In the Country of Shadows (Exit Unicorns Series Book 4)
Page 1
IN THE
COUNTRY of SHADOWS
Also by Cindy Brandner
Exit Unicorns Series
Exit Unicorns
Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears
Flights of Angels
Short Stories
Spindrift
IN THE
COUNTRY of SHADOWS
CINDY BRANDNER
IN THE COUNTRY OF SHADOWS
Copyright ©2016 Cindy Brandner
All Rights Reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system without the prior written consent of the author is an infringement of the copyright law.
Cover design by Stevie Blaue
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Published in Canada by
Starry Night Press
First Edition
Rev. 01/29/2016
For my grandmother,
Violet Brandner,
who first introduced me to the magic of Ireland.
Acknowledgments
The author’s thanks to:
My editors – Tracy Bhoola, Denise Ferrari, Carla Murphy and Mary Foley Hurst. I cannot even begin to express my gratitude for all your hard work. The book is so much better for it.
Karen Barth who ended up being my first reader as well as the last set of eyes to look at the manuscript – thank you for both the encouragement and the proofing.
All my beta-readers and proof readers – Connie Lawrence, Marie Sheehy Grip, Marcia Peterson, Lindsey Walsh Smith, Stephanie Williams McCartha, Laura Molina, Jackie Helus, Amy Quarry, Nancy Albano Burley and Marlonne McGuire. Thank you for all the careful reading and picking up of a variety of errata. Any mistakes left are entirely my own responsibility.
Thank you to Yuliya Miakisheva for checking over my little bits of Russian and making sure they were correct and to Isabelle Mulligan for correcting my French – Jamie appreciates it. ☺
Michael O Neil and Arlene Gillen, tour guides extraordinaire, thank you for the best and funniest tour of Northern Ireland imaginable. Mick, you always reignite my passion for Irish history.
Lisa Egan Wanket – both for the use of her name as well as showing me her beautiful city by the bay. Carol Cross for giving me a wonderful tour around the Haight and the Castro while relaying the history of the area.
Stevie Blaue for yet another beautiful cover.
Thank you to the readers who have shared their stories with me over the years, both those of their Irish ancestry as well as tales more personal. You all inspire me.
And last but never least, gratitude to my Patrick for always being my biggest fan and supporter. I couldn’t do it without you, babe.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Part One – Home
Chapter 1 – Home
Chapter 2 – Here, Nevertheless
Chapter 3 – The Disappeared
Chapter 4 – Noah
Chapter 5 – The King of the County
Chapter 6 – New Friends
Chapter 7 – Black Taxi
Chapter 8 – His Father’s Son
Chapter 9 – The Lion and the Fox
Chapter 10 – The Devil You Have
Chapter 11 – ‘In Falls of Sky-Color’
Chapter 12 – Tomas Egan, Esquire
Chapter 13 – The High Cost of Truth
Chapter 14 – ‘Should Time Dissolve This Prison’
Chapter 15 – No Small Thing
Part Two – Count the Stars in the Sky
Chapter 16 – You Take a Breath, and Then You Take Another
Chapter 17 – Count the Stars in the Sky, Noah
Chapter 18 – Qui Audet Adipiscitur
Chapter 19 – The Visit
Chapter 20 – Man of God
Chapter 21 – Life, Death and Lemon Loaf
Chapter 22 – The Weight of Blood
Chapter 23 – Dealings With Badgers
Chapter 24 – Nothing to Lose
Chapter 25 – Carpe Diem
Chapter 26 – Tea Spot
Chapter 27 – The Colors of Men
Chapter 28 – Hope is the Thing With Feathers
Chapter 29 – Circumstances and Madmen
Chapter 30 – Shooting Lessons
Chapter 31 – If Wishes Were Horses…
Part Three – Me, Without You
Chapter 32 – Pressure
Chapter 33 – Me, Without You
Chapter 34 – The Anatomy of Desire
Chapter 35 – Baptism of Light
Chapter 36 – The Peace People
Chapter 37 – From Dawn ’Til Dark, From Dark ’Til Dawn
Chapter 38 – Silence and Dignity
Chapter 39 – The Transitory Nature of Butterflies
Chapter 40 – Prayers and Penicillin
Chapter 41 – Recovery
Chapter 42 – Fire Without Smoke
Part Four – The Lotus Eater
Chapter 43 – The Lotus Eater
Chapter 44 – Molly Malone’s House of Blood and Pain
Chapter 45 – The Dream
Chapter 46 – The Fighter
Chapter 47 – The Ghosts That We Are
Chapter 48 – The Maid From the Sea
Part Five – A Glimpse of the World Before
Chapter 49 – The House With Moon and Star Shutters
Chapter 50 – Stars Falling All Around
Chapter 51 – A Glimpse of the World Before
Chapter 52 – Taking the Dive
Part Six – The Far Side of Barsoom
Chapter 53 – Roll Call of the Dead
Chapter 54 – An Acceptable Level of Violence
Chapter 55 – Too Deep For Tears
Chapter 56 – The Dreaming Coast
Chapter 57 – The Shape of Grief
Chapter 58 – The One Searched For…
Chapter 59 – Heart’s Truth
Chapter 60 – On the Far Side of Barsoom
Part Seven – The Dark Man
Chapter 61 – Solitude
Chapter 62 – Peace Comes Dropping Slow
Chapter 63 – The House of the Dead
Chapter 64 – Smoke From a Far Distant Fire
Chapter 65 – At the Crossroads
Part Eight – The Undefended Heart
Chapter 66 – The Workhouse
