“What did Nanny tell you about our family’s history?”
“Not much, actually. I’ve learned more this week than I have in my entire life. She would just say that we came from the islands off the west coast of Ireland and were once great sea captains.”
“You would have to be great sea captains to sail these waters, huh, Mom”
“This is definitely not Fishers Island Sound, Meg,” her mother said with a smile.
Looking at the coast of Connacht from the rocking boat, Meg’s mind drifted off. She was daydreaming of sea captains and ships and escaping from invaders to save a heritage. Her existence seemed so childish up to this point; all she had ever done was play and read. Meg thought of the compendium that was hanging around her neck and had a newfound goal for her life. It was up to her to save the family legacy, become a great sea captain, and to travel the world. It was an easy dream to have at this moment, sailing up an unknown shore in a sailboat with billowing red sails.
They were enjoying the sail on a broad reach, almost running with the wind. Suddenly, the wind changed direction. In an instant, the sheets back-winded and the boom that held the main sail swung violently across the hooker throwing the Cailín Mo Chroí on its side. Shay was caught off guard, as she was not fully used to the boat, and did not release the lines in time to stop it. Like a rag doll, Meg was thrown overboard into the cold water.
“Meg!” she heard her mom scream.
The shock of the cold water hit Meg like a wall, taking her breath away. She fought to catch her breath and righted herself in the water. The ocean swells were huge, and she struggled to swim back towards the boat, “Mommy!”
Meg was heaved up and down, water crashing over her, but her lifejacket kept her head above the water. She swam as hard as she could, but despite all of her efforts the boat kept getting farther and farther away.
Swim, Meg, swim, she thought to herself. Meg saw her mom swing the boat around to come back towards her, but it seemed that she was caught in a current opposite the wind. The current swept her out to sea while the wind pushed the hooker and her mom away from her.
In between the waves she could see the boat and also the cliffs that she had seen earlier. But with every rise and fall of the waves, they became smaller. Meg was breathing so hard and was so cold that she could not think straight.
All right, Meg, fifty-degree water should give me about thirty minutes before hypothermia…, or is it fifteen minutes? As she thrashed against the massive swells, Meg tried to remember the boating safety course she had taken when she was nine. No matter how hard she swam, she was unable to change how fast she was drifting away from land and her mother.
In what seemed to be an eternity, she finally stopped swimming to see if she could get her bearings. When she looked up she could no longer see the cliffs on the shore. Her inability to see land scared her to death, but she easily made the red sails out from the grey-green ocean and swam harder.
Come on, Mom. Get that boat moving. Meg could see that Shay was forced to tack the boat back and forth against the wind to follow the current that was dragging Meg. The wind was strong, and Shay was tacking quickly, but the distance between Meg and the boat grew by the minute. Unlike the boat, Meg had no wind resistance and her little body was being carried away with the strong current at a rapid pace.
Between swells, when she was at the bottom of a wave, fear overtook her. But then, on the up swell, she would get a glimpse of red triangles in the distance, and felt hope. The roar of the waves filled her ears with white noise. Up and down, comforted and terrorized, wave after wave, she agonizingly watched the sails shrink from the peaks of water, until finally, after emerging from the bottom of a large swell, she could no longer see the boat.
THIS CAN’T BE HAPPENING! Meg was overcome with terror as she went down into the next valley of water. She swam as hard as she could to get to the top of the next wave, but all she saw in front of her was the heaving ocean.
Meg was seized by the idea of never again seeing her family. Her strokes against the current slowed, she began to cry out loud. This was impossible. How could this have happened? If only she hadn’t been daydreaming and was paying attention to what the boat was doing. Meg looked up at the sky above her, too tired to swim. Her struggle against the sea had completely exhausted her and she was losing consciousness.
Meg’s last thought was of Nanny’s brother being lost at sea. Then she felt something push hard against her.
15
The Aftermath
“Meg, honey, please wake up.”
