Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series) (90 page)

“These do be my sons. Michael is on the left an’ Colum to the right. ’Tisn’t everyone I introduce to them,” she said shortly, “but Michael likes the look of yez. Colum, ye understand, was never much of a talker even in life, an’ he’s less so in death.”

Pamela swallowed the desire to laugh hysterically, uncertain of how one was expected to address a skull. Casey however took it in his unflappable stride, calling each skull by the name Nuala had told them, and adding a polite, “nice to make yer acquaintance.”

Nuala, after the pleasantries were through, returned each son to his proper place on the mantle. The fire flickered oddly in the hollow eye sockets, giving the illusion of something looking out over the room. Pamela shivered; suddenly the atmosphere in the crowded little cottage no longer seemed absurd.

“Yez may think me mad, but the bones lay closer to the spirit than does the flesh. You,” she said to Pamela, “will understand this, no?”

Pamela nodded reluctantly, avoiding Casey’s sharp glance sideways. She understood all too well the memory that bone held. The cradle of human fragility, the fretwork of a divine plan, it was aria to the flesh’s libretto, holding the memory of what was and what might have been. The bones that haunted her, now buried in an unmarked grave in an undisclosed location, had told a tale of fury and violence, composed of words that could not be spoken aloud.

As if sensing the direction of her unspoken thoughts, Casey took her hand in his own and she felt with gratitude the strength of his fingers as they encircled hers, the warm security of flesh, the reassuring pulse of blood. His touch banished the smell of violets that had risen within her.

Nuala settled herself in the rocking chair, sheltering the delicate teacup in her rough hands, the fire striking sparks of hammered silver from the blaze in her hair. She gazed at the skulls, a distant smile on her face as she began to speak in a low voice.

“I saw the water in them all when they was born. An’ I knew the sea would call her own, she always does. You,” she pointed at Pamela, voice suddenly fierce, “you will know, for she calls you.”

She turned to Casey, long white fingers snaking out to grip his wrist, until the tendons in her hand stood out taut. “Keep her from the sea, boy, if ye want to keep her at all. The sea does know its own an’ will come for them. All the merpeople do be havin’ the green eyes. An’ tis told the O’Flaherty are descended from the sea peoples.”

Pamela started and opened her mouth, but Nuala simply shook her head. “Ye can’t be days on this Island and not have people know yer business. I’d know you for an O’Flaherty anyway, ye’ve the way of them about you.”

A slow smile that wasn’t exactly pleasant spread across her mouth and she began to speak directly to Casey. The gaelic was too rapid and fluent for Pamela to comprehend, but she was afraid she understood the general gist when Casey grinned and nodded. She’d seen that particular grin before. She cocked an enquiring eyebrow at him.

“She says,” Casey cleared his throat and she could have sworn he was blushing, “that the O’Flahertys were known for their talents in—er—the bedroom. She also says I’ll always come hungry to your bed, because I’m fire an’ yer water. An’ there’s a great deal of heat in such a pairing.”

“Oh,” Pamela said, feeling rather flushed herself suddenly.

“An’ she says that water people are harder to trust because ye can’t always discern what lies beneath the skin.”

Pamela glanced up sharply, but Nuala was staring fixedly at a spot in the air. It was impossible that the woman should know anything and yet there was something very odd about her. Her voice, when she spoke again, was soft as ether, sending chill tendrils out into the room.

“I did know them by their sweaters, aye. I knit them myself, an’ there’s not another pattern like it to be found on the whole of the Islands. After the sea has kept yer child for ten days ye may not know them by the face God gave them. ‘Twas so with my Michael, but I knew him by the wee ivy leaves twined with thistle, that I’d knit into the pattern of his sweater. Colum washed up the very night he was drowned, looked peaceful, as if he slept. But the sea did not give me back my Sean, nor the son named after him. They say that in time the sea surrenders all her dead, but I think she likes to keep a few for herself.” Her rocking slowed as she spoke, until the chair was only the softest grate against the floor.

“My Sean was a big man like yers,” she said to Pamela. “He’d the red hair though, an’ blue eyes an’ a laugh that ye could hear clear up from the shingle. It’d be the sound I waited for all day, for then I knew my men were home an’ safe as I could keep them for another night. Sometimes when the wind blows right from the west, I can hear it still.” She shivered and drew her heavy shawl tighter about her shoulders. “He was a fine strap of a man an’ he might have had his pick from the Island girls, but he chose me. There were those that muttered he’d live to regret it. But he never did. I always knew he was the only one for me, from the time I was a wee thing, but I still couldn’t believe it when he picked me for his own.

