Selkie's Song (Fado Trilogy) (27 page)

A cry pierced the air. Though Ty knew it was only a manifestation of the wind, it sounded like a woman’s voice, as though the earth were being torn from heaven’s womb.

He had heard the tales of the
bean sí
, the wailing fairy woman who came for the souls of the dead. He hadn’t given the stories credence, until now.

He knew by the change in Muireann’s stance, she had heard it too. She looked up at him, eyes wide with fear.

Like a wounded beast, the sound retreated. Muireann trembled in Ty’s arms but he held tight to her. Her body shook with sobs. “It’s going to be all right now. Whatever that was, I think it’s passed,” he said and hoped he was right.

She stepped back and looked up through the open roof timbers. “Blue sky,” she said with awe in her voice. The sun shone on her face and Ty could see stains of tears mixed with dust on her cheeks.

“We’re a right mess,” he said, and offered her his shirttail to wipe her eyes. “A branch got you here.” He blotted a drop of blood from her ear.

“The fairy tree,” she whispered. “Everyone’s keepsakes…they’re all gone.”

“Maybe not,” he tried to reassure her. “Let’s take a look.”

Ty took her by the hand and climbed over a new pile of rubble that blocked the doorway. Branches, nettles, and bracken torn from the sod, a piece of a road sign and the door to Muireann’s van, lay in an incongruous heap where the wind deposited them against the old stone garden wall. A few yards away the red hire car lay on its side against the berm like a dead ladybird beetle. “Stay here,” he commanded and started toward the car.

“No…Oh, no,” she cried.

He looked over his shoulder as Muireann rounded the corner of the cottage. She stopped, feet planted in the muddy ground.

“What?” he called. His eyes widened as he took in the surreal scene.

The branches of the whitethorn tree lay tangled at an unnatural posture. A fresh gash severed the earth and pale roots reached up to the heavens like broken hands in prayer. The grief in her voice punched the air out of Ty.

Muireann knelt and started shoveling through the soil with her bare hands. He watched her vain attempt to protect the tree roots. Her efforts were fruitless. He knelt next to her and gently grasped her hands, but she pushed him away.

“Wait.” She smacked his hands aside. “Look.” She loosened more soil and he could see what she was doing. Muireann wasn’t trying to cover the roots. She was uncovering something entangled in them.

The sun was bright and his eyes took a moment to adjust to the darkness in the fissure beneath the savaged tree.

Then he saw what she was so excited about.

“Here,” he said and started to help her dig away the soggy turf. “What is this?” It appeared to be the top of a box, tied with rotted twine. “Let me see if I can lift it out.”

Ty braced himself with his feet against the trunk of the tree that was now horizontal and reached into the hole to wiggle the box free. “It’s really wedged in here.” Sweat dripped from his hairline and stung his eyes. “The roots are grown around it.”

Muireann dug dirt and roots from the sides. Tynan wondered if she was thinking the same as he. This box, whatever it was, has been here a very long time. Excitement skittered up his spine and made his ears buzz.

Muireann stopped digging and brushed her hair from her face with a muddy hand. “Maybe we shouldn’t be doing this,” she said and put her hand on Tynan’s shoulder as to stop him.

He gave a short laugh. “Too late.” He jerked the object free of its grave, and fell backwards. The box slipped from his hands and landed with a crash against a paving stone, jarring the top.

“Don’t touch it,” Muireann said and pushed his hand away. “I mean, let’s open it…but very carefully.”

Together they pried the already loosened lid free. When it was completely liberated, they stopped. The skin of Muireann’s cheeks paled in contrast to bright sparks of gold in her deep sable eyes.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

Two sets of hands working in unison lifted the cover away.

“Mother in heaven,” Ty mumbled and looked from the box to Muireann. “Is this—?”

“Can it be—?” she started to ask.

Muireann spread her fingers and reached into the box to feel the slick seal fur. It felt warm and almost alive. She snatched her hand away and shook her head.

“I thought it was just a legend, a story.”

Tynan grabbed Muireann’s hands as much to steady himself as give her support.

“This should keep the bulldozers away,” he said.

As he watched her, one tear and then another spilled from her eyes, caught the waning evening light and glistened like jewels on the pelt of the selkie.

