The 13th Mage (4 page)

“It is so beautiful, just what I was looking for, is it a present for someone? Or is it for your own child?”

“Excuse me?”

“The baby shawl, who is it for?”

“Oh, it’s mine.
I mean, I see…” he said and felt a heavy knot in his stomach.
A baby shawl. “It’s for a friend, he just had a baby, well, his wife
had it…
I mean.”

“Pink, a girl I see.
Could you tell me where you got it?
Mine is due in May and I have been looking for a shawl like this for months now. It would have to be yellow of course, although I am hoping for a girl, one can never be sure.”

“It’s a boy,” he said looking down at her belly.
It wasn’t a good idea for him to be
copulate with a pregnant mortal. B
abies had a way of absorbing energy that other mortals did not.
Pity, she was quite attractive, smelt delightfully too.

“Funny, that’s what my husband said too, a boy.”

“Yes, well, I better get going,” he said tearing the shawl from the mother to be and folding it neatly into his briefcase.
The young woman mumbled the library’s closing time and went onto the next table to hush the readers out of her domain.

He opened his briefcase and stared at the shawl for a few seconds.
Did this mean he had to have a baby?
Why would a Keeper want him to have a baby?
And
what did a baby have to do with the number thirteen?

He hoped against hope he didn’t have to have
thirteen
babies.
It would be difficult enough finding a mother for one, but
thirteen
?
The Council would expel him no questions asked.

He collected his notes, which included many subjects so as to disorient any elder who might be spying on his research, put on his coat and left the library.

It was already dark outside. H
e hated
London
in the autumn, but not as much as he hated it in the winter.
He felt a few heavy raindrops fall on his face and wondered what would look good and cover his head at the same time, hats were out of the question these days.
He’d have to look into something called hoodies.

“Oh dear Mary Mother of God, Jesus Christ all mighty, please let it not be true! Not my baby girl, not Jennifer,” Esther Stone shouted, then held her face in her hands and sobbed.

“There, there Esther, it’s not the end of the world you know,” Mrs. Crow said tapping Esther gently on the arm and leading her to the sofa.
“We all got here this way. Nothing wrong with a baby.”

Esther very rarely lost her composure, she had lost it the day her mother died, the day she married Jennifer’s father, and now.

Her baby girl, all the plans they had for the future, dashed. She had sacrificed her own life to give a better one to her only daughter, so she could have a real life, a real chance in life, a real education. Now this. It was the end of her world.

“Please mom
,” whispered Jennifer, but she couldn’t look at her mother in the face. She simply stood there, by the door, holding her bag with all her strength, the worst was over, she thought, the worst was over.

“Here,
drink
some of your tea, it’ll make you feel much better,” Mrs. Crow said to Esther, she knew for a fact
a cup of tea worked wonders on shattered minds and hearts.

“My baby, oh dear God, Jennifer,” added Esther putting the tea back on the coffee table, she wasn’t about to be comforted with a cup of tea, not over something this serious.

“Mum, it’s alright, I’ll cope.”

How could she cope, Esther thought, Jennifer was but a baby herself, always pampered and protected.
Maybe that was it.
Maybe she had over protected her, maybe she should have been harsher, and
maybe she should have allowed her to see all the misery in the world, misery caused by irresponsible men.

Now her girl was all alone in the world with a baby to raise.

“What about the father? What has he to say about this?” She asked.

The father was gone.
Had paid his bed-sit, packed all his possessions and gone.
Not a word or sign from him since.
Nothing.

“I’m sure the boy had his reasons,” put in Mrs. Crow.

“He had reasons alright Mrs. Crow, you know what men ar
e like. I
t’s just so typical, use the girl for their dirty deeds and leave when the baby comes along.” Esther spat out.
It was all so common, and her daughter had fallen for it.

“You were meant to go have a better life than this Jennifer, remember? How will you do that with a baby in your hands?”
She said to her daughter, her Jenny, her pride and joy.
“And how are we going to afford this baby?
T
he shop hardly turns over enough to keep us fed and clothed.”

“I’ll get another job mom.”

“A job?
Who is going to give you a job here Jennifer, an unmarried mother.”

“When Daddy left you, you got a job mom.”

“Yes, but we got married first, then he left.”

Mrs. Crow knew what Esther was thinking now, what would people say?
If word got around about this unfortunate event there might be no customers left for the shop to keep going at all.
After all, most of Esther’s clientele were young mothers.
Upright, married mothers with legitimate children.

“We could send her to London, I have a friend there who is looking for a housekeeper,” the old woman said, “that way Jennifer could have the baby and come back when it
i
s all over.”

“Yes mom,
London
is big, and Mrs. Crow tells me her friend has a really big house, I could clean and cook and in the evenings I could go to night school…”

Her mother got up and took Jennifer into her arms, “why didn’t you tell me about the baby earlier?” She said realizing all this had been discussed before, “oh, my baby, why didn’t you come to me first?”

Jennifer hadn’t even realized her condition until Mrs. Crow had pointed it out, let alone thought of telling someone about it.

“Now Esther, you know I’ve been around for a long time, these kinds of things can’t exactly be hidden from me.
Of course Jennifer was going to tell you, she’s your daughter, it’s just better this way, better to have someone who can look at things from the outside,” Mrs. Crow said to comfort the grandmother to be.

Esther’s mind changed gear, it was the twenty first century, and her daughter didn’t have to suffer this fate, not these days.

“What about that ship that takes the girls out to international waters?” she said.

“An abortion?” Asked Jennifer.

She had thought of it, she had planned it when she found first found out, when she was angry and upset at Sean for not saying goodbye, for not saying anything, for stealing her ring.

“I can’t have an abortion mom, I love… I love this baby,” she said.
She loved the baby, Sean’s and her baby.

