by Lisa Henry
“I’d rather stay here. Hide away forever, safe.”
“You’ll be safe at home, Ciaran,” Darragh said, feeling Ciaran stiffen in his embrace. “With your father.”
Ciaran pushed away from him. “You don’t want the reward, do you?”
Darragh frowned slightly. “If your father gives one, I’ll take it.”
Ciaran narrowed his eyes. “No, listen to the question, because I’m not asking about what you’ll do, I’m asking about your motivation, understand? Why are you taking me north, Darragh?”
“To keep you safe.”
“And that’s all?”
Darragh nodded. What else was there?
“Fine,” Ciaran said, some strange emotion that Darragh couldn’t read passing over his face. He shoved his hands under his armpits. “Fine.”
“Are you cold?” Darragh knelt down and opened his pack. He pulled the sleeping bag out and unrolled it. “Take your boots off. You were walking like a lame horse the last of the way here.”
There was nowhere comfortable for Ciaran to rest, but Darragh wondered if he could sit against the wall then maybe Ciaran could use his lap as a pillow. If he didn’t bristle at the suggestion, of course, or take it as an invitation to something more. Not that Darragh didn’t want that something, of course—he always did with Ciaran, it seemed—but he wanted Ciaran to get some rest more. And he didn’t want Ciaran to feel pressured, or like a whore. Because he wasn’t, and Darragh would rather die than make him feel like he was one.
Ciaran unlaced his boots and stepped out of them, shivering as his socks made contact with the cold stone floor. “Just imagine what it was like here when they built it. How cold it would have been in mid-winter and how miraculous to see the light coming in.”
“Hope,” Darragh said quietly. He sat down on the floor and stretched his legs out. “In the middle of winter, suddenly hope.”
Ciaran dragged the sleeping bag closer without Darragh suggesting it, and Darragh’s chest swelled. Ciaran unzipped it and climbed in. “Do you want to share?”
“I’m fine,” Darragh said. “You just rest. Against me, if you want.”
Ciaran nodded, shifting closer. Half-sitting, he leaned against Darragh’s side. “I bet you had some dark winters in your village, as well.”
Darragh nodded and put an arm around him. “The first one … when all the adults were gone. We didn’t have enough turf. Hadn’t even thought of it, but then we used up everything that was already in the houses. We burned twelve chairs one night. We would have burned everyone’s, going house to house to get them, except Maeve said we were being stupid and there might come a time when we wanted chairs again. So we burned everything in Mr. Garrity’s attic instead.”
“Why Mr. Garrity’s things?” Ciaran asked curiously.
“His house was the nicest.” Darragh sighed. “The big house. We figured we were in charge, we should live in the best house. Well, it wasn’t the best after that first winter.” He snorted. “It’s a wonder we even survived.”
Ciaran snuggled closer. “It’s not a wonder at all,” he said. “You’re a stubborn shite.” He was silent for a long while and then said, suddenly, “I bet Rabbit thinks we’re fucking.”
“Let the little pervert think what he likes,” Darragh snapped. Ciaran’s muffled laughter surprised him. “What?”
“He’s okay,” Ciaran said. “He’s just jealous. Actually, he’s so frustrated it’s like he could blow a gasket every time he looks at us.”
Darragh held Ciaran closer. “I don’t like him looking at you. Not if it upsets you.”
“I think even if it didn’t upset me, you still wouldn’t like it.” Ciaran flashed him a sly smile, peering up at Darragh through his lashes.
“Maybe,” Darragh said grudgingly, unwilling to admit to any jealousy. He didn’t own Ciaran. Ciaran was his own man, and could choose his own partners. Choose who had the right to be territorial and jealous over him. He wasn’t an object to be hoarded or guarded, to be treasured or misused.
“It’s okay, you know.” Ciaran sat up, straightening his shoulders. “If you don’t like other men looking at me, that is. Not liking is different from trying to … own me. We can’t help what we feel, but we can help how we behave.”
“That sounds like something my da would have said.” Darragh closed his eyes for a moment. “He was smart, like you.”
“I’m not smart.” Ciaran hugged his knees to his chest through the layers of the sleeping bag’s fabric.