Meg heard her mother’s voice. Her head was spinning and she was in a thick fog. Then it all started to come back to her. Meg remembered being in the water and freezing cold, and that she had just lost sight of the boat, but she was now warm and dry, and smelled a familiar smell in the air: burning turf.
“Are we at Nanny’s?” Meg said in a daze. She opened her eyes and didn’t recognize where she was. The room around her was small and dark and she noticed the turf fire burning in a fireplace.
“Oh, thank goodness!” her mom exclaimed, hugging her. “I was worried sick about you.” Tears welled up in her eyes. Shay held onto Meg for what seemed an eternity, but the feel of being in her mother’s arms after such a frightening experience was just what Meg needed.
“Where are we?” Meg asked.
“We are at Nanny’s house. Well, the one she grew up in on Inishbofin.”
“Huh?” Meg was confused.
Shay told Meg how she thought she had lost her forever. She tried to get the sailboat back to Meg, but the current carried her away too quickly. When Meg disappeared out of sight, Shay had nearly lost it, thinking her baby was lost at sea. Then Meg suddenly appeared again, apparently in another current that had brought her right back to the boat. Shay said it was the strangest thing she had ever seen in her life. But she didn’t care how it happened because she was then able to save her. Meg was unconscious and hypothermic as Shay hauled her into the boat. Shay always carried a hypothermia prevention and management kit when sailing in cold waters, so she immediately got Meg into a heat-reflecting bag, knowing its self-heating liner would help. Shay nursed her with the sails down, and they had drifted for a couple of torturous hours when a passing motor yacht found them and towed them to the island.
“It was lucky for us that a kind man happened to be cruising up the coast to Inishbofin at the same time.”
A man stepped out of the shadows. He was older than Meg’s mom, and had black hair with specks of grey throughout and a long, drooping grey moustache. Behind his glasses, his tiny dark eyes were cold. He was dressed in jeans and a worn leather jacket, and he had a fedora hat on his head.
“I’m sure glad you’re all right,” he said. “Your mother was terribly frightened when I reached your boat. We tried to radio for help but could not get through, so we came right to Bofin. You were not that far away when I found you.”
Meg gave him a questioning look. He noticed her apprehension and took his hat off. “Bofin is what the locals call the island. The name’s Al, Al Woods. You’re a lucky little girl,” he said in a strange accent that wasn’t Irish.
“Thanks. I think,” said Meg.
“Mr. Woods towed us here and helped me get you to the only nurse on the island. Thank God he’s been here before and he knew right where to go. He stayed here with me all night as I kept watch over you.” Meg looked up at the man and smiled.
Shay went to a counter and brought back a cup of tea in a very old, beat-up cup. The smell of the tea overwhelmed Meg’s senses and, as she sipped it, she could feel its warmth travel down into her stomach. Mr. Woods walked back into the shadows, sat in a chair by the door, and did not say a word. Shay held Meg’s hand after she finished the tea and sat there, just staring at her. In all her life Meg had never seen her mother act this way. It was as if she did not know what to do and, to Meg, Shay was always in control. Finally, Shay looked down at her with big eyes and said, “Oh, Meg, I am so
sorry. This is all my fault. We should have just driven up from the airport and taken the ferry here, but instead we had to stick to our ridiculous vow… At a minimum we should have been wearing dry suits. I can’t believe I was so stupid.”
Meg didn’t say anything because she could clearly see that her mother was upset, but in reality she felt just fine. So what if she got a little hypothermic? It was no reason to go against something they both believed in. Thankfully she was swept back to the boat— in her mind she could still feel whatever it was that had pushed her back. They sat there just looking at each other for quite a long time while the fire sizzled in the background. Finally, Meg yawned and her Mother said, “You’d better get some more rest, honey. I need to go into the village to let the nurse know you woke up. I’ll bring you back some warm stew, and I want to let Mr. Woods go back to his boat. He has been here a long time.” Shay reached down to Meg, brushed her cheek, and gave her another long hug.
