Emerald Magic

by Andrew M. Greeley

  At the center of the linen wrappings was a delicate cap fashioned of a dark-colored fabric woven with pearls. Nothing more.

  Patrick sat, lost in thought, while the wind whipped all around him, pondering the significance of what he had found. Finally, unable to make sense of it, he took out his handkerchief and painstakingly wrapped the fragile cap in it, stowing it in his pocket. He then rewound the linen and returned it to the chest, which he quickly reburied, obscuring the hole once more.

  BY NOON THAT DAY Patrick had still not come to peace about his quandary. The handkerchief burned a hole in his pocket, his mind itching to make sense of it, why his father considered the pearl cap to be such treasure.And why had he not sold it, when he sold everything else of value they owned but Fionnbar? The beautiful horse was awaiting his leave-taking as well; Old Pat had offered him to the constable who patrolled the three counties and who promised to come by at midsummer to pay in grain.Money had ceased to be of much use; there was no food to be bought, even when there was coin in the pocket. Old Pat was worried that the constable, when he finally came, would be as empty-handed as everyone else.

  At noon Patrick checked the hen. She had been a solid layer before the blight, and was fairly young, so while her eggs were small, she still produced one most days, even now that she was foraging in the grass in the absence of feed. She had laid that morning, and so Patrick was shocked to discover a second egg in the nest, gleaming white with a hint of milky blue, the one color he could distinguish.

  This all-but-magical occurrence, and thoughts of the faerie ring, set his mind to thinking about Bronagh, the witch-woman who lived alone at the northern outskirts of Glencar. His uncle Colm had once accused Bronagh of stealing his milk in the form of a hare, back when Colm still owned cows. Bronagh had delivered Patrick, and most of the children in the village. She climbed nearby Carrauntoohil, the tallest peak in Ireland, gathering herbs for medicine and ceremony, and was said to celebrate the pagan feast of Lughnasadh, but still managed to attend daily Mass at Queen of Martyrs, Glencar’s tiny church.

  Father Flaherty, the pastor of Queen of Martyrs, had publicly declared, after hearing her confession, that she was harmless, a bit daft, perhaps, and without question odd, but not in league with Satan, and therefore should be pitied as the forlorn and lonely woman that she was, to whom kindness should be extended whenever possible. Bronagh, in turn, had tended the priest in his final hours as he lay dying of typhus resulting from the blight, had brought him consolation and a spiced soup that had broken his fever, eased his suffering and helped him to sink into a peaceful, painless sleep until his passing.

  Bronagh kept to herself unless a baby was coming, or an illness needed tending. She could sometimes be seen in her tiny, rocky garden, but otherwise remained in her odd hut that backed up to the foothills of Carrauntoohil.

  Bronagh knew everything.

  Before he could think better of it, Patrick was standing at the gate of her broken picket fence, a blue hen’s egg in his hand.

  The old woman was hunched over in the corner of her garden, scratching futilely at the dry soil with her walking stick.

  “Blight’s taken the turnips and the horseradish as well,” she said; her voice had the harsh sound of wood beneath the saw blade. She looked up then, and when her eyes lighted on Patrick they gleamed.

  “Well met, Patrick Michael Martin,” she greeted him, shambling forward to the gate. “You’ve grown a good deal since we’ve last shared the wind.What brings you? Is someone ailing?”

  “No, ma’am,” Patrick said respectfully. “I’ve brought you a hen’s egg.” He held it out to her.

  The old woman’s face hardened slightly as she took the blue egg, turning it over in her hand and studying it.When she looked back up at him her black eyes pierced his.

  “What is it you wish to know, Patrick Michael Martin?”

  Awkwardly, he reached into his pocket and withdrew the handkerchief, carefully unfolding it to show her the pearl-laced cap.

  Bronagh breathed deeply.

  “Come into the house,” she said.

  Patrick took off his hat and followed her into the small white hut. A single stool and a hay pallet covered with a linen sheet were the only furnishings. A rusted black pot hung on a crane over the fire. All about the place were jars and sacks and open mats on which herbs and flowers lay drying. An open doorway out the back appeared to lead to an outdoor root cellar of some sort.Woven reeds forming a St. Bridgid’s cross adorned the wall, dressed with dried foxglove. The wind whistled through the open door, raising to his nose a thousand scents, spicy and sweet, sharp and musty, all at once.