“You are,” Darragh said firmly. “If we’d had someone like you with us, maybe we wouldn’t have made so many mistakes.”
“I would have burned chairs, too.” Ciaran smiled ruefully. “And if I was smart, I wouldn’t have been captured by Boru. I wouldn’t have let him keep me captive. If it had been you …”
“It wouldn’t have been me. He would have never wanted me the way he wanted you. Which isn’t your fault, it just … is.”
Ciaran sighed. “I fooled myself into thinking the only reason he kept me alive was because I was clever. That otherwise I would have ended up like Danny. But it wasn’t because I was clever. I was just desperate. Every time I told him some bullshit about what a wise and great king he was, I wasn’t playing him like I thought. He was just fucking with me all over again.”
“I think you give him too much credit, Ciaran. He’s insecure and paranoid, just a petty tyrant. He needed to hear the things you said, he did. Look how desperate it made him not to have you anymore. Desperate and sloppy. Without you playing him and whispering into his ear, he’s even crazier. He needed you. He’s nothing without you.”
Ciaran shivered.
“We won’t talk about him anymore,” Darragh said, sliding his hand along Ciaran’s upper arm, rubbing warmth into him. “He’s far behind us now. All of it is far behind us, and you.”
Ciaran was silent for a while. Then, tentatively: “Darragh?”
“What?”
“Darragh, I don’t want to go north. I know you think that’s where I’ll be safe, but it isn’t true, not really. I’ll be … I’ll be an object. Everyone will know what happened to me. They’ll look at me, and they’ll know. And my father … my father will use me. To make a political point. I’ll be no better off than I was with Boru, paraded around, humiliated, no say in my own fate. I don’t want that.”
Darragh’s stomach clenched. “Oh. But what about Danny? Was he your friend? Was he with you? Don’t you think his people need to know what happened? Even if your father parades you around, you wouldn’t be his puppet. You have your own voice; you could use it.” Even as he said it, he knew how much he was asking: for Ciaran to open himself up to scrutiny and ridicule and disapproval from his own father, and all the while to have people goggling at him and knowing. He’d be Boy all over again, even if nobody was fucking him.
“I don’t know …” Ciaran closed his eyes. “I’m just so tired.”
“So rest, then,” Darragh said. “Rest, a rúnsearc.”
Ciaran summoned up a sleepy smile. “And things will be brighter in the morning?”
“Sure they will.” Darragh stroked his hair and smiled. “And if they’re not, we’ll catch our own sunlight, won’t we? Perfect place for it.”
“Just have to wait here until winter, yeah.” Ciaran laughed softly, his body nudging Darragh’s as it shook.
“With you? I don’t mind.”
“Me neither,” Ciaran murmured.
Darragh continued to stroke his hair long after he’d fallen asleep.
It was dark when Ciaran woke up. For a moment he didn’t know where he was, then it hit him: Newgrange. How often had he read about this place? Dreamed of seeing it? He sat up, careful not to disturb Darragh, and unzipped the sleeping bag slowly. Around him, the earth seemed to hum, a soft white noise that had helped lull him to sleep but now energised him. In the flickering lamplight, the ancient carvings seemed to shift and move, chevrons pouring down like rain on a window and swirls twist
ing tighter and tighter in on themselves but never knotting.
For a moment Ciaran wanted to know—just like every other person who had ever stepped foot inside the place, he imagined—what it meant. What it signified. What gods it spoke to. And then, quite suddenly, the need flowed away and he was content to simply experience it, to not know at all, and just to feel, for a brief moment, that he was a part of something timeless, something beyond his understanding. Knowing was nothing.
There were newer carvings too. Graffiti, really, that somehow earned a strange value as the years passed. Men’s names carved into the stone, and dates, evidence that they had been there. Ciaran felt no similar urge to leave his mark. His feet had trod here, that was enough. After all, with no one to see them, these names were meaningless as evidence, remembered only by the stone. The stone would remember Ciaran’s footsteps, too, and the weight of Darragh’s head where he leaned against the wall in sleep.
Ciaran climbed to his feet, his socks whispering against the floor. He reached out to touch the wall and drew the pads of his fingers across the stones. Smooth with age. Cold, but not dead. Not frightening. This didn’t feel like a tomb at all. It felt like a cathedral.
