PANDORA

by Rebecca Hamilton

  Backing up the hill one step at a time, he felt his way against the markers. The children who were desecrating graves had been joined by women and some of the men. When one of them straightened to observe him, he actually took hold of a carved wooden cross and wrenched it sideways as if he were part of their soulless purge. And he might have pulled off his escape, except that as he neared the top of the hill a woman and a small boy who had been crawling along the ground sprang up in fear and fled. From below he heard the shrill, “Thuas ansin . . . thuas ansin!”, but by the time adult faces were turned, Lane stood alone at the crest.

  There was too much seductive madness surrounding the infamous structure at hand for all the attention to shift at once. But his unrestrained flight had the effect of flushing out a dozen more terrorized fugitives. They rose up from the field of graves like so many dead souls, and it was this that triggered the clamor for a chase.

  So he ran with the hunted.

  The feeling of prerogative that lingers in the back of the dreamer’s mind to rewind, revise, re-play the dream was totally expunged by the stab of breathlessness and the throb of panic as he stumbled through the churchyard against the cold rain. Mist, rain, tides, night the vehicles of Hibernian visions. He longed for the warm incandescence of Edison’s invention; he wanted sunrise and stale pizza boxes to assail his nostrils as he rolled on a waterbed in St. Paul, Minnesota. But what he got was primal flight and the promise of his own death in a time before he was born.

  Whatever the twisted self-righteousness that motivated his pursuers, directly ahead lay unambiguous darkness, unambiguous evil. Because twenty or thirty of those who had escaped demonic Cinnfhail knelt in the shallows and on the banks of the pond, all facing the Pillar of Thiollaney Merriu silhouetted in the rain. They were praying to the damn thing the pylon as if they had reached sanctuary.

  No thank you, not for Lane Andersen. Yet he hesitated. Brone McCabe’s house past the pond did not exist yet. There was no footbridge, few markers, and beyond the handful of Celtic crosses and stone tablets was extreme darkness, as if the producers of his nightmare had run out of stage. The grotto would have been a safer bet for making his stand, but it was too late for that. Looking back, he could see torchlight rippling toward him. Ahead of it more shadows ghosted in, genuflecting in the shallows and picking up the chant.

  “Dead end . . .” Lane breathed but still did not move.

  Something in the meter of the voices began to blend with an actual tremble in the earth: the shuffle of feet, the stutter of an army. He looked around but there was no infantry, no rescuing cavalry, just the sweeping tide of torchlight from the other direction. On came the mob, but not enough of them to explain the seismic beat or why the pond was suddenly ribbed with standing vibrations. No one turned around.

  It was in the final complete row of headstones raying out from Cinnfhail, just where before the number of graves thinned, that it happened. He would remember this clearly later on, because it explained why the boundary of twenty-first century Thiollaney Merriu was where it was. The lead torchbearer had just reached that demarcation when he faltered and cried out in surprise. Abrupt wails of terror followed. Up and down, the ragged forward line was locked onto the graves where it stood. And even without the gray suggestion of sinewy hands erupting through the earth to snag legs and ankles, it was all too clear from the yanking and twisting and the screams of unmitigated horror that something was breaking out of the burial pits.

  Lane fell back step by step as the few of the mob who didn’t flee pulled at their doomed companions. Only one of the victims was dragged free (this at cost of his leg hacked off with an ax in answer to his pleas). In desperation someone thrust a torch at one of the gravesprung hands, and as if that obscenity were welcoming its ambient element, a seam blazed open. In either direction fire raced, setting off a fresh chain of screams.

  Human beings were going up like oil-soaked rags in a thin wall of flame pluming out of the earth, and Lane watched as if he were in a movie theater. Behind him the celebrants of Cinnfhail chorused with eerie self-righteousness. History was quite literally bearing witness to itself, and there was nothing he could do. In an instant the pursuers were engulfed, in another they were consumed.

  Earth, air, fire, water: Lane Andersen stood in the shallows of a pond in a burial ground, his lungs parching with every breath, watching an inferno boil away the rain, the sky, the night. And when the elemental vision collapsed, he found himself in the churchyard of Thiollaney Merriu in the late summer of the second year of the third millennium staring at an iron fence that ran precisely where once he had dreamed human beings danced in fire and sank into the earth.

