The Fire Opal (15 page)

Da and Ishleen appeared on the rocks an hour or so later, calling me home. I was sitting on the stone shelf curled up into myself, not even caring that the tide was high and wetting me to the bone.

But with the sun up, there was little hope that Francisco might come. My heart had fallen so hard, I didn’t want to move. I felt so helpless against what now felt like Mam’s inevitable sinking away.

Da got his boat and steered it around to where I was.

“Come home now, Maeve,” he said, and reached out to help me into the boat. When I looked into his eyes from under my wind-matted hair, I saw the same look he had given Mam when she’d heard the voice of the swan.

As we ascended the hill at Ard Macha, Da stopped to talk to a local man who told him about all the wreckage from Spanish ships in a confluence of rocks a few hours south of our shore.

After washing and dressing, and wearily sleeping away the afternoon, I heard Francisco’s voice again calling me: “Maeve! Maeve! Help me!”

I prepared for another night’s vigil among the rocks. It was as if I couldn’t help myself.

This time I did not remain in the rocks near the caves, but walked south along the shore in the direction the ship had gone. Some of the wreckage I saw was from Francisco’s original ship. I knew, because I found a warped broken board with the blistered decomposing letters of the word
Soledad
on it. But, finding no signs of
La Hermana de la Luna
, I tripped my way back toward Ard Macha, the wick of my lamp now dark and quenched in oil.

It was dawn when I saw Da and Ishleen appear in the boat, with despondent expressions. Shivering, I got in with them.

Ishleen looked wistful.

“I think Francisco is in trouble, Ishleen. I hear him calling me.”

Her eyes darkened, but she said nothing.

Da pulled the boat up onto the sand, and I got out, but Ishleen stayed with him to go out fishing that day.

In Da’s search to find me, other residents had come out to lend a hand. When they saw that I was safe, most of them disbanded, but as I climbed the hill back to the cottage, Mrs. Molloy and Mrs. Callahan were standing there. They stared as I carried the burned-out lamp, my hems torn and soaked, my hair matted from the wind.

“She’s like her own mother, as mad as the mist and snow,” one of them said.

Tears streaked my face as I heard this, but I was not dissuaded.

“Look at her, wearing the coat of a dead Spaniard,” the other whispered.

When I was inside the cottage, I laid Francisco’s jacket on a chair near the fire, to dry from the mist and salt spray. My skin was hot and feverish, and my stomach felt queasy. I knelt before Mam, who was in her wheeled chair facing the fire, hanging her head. Her eyes were three quarters of the way closed, inward-looking. Her breathing was very faint. I laid my head in her lap and cried.

That night before the meal, Da took me aside and told me that he had to leave early the next morning for Killybegs. The remaining men of the Ard Macha faction were going to meet to discuss more action against the English and to try to find a way to bring aid to the fugitives.

“You can’t keep traipsing off every night this way, Maeve,” he said. “You’ve got to stay here and take care of Ishleen and your mam.”

Nervous at the danger he faced and the gravity of the situation, I promised him I’d not do it again. And even though I heard Francisco’s voice, I didn’t go out for three nights.

But on the fourth night that Da was gone, I felt an intense expectation on the air, a certainty that Francisco was waiting for me. The moon was large and hung in a
clear sky. I told myself I’d go down to the overhang while Ishleen was asleep but come back well before dawn, and she’d never know that I’d gone. As I was planning this out in my thoughts, she awoke, having somehow sensed what was on my mind.

“There is a storm ring around the moon,” she said softly as we stood by the open door, looking out. She peered into my distracted face. “There will be wind and very high tides in the morning.”

I had not noticed until she’d pointed it out, but she was right. A slender aura of luminous fog encircled the moon, the promise of tumultuous weather.

“If you go,” she said, “something bad will happen.”

“I’m not going anywhere, Ishleen.”

But even after I tucked her into bed and kissed her on the temple, she looked uneasily at me.

CHAPTER 14

D
eep in the night, when I went outside, the sky was lit up with the moon and portending storm, flashes of trembling light breaking between massive clouds. I got into the boat and sailed away from the land. A violent wind blew me miles to the south until I beached on a rocky isle, where I came upon a dozen bodies of dead Spaniards lying facedown in the sand. All were wearing the purple jackets, the mysterious white steam rising from the silver cording and disappearing on the air. The tide had soaked them all through, and ran in again now, flooding them and retreating in jetties of foam.

With great effort, I turned each man onto his back and bent over him, searching for signs of life. I wiped sand from their faces, pushed and cajoled until I knew with certainty that each was dead. I was sweating, in spite of
the blistering wind and icy salt sparks from the tides. My heart pumped hard, my eyes raking the shore for any others.

It was then that I saw the torn side of a hull, bobbing and stuck between rocks. Words were painted there but partially obscured with kelp. I waded in up to my thighs to where the rocks were high, jagged and numerous. Their black surfaces were slippery; it was with effort that I managed to climb them and come close enough to move the kelp and read the words:
La Hermana de la Luna
.

Turning, I saw the figurehead from the ship, the one that Francisco had insisted looked like me. It was presiding over something in a pool between three or four large peaked stones, something I thought at first was a sea plant, dark fringes waving in unison with the sloshing water. As I pulled myself along toward it, the figurehead’s eyes flashed to mine, peering at me for a few moments before looking down again at whatever she was watching over. As I got closer, my perspective grew clearer and I saw that it was the hair of someone in the water.

When I reached the edge of the rock, I could see the poor soul quite clearly. It was the sailor who had come out in the little boat to bring Francisco back to the ship, the one who had told me that Francisco promised to come back for me. Only his head was above the water-line, leaning back against the rock. His eyes were open, staring but unseeing. His arms were rising slightly from his sides in the water, and softly bobbing on the cold
current. I leaned far over the stone, desperate to bring him up somehow, when I saw that one of his legs was caught under a piece of fallen wreckage. It held him there, suspended underwater.