  Bronagh went to the fireplace and ladled some water from the bucket beside it into the pot over the fire, then slipped the egg into it.

  “I can make you root tea if you wish, Patrick Michael Martin,” she said, her hunched and bony back to him. “That and a bite of the egg you brought are all I can offer you.”

  “No, Bronagh, thank you,” Patrick said hastily. “What can you tell me of the cap?”

  The old woman turned, her eyes dark as tunnels in the backlight of the hearth fire.

  “Where did you find it?” she asked. Her harsh voice was softer with import.

  “In the forest back of the house,” Patrick replied nervously, suddenly wishing he had kept to himself.

  “Ah.” Bronagh revisited the pot, stirring carefully. She sat on the stool, gesturing to Patrick to take the floor, which he did. “Your father must have hidden it out there, then.”

  Patrick felt ice constrict in his veins. “Why would you say such a thing, Bronagh?”

  The witch eyed him levelly. “Was it in a sea chest?”

  “Aye.” Patrick cursed himself for the weakness in his voice.

  “Then the cap must be your mother’s,” the old woman said.

  “From their wedding? Is that why he saved it?”

  Bronagh smiled. “You know that’s not the answer without even asking the question,” she said. “Within you, you sense that there is more.”

  “Aye,” Patrick admitted, “though what that may be, I’m not certain.”

  “Do you wish to know the truth, then? I will tell it to you if you want to hear it, though I suspect you’ll not thank me for it.”

  “Go on,” Patrick said, laying the cap on his thigh to avoid touching it with hands that were by then covered in sweat.

  “That is the cap of a murúch, a merrow,” Bronagh said. “A sea creature, part human, with the tail of a fish. You’ve heard the tales, no doubt—the dream of sailors, the daughters of Cliodhna Tuatha Dé Danann—they are real, lad. They live within the waves of the sea a thousand years or more, never aging, soulless; their immortality is in this life, not the next. When they finally die, they but turn to foam upon the waves. Your mother, Aisling Martin, is a merrow.”

  “My mother is a devout Catholic,” Patrick whispered. “And a daughter of Ireland.”

  “Aye, she may appear to be,” Bronagh nodded. “But if she is a merrow, it is naught but appearance. Everything about her that you think you know is an illusion, Patrick Michael Martin.

  “The merrow lives in the depths, venturing close to the rocky shore—do you know why? Because deep within her there is a compelling desire to walk upon the land, to see the dry world. It is a desire beyond reason, and there is but one way for her to fulfill that desire.” The witch leaned closer to Patrick, who was trembling now as if with cold. “She must entrust her red pearl cap—red this is, Patrick, though you probably cannot see that—to the keeping of a human man, a sailor most often. If she does this, she grows human legs, the webbing between her fingers recedes. And then she can walk the earth and see the sights she has longed to see all her life.”

  Bronagh rose and went back to the fire. She swung the crane out from the flames, fished the egg out of the pot with a spoon, and returned to the stool, cradling the egg in her ratty apron.

  “Once a merrow gives her cap to a human man, however, it i
s as if she has given him control of what little semblance of a soul she has. The freedom and the joy she once knew in the embrace of the sea is gone, replaced by a meek, compliant nature. She becomes a gentle wife, a patient mother, a woman without a thought for herself. The ocean that is her birthplace and her home is forgotten, along with all the spirit that it once gave her; merrows are creatures of immense passion and humor, daring and full of spit and vinegar in their natural state. Now she is a shell, a hollow shadow of her real self. And the man who holds her cap likes her that way. She tends to his needs, gives him comfort and sustenance, bears his children, keeps his home, all the while remaining ever young and beautiful, even as he ages unto death. It is hard to blame him, I suppose; what man wouldn’t want such a thing?”

  “You’re daft, Bronagh,” Patrick said testily. “My father adores my mother.”

