The Crow of Connemara (30 page)

“The man's not a piece of furniture nor a pet, Morrígan. But I'll leave him be for now, perhaps. We'll see if yeh can manage to keep him.” Fionnbharr stepped toward them, though she knew he wouldn't break the line of the standing stones ringing the base of the mound.

“What are you two saying?” Colin asked Maeve. He squinted toward Fionnbharr as if the apparition were hard to see, like a shadow glimpsed in twilight.

“Come closer, mortal,” Fionnbharr answered, in heavily-accented English this time. His voice was honed steel, ringing and sharp. He gestured toward Colin, who glanced at Maeve.

“Don't step inside the ring, and yeh'll be safe,” she said to Colin, nodding, and Colin moved past her to stand just outside the stones, an arm's length from Fionnbharr, who looked Colin up and down closely, leaning in almost as if to sniff him. “There's death around yeh,” Fionnbharr stated. “Yeh lost someone close to yeh recently, but that's not why the stench remains.”

“Fionnbharr,” Maee said warningly. There was never a certainty that the aos sí were on any side other than their own; over the long centuries, they had always made for uneasy allies. It had been that way since the aos sí had retreated into their Otherworld inside the mounds after their defeat by the mortal Sons of Míl centuries ago. She still remembered those battles and that time, and not with pleasure. Fionnbharr, as one of their leaders, was not someone Maeve entirely trusted. He glanced over to her with a leer on his face.

“What's the matter, lass?” he said. “I'm not coddlin' 'im. Yeh do'nah want yer man to know what yer about?” He gave a short, bitter laugh that the stones echoed, as if the hidden aos sí were also listening. Colin heard them, too; she saw his head lift as he looked around. “No worries. 'Tis not yer death I'm talkin' about, mortal. Not yet.”

“Whose, then?” Colin asked.

Fionnbharr gave a one-shouldered shrug that rattled the scabbarded sword at his side. “Everyone of yer kind dies,” he answered. He inclined his head toward Maeve. “Even the Morrígan will die—at least the body she's wearing now will, and she'll have to rob another. Death stalks yeh all. But that's not what I wished to tell yeh, mortal. Those things yeh speak of in the old songs?—they're not just tales and stories; they're real, or parts of them were, an' some a' the creatures that lived in them still walk this land. They're weak and sick, most of 'em, but they live, an' they want to keep on livin'. The Morrígan wants yeh to open a path for them, for us—a way to a safer place—but yeh should remember that doors work both ways, an' that's the problem: keeping out what's inside. The aos sí opened our own door when we fled from yeh mortals, so we
know.
She hasn't told yeh yet what the cost is to be, has she?”

“Fionnbharr,” Maeve said again in warning. She raised her hand, pulling in the energy of the air around her. The wind began to blow, the hawthorn tree on the mound above them bending. Dirt and leaves flew around her, the center of a burgeoning tornado.

“Och, there's no need of violence now, Morrígan,” Fionnbharr said in Gaelic to her, looking alarmed. “I'll be gone and leave yer poor fool still a fool.” With that, he gestured himself, flinging a hand toward the sky. Lightning cracked from the clouds above, blinding; the following thunderclap deafened Maeve momentarily. When her vision cleared, Fionnbharr had vanished. The echo of the thunder still lingered, rebounding from Ceomhar Head three miles away, and still dinning in her ears. Grudgingly, Maeve released the energy she'd captured. The whirlwind around her dissipated, blowing off seaward. The wind diminished into the normal salt-laden breeze off the Atlantic, and the branches of the hawthorn settled once more.

She sighed, a weariness surging through her as it always did when she touched the world that way. This world was, mostly, no longer hers to affect, and it exhausted her to do so.

With the flash of lightning, Colin had scrambled backward, landing on his rump, his glasses falling off onto the ground. From his sitting position on the grass, he shook his head groggily as she went to him.

“Are yeh hurt, darlin'?” she asked, crouching alongside him. She hugged him, quickly; this time, he didn't pull away. “Fionnbharr likes dramatic exits.”