Chapter 67 – A Kirkpatrick Christmas
Chapter 68 – The Unbounded Ocean
Chapter 69 – And Still, And Always
Chapter 70 – Lost Things
Chapter 71 – Lost Things, Part 2
Chapter 72 – Decisions
Chapter 73 – The Proposal
Chapter 74 – The Answer
Chapter 75 – Patrick and Kate
Chapter 76 – Give Up Your Ghost for Good…
Part Nine – Cosan na Marbh
Chapter 77 – The Country of Shadows
Chapter 78 – Of Ice Cream and Men
Chapter 79 – The Infinite Ache
Chapter 80 – Loose Ends
Chapter 81 – Bittersweet Peace
Chapter 82 – …And Did But Half Remember Human Words
Chapter 83 – Great Hatred, Little Room
Chapter 84 – There Will Always Be Blood
Chapter 85 – Partners at Law
Chapter 86 – Two Weeks from Yesterday
Chapter 87 – Devil’s Bargain
Chapter 88 – The Shooter
Chapter 89 – I Rest in the Grace of the World
Chapter 90 – On a Deep November Night
Chapter 91 – Cosan na Marbh
Prologue
YOU CAN LIVE inside a shadow, for shadows are not as people think. Shadows have a life and substance of their own.
Watch them roll down the street as a cloud crosses the sun, watch them swallow pavement and light, feel the cold as it touches your spine, feel the fingers of the shadows as they skim through your hair. Feel the chill wind of a mountain against your skin, the snuffing of light as though it were tucked quick in a box when you enter the forest’s edge.
Sometimes we think we walk without our shadows, but I tell you this is not true. For when the sun is at its highest, blinding us with the gold of happiness and fortune, the shadow is still there, living within us, dense and whole, weighting our lives with premonition. It is only when the sun begins to sink and the shadow re-emerges, sliding sideways, breathing thick, moist vapors, that we realize it never left.
For in the umbral depths of a shadow reside many things; the dark architecture of need, the cold-breathing well of want, the drifting ship of love lost and hearts betrayed.
Shadows walk with us all our living years; they follow us out of bed each morning, keep to our sides during the day, amble along country lanes hand in hand, and flitter down moonlit pathways before us. We build many things from shadows: dark dreams, regret, vengeance, magic, borders, wars and loss.
We walk from sunlight into shadow, from year to year, all our lifetimes.
For this I tell you true, you can build a country entire out of shadows.
Part One – Home
Ireland
December 1975-April 1976
Chapter One
Home
HE WAS HOME. His lordship, James Stuart Kirkpatrick, having spent two years in a Russian gulag through what had been little fault of his own, (though some might argue that point) had arrived home at long last. His house, locally known by the illustrious name of Kirkpatrick’s Folly, basked in the chill light of a December afternoon, its amber stones aglow in the last of the pale winter sunlight.
The house looked much as it had when he had left it three years before, but he had changed markedly during that same time. He brought with him a son, aged one year, a Georgian dwarf and a very pretty young man with inconvenient senses.
The door stood wide, for he was expected. He hesitated for a moment, his son in his arms, the child’s blue eyes wide with curiosity, a stuffed cat clutched in his fingers. He took a deep breath, kissed the warm reassurance of Kolya’s red-gold head, and walked back into the world he no longer knew.
An hour later he felt that while you could, contrary to what Thomas Wolfe had to say on the matter, go home again, you might find it wasn’t the same place that you left behind. Everything felt unfamiliar, even something as simple as the pathway to his bed. He was seeing everything through a scrim of exhaustion, he knew, and a good night’s sleep would make him more right with his own world. At least he hoped it would.
They were gathered, at the end of that whirlwind first hour, in the kitchen, the Aga humming warmly in the background, food upon the table, tea at the ready. Shura had already, in his inimitable way, endeared himself to Maggie by complimenting her cooking and the orderliness of her kitchen. He had run an infirmary in a gulag for several years, and appreciated order and mastery when he found it. His command of English was impressive, though the heavy Georgian accent that accompanied it rendered it somewhat less than entirely comprehensible.
Vanya was quiet, taking in the house and its grounds, its inhabitants: Maggie, cook and housekeeper, Robert, secretary to Jamie, and Montmorency, the somewhat unprepossessing dog that he and Pamela had rescued many summers ago. Vanya’s amethyst eyes met his own now and again, and smiled as if to acknowledge how very far they were from that frozen gulag which had been the entirety of their universe such a short time ago. Vanya did not look like the refugee that he was but rather—with those eyes and Tatar cheekbones—he seemed a Slavic faun, an emperor in exile from the Babylon of the Snows.
