A Bittersweet Garden

by Caren J. Werlinger

  “Take my feet,” Briana said. “Hand me a torch and let me down.”

  Quinn and Sheila knelt, each taking one of Briana’s feet and holding on as she slithered into the rocky tunnel, calling and reaching as far as her arms could stretch. Spiders and many-legged worms slithered over her hands, brushed over her face. She forced herself to ignore them, though she shuddered at the thought of Nora being covered in them. The darkness of the shaft swallowed her torchlight, showing her nothing.

  “Nora, are you down here?”

  Her heart nearly stopped as she heard “Briana” echoing up from what sounded very far away, but it was so faint she wasn’t certain if she’d really heard it or only wished she had.

  “That’s as far as we can let you go, Bri.” Quinn tugged her back up to the surface. “We can’t reach any further. And you’re not going down as you are,” he said quickly, anticipating her argument. “I’ve rope in the truck. I’ll be right back. Don’t do anything daft.”

  He took one of the torches and ran back in the direction from which they’d come.

  Sheila kept a tight hold on Briana’s arm as she shivered in her wet, slime-covered T-shirt.

  Briana rounded on Eve. “Why did you do this? Why did—” Her voice broke.

  Eve faced Fiona. “I told you and your sister long ago, that this day would come.”

  “You said one who came from us would have to make a fateful choice,” Fiona said hotly. “You knew. You knew she was the one.”

  “I… felt something in her,” Eve admitted.

  “What choice did Nora have when you’ve been manipulating things all along?” Sheila demanded.

  Eve’s face was placid as she said, “She had a choice. To stay or not to stay. To open herself or to remain closed.” She glanced at Briana. “To love or not to love. Every choice she has made has led to this. To her being willing to sacrifice her life for another.”

  But after “to love or not to love”, Briana hadn’t heard anything. Her ears buzzed, and her legs collapsed under her. She loves me.

  “But,” Fiona was saying, “you also told us she could give life to another. How the devil is she to do that if she dies down there?”

  Bri’s head snapped up at those words.

  Sheila saw and immediately said, “She’s not going to die.”

  But Eve was implacable. “There is more than one kind of life.”

  Briana sat, her head bowed again, as Sheila and Fiona argued with Eve. Inside, she was calm, disturbingly so, considering everything that was going on, but it was a stillness born of despair. She’d never told Nora how she felt—the only woman she’d ever loved—and what if she never got the chance to?

  It seemed a lifetime before Quinn got back with the rope. He tied it securely around Briana’s waist and handed her his torch.

  “We’ll see you and Nora in a few minutes, squint.” He gathered the rope in his hands and lowered her into the hole in the ground.

  This time, Briana went in feet-first. One hand clutched the torch and the rope, the other shielded her face from the roots and rocks as she slid deeper into the shaft. She tried to call out once, but got a mouthful of dirt. She kept her mouth shut after that.

  In the torchlight, she could see scrape marks on the rocks and the mossy slime that covered them.

  After what felt like ages, her feet touched something solid. She twisted to work her arm down in the tight space, and shone the torch beam into a white, wide-eyed face.

  “Nora!”

  She pushed to one side and slid into the water. “Jesus!” The shock of the cold took her breath away. The water was nearly up to her chin.

  “Are you okay?”

  But Nora was incapable of answering. Her lips were blue, and she was shivering so hard, her jaw seemed to be locked.

  Briana aimed the torch back up the chute. It wasn’t wide enough for both of them to go together as they had planned. Her heart sank. She was going to have to send Nora up first.

  She put the torch in her teeth and tried to untie the swollen rope from around her waist. She hadn’t planned on having to do this in ice-cold water that was trying to move her deeper into an underground tunnel. She braced her feet as best she could on rocks she couldn’t see while she fumbled with the knot.

  At last, she got it loosened and managed to slip the rope around Nora’s waist, tying a new knot as tightly as her rapidly numbing fingers could manage.

  She took the torch out of her mouth. “Quinn will haul you up,” she said through her own chattering teeth.

  Nora still couldn’t answer, but she wrapped an arm around Bri’s neck.