Chapter Twenty-Four

The sun’s orb dipped toward the sea. Light fanned out, filtered through a cloud bank that formed on the western horizon and skimmed over the tips of wet rye grass on the hills.

Tynan and Muireann carried their treasure into the shelter of the fortress walls and stared in silent reverence at the humble reliquary until a gust of wind blew a chill of reality over them. “We should get out of the weather before another storm hits,” Ty suggested.

Muireann tried again, with no success, to start the van. When it had coughed, sputtered and died once again, she and Ty collected two blankets and a flashlight from the back. She leaned down and pulled something from under the front seat.

“I’ve this for disasters,” Muireann smiled and held up two bags of crisps and a bottle of red wine.

“You keep wine in the event of a disaster?”

She gave him a playful grin and carried her emergency stash to the shelter of the fortress.

They tucked into the recessed hearth where the floor was mostly dry, listened to the wail of seabirds and tried to think of something to say. Words rarely eluded him. This was one of those moments.

“Ty, this isn’t proof,” Muireann insisted quietly.

“It doesn’t need to be.” He knew it only needed to spark the interest of the community for whatever reason each individual might imagine.

“But you said—”

“You have to think of the potential here. Every Conneely and O’Malley in Ireland—maybe the world—will want to preserve this place.” He looked deep into Muireann’s eyes and hoped he was right. “Every person in the west of Ireland with a shred of Irish in his blood will want to tell the story. It will pull in tourists, ignite cultural and archeological interest. It’s better than finding old bones and stone carvings…It’s a
seanchaí
treasure trove.”

She reached for the lid of the box and lifted it. “How long do you think this might have been buried?” Muireann looked skeptical.

“What do you say we spread this out and take a closer look?” He removed his jacket and laid it on the hearth stones.

Muireann lifted the pelt and gently unrolled it on the jacket to keep it clean and dry. “This is unusual.” The hide was soft and pliable, as though it had been prepared for storage. The fur glistened with natural oils. “Most harbor seals are tones of grey.” This one had been dark sable with a pattern of speckles across the shoulders. Muireann was reminded of a lace shawl. “I’ve seen a lot of seals, but never one like this before.”

Ty ran his hand across the skin. “Hard to believe this is old at all. Wouldn’t it be rotten, stiff, moldy?”

“I would think so.” Muireann shrugged. “Too bad.”

“Does it matter?” He reached for her hand. “Muireann, listen to me.” Ty’s heart pounded in his head. Time to tell her the truth. “I had a plan. It didn’t include you. Until a few weeks ago it didn’t include Ireland at all.”

“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Everything’s changed. My plan had to change…because of you,” Ty confessed.

“No, please. I don’t want anything to change because of me,” she begged.

“It’s too late. I told Feeney I’m not putting the land on the market. Not for him, not for foreign investors.”

A look of worry rose in her eyes. “What foreign investors?”

“It doesn’t matter now.” He glanced overhead. A few stars twinkled in the clear patches between the clouds. “It’s late. We should get back.”

Neither of them moved.

Ty listened to the wind howl across the open sea and up the cliffs. “We’ve no functioning vehicle. How about you wait here? I’ll walk back to Mary’s and borrow her car to come get you and…this.” He nodded toward the tarred casket.

“The rain’s starting again. You’ll get drenched.” Muireann grabbed his hand and stopped him. “I think we could stay warm and dry until this clears.”

Ty shook his head and gave a soft chuckle. “It’s the west of Ireland…it might not clear for weeks.” But he’d take an hour or a night and be happy to be with Muireann for the time it lasted.

She ripped open a bag of crisps. “Dinner then?”

“Pass the potatoes,” he said.

****

They talked deep into the night, until wine and exhaustion garbled her thoughts and her words. Muireann knew she should go home, walk through the rain and wind back to her cottage and settle all the rest in the morning when her defenses would be stronger. But a blanket of peace warmed her even more than the itchy wool cover she’d pulled up to her chin as she snuggled close to Tynan’s side.

She checked one last time to be sure the box with its pelt was truly real and not a figment of her muddled imagination before closing her eyes.

Thoughts drifted and melted one into another until the line between dream and reality blurred.

