The Fire Opal

by Regina McBride

  If I could have spoken to him, the thing I would have told him, as odd as it seemed in those dangerous moments, was about the dress of delicate metal and the room with the iced-over walls and the gusts of wind. And that if I could only find that place, I might bring Mam back.

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  It was just at this moment that I glanced over at Mam, and Francisco also turned and peered into the shadow where she sat. He gazed at her for a few seconds, then looked back at me.

  "Your ... madre? Mother?" he asked.

  I nodded, my heart sinking for poor Mam.

  He watched my eyes. His expression, worn from exhaustion and grief, was so unguarded that I was pierced by a multitude of sensations and a yearning of the same nature that I often felt gazing into the western sea. I looked away from him, stirring the oats until they were of a good consistency, then ladled a dish full.

  Ishleen and I watched with absorption as Francisco ate. He stopped once as he was raising the spoon to his mouth, looked at us, and a half smile broke onto his face. Everything about his handsome visage came into intense focus with that smile, which was skewed to one side of his mouth. A long dimple scored each cheek, and his eyes glimmered.

  When he finished eating, he approached Mam, focusing on the triple spiral around her neck. I touched his arm and showed him the one Ishleen wore with the little bottle attached to it. Francisco looked closely at it, as if in awe. For the last year or so, Ishleen had no longer needed the bottle sewn into her clothes for safekeeping, and now wore it as a necklace.

  "You have?" he asked, and pointed at my neck. I shook my head. Then he pointed to his jacket, which I had laid near the fire to dry. He went over to it, opened it, and showed me the compass with the triple spiral.

  He looked again in Mam's direction, then went to his

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  knees. He touched the spiral, and it hummed, so Ishleen and I looked at each other. For a moment, Mam's breathing became audible.

  Noticing this, he whispered, "Señiora, regrese anosotros."

  A certain effervescence came into her posture, and, though I was afraid to believe it, I thought I saw more light in her eyes.

  I got on my knees beside him and took Mam's hands, searching her face. Very gradually the little bit of renewed life faded. Still, as I knelt there, a flicker of hope caused me to shiver. Francisco, having grown tired, now hung his head and breathed with effort. He got up, dragged himself back to the bed, and lay carefully down, wincing as he did. He sighed and half closed his eyes.

  I pulled the curtain around him, then looked at Ishleen, who was peering excitedly at me.

  "What do the three spirals mean, Maeve?" she asked.

  "I don't know, Ishleen, but it's something we have in common with Francisco."

  In the middle of the night, there was a loud banging on the door. I bolted to my feet, and Ishleen sat up. "Maeve!" She gave me a frightened look.

  The fire had gone down to a few red embers in the white ash.

  Francisco drew aside the curtain.

  "No," I whispered, shaking my head.

  The banging began again, and a deep, unfamiliar male voice shouted, "Open, or I'll shoot the lock away!"

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  "English!" Ishleen whispered.

  I suddenly remembered the gun Donal had left for Da. I went to my knees and, moving the hearthstone aside, drew it out. I'd held it before, but was alarmed now at how heavy it was.

  Even though Da had never followed through and taught me to use the gun, I recalled the things Donal had said the night he'd explained its workings to me.

  "Donal said it has bullets," Ishleen whispered.

  The soldier pounded again. "Open!"

  Holding the gun behind me in my left hand, I opened the door. The sudden bright beam of a lamp pierced the shadows of the room. It was the soldier with the scar on his chin, the one who had shot Francisco and his two friends. He gave me an impatient cursory glance, obviously thinking I was no threat, and pushed in past me, his eyes on the curtain Ishleen was standing in front of.

  Sensing that she was hiding someone, he pushed Ishleen out of the way and drew the curtain aside, so roughly that part of it tore.

  He aimed his gun, and I saw his finger move obliquely toward the trigger. With lightning speed I pointed Donal's gun at his back and shot.