  46

  “Top o’ the mornin’,” Abban said.

  Lane set his suitcase alongside the Fiat Punto and turned in the direction of the ginger aroma. “I’ve been waiting to hear someone say that in Connemara.”

  Abban took four measured draws on his dudeen where he sat cross-legged on the whitewashed boulder at the end of the flowerbed. “‘Twas Barry Fitzgerald made it popular when they filmed ‘The Quiet Man’ right here in the county. I never used the phrase till we drank a bit together.”

  “You’re a name dropper, Abban, and I haven’t believed a thing you’ve said since we met.” He opened the car door. “No point in starting now.”

  “So you’re really goin’? ‘Fraid to show your face for the contest? Despite your unkind remarks, I thought more highly of you than that.”

  “Save the shaming. Road bowling will be my final stop, even though I don’t have a clue about the silly sport.”

  “Well now, if it’s a clue you want ”

  “No thanks.” He stowed the suitcase. “I’ve had enough of your clues, old man. And I really don’t care how stupid I look holding up my end of a challenge. I’m just tying up loose ends for my own self-respect.”

  Abban’s beryl green eyes hardened. “I see. You don’t care about winnin’. In that case make sure you don’t wear your cap backwards when you throw and accidentally turn it around on your follow-through. That would make you win.”

  Lane gave him a tolerant look. “Good-by, Abban.” He strolled into the cottage, plunked down on the wood slat futon, called back through the door he had left open, “You’re a helluva checkers player. I mean . . .” But the word “draughts” stayed on his tongue, because the ginger smell was already gone.

  Sosanna would probably be there when he made a fool of himself, he thought, and realized he would have to get used to not thinking about her in a few hours from now when he was over the Atlantic. Summer romance, autumn longing; by winter he would be his cold keen self again.

  He poured the orange juice down the drain and dumped some carry-out chicken from the ‘fridge, leaving an apple, then twist-tied the trash and put it out in the bin. His briefcase, the Hibernian Dream Pillow and some dirty laundry in a plastic bag, went out to the car next. Last to go were his laptop and the two steles wrapped in towels from the Mena House Oberoi in Cairo and zipped into a nylon overnight bag. He had paid for the room through the weekend, but he threw the key on the bed and left the door unlocked.

  His first stop was the Book Bog where he plied one last favor from Doreen Brynn: a web search for references to the earliest churches and churchyards in Connemara. She was more skilled than he at devising search words, much more skilled at saying good-by. The search was futile, and she told him with exaggerated concern that he wasn’t ready to leave Connemara yet. She cooed with such effusiveness about his suddenly abandoning his “work” that he wondered if she somehow knew about his barely budded relationship.

  “Good luck in your quest to bring Darrig into modernity,” he said at the door.

  She kissed him brusquely on the lips. “Email me.”

  And then he was off to endure the jeering, back-thumping, bottle-raising,

  hat-waving, rah-rah-rah of Flann Macloy’s hundred or so partisans gathered at the straightest stretch of road that led to Thiollaney Merriu.
He could hear the glee of relief in their taunts. They were glad to see him, afraid he was going to stand them up. And he wished he had, because it was the only defeat he could possibly inflict on them. At least he could make a mockery of it, he decided, rob them of his own defeat, and he bowed deeply and waggled his hands as if accepting applause. And it was working just fine, provoking an acid note of disappointment in their laughter, but just then a green silk scarf whisked over his shoulder and he spun around and found himself face to face with his inamorata elect.

  “Well, if you’re going to play this ridiculous sport, you may as well wear my colors,” Sosanna said loudly with a slow, challenging look around at the crowd.

  And that dampened Lane’s sarcasm considerably. He caressed the green silk scarf while the mob “oohed” knowingly. She had acknowledged her choice among men, and that would be talked about. Sosanna was already moving onto the sedge at the side of the road. His gaze settled on the shaggy Flann Macloy, who looked dusky with jealousy if regal with confidence.

