We sat near the well and rested, watching the birds soar over us, screaming back and forth to each other. Then it was time. I stood up, bent because of the wind, shivering, listening to Patch crying. “Cold, Nory, cold, cold.”
I went back and put my face against his, my arms around him. “You will build great stone walls someday.” I fluttered my eyelashes against his cheeks, rubbed his back. “Soon we will go back to Anna’s. I will cook you an egg, two eggs, Patcheen with the blue stone eyes.”
I reached under him with my arms and tugged him out of the cart as Sean began to uncoil the rope, using his arms, butting his head under it so it looped around his neck.
“It will be warmer back among the rocks,” I told Patch, “out of the wind.”
Patch shook his head. “Not there.” Someone had told him about the gray smoke men who lived in the rocks, I knew that.
I put my hands on his cold little cheeks and tried to think of what I could tell him. And then I said in my loudest, fiercest voice, “No gray smoke men will dare. No sídhe, no bean sídhe. I am Nora Ryan and I come from Queen Maeve and Mam and Granda and Da. And you, Patrick Ryan, are safe with me.”
And then I saw Sean Red and stuck my chin out so he’d know too that I meant what I said.
I turned back to Patch. “I’ll take a bit of rope, twirl it around you.” I tried to make it sound like a game. “You’ll be warm, Patcheen, you’ll dream of building a wall with blue stones.”
He was crying again, tears from the blue stone eyes.
I kept moving with him, trying to find a space to wedge him in. The place I found was almost a bowl, rocks curved up and around with just enough room for one wee man, I thought, or one small boy. But after I had wedged him in, I knew there was no way to tie him. Too loose and he’d slip out, too tight and he wouldn’t be able to move.
“You have to stay here, Patcheen, stay still, don’t move. It’s a place to fall. Will you stay?”
Sean was calling me now. “Hurry.”
I could see the shadows falling across the cliffs. My legs ached, and my arms. It was hard to think. “Sleep,” I told Patch. “I’ll be back, back in a moment, back in a while.”
I slipped down off the rocks, onto the bare ground of the cliff where Sean was waiting, the rope curled around his shoulder.
“Listen, Nory,” he said. “You have to turn into the rope as the wind spins you. Test each rock with your foot before you rest on it. You have to be quiet, be quick, and watch your face, your eyes. The birds will fight to save their nests.”
I put up my hand. I didn’t want to hear any more.
“There’s a ledge,” he said. “I don’t know how far down. But we’ve seen it from the shore. There are chinks and cracks and messy nests.”
“With eggs,” I said, reaching for his cap. “I’ll fill this, you’ll see. But we have to hurry.” My lips chattered. “Patcheen will be up.”
“I’ll watch him,” he said, but I knew he’d be holding the rope, watching me. If Patch wandered onto the edge …
Stop, I told myself, and in my mind, Celia.
I couldn’t think about that. Instead I’d think of the eggs round and warm in my hands. I’d think of opening them, one for me and one for Patch. Think of spooning a warm egg soup into Anna’s mouth. Think of Sean.
Sean kept talking as we sat ourselves on the ground and wound the rope around our waists, wound ourselves together. His face tightened as the rope touched his hands.
It was beginning to rain, a soft slanting rain that went through my shawl. We stood up and danced away from each other, pulling on the rope at our waists, to be sure it was tight. I pointed. “I’ll go down that way.”
“A brave child like my son,” Anna had said.
Please let me be brave.
“Don’t face the sea, face the rocks,” Sean said. “Don’t look down.”
I watched him wedge himself in, his feet up, his hands wrapped in a cloth holding the rope. “I’ll hold my own weight,” I said, “you know that.” I didn’t say what we were both thinking. If I lost my footing and fell, he’d have to depend on the strength of his body and the rocks to keep me from going into the sea. He’d never be able to use his hands.
