PANDORA

by Rebecca Hamilton

  He had entered the cliff.

  The speed of the flow obliterated any sense of up or down. But as rapidly as he had been sluiced into a submerged channel, the thrust suddenly cushioned as if a dead end had been reached. His shoulder struck stone, jarring sparks within his ebbing consciousness and forcing the first bubbles from his lungs. Instinctively he clawed for a handhold and caught a protrusion. Moments later, there was an explosion of sorts: air bursting through, hissing against the gurgle of draining water, as if these fundamental elements were two species in confrontation.

  He gasped, choked, clung to the smooth spar he had captured. The vapid air reached every burning outpost in his body, calming him, making thought seem like inspiration. In the darkness, he listened. Water was still moving above him, he thought. This was probably the maze of channels below the vermicular birthing chamber he had discovered within the grotto, and the loops and crossovers were producing air pockets as the cliff respired. The sea surged in, the sea surged out. It would be a short-lived sanctuary, because the freight train rush of water above him would be coming back in a few moments.

  He clung to the smooth protrusion with both hands, and that was how he discovered another horror. The lower end of the long, slender thing was wedged between two plates of stone, and the knobby upper end his fingers wrapped around yielded the unmistakable mental image of a human thigh bone.

  He didn’t actually let go, but the deluge returned at that instant and tore him away with unforgiving violence. And after that, he had no control at all, no rational input, none, zero, nada. Just fate. He didn’t fight it. There was the G-force rip of his own lightning return and then he was tossing on the surface of the ocean.

  Later, when he dared think it was more than a dream, he would reason that it wasn’t so remarkable after all. Myriad things survived to be cast up on a beach, from seaweed to feathers to mollusks. Notes in bottles survived. Pieces of ships, cadavers of fish, green empties of Connemara Single Malt. A riptide or an innocuous lane within the currents had taken him south down the beach and eventually in.

  But now he lay on his side listening to the surf pounding the rocks and staring back at the mist, beyond which was the cliff. A tardy bolt of lightning erupted as if in anger at his escape (the Coach-a-Bower was not permitted to return without a passenger), and even though he knew it was impossible to tell, he would swear that the current traveled up from the earth.

  When his strength returned, he rose and staggered inland through the downy gauze of a healing fog. Soon he felt his feet on the ubiquitous cobblestones. A molten glow to his left climbed high in the sky, and he thought it was in the direction of the stone building with its pitiful wretches. And then the road beneath his feet became macadam again, and the mist thinned, and he saw the cottage he had leased. He went in utterly spent, taking time only to strip off his clothes and write a note to himself on his laptop that said: If this is here when I wake up, it means I really left the cottage.

  Hurling the pillow off the bed, he collapsed into a dreamless sleep.

  23

  “You’ve been on the pond in the boat,” Brone said, and he inclined his head toward his daughter there in the kitchen as if she were hard of hearing. “It wasn’t your mother, so it must have been you.”

  “If you had asked me in the first place, you wouldn’t have had to interview all the other suspects,” Sosanna said, a touch of color coming to her cheeks.

  “Well, I’m askin’ then: what happened out there?”

  “Nothin’.”

  “How can it be nothin’ when the hull is laid bare stem to stern? You must have felt somethin’ when it happened. You’re lucky to be alive.”

  She gave the sink strainer a twist and he stayed her hand with his.

  “You’ve disobeyed me.”

  “Children disobey. Adults disagree. Which am I, father?”

  “You’re mortal, and mortals die when they ignore forbidden things.”

  “Then send for the gardai. Arrest me.”

  He looked apoplectic. She looked steadfastly innocent. Old postures, a fork in the road they had never gotten past. Silence would come next, if they let it; another day of avoiding eye contact and moving through rooms in opposition. But this time Brone sighed long and volubly, and his rugged lips, which worked like pieces of soft lead when he was angry, relaxed. When he took his hand away, Sosanna looked out the window and did not turn on the water.

  “I never did tame you,” he murmured. “But that’s good.” He backed up to the table, tugged his trousers at the knees, sat down. “That’s good.”