  Time got stuck then in a long, distended moment. The soldier froze, dropping the lamp, which landed on its side on the floor. Incapacitated, his mouth hung open and his eyes bulged in utter shock. Then, at last, he fell.

  Shaking violently, I put the gun down and picked up the lamp.

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  Francisco came out from behind the curtain and squatted beside the soldier. He took the gun from the soldier's hand and examined it, turning a cartridge and looking inside, counting the bullets.

  Everything we did from that moment on happened quickly. Wincing, Francisco was on his feet, laying a blanket on the ground. The three of us coaxed and rolled and pushed the soldier's body until he lay on the blanket. While Ishleen stayed with Mam with the door bolted, Francisco and I hauled the body down to the beach, Francisco stopping now and again and breathing with difficulty.

  A muted moon was just visible through the starlit clouds, and though it was still raining, there was a reprieve in its intensity.

  We laid the soldier's body close to the cold tide, which rushed in with purposeful momentum, pushing and pulling at him, trying to claim him.

  Francisco headed for the cliff, but I remained near the dead soldier, looking at his face, which the vague moon dimly illuminated. He was a young man. In death, no threat left in him, he had a soft, childlike expression. A bolt of remorse shook me.

  Francisco approached and took my arm gently, his dark eyes catching the moonlight and turning it faintly amber.

  Sensing his gratitude, I shivered inwardly and reminded myself that if I had not shot the soldier, he would have killed Francisco. Francisco's eyes made me feel

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  strong, my heart beating high in my chest. I imagined the soft metal dress and saw myself storming the icy, elegant room.

  Francisco looked at me as if he wished to convey something, but sighed. Perhaps he had not been able to find the words in my language. He touched my shoulder with his warm hand.

  "Vamos," he said in a quiet voice, and took my hand, leading me away from the dead soldier. "Your mama, your sister." He pointed toward the cottage.

  "You know some words in Irish," I said.

  He held his thumb and forefinger half an inch apart. "Irish," he said. "Poquito. Little."

  Lightning flashed in the sky, and a warm metallic smell filled the wet air. Moments later, thunder cracked and rumbled, and a new belt of heavy rain moved in over Ard Macha.

  Back in the cottage, I was still shaking as we dried off. I gave Francisco some of Da's clothes to wear and struggled to think of a safe place where we could go and hide.

  Ishleen helped me put things into a satchel: several blocks of turf and matches, a sack of oats and half a loaf of soda bread, ten potatoes, a turnip, and the bottle of whiskey.

  The wheeled chair was no good to us where we were going, through sand and jagged rocks and tidewater.

  Francisco and Ishleen took Mam's arms, guiding her, and followed as I led the way down the hill carrying the supplies.

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  ***

  CHAPTER 12

  ***

  To the south along the beach, under the limestone overhang where Da and my brothers used to fish for black pollack, there was a system of natural corridors that opened into a cave, deep enough in the wall of rock that a burning fire could not be seen from any passing boats. Because of the jutting nature of the headland, we lay completely hidden, a haven from anyone on shore.

  We slept there that night, though I could hardly call it sleep. My mind was in a daze, reliving the noise of the gun and the way it had shaken and deafened me, the face of the soldier in the rain and the tide.

  In the day
light, we came down from the cave and stood on the stones where my father and brothers used to fish. Hard rain still fell, and gales blew, and when it all quieted

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  a little, a mist descended so that we could see no horizon between sea and sky.

  Mam remained half sitting, propped up against a blanket in the cave. I led Francisco inside and gestured for him to go near her, and speak to her as he had the night before. He squatted down and whispered to her in Spanish. I saw again, with a racing heart, a subtle effervescent light encasing Mam, her eyes stirring faintly as if with memory. Ishleen and I watched breathlessly, but soon, as if the energy and faint animation were too difficult to maintain, the barely visible twinkling light fled all at once.

