Ashes on the Waves (34 page)

Fearful indeed the suspicion—but more fearful the doom! It may be asserted, without hesitation, that
no
event is so terribly well adapted to inspire the supremeness of bodily and of mental distress, as is burial before death.

—Edgar Allan Poe,
from “The Premature Burial,” 1844

H
eart full of hope and light-headed, I collected candles and a lighter from the dresser in Frank’s bedroom and a thick bathrobe from his closet for Muireann so she wouldn’t be cold. I draped the robe over my shoulders, stuffed the extra candle in my back pocket, and lit the other one before opening the hidden panel from the room.

I located the trapdoor to the lower level and descended into the musty-smelling darkness. Taking the tunnel I had traveled with Anna, I made my way around the large boulder we’d hidden behind at the turn and ran to the beach. Muireann stood shivering at the cave entrance.

She looked over her shoulder at the water as I wrapped the robe around her. “One moment,” she said before running to a grouping of rocks. She grabbed a pelt from behind it and ran back. “I don’t want the Na Fir Ghorm to steal it or anything. They’re looking for me right now.”

“Why?” I asked, lighting a candle I held in my teeth.

Again, she looked back at the beach. “They want me to come try to seduce you again.”

She hesitated when I held the candle out to her. “That’s fire,” she said. “It’s dangerous. I don’t want it.”

“The tunnel is dark. We need to be able to see. It creates light.”

“I have a better idea.” She closed her eyes and chanted in a strange language. “We need to wait here for just a moment,” she said.

“Why do they want you to seduce me?”

She tilted her head and stared at the flame in my hand. “So they can win the wager.”

The wager again. I blew out the candle. “What exactly is the wager?”

“That human love is frail and will falter in the face of adversity.”

Rage welled up from deep inside my chest and my face grew hot. “That’s what this is about? It’s a bet over whether love will last? Anna could be dying because of a stupid bet like that?”

She nodded and pointed at the sky. “Look, here they come. They’ll light our way. No need for dangerous fire.” She tilted her head up to the golden clouds swirling overhead. “His female is in the tunnel somewhere. Please help us find her.”

The Bean Sidhes grew bright and created a golden light that cocooned us and lit our path as we traversed the tunnel. “Anna!” I yelled.

“They mentioned a boulder and a pit,” Muireann said, running to keep up with me. “Ouch.” She stopped and pulled a rock from the bottom of her bare foot.

I slowed to let her keep up without running. “Anna!” I shouted again.

Almost dreamlike, there was an answer. “Liam.”

It came from just up ahead where the tunnel took a sharp right turn around the boulder. The boulder! My heart soared.

“Anna!” I shouted.

“Liam,” her beautiful voice answered. “Help me.”

I stopped at the boulder, desperately running my hand along the edge where it met the wall. “I’m here. Where are you?”

“D-don’t know.”

Her voice came from underneath the huge stone. I dropped to my knees and dug at the ground at the base of it. It was solid rock with loose pebbles around it. No matter how hard I clawed, I would never break through.

“Hang on. I’m right here.” I stood and put my shoulder to the stone and pushed. There was no way I could move it. “Muireann, I need you to go get help. Please go tell Francine what has happened and have her bring men to come move this—as many as she can find. Anna is underneath. Please hurry.”

“I will get there much faster swimming.” She ran, a Bean Sidhe lighting her way, in the direction of the beach.

“Anna?”

Her voice drifted up from the far side of the boulder. “Please h-hurry. N-need you.”

I crawled to the other side and ran my fingers along the bottom of the huge stone and found a gap between it and the floor. “Could you light this?” I asked a Bean Sidhe.

Anna’s slender fs sleningers slid up through the crack, guided by the light. “L-Liam. I love you. P-please know that.”

I placed my hand over her fingers. They were as cold as the ocean. “I love you too. We’re going to get you out of there.”

“No. T-t-too late. Water. Love you.”

The water had been halfway up the beach, which meant it was high tide. The water had probably risen almost to the top of the pit in which she was imprisoned. Panic slammed into me like the waves on the jetty. If I didn’t get her out soon, she would become too affected by the cold water to stay conscious and she would certainly drown. I couldn’t lose her again. I had to persuade her to fight for life. To stay.