  “You don’t believe that, father.”

  “Well, I may not like it, but I s’pose it’s good. You had to become a woman, even though you’ve never left from under my roof. But you can’t blame a father for missin’ his little lassie.”

  “You’ve fairly smothered me, father dear. It’s a wonder I’m not still three feet tall.” She turned to face him with her almost-smile. “Father . . . how did you know the scratches on the bottom of the boat came from the pond?”

  “Well, it is a boat, isn’t it?”

  “More likely they’d be from being dragged on the shore. Why didn’t you think that?”

  “I did. That’s what I meant.”

  “But you said I must have felt it.”

  “Felt the shore when you dragged it up.”

  “. . . and lucky to be alive, you said.”

  “You know you can’t swim. You could’ve drowned.”

  “Fibs are for children.”

  His craggy brows stiffened and his lips became lead again. “So what were you doin’ out on the pond?”

  “Not swimmin’ though it wouldn’t matter if I was. I was only boatin’.”

  “Just like that? After twenty-eight years you suddenly decide to go boatin’ on the pond which you’ve never gone boatin’ on before?”

  “It was about time.” She whirled away, whirled back. “Why should I lie to you, I was sketchin’.”

  “Sketchin’? You mean . . . with a pencil?”

  “That’s the usual way.”

  “What I mean to say is, the inspiration comes kind of sudden, don’t it? Have you found the James Arthur O’Connor in your soul?”

  “I was sketchin’ the Pillar.”

  This time Brone’s whole body froze.

  “That little thing on the top,” she said. “The stele, I think it’s called.”

  “Stele. That’s not your word.”

  “I didn’t invent it, no.”

  “It’s his. That American. Andersen.”

  “It’s just a word. There’s a proper word for everythin’, and that’s the proper one for the . . . thing.”

  “The proper word is betrayal. You’ve seen the American, and he asked you about the Pillar.”

  “I’ll see who I please. No one’s plottin’ against you, father.”

  Brone clapped his hands together in dismay, and Mr. Billy, lying beside the door, came all the way to his feet. “God Almighty!”

  “It was to defend you that I saw the American. I gave him some choice things to think about.”

  “Eh? You’ve told him nothin’?”

  “What is it I could tell him?”

  “Did he say anythin’ about Thiollaney Merriu about the pond or the Pillar or the cliff?”

  “We’re not exactly at the sharin’ secrets stage yet.”

  “Yet? Then you’re goin’ to see him again?” Immediately he spread his hands to temper her reaction and his dark eyes took on a craftier light. “It’s all right. It’s good. You can tell me, then, can’t you, Sosi? You can tell me what he’s about.”

  “About?”

  “What he plans to do. Just give me fair warnin’ when he’s up to one of his little forays.”

  “You want me to spy on him?”

  “Hardly spyin’, lass. Haven’t I a right to know who’s trespassin’ on my property? He’s an outsider without principles. Surely you can see that?”

&nbs
p; “I can see you’re obsessed.”

  Brone’s hands were white, pressed against the table. “Blood should count for somethin’.”

  “Are you goin’ to make me choose between my honesty and your everlastin’ battles?”

  “You’re betrayin’ me. You’re betrayin’ your name and your ancestors.”

  She was astonished at his adamancy, unable to understand or accept it. “Well, include Mr. Billy, why don’t you?”

  The dog looked up expectantly.

  “I’ll have none of your mocking,” Brone said. “This can’t be brushed aside between us. A family has bonds. A family has . . . has ”

  “Secrets?”

  “Don’t be tryin’ that on me again, Sosanna McCabe. There are no secrets!”

  She moved toward the door, turned to face him, pressed her palms against the wall. “I might do your spyin’ for you, if you can tell me why mother was wanderin’ through the tombstones again today. Why does she read the inscriptions? Who is she lookin’ for?”

  He seemed to weigh something on the tip of his tongue, and the longer he took, the more the bluster went out of him. “Your mother has had delusions in the past,” he said at last.

