Selkie's Song (Fado Trilogy) (28 page)

Nausea rose in her throat. Her da sounded terrified. She’d not heard that quality in his voice since Ronan disappeared. Muireann could feel the blood drain from her face.

“What? Muireann, what’s wrong?” Tynan’s hands gripped her shoulders.

Reality was slipping away. His solid hold was the only thing that kept her from sliding into an abyss. “It’s my mam,” she whispered.

Ty took the phone from her hand. “I’ll call him.”

Turlough took only seconds to pick up. Muireann could hear the panic in her father’s voice as Ty held the phone close to both of them.

“Muireann, where are you?”

“Yeah, this is Ty. Muireann’s with me. We got caught in that storm last night.”

“Ty, it’s my wife…she’s missing. She went to let Cú in…said she heard him howling, but she never came back inside.” Terror tinged every word. “Where are you?”

“We’re at the old fortress. The cars are both disabled. Where should we meet you?”

“We’ve looked along the cliffs.” Ty heard a quick intake of breath as though the older man tried not to weep. “Meet me at Mary’s house.”

“We’re on our way,” Ty said and snapped the mobile closed. He turned to Muireann and took her trembling hand in his. “Let’s go.”

As she turned to follow him her eyes caught the tarred box and her heart leapt. The top of the box was ajar. She knew they had closed it tight.

“Ty, wait.” Muireann leaned down and lifted the lid. She shook her head to clear it. She must be in some nightmare where nothing makes sense. “The pelt—”

Ty came up behind her and looked in the now empty vessel. “Did you put it somewhere? Did you move it?”

A scream caught in her throat. Fear, confusion and a dizzy feeling of foreboding welled up and gripped her.. “Oh, God, no,” she gasped. “I heard something…I thought it was a dream.”

“What? What did you hear?”

“I thought she was here, with Cú and the selkie woman. You were playing music…I…it seemed so real.”

Ty lifted her face, forcing her to look at him. “Are you telling me your mam was here? Last night?”

Tears sprung to her eyes. How could she have been so irresponsible? Why hadn’t she realized it wasn’t a figment of her unconscious? The wine and closeness with Ty blinded her to reality. “She must have taken it.” A ball of raw fear formed just below Muireann’s ribs. “We’ve got to find her. Ty, she really believes—”

“Muireann, listen to me,” Ty insisted and grasped both her hands in his. “I will find her. I promise you. Everything is going to be all right.”

A shudder of uncontrollable sobs shook her. “This is all my fault.” Visions of the night they lost Ronan accelerated her heart until she felt faint. She’d lost focus again and now must pay the consequences of her foolishness.

“Muireann, I never make promises I can’t keep.” He put his hands on her shoulders to steady her. “You’ll have to trust me.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Don’t look down.
Tynan gritted his teeth. As though ignoring a gorilla in the room would make it go away.
Just one peek.

The sea churned. Its grey, cold mass surged forward with each pulse of the incoming tide. Fingers of icy foam reached for the bottom steps of the Monk’s Ladder.

His stomach lurched and he immediately regretted his weakness of will. The nanosecond of lost concentration resulted in a slip and he caught himself by slamming his chest against the rock.

“Ugh.” The wind punched out of his lungs hard enough to make him question his sanity.

But the look of complete despair in Muireann’s eyes pushed him to traverse the rain-slicked cliff edge toward the beach. She trusted him. It wasn’t love. Her heart hadn’t opened to him the way he had hoped. They had no future. Still, he would not or could not let her down. Ty needed to do this on his own. If he had told Muireann where he was headed, she would have insisted on being the one to take the risk.

In many ways, that would have made sense. She was a strong swimmer, familiar with this sea, the rocks, the eddies. Ty, admittedly, did not like cold water, swam like a penguin flies, and was unfamiliar with the lay of the land.

All his lack of confidence as a swimmer aside, he was certain Dervla would be in the cave cut into the rocks at the bottom of the Monk’s Ladder. If his instincts were true, she would not leave her sanctuary willingly. As strong as Muireann was, it might take more than physical strength and ability in treacherous waters to cajole a confused woman from her shelter.