  “No. No, you have to go up without me.” Briana gripped Nora’s arm, forcing it loose, and placing Nora’s hand on the rope instead. “Hold on. Don’t let go.”

  She tugged three times on the rope. When it stretched taut and began raising Nora out of the water, she gripped the belt loop of Nora’s jeans, trying to help boost her up, but she began to lose her own precarious footing. She had to grip the same slippery rocks Nora had been holding on to as Nora disappeared into the black hole above.

  All she could do now was wait. She put the torch back in her teeth, needing both arms to keep herself from being swept away by the current. It wasn’t fast or hard, but it was steady, and her body was losing feeling. She could no longer tell if her feet were touching bottom.

  The seconds dragged into minutes. She had no way of knowing how much time had passed. The torch beam dimmed. Her feet slid, and she went under. Clawing back to the surface, she gasped for air around the torch, which was still clamped in her teeth, and scrabbled for a better hold on the rocks. She wedged her numb fingertips into a crack and held on for her life.

  The torch, apparently not waterproof, began to go out, flickering on only for a few seconds before going out again. She almost yelled and dropped the torch from her chattering teeth when a different light appeared—a girl in a yellow dress—floating beside her with a faint glow. Every time the torch flickered on, the girl seemed to fade. Her presence in the dark was some comfort as time crept by and it seemed no help was coming.

  Above her, Briana heard a scraping sound. The rope, with a rock tied to the end, clattered down the shaft and dropped on her face, hitting her in the forehead. She didn’t dare let go long enough to untie the rock, nor was she certain her fingers could tie another knot if she did. She simply grabbed the rope and slung it under her arms, looping it around her chest twice, and gave a weak tug. Rowan smiled and disappeared.

  When they pulled from the surface, the rope tightened painfully. Inch by inch, they dragged her out of the water. Slowly, Briana began to ascend the chute. The torch beam still switched on and off randomly. She was about to let it go from her frozen jaw when she saw a flash of color dangling from the roots beside her. She reached out to snatch it as the rope yanked her upward.

  It seemed an eternity before she emerged from the shaft into the warmth of the summer night. Quinn gripped her by both arms and lifted her clear of the hole.

  “Here you are, squint,” he said softly, untangling her from the rope. “We’ve got you now. We’ve got you both.”

  Nora sat on the ground, Fiona’s arms wrapped around her as Eve knelt next to them. Nora’s eyes locked with hers, though it seemed she still couldn’t speak.

  Eve turned to Briana. “I’m sorry. I never meant any harm to come to either of you.”

  Wordlessly, Briana held out her hand. When Eve extended hers, Briana dropped something into it. Sheila aimed a torch to see what it was.

  Eve held up a length of scarlet ribbon.

  Chapter 18

  While Briana was examined and released, the doctor insisted on keeping Nora in the hospital for two days. “You’re severely hypothermic,” he said. “We need to be sure there are no after-effects.”

  Nora lay in her hospital bed, huddled under three blankets, still unable to get warm. She was certain there would be after-effects for the rest of her life, though she didn’t voice th
at thought to the doctor.

  Refusing to turn off the harsh light over her bed—to the disgruntlement of the other patients in her six-bed ward—she tried hard not to remember the paralyzing despair of being trapped in the pitch-black of that underground cavern.

  Sheila and Fiona had driven to Castlebar to spend all the permitted visiting hours with her the first day.

  “Quinn covered the opening to that hole,” Sheila said. “We had an old iron grate. He fastened it in place so no one else can ever—” She stopped abruptly.

  “Ever die down there,” Nora finished for her.

  “I had to call Brigid and Tommy,” Fiona confessed. “They never would have forgiven me if I hadn’t, so when you’re out of here, your family in America are waiting to talk to you.”

  Briana had come for a few hours the first day, barely saying a word. She simply sat, stonily silent, causing Nora to feel even more guilt than she already did. She apologized again and again.

  “No need,” was all Bri said.