“He’d been to sea from the time he was twelve, was mad for it, obsessed by it. We went on holiday to Athlone the one time, he’d relatives there, an’ I thought he’d take sick from the lack of the sea. Said he couldn’t breathe right an’ felt as if the air were pressin’ in upon him. I never took him away from it again.

“Each evening I’d wait on the cliffshead for him, so even far out he could see me. He said it was the best of his day, the sun behind him an’ his wife before him, knowin’ that he’d soon be home to a warm meal an’ a warm bed. It was a good life for a very long time, we’d the three boys, all fine an’ strong, handsome like their da’.” She looked up, piercing Pamela with her odd gaze.

“It’s said the gods are angered by the joy of humans. That it never does to be too happy. I think that was my sin, I think my joy drew their attention an’ they decided to punish me for it. For all the boys had their father’s love of the sea. Sean more than the other two, but all infected by it. I’d hoped an’ prayed one of them would choose somethin’ different, would become a barrister in Dublin or a clerk in some wee town. But they didn’t, an’ though it worried me, I thought I’d made my peace with it.

“And then came that day. I’d ill thoughts from the start of it. Three men of the same name in that damned boat. My Sean, our son that was named so, an’ Sean Cuddy from the other side of the Island. ‘Tis ill to have three men of the same name in the one boat, but my Sean laughed. He never held with the old superstitions, an’ said they could use the extra hands. He knew the boy could use the money an’ he was never one to turn back a man in need.”

‘I went early to the cliffs that night, for I’d not been easy at my work all day. ‘Twas odd weather, the sky heavy an’ low with clouds, but not a breath of wind to be had. The boats came in just afore twilight, but only a straggle an’ twas then I knew somethin’ had gone wrong. I could see it in the set of their shoulders as they came ashore.

‘Five days an’ nights I waited on those cliffs,” she continued, hollow-voiced, “an’ five mornins’ did I see the men put out in their boats, an’ the same come home at night. But never did I see the one I waited for. Finally the women came an’ dragged me home. They say I yelled somethin’ fierce an’ fought them hard, but I’ve no memory of it at all. Ah,” she shook her head, silver blaze a dull gleam now in the night of her hair, “it’s a terrible place an’ no mistake about it.”

“And that’s why you wander the cliffs at night,” Pamela said softly, in the tone of one who knew what it was to wait for a ship to appear on the horizon.

Nuala nodded, a smile of shared understanding on her face. “Aye, I want him to know I still wait for him.” The smile faded and she seemed suddenly very tired. “For I know someday, when the wind is right, he will come back to me.” The story had cast a pall upon the room, the fire burning low during the telling, though the chill in the air seemed to have little to do with the dying embers.

Prodded most importunely by the peppery tea, Pamela sneezed three times in succession. It had the immediate effect of snapping them into the here and now.

Nuala nodded grimly after blessing her. “I knew ye’d a cold cloud hangin’ about ye. Ye’ll need somethin’ stronger than the tea to ward it off.”

Pamela shot a look of horror at Casey, who merely shrugged and wisely suppressed his laughter while Nuala rustled in the cupboard beneath the washstand.

“Ah, there we go, ‘tis part of last year’s batch.” Nuala emerged triumphantly with a bottle in hand, which she then uncorked, breathing in the resulting fumes with a look of dreamy pleasure. “I make it meself, ‘tis perhaps a bit stronger than poteen is meant to be, but it’ll do ye no harm.”

Pamela, catching a whiff of the brew, suspected there were few organisms that could survive such a cure. With luck, she might make it to morning. Administered with a fierce eye by Nuala, the poteen went down like living fire through her veins. Though she drank it meekly enough, knowing so much as a drop left in the copious mug would offend the woman.

The wind slapped the side of the cottage with a particularly vicious gust and Nuala’s head turned sharply as though controlled by outside forces. The hair on Pamela’s neck went up when she saw the wild light that entered the woman’s eyes, turning them an odd murky green.

“Do ye hear him, then?” she asked, long fingers tight around Casey’s forearm.