  Francisco gritted his teeth and closed his eyes, his hand hovering near the gunshot wound. I told him that I should clean it. He sat down on the ground. My hands shook as I carefully removed the makeshift bandage. I dabbed a cloth with whiskey and cleansed the gash in his skin. He winced, squeezing his eyes shut hard.

  When it was finished, Francisco stood and sighed, then went back out and wandered a few yards away. He sat on a shelf of rock with his arms wrapped around his bent legs, resting his face on his knees.

  The tide filled the pools between rocks with pollack and skate. I had brought a fishing pole, and while Ishleen sat with her legs dangling off the rock, catching fish, I stole glances at Francisco, who brooded there, staring down into the dark water.

  At dusk, the splatter of the rain on the sea took on a soothing, almost hypnotic sound. The mood of the weather had gone from violent to soft. I built a fire and

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  cooked the fish Ishleen had caught. We all ate, and then she went into the cave, where Mam was still propped up. Ishleen laid her head on Mam's lap and fell into a deep, exhausted sleep.

  The descending sun burned red in the humid sky, cleared of clouds. Francisco and I went south past the rocks to a long strand of beach, an unfamiliar stretch that looked like an alien country in the red light of the waning day.

  Big pieces of Francisco's wrecked ship bobbed and rocked on the waves, with some bits stuck in the sand or the rocks. As we approached, I was stunned to see the tide washing over a giant figure of a woman wrapped in kelp. We ran to it and discovered the twelve-foot-tall figurehead from the front of his ship.

  "Nuestra Señiora de la Soledad," he said.

  "What does it mean?" I asked.

  "Nuestra Señiora ... ," he began. " 'Our Lady.' "

  I nodded.

  "... de la Soledad," he continued, and hung his head, searching his mind for the word that might translate it best.

  " 'Alone,' " he said.

  "Our Lady Alone? Lonely?"

  He shook his head. "Soledad," he said softly, then looked at me and said enthusiastically, " 'Solitude'!"

  "Our Lady of Solitude," I said thoughtfully, and studied her. I cleared her damp polished face of seaweed, then ran one hand over her prominent cheekbone. Her mouth was the same shape as Mam's, lips pressed closed and

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  tense at the corners. Her wide open eyes were set upon something that no one but she saw. She was a giant beauty, but petrified in her eternal longing, seeing nothing but the thing missing from her.

  Walking down the length of her supine body, I studied the gracefully carved hands, both pressed to her heart. At the bottom of her dull rose-colored dress, the wood was fractured in places; salt had gathered there and glistened white like streaks of snow.

  Francisco gestured for me to help him bring her up from the water. With effort, we dragged her farther up the beach and stood her, impaling the broken wood beneath her hem as deep as we could into the sand. She towered over us, a monument leaning toward the western sea, facing the waves.

  "She's looking toward the Holy Isles," I said, pointing at the horizon.

  He nodded, understanding immediately what I had said. "Las Santas Islas," he said.

  He brought out his compass and showed it to me. The Spanish words that I'd seen there before were Las Santas Islas.

  Instead of north being the top of the four compass points, west was. The face of the compass was embellished in places with Celtic knots.

  I marveled that he, too, knew of the Holy Isles, and I remembered what Emmet Leahy had said about the ancient intimacy between the Irish and the Spanish. The triple spiral, I realized with wonderment, was connected somehow to the Holy Isles.

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  "I used to dream of sailing in search of the Holy Isles," I said.

  He nodded. "Peligroso ... dangerous journey."

  "But beautiful," I said.

  "Sí."

  He tapped his forehead with his finger. "Maybe only islas ... isles in the mind. El sueño de un niño. The dream ... of a child." He stared darkly toward the horizon, where the sun was still descending, causing the sky to burn very red and the streaks of gold to go purple. Gulls flew at all altitudes, cawing mercilessly above us.

  "I believe in the isles," I said, and touched my chest, nodding, in case he didn't understand. "I think they are there."

  I handed him back his compass, and as his arm brushed against mine, my heart gave a little jump.

