The Crow of Connemara (26 page)

She seemed to taste the sound of that, as if she'd taken a sip of whiskey and was rolling the liquid around her tongue. The bull behind her stamped its feet, its hooves drawing sparks from the stone tiles. “Aye,” she said finally. “The Morrígan, Morrígu, Mór-ríoghain . . . Some say that I'm actually three people: Badb, Macha, and Anand. I'm sometimes seen as a young woman, as an old hag, as a crow. Many names, and many forms. I was loved.” She smiled at him, but there was no affection in that gesture. “And feared. Once.”

“But not now?” Colin asked. His mouth was dry; the words tasted like ash and dust on his tongue.

“Now?” she repeated. “Now there are so few of us left, and 'tis my fault. I convinced them to stay when the others left.” She waved an arm at the hall behind her, and where her hand pointed, a beam of cloudy light swept across the creatures there. He saw them and knew them somehow as they drifted in and out of the light: Selkies, the seal-changelings. Pucá, the goblins. Failinis, the war-hound. The fear-forta, the emaciated “man of hunger.” Abcan, the dwarf poet. The merrow, human above the waist and fish below. The sluagh, the spirits of the evil dead. The neamh-mairbh, the “walking dead.”

And dozens more. The gods and demigods: Danu, Dagda, Cromm Cruaich, Brigit, Boann, Aengus, Lugh, Epona, more . . . Their names came to him as the Morrígan's light swept over them. They were others as well, but nearly all of them seemed to be slumbering in niches in the hall.

They were with him here, all the creatures of myth and legend and tales. He glimpsed them in the sweep of light from the Morrígan, and they were gone as quickly. “We are the Last,” the Morrígan said. “We are the remnants, and we are dying.”

“Dying? Why?”

The Morrígan didn't answer. She closed her hand and the light died, leaving purple-and-green ghosts chasing themselves across Colin's eyes. Her hand reached out, and though he drew back, she was quicker. Her skin felt cold and dry; the caress of a dead lover. “Yeh might open the door again for us,” she said.

He shook his head. “I don't understand. What door?”

“Yeh have the cloch,” she told him. “The cloch that Rory took. Yeh have it, and now yer the one who must use it.”

Involuntarily, his hand went to his jean pocket, and he felt the lump of his grandfather's stone there. The touch of it was icy, and it seemed to throb. The Morrígan's gaze was on his hand, and she nodded.

She was turning from him even as he guiltily took his hand away from the stone, and all was fading with the sound of soft earth falling like rain. The creatures had all left. Only the Morrígan was still there, her cloaked back to him as she, too, started to leave. She stopped, her hand lifted again, and she spoke without turning. “Yeh have to believe me, Colin. Yeh have to
believe
in me, and yeh have to give me what yeh have freely.” The Morrígan's voice was fading like the cavern. “Do yeh believe?” she asked, but her voice trailed off into the soughing of the wind and the rustling of leaves.

The wind had picked up; the tops of the trees around the glade in which they were sitting were swaying as if in time to some unheard music. Colin rubbed at his eyes; the flask from which he'd drunk the potcheen was lying on the grass beside him, and Maeve was sitting next to him, her quiet gaze on him. His eyes burned; his head was pounding as he rubbed his temples. The dream was already fading, more distant and unreal with every passing second. He couldn't seem to hold onto the images; already he was forgetting what he'd glimpsed. “Damn, what did you give me?” he asked. “One little drink put me out. That's never happened before.”

“I thought Yanks could hold their liquor better,” Maeve answered gently. “Good thing there was nobody here who wanted to take advantage of yeh.” He couldn't read her expression, whether that was a smile that touched her lips and crinkled the lines at the corner of her grass-green eyes, or something else entirely.

“I've been drunk, I'll admit, but I've never passed out before, and certainly not from one little swig. What was in there?”

A shrug. “A dream,” she said.

“Well, it worked. I had the weirdest dream ever. Sorry, I didn't mean to fall asleep on you . . .” He blinked; his eyelids felt terribly heavy, and his pulse throbbed in his head.

“So what was weird about yer dream?”

Colin shook his head and sat up; the movement caused his head to pound more, and he groaned. Maeve leaned over and rubbed his temples; he closed his eyes at the touch and let it drain away the pulsing of the headache. “Thanks. That feels good . . .” Colin tried to remember the dream:
the Hall, the Morrígan, the others . . .
“I don't know. It must be this place—I
think
I was under the fairy mound, and I was talking to the Morrígan. At least I think I was.” He opened his eyes and stared hard at Maeve. “She looked like you.”

