Nanny Sullivan was tall with silver hair that was always cut short. She had the presence and demeanor of a queen, and it seemed as though she could look right through you. At the same time, she had a twinkle in her eye that let you know she was not as stuffy as she looked. She was sitting in her usual place, in a rocking chair on the front porch of her small cottage, her legs crossed at the ankles and her hands resting politely on her knees.
“Hello, Murphy clan!” she boomed with a voice that can only come from a life of calling out instructions over the wind.
“Nanny!” the kids shouted as they ran up the dock to her house.
Sean jumped up on her lap and nuzzled his head into her neck, “Would ya look at this lad. He’s as handsome as his father and gettin’ bigger by the day.” She gave him a hug and looked up at Eileen and Meg.
“And how’s Eileen?” Nanny had a lilting Irish accent that had softened only a little from living in America so long.
“I’m good, Nanny, real busy as usual. I have a big dance competition next week and we just found out that my soccer team is going to play in a tournament.”
“That’s wonderful, dear,” Nanny patted Eileen on her shoulder. “Now, Shay, take the wee one from me so I can grab a hold of the birthday girl.” Shay picked up a squirming and now unhappy Sean from his grandmother’s lap and Nanny pulled a reluctant Meg towards her.
“Ahh, look at ya. As beautiful as a Connemara sunrise, and I think you may have grown since the last I saw ya.”
“Nanny,” blushed Meg, “I was here two days ago and am just the same.”
“No, Meg. I’d say yer definitely a smidge taller and a tad wiser. I watched ya bring the boat between the point and the rock and from the way ya were piloting the Muirín in this heavy wind, I’d say yer the finest sailor in these waters. How’s my birthday girl?”
“I’m fine, Nanny” said Meg.
“Oh! Just fine, are ya?”
“Just fine,” said Meg with a yawn. “I’m a little tired ‘cause I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
“Well, isn’t that funny. Neither did I.” She looked around at the family. “It was the strangest thing. Around midnight, I was sound asleep and was woken by the loudest crash. I thought a plane from the airstrip had smashed into me front room. I got up and looked around the house, but there was nothing.”
“Oh, my God, Nanny! That is exactly what happened to me last night, too.” Meg got right in front of her and looked into her grey eyes, “Finn and I thought that a tree had fallen on our house. We looked around, but there was nothing.”
Mark chimed in, “I found her outside with the dog around midnight, and she was talking pretty excitedly about a big crash she heard.”
“How strange is that?” said Shay. “Both you and Meg heard a loud crash at the same time and in two different places.”
Nanny Sullivan pursed her lips and frowned as if she had recalled something bad and repeated, “Strange indeed… a crash… a crash... ” Suddenly her face softened as she gave up trying to remember. She said to Meg, “No granddaughter of mine can be ‘just fine’ on her birthday.” She got up from her chair and grabbed Meg by the shoulders. “Tired or not, it’s time to celebrate. Ya only turn eleven once.”
Just before they entered the cottage, Nanny paused and looked down at Meg. It looked as though she had remembered what she was trying to recall just a minute earlier. She held her pointer finger in the air near her temple and took a breath like she was about to speak, but instead gave Meg a strange smile and continued inside. Meg returned the smile but she couldn’t help but wonder what her grandmother was going to say before stopping herself.
6
The Gift
Just inside the door of Tír na nÓg was a sort of all-purpose room that served as a living room, dining room, and kitchen. The windows faced the sea and the fireplace was always lit. Nanny had a couple of bricks of Irish turf burning brightly on the fire.