He found his glasses, put them back on, and blinked at her. “Dramatic's a good word for it. So I
did
see him, then? I was talking to one of the mound-folk?”

“Aye, yeh were indeed.” She hugged him again, sitting alongside him on the damp earth. The sun struggled from behind clouds, and the ring of stones cast spiked shadows around them. “I'm sorry, Colin. Yeh deserve the truth, an' that's what I've been trying to tell yeh.”

He blinked again. “The truth, then. You're really the Morrígan?”

A nod. “I was, once. I still am, a part of me anyway.”

“This is awfully hard to process or even believe, I have to tell you.” He looked at her, and behind the glasses, his eyes were full of confusion and hurt.

“I understand. I truly do. But I don't like having to lie to . . .” She chose her next words carefully. “. . . someone I believe I love.”

There. The hook is set, even if you're no longer certain that you want to land this fish and see him gutted and cleaned for the table.
The words had come too easily, and the conviction in them had been too real. She wanted to take them back. She wanted to tell Colin to flee, now, before he was snared too tightly in Inishcorr's affairs, before their relationship held him fast. She wanted not to be the Morrígan, but just a mortal person—to be Maeve and no more than that.
Yeh were ensorcelled
, she wanted to tell him.
That first night, when yeh met me. I cast my spell and caught you, the same way I caught your grandfather . . .

She smiled, plainly, despite the thoughts fighting in her mind. Once, she'd felt the same about Rory. She'd thought she'd captured him . . . and yet he'd left her. Left her and the others, back when there was still time and hope.

Now there was very little of either.

She saw Colin struggle to return her smile. “Maeve . . .”

“Nah,” she told him, wagging a finger in his face. “What I just said doesn't obligate yeh to say anything in return. In fact, please don't, because if what yeh say 'tis anything like what I want to hear, I won't—I could'nah—believe it now. Save it for when I can.”

He nodded. “Okay, I will,” he answered. He looked down at himself. “I'm soaked to the knees, my clothes are filthy with mud, and I'm sitting on my ass in a wet field. Quite the dashing figure, aren't I?”

She laughed and kissed him hard and quickly. “Yer my hero,” she said. “And hey, how many men can say they made love to a goddess, even a mostly forgotten one?” She rose to her feet and extended her hand. “Come on, hero,” she said. “Let's get yeh some dry clothes.”

This time, he took her hand.

24

“H
ERE,” MAEVE SAID, handing him a sheaf of thick papers embossed with an Irish harp and foil letters across the top proclaiming
National Parks & Wildlife Services: Parks & Reserves Unit
. “Read this; it will tell yeh a lot of what's going on, and why everyone's on edge right now.” She sat down at the table across from Colin. Keara, as promised, had brought supper to Maeve's cottage and set it on the table, then taken her leave once again. Colin took up the papers, leaning back in his chair and sipping from the mug of tea in front of him. He settled his glasses on his nose and scanned the words, glancing occasionally at Maeve.

She'd been strangely quiet during their walk back from Fionnbharr's mound (which she told him was named Cnoc Deireadh), deflecting his questions with promises to answer later. His own head was a whirl of confusion: the revelation of Liam, witnessing the transformation in Maeve, seeing Fionnbharr. Part of him still wanted to refuse to believe any of it. He especially wanted to disbelieve the talk of him being caught up in some mythical conflict.

Yet . . . he could still remember the Maeve of last night. He could remember the taste and smell of her, the gentle caresses and lovemaking, her sighs as they made love. That Maeve had been real and solid, and there had been nothing imaginary about his feelings for her—and, he could hope given what she'd said to him, her feelings for him.

He scanned the words on the paper, trying to make sense of them against the confusion in his heart. The words kept wanting to bleed together into an indecipherable gray. He forced his eyes to focus. “This is saying that Inishcorr is the property of the NPWS, and they are giving you two weeks to vacate the island—as of three weeks ago. One of the people who signed this is Superintendent Dunn—as it happens, I met him just before I came back here.”