Ciaran left the lantern with Darragh, not wanting him to wake up in the dark. The scant light it gave off was enough for him to pick his way into one of the small alcoves off the main chamber. He was unafraid, not superstitious like Darragh or Rabbit. He felt a little guilty for filling their heads with stories of the Dagda and dead kings of Tara, but that was part of the mythology of Newgrange, and when else could he share it? A structure as magnificent as this one, as enduring, of course had a long mythology surrounding it. Not that Newgrange needed such a mythology to add to its stature. It was already marvellous in its own right.
Ciaran closed his eyes for a moment, revelling in the darkness and the quiet, and then moved into the main chamber. He was hungry now, hungry enough that it drew him back from his near meditative contemplation of the place. He crouched down and dug around in Darragh’s pack, pulling out two protein bars.
Because if he was hungry, so was Rabbit.
He headed barefoot down the passageway to the entrance, squeezing through the narrowest section and glimpsing natural light again—it was almost dusk. He climbed outside, hauling himself over the entrance stone. “Rabbit?”
For a second Ciaran thought he’d abandoned them, or run off and betrayed them, but then he popped up from behind one of the large stones that encircled the place. “I thought the Dagda got yous!”
Ciaran threw him a bar. “No, we’re having a fine time with him, actually. Nice bloke and all. Have you seen anything?”
Rabbit shook his head. “Nah. It’s quiet, so.”
“If you need to sleep, call out for one of us to take over.”
“Right, little birdie,” Rabbit said. “So.”
Ciaran clambered back into the darkness of Newgrange.
When he made his way down the narrow tunnel, Darragh was awake sitting against the wall. He grinned when he caught sight of Ciaran. “You came back!” he said.
The corner of Ciaran’s mouth twitched in a bemused smile. “Of course I did.”
And he suddenly remembered the time he hadn’t … the time he’d left Darragh asleep and fled towards Dublin. Endangering them both again, and for what? Had it been pride? God, he couldn’t even tell anymore.
He sat down beside Darragh, drawing the unzipped sleeping bag over their legs. “I took Rabbit a bar. He’s going to call out if he needs one of us to watch while he sleeps.”
“I’ll do it,” Darragh said. “I’ll stay awake if Rabbit can’t. You can stay inside and sleep.”
Ciaran elbowed him in the side gently. “I should. I’m the one who’s already had a sleep.”
Darragh put an arm around him. “Sure, but you’re the one who needs to work on getting his strength back.”
“Always looking out for me, aren’t you, Darragh?”
“Always,” Darragh said simply. He looked away briefly. “It was a lie, wasn’t it? That thing you said to me the night you left.”
It was all a lie. Until it wasn’t.
“I don’t know what you’re asking,” Ciaran said instead, swallowing through a dry throat and fisting the sleeping bag. “I …”
“It’s all right, Ciaran. I’m not angry anymore. I just … what we were saying earlier made me think. What you said was for me to give you back what Boru took. It made me drunk, hearing you say that, thinking I could. Ever since I met you, I’ve wanted to be a hero for you. A hero, like in the old stories.” He gave Ciaran a smile and a nod. “But I can’t give you that, can I? That was just something you said. Just a line, like you fed Boru about being wise.”
“God, Darragh. I don’t …” Ciaran reached up and cupped his hand to Darragh’s cheek. “It wasn’t a lie, all right? I said it to manipulate you, I’ll admit it, but it was never a lie.”
“But it was.” Darragh didn’t seem angry, though, although God knew he had the right to be. He smiled—sadly, but a smile all the same—and covered Ciaran’s hand with his own. “Because I can’t give you that back. I want to, but I can’t. I thought I could, but I was wrong. I watched you today, the way you ran to this place, the way you were suddenly alive …” He shook his head, as though frustrated with himself. His eyes shone, and suddenly Ciaran felt strangely afraid, like he wasn’t ready to hear what Darragh was about to say. “You’re your own hero, Ciaran. You save yourself. You never needed me at all.”