  He noticed this and looked at me thoughtfully, then came close, a tender flinch in his eye. He touched my hair, sweeping a strand away from my face. I felt a kind of vertigo, as if I might fall, but in slow motion.

  He embraced me and held me close to him so that I could feel his strong heart beating against my neck. Closing my eyes, I felt myself melting into him, drifting into some other state of being, in which every pulse in my body tolled like a bell. After such upheaval, the world was recovering itself with a heightened intensity. The wind rose and fell, deepening some moments to a high chorus, then fading into silence.

  In that hour, as the sun disappeared and left the sky

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  dark blue, it was as if we were utterly alone on the planet, with only Mam and Ishleen safely dreaming in the nearby cave, the giant lady of solitude presiding over us.

  It was dark when we crept back to the cave. I took my place beside the slumbering Ishleen, and he took his place on the other side of the fire, which was almost out. A few times as I started to sleep, I opened my eyes and looked over at him in the light of the dying embers. His eyes were open and he stared into the darkness above him.

  In the middle of the night I heard soft voices. Both Francisco and Ishleen were deep asleep. I got up and crept out through the corridor to the threshold, following the sounds.

  The water was very still, the sky above, clear and wildly starry, and each star's reflection shimmered on the water's surface, a quiet festival of lights.

  On the shelf of rock where Francisco had sat in a reverie earlier in the day were two figures wearing purple jackets with silver braiding--the uniform of the crew of Nuestra Señiora de la Soledad, the same jacket Francisco wore. At first I could make out only their silhouettes and minimal movements, but the wet silver braiding issued a faint illuminated mist that rose like steam from their shoulders. I did not breathe, and gradually my eyes adjusted enough that I could see that the two young men were dark-haired like Francisco. They whispered and conferred excitedly with each other.

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  One of them saw me and informed the other one and they froze where they were. For some reason that I did not understand, I knew that they were dead or no longer of the world Francisco, Ishleen and I lived in. And then I realized why. They were the other two rescued Spaniards, Francisco's friends who had died when they'd been shot.

  The one who had seen me first took off his jacket, leaving it on the rock. His human silhouette lost its contours and he became a dark liquid shadow that poured itself into the water. The other one followed suit. When the water they had disappeared into had gone quiet again, I looked at the jackets that lay on the rock, sleeves in expressive postures still steaming, the wet silver cording ignited.

  I looked out at the sea. It must have been filled
with the Spanish dead, yet the elements seemed to be rejoicing and excited, in the way the two Spaniards had been before they'd seen me. Shouldn't the sea feel like a giant tomb, I wondered, floating with Spaniards and a single murdered Englishman? Instead there was a shivery animation to the new silence and the starlight, a charge on the air and an exhilaration barely held in check. I thought of Francisco sleeping inside, and my heart quickened. He seemed like the single survivor of a dark-haired breed of gods. Maybe he'd been meant for the sea as well, but Ishleen and Mam and I were keeping him, holding him in this other world.

  When I looked again at the shelf of rock, the two jackets were gone.

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  ***

  A few minutes later, Francisco appeared at the threshold of the cave, carrying the lamp, looking questioningly at me.

  I hesitated, then said, "Seals. I was watching them swim."

  He raised his eyebrows and smiled, then exclaimed in a soft voice, "Seals! They are ..." He struggled to find words. "Humans."

  "Like humans?" I asked.

  Ishleen came out then, rubbing her eyes sleepily.

  Suddenly, as if it were a vision, a Spanish boat appeared, an armada ship. "La Hermana de la Luna!" Francisco cried, and held up the lamp, waving his arms wildly at them.

  The ship dropped anchor. With the water so calm and the moon so bright, the sailors could see the rockiness of the beach and knew not to attempt to come closer. Two men boarded a small boat and were lowered to the water. They navigated between the rocks and came toward us as Francisco ran anxiously into the sea. He and the Spaniards spoke in urgent tones to one another.