“If you’re in trouble,” he said, “the rope will tighten against me. Otherwise it will be slow and steady, and you will give a tug on it once in a while so I know you are still …”
“Alive.” I tried to grin at him. “Bringing you an egg for your breakfast.”
“Two eggs.” He tried to smile. “There is a hole in my stomach where there should be food.”
I touched his hand, made the sign of the cross over myself …
And took a step.
And another.
And turned my back away from the sea.
And lowered myself down, one rock at a time, feeling with my toes, testing each rock as Sean had said, to make sure it would hold me.
And rested, catching my breath, leaning my head against a slab of a rock, my feet on a wide flag.
And listened with my eyes closed to the sound of the wind and the surf and the spray crashing against the cliff below. Don’t look at the sea, but I had to look over my shoulder, a quick look, the quickest look.
The clouds drifted across the sea and away again, making patterns of light on the water in the distance, and suddenly the sound of what I was hearing, the whistle of the wind across the cliffs, the booming of the surf, was music. And at that moment I felt like Queen Maeve.
I felt Sean tugging at the rope. He must have wondered why I had stopped. I tugged back with my free hand to let him know I was all right.
From there it was not as hard. I made music in my own mind to go with the music of the cliffs. And my hands held each rock above and my feet found the right places one after another …
Until I reached down and there was no rock under me. I circled the air with my leg, toes pointed, searching for something, a rock, a ledge. Suddenly there was a screaming in my ears and a great flapping of wings against my head and in my hair. Claws raked my forehead, opening a cut. Blood ran over my eye and down my cheek, and I screamed with the same sound as the bird.
Without thinking, I let go of the rock to beat it away. I dropped, one hand still holding the bird’s legs, feeling the dizziness as the sea below tilted and moved up toward me. With a sickening crunch I landed on the ledge.
The screeching of the bird stopped and I saw that it was dead under me. I moved as far away from it as I could on the edge, so far that my back was up against the wall of rock. I could feel Sean pulling on the rope. I tugged again and lay there, thinking I’d never get up, never get away from the bird.
I saw the nests above me, within my reach, and got up on my knees, shouting, waving my arms, to be sure there wasn’t a bird on a nest that would startle me into falling again.
The birds wheeled above me, screeching, their powerful wings flapping. I took the eggs quickly, searching out the largest ones, putting them carefully in Sean’s cap, nesting them in bits of grass to be sure they wouldn’t break. I left an egg in each nest.
And then I was finished. There was more to eat in that cap than we’d had in days. I pictured the eggs bubbling gently in the boiling water, tried to think how long they’d last, because I’d have to do this again, and again, until Da came back, or Celia and Granda.
I crawled back along the ledge, trying not to look at the poor dead bird, its feathers blowing in the wind.
The bird. What would Celia think of me if I left it there? A giant of a bird, more than one meal.
I reached out and touched it. Fuafar. And then I tied it to my waist and began to climb back up the cliff.
CHAPTER
21
Every day was a day to get through, a day to wonder about Celia and Granda, a day to long for Da. Anna watched me, shaking her head. She was stronger now, and one morning at last she left her bed and went slowly to the doorway. She looked toward the cliffs. I knew she was looking for Maeve. “It is all
I need,” she said, nodding at me. “A dog at my hearth, a few weeds for medicine, and a field of growing potatoes.”
I felt a quick pain in my chest. I knew where Maeve was. I opened my mouth, wondering what to say, but then I saw Sean and his cart coming down the road toward us.
Sean was stronger too. I had climbed down the cliff again and again. We had cooked birds, tasting horribly of the sea, eaten their eggs, and Sean had dipped his hands into the bay every day until they began to heal.
It wasn’t that we weren’t hungry. We were hungry all the time. And Patch was still thin, still white, his skirt big enough for two boys his size.
I went outside to take a breath of the damp air and there was Sean, coming down the road, waving, and his mother lumped up on the edge of the cart, holding a small chest on her lap. “We are leaving,” she called. “Leaving for Galway to find a ship.”