The footfalls shook her awake, but her eyes refused to stay open. She heard music from across the room.

Through slitted lids she saw a seal woman beat the time with her webbed feet on the stone floor, while she rocked her pup to the rhythm of the sea.

“Who’s there?” she tried to call but Muireann’s lips were unable to form words. Tynan watched them as he played a tune on his mandolin. The melody was familiar, but she could not name the song. He had played the same one for her when they picnicked on the beach. The first day she thought she might fall in love with him all over again.

She would tell him how she felt. Then, before the idea had time to linger, the pluck and strum of strings lulled her back to sleep.

The heartbeat next to her ear was thumping in a rhythm different from her own. It took Muireann a dizzy moment to realize her head rested on Tynan’s chest. The warmth between them felt more intimate than anything they had done in the heat of passion.

She didn’t want to breathe for fear even a whisper would shatter the fragile moment. The gentle rise and fall of his chest sang a lullaby as sure as the pulse of the tides.

The sea surged and receded leaving pastel shells and bright sea grass in its retreat. Her mam’s skirt blew in whirls about her ankles as she bent to pick treasures from the sand. “Mam, what are you doing here? This is my dream.”

“Codladh sámh.”
Go back to sleep, my child.

A sudden sound like rocks falling startled her awake. Ty was still there. Muireann looked up through the broken roof beams. Silent and still, the Milky Way cut a swath through the canopy of a night black as a raven’s wing. Stars appeared close enough to reach out and scoop up with her hands, the way she might capture grains of sand from her favorite strand.

Ty murmured unintelligible words and his arms tightened about her. Is this what love felt like, the infinite and the finite within the reach of a man’s arms? Then his earlier words clawed at her thin veil of hope for them.
I’m done with you, Muireann. I can’t play your games.

Pain cut through her and she knew she would have this privilege only for one night. She would have these few hours, within the broken walls, lying on a tattered woolen blanket with a man’s chest as her pillow. One short night to last the rest of her life.

Muireann told herself it was simple exhaustion that allowed her to think such romantic and irrational thoughts. She closed her eyes to clear her mind.

Nothing changed.

No voice whispered to her that she was a simple fool. No star fell from the sky as omen or portent. Her heart embraced the truth as she listened to Tynan’s even pulse next to her ear and breathed in the scent of him. In the morning she would tell him she loved him. And then, she would say goodbye.

****

“Wake up, Muireann.”

A hand was on her shoulder, shaking her. Muireann’s eyes refused to open. She tried to snuggle closer to Tynan’s warmth, but he’d been replaced by a cold, stone floor. Her fingers felt chilled and stiff as she pulled the itchy wool blanket up to her chin.

“Leave me alone,” she mumbled through tired lips. “I’m having a dream…”

“You have to wake up now.”

It sounded like Ty. She forced herself to turn her head to the voice. “Okay, I’m awake.” Muireann tried to sit up. “Why are we awake? It’s dark.” Logic escaped her.

“I heard your mobile. It woke me.”

“Who was it?”

Ty pushed the phone into her hand. “I didn’t answer it. Maybe there’s a message.”

“Hmm…give me a second.” Her mouth was dry as cotton wool and tasted of crisps and stale wine. She longed to stay cuddled into Tynan’s warm body and return to the dream, the one where he was singing.

Slivers of light crept across the floor from the east side of the fortress. Muireann pushed herself to sitting. “Is it morning?”

The reflection of the sun’s rays off the stone wall lighted his face. Dark bristle shadowed his jaw and his eyes were dilated in the dim glow. He looked a little dangerous, like a pirate come to shore from the sea in search of treasure.

Treasure
. She had almost forgotten. The hair on the back of her neck tingled and she gave a little shiver.

Ty reached over, pulled her close and wrapped the blanket tight around her.

“Check your mobile. Maybe someone left a message.”

Muireann flipped her phone open. “It wasn’t getting a signal last night. Looks okay now.” She pushed a couple of buttons on the screen. “Yeah, got a message.” Her father’s number appeared. The mobile rang once and his voice came on. “It’s my da.”

Muireann, where are you? Mam’s missing. We need you. Why aren’t you home? Call me right away. I’ll have my mobile on. Call me!