“Not true.” Ciaran shook his head, his voice barely more than a whisper. He dropped his hand, fisting it in the fabric of Darragh’s shirt. “Not true. I needed you. I need you.”
“You’re stronger than you think.”
“Maybe so. I don’t see it, but maybe so. But you.” Ciaran’s heart pounded, and he realised he was panting, desperate, like his life depended on getting his meaning across, getting these words right, making Darragh understand. “Darragh, you saw me as a person when nobody else did. You protected me. You swore not to hurt me. You cared for me. You … you physically rescued me!” Tears sprung to his eyes. He hadn’t meant to yell, and yet there it was. He was completely out of control, like a scared child.
Darragh took both of Ciaran’s hands, staring deep into his eyes with that calm, simple sureness, like he saw all the world at once and could comprehend it as simply as a page in a picture book. “I loved you,” he corrected, taking all of Ciaran’s protestations and condensing them into that single fact.
You … Ciaran couldn’t even form the word.
“I loved you,” Darragh said again, and something regretful passed over his face. “Ciaran, I love you.”
Well, that was the cat out of the bag. Darragh didn’t know what he expected from Ciaran—anger, disbelief, accusations of lies hurled at him—but he didn’t regret saying it. He wasn’t ashamed of it. Afraid of it, maybe, but not ashamed. He’d been feeling it for a long time, and now he’d said it.
Ciaran just stared at him, his hands twitching in Darragh’s loose grip as though he wanted to pull away, but he didn’t.
“So, there’s that,” Darragh said, trying to find the words. “Maybe you don’t believe I can feel it, but I do. Maybe you think a dumb culchie like me doesn’t understand it. Maybe you think because my parents died, because everyone did, that I don’t know what I’m talking about. There’s a lot of things we kids learned ourselves, a lot of things we got wrong, but we love one another. So, you know, I do know what it feels like.”
“What does it feel like?” Ciaran asked him.
“Feels like I would do anything for you,” Darragh said, his face burning. “Feels like I don’t ever want you to leave.”
“But you’ll make me leave you anyway?” Ciaran’s brow creased. “To keep me safe?”
Darragh nodded, swallowing painfully.
“You,” Ciaran said, and paused for a moment. “You can’t give me back what Boru took, but you can give me something else instea
d. You have. What you just said, what you told me, nobody’s ever told me that before.”
“Nobody?” Darragh couldn’t believe that.
“Well, my da when I was little, and my nanny and stuff, but nobody … nobody like you.” Ciaran smiled. It wavered. “Nobody who made a choice to be in my life, like you. No boyfriend ever said it. No lover.”
How was that even possible? Ciaran was … It didn’t make any sense. “Why not?” Darragh asked before he could help himself.
It was a terrible question to ask, but Ciaran didn’t falter. “Just wasn’t anyone I felt that way with, I guess.” And then, taking in Darragh’s confused expression, “You know, committed to? Uh, serious about?”
“Are we ‘serious’?” Darragh asked, trying out the word as he’d heard it used, and even though this question was perfectly fine, now Ciaran reacted with a laugh.
“I’d say we’re dead serious,” he managed to get out between snorts. “You know, because we keep almost dying.”
Which was true. There was an element of danger to their relationship. Back in Cúil Aodha, there had always been the fear of death by disease or famine, and yes, of course, it cast a shadow over the love lives of those who’d found partners there, but it seemed like that threat was different somehow, a constant grim companion instead of a fleeting, unpredictable terror. No telling which was worse.
“Is that all it is?” Darragh asked, wondering if Ciaran understood. Was it only shared fear, or a morbid sense of obligation that entangled them? In the North, would Ciaran have wanted him? Would he have found room for Darragh in his life if it hadn’t been reduced to this?
“I don’t know,” Ciaran replied. “But I … I do feel bound to you, in a way. Like our fates are tied together, if you believe in that sort of thing—which, I suppose, if there’s room for the Dagda then there must be room for destiny in that blockhead of yours.”
It was a joke, Darragh supposed, or kind of like one, but he didn’t smile. “Don’t say ‘bound.’”
He didn’t want Ciaran to see chains between them.
“I can’t think of another word.”
Darragh ran his thumb along Ciaran’s jaw. “Me neither.”
