The Light-Bearer's Daughter (7 page)

“You were only three. But you’ve seen the photos.”

Dana’s mouth twisted wryly. How intently she had once studied those few fuzzy pictures taken with a disposable camera! Always searching for clues and memories. There was one of the wedding at the Registrar’s Office. Her mother wore a dress of green lace with a string of pearls, and a sprig of honeysuckle in her hair. There were several of the celebration back at the cottage, all their friends laughing and drinking, mostly young musicians and artists. Dana’s favorite had always been the one of herself as a baby in her mother’s arms. Yet no matter how hard and how long she had stared at those images, the pretty young woman with the strawberry-blond hair remained a stranger to her.

“I mean a picture in my head. Of
her
looking at
me
. I can do it with you, even from way back. I shut my eyes and there you are, smiling at me.”

Dana closed her eyes. Her face lit up, reflecting her father’s love for her. But when she opened her eyes again, they glinted darkly.

“When I try to do that for Mum, nothing comes. Nothing’s there. Gabe, did she hate me? Is that why she left?”

For the second time that night, he was speechless. A deep shudder passed through him. He reached out to grip her arms, his voice shaking and urgent.

“Jesus, Dana, how can you think that? We went over this again and again when you were little.
All
kids blame themselves if their parents leave or split up or even die! You’ve got to believe me.
It wasn’t your fault!
It had nothing to do with you! How could it? You were an innocent baby! A three-year-old! Maybe I was fooling myself and I was doing it all wrong, but the way I remember it, the three of us were happy. Really happy. I can tell you this for certain—she loved me and she loved you.”

“Then why did she go?”

Dana’s demand was almost a wail. They had arrived at the point inevitably reached whenever they went this way: a dark place of defeat and unknowing. A dead end.

Gabriel sighed and shook his head.

“Like I said, we were very young. Just kids. Maybe it was too much for her. The truth is, honey, I can’t answer that question and I’ve given up trying. I don’t know why she left. I guess we’ll never know.”

he giant roared like a wounded beast in the night, maddened beyond all sense. The mountain closed around him like a tomb. The weight of stone bore him down. Tripling in force, the spell worked its magic with more songs and more words to tighten his bonds
.

Seothó, a thoil, ná goil go fóill,

Seothó, a thoil, ná goil aon deoir,

Seothó, a linbh, a chumainn’s a stóir.

Hush, dear heart, no need to cry
,

Hush, dear heart, no need for tears
,

Hush, my child, my love and treasure
.

Now an image flickered in the darkness of his mind. A great bonfire burning on a distant hill. He strove to draw nearer, to see more clearly. The night sky was dusky with the warm breath of midsummer. Was it he who stood in the flickering shadows, surrounded by creatures of every kind? Not only animals but elemental beings of the woods and the waters, shimmering like the stars above. He was laughing with the others, yet he did not join the circle that danced around the flames. His eyes were constantly watching the sky
.

Then he raised his arms, for he knew the time had come, and he let out a cry that flew like thought
.

Let her come to me now, she for whom I have waited so long!

ana was beginning to panic. More than a week had passed since the meeting in the woods. The Lady had told her to wait for a sign, but time was running out. The airplane tickets were booked. In less than a month, she would be leaving for Canada.

There were moments when Dana wondered if it had really happened, if such a thing were possible. The leaf she was given in the cave had already dried and crumbled to dust. Was it just make-believe? Her own wishful daydream? And what if it wasn’t? A trace of fear always mingled with her hope. She knew these matters were beyond the ordinary. She recognized their nature from the stories she had grown up with; all those tales of a half-glimpsed world beyond the veil of the visible. A world that was both beautiful and perilous. Didn’t the Lady herself speak of danger?

Dana knew she would go regardless. Having caught hold of a long-lost dream, she wasn’t about to give it up. She had begun to think of her mother again. Early memories were trickling in. That time she found the box of clothes in her father’s wardrobe. Was she four or five? The dresses and skirts were mostly light cottons with flowered patterns. Crushing the fabric against her face, she had inhaled the lingering scent of apples, as she sobbed her heart out. Then there were the times she had lain in bed at night, listening to the sound of a sweet voice in her head.
Hush, dear heart, no need to cry. Hush, dear heart, no need for tears
. Her pillow was always damp when she woke in the morning.

And there was something else. Behind the snippets of memory, Dana sensed the shadow of some terrible moment; an event both monstrous and hidden. Too amorphous to recall, it only left her baffled.

