They moved closer to the bed while Eve lit the candles. Only later did Nora recall that she hadn’t seen any matches in Eve’s hands. Eve reached into her bag again, this time retrieving a collection of stones and crystals. Several of these, she laid on the bed.
“Nora, drink this.” She held out the glass of murky green liquid.
“What is it?” Nora asked.
“Something to open you.”
“Wait,” Quinn said. “Before you do that. Eve, what’s this about? What’s going to happen?”
Eve turned to him. “We’re going to guide Nora, her consciousness, to a place where she should be able to communicate with Móirín and maybe Rowan as well. If this goes to plan, she may be able to learn what happened to Rowan and why they’re both still bound to this world.”
“But how does that work, exactly?” Briana asked with an anxious glance in Nora’s direction.
“This tea will relax Nora’s mind,” Eve said, offering the glass to Nora again. “It will release her inhibitions and guards, so that she can be more open.”
Nora withdrew her hand. “What if I don’t want my inhibitions and guards released?”
“Worried?” Sheila grinned. “We promise not to spread your secrets.”
“Gee, thanks,” Nora said.
“We’ll be here,” Eve insisted, “gathered round, to ground you to this plane and pull you back if needed.”
“Pull me back?”
Eve’s sharp eyes focused on her. “You’ll be moving through a realm a corporeal being doesn’t normally inhabit. There are… things that might try to drag you deeper in. You’ll need to be able to find your way back.” She offered the glass again.
Nora took it and drank. She made a face. “It tastes like grass.”
Eve smiled unsympathetically. “Lie down.”
Nora stretched out in the middle of the bed, trying to settle comfortably atop the stones. She felt very silly as she looked up into the others’ worried faces. Eve placed more stones and crystals on her chest and stomach. She handed one last white crystal to Nora.
“Take this. Keep hold of it, no matter what.”
Nora clutched the crystal to her chest.
“Now close your eyes and let your mind go.”
Nora was certain that letting her mind go was the last thing she would be able to do. She closed her eyes, though, as Eve daubed some kind of aromatic ointment on Nora’s forehead, eyelids, mouth, and hands. She softly intoned something in Irish. The stones and crystals began to feel warm; the scent from the ointment was pleasantly musky. The crystal in Nora’s hand felt as if it was pulsing with energy. She tried to open her eyes, to roll them at Briana, but she found them to be too heavy. Her lids were weighed down, and it seemed her whole body was sinking into the softness of the mattress. The last thing she remembered was Eve’s hand on her forehead.
The air was bitterly cold. All the colors seemed slightly off, as if Nora were looking through strangely tinted sunglasses. She was in the bedroom, looking down at herself lying on the bed. Briana had placed a hand on her knee, while Sheila and Quinn sat on the other side, looking on anxiously.
Across the room, standing near the doorway where Shannon lay, was Móirín. She beckoned, moving into the hall. Shannon whined and scrambled out of the way. Nora followed, kind of gliding along, as if her feet weren’t actually touching the floor.
Down the stairs they went, to the parlor. Móirín was clearer than she had been in Nora’s dreams—her black hair gleamed, her eyes were a clear gray, her dress a deep blue. Even through the other distorted colors, these were sharp.
“Rowan,” she called out the door. “Time for tea.”
Her voice was soft, melodious—not torn with grief and worry as it had been in the dreams. She moved into the kitchen where Nora saw a fire burning in the stone hearth where her stove now sat. Other figures, more shadow-like, moved about—a tall man and other children. Here, there was laughter and love.
A flash of yellow caught Nora’s eye. She turned and saw movement through the front door. She glanced back, but Móirín hadn’t seen it. She was busy stirring a pot on the fire.
Nora hurried outside and caught a glimpse of a girl, a scarlet ribbon tying the black hair that hung down the back of her yellow dress. Here, though, the other colors around them had shifted, as if Nora had put on a different pair of glasses. Inside, Móirín and the other shadows still moved about and talked. Nora tried to call out, but her voice didn’t carry here. She trailed after the girl, following the sound of her laughter.