I pushed on the various stones that surrounded him, to see which might be movable, and found that one of them rocked and might be shifted. With my entire body, I pushed until I got it out of the way and, swimming down, pulled the wreckage away from his feet. Despite my exhaustion, I began to drag him ashore; at one point, still half in the water, I stopped to rest, pressing his body near a rock wall. I felt how intensely cold he was. Though it made little sense to do so, I wriggled out of the deluged jacket I wore and wrapped the sailor in it.

Then, as I continued to try to drag him to shore, a strong tide came in. I lost hold of his body, and it went seaward, then under a wave. I swam down after it. The moon shone in a long beam of light into the water, illuminating him, his arms raised all the way up now, as he stared ahead unseeing. I caught him, struggling hard to bring him up by swimming with one arm and holding him with the other, but the effort was too great and he slipped from me, continuing to plummet.

Panicked, I pulled myself deeper, swimming after him, when my need to breathe grew desperate. I had to rush upward and break the surface, gasping for air.

When I went down again, my hopes of helping the Spaniard faded. He was nowhere to be seen. I resurfaced to breathe, but decided to try once more. My heart jumped with hope as I saw a shadow coming up from a
great depth. But as it ascended, I realized that it was the jacket floating there, open-armed and filled with water. Remembering what Francisco had said about keeping him alive, I swam down after it, but the waves had become choppy. The forceful push and pull of the water played havoc with me. I thought I was finally getting close, when the water pulled me suddenly away from the jacket.

A figure that seemed to be wearing a dark gray cape appeared in the depths and came swimming quickly toward me, revealing itself to be a kind of stingray, a wide flat kite-shaped creature with human hands and an angry human face. It bared its jagged teeth and planted a bite on my shoulder, sharp and painful. I screamed, the sound muted by the water.

Four women similar in visage to the Swan Woman approached us in a frenzied swim, driving the creature off. As I swam to the surface, aching to breathe, the women also rose upward, turning into swans as they reached the air. Each ascended to the sky with a tremendous shriek as the light of dawn began to break. Three of them flew westward, while the other hovered close above a few yards away, as if to show me Da’s little boat, which was bobbing on a wave below it.

My shoulder ached badly and bled, and my arms were intensely tired as I trod water and made my way toward the boat. When I got in, the swan flew over me as if magically propelling the boat back north. The dawn light had now driven off the shadows of night. I had not intended to be so long away, and found myself anxious to be home,
praying that Ishleen had not awakened and found me gone.

I was almost back at Ard Macha when, to my shock, I saw a small boat riding seaward from the shore, rocking unsteadily. Recognizing Tom Cavan in the bow, rowing the craft, I felt an intimation of dread. A woman in gray-green sat in the boat, too, hunched forward and holding something contained in glass. Neither seemed to see me in the periphery. With tremendous effort, I rowed forward, struggling to see what the woman was holding. It was small, too insubstantial to be called a figure, yet it had a shimmer and a form, and moved within the glass that contained it. For flashes of moments, it took on a solidity. Straining to see, I recognized it suddenly as the transparent figure of a child. Just as my heart sped with suspicion, the swan flew toward them and began screeching.

The little transparent figure grew opaque as it looked up at the swan, and in that instant I recognized a ghostly Ishleen. I cried out, but my voice was drowned by the violent rush and crash of the sea. Soon the boat was swallowed by a sudden mist that opened like a curtain, revealing something massive floating there, a flash of ice and light, before it was again obscured.

I tried to row after them, but a powerful surge lifted my craft from below. The clouds rent apart, and rain fell in a deluge. The sea carried the boat to the shore against my will, lodging it between stones on the high beach. I ran up to the cottage and found Old Peig inside, sitting forward on a chair as if stunned.

“Peig!” I cried.

She turned her head slowly and looked at me, her eyes wet with tears. She hesitated, then lifted a trembling arm and pointed to the yellow curtain, which was pulled closed. I went and drew it open.

Ishleen lay limply beside Mam, wearing the same vacant expression Mam wore. I sat on the edge of the bed and touched her arm.

“Ishleen! Ishleen!” I whispered, shaking her gently.

“She won’t wake,” Old Peig said. “She came to me before dawn when she found you gone. I came back here with her to wait for you. She was playing outside just as dawn was breaking. The door was open and I could hear her singing to herself the way she does. But then she was quiet, and when I said her name, she didn’t answer. I went out and found her sitting on the ground. I said her name and she didn’t turn. As I went toward her, I saw Tom Cavan and a strange woman rushing into a boat. I think they’ve carried off her spirit the way they did with your mam.”

“Do you think they have Mam, too?” I asked.

“It’s the same awful devilry at work here,” she said, and pointed to Ishleen. “I think they must.”

“What do I do, Peig?” I pleaded.

She shook her head.

I ran outside, but the water was still too unsteady and the wind too high for me to attempt going after them. Clouds bulged with seemingly endless rain. I heard on the air itself the voice of the swan, which I could no
longer see. It had now flown into the distance, leaving a vague, melancholy echo.

That night I lay with Mam and Ishleen on the box bed, leaning my face close to my sister’s, making sure of her steady, transparent breathing. Exhaustion set in and I closed my eyes.

The light was very blue, like late dusk or early dawn. A quiet wind was blowing and the sea was still. I was staring at the ruins when I saw an opening through the tower, a dark doorway with faint illumination like candlelight within. I went in and descended a staircase. The place was rough, dilapidated walls and crumbling passageways. I heard Ishleen’s soft breathing and followed the sound into a once-elegant room with a great canopied bed, now collapsed; the walls and furniture were dusty and decrepit.