The moment Ty and Muireann had found Turlough O’Malley, the fear in the old man’s eyes and the set of his jaw made obvious he would only slow Tynan down. The older man was broad of shoulder and had always had a presence of control about him, but today he looked defeated and tired. Beads of sweat glistened on his brow, he was pasty pale, and his breathing was labored.

O’Malley and his daughter agreed to search the southern stretch of shoreline and near the harbor where Dervla often went to wait for the fishermen to come in with their catch. Tynan and Simon would drive north, park the car, and walk along the paddocks between Muireann’s cottage and the cliffs.

Ty removed his shoes and socks, put them on a ledge above the tide line, and slipped his mobile into one shoe.

Now, as his feet found solid ground beneath them, Ty hoped he was up to the task he’d set for himself. He took the same path he had walked with Dervla two mornings ago.

A sound like the keening of a mourner rose above the cry of the wind. Cú, fur soaked and tangled with sea weed, howled and paced the rocky shoreline, eyes focused on the foamy waves.

Ty’s first instinct was to call out the hound’s name but caught himself when he remembered Cú wouldn’t hear him. The presence of Ronan’s dog reaffirmed Tynan’s belief that Dervla was here. A chill of fear passed through him as he watched the frantic pacing and listened to the plaintive baying of the hound.

Was Muireann’s mother already out in the roiling sea?

“Mrs. O’Malley…Dervla,” he shouted, but the wind pushed his voice back down his throat.

The incoming tide had washed clean any footprints that might give a clue to the path Dervla may have taken. Each surge of water brought the sea inches closer to the shore and, Ty knew, would fill the cave with dark and frigid water. He had to act now or admit defeat. Random flashes of fear were fought back by practicality.
The tide is surging. I need to go now.

Cú howled in distress, but did not follow him over the rocky outcrop that masked the entrance to the monks’ cave.

Grey-backed gulls circled overhead. Ty thought they might be seeking cover from another storm surge as they lit on crags and huddled beneath outcrops of limestone. He’d give anything to be huddled in a warm bed right now with Muireann snuggled into his embrace and not scrambling over these jagged rocks.

Though the sound of pounding surf was deafening out on the rocks, as he entered, the cave was quiet and, to his distress, reminded Ty of a tomb.

“I knew you’d come.” Dervla’s voice was calm and welcoming.

Ty held his breath.
Don’t scare her.
He pushed down the urge to grab her and rush her out onto the safety of the shore.

The cave was in deep shadow and Tynan’s eyes took several moments to adjust to the dim light. She sat on a ledge, a seal pelt clutched in her arms like a newborn child to her breast.

“Mrs. O’Malley,” he whispered. “The tide is coming in. We should go. Muireann is waiting for us.” He stepped across the distance to her. The floor at the back of the grotto was still dry. They had little time. Soon the sea would fill the entrance.

“They all said you were gone, Ronan. But I knew you were just waiting. Mothers know these things.”

Ty knew now he should have thought about this. She was confused. She thought he was her son. To deny her would only make things more difficult.

“I’m here,” he said and reached out his hand. “I’ve come to take you home.”

She gazed down at the pelt, stroking it. “This will take us wherever we want to go.” Her eyes, dark replicas of Muireann’s own, lacked the clarity of reality.

A sharp shard of pain cut into Tynan’s heart. Dervla had the same wistful timbre to her voice that he remembered from his own mother when she was close to death.
No way
. He wouldn’t lose this one. He’d promised Muireann and he never made a promise he didn’t intend to keep.

Dervla started to hum. The tune was familiar to him. Ty searched his memory for the words.

“Trasna na d’tonnta, dul siar, dul siar.”
Crossing the waves, going west, going west. Yes, that was it. The first song his mam had taught him in the Irish.

Dervla stopped humming and smiled. “You played this on your harp for me,” she said.

Ty nodded assent and took her hand.
“Slán leis an uaigneas is slán leis an gcéan.”
Goodbye to the loneliness, goodbye to the sadness.

Dervla joined him with a harmony as they stepped toward the arched entrance. She clutched the pelt to her heart. Ty thought about asking her to leave it behind so that she would have her hands free to steady herself on the rocks, but he didn’t want her to become upset. He continued his song and encouraged her to sing with him.

“Geal é mo chroí agus geal í an ghrian.”
Bright is my heart and bright is the sun.

