The Fire Opal

by Regina McBride

  As we traveled back to Ard Macha in the pony and trap, I thought of the silliness of the pampered girl and her mother, the meanness of the shop matron. The atmosphere had lost its heightened sparkle for me. And worst of all, the beautiful soap in its exquisite package had lost its sensual incandescence and had become nothing more than a fragrant-smelling bribe. Mrs. Cavan saw me as the wife of her mean-spirited son. Rarely had she shown me any kindness before. Why had I imagined there had been some pure intention behind her offer to take me to Dungarven?

  All the way home, though, she made attempts to engage me in chatter. I sat leaning to one side, staring at the passing fields.

  It was dusk when we arrived back at Ard Macha. I thanked Mrs. Cavan and was about to scale the hill when I was startled to see Ishleen talking to a woman in a gray-green dress down near the beach.

  "Who is that woman?" I asked.

  Mrs. Cavan stared darkly, and I felt that she knew who the woman was but wouldn't say. Her expression made me afraid for Ishleen, and I began running toward the beach.

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  "Ishleen!" I cried, but she was too near the roaring tides to hear me.

  The woman spotted me coming and grabbed Ishleen's arm. In that moment there was a sudden commotion of birds--swans and falcons and herons flying overhead, feathers and down from their wings floating and descending around Ishleen and the woman. As birds alighted at various places on the stones, a swan landed at the feet of the woman in gray-green. It thrust out its chest and beat its huge wings, and as it did, it transformed into the woman who had once given me the little bottles. The woman in gray-green let go of Ishleen's hand and backed away several steps, then dove into the sea.

  As I ran toward them, the birds that had alighted rose again into the air, and the woman in white turned back into a swan, rising with the others and flying in arcs over the sea as I took Ishleen into my arms. From that moment on, I would think of the woman who had given me the bottles as the Swan Woman. We watched her and the others flying into the distance, the evening sky gone almost fully dark.

  Ishleen said she did not know who the woman in gray-green was, but that she had promised to take Ishleen to the place where she said Mam's soul was waiting for her.

  The next day when I was driving the cows back up the hill, Tom Cavan jumped out from behind the wall, startling me so badly that I screamed. After I caught my breath, I was amazed by the way he was dressed: in an

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  elegant, long fitted coat with tails, crafted of sky-blue velvet. His light brown hair was longer and carefully combed, the curls keeping their shape stiffly in spite of the wind. Though still recognizable as the boy who had taunted me all my life, he was now a man and he looked different, much taller and wider in the shoulders. The bone structure of his face was stronger, and he wore a mustache on his upper lip.

  "Aren't you glad to see me back, Maeve? My mother told me what a beauty you've become, and she was right." He took a step in my direction.

  "Stay away from me, Tom Cavan!" I cried, all my frustration and fury directing itself at him.

  "You have spirit, and I've always liked that!"

  "Stay away from me!" I practically spit the words at him, and now his face darkened.

  "You'd like to leave here, wouldn't you? You'd like doctors for your mam, and nice things for your sister and yourself."

  "Why are you dressed like that?" I was about to tell him that he looked like a right idiot, when I suddenly felt afraid of him. Maybe it was the faint wafting of the unpleasant odor, apparent now and again from behind the strong cologne he wore, that made me think he was responsible somehow for what had happened to Mam. It seemed to me that he and his mother were involved in some way with the woman who'd tried to lure Ishleen toward the sea.

  I rushed away from him, suddenly terrified to have left Ishleen alone.

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  ***

  CHAPTER 9

  ***

  I told my brothers and Da that Tom Cavan was bothering me, and that I was afraid he might try some mischief with me if I was left on my own caring for Mam and Ishleen. That got them riled up and angry, and after that, Donal and Fingal alternated days staying home.

  Tom sometimes watched from a distance as Donal or Fingal walked the cows with us, cut peat or dug and planted.

