Raven Calls

mother’s death. In my limited defense, it had been her decision, but I’d made a lot of bad choices over the years that forced her hand toward that decision. I’d thought at the time that the woman had basically decided she was done living and had willed herself to death, which seemed pretty extreme for someone in her early fifties. I’d discovered later that yeah, she’d done exactly that, all in the name of making sure I stayed alive.

And now she was a banshee and I owed her every chance I could take to free her from that. I wasn’t exactly close with my Irish family to begin with, but I seriously doubted I’d win any friends if all of the sordid details about what I was doing there came out.

“What are you doing here?” Caitríona demanded. “And who’s that?”

That, of course, was Méabh, who required far more explanation than I was prepared to offer. After barely an instant’s consideration, I shrugged. “That’s Méabh. Méabh, this is my cousin Caitríona.”

“Méabh,” Caitríona said, and laid the accent on thick. “Av carse it is.”

“We’ve come to lay your auntie’s bones to rest,” Méabh said as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. “This is grand so, three of our bloodline to do the job. We couldn’t ask for better.”

Caitríona’s expression went peculiar. She said, “I’ve never heard an accent like that,” in English, then said something else to Méabh in Irish. It became instantly clear to me that Méabh had been speaking Irish all along, because Caitríona sounded more or less like Méabh did if I listened hard to the words and not to what my magic told me she was saying. Bizarrely, though, I couldn’t understand a word Cat said in Irish.

Worse, I then couldn’t understand Méabh when she answered. I made a strangled noise and waved my hands. “English, please, Caitríona. I can’t understand Méabh if you speak Irish. I mean, I can’t understand you, either, but—English. Please? Just English?”

“I only wanted to know if she’d learned Irish in the Donegal Gaeltachs.” Caitríona shrugged, then did something with her face that reminded me of me. It was this little quirk of her mouth, a tightening of the skin around her eyes, a tensing of the nostrils, all of it minute body language I’d felt myself do a thousand times. It indicated that she’d been ignoring the completely outrageous thing Méabh had said until it made some kind of sense in her own head, except the making sense part wasn’t happening so she might as well bite the bullet and ask.

I couldn’t decide if it was creepy or fascinating to see all of that on somebody else’s face. Especially somebody I barely knew. She also looked like she very much wished she could say two things at the same time as she opted for, “Lay me auntie’s bones to rest?”

That was the one I probably would have chosen, too. The whole bloodline thing was a little much to take a run at. But before I had a chance to explain, Cat said, “It’s just after fifteen months we’ll be doing that.”

My American-English brain cramped. Caitríona’s statement was a perfectly accurate comment on what was about to happen, but what she, the Irish-English speaker, meant, was that they’d done that fifteen months ago. I’d forgotten the peculiar direction sentences landed from in Ireland. I vowed to listen harder to what she meant and to focus less on how she said it. “There was a mix-up at the mortuary. I thought if I just came and dealt with it myself it would be less upsetting.”

It almost sounded plausible. Almost, except the part where no local undertaker would have called the American daughter instead of the extensive Irish family, which Caitríona’s expression indicated clearly. “Look,” I said a bit too loudly, and before she could speak, “look, just go with it, okay? And really, Méabh might be right but you’ll be happier if you just head on home and forget you saw us. What’re you doing here, anyway?” That was not a tactic to make her leave. I wanted to kick myself again.

“Sheila liked the old holidays. The solstices and Beltane and all. I come to put flowers on her grave at each of them, but I was away to Dublin for the Saint Patrick’s Day crack so only could come this morning.” Caitríona looked hard between me and Méabh, then crossed her arms under her breasts. “I think I’ll be staying.”

Of course she would be. I looked for a compelling argument and came up fast on, “Crack?” because admitting to larking off to Dublin for a drug fix seemed a little brash.

Both the Irish women said, “Fun,” and Caitríona added, “The parties, the parade and all. Me sisters and I went for a bit of crack and now I’m home again and whatever you’re doing, I think I’ll be part of it.”

“Oh. Okay. No, wait. I meant okay, that’s what crack is, not, like, cocaine, and not like okay you can come al—oh, to hell with it, fine, come on then.” I had better things to do than argue with people who wanted to get in over their heads. She’d scare off soon enough, and in the meantime, “You can show me where the grave is. I don’t really remember.” I set off the direction she’d come from, hauling the carry-on behind me.

Caitríona ran to catch up, then to pass me, then to eye the suitcase. “What’s that?”

“Mom’s bones are in it.” It hadn’t been practical to keep them in the coat, which was not, after all, especially baglike. Caitríona’s eyes bugged. “Really, you’re happier not knowing. I should probably warn you we’re going to burn them, too.”

She stopped dead. I almost crashed into her, and she hopped into motion again. A few steps later she said, “She’d like that so, but sure and you’ll have the town up in arms if you’re setting fire to the cemetery. You should bring her up there, to the Reek. To Croagh Patrick. She’d like that even more.”

Magic lit up within me, fishhook tugs that signaled approval of Caitríona’s suggestion. I turned to look at the mountain that dominated the western skyline. There was a lingering low fog, but the mountain was clear and the chapel atop it was almost visible if I used my imagination. I so very much did not want to haul a suitcase up a three-thousand-foot mountain.

“We called it Cromm Crúaich. My father fought a battle here when they first came to Ireland,” Méabh said. “Who is Patrick?”

“He was…” I didn’t really want to give her Saint Patrick’s whole story. “A holy man after your time. He did a pilgrimage on that mountain so they named it after him.”

“Patrick defeated Cromm on the mountain.” Caitríona gave Méabh a good hard stare. “Cromm was an old god and Patrick banished him along with all the snakes in Ireland. Who are you?”

“She’s Méabh,” I said again. “Honestly, are you sure you don’t want to go home? It’s too early in the day to be climbing mountains, isn’t it?”

Caitríona turned her good hard stare on me. “No.”

Well. No arguing with that, then. I sighed and turned back to the car, bumping the suitcase along behind me. “You really think she’d like to be burned up there on the mountain?”

“Oh, yes. She wasn’t even a pagan, was Auntie Sheila. She was something else all her own. Connected, like. Connected to everything. Are ye like her?” she said to me, and I startled guiltily.

“Not very much, but in some ways, yeah.” Wow. Prevarication 101, that was me. “