A few years back, Shay had found a distributor of turf in America and had purchased some for Nanny, to give her a treat from her home country. Because Ireland is not heavily forested, there is little natural wood available to burn in fireplaces. For centuries the Irish have been cutting bricks of peat bog and drying them out to use later as fuel for their fires. Peat is composed of decaying plants that have been compressed for thousands of years in wetland bogs. These bogs are then carefully trenched and cut into bricks using a slane, a spade-like tool with a flat blade that has a wing on one side that allows two edges of the bog to be cut at the same time. The dried turf burns longer and more evenly than wood and produces a sweet-smelling smoke. When Nanny Sullivan lit a brick of turf for the first time since leaving Ireland, the scent brought tears to her eyes. In fact, Nanny was so overwhelmed with memories of her home that she immediately signed up for regular deliveries of turf and it was now the only thing she burned in her fireplace. Even blindfolded, it was possible to find Nanny’s house on Fishers Island just by following the sweet aroma of a turf fire.
Nanny swung the tea kettle that was hanging from a hinged bar and chain over the fire. She sat down in a chair that faced the fireplace and windows looking out to sea. The kids sat on the floor in front of Nanny as Shay grabbed tea cups and plates from the cupboard. No visit to Nanny’s would be complete without a cup of tea and, of course, cookies. As the cups were handed out, Nanny Sullivan looked at Meg with a big smile and began.
“Now, as ya know, our family has been in love with the sea as far and as long as we have been around. It’s in our blood. When I was a child on the Island, I learned to swim before I walked ‘cause there was always a chance of being dropped overboard, as we traveled everywhere by boat.” Nanny winked and the kids laughed. “Most fishermen on our island didn’t want to learn to swim because they would rather go right under the water if their boat sank, but we were always different. Me father was a fisherman by choice, not necessity; he came from a long line of sea captains.” Nanny held her head up high with pride.
“You see, a ship captain spent his life at sea and was rarely at home. My father loved my mother so much that he couldn’t stand to be away from her on the long voyages, so he gave up being a captain of a ship for becoming a fisherman with a currach. It was a simpler life and much harder but he was able to be with his family every night, and that, he said, was worth more gold than any ship could hold.”
Meg loved to listen to her grandmother tell tales of the old country. She never missed a chance to come out with her mom when she came to check on Nanny.
“But a captain he was, one of the best in Ireland. He knew how to sail by the stars and he taught all of his seafaring knowledge to his daughter—me,—and this is what he taught me with.”
Nanny reached into the drawer of the side table next to her and took out a beautiful, ornate-looking metal object. She held it up for a moment for everybody to see and then handed it to Meg. It looked like one of those old-fashioned pocket watches but it was just a little larger and very heavy for its size. It was made of brass or bronze, was well worn from use, and had etchings all over the surface of beautiful Celtic knotwork, along with all sorts of strange, stylized creatures. On the face, in the middle of all the artistic etchings, was a strange letter that Meg didn’t recognize. It kind of looked like the number 5 but the top of the letter was long like a T. There was a hinge on one side and a latch on the other.
“Go ahead…Open it, Meg,” Nanny urged.
Meg carefully pushed the latch open to reveal a set of instruments, all in the same brassy metal, ingeniously hidden inside of the cover. These instruments were covered in more etchings and words in what looked to Meg like Gaelic. One of the instruments was flat with discs and levers, another looked like a sundial when folded out, and yet another had a compass in the middle. Each instrument was covered with numbers, words, and beautiful artwork. It was, without a doubt, one of the most beautiful things Meg had ever held in her hands. Holding it as if it was a sacred relic, she looked up at her grandmo
ther with a quizzical look.
“It’s an astronomical compendium, a sort of Swiss army knife of ancient mariner’s instruments. With it you can calculate time, latitude, longitude, the tides, and the movement of the stars. Your family has used this tool to travel the world by sea for generations, and I’m hoping your mom will teach you how to use it, because it’s yours now.” Nanny Sullivan looked down at Meg. She was beaming with pride.
“Oh, Nanny… I can’t…I just can’t take this from you. It is priceless,” Meg said.