  And then Lane did an uncharacteristic and spontaneous thing. Whether it came out of his subconscious or was a deliberate appeal to luck, he turned his cap backwards. There, surrounded by more asinine folderol than he could endure and himself the butt of it, he had done exactly what Abban had suggested he do.

  “No style points, Andersen!” someone brayed.

  “No style,” another amplified.

  “Have you done this before?” from Dolan.

  “Not since I was six years old . . .” he undertoned, and there was a hostile hum through the ranks that were close enough to hear.

  “Challenger first,” Macloy said, hefting a round stone as carelessly as though it were a ball bearing.

  “I don’t know the rules, so I’ll just defer to your example, if you don’t mind.”

  “—none of that!” Shaughnessy stepped forward. “Challenger first, that’s the

  rule, Mr. Andersen. Have you no seen a tournament at least?”

  “Since when has Darrig followed rules?” Laughlin O’Brien hollered out. “Don’t even have proper bowls, just our stones. Let ‘em throw, Shaughnessy.”

  The bartender, clean-shaven and wearing a suit coat, reddened in the noonday sun. “I didn’t close down my pub for an amateur contest. If you want me to be the referee, then we’re playin’ by the rules. Your first throw, Mr. Andersen. I’ve set your stone on the mark.”

  “First throw?” Lane felt the stares. “How many are there?”

  Laughter rippled. The braying voice was back, “Lots and lots for you, Yank!”

  Shaughnessy licked his lips. “It’s a course, Mr. Andersen. You try to cover it in as few throws as possible. We don’t use the regulation cast iron bowls, but the stones are a tradition with us and balanced against each other just this mornin’ by myself.”

  The leering crowd, the baking sun, Sosanna’s hopeful defiance: Lane had a foretaste of prolonged humiliation. He had come to his own flogging to make a statement about the stuff he was made of drunk or sober. It was his challenge, after all, and he wouldn’t slink out of Darrig, if only to save face with one or two people and himself.

  “Look,” he said, “you can call it what you want, but if I’m the challenger then I should name the contest. I’m willing to take a toss against Macloy here, but I’ve got places to go and I don’t intend to get there by chasing a stone halfway across Ireland.”

  “If you don’t mind my sayin’, that’s just plain arrogant,” Shaughnessy opined and was seconded by Dolan’s, “Typical Yank.” The crowd, sensing it would be cheated out of its spectacle, began to look menacing. A dog started to bark.

  “Here’s your choice, Mr. Andersen,” Shaughnessy said with renewed vigor. “Either you keep your word and prove yourself not wholly removed from bein’ a gentleman, or you forfeit, in which case you’re not worthy of the game you’re spurnin’.”

  Macloy’s ample timbre cut through the ugly buzz of the crowd, and no one had to ask him to repeat himself. “It’s all right with me,” he said. “If Andersen here hasn’t got the vinegar to do the job, then I’ll let him off the hook with one toss.”

  Shaughnessy was livid. “Why don’t we change the name then? Instead of Long Bullets, we’ll call it . . . we’ll call it . . .”

  “Creampuffs!” someone shouted and a half-eaten donut was tossed onto the road.

  The laughter stopped when Flann Macloy deigned to stoop and pluck up the bit of pastry for study. “We’ll call it . . . ‘the shot heard round the world,’” he said, flicking the donut aside.

  Lane withered at the crowd’s delight. He had expected to show some class in defeat, but his nemesis was already winning on words and graciousness.

  “If I remember correct, it’s done like this,” Macloy said, and suddenly it was breath-holdingly silent.

  The young buck paced back a dozen feet from the line sprinkled across the road with powdered chalk. Concentration fused him into a study of athletic harmony: the stone cradled hand, wrist, forearm flowing with discus like pumps as his other hand feathered against the air and stutter steps became strides. The final effort was pure ballet, launching him from head to toe and ending with the cradled arm straightened and transverse across his body, that body in the air, shoulder and forearm flexed, feet absurdly crossed with the toes pointed as though he had just finished a pirouette and was going into an arabesque.