“Did she now?”

“Yeah. And there was something about a caul,” Colin added. “Some old woman in the dream said I was born with one. I've heard about cauls—something to do with the amniotic sac?”

“A caul is real enough,” Maeve told him, still massaging his temples. “Sometimes a babe is born with what looks like extra flesh draped over his or her face and body—and aye, it's actually part of the amniotic sac. A long time ago, being born with a caul was supposed to signify that the child had the gift of being able to access the Otherworld. Those born with one were thought to be especially blessed by the old gods. Not all that long ago, here in Ireland, yer caul might have been preserved as a charm, though in the States, they'd just dispose of it. Ask yer mother or someone who witnessed yer birth; she might know if yeh had a caul.” She lifted her hands away from his head. “There; does that feel better now?”

Colin titled his head from side to side, listening to his neck cracking at the motion. The headache had receded to a distant tidal pulse. “Yeah. Much better.” He found her hands and clasped them in his. “I don't know why I'd have someone talking about a caul in a dream considering I haven't thought about the term in forever. I must have dredged it out of my subconscious.”

Maeve tilted her head. “That's one possibility.”

He closed his eyes again. Opened them. He was beginning to feel somewhat normal, though he vowed never to take another shot of that potcheen if Maeve offered him one. “Listen, we haven't talked much about . . .” He lifted a shoulder. “. . . us,” he finished. “I've been thinking about that a lot, though. Lucas kicked me out of his group because of it, I think.”

“Did he now? I'm sorry, Colin. I know how much yeh enjoy playing music; I know that's the reason yeh came here. But I'm not particularly surprised.” Her hands squeezed his. “Out on Inishcorr, yeh could play all yeh want. They'd be happy to have yeh there, and Keara and the others know most of the old songs—more of 'em than Lucas. Our memories are long out there, and deep. There are plenty of houses there for yeh to take and fix up, if yeh want.” She paused. Began again. “Or yeh could stay with me, if yeh'd like.”

He pulled his hands away from hers; she seemed to let go only reluctantly. “I appreciate that. I do. It's just . . . It feels like you're saying I have to make a choice between Ballemór or Inishcorr, that if I'm with you, I can't be here, too.”

She held his gaze, unblinking. “Yeh know what they're like here. Do yeh think that's a wrong assessment?”

“Maybe not,” he admitted. “But I don't have to like it. I don't like being told there's only one way, and that's the way I have to do things. I like being with you, Maeve. You know that, right? But . . . I don't know . . .” He exhaled, hard, and with the next breath, the world seemed to snap back into focus around him again. The glade was just another glade on the Head, no longer imbued with strange, saturated colors. The stones around the mound were just stones, and the mound itself just a frost-upheaval in the sod. “Look, give me another few days. Let me talk to Lucas again, and think about what's best for me right now. Is that fair?”

Maeve rose to her feet, her skirt swaying. She brushed her hair back from her face as she looked down at him. “It's fair; in fact, I'll give yeh over the weekend. I'll have the
Grainne Ni Mhaille
moored on Beach Road next Monday morn when we come over for supplies. We'll stay there until noon. If yeh want to come back to Inishcorr with me, then be there. An' if yer not, then I'll just wish yeh well.” She turned and started walking back down the trail, not waiting for him as he rose, brushing dirt from his jeans. She turned back to him. “I thought yeh might be the one for me from that first night I saw yeh,” she told him. “Yeh have to believe me. Yeh have to believe
in
me. Do yeh?”

Her last words seemed overlaid with another voice, and with that the last moments of the dream returned to him, the Morrígan speaking the same words, in the same tone. He seemed to feel the resonance of the voice in his grandfather's stone as well. In the pocket of his jeans, it vibrated against his skin like a cell phone.

“Maeve,” he started to say, but she shook her head and half-ran from the glade and into the trees. He stayed there, wanting to chase after her, but his legs refused to cooperate.

She had disappeared into the trees before he could manage his first steps.

22

“I
T'S GOOD TO HEAR YOUR VOICE, too, Mom. Sorry I didn't call earlier. Things have been a little crazy here, and some of the places I've been there just wasn't any service at all.”