  “No doubt,” the witch said dryly. “But he adores her as she is, diminished, obedient, shallow like the landscape you color-blind gos-soons see only in shades of grey, willing to believe that this is as the whole world is. It is not, Patrick—the world is a place of endless color, of vital, blooming color. Just because you do not perceive it does not mean it is not there.” The old woman sighed. “But, of course, in life men hold the reins, just as your father holds your mother’s cap in a sea chest buried deep in the forest.”

  Patrick ran his finger over the tiny pearls in the fabric, white pricks of light against a flat, dark background.

  “What if I were to return it to her?” he asked.

  Bronagh tapped the egg against the knobby white wall, cracking it. “You will both lose her forever if you do,” she said seriously, peeling away the shell. “A merrow only remains with her husband because he has hidden her cap. Should she find it, or be given it back, she would immediately seek to return to her home in the sea. She will abandon house, husband, child, without a second thought. You will never see her again.”

  “No,” Patrick said harshly. “You are wrong, Bronagh.”

  The old woman’s dark eyes met his, and there was deep sadness in them. “You asked for the truth, Patrick Michael Martin, and I have given it to you. I am not saying this to decry your mother. But there is great magic in the sea, a magic much too strong to resist. Your own father knows it; ask yourself why he brought her here, to this rocky place in the lee of the tallest of Ireland’s mountains, when all his young life he plied the sea by choice? I suspect that you yourself have never seen the sea. Your father knows what Aisling would do were she to find the cap—every sailor is versed in the lore of the merrow. He took her from the sea. She has forgotten her life there. But if you give her the cap, she will remember, and she will abandon all she knows of this world for a chance to return to it. She has been a prisoner of sorts all of your life, and before, ever since she left the sea. Everything she has done she has done against her will, but she does not know it.” Bronagh lifted the peeled egg to her mouth. “Perhaps it is kinder not to tell her.”

  The only sound that followed her words was the crackle of the fire. Bronagh took a bite of the egg, watching Patrick as the young man wrestled with his thoughts. Finally, he stood and shook out his hat.

  “Thank you, Bronagh,” he said hollowly.“May God sustain you.” He turned and walked to the doorway.

  “Wait,” the old woman blurted, struggling to rise. “What are you about to do, Patrick Michael Martin?”

  “I won’t be certain of that until I do it,” Patrick replied. “I still believe you are mad. But I think my mother is entitled to the truth. In another time it might not be so; were Ireland hale and fertile, I might be tempted to let things be. But my father’s insistence on remaining in Glencar is the weight that unbalances the scale. I cannot allow him to keep her here at the cost of her life, even if that costs him her love.”

  Bronagh shook her head sadly. “He has never had her love, lad, nor have you,” she said. “All you have is her enforced fealty, against her will, nothing more.”

  “Be that as it may, she has mine,” Patrick said. “And if in that I must let her go forever, then I must.” He put his hat on his head.

  The old woman swallowed the last of the boiled egg and brushed her hands against her torn skirts.

  “The day I caught you as you came into this world was a good one, Patrick Michael Martin,” she said.“May God grant you as many more good days as He is willing to.”

  Patrick nodded his thanks and hurried out the door, brushing the sting of the cottage air and the water from his eyes.

  HE STOPPED at Donovan McNamara’s place on the way home to beg the loan of Donovan’s remaining horse. It was nigh on three o’clock by the time he returned to the house.

  Aisling stood in the road, waiting to meet him. Her face was serene, but her eyes held a tinge of concern. She said nothing, but eyed Donovan’s horse questioningly.

  Patrick led the horse to her; he smiled, in the attempt to contain the torment that was clawing at his viscera.

  “Is Da home?” he asked as he brought the beast to a halt.

  Aisling shook her head.

  Patrick inhaled deeply, then reached into his pocket and took out the handkerchief. He placed it in her hand, struggling to maintain his smile.

  Aisling opened the linen square carefully, revealing the cap. Patrick watched as she stared at it for a moment.

  Then, before his eyes, a change came over her.