“Anna! Listen to me. Just h
ang on a bit longer. Men are coming to move the boulder. Just stay conscious and above water.” I squeezed her fingers. “Anna!”

Her fingers twitched. “So c-c-cold.”

“I know. We’ll have you right out.”

Her voice was so faint I had to put my ear to the crack to hear it. “No. I’m warm now. It’s all good. Sleepy.”

“Anna. No. Stay awake. Stay with me.”

“Always with you. Love you . . . forever.” Her fingers went limp.

I clutched onto her even tighter, as though somehow I could keep her very soul from exiting if I just hung on hard enough.

Then time stopped. All sound and light disappeared, leaving me with nothing but the feel of her cold fingers and her last word repeating over and over through my mind. “Forever.”

An unbearable ache consumed me entirely. I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came out. It was as if a part of me had been removed. A significant part. Anna’s part.

I crumpled over and ran my lips over her knuckles. “No. God, no.”

But the vast, hollow emptiness in my chest confirmed what I already knew. No matter how hard I clung to her, I could not hold her here. She was gone. I’d lost her again.

I released her fingers and they slipped away through the crevasse into darkness.

The agony of my soul found vent in one loud, long, and final scream of despair.

—Edgar Allan Poe,
from “The Pit and the Pendulum,” 1842

S
houting came from up the tunnel toward the house. “This way,” Muireann called, running in from the ocean entrance.

Standing, I stumbled away from the boulder, falling against the opposite wall, holding it to support me as voices bounced and skittered over the stone walls of the tunnel and then scattered through my brain.

Pa reached me first. “Son. I’m so sorry. We’ll get her out.”

I couldn’t even form the words to tell him it was too late. Most of the men from the village were there: Mac, Ron, Edmond, and others. Everyone pitched in to push the boulder off, and before long it tumbled to its side, revealing a gaping hole almost full to the top with water. Anna rested primarily submerged on a shallow slope near the opening. I turned away as they pulled her out.

“She’s gone,” someone said. It sounded as if they were far away. Their voices echoed and overlapped in my mind as they spoke to one another.

“Frank!” Miss Ronan yelled from the edge of the pit. “Oh, dear gods of the ocean. What have I done?” Falling to her knees, she crumpled into a heap, her long hair dipping into the water. Her body shuddered with such violence, it appeared she would rattle apart into pieces.

A Bean Sidhe floated over the top of the pit and through the clear water, human bones were visible. Frank. Something gold glimmered against the edge.

“He took it off!” Miss Ronan screamed, tearing at her hair. “He could have lived forever, even underwater. I never imagined he’d take it off. I just wanted him punished.” She crossed her arms over her body and rocked.

“She killed the girl. She killed them both,” Pa said.

“No!” Miss Ronan jumped to her feet but was caught by Francine, who held her around the middle from behind, pinning her arms to her sides. Like a feral animal she struggled against Francine, writhing and kicking. “Anna wasn’t meant to die,” Miss Ronan shrieked. “Her parents were supposed to take the body home for burial, and she’d wake up. But they insisted on putting her in the family crypt.” Her eyes darted from one villager to another like a cornered beast’s. “I couldn’t have her screaming where Liam could hear her, so I had her moved. She was to be fed and kept alive by the Na Fir Ghorm, then released when the term of the wager was over. She wasn’t supposed to die.” As if her bones had dissolved, she went limp, and Francine loosened her grip, letting her slide to her knees, sobbing. “The Na Fir Ghorm did this on purpose.”

“Let’s get the girl out of here,” Mac said. The men helped him carry Anna toward the beach, leaving only Francine, Pa, Muireann, and Brigid Ronan.

Muireann, tears streaming down her face, moved to the edge of the pit. Eyes wide, she tilted her head and studied the glimmering object in the water.

Wordlessly, she dropped her robe and slipped her feet into the back flippers of the pelt, crouched over, and stretched the pelt over her head.