“Ya must, Meg. I will never travel away from this place, and your mother has followed in the footsteps of my father and become a fisherman. Eileen will be a movie star someday,” said Nanny, winking at Meg’s sister, “so it is up to you to travel the world and follow in the family tradition of being a great sea captain.”
“Oh, Mom!” said Shay “The compendium. Really? It should be in a museum somewhere, not in the care of a little girl.”
“Mommy is right, Nanny. This is a treasure, and I just can’t take this from you,” Meg said, trying to hand the compendium back to her grandmother.
Nanny looked around the room with her sternest, queenly stare. She was clearly upset with their words and was just about to speak when little Sean jumped on her lap yelling “Treasure!” breaking the tension. At that, they all had a laugh. Nanny held her little grandson, smiled, and looked again at her family. The kindly twinkle had returned to her eyes, but she was still very serious.
“This treasure,” she said, tickling Sean, “has been handed down in my family for ages, each time to the next, great, seafaring child. It would have been my brother’s…” Upon mentioning her brother, Nanny made the sign of the cross, touching her finger first to her head, then to her chest, then to her left shoulder, then her right shoulder, “… had he not been lost at sea at eighteen years of age, God rest his soul. After losing his son, my father didn’t even want to give it to me, for fear of losing his only other child to a watery grave. But I swam out to his currach one day and forced him to teach me its secrets.” Tears welled up in her eyes, and she added, “It no more belongs in a museum than I and it is as much a part of our family as the blood that runs in your veins.”
Meg took the gold chain that held the compendium and put it around her neck, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I am honored to carry on the family tradition, Nanny.”
At that moment, the radio on Nanny Sullivan’s counter crackled to life.
“Coast Guard station to Tír na nÓg. Kathleen or Shay, are you there?”
7
A Death in the Family
“Shay, are you at your mother’s?” came the familiar voice over the radio.
“Tír na nÓg to Coast Guard station. Yes, John, I am at my mother’s. What’s up?”
“We just got back from Race Rock Light and there was no woman out there. Are you sure you saw someone there?”
“Of course we did, John, or we would not have called it in. She was an older woman with white hair sitting on the sea wall, the whole family saw her. Did you see a kayaker on the water anywhere near Race Point?”
“There was no one on Race Rock Light and no boaters on the water, Shay. No one but you or your mother would be out near The Race on such a windy day with the tide going out. You must have seen that ghost from the TV show, over.” With the last response they heard laughter in the background.
“A woman with white hair out on Race Rock Light?” Nanny said, looking more serious. “Ya didn’t tell me about this.”
“I haven’t had the chance to tell you yet. As we were coming up towards Race Rock Light, we saw an older woman sitting on the sea wall. We figured she was one of those crazy ghost hunters that had paddled out there, because she was in a long, grey dress just sitting on the wall.”
“And crying!” blurted Meg, surprising her family. “I heard her crying as we approached.”
“I already told you that was the rigging singing, Margaret Grace,” Shay said sternly.
“No it wasn’t. It was just like the crash last night. You didn’t believe me about that, but Nanny heard it also.” Meg pleaded, “Nanny, as we neared Race Rock Light, I heard a woman wailing and crying on the wind… And then we saw her on the wall. She was bent over and combing her hair and…and…crying. I know it was her.”
“Meg, Sweet Pea, you are overtired and emotional and you are letting your imagination run away with you,” said Mark, trying to ease the situation.
There was an awkward silence and then everyone noticed that Nanny Sullivan was crying.
“Nanny, what’s wrong” said Eileen.
“He’s dead,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes. “It all makes sense now … Everything. I knew I had heard that crash before and the ‘shee confirms it.”
“Mom, who is dead? ‘Shee?’ Do you mean banshee? What are you talking about? I think we all need to calm down, take a deep breath, and pull ourselves together,” said Shay.
Eileen grabbed her grandmother’s hand. “Who’s dead, Nanny?”
“My father.”
“Your father. Mom, I didn’t even know I had any living grandparents… And now you say one is dead.”