Robert, in his reserved Scots way, was taking in each of them, clearly uncertain what to make of their bizarre troika, plus one. Kolya had crawled across the floor, and pulled himself up with drool-festooned hands, using the impeccable grey wool of Robert’s trousers. It was to the man’s credit that he merely lifted the baby up and set him on his knee, then gave him his flawless handkerchief to chew.
Maggie, Jamie noted with a pang of sorrow, looked older, her shoulders slightly stooped, but her welcome and love no less vibrant. She took the baby from Robert when it was time to eat and snugged him firmly to her hip.
“He’s a beautiful laddie,” she said. Kolya merely goggled back at her with his vibrant blue eyes. “But then with yerself for a daddy, I would expect him to be.”
“He is Andrei’s son biologically speaking, but mine in all the other ways,” he said, feeling that Maggie deserved the truth. “I was…I am…married to his mother.”
“Married?” Maggie said, looking around suddenly as if she expected a bride to materialize here in the warmth of the old kitchen.
“Yes, for a year in September,” he said. “But she is in Russia.” More than this he would not say, he did not speak of Violet to anyone, he did not think of her if he could at all manage it.
Maggie, being Maggie, did not ask any further questions. For this, he was inordinately grateful.
Her eyes met his—eyes that had seen him grow from a small lad to the man he was now and he knew she catalogued all the changes, for better or for worse, and kept her counsel about them.
“Ye’re too bloody thin,” she said, fiercely blinking back tears. “We’ll work on fixin’ that in the next while. Now, I’d best pour the tea for yez, before it’s fit to take the paint from the walls.”
With visions of endless potatoes and roasts in his near future, Jamie hugged her tightly, so that she might have no doubt there was still strength in him. He did look, he had to admit, a wee bit like a scarecrow left out in the field too long. He had managed a haircut and shave in Paris in an attempt not to look like a barbarian returned from foreign wars. Apparently, it was not enough to civilize him.
Later, when Kolya had been put down in the bed prepared for him, and Vanya had drifted off to the library, Shura to a bath and sleep, Jamie asked Robert to join him in the study.
The fire was lit and there was tea, steaming gently, on the desk. He had dreamed of good, hot Irish tea during his entire time in Russia. He had dreamed of many things during his time there.
The small Scotsman came in. “Sir?”
“Please, Robert, sit down.”
Robert looked tired. Jamie knew the preceding two and a half weeks must have gone hard on him as well. He was very fond of Pamela and her children after all.
“Robert, I will be to the point. Tell me what happened with Casey.”
Robert sighed, his small, wise-owl face drawn down in lines of sorrow. “I wish there were something to tell, sir, but there isn’t. As far as Pamela can discern, he went out one morning to check the property—something I understand he did on a monthly basis —and he never returned home. He was meant to go to work later in the day and never showed up there. She and Patrick searched the entirety of the property and every other location they could think of, and then called the police.”
Jamie raised an eyebrow. The police, all things considered, might feel the disappearance of a man who had been no small figure on the republican scene, a sort of gift. Both Pamela and Patrick knew this all too well and would have exhausted all other avenues first.
Robert noted the lifted brow and translated it accurately.
“And what are the police doing to assist?”
“About as much as you might expect, sir.”
“And Pamela?”
Robert rubbed his eyes, as tho
ugh they pained him. “Again, about what you would expect, sir. She’s in denial. Whether that is for the sake of her sanity or something that will go on indefinitely, I do not know. And perhaps she is right to hope at this point.”
A heavy silence fell between them, because this was Belfast and the most likely scenario that would have snatched Casey away from his family was one that ended in blood and pain in a wee hillside hut, until the merciful bullet to the back of the head came. Pamela would know this as well as anyone. Those scenarios played out in a week at most and nearly three weeks had passed since Casey’s disappearance.
“She was here earlier today. She wanted to be certain all was prepared for your arrival. I think she finds it easier at times to be here, rather than at home. There’s a passel of women there just now, and I suspect she’s more than a bit overwhelmed.”
Jamie nodded. When in the midst of a tragedy she would seek solitude.
The man sighed, his entire frame pensive inside its expensive grey wool suit.
“What is it you’re not telling me, Robert?” Jamie asked, setting his teacup down on the desk.
The Scot moved his glasses back up his nose. “Why do you think that, sir?”
“Because it’s roughly the size and shape of an elephant, and standing right here on the rug.”
“That will be my cue, then,” said a sharpish voice from the entry.
Jamie stiffened. “Grandmother,” he said, and the tone could not be construed as one of great joy.
“Grandson,” she replied and nodded to Robert, who stood and, like the wise man he was, exited the study posthaste.
Small and neat, his grandmother crossed the room to him and proceeded to startle him with a rather fierce hug. It only served to add to his feeling of having arrived in a world unfamiliar in its lineaments.
She held him out at arm’s length. “Well, ye’re a bit worse for the wear, but that’s not anything which can’t be mended.”
Jamie thought he’d had enough of being assessed. “Would you like a drink?”