Brigid Ronan screamed, and when I looked back, Muireann’s seal form was complete and had slipped into the water. She returned to the surface with the gold object in her mouth. In her cumbersome seal body, she couldn’t climb out of the pit, so she bowed her head and human arms pushed through a slit in the belly of the pelt. Soon, Muireann’s full human form emerged. The amulet still in her mouth, she pitched her pelt out of the pit and began to climb up after it.

Before anyone could react, Brigid Ronan broke free from Francine and grabbed the pelt. “It wasn’t supposed to happen this way,” she said, backing away, pointing a shaking finger at me. “You were the only one who was supposed to die.” As Francine lunged for her, she bolted out of reach, running through the tunnel toward the beach.

“No!” Muireann’s scream ricoch
eted off the walls. “No! My pelt!”

I couldn’t let Ronan get away. I sprinted after her but was too late. When I reached the beach, she had already transformed and plunged into the sea.

Catching my breath, I stared out over the water where Miss Ronan had disappeared, unable to fight off the delirium clouding my mind. The familiar sounds of the ocean seemed foreign, the rush of wind on my face abrasive.

“I’m sorry about your girl, slouding mon,” Pa said from somewhere behind me, his voice skipping through my brain like a stone across water. “I’m sorry about a lot of things.”

Francine wrapped her arms around me. I felt her, but still moved in a daze. Everything seemed far away. “You are bound, lad. You’ll see her in the next world.”

Again, the memory of Anna’s voice filled my head. “Forever.”

Forever,
I repeated in my mind.

It wasn’t until I turned around that the fog lifted from my brain and I found my voice. Anna lay on the beach, the moonlight reflecting off the gauzy silver fabric tangled around her limp body. The last time she had worn that dress, we were bound for all eternity on this very beach.

I fell to my knees and pulled her to me.

Folding over her body, the pain of my very soul issued forth in scream after scream, proclaiming my despair to every living creature in this world and the next.

The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague.

—Edgar Allan Poe,
from “The Premature Burial,” 1844

M
uireann had never witnessed agony like Liam’s. Her heart ached inside her human chest, but she knew there was nothing she could say or do to help him. Like the tide, his sorrow had to run its course before it would subside.

The villagers, save for Francine and the human he called Pa, left through the tunnel.

Liam had stopped shouting and now simply rocked, holding his dead female to him.

Francine approached and squatted down facing him. She brushed his hair from his eyes. “Anna loved you, lad. That’s more than most people get from life. True love.”

“It was more than love,” he said, still rocking. “I . . . I . . .”

“I know,” she whispered, kissing his cheek. Pa patted his shoulder and then left through the tunnel with Francine.

For the longest time, Liam was silent. He caressed Anna’s face and simply stared at her. Then something in him changed. Gently, he laid her down and stood, staring over the water with his good hand clenched in a fist.

His rage was as terrible as his despair, and just as painful to watch.

“Why?” he screamed to the sea. “Why her? Take me instead!”

A gray head popped up a few dozen yards from shore. Then another. Yellow eyes peering from blue faces. More joined them. From thin air, the Bean Sidhes materialized in their nebulous cloud-like forms, floating just above the surface.

Liam paced the water’s edge. “It was a bet? A wager? You murdered her for that?”

Muireann ran her fingers over the raised gold crest of Manannán mac Lir on the amulet, hating the Na Fir Ghorm as they gloated from the water at Liam’s suffering.

The metal warmed under her touch. That was it! Manannán mac Lir was the ruler of her people—of all ocean-dwelling Otherworlders. He had the ability to restore life to the dead; she’d heard stories of it since she had been a pup. She ru Libbed the amulet with her fingers. “Please come to us, great Manannán mac Lir. We need you,” she whispered.

Lightning crackled in the clouds above, and the amulet grew hotter still.

“Please,” she said, a little louder.

A bolt of lightning slammed into the water just behind the Na Fir Ghorm, and where it had struck, a huge horse bearing a rider now stood, appearing more gaseous than solid. The beast strode across the surface of the sea and halted at the waterline, its rider so terrifying, Muireann trembled.

Liam, halfway down the beach, stopped pacing and stared but showed no fear, perhaps because he had nothing else to lose.