  We enjoyed this privilege for three days, and then at dusk on the third evening, while both brothers were down at the beach helping Da haul in his catch, I heard the cow mooing anxiously from the byre. I went and checked and saw that her calf had broken through a loose board and gone off on its own.

  I went outside and, raking the distances with my eyes,

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  spotted the calf far off in the valley. A certain sweet flower grew down there in profusion around the dolmen stones near the vervain, and this little devil of a calf had a terrible sweet tooth.

  The clouds were edged in red from the lowering sun, and there was still enough light in the sky for me to go without a lamp. I grabbed a rope and ran down after her.

  Knee-deep in the flowers, her jaw working hard as she chewed, the calf blinked and gave me an irritated look, then twitched against the rope as I tried to secure it around her neck. She slipped loose and ran, tripping me so I fell into the flowers. I watched her prance up the hill, hopping more like a goat than a calf, in the direction of her mother's bawling moo.

  As I stood up, brushing myself off, I heard a man's low groan. I froze and, listening expectantly, heard it again.

  "Help me," the man said weakly.

  About a yard away from me, just beyond a group of standing stones, rose an embankment of earth. I had always thought that the hole past that mud wall may have been bog land in centuries long past.

  I looked down into the dim hollow and saw a man lying on his side, blood on his shirt and vest. He lifted his head, turning it slightly to look at me. With a shock, I recognized him as Denis Hayes, a member of the neighboring faction of the secret rebellion. He had come once to a meeting at our cottage.

  "Mr. Hayes!" I whispered.

  "The English ... invaded us in Dunloe, tied us up.

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  Took food and supplies. I fought one of them and he shot me...." He winced, tensing his entire body with suffering. He was about to speak again when I stopped him.

  "I'm getting my da and my brothers," I began, but before the words were completely out of my mouth, we heard the pounding gallop of approaching horses.

  "Hide!" he said. "For the love of God, hide, and don't show yourself for the world! They'll kill you as soon as look at you!"

  I got on my knees, quickly creeping in the tall grass past the embankment and then behind a large standing stone.

  The galloping came to a sudden halt, and I heard voices as the men dismounted.

  One voice got closer to me, and I went as hard and still as the stone I leaned against. A shadow loomed on the ground, and the approaching Englishman's breathing grew audible. My muscles burned and ached with tension. I saw the contours of his boot, so close was he to me.

  "Roberts! Come over here," the more distant voice called. "Look what I've found."

  The shadow was gone suddenly, and a ruckus broke out. I heard them beating Mr. Hayes, dealing him kicks and blows. My impulse was to jump up and scream at them, but I knew they'd kill me. If he could just survive, I kept thinking, I'll nurse him back to life! I squeezed my eyes shut and covered my ears.

  "Stinking Irish pig!" one of the Englishmen said.

  I clenched my jaw to keep myself from yelling.

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  Everything stopped suddenly. I heard them mount horses and gallop away.

  I got up and ran like mad, gesturing wildly at my father and brothers just as they were climbing the hill back home.

  When they did not return right away with Mr. Hayes, I filled a skin with water, wrapped bread in a cloth and made my way back down. The daylight was almost gone. Moving in the direction of the lamps, I ran into Donal. I could see by the sombernes
s of his demeanor that Mr. Hayes must have died.

  "I'm coming up to arrange for a pony and trap. We're taking his body back to Dunloe."

  Emmet Leahy arrived the next day. Donal, Fingal and Da and the other five men who'd been meeting for the past four years gathered in our cottage.

  I knelt beside Mam, who sat unmoving in her chair, her head leaning to one side, and explained to her who was there and the importance of the meeting that was about to take place.

  "It was awful, Mam," I said softly, "the way the poor man suffered."

  "Does she understand what's being said?" one of the men who'd been watching me with Mam asked Fingal.

  "I don't think so," Fingal remarked, shooting me an irritated look.

  "She does!" I snapped. "She understands!"