  It was a thing to behold, and Lane beheld it while everyone else followed the flight of the sphere until it landed with a satisfying smack well down the road. “Ooo-h,” came from the gallery on both sides, and excited chatter broke out. A pair of boys spotted the impact mark, and a third pursued the cavorting stone. Shaughnessy, overcome with the action and not wishing to be left out of the officiousness of the day, snatched up the second stone and presented it to the American.

  “Your throw,” he drew out with crisp animus.

  Lane took up a position rather like a traditional bowler on a wooden lane. He held the stone just under his chin, feeling for the holes that weren’t there. For a moment he considered walking to the line and ceremoniously and delicately releasing the ball to fall just the other side, then dusting his hands and walking away as if to say, “There, I’ve given you your stupid victory, that’s what I think of it.” But they would have taken that for nearly as much cowardice as not showing up at all.

  “Try to hit the road, Andersen!” someone bellowed.

  He’d like to hit the road. He would hit the road as soon as this was over. Say good-by to Sosanna and drive off into the sunset. Never mind that it was the wrong time of day and he would be heading in the wrong direction toward Shannon. The dog was barking again, and the crowd never did grow completely still. He palmed the stone in his right hand, licked the fingers of his left, pinched air when he reached to touch the bill of his cap, remembered he had turned it around. That was it. Abban’s superstition. He would satirize the athleticism of his opponent; give them nothing to laugh at that he hadn’t already laughed at. A mocking defense against mockery.

  He took the formal steps of a formal bowler, which left him only halfway to the line and obliged to gallop the rest of the way, then he stopped, planted his feet, performed a roundhouse that lifted his left leg in the air while his right hand followed across after the release and swiveled the cap around. For good measure he squinted one eye and stuck his tongue out the side of his mouth.

  This time it was the crowd that remained fixated on the bowler and Lane was the one to follow the throw. He actually assumed a ramrod position, left hand bent backward at the hip, right hand shielding his eyes as if to gaze a long way. But the astonishment was his. Because of course the stone flew and flew. It was still going up when it passed Flann Macloy’s mark, and when it fell, it fell like (what else?) a stone, except that it didn’t land like a stone. It hit and split in half.

  In the immediate aftermath the perception was that the extreme height and distance caused the split, but later the consensus would be th
at the stone had been cracked before it was thrown. No one would admit that they had been staring astonished at the spectacle of Lane Andersen’s form and hadn’t seen the flight of the object. Except for the spotters, few heads swiveled until the thing was heard to fracture. And at that point the silence was complete. It would be a long time before they could laugh at this day, and someone would say that it hadn’t been that quiet in Darrig since the priest had looked out from the pulpit and called for all the young women to hang onto their virginity. And by then Lane Andersen’s destiny would be fulfilled.

  Macloy never did shake his hand, and Shaughnessy never spoke another word. The Buskers contingent was a sour if subdued handful, though the rest of the crowd had come out to make an afternoon of it and gradually moved on to sandwiches and beer. For his part, Lane was so stupefied that there was no enjoyment in his victory. He would say later he wished he had been there to see what he had done.

  What he did take note of what superseded everything else was the stone he had thrown. Watched by small boys, trailed by the dog that had barked all through his performance, he walked deliberately down the road as if each step might reveal the end of reality and the beginning of fiction. But no, this was not a Dream Pillow-sponsored event; it was noon outside Darrig and he was standing over the jagged halves of a stone sphere he had thrown a remarkable distance. He picked up the intricately roughened hemispheres, still watched by the small boys who perhaps wanted souvenirs, and clapped them together with a twist like pieces of a Rubik’s cube, a Chinese puzzle that fit together as smoothly as cymbals when you got it right. “Abban . . . Abban,” he muttered to himself, and it was then that he had his little epiphany and the present tense came back into his pale blue eyes.

  He looked up and saw that the milling populace of Darrig was observing him. Everyone but the person he wanted to see. With a flicker of a smile he tossed the stone halves toward the Irish lads, who tensed momentarily, mindful that the odd stranger didn’t seem to know his own strength, and then he climbed the seaward bank of the road in search of Sosanna McCabe.