Maeve gave a laugh at that. “I'm not surprised. He's a decent enough man, Dunn, but he's all bound up in rules and regulations and what he thinks is his duty.”

“And this is the third notice they've given you? You've not given them any response to the others?”

“I went and talked to Dunn a while back,” she told him. “I told him that we weren't going to leave. He wasn't happy.”

“It appears not. They're threatening to forcibly remove you this time. ‘By any and all means necessary.' That doesn't sound good.”

“Aye,” she said finally and—to Colin's mind—far too calmly. “We won't allow them to remove us. We ca'nah. We've been pushed as far as we can be. 'Tis here we will stand, no matter what. Finally.”

“Maeve, they'll put you all in jail.”

She shook her head. “Neh, they won't. They ca'nah take Inishcorr if they ca'nah get to it.”

“I don't understand what you mean.”

“Can yeh go under Cnoc Deireadh with Fionnbharr?” she asked him.

“No. Well, not without some digging equipment. Give me a good backhoe, and maybe . . .”

She laughed, but her amusement seemed more sad that anything else. “Even then, 'twouldn't work. The world under the mound isn't a place yeh can dig to—nor will Inishcorr be. There are other ‘lost' Irish islands; Inishcorr will join them if need be. Become part of them.”

“And how will that happen?”

“I don't know yet,” she told him. The sadness seemed to fill her then. She looked away, closing her eyes hard, then back again. “We'll figure it out.
Yeh'll
help figure it out, and I'll help you.”

He shook his head at that. “Maeve, I've no clue what you're talking about or what you expect me to do. None. You—everyone—seems to expect something from me and . . .” He sighed, putting the NPWS notice on the table. “Right now, all I feel is lost. I'm sorry. I'm not Cúchulainn—not anything close. I'm not a warrior and I'm not strong. I'm a decent musician and, I hope, a halfway decent person. That's all.”

A smile came and vanished, like a spring snow. “Yeh are all and everything I want.”

“What
you
want, or what the Morrígan wants?”

“Both,” she answered. She pushed her chair back and came over to him, crouching alongside him and leaning her head on his shoulder as his arm—almost of its own accord—went around her. “And for this moment, let's just be Maeve and Colin, and forget the rest. Can we do that, for at least this evening?”

He wanted to shake his head, wanted to say “no,” but he couldn't. With her touch, his mind eased and the confusion receded. “We can try,” he told her, and he turned into her embrace.

The pub at Inishcorr harbor was busy that night. Maeve had wanted to go, had wanted Colin to bring his guitar. “Yeh'll be feeling more yerself if yeh play a set or two with Keara and the others,” she'd insisted.

He thought she might be right. The guitar case felt familiar and comfortable in his hand as they walked toward the pub, and he heard the strains of Keara's fiddle, somebody playing bodhran, and two voices in harmony singing “
Dark-Eyed Sailor
.
”
When the two entered the pub, the song was ending, and Keara waved at Colin from the little stage in front. “Colin! Get your guitar and a pint, and bring yer sorry arse up here!”

“G'wan with yeh,” Maeve laughed along with several of the patrons. “I need to talk with some of the others.”

“All right. Save me a seat, then.”

“Promise.” She gave him a quick kiss and a pat on the rump. He grinned back at her.

Colin snagged a Guinness from the bar, the foam still settling, and took his guitar up to the little stage. He put the Guinness on one of the stools there, laid his case on the stage, and took out his Gibson. He took a sip of the stout and placed it on the floor next to him as he sat on the stool, the curve of the Gibson's body comfortably over his thigh. “Give me a ‘G,'” he told Keira, and tuned his guitar as she played the note. “What do you want to play first?”

“How about ‘Cliffs of Dooneen'? Yeh know the verses?”

“Some, not all,” Colin answered. “Enough, I'm sure.”