Nanny stared into the fire, motionless for what seemed to be an eternity. She then spoke, not lifting her gaze from the burning turf. “I was a little girl, only about Meg’s age… I was playing out in the fields. It was a lovely day… I was watching a beautiful white cow that I had never seen before, walking along the lough when a storm came in out of nowhere off the Atlantic. Me father and brother were out fishing as usual and me mother came out to the field where I was and rushed the two of us into the cottage for shelter.
“The storm was fierce and the wind cut through the walls of our cottage like they weren’t even there. All afternoon me mother and I waited and prayed that me father and brother would walk through the door in their oilskins, but they never came… It was a long and heart-wracking day, but I had fallen asleep somehow.” She paused and took a sip of her tea.
“In the middle of the night, there was a loud and terrible crash that shook the house to its foundation, that woke me from me sleep. With the storm blowin’ outside, I thought something had been thrown onto our little cottage, but me mother knew what had happened.” The recollection of the crash made Nanny’s hand tremble, causing her tea cup to clink in its saucer.
“Me mother told me that stormy night how the old families are watched over by the spirits, and when someone from an old family passes to the other side, the fairies knock the houses of their kin to let them know. When me mother heard the crash, she knew right then and there that me father and brother were dead. She was crying and inconsolable for the rest of the night.
“The next morning the storm had passed and we went out to the shore to look for the bodies.” Nanny Sullivan looked up from the fire and said to them, “First we heard her, for her keen is known all across the land and sea. The melodious and sad wail was coming from the banshee mourning the death of her kin. We walked towards the shore and we saw her on the rocks in the distance, in a grey cloak, crying and wailing as she combed her white hair. Me mother and I rushed towards the ‘shee but when we reached the rocks it was gone. Then, miracle upon miracles, we found me father on the shore, clinging to his life along with an oar from his missing currach, but me brother was nowhere to be found.” Nanny reached for her handkerchief to dry her tears again. “We carried me father home and nursed him back to health, but we never recovered me brother’s body.”
Meg looked up from Nanny and then over to her mother, who looked like a deer in headlights. Nanny cleared her throat and continued, “Me father was never the same after. By day he sailed around the ocean and at night he walked the shore, always searching for his lost son. I stayed by his side as much as I could, but he would not let me go to sea with him no matter how much I begged. One day I got so fed up with being left behind that I swam out to him as he was pulling away in his boat and he had no choice but to bring me on board. He begrudgin
gly took me along. We sailed along the coast, from island to island looking for the remains of me brother. The next day he didn’t say a word to me but waited at the door of our cottage for me to follow when he left, so I knew he wanted me to come along. We searched all over and spent a lot of time on the Atlantic. A family friend lent us a sailboat and we pushed out our search even further. It was on these searches that eventually he taught me the skills of the sea and navigation. One night, after a long voyage, he gave me the compendium that he had taught me with.” Nanny pointed to the object in Meg’s hands.
“Day after day, week after week, month after month, we searched for my brother’s body. If it weren’t for the kindness of our neighbors we would have starved because me father had stopped fishing. Don’t get me wrong. I missed my brother, too, but you must move on at some point. After months of searching I begged him to come back to the world of the living and laugh with his wife and daughter. But a death at sea is hard to accept, for you never can say goodbye to the mortal remains, and me father was heartbroken from losing his only son. I was young then and didn’t understand everything, and I was also very headstrong. I could not get over me father’s refusal to let go. I stopped going out with him on his searches and we ended up fighting all the time. So when I turned eighteen, I hopped on a ship and left him and me mother behind.”
Shay was dumbstruck. “Mom, I had no idea. Why haven’t you told me any of this before?” she said.
“Hard memories are best left behind so they don’t weigh ya down,” said Nanny with a scowl.
There was an awkward silence.
“I have grandparents,” Shay wondered aloud.
The Pirate Princess: Return to the Emerald Isle Page 4