She wished she had someone to talk to, but her best friend was in Spain on holiday and her soccer gang were useless. They would only make fun of her. No one believed in magic at their age. Gabriel did, of course, or so he always said, but he was the last person she could turn to.
Hey, Da, I’ve got to go off into the mountains on a dangerous quest!

Things were already tense at home. Since her father held a Canadian passport, he had to prove his right to take Dana from her birthplace. Officially the mother’s consent was required. Notices had to be posted in newspapers and public places to allow her the chance to come forward to claim her child. It was harrowing for him. Though he didn’t involve Dana, she knew what was happening and she could see the haunted look in his eyes. Under normal circumstances, she would have been tormenting him about the move, but she wasn’t able to. He looked too miserable.

It was Sunday when she found him sitting alone in the kitchen staring at the wall. His eyes were red and she knew he had been crying.

“Let’s go out for dinner,” she suggested. “Take my pocket money for the month. We should celebrate your new job!”

She had to turn away quickly. It was obvious he was about to cry again.

The Hanuman House was their favorite place in Bray, not only because it served delicious food, but because they knew its owners, Aradhana and Suresh, who had arrived from India only a year before. Two flights of stairs led upward to an airy dining room overlooking the stone bridge that crossed the River Dargle. The walls and even the ceiling of the restaurant were painted with scenes from the Hindu epic the
Ramayana
. Dana loved looking at the pictures that told the story of the hero, Rama, who saved his beautiful wife, Sita, from the evil demon, Ravanna. In the evening, when candles were lit at the tables, the murals seemed to come alive. The flickering light made the figures breathe and move, while the music of tambours and sitars swept softly through the room.

Aradhana was on duty that night, not her plump and jocular older brother. Slender and graceful, with great dark eyes, she mirrored the mythical beauty of Sita. The silk of her red sari, threaded with gold, rustled as she walked. Her long dark braid was plaited with jasmine. This was how she dressed for work. When they met her on the streets or in the shops, she was usually in jeans and a T-shirt, with her hair in a ponytail.

Dana and her father were also dressed up. Gabriel wore beige linen trousers and a faded blue shirt. Both his head and his silver earring gleamed in the candlelight. Dana sported her best clothes, bought for her Confirmation: a denim skirt that fell to her ankles, a yellow blouse with embroidered sleeves, and high-heeled sandals. She caught the critical look of a girl her own age who sat at another table, and shrugged it off. Fashion was not something she understood or cared about.

“How is my Irish Barbie this evening?” Aradhana asked as she brought them to their seats.

Dana would have hated to be called this by anyone else, especially since she had never owned a doll, but it somehow seemed less objectionable coming from Aradhana. And Dana wasn’t the only one the young woman charmed. Gabriel always acted oddly around her. When Dana once teased him about being too cowardly to ask for a date, he had answered seriously, “My girlfriends don’t last. You know that. Radhi’s special. I wouldn’t want to wreck our friendship.”

Now Dana watched wryly as her father puzzled over the menu to keep Aradhana beside him. Enquiring after various dishes, he requested her opinion on this one and that, knowing full well what he meant to order. He and Dana always ate the same meal: white basmati rice with vegetables cooked in a balti sauce, peshwari bread stuffed with nuts and raisins, and two frothing glasses of mango lassi.

While Gabriel dragged out the process as long as he could, Dana left the table and wandered over to gaze at the murals. There was Rama with his great bow, shooting arrows that never missed their target. His skin was sky-blue, a sign of his otherworldly nature as he was the son of a god. At his side stood Sita, the daughter of a king, who fell in love with Rama the moment she saw him. It was when the couple were exiled in the forest that the ten-headed Ravanna, half demon, half human, abducted Sita. In his fiery chariot, he carried her away to the island kingdom of Lanka. Only after many adventures and the help of the monkey-god Hanuman did Rama defeat the demon and rescue his wife.

As Dana gazed at her favorite scene, the reunion of Rama and Sita, an old woman hobbled up beside her. Leaning on a blackthorn stick, she wore a long crimson skirt and a black shawl with a green fringe. Wisps of smoky gray hair framed a narrow face that was wrinkled and whiskery. Her eyes were like two black beads.

“
Is breá an tráthnóna é
,” she said to Dana. “A fine evening indeed.”

“
’Sea
,” agreed Dana politely. Educated in a Gaelscoil, she was fluent in Irish. “
Conas atá tú, a mháthair?
”