“Oh, my poor baby, he really got to you didn’t he.
The bastard. He has to answer for this, we’ll get the Garda to trace him, no one can
vanish into thin air these days
, and they have all those computers. T
hey can trace anyone.”

But Mrs. Crow had already gone to the police, filed a missing persons report.

The old woman led Esther back to the sofa and insisted she take the cup of tea this time.

“So, no abortion, you will sacrifice your life for a silly mistake,” she said sipping her tea, “oh Jennifer, why didn’t you take precautions? You are an educated girl, I always told you what to do in those circumstances, a condom, go on the pill.
Why didn’t you protect yourself?”

Jennifer felt embarrasse
d. She had done the right thing. I
t wasn’t her fault.

She remembered that weekend, she remembered Sean walking to the chemist and tears welled in her eyes.
She walked toward the window and pretended to look outside.
She hated it wh
en tears betrayed her composure. S
he hated crying in front of others.

The rain was falling heavily against the glass pane making a thunderous noise, the sky was dark and forbidding, she pulled the net curtain to the side and leaned against the cold glass, it was all so d
ark, so many rain drops falling. I
t felt like nothing would survive it.
She looked at her mother’s cherry tree, the last of the leaves fell to the ground under the pressure.

She heard little bells. I
t was as though among the drops there were tiny lit
tle bells that lifted her heart. S
he lea
ned her ear closer to the glass. I
t was coming from the garden.

“Sean!” she shouted and ran out into the rain, she closed her eyes and faced the sky, cold rain, she heard th
e tinkering of tiny bells again. I
t was to her left.
She walked slowly so as not to lose the
sound, they got stronger.
It was by her corner, it was where she used to plant her favorite flowers when she was a little child.

“Oh, God,” she said and she fell to her knees.
In front of her there was the heather bush she’d planted for the fairies when she was eight, its tiny blue bells moving in the rain, and she could hear them singing.

“Oh dear God, I’m going mad,” she said reaching
toward
one of the little bells and seeing it shine silver on her fingertips.

She felt Mrs. Crow’s hand on her shoulder. She’d brought an umbrella.

“The heart has many ways of communicating Jennifer, you know in your heart who it is that’s sending you that music.”

She looked up at the old woman, could she hear it too?

“Sometimes, when a lover goes away, he can send his voice to his loved one using these, sounds like bells playing, or so they say.
I’ve never heard it myself, but there again Mr. Crow wasn’t exactly the romantic type, if you know what I mean.”

Jennifer took the old wom
an’s hand in hers, another myth. I
t was probably
nothing more than
the rain making noises in an old pipe.
The sound was gone and so was Sean.

“Come on dear, we don’t want you to catch your death.
That young Sean is alive and well somewhere, that’s for sure.”

“Do you really think he still lives?”

“What does your heart tell you?”

“It tells me he is alive and he loves me.”

Mrs. Crow smiled. T
he truth of a young heart was unquestionable.
If only people didn’t stop listening to their hearts as they got older the
world would be such a nice place to live, she thought, “let’s get back in there and see what we can do about your mother.”

But her mother was not about to be comforted.
It would take a while.
Jennifer
would leave as soon as possible. S
he would tell all her friends that she was off to
London
to marry her boyfriend.
People would know she was pregnant but they wouldn’t be able to prove she didn’t get married.
She would stay to live in London as long as possible after the baby’s birth, so as when she returned to Skerries she could say the marriage failed and she was getting a divorce.
A divorced woman was much more acceptable than an unmarried mother.

The next day she bought her ticket to London.
She had never hated Skerries before, in fact she had always loved the place, but she knew how she herself had shunned a girl a few years earlier when the girl got herself pregnant.
The girl went to live with her aunt in
Liverpool
in the end.
It wasn’t as though people would throw stones or actively insult her, no, none of that.
It was more like not talking to her, not saying “hi,” in the street when she walked past.
Staring at her and talking about her predicament behind her back.
The girl’s family would walk with their heads hanging low, which added to the shame she must have felt.

If people found out about her own state now they would stop going to her mother’s shop.
Maybe some of the gossips would go to try and weave some of the sordid details, but they wouldn’t buy anything, it’s likely her mother would throw them out adding fuel to the fire.

Jennifer felt closed in.
London was big, she could disappear in
London
.
She felt frightened.

She walked down the beach and sat to watch the sun go down.
A young woman arrived with three young children and a dog, a Springer Spaniel.
The dog ran toward her and wagged his entire body in greeting.

The eldest of the children, a small blond girl, ran toward her, “don’t mind him,” she said, “he’s harmless.
Come on Charlie!”

The young girl pulled at the dog, which simply stood there wagging all over, staring at Jennifer.

The mother was walking past and greeted her, then turned and walked toward them, the dog wouldn’t budge, Jennifer thought the woman would help the girl with her pet, but she walked past the girl and dog and sat by her smiling.

“Sometimes everything looks dark and endless,” she said, “but don’t forget that winter never fails to turn to spring.”

She handed Jennifer a white rose, “the sea just gave me this little present, I think it must be for you.”
With these words the woman stood up and left, “Charlie, come boy,” she said and the dog followed her, jumping and running around and around, lifting clouds of sand.

Jennifer watched the family move away and realized she hadn’t returned the greeting or said thank you.
She l
ooked at the rose, it was fresh. S
he wondered how it had stayed fresh while floating in salty water.
It was scientifically impossible.
Someone must have dropped it. For a moment she thought it shone silver in the sunlight.

“Thank you,” she said toward the now distant woman and her children.

The woman turned and waved, startling Jennifer, it was as though she had heard her, Jennifer waved back then got up to leave.

"
Winte
r never fails to turn to spring," s
he thought and was glad for the first time in a long time.
She would have a great future, she had to.