Colin wondered if his mother could hear the excuses in his voice. He could imagine her in the living room of their house in Chicago; he could hear the TV on in the background, thin voices scratching at the speaker of his cell phone accompanied by equally tinny music. His mother's breath obliterated them. “Jen told me
she's
talked to you several times.” The accusation was implicit, with just a hint of guilt-inducing
“You'll call your sister, but you won't call me”
underneath it.

“Yeah, sorry, Mom.
Mea culpa
, and all that.” He pressed his lips together. Downstairs, he could hear Mrs. Egan puttering around in the kitchen, and the smell of baking bread wafted through the house. “I'll try to be better about that. I promise.”
But if I move to Inishcorr, there'll be no phone service at all . . .

“Jen says you've met someone?” The bald statement had a dozen conversational hooks dangling from it. Silently, he cursed Jen for giving Mom the bait, and he wondered how he was going to avoid getting dragged into a conversation he didn't want to have. He decided that a lie would be the best course for the moment.
It's no coincidence that Mom's named Mary
, he and Jen used to joke in their teenage years.
She's intent on making sure we stay virgins.

“Her name's Maeve, but right now we're just friends. Nothing more. So there's really not much to say. She lives on one of the islands around Ballemór; I don't see her all that much.”

“Ah.” He heard a click and the voice on the TV changed to Ellen DeGeneres' distinctive voice. He imagined his mother, sitting on the couch with the remote in one hand and the phone in the other, her coffee steaming on the table in front of her. “Jen made it sound like this was something serious,” she said.
Dangling the hooks again . . .

“Well, Maeve's five months pregnant, though I'm not entirely sure I'm the father. Still, I married her last week just in case, but, nah, it's not serious.”

From the other end of the connection came a gasp, then a shaking laugh. “Oh, you! You're awful, you know that?” He heard the laughter die away quickly. “So . . . when are you going to be back, Colin? We miss you so much, and Tommy could use your help with the campaign.”

“I'm sure Harris will do everything that Tommy needs,” he told his mother. “I'm managing to keep myself afloat financially playing music, my visa's still good, and I'm learning a lot. I'm really not planning to leave anytime soon.”

“Yes, but what
good
is all this music stuff going to do for you? Colin, someday you're going to have a wife and family; how is music going to provide for them? Why, you'll need medical benefits and a house in a decent neighborhood, and a down payment for that is going to be tens of thousands of dollars, and—”

“Mom,” he said into the rush of her objections, the same litany he'd heard for the last several years, “it's the twenty-first century. Maybe that wife of mine will be the one with the good job and benefits. Or maybe folk music will come back into favor again and I'll be giving concerts in stadiums. I don't know what the future holds, and neither do you. In any case, I'll worry about a wife and family when the time comes.” Then, simply because he knew it would annoy her: “Or maybe I'll just stay here in Ireland. Things are relatively cheap over here, and they
like
musicians. Maybe I'll just settle down with Maeve, become an Irish citizen. I won't have to worry about the high cost of living over there, and Ireland has free public health care, so I won't have to worry about that, either. You'd just have to fly over here to visit your grandkids.”

There was silence on the other end for a moment, though he heard her intake of breath. He imagined her sitting there, staring at the TV and trying to decide if that was another joke. “Well,” she said, drawing out the word over a long breath, “I'm sure you'll do what's right in the end.” He knew that in Mom-speak, that translated as
And you'd damned well better do what
I
think is right.

“Sure, Mom,” he said. “I'm sure I will. Listen, I have a silly question. Do you know what a caul is?” She didn't, and he explained. “Anyway, was I born with one?”

She gave a cough of surprise. “Why on Earth would you ask that?”

“Someone said that she could tell that I had been. Something about it being considered lucky.”

“What kind of people are you hanging around with there, Colin? Gypsies and fortune tellers? Is this Maeve of yours one of them? Of all the ridiculous things to ask—”

“Mom. Just answer the question. Was I born with a caul?”

Television voices chattered beneath his mother's breaths. “I . . . I don't know—they told me they had to clean you up before they gave you to me, and I couldn't see what they were doing. Your Aunt Patty might remember. She was there, since your father was stuck in Indianapolis at some meeting. You could ask her, if you really want to know. It seems silly to me, and rather gross, honestly. All I cared about was that you were healthy. Yours was the easiest birth of all of you. I was in labor with Tommy for twelve hours, and eight with Jennifer . . .”