“Don’t worry, Mommy. I’m okay. It’s a good thing you are always prepared and had that hypothermia kit. You have always said it’s better to be safe than sorry.” Meg looked up and smiled at her mom. “And thank you, Mr. Woods. I sure am glad that you were on the water yesterday.”
“As am I, Meg,” said Shay returning the smile. “If you think you are okay, honey, I am going to walk Mr. Woods to the village, but I’ll be right back.”
Meg nodded at her mom and snuggled into the bed. Mr. Woods gave Meg a smile and tipped his cap as he walked out the door with Shay.
Meg looked around her. She was inside a tiny stone-walled cottage, and there was not much around, just a single chair by the fireplace and a few cabinets. On the wall opposite to her was a pair of small windows and a single wood door with a wrought iron handle. Whoever lived here sure didn’t take care of the place because it was a mess. Then she recalled it was her Nanny’s old house, and realized that this was the place where her great grandfather had died. A chill ran up her spine. She drew the covers over her head and tried to remember what had happened.
She was in the water and thinking about being lost at sea like her great uncle, and she felt something pushing at her back. What in the world had pushed her? Her mom said a current swept her back towards the boat. Could you feel a current pushing you on your back? What could it have been? Whatever it was, it had evidently saved her life.
She heard the door squeak and, despite being frightened, she peeked out from under the covers. A boy about her age entered the cottage. He was wearing a long-sleeved tee shirt and pants with, strangely enough, big rubber boots. Meg saw he had a close-cropped hair cut and, even with the darkness of the cottage, incredibly blue eyes and very red cheeks.
“Excuse me,” Meg called out to the boy.
“Ah, yer awake. I saw yer ma leave with The Digger and she asked me to come over and stay wit ya,” he said with a deep Irish accent.
“The Digger?”
“Yah, that’s what I call yer man who is always digging things up around the island. I tink he’s an archeologist like Indiana Jones or something.”
“You know about Indiana Jones?”
“Of course I do,” he said, offended, “just ‘cause I’m on an island doesn’t mean I’m backward or something. You Yanks are something else.”
“Sorry,” said Meg, embarrassed. “What’s your name?”
“Dermot Liam Davin. But you can call me Trout.”
“Trout?”
“Yeah. Me da likes fly fishing in the rivers when he’s not fishing at sea. It’s mad. He’s a fisherman who likes to fish when he’s not fishing. He said when I was little I ran around all of the time and was very hard to catch so he called me Trout and the nickname stuck.”
Meg laughed out loud.
“It’s good that yer laughing. Your ma thought you were going to die. She said you were nearly swept out to sea.”
“I thought I was, too, but something pushed me back.”
“Something pushed you back?”
“Just before I lost consciousness I felt a hard push on my back. It was the weirdest thing.”
“Must have been a selkie,” Trout said confidently, spiking Meg’s interest.
“A selkie?”
“You don’t know ‘bout them?” Trout challenged. “They’re shape-shifting fairies of the ocean. The selkie looks like a seal but can shed its skin and take human form on land. There are many stories of them and they are all good, but know this, if you ever find clothes on the shore and no one else around,” he looked left then right “don’t take ‘em. They’re the enchanted skins of a selkie who is up on land, and if you take ‘em, the selkie will not rest until you give ‘em back.”
Trout looked at her very seriously. “Sometimes a selkie would trick a human into marrying and even have kids with ‘em. Then someone in the house would find their seal skin hidden away, by accident like, and the selkie would have to go back to the sea where it came from.”
Meg liked this boy.
“But since the selkie still loved their kids and missed ‘em, they would come back to play with ‘em, but only in their seal form.”
“Dermot…err… Trout, I was being swept away by a current and the last thing I felt was something pushing me hard on my back. It did feel kind of like the snout of a seal,” Meg said, starting to believe she had been saved by a selkie.