Sean leaving? Not Sean, too! My fist went to my mouth, hard against my teeth. We had always been together, the two of us.
He reached out and took my hand from my mouth. “A friend of Liam’s,” he said, “stopped with the papers last night. He told us that Liam and Michael had worked on the docks before they sailed to America.”
“And what of Da and Celia and …”
Before I could finish, he shook his head. “There are so many people at the dock.” He reached for my other hand. “There is one extra ticket, Nory. Granny’s ticket. And it is for you.”
Smith Street, Brooklyn. Horses clopping down the streets. Maggie waiting at the door. Food.
“Come with me, Nory,” he said.
Anna spoke from the doorway. “I will keep Patch for you. He will be safe with me.”
But even as she said it, I shook my head. I would never leave her. It was Patch who had to go to America, Patch who had to have that chance. “Will you, Sean Red …,” I began, and he knew what I was going to say.
Mrs. Mallon knew too. “How can we take someone so small?” she asked, but Sean held up his hand.
We looked at each other, the two of us, and I remembered walking to Patrick’s Well together. How many times? I had danced with him at Maggie’s wedding, making faces at Celia. Dear Celia. I remembered singing and sharing dulse with him. I remembered the cliffs.
Sean nodded. “You can trust him with me.”
“Don’t I know that?” I told myself I couldn’t cry now, not until they were gone. I went to the side of Anna’s house. Patch was there, bent over, humming to himself, piling one stone on top of another. I sat down next to him and touched his hair and his little shoulders, and his neck that was almost too thin to hold up his head. “Someone is waiting for you,” I said.
He looked up at me with blue stone eyes. “And who is that, Nory?”
I could hardly talk. “It is your own Maggie,” I said. “You will climb up on the cart with Mrs. Mallon. You will take your best stones and your coat. And a ship will be waiting for you in Galway.”
“The Emma Pearl,” he said dreamily. “And you, too, on the cart.”
I shook my head. “I must stay here. I will find stones for you and send them someday.”
He shook his head, beginning to sob, reaching out for me. I held him, his hair fine under my hands, his arms tight around me. He was the last one left.
I pried his fingers away. “You must go,” I said, my voice hard. “Maggie is waiting, and there will be food.”
“No.” He pulled at my arm, at my skirt. “Let me stay.”
“Maggie will be waiting at the port of New York for you. She will lift you up, hug you. She will be so happy to see you.”
He was on the ground now, sobbing, his face buried in the earth. I pulled him up on his knees, looking into that little face. “You will find stones in America. You will build a house and tall buildings.”
He shook his head hard.
I cupped his cheeks in my hands, kissed his tiny nose. “You will remember something, when you are an old man like Granda.” I said it slowly, each word above the noise of his crying. “You will say that your own Nory sent you because she loved you. You will say that no one ever loved you more.”
He shut his eyes over his tears, the lids swollen.
“Patcheen with the blue stone eyes,” I said, and stopped. I could not cry. Not yet. I darted into the house, trying to think. An egg hard-boiled for one pocket, another for his hand, a pile of stones. And Anna grabbed up the old black coat to cover him.
I went out to the cart, looking at Sean, looking at Mrs. Mallon. “You will put him into Maggie’s hands, then,” I said.
“It is where we are going, after all,” Mrs. Mallon said in her harsh voice, but moving over, making room for him on the edge of the cart.
I bent over him and pulled him up, his legs kicking out, and his arms. “No, Nory, no,” he cried as Sean took him from me and put him up on the cart.
Sean turned back to me. “I will see you on Smith Street,” he said. “We will climb cliffs if they are there to be climbed.”
I reached out to touch his forehead. “Dia duit.” Then I stepped back and Sean began to pull the cart.
“Remember,” I called to Sean. “Remember me.” I waved to them all the way down the road, even though I could hardly see for the tears. I could hear Patch crying for me a little longer. Then they were gone. I stood there, my forehead against the wall of Anna’s house, feeling its roughness against my skin, sobbing, as Anna rested her hands on my shoulders.