  “What delusions?”

  “Like thinkin’ she belongs to the sea.”

  “Is that why the villagers think she’s a merrow?”

  “Do they now?” As if he didn’t know.

  “But . . . that doesn’t explain what mother thinks. Did you have another wife? Did she drown? Is that what she’s lookin’ for, her predecessor’s grave? Tell me that, and maybe I’ll do your spyin’.”

  “There were no other wives,” he said wearily. “No secrets.”

  “No secrets,” she repeated. “Good. Then there’s nothin’ I’ve got to hide from the American.”

  24

  “You’ve been drinking our good Irish Redbreast from ‘the priest’s bottle,’” Doreen Brynn said. “I’ve never heard of the Mists of Ionarbadh. And I can’t imagine how you’re coming up with these things that aren’t there anymore. First Quilligan’s Mill, now this.”

  Lane leaned back in the roll chair he had drawn up to the dinosaur computer in the back room of The Book Bog. On the screen was a scanned pen and ink drawing the expatriate Brit had conjured up from her limitless and miraculous resources of Irish myths, fibs and stone sober veracities. Unfortunately, the item on the screen referred to a disturbing image of the latter variety. It was the gray building of horrors with lancet windows he had seen in his dream. Seen or actually visited: choose one. He tapped the screen.

  “What about the inscription above the door?”

  “I think it’s a name,” she said, rocking forward to read it from the sketch. She had come up with the site by taking apart the phrase he had memorized from the cornice: CINNFHAIL TEACH NA NGEALT. “But it’s mixed. You’ve got the Irish teach na ngealt, which means mental asylum. And then you’ve got cinnfhail which is Gaelic, I think. It must be a family name that was given to the place. Someone’s surname, a doctor or a local angel of mercy.”

  He pawed his face, remembering scuppers and chains and the stench of something degraded beyond rot and human waste. “I think we can eliminate angel of mercy. Try the Gaelic. Can you give me a translation?”

  For this she rose and rummaged the bookshelves that lined the room, fingers working febrilely over the spines as she fluttered up and down, looking like a myopic butterfly. Pausing, she snatched out a thin volume and leafed through the pages. Again a finger, hissing down a page, stopping.

  “Cinnfhail. It means . . . ‘from the head of the cliff.’”

  “It was close by the cliff at Thiollaney Merriu.”

  “But why mix Gaelic with Irish? I still think it’s a surname.”

  “What if it was just Cinnfhail at an earlier time? What if the insane asylum part got tacked on later? It might have been something else before it became an asylum.”

  “Like what?”

  He shrugged. “A prison.”

  Her red hair eclipsed the computer. Keys clacked. In a minute she said, “Hello? Someone has preserved a fragment of a letter in their family history.”

  It was one of those amateur attempts to preserve and glorify unremarkable lives. A certain Mary MacKay had included extracts from personal letters among her ancestral archives. In a letter dated, June 7, 1833, her deceased paternal great-grandfather, one Obadiah Byrne, had written to unspecified commissioners regarding the Cinnfhail workhouse. A brief note to this effect was followed by a transcript of the single surviving page:

  ***

  . . . neither are there night buckets at present for the inmates, the

  consequences of which I spare you for discretion’s sake. Also, the

  ventilation turrets appear to be blocked, though no one will venture

  onto the roof to perform an inspection.

  The building, as it stands, has been refurbished twice, and

  but for its impregnable walls and the extreme reluctance of the elders

  to seal the tunnel, lest old pacts that some still adhere to be violated,

  it would have been torn down. As it is, the slatier and the mason

  forbear further work until their debt is settled. I attach no blame to

  them, for the weather has been inclement and pestilence rages within.

  To make matters worse, Dr. Arbuthnot, the visiting physician, himself

  has died of malignant typhus fever this Sabbath past.

  Good sirs, I trust you will not let rumor and fear attend the

  plan to make alternate arrangements for the county’s indebted souls.

