Flights of Angels (Exit Unicorns Series) (99 page)

An oak wood lay not far from the cottage. Kerry was a mix of shore and wood, of ocean and thick greenery that grew rampant in the summer time. In spots, the rhododendrons filled up entire mountainsides, making them as impenetrable as a jungle.

Today, there was a heaviness in the air, as though it too were pregnant and filled to the brim with water and life. As she stepped out into the cottage yard, the scent of thyme and lavender, steeped in sunlight and humidity, flooded her senses. With it came the knowledge of the force that lay coiled at the root of every living thing that moved on two legs and four, things which swayed to the passing wind, to the patter of raindrops, and lay hushed under the winter snows, of all things being connected at their core as though everything had roots that stretched down to some central point in the earth.

Yet the forest was its own world, with its own secrets and hierarchies of life and drama. It was part of what she loved about her walks there, as though she had stepped into a realm separate from the one where she was behind on the laundry, hadn’t seen her feet in three months and didn’t know what to make for supper. For her it was like crossing from one country to another, where all the customs were different yet somehow deeply familiar.

The property was bounded on one side by a farmer’s fields and low stone walls, on another by a small peaty-gold stream. The other two sides led out into small wildernesses where a person could walk without running across a trace of civilization—unless one counted the small holy well that was all but grown over with moss and the detritus of many seasons.

She had discovered the well early in the summer on one of her rambles and knew it was ancient, possibly one that had been consecrated to the Goddess rather than the newer Christian deities, or to Brigid, who was merely a newer face of the Goddess. That it had lain undiscovered for many years was apparent, but the sense of something
other
lingering in the air around it was not diminished by the years that had passed. Today she would go there, perhaps leave some small offering on behalf of her unborn child.

So with Finbar at her side, long nose stretched joyously into the air, she struck out west of the property where the boundaries of cultivated land soon gave way to moss and stone, the wicking of water and the slipping shadows of trees.

Today the forest seemed very still, as though the entire world within it paused at the approach of human feet. Music halted, breath stopped and wine, in the act of being poured, froze in midair. She sometimes had that feeling even in her own home when she had come in after chores or errands—a stillness that spoke of action abruptly halted, pipes and flutes stopped mid-note, and a curtain would flutter as though a light breeze had passed. It was not an ill feeling, rather that some
thing
existed side by side with them in the air and upon their land. And though to say that such presences were benign did not seem right, nor were they in any way malevolent. It was so with this wood as well.

She stepped deeper into the bottle green dim, stooping with care to pick the mallow that grew with such abandon this summer. Finbar bounded ahead of her joyously, picking up sticks and dropping them to bound onto the next one. High in the oaks the blackbirds were voicing shrill complaints at the intrusion.

She hummed to herself as she walked, secure in the knowledge that Conor was well looked after by Peg who, while not as grandmotherly as Gert, was genuinely fond of Conor and was happy to take him any time Pamela was willing to part with him for a few hours. Pamela wondered if she saw some echo of her Brendan in his small great-grandson’s face.

A breeze fluttered by, moving the curls against her neck and providing a welcome coolness. It was humid in the wood, with the damp of all things green and the soft decay of fallen trees. A shimmer of silken pewter flashing in and out of the maidenhair ferns and the dappled hollows and mossy edges of long buried stones told her that Finbar was on the trail of some small creature.

She held her face up and took a deep breath, relishing the moisture. The mottled, watery light was soothing, relaxing something in her core that she hadn’t been aware was tightly held. The scent and mystery of plants was nourishment to her soul. She felt at home with green things, aware however that they held their own counsel and secrets, whispered about in the night on wind and through water. She rarely felt more relaxed than she did in the company of plants.

It was good to move about without the constraints of yard or child—or husband, come to that. Casey had become particularly strict of late, insisting that she have a lie-down the minute he came through the door at night, while he started supper. Though that might be more in the way of self-preservation on the man’s part, she thought, cooking not being her forté by any stretch of the imagination. Still, she enjoyed the wee bit of solitude a nap provided, for Conor was as busy a tot as Casey admitted he himself had been.