Muireann marveled as the transparent figure of a warrior in armor solidified before her eyes. His stallion did the same as it snorted and pawed the surface of the water.

Manannán mac Lir turned the beast in a full circle, deep-set blue eyes traveling from creature to creature and stopping to rest on Muireann. He crossed his arms over his chest and said nothing.

Fear felt the same in human form as it felt as a Selkie. Her stomach churned as she struggled to inhale. “Please,” she said. “Please help us.”

Again, the warrior surveyed the scene. His eyes came to rest on the dead girl on the beach. He gestured to Anna. “Is this why I was called? A dead human?” His deep voice rumbled like distant thunder.

Muireann swallowed hard and nodded.

He dismounted and Muireann cringed. “In what manner did she die?” he asked.

“She was murdered!” Liam shouted. “Murdered by all of them.” He gestured wildly with his good arm to the creatures in and above the ocean. “They made a wager and used us as pawns for their amusement. They killed her for sport!”

Thunder rolled through the sky as Manannán mac Lir turned his attention to the Na Fir Ghorm and Bean Sidhes.

“We killed no one,” the Na Fir Ghorm leader announced, his voice shrill. “The Selkie Brigid Ronan did.”

“Are you this Brigid Ronan?” he asked Muireann.

Unable to find her voice, she shook her head.

“Where is she?” All the creatures cringed as lightning split the sky.

“She’s gone,” Liam answered. “She stole Muireann’s pelt and escaped. But they”—he indicated the Bean Sidhes and the Na Fir Ghorm—“are as responsible as she. More so, even.”

Muireann slid off the rock and took a deep breath. “No. The Bean Sidhes are not at fault.”

“Tell me then, little Selkie, what happened.”

As Muireann told the tale, thunderclouds thickened overhead, and by the time she had finished, lightning struck all around, stopping just short of the water. She assumed the weather was an extension of Manannán mac Lir’s emotions, since it intensified when his expression grew darker.

“Enough,” he said, cutting her off mid-sentence as she reached the point when Anna’s body was brought to the beach.

He stood very still and closed his eyes briefly before speaking. “Bean Sidhes, your involvement in a wager using humans as players was foolhardy and wrong. Your motives were not malicious, however, so I am granting you a reprieve. You have accomplished your task of exposing the wrongful deaths of the two humanwros. I will allow you to cross through the veil to the other side and join your loved ones there.”

The six clouds took human form and shone brilliant gold. A bright white light shimmered just at the horizon, expanding toward the heavens in a thin vertical line that widened momentarily like a curtain being opened. The Bean Sidhes disappeared and the line narrowed into nothing but the night sky once again.

Muireann, still clutching the amulet, returned to her rock and cowered against it, dreading the judgment she would receive for her participation in the wager. She sighed with relief when he next turned his attention to the Na Fir Ghorm.

“Your part in this, however, was despicable and malicious. I can find no redeeming motivation behind your acts.”

The Na Fir Ghorm exchanged looks, many of them
shuddering to the point that ripples radiated around them in the already-turbulent water.

Manannán mac Lir raised his arms in front of him at shoulder level, the bronze bands around his upper arms glittering in the light of the setting moon. “You are from this moment forward banned to the deep ocean, where you will never have human contact again.” Lightning shot from his fingertips in a wide fan, and as if they had never existed, the water’s surface was clear of the horrible creatures.

Liam had moved back to Anna’s body and was again holding her to him, no longer taking notice of anything else.

Manannán mac Lir strode to Muireann and held out his palm. “To prevent it from being abused again, I will take the amulet back.” She placed it in his hand and he smiled at her. “It is unfortunate, little Selkie, that your pelt was taken. I have no remedy for you. I wish you a long and prosperous human life full of joy and love.”

His words felt like a blow to her chest. Love and joy was what Liam and his Anna had shared.

Manannán mac Lir mounted his horse and jerked the reins, turning the beast toward the sea.

“No, wait!” she said. “What about the girl? There are countless stories of you restoring life to the dead.” Tears streamed down her face. “Please.”

From atop his horse, he stared down at the pitiful couple. “I’m sorry, she is but a mere human. Her soul has long taken flight. There is nothing I can do.”