  Cinnfhail has too long been at the mercy of certain individuals whose

  intentions and outdated beliefs are travesties on the Church and

  society. Despite their tenure in the community and insistence on being

  privy to arcane particulars, they should not speak for all of us in this

  enlightened age. Indeed, what body outside the district would tolerate

  such abominations as exist here among us? I urge you to take this matter

  up at the . . .

  ***

  Doreen Brynn sagged in her chair. “Dear God, Dickens was right, and so were you. It was a debtor’s prison before it became an asylum. If that’s how they treated poor people, how bad must it have been for the mentally ill? Worse than Bedlam in London, I expect.” She turned to look at him. “Are you listening to me?”

  He was puzzling at the screen. “What’s this about sealing a tunnel and breaking old pacts? Does that make sense to you?”

  “Not unless you want to hear all the myths dredged up that you put to rest so eloquently the other night.”

  He focused on her now. “Faeries? You’re going to tell me it’s faeries?”

  “Dressed in green or red, trooping or solitary. They’re like chipmunks, you know. Always digging. It’s not hard to figure what inspired the tall tales, of course. This whole area is riddled with caves. The Burren over there is a moonscape of fissures and chasms. Some of the caverns and underground streams are spectacular. They’re supposed to be linked by tunnels, and a lot of villages claim old houses with . . . connections.”

  “But the Burren is in County Clare.”

  “Some say the whole of western Ireland is a network that leads to the sea. For a fact, water comes and goes in peculiar ways in the bogs, and there are endless stories about lakes and holy wells that appear and disappear ”

  “Yes, yes, with maidens who turn into swans and are spirited away by horny horsemen.”

  She crossed her legs. “Believe me, I’ve been in line for swanhood since I grew breasts. There are no horny horsemen.”

  He looked analytically at her breasts. “I can’t picture those on a swan.”

  “Two swans. Feel free to picture anything you like.”

  He looked at her stupidly, tried to laugh, mumbled something about horny horsemen and Connemara ponies.

  She smiled langu
idly. “Well, let me help you find a tunnel then. As I said, they’re supposed to be all over the place under trees in faerie raths and . . . sometimes connected to houses.”

  “Connecting them to what?”

  “I haven’t the foggiest. But I’ve heard of superstitious farmers filling some of the older wells with stones and bricking up fireplaces. Even blasting out stumps.”

  “What about ruins? A stone building like Cinnfhail must’ve been around for a long time. There must be traces of it.”

  “Plenty of ruins. The village actually moved away from Thiollaney Merriu. Fancy that. Used to be all out on the old road.”

  “Which is . . . ?”

  “Next to the new road. Lots of foundation sites out towards Brone McCabe’s churchyard.”

  ***

  Ionarbadh. It meant exile. He found it himself, pulling up a reference from Yeats on his laptop. The Mists of Exile. What did that mean? That the Connemara fog crept in on little cat’s feet from some place outrÉ, or that you were some place outrÉ when you entered it?

  He asked Abban, and it cost him three more games of draughts three instead of one because the little man twice declared him in default for not paying attention. “I’ve huffed you seven times already for not jumpin’ my piece when you had the chance,” Abban said, “can you no concentrate long enough to lose the regular way?”

  Lane made an effort and lost the regular way.

  Then Abban lit up his dudeen, filling the cluttered parlor with ginger-scented wraiths. “Exile is a sacrament to the Irish,” he expounded between earnest draws. “I s’pose you’ve never heard of ‘white martyrdom.’”

  “You s’pose correctly.”

  “‘Tis self-exile in search of God. The monks were very fond of it. Always isolatin’ themselves on one godforsaken isle or another in the Irish Sea. Lots of mist there, figurative and otherwise. So there you have it. You’ve got your own Mists of Ionarbadh.”

  “I haven’t isolated myself in search of God.”

  “Haven’t ya now?”

  For a moment Abban’s chatoyant eyes glinted like hard green beryls, and it flashed across Lane’s mind that the little man knew something about his relationship with his mother. Such a cynic. Have you no been told your soul is bankrupt? Surely, your mother warned ya. That was what Abban had said in the car that first day.