The girl ran through the forest, pausing here and there to pluck wildflowers, gathering them into a bouquet. It seemed to Nora that there were faint lights in the shadows of the forest, as if a prism were scattering a beam of sunlight. The red ribbon in the girl’s hair caught the light as she moved into a clearing with a circle of squat stones.
From behind them, Nora heard, “Rowan!”
The girl giggled, running on to gather more flowers. Móirín’s cries became more urgent. Rowan stopped at the far edge of the clearing and looked at Nora. She ran into the shadows of the forest again, but by the time Nora got there, she had disappeared, as had the glowing lights.
“Rowan?” she called tentatively. Her voice echoed slightly, but there was no response.
Suddenly, the air was filled with the scent of lilac, though Nora couldn’t see a bird cherry tree. She strained to move forward, but the crystal in her hand burned, glowed white as something began pulling her backward, tugging and yanking…
She gasped and opened her eyes to find Quinn and Sheila leaning over her, while Briana gripped her knee hard.
Eve was still intoning something in Irish with her palm pressed to Nora’s brow.
“What happened?” Nora rasped.
“Sit up and drink this,” Eve said, helping her to sit and holding a glass to her mouth.
The cool water helped clear her head. Nora realized she was still clutching the white crystal. She dropped it, expecting to see her palm scorched and blistered, but there was nothing.
“How long was I… under?” She wasn’t sure what to call this experience.
“Over an hour,” Briana said, a slight tremor to her voice.
Nora shifted to rest against the headboard. “That can’t be. It was only a few minutes.”
“Tell us what you saw,” Eve said.
The others scooted their chairs closer as Nora described what she’d seen.
“I think you’re right,” she said to Eve. “Rowan was right there, just outside the door, but Móirín couldn’t see her.”
Eve leaned forward, grasping Nora’s hand and squeezing painfully. “And when Rowan disappeared into the trees, that’s when you smelled the bird cherry?”
Nora nodded.
Eve released her hand and sat back, her eyes closed. “We’ve assumed all this time that the lilac scent was Móirín, but it may have been Rowan, trying to reach out to you in her own way.”
“What about that clearing with the stones?” Nora asked. “Do you know where that is?”
“I think so,” Quinn said. “It’s all overgrown now. Most people don’t even know they’re there.”
He scrubbed his hands over his face. “Bloody hell. I need a drink.”
Eve reached into her bag yet again, producing a bottle this time. “Briana, go get some glasses from the kitchen while we put Móirín’s room to rights.” At Nora’s stare, she said, “Sorry. I meant Nora’s room.”
Briana jumped up and went to where Shannon was wagging her tail in the doorway. She paused and looked back at Nora for a moment, and then she was gone.
“Are you all right?”
Nora looked up into Sheila’s concerned face. She climbed off the bed, her legs still a bit wobbly. “I’m fine.”
She helped Sheila and Quinn slide the bed into position against the wall while Eve gathered her candles and jars, putting everything back inside her bag.
“What about the lights I saw?” Nora asked
.
“There are some plants, mushrooms mostly, that are bioluminescent,” Sheila said. “Could have been that.”
“Or the sióg,” Quinn said.
When Sheila and Nora stared at him, he threw his hands up. “What? We’re talking about ghosts. You think fairies are out of the question?”
Nora was tempted to giggle at the absurdity of the conversation, except it didn’t feel absurd. Or funny.
Briana returned in a couple of minutes with five glasses. Eve sloshed generous measures of whiskey into each. Nora realized her hand was trembling as she raised her glass to her lips. The burn of the whiskey spread through her chilled body.
“It was so cold there,” she mumbled, her lips almost too numb to form words.
Sheila rubbed her arm briskly. “I’m going to insist you come along home with us tonight.”
Nora nodded, too wiped out to argue. A bone-deep fatigue had set in. She felt she could sleep a week. She drained her glass.
“We’ll wait below while you gather whatever you’ll need,” Quinn said.