A cold gust of wind slapped Ty’s face as he stepped beyond the shelter. Dervla pulled back. She looked at him, her face a mask of bewilderment and, something else, something familiar—defiance. The same fiery insolence he had seen the first time he’d met Muireann, the night in the pub when she’d virtually hung Ian Feeney’s arse out to dry with her sharp words.

“What are the rest of the words?” he asked in a vain attempt to keep her calm.

She shook her head, and her hair whipped about her. “Ronan knows the words. I’ll wait here for him.” She started to turn to the back of the cave.

Ty had to make a quick choice. There was no time to humor her. He swept her off her feet and carried her to the exit.

Dervla kicked and squirmed, dropping the pelt in her effort to escape his hold.

The water was now ankle deep and the sand sucked Ty down, making it difficult to walk. With the struggling woman in his arms, he wasn’t at all sure he could climb back to the strand over the jagged rock ledges.

Instinct told him they had few choices. Ty tried to get her to focus on him before he spoke. She stopped struggling and he thought she was about to relent, but her face came up, her gaze not on him but over his shoulder.

Dervla’s eyes grew wide and she trembled.

“What?” he asked.

The answer came, but not from her lips. A grinding roar. He turned at the sound and the earth shuddered beneath his feet. At once the sky grew black. A green-grey swell built in the sea, roiled and rolled toward land, toward the cave, toward them, and swallowed the light of day.

Like an angry python, the force gripped him, twisted and tumbled him. Ty had only a vague sense that he held in his arms something very precious. Something he would give his life to preserve.

His lungs burned and begged for new breath to fill him. Pain thundered through his shoulder as it hit something hard and unmovable. Then, as suddenly as the water covered him, it retreated, gathered, and threatened again. He choked and sputtered, then breathed the salt air.

Dervla was limp against his chest. He thought she might be unconscious until she shouted, “Let me go.”

“Not in this lifetime,” he shouted above the crash and din. “I promised your daughter I’d get you back, and I’ll go to a wet grave before I’ll break a promise to the woman I love.”

The tide raged against his efforts to scramble up the rocks. Ty knew he was going to have to swim. He tried to remember how his da had held him when he was ten years old and got caught in a rip tide.
I won’t let you go,
he’d said as his strong forearm circled Tynan’s chest. Michael Sloan had held his son with one arm and swam with the other. Even now, with the roar of tons of salt water crashing in his ears, Tynan could hear his father’s voice, clear as it had been two decades ago.
Don’t let go!
I’ve got you.

Ty could attempt nothing less. He gripped Dervla; one long arm encircled the slender woman without much difficulty. There was no delicacy in it, but he held her firmly against him.

Another wave, stronger than the last, struck with an explosive boom against the cliff wall. Ty braced for the onslaught. White water appeared ephemeral but was hard as bullets against his body. The force hit him and he slammed hard onto the sandy bottom before popping up again to catch a breath on the surface.

Ty kicked his legs and stroked through the water with his free arm. He was an inefficient swimmer and would make very slow progress. He just hoped he wouldn’t be pushed farther out by each successive thrust of the sea.

Off in the distance he could hear Cú howl. As the water once again receded, Ty gained a bit of purchase with his feet on the sea floor.

Dervla was silent, eyes wide, shaking her head in protest, clawing to break free, and reaching for something in the water.

The pelt.

Ty watched as it was stripped from them and returned to the sea from which it came. For a moment it seemed to float, teasing him, calling him to let go of his burden and reach for it. Then, it slipped silently beneath the steely surface and was gone. A little of his hope was carried with it, but he gathered his thoughts and tried to steal himself for another attempt to get around the rocky outcrop and onto solid earth.

The next sea surge slammed his head back as though he’d been punched by a giant’s fist. Air expelled from his already burning lungs and made it impossible to hold onto breath. His head spun and blackness tried to take his consciousness. Uncontrollable shivers seized him. He fought the urge to let the sea float him away in the chilled depths.

I don’t make promises I don’t intend to keep.
This became his mantra as he held his breath in preparation for another assault. Ty swam, pulled, scrabbled, and fought…for his life, for Dervla, for Muireann.

He battled for his integrity, for his manhood, for everything he believed family, love and life deserved from him. Dervla slumped against him. Cú howled. Darkness descended.