As glad as she would be to have this pregnancy successfully come to its end, still she had enjoyed this time with Conor and with Casey too. Two babies meant ten times as busy and distracted, at least that’s what other mothers told her. Besides, and here she smiled softly to herself, her husband was the sort of man who truly appreciated a pregnant woman and her hormones. Mind you, it was not as if they were the sort of couple built for abstinence, pregnant or not.

Her musings were brought to a halt by a sharp bark from Finbar up ahead, invisible in the heavy foliage. A small spike of adrenaline shot through her. At this stage in her pregnancy, it was hard not to feel vulnerable to unexpected events. She moved toward the echo of the dog’s bark, reverberating like a warning and thrumming at the base of her spine, a delicate ache that she only now realized had been there all morning. The sense of something
other
being present grew heavy again and she glanced about, a shiver threading its way down her spine and settling in with the ache. There was no one to be seen, but it wasn’t the sense of human eyes watching that put the fine hairs up on the nape of her neck. She would find the dog and go home. A cup of tea was sounding far more sensible than a walk just at present.

Finbar was scrabbling at the roots of an enormous oak that stood alone in the midst of ash and elm. The floor of the forest here was smooth with moss and fern and the still, heavy light that seemed to come up from the ground rather than down from the sky. Fairy light, Casey would have said, and not that of good fairies either.

“Finbar,” she said sternly, “come on, boy. We need to head home.”

Like most males, Finbar had finely tuned selective hearing. All around his paws lay a welter of torn moss and black soil. He kept digging and whining, deep brown eyes looking up at her as if to ask why she didn’t help if she was in such a tearing hurry to leave. Last time he had dug in this agitated fashion, he had emerged with a cow skull. She strode—as well as her belly would allow—over to him, only to have him back away from the hole he had dug and growl low in this throat, hackles up.

“What is it, boy?” Finbar had crowded close to her legs, a fine trembling apparent beneath his rough hide.

Where Finbar’s paws had scrabbled, the turf was overturned, and underneath it lay a flat stone. She bent over to look, for there were strange markings on it, cut deeper into the rock than any scratch Finbar could possibly have inflicted. She lowered herself awkwardly to the ground, hoping she would be able to get back up. She ran her fingers over the damp, cool surface, feeling the pebbled dirt roll into the crevices of her palm, her fingertips easing into deeply scored lines that held no random shape. She looked more closely, bending sideways to avoid the great mound of her stomach. The carved lines looked human in shape, crude, but with the definite outlines of arms and legs and head with a burst of hair. A woman, from what she could make out, a woman pregnant like herself, for where the midriff ought to be was a great round of belly. She wondered briefly if this had been some sort of fertility stone, where women came to offer sacrifices during times of barrenness. She touched the woman’s belly, noting that the center held a deep hollow. No sooner had her finger traced the bowl, than she felt a sharp pain in her own belly, deep and low, striking with a hard resonation like iron against a bell.

She took in a breath, a small shot of panic echoing through her, spreading its dark sibilation in her blood. Surely not
now—
she had a couple of weeks yet to go, though Conor’s birth had been early and precipitate. She sat on the ground, focusing on taking several deep breaths and praying there would be no more pains, or that the next one would be greatly lessened in strength.

She closed her eyes, turning inward, feeling her way toward the center to see if she would know if it truly was time or if she could get up in a few minutes, damp and green-streaked in places but little worse for the wear.

All she could sense for certain was that she was in a great deal of trouble if this was the real thing. It was a good mile back to the house, Casey wasn’t due home for some time yet and Peg fully expected her to be absent for several hours.

