came the musical tinkling of little golden bells.
The road ahead unfurled like a ribbon of deep orange, glowing dully in the mystic moonlight like a fairy path across the ridge of the world.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
First published in 1949 by Julian Messner, Inc. under the title The Wishes of Jamie McRuin.
Copyright © 1949, 1980 by Charles O’Neal
ISBN: 978-1-5040-2478-5
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Three Wishes for Jamie Page 22