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  Ishleen sat at Mam's feet, drawing with charcoal on a flagstone. Now and again, she'd get up and hold her drawing before Mam's face. "Look, Mam, I've drawn flowers for poor Mr. Hayes."

  "The situation is dire," Emmet Leahy was saying to the men. "Hundreds of Irish have died of starvation in the south because of all the English raids and disturbances. Now they're up here in the north committing their dirty deeds."

  Fingal, listening thoughtfully, sat at the hearth raking the cinders, then stirred the torpid coals until they glowed, the fire reviving.

  The door was suddenly pushed open from the outside, and Tom Cavan appeared. He wasn't dressed in the odd, over-elegant manner he'd been in lately, but in the rough woolens and cap of an Ard Macha fisherman.

  "This is an open meeting," Emmet Leahy said. "You are welcome."

  Donal stood, ready to protest, and exchanged glances with Tom's father, who was in attendance.

  Tom gave his father and Donal a gloating look, then sat negligently in a chair.

  "The Spanish are our allies against the English," Emmet Leahy went on. "There is an ancient and powerful tie between the Spanish and the Irish. The northwestern coast of Spain has the same roots as we do in a Celtic mysticism, and we share with them a justified hatred for the English. If two very different countries can be soul mates, it is Ireland and Spain."

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  Tom Cavan listened to this information with absorption.

  Emmet Leahy continued, "We've received calivers and gunpowder from Spain, and also from Scotland. We've no choice but to arm the people rather than rely solely on mercenary soldiers. And after we've distributed the guns to each cottage in the area, I'm off with plans to infiltrate an English fort in Skibbereen. I'll need to be asking for a few volunteers to go with me."

  Donal and Fingal immediately raised their hands, and Leahy gave a nod of assent.

  "We should talk about our strategy," Emmet Leahy said.

  Donal looked at Mr. Cavan, who stood, then approached Leahy and took him aside, conferring for a few moments. Leahy then approached Tom. "I've met with all these men before. I'll be glad to come around and speak with you privately afterward. But for now, the rest of this particular meeting is closed."

  Glaring at his father and then at Donal, Tom said, "Such important men you are. What would any secret rebellion do without the likes of two such as yourselves?"

  Everyone in the room looked warily at Tom, especially his own father, the color high on his face.

  "You especially will be sorry," Tom said, pointing angrily to his father. "I'll find some way of making you suffer."

  He went out the door, slamming it after him. "Can we expect worse from him?" Emmet Leahy asked Mr. Cavan.

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  "I don't think there's treachery in him," Mr. Cavan answered. "But he's up to something, and he is a mystery to me. He leads an entire life that I don't know about."

  Emmet Leahy patted him on the shoulder.

  Later, I heard Mr. Cavan confiding to Da, "In my own home I am unwanted. His mother fawns over him, and the two of them treat me with disdain."

  The men went off to an undesignated place where guns were hidden, and to a quiet, vacant field where they could practice firing.

  When Da, Donal and Fingal returned late that night, I was waiting up. They settled themselves by candlelight, their faces ruddy with the wind. I poured steaming tea into their cups, then sliced a soda loaf and set it before them.

  "I'd like to learn to fire the gun," I said plainly as I faced them, ready to argue if I had to. In the hours that they'd been gone, I had thought of all the reasons I should know how to shoot.

  "No, for the love of all that's holy!" Da cried.

  I could see by the expression on Donal's face that he didn't think it such a bad idea, and maybe that was what made me even bolder. "I am often here alone caring for Mam and Ishleen," I said.

  "Be practical, Da," Donal said. "You don't like the idea of your daughter with a gun, but she needs it without us here. The English might come and you might not be home. I want to teach her."

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  Donal took something wrapped in cloth out of a satchel and, laying it on the table slowly, ceremoniously unraveled it. He explained to me exactly how it worked, and promised that in the morning he would take me out to the field and teach me to shoot.

  But very early the next morning, Emmet Leahy arrived and said they had to leave immediately, that he had received word of English soldiers on a road they'd planned to take. Now they'd have to head a different, longer way.