  Only there was. There was so much that needed to be said, but not in the crowded ward. As if they sensed all the unspoken words hanging in the air, Sheila and Fiona chatted to fill the void. When Nora couldn’t keep her eyes open that evening, thanks to the sedative the doctor ordered for her, they left her to rest.

  But even the sedative couldn’t stop the nightmares, and she woke, crying out and scaring all the other patients. She reassured the nurse that she was okay, but fought sleep after that.

  She sat up in bed, scouring the genealogy papers Fiona had brought to her. As inconceivable as it was, the truth of her ancestry rang true inside her: she was a distant niece to Aoibheann and Rowan—it made her head hurt to try and figure out what exactly—and a seventh-great-granddaughter to Móirín and Donall. It hadn’t been random that the ghosts had reached so strongly for her, or that she felt such an urgent need to help them.

  She was hit by another wave of sorrow and desolation so strong she thought it might suffocate her. For Rowan to have died that way—alone, terrified, in the icy bowels of the earth. She knew that horror firsthand, and it broke her heart to think of a child being trapped as she’d been, spending her last minutes in such despair. She curled up on her side, shoving her fist against her mouth to stifle her sobs and covering her head with her blankets to muffle the sound.

  When the doctor finally relented on the afternoon of the second day and released her, Nora gratefully dressed in the clean clothes Sheila and Fiona had brought.

  She wanted to ask where Briana was, but she thought she knew. Briana wanted nothing more to do with her after this. Her silence had told Nora all she needed to know, but she felt too fragile to think about that now. Allowing those thoughts in on top of everything else would surely tear her heart into irreparable pieces.

  Fiona insisted Nora sit in the front passenger seat of Sheila’s SUV.

  “How’s Eve?” she asked as Sheila maneuvered out of the hospital’s parking lot.

  “No one has seen her since that day,” Fiona said from the back seat.

  Sheila’s mouth was set in a thin line. “We were more concerned about getting medical care for you lot. We’ll deal with her later.”

  When they got back to Cong, Sheila drove home to the nursery without asking where Nora wanted to stay. They had gathered a selection of clothes and all of her electronics from the cottage.

  “Everything you need for now,” Fiona said in a tone that brooked no argument.

  She and Sheila got Nora settled comfortably on the sofa in the den with orders to rest while they prepared supper. To make sure Nora stayed put, Sheila plopped Rusty on her lap.

  “You let me know if she stirs,” Sheila said to him.

  Rusty curled up on the blanket covering Nora’s legs and gave a contented sigh as she patted him.

  When supper was ready, they brought her to the table and served her a bowl of piping hot potato soup, thick and creamy, along with generous slices of brown bread.

  Quinn came home halfway through the meal. He helped himself from the pot on the stove and sat at the table. “How are you feeling?”

  “Warm, finally,” Nora said with a wan smile. “How’s Briana?”

  He gave a sideways nod as he buttered a slice of bread. “You know Briana. Doesn’t say much. She seems okay.” But he didn’t meet Nora’s eye as he said it.

  Nora’s stomach clenched with guilt again, and it was suddenly difficult to eat. It was hard not to notice that Briana was avoiding her.

  After dinner, Fiona led Nora to the computer. “I’ve arranged a video chat with your family.”

  She stayed until the connection was made, waving from behind Nora to the entire McNeill clan who were all trying to crowd into the screen, speaking at once, wanting details as to what happened.

  Nora choked up. It was so good to see them all, especially after having thought she might never see them again. She left out the parts about living in a haunted cottage and chasing ghosts through the forest, and made it sound as if she’d simply slipped into a sinkhole connected to the underground cavern system. Only the glance shared between Fiona and Brigid betrayed anything more.

  Fiona wrapped her arms around Nora from behind, saying, “See, everyone? She’ll be fit as a fiddle in a few days. Don’t tire her out too much.”

  Fiona gave Nora a kiss on the cheek and left them to visit.

  Despite Fiona’s admonition not to tire her out, Nora was exhausted by the time she clicked off the computer.

  “How are they, then?” Sheila asked when Nora returned to the kitchen.

  She set another mug of tea and a slice of almond bread in front of Nora as she sat.