He was half-listening now, having heard these stories too many times over the years:
Tommy was breech and they almost went to an emergency C-
section but the doctor managed to turn him at the last minute. I swore I'd never have another child after that horrible experience. But a woman forgets these things, dear, and Jennifer was a sweet, even-tempered child from the moment she emerged. Now you—you squalled with colic for the entire first two months and the only thing that would sooth you was riding in the car, and your father or I would put you in the car seat and drive you around for hours . . .

Colin allowed their conversation to drift into polite niceties. He heard all about Tommy's progress with the campaign and how his “coming-out” hadn't seemed to affect the polls too badly, and how well Jen was doing (though his mother somehow neglected any mention of Aaron), and how her knees were hurting and the doctor was thinking it was incipient arthritis and at some point she'd probably have to have knee replacement surgery (“You see, it's things like that that countries with public health care just won't provide until you're practically crippled . . .”).

He finally made his excuses and disconnected with the promise that he'd call again soon.

He suspected that their definitions of “soon” would be wildly divergent.

After the conversation with his mother, he hesitated, sitting on his bed as he listened to Mrs. Egan puttering around downstairs, but he finally pulled up the contact list on his phone and pressed the number for Aunt Patty's cell phone. There was the hiss of the overseas connection, a long pause, then he heard the phone ring on the other end. After four rings, he thought he would need to leave a message, but he heard a click and then Aunt Patty's voice, a little breathless.

“Colin! I'm at the mall; my phone was in my purse and so I didn't hear it right away. How are you? I've been hoping you'd call so we could catch up.”

“Sorry, Aunt Patty. I've been busy here, and some of the places I've been just don't have cell service.”

“Oh, I understand. Have you called your mom, though? She calls me at least every other day to see if I've heard anything from you.”

“I just talked to her. Which is actually why I'm calling you now.” He took a breath, running his tongue over his lips. “Listen, I've a strange question to ask you. I asked Mom, and she said you might know. When I was born. . . . Well, do you know what a caul is?”

Aunt Patty laughed. “As a matter of fact, I do. And yes, when you were born you had a caul, if that's what you're wondering. You looked like someone had plastered a really ugly, pale blue, splotchy wet cloth over your face. Took the doc a few moments to get it off so you could start breathing. There were a few anxious moments for me watching them, but I don't think your mom really noticed, and it was easy to forget about once everyone knew you were all right. God, I haven't thought about that in
years
, Colin. Why in the world are you asking?”

“Believe it or not, the subject came up here in Ireland.”

“Really? How odd. I mentioned it to my mom—your Maimeó—afterward. She was the one told me what a caul was. She said that, back home, there were tales about children born with cauls and that supposedly Daiddeó Rory was born with one, too, so maybe it runs in families. It's supposed to mark the child for something special, according to Maimeó. I can't remember if I ever told your mom that or not. If I did, she probably didn't think much of it.”

“No, it seems she didn't. She wasn't even sure what a caul was. But thanks, Aunt Patty; that's what I wanted to know.”

“Glad I could help. So tell me, how are you?”

“I'm fine.”

“Uh-huh,” he heard through the speaker. “That's the answer someone gives when they don't want to actually answer the question. I know you better than that, Colin. Let's try again. How are you?”

He didn't respond immediately. On the other side of the line, he heard the tinny blandness of mall music over the speakers, and fragments of people passing his aunt, who waited patiently for his response. “All right,” he said at last, “things have been somewhat strange. This is going to sound bizarre, but I'm wondering if I'm not caught up in part of the same impossible tale that Daiddeó Rory wrote down—all that nonsense he talked about in the journal you gave me. I thought that was just some tale he was making up, but now . . .” There was nothing but the hiss of the connection in his ear. “Aunt Patty?”

“I heard,” she said. “Is that why you were asking about the caul?”

“Yeah. Maeve, the woman I've been seeing here, she said she could tell I was born with one. And . . . Well, I'm not sure exactly
how
she knows some of the things she tells me or does some of what she does. I'm even starting to wonder . . .” He stopped.

“Do you trust this Maeve?” Aunt Patty asked. “What does your heart tell you, Colin? Dad—your grandfather—always told us that if we followed our hearts, we couldn't be led astray, no matter where we ended up. That was always good advice for me.”

“I'll remember it. Aunt Patty, please don't tell Mom any of this. Not even Jen or Tommy. I don't want anyone worrying. Or thinking I've gone off the deep end, either.”

“What about me?” she said, though he heard a laugh riding under the words.

“I figure you can handle it,” he told her. “Listen, I'll let you get back to your shopping. You've given me a lot to think about, and that's what I'm going to do.”