He, Sheila, and Eve went downstairs, Eve taking her lantern with her. Nora flipped on the light, blinking at the sudden brightness. She opened a dresser drawer to collect pj’s and a change of clothes for the next day. When she turned around, Briana was standing there.
“That was scary,” Briana murmured. “You got so white. You almost stopped breathing.”
“It didn’t feel frightening at the time,” Nora said. “But I admit, I’m a little shaken now. I feel a little drunk, and I don’t think it’s from the whiskey.”
Briana rushed forward and flung her arms around Nora. Startled, it took Nora a second to return the embrace. Briana’s warmth felt as good as the whiskey. For a long moment, they stood, holding each other. At the sound of voices down below, they reluctantly parted. Nora hovered, her face mere inches from Briana’s.
“Ready?” came Quinn’s voice up the stairs.
“We should go,” Nora whispered.
Briana nodded and headed toward the door where Shannon whined as she paced in the hall. Nora followed them down the stairs.
“Where’s Eve?” she asked.
Sheila and Quinn looked around in surprise.
“She was just here,” Quinn said.
Sheila took Nora’s arm. “Let’s go home.”
Nora locked the cottage doors and got into Sheila’s car. As they backed around, she glanced up at the window, half expecting to see Móirín’s pale face watching them, but the window was black and empty.
Chapter 10
Briana was a cyclone over the next few days. When she wasn’t mucking stalls, she was cleaning tack or training Ginger and the yearlings or replacing broken fence boards.
“Is there some do I don’t know about?” Sonya asked her one afternoon, coming in to hang three sets of tack from the guided ride she’d just completed, easily reaching over Briana’s head to the saddle racks.
For all her fifteen years in Ireland, Sonya had kept her Swedish accent.
Briana glanced up from her scrubbing of the tack room utility sink. “No. Why?”
“Because you’ve been a virvelvind... what’s the English word… whirlwind, all week.” She waved at the tack room walls. “This place hasn’t been this clean since I came here.”
Briana scowled, brandishing her scrub brush. “I told Jimmie and I’ll tell you—see that you help keep it that way. I can’t stand clutter.”
“Did I hear my name?” Jimmie poked his head around the corner.
Sonya waved at the tack room. “I was just wondering what was up with all the cleaning.”
“Why does something have to be up?” Briana demanded.
Sonya and Jimmie just looked at each other.
“Out. Both of you.”
Sonya chuckled, and Jimmie shook his head as he backed out, grumbling under his breath about “women” and “that time of the month.”
But being left alone only let Bri’s thoughts run uninterrupted, rampaging through her head like a hamster on a bloody wheel.
What were you thinking, hugging her like that?
It was nothing, she argued. Just the moment—seeing her lying there like the dead.
Still, you’ve started something. She nearly kissed you.
Briana paused, her eyes closed, remembering the sweet smell of the whiskey on Nora’s breath, the soft brown of her eyes, the way her own heart had pounded as she waited for the kiss that hadn’t come…
“Damnation.”
She shook herself and resumed her cleaning. She knew from Quinn that Nora had only stayed the one night, returning to the cottage after working with Sheila the next day, but Briana hadn’t seen her. She’d been tempted to go by, to check on her—to hold her again—but the strength of the wanting was enough to make her stay away.
But staying away hadn’t stopped Nora from occupying her thoughts for nearly every waking minute, and plenty of the non-waking ones, too. She’d never had so many erotic dreams about anyone in her life.
In the meantime, Cara and her mother hadn’t given up. Cara left three messages a week, asking when she and Nora were coming to Dublin again.
And then there was the whole sightseeing thing she’d stupidly brought up. What if Nora pressed her on it? What if they went rambling down to Clare or Kerry or Cork and spent a few nights together?
“Jesus, it’s been so long, I’m not sure I even remember how—”
“What’s that?” Quinn stepped through the tack room door.
“Nothing,” Bri muttered, a feverish blush heating her face.
He let out a low whistle. “When you’re done here, you can go to our house.” He peered into the corners. “Hey! You got rid of our spiders.”