  “They’re fine. Gosh, it was so good to see them.” Nora’s throat tightened. “I thought… when I was down there, that…”

  “Shhhh.” Fiona shifted closer to wrap an arm around her shoulders as she cried. “It must have been terrifying. It’s all right now.”

  She let Nora cry while Quinn muttered something about taking Rusty out.

  “Sorry,” Nora hiccupped, dabbing at her eyes with her napkin.

  “No need to apologize,” Sheila said brusquely. “I’ll wager you’ll be in for more of that before you’re through. I know I would be. Eat your bread and drink your tea. We’ve a room ready for you.”

  “I’ve been so much trouble already,” Nora said, feeling guilty again.

  “Nonsense.” Sheila stood. “And I’ll have your word that you won’t be going back to the cottage alone. At least one of us goes with you. Yes?”

  Nora nodded. She wasn’t sure she ever wanted to see that cottage again. She brushed her teeth and changed into pajamas.

  After she’d crawled under the covers, Sheila came in, tugging the quilt up over Nora and sitting on the side of the bed.

  “I keep thinking,” she said softly, staring at the colorful pattern of the quilt. “It breaks my heart to think what it must have been like for them, Móirín and Rowan.” Her chin quivered. “Even though Annie only lived three days, there wasn’t a moment, not one, that she wasn’t held by someone who loved her. And I held her as she died.”

  Tears spilled from her eyes. “For Rowan to have died like that… I can understand how it could have killed Móirín never to know. I don’t know that I could have survived that.”

  Nora freed one arm from under the covers and clasped Sheila’s hand. They stayed like that for a few minutes before Sheila swiped the tears from her cheeks and stood. She pointed to the small lamp casting a soft glow from atop the chest of drawers. “So you won’t be in the dark,” she said. “Good night.”

  Briana brushed Ginger until she gleamed like new copper. The filly tossed her head, fully aware of how good she looked. She pranced in the crossties.

  “Settle down now,” Bri murmured. “We want her parents to like you, too, and they won’t do that if they think you’re too much horse for their little girl.”

  Quinn had put word out that they had a good prospect for eventing or sh
owjumping. Of course, Ginger was too young to do any aggressive training yet, but a family with an eager ten-year-old had inquired. Filly and girl could come along together if all worked out. They were driving up from Killarney to meet Ginger and let Sally try her out.

  Briana stepped back.

  “You’re beautiful.” She went to Ginger and pressed her forehead against the filly’s. “I’ll miss you, but you need to fly. And you can’t do that as a stable horse.”

  Voices outside announced the arrival of Sally and her parents. She heard Quinn greeting them.

  “All set?” she asked.

  Ginger snorted in answer. As if she knew how important this was, she followed Briana docilely, arching her neck and prancing only a little.

  Briana noticed with a shock that they’d brought a horse trailer with them.

  Sally clapped her hands, and her freckled face split into a wide smile. “Look, Mum! She’s ginger, just like me!”

  Sally might have looked bookish and awkward, with her glasses and braces on her teeth, but she knew how to approach Ginger, giving the filly a chance to sniff her.

  “We gingers need to stick together.” Briana grinned. “Want to help me tack her up?”

  Together, they saddled her. Sally had no trouble getting Ginger to take the bit. Briana took her around first, showing off her paces with Sally hanging onto the fence alongside her parents.

  When Sally mounted—Bri noticed with some chagrin that the stirrups didn’t have to be shortened for her—she kept a light hand on the reins as she took the filly around the ring.

  “She’s a natural,” she said to Sally’s mum, who stood with her hands clasped in worry.

  “That’s what her instructor back home says.”

  The dad stood with his hands in his pockets. “And you didn’t drug the horse? You know, to calm her down.”

  Briana bristled, but Quinn laid a hand on her shoulder. “Mr. Waldren,” he said, “I know horse traders have a bad reputation, but we don’t run that kind of business here. I’ve a copy of the report from the vet you sent here to check her. If you’re the least bit worried, then we’ll just keep Ginger and bring her along ourselves.”