“It had to be a selkie. We always thought The O’Flaherty was searching for a selkie wife. Me da said his wife just disappeared one day and The O’Flaherty was always walking around the shore looking for something. Maybe you have a fairy great grandmother.”
The mention of her great grandfather brought Meg back to reality. He was dead and they were here for his funeral.
Trout saw her face change. “I’m sorry. Did I scare ya?”
“No. My mother told me our family is protected by the fairies, but I just remembered that I’m in my dead great grandfather’s house.”
“Oh yeah, jeeze, I forgot about that. This is the first time I’ve been in here too,” he looked around with a frown on his face.
“Why did you call him The O’Flaherty?”
“He’s the last one around here. It’s a title like.”
“Oh,” said Meg and then the door opened and her mother came in with a steaming bowl and a loaf of bread on a tray.
“I better go. Nice to meet ya. I’ll see ya’s later.”
“Thanks, Trout,” said Shay, as he walked out the door.
Shay put the tray of food in front of Meg and explained to her that Trout was one of Owen O’Flaherty’s neighbor’s kids. In fact, Trout’s family was the one that Nanny had called to check in on Owen, and they were the ones that found Owen dead. Nanny had grown up with their grandmother and they were the only contact she had on Bofin. Trout had two siblings just like Meg: an older brother Dennis and a younger sister Deirdra.
Trout’s father Declan was a lobsterman like Meg’s father, but instead of a big diesel boat he used a currach to tend his traps. A currach is a light boat made out of a wooden frame covered, in the old days with skins, but now made with canvas and, like the Galway Hooker, currachs were covered in pitch to keep them waterproof. Meg was told that the small light boats almost floated over the water and were very adept at handling the big swells in this part of the Atlantic. Traditionally they were rowed but many now had an outboard motor attached to the rear.
While Shay was telling Meg all about the neighbors, Meg hungrily ate the stew and almost the whole loaf of bread her mom had brought. Soon after, however, Meg drifted off again into a deep sleep.
16
A Ferry Ride
The sun was shining through the tiny cottage windows when Meg woke up next to her mom in the small bed they shared. She was completely refreshed because, unlike the previous couple of nights, she had had no dreams and slept the whole night through. The turf fire had died at some time during the night and there was a chill in the air. Meg noticed that the fireplace had the same kind of hinged arm for hanging a teaket
tle that Nanny had in her house back at home, but this one was much larger. There was a large pot next to the fireplace that must have been slung over the fire for cooking and the larger arm must be for handling it.
The floor, like the walls, was made of stone, and it was dirty from not being swept in a long time. Meg looked at the walls. They were white, kind of, but like the floor, they were dirty from years of smoke from the fire and not being cleaned. The whole cottage was in shambles.
Meg’s mom woke up shortly after she did and they got dressed and left the cottage. Meg felt completely rested and totally unharmed by her whole ordeal at sea. In fact, she was feeling quite invincible with the fairy protection and all. The wind was blowing hard and the sky was sunny as it had been the day before. The view in all directions was breathtaking. From the door of the cottage Meg saw another island just south of where they were, and to the east she could see the coast of Ireland. The shore was much hillier than what she had seen the day before, and in the distance there were peaks of strangely shaped mountains.
They first walked down to a harbor along a road that was barely paved. Up from the harbor they walked to a fancy hotel. During their walk the weather went back and forth several times between sunny and drizzly. Irish weather was very different from the weather in Connecticut. From the stories that Nanny had told her, the last thing Meg expected to see was a nice hotel, but apparently the remote fisherman’s island in the Atlantic where Nanny was raised had become a big tourist attraction. There were now a few hotels and spas that accommodated vacationers on Inishbofin. Meg and her mom ate a wonderful breakfast, with soft, new-age music playing in the background. As they ate, they enjoyed looking out at the incredible scenery that drew the tourists from all over Ireland, and the world, for that matter.
“Meg, we have to go into Cleggan to take care of some business.”
The Pirate Princess: Return to the Emerald Isle Page 9