Her mouth tugged into an unwilling grin. “They’re fine. Just relocated.” She rinsed out her brush.
He peered at her more closely. “Everything okay, squint?”
“Fine.” But she knew better than to think he believed her. “Did you need something?”
“I nearly forgot. Sheila wants to have dinner tonight. Our place. Six o’clock.”
Briana briefly panicked and tried to think of an excuse, but she heard herself say, “Six. See you then.”
He left her to her scrubbing. And her thoughts.
Nora stood at the sink, peeling potatoes, when she heard Sheila chuckle.
“What’s so funny?”
Sheila looked up from the table where she was transferring pieces of chicken from a bowl of marinade to a roasting pan. “You, standing in my kitchen, humming as you peel potatoes. Who’d have thought six weeks ago?”
Nora grinned. “I didn’t realize I was humming. And I can’t believe how fast my summer is flying by. I don’t want it to end.”
Sheila pursed her lips.
Nora set her knife down. “I can see you’re just bursting to say something. Out with it.”
Sheila shrugged as she drizzled a little more olive oil on the chicken and then sprinkled her own herb mixture over top. “It doesn’t have to be just the summer. You could move here permanently.”
Nora stared a moment. How did she know? She hadn’t said a word to anyone that she was thinking just that.
Sheila’s eyes widened. “Oh, sweet Jesus. Are you?”
Nora turned back to her potatoes, flustered and caught off-guard. “I… No. My whole life is in the States. How could I just leave and move here?”
Sheila placed a hand on her shoulder, making Nora turn to face her. “Are you really thinking about it?”
Nora gave a half-hearted shrug. “Kind of. Just thinking, though. I haven’t said anything to my family.”
“Understood.” Sheila let her go back to chunking up her peeled potatoes. “Have you told Briana?”
“No!” Nora jabbed her knife at Sheila. “No. And don’t you.”
Sheila held up her hands. “Promise.”
Silence settled back over them. Nora spread her potatoes out in another pan, with generous pats of butter
and diced onion. Sheila placed both pans in the oven while Nora scrubbed her cutting board and knife.
“I know you enjoy your work at your library,” Sheila said nonchalantly. “But I’ve come to depend on you here. With the extra online orders we’ve generated since you updated our website, there’s more than I can do alone. I’ve already been thinking I’ll have to hire someone when you leave. You could work here with me. Just something to think about.”
Before Nora could even process what Sheila had just said, the bell on the shop door tinkled and they heard, “Sheila? Where are you?”
“In the kitchen.”
Nora turned to see a woman who, for just a second, she took for her Mamma.
“Nora,” said Sheila. “This is my dad’s mum, Fiona Muldoon.”
The petite woman chuckled at Nora’s expression. “Bit of a shock?” She gave Nora a kiss on the cheek. “I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get down here to meet you. Our B & B in Clifden is booked all of July. I left my Jack in charge. Heaven knows what disaster will strike while I’m away.”
Nora held onto her hand. “Sorry, it’s just, I can’t believe how much you look like my grandmother.”
Fiona laughed, and even her laugh sounded like Mamma’s. “We’re only nine months apart, but I’m older and better looking. Brigid and I used it to our advantage—and our mother’s mortification—on more than one occasion. Skipping school and other mischief.”
Nora felt sudden tears prick her eyes.
“Are you all right, dear?” Fiona asked kindly, her blue eyes—so like Mamma’s—filled with concern.
Nora nodded. “I’m fine. Seeing you just made me homesick for my grandparents, that’s all.”
“Did you find anything?” Sheila asked.
Nora frowned at this cryptic question.
“I did,” Fiona said, lifting her bag off her shoulder.
“Dinner’s roasting,” Sheila said. “Quinn will be home soon, but I can’t wait. Let’s go over what you found.”
“I think this has earned me a glass of wine,” Fiona said, sitting and retrieving a sheaf of papers from her bag.
“Wine it is,” Sheila said. She went to the refrigerator to retrieve a bottle. “Nora?”
A Bittersweet Garden Page 14