At last I turned to her. “Gone,” I said. “All of them.”
She gripped her clay pipe in her mouth. “I don’t know why life is so hard,” she said. “But I do know this, Nory Ryan. It is a lucky house to have you in it.”
I wiped my eyes with my sleeve and the back of my hand. “I will walk up to my house. I will see what food there is to find.” We both knew there was nothing there. But I couldn’t stay there for another minute. I needed time to take deep breaths, time to walk along the road by myself. Later in the day I’d go down the side of the cliff for eggs again. I didn’t need Sean Red. I had gouged out small pieces of rocks, places to fit my feet. I knew where to hold, where to lean, where to rest.
I walked to my own house first, added a piece of turf to the fire, ran my hands over the stones in the hearth. I knew the house would be tumbled any day now, but I’d never let the fire go out until then.
A trail of stones wandered along the floor. Patch. I caught my breath.
I looked out the door the way Anna had, still searching for Da every day, even though I was sure now he’d never come. And then I took the steps over the stile and went through the old cemetery. I stopped for a prayer at St. Erna’s shrine, leaning under the roof to stay out of the wind. I remembered the stones piled up around the statue, Da fitting each one perfectly together; remembered his smile as he touched the statue’s feet: “It’ll keep the old monk out of the rain for another hundred years or so.”
Something was caught against the stone wall. What was it? A piece of wood? I reached for it, and as I pulled it out gently, I could see it was a piece of a box.
A piece of our box! The box that had come all the way from Smith Street. The man must have pried it open and left the part that didn’t matter. But it did matter. It made all the difference. I sat back on my heels, holding it against my chest. Maggie had touched it too. I turned it over, patting the rough piece of wood, and it was even more wonderful than I had thought. It had been sheltered from the wind and the rain in back of the shrine, so I could still see what Maggie had drawn.
This picture was different from her usual ones, drawn with thin lines of color, greens and yellows, instead of thick peat lines. I could see a row of houses stuck together, and in front were people, stretched along that Smith Street, and I knew who they were.
Da was there, the tallest, and Granda next to him, and Patch on one end, looking up. Celia and I were in the middle, making faces at each other, and Francey had one arm around Maggie.
And Maggie! She had made a small curve
in her long skirt so it billowed out, and one hand was over her waist. I ran my fingers over Maggie and her full skirt, so glad the man who had stolen the package never knew he had left the best for me.
Staying there in Maidin Bay wasn’t going to be the worst thing. I would have Anna, and I knew by the small N Maggie had drawn over her skirt that there was going to be a baby, and she meant to name her Nory.
I stood up then and told myself for the hundredth time that year that I would never cry again. Then I saw someone coming. Devlin! And when he saw me he reined in his horse. “You,” he called. “It’s you I want to see.”
CHAPTER
22
“You are staying with Anna Donnelly.” He tilted his head toward Anna’s house.
I didn’t answer. I tucked my hands under my shawl, clenching my fingers.
But he showed his long teeth in a smile. “The landlord is here for a visit. He needs healing.” He waved his hand. “I thought I’d talk to you about it instead of the old woman.”
I stared at the horse, at Devlin’s rough boots, then up at his face. And standing in the road, I knew I could do something for Anna at last. It was hard to get out the words. “Sometimes she heals,” I said, “and sometimes she doesn’t.” I made myself raise one shoulder just the slightest bit.
“I remember she does something about stomach pains.” He ran his hand over his waist.
I had to tell Anna. He hadn’t forgotten about that cure after all.
“Broken bones,” said Devlin. “And wens.”
“And the fever people are having in Ballilee,” I said, taking a guess about what might be wrong with the landlord.
I saw the light come into his eyes, but I shook my head before he could say anything. “Anna is not healing now.” My mouth was dry. “Her dog is missing, a black-and-white dog with a freckled muzzle.”
He narrowed his eyes, staring at me.
“She needs the dog.”