Casey took her hand and spoke gently. “No, I cannot hear him, but it could be I’ve not the ears for it.”

“I must go,” the woman said urgently, the tension in her fairly singing off her skin. “I can hear him call.”

“Ye could die out there,” Casey said in a patient tone.

“Do ye think I’d mind such a thing, boy?” she asked, releasing her grip on his arm. “What do ye think it is I seek on those cliffs? I must go,” she turned abruptly, throwing her shawl over her head and putting her hand to the latch. She pressed it, releasing the hasp and then turned back, eyes riveting Pamela, even through the poteen haze that was beginning to cloud her senses. “You girl, you’ve the seawater in yer veins, tell me where will I find him?”

“I—I don’t know, but I believe one night you will find what you seek.”

Nuala nodded as if queerly satisfied by the answer and then with a swirl of skirts and a flash of one bare, dirty foot she was gone into the night and the storm.

Casey stood looking after her, rain lashing angrily against his face, but he did not follow the old woman.

Old Mad Meg stood by the sea

A thousand years stood she

Her skin flame, her touch burn

A threnody sang she

Pamela paraphrased the Jack Stuart poem to herself, the picture of the old woman with her ageless quest shining in her eyes, bringing the poet’s madwoman back to mind.

“What did ye say, Jewel?” Casey asked, turning from the door after closing it firmly.

“Nothing, just a bit of poetry.”

“Oh aye,” he ran a hand over his face, rubbing his stubbled chin vigorously, “ye do feel the need to quote at the oddest moments.”

“You look exhausted,” she said, squinting at him in a vain effort to limit him to one solid image.

He laughed in reply. “Do I, then? Which one of me would it be that looks so? Number two or four?”

She grimaced wryly. “There was enough drink in that mug for all five of you. I can’t feel my face nor my toes.”

“To bed with ye then,” he said firmly, “before ye lose yer faculties altogether.”

“We’re going to stay?” Pamela said, stifling a sneeze with great effort.

“Do ye suggest we attempt the storm again? Listen to it, woman.”

She fixed her wits and realized the storm had died back but little, and still railed with salted fists at the doors and windows. And within the immediate furor another noise, that of the sea building in upon itself and breaking in a towering temper that threatened to destroy with impunity. Casey was right, they’d be fools to even attempt a trip back on unfamiliar ground in such a tempest.

“Do you think she’ll be alright?” Pamela asked, not at all happy about the thought of searching the storm for a mad witch.

“She knows all the dips an’ hollows. Besides, ye heard her, she’d not let us drag her back. No use all of us lookin’ for death out there. Here,” he lifted the nightgown Nuala had left hanging off the rack by the stove, “ye’ll put this on, yer clothes are still a wee bit damp, an’ Nuala was right, ye look to takin’ cold.”

The nightgown was made of a fine wool that smelled strongly of camphored confinement. “It reeks,” she said pushing it back toward him, unable to stifle the sneezes that came in a quick succession of three.

“Ye’ll put it on or I’ll sit on ye and force another mug of that peppered tea down yer throat.”

“Sadist,” she said, giving in with ill grace to having her clothing removed and the eye-watering woolen sack dropped over her head. Casey did the buttons up to her throat and then dispatched her onto the settle with a smart smack to her rear end.

“Ow,” she muttered, navigating the neatly laid sheets and quilt with some difficulty.

“Quiet or I’ll make ye a mustard plaster for yer chest like my Da’ used to do when Pat took cold. I see there’s a tin of the dried stuff on the shelf, so don’t think I won’t.”

“Mustard plaster?” She squinted up at him, one eye closed as she’d discovered this cut his numbers nicely in half.

“Aye, it’s a kill or cure. Only had it the once but it was more than enough, burned like the devil an’ smelled even worse.”

“I thought you’d never been sick.”

“Wasn’t,” he replied, voice muffled as he drew his sweater off over his head, “was only pretendin’ in an effort to miss school. Da’ saw through me from a mile off though, but he let me stay home an’ plied me with home cures all day. Never did pretend sickness again, I tell ye.”

The settle was old and solidly built. It was snug, but it fit the two of them comfortably enough. Pamela, flat on her back and feeling akin to molten lead that had yet to gel, tried shifting to give him room and then gave up as the beams above her head spun in a dizzy circle.