“Alright, Pamela,” she chided herself aloud, setting off a cloud of rooks, swooshing from the treetops in startlement. Beyond that the forest was unnervingly still, as though it were waiting for something. She tilted up onto one hip, the ground soft and damp beneath her, and made it to her knees before the next pain hit with the force of a wave. This was definitely the real thing, one of those bone-tearing pains that made you remember exactly what was so difficult about giving birth. It was then that her water broke, spilling between her legs onto the ground.

A terrible panic engulfed her, her entire body shaking from head to toe with utter and complete terror. What if something went wrong? There was no way to get help. It wouldn’t matter how loudly she screamed in the next few hours, no one was likely to hear, unless someone was out for a walk in the woods.

Women had given birth alone before and survived it. She was young, in good health, and strong, all things in her favor, yet these things seemed of very little comfort at present.

She managed to crawl to the base of the large oak tree under which there was a broad space, soft with moss, sheltered by the tree’s great branches.

“Oaks for protection,” she muttered to herself, thinking any wee bit of superstition or myth that might help her now was more than welcome.

She took the cardigan she wore off and spread it on the ground, sat upon it and braced her back against the trunk of the tree, easing herself to the edge of her sweater and pulling her knees up toward her body, praying with every fiber of her being that the baby was still the right way round. She took several deep breaths, steadying herself between contractions, striving with every last cell not to give in to the panic that waited to engulf her like a rogue wave and pull her out into the great ocean of terror that awaited her if she gave in.

Her vision seemed oddly delineated, as though the trees had been cut to loom large as in a stage set for some dark and forbidding scene in a Wagnerian opera. The clouds above ran in long shreds and the lovely, mild summer day looked to be brewing itself up for a nasty storm. Sweat was trickling through her hair now, gluing her dress to her body and making the tree slippery behind her.

She knew the fear of death was never far off during labor, but that small bit of knowledge did little to comfort her in her current predicament. Because she was all too aware that under such unsanitary conditions, without help, the odds of something going awry were much higher.

She didn’t notice the rain when it began to fall until it had built up enough force that it ran in small streams down her face and trickled into her open mouth. It was a relief, the cool taste of it, for she was as parched as though she were crossing a desert. Desperate sobs sounded in her ears and she could hardly understand that it was she making those noises.

The pain was like lightning now, with little space between strikes. Her backbone felt as if it were breaking. She pushed her heels hard into the soil, feeling the moment nearing, the urge to push irresistible now, accompanied by that terrible burning that told her the baby was crowning.

Where was Casey? Why wasn’t he here? Damn the man for not knowing what was happening. If she were to die and leave the baby here alone, how long could it survive? She couldn’t judge anymore how long she had been laboring and the storm had darkened the sky so she couldn’t tell by the light or the lack of it.

“
CASEY RIORDAN YOU BASTARD!!”
she yelled, finding some small relief in the yelling yet wanting to break down and sob for him as well, wishing he was here with the rain lashing them both so he could hold her hand and tell her all would be well. Even if that was a lie, because the man could make her believe all
would
be well just by his presence and strength.

Suddenly there were hands on her own, cool and dry, and a face swam into her fevered vision. A woman with a face wondrously calm and smooth. She had warm brown eyes that Pamela thought she could fall into, would happily fall into if only this pain would cease.

“Another minute and it will all be over. Just look in my eyes,” the woman said, in a voice so soothing that Pamela immediately felt a calm descend over her. There was a strange sensation emanating from the woman’s palms and pouring into her own blood. She was certain there was something odd about this personage, but was too distracted to understand what it was. Nor did she particularly care, for it seemed the woman knew what to do, and having another human being there was a great comfort.

Time abandoned her, minutes blurred into an agony that seemed eons in the making. There was only the primal struggle that took one across the boundary between life and death and reduced everything in the universe to bare essentials. She could hear the woman’s voice, encouraging her, reassuring her that only a few more pushes would see this child into the world. All the world was this ring of fiery pain and all she wanted was to come out the other side of it.