  "Da will teach you to shoot, Maeve," Donal said.

  It was a rushed goodbye, my brothers shuffling to get things, hardly awake and with no time even for a cup of tea.

  "I'm proud of both of you, my sons!" Da said, though all the color had gone from his face. We watched them move swiftly down the hill, following Emmet Leahy and two other men.

  That day, Da took the boat out on the water alone. Ishleen and I watched him staring at Woman's Crag, lost in thought. For the first time, he looked fragile, as if the mist might swallow him.

  This made me even more anxious to learn how to shoot, but I knew I'd have a devil of a time getting Da to teach me.

  That afternoon, an east wind blew in milder temperatures, and Ishleen, Mam and I went to the shore. As I

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  pushed Mam's wheeled chair, Ishleen carried two creels, one for each of us to collect the blue-black mussels from where they clustered on the rocks.

  Tom Cavan appeared out of nowhere, standing a few yards off on the sand, the tails of his sky-blue coat rippling in the wind as he watched us.

  "Maeve," he said. "I want to talk to you."

  "What is it?" I asked warily.

  "Over here," he said, beckoning to me.

  I stood up and started walking over to him.

  He moved toward me suddenly and grabbed my arm.

  "Stop it!" I cried, struggling free of him.

  His eyes narrowed, and he was fuming a little. He had grown so much larger in the last few years, and I was afraid of how strong he was. I wondered, too, about the mysterious life his father said he led. "The only sensible thing for us is to marry," he said.

  "No," I said firmly, and walked back toward the rocks, but he rushed after me and blocked my way.

  "Your brothers are gone and your father is old. You've no one to protect you. It's natural that we marry. In the end it will come to that."

  "It won't come to that," I said calmly.

  Ishleen peered angrily at Tom, who remained where he was.

  "What are you looking at, you odd little thing? You know your own mother is the way she is because of you!"

  Ishleen lowered her head and squinted in the mild sunlight, Tom's words piercing her.

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  It was the way he looked at Mam's vacant form with an air of triumph that made me think again of what I'd felt before, that he was somehow responsible for what had happened to her.

  "I'd never marry you, Tom Cavan," I said gravely. "Never!"

  He took in a deep breath. "You'll have nothing left, soon enough, Maeve O'Tullagh, and your hand will be forced. You should start getting used to the idea."r />
  He refused to leave, so Ishleen and I packed up our baskets.

  On the way up the hill, Ishleen asked me to tell her about Mam when she had still walked and spoke.

  "She could feel you wanting to be born," I said. "You were trying so hard to be with Mam."

  Ishleen looked at me, her wild nimbus of hair glinting in the sunlight.

  "Do you remember? Do you remember wanting to be born?"

  "I remember something," she said. "A place." I stopped pushing Mam's chair. "What was the place like?"

  "Very cold and windy. The walls and floors were made of ice."

  "I think it's where Mam's soul is, Ishleen."

  I described the vast room I kept envisioning, with its white and pale blue embellished walls, iced over, and the blasts of wind blowing sparkles of frost.

  "Yes, Maeve. I remember that room."

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  "Do you know where that place is, Ishleen?" I pleaded. She shook her head helplessly. "I only know it's very cold there."

  We scaled the hill, and when we were safe inside the cottage, I knelt down in front of her. "Oh, Ishleen," I said. "If you could just try to remember something more about that place."

  "I'll try, Maeve," she said.

  I went to the hearth and blew on the embers, and small flames appeared from the ashes. Ishleen gazed at them in earnest, as if they might jog some old memory.

  "It's cold there. Very cold. I wanted to leave."

  But try as we both did to find any other clues, all that Ishleen could remember was the cold and that particular iced-over room. And all we could do to quell our frustrations over Mam was embrace and kiss her, comb her hair and pamper the vacant body still with us.

  It wasn't a fortnight before we got a letter from my brothers.