  She caught her breath, a shuddering inhalation that was part gasp, part laugh. Then she laughed again, a merry, bell-like sound he did not ever remember hearing before. A light seemed to ripple over her face, and when she looked up at him, she was smiling broadly, tears pooling in her eyes and beginning to run down her cheeks.

  “Patrick,” she said, exhilaration in her voice, “will you take me to the sea?”

  “ ’Tis true,” Patrick said in disbelief. “ ’Tis true what Bronagh said, then. You are murúch—a merrow?”

  “Aye,” Aisling said, her face shining with excitement. “Aye, Patrick, that I am. Take me to the sea, please! Take me to Bolus Head.”

  Patrick nodded numbly. “Do you—do you want to pack your belongings?”

  Aisling laughed again. “That won’t be necessary. Let us be off.”

  As if in a dream, Patrick helped her mount Donovan’s horse.“Do you at least wish to wait until Da returns, so that you can bid him good-bye?”

  “No,” said Aisling. “Come. Let us not tarry.”

  THE RIDE SOUTHWEST to the sea was not at all what Patrick had expected.

  The heaviness in his heart at the knowledge of what would happen when they reached the end of the peninsula gave way fairly quickly to amazement at the change in Aisling.

  She sat before him on the horse, her long hair loose and free in the wind, the sun on her face, chatting merrily, something in all his life he never had known her to do.

  All the way she told him stories of the sea, tales of the warm shallows where fish of brilliant colors swam between sharp living rocks, of cold depths where broken ships lay in their graves, their decks, masts, and wheels slowly becoming part of the ocean floor, as if the sea were sculpting them the way an artist transforms stone. She told him of her people and their ways, the lazy merrow men sunning themselves on the jagged cliffs of Connemara or the rocks of Small Skellig, guzzling rum gleaned from the wreckage of those ships, and the schools of seals that swam alongside those of merrow children. And she sang him wordless songs in a voice that both haunted him and caused silver shivers to resonate through his soul. The sheer joy that had taken her over was infectious; it was cherished time, this journey to land’s end with a mother he had loved from childhood but no longer recognized.

  She never mentioned his father.

  Only at night when they slept, or during the moments in daylight when they stopped to let the horse drink and rest, did the melancholy return, deep, abiding sadness at the despair he knew would be the lot of Old Pat for the rest of his life. He prayed silently for wisdom, for forgiveness.


  Honor thy father and thy mother.

  How do I do both, Lord?

  All the things she had made with her hands—the delicate tatted lace, the clothing, the sweaters of worsted wool—she had left behind without a thought; Patrick knew she would not need them in the sea, but the readiness with which she had abandoned everything that had been built over the course of her life as Old Pat’s wife, as his own mother, thudded hollowly in his head.

  Everywhere along the way were signs of the blight—empty huts and storage silos; bare fields that should have been rich with foliage, but instead held only the blackened leaves and withered crop; potters’ fields with row upon row of freshly turned earth mounded in scores of graves. Patrick and Aisling stopped at each long enough to say an Ave from atop the horse, particularly the ones outside of what had once been homes where entire families had been buried, the smallest mounds no more than a yard in length. A little church stood empty, its door banging in the wind. Even in the places where people lived still, there was emptiness; the eyes that watched them as they traveled through were hollow with hunger, in faces drawn and shrunken from disease.

  Finally, after two days’ ride with little to eat but that which could be begged or found along the way, the crash of the waves off Ballinskellig Bay could be heard. Patrick saw ripples of spray rising above the ocean even before the old horse crested a hill enough to catch a view of it. He reined the horse to a stop and slowly slid to the ground, transfixed.

  The wet wind slapped his hair wildly as he stared out into the endless blue of the sea, the color of it filling his eyes. Even though it was mixed with shades of grey, subtle tones he could not distinguish, it was still the most vibrant, moving panorama of blue he had ever seen, like the living sky, rolling and crashing against the rocky beach. In the distance, he saw the dark rise of Skellig Michael, wrapped in fog and wind.

  “How could he have kept you from this?” he murmured, fighting off the deep sense of longing that was twisting around his soul.“How in the name of God above could he have taken you away from here, and kept you in the shadow of the Reeks?”