“Then let's do it . . .” With that, Keara launched into the melody with her fiddle, and Colin followed with the guitar, and the bodhran player played softly along, accenting the beat. After a verse and chorus instrumentally, Colin began to sing:

You may travel far from your own native land

Far away o'er the mountains, far away o'er the foam

But of all the fine places that I've ever been

Sure there's none can compare with the cliffs of Dooneen

Colin felt the world shift around him before the first verse had ended. It began with a pulse from his grandfather's stone in his pocket, a lance of raw fire running through him. He drew in his breath with the next line, and it seemed that the pub around him became somehow thin and semitransparent, and past it, he saw another land entirely: tall, rounded mountains blanketed with green bracken and girdled with oak forests, misted valleys between, a sapphire sky pillowed with clouds, and in the distance, a line of green-blue sea frothing at cliffs. With the vision, he felt a pulse of homesickness, as if this were a glimpse of a world to which he belonged, even though it was no place he'd ever seen before.

At the same time, he heard his voice swell, booming in the room, his tones as rich and colored as that of a cello played by a master hand. With each line, his voice gained depth and power, and he could see everyone in the pub turning to him, their conversations dying forgotten, leaving only the song and his voice.

Take a view o'er the mountains, fine sights you'll see there

You'll see the high rocky mountains o'er the west coast of Clare

Oh, the towns of Kilkee and Kilrush can be seen

From the high rocky slopes round the cliffs of Dooneen

When the song ended, two more verses along, there was a reverent silence, then a deafening roar of applause and approval. Colin grinned into the applause; the energy of their approval filling him, as nourishing as a gourmet meal. “Another!” someone shouted. “'Tis grand, that! Yeh have the gift, yeh do!”

Keara was tapping on her fiddle's body with her bow. She leaned toward Colin. “I've never heard the like. Never. An' I saw the far land. I
saw
it, even if them out there di'nah,” she whispered to him. “I saw it without a spell. Maeve is right about yeh. Yer the one to help us.” She ran the bow over the strings, calling forth a new melody. “So, how about ‘Castlehyde'?” she asked. “Can yeh do that again with it?”

Colin lifted his shoulders in a helpless shrug, the grin still on his face. He saw Maeve watching him. She smiled as his gaze snagged hers, and she nodded to him, as if she, too, had seen what he'd seen.

“Don't know,” he said to Keara.

“Then let's find out.”

He found he could. Again, as he began to sing, his grandfather's stone responded with searing heat that found its way into his body and his voice, that while he was singing caused the air in the pub to shimmer and call forth another vision that slid over reality like a ghostly mask only to vanish as quickly as it had come.

He wondered if they could all see it.

The visions would come again with the next song, and the next, as well, and if those in the pub didn't seem to notice them as he did, as Keara evidently did, they could all hear the power that had been given to his voice, and to that they responded.

An hour or so later, the musicians took a break to tremendous applause and cheers for Colin. Colin was still reeling from what had happened, the applause filling him with heat and light. He put the Gibson in its case, hugged Keara, and headed for the bar to get another pint. He could see Maeve in the far corner of the pub nearest the door, now in deep conversation with Liam, Aiden, and a few others. “Another pint, thanks,” he told the bartender.

“After that, yeh deserve it an' more,” the bartender told him. “That was sometin'.” He shook his head. “I never heard the like.”

“Thanks,” Colin told him, beaming. As the barkeep turned to the tap and Colin leaned against the bar, he heard a voice behind him.

“So now yeh know all about us? Yeh think that because they call out yer name when yeh sing, that because yeh can make them think of another place, that yer all special?” Colin turned to face Niall. The man was standing a little too close for Colin's comfort—though that was usual enough in Ireland. His face still bore the vestiges of the beating he'd taken at Regan's: a touch of purple under the eyes, the shadow of a bruise on his cheek. Colin could smell alcohol on the man's breath. “Liam said Maeve made him show yeh his skin,” Niall continued, his words slightly slurred and his accent heavier than usual. “I would nah have done it, no matter what she said.” He shook his head. “Yer just a pretty boy, and not the one we need. Maeve's made a mistake and ca'nah admit it, 'specially now that she's shagging yeh.” His dark eyes looked Colin up and down. “Yeh don't look to me like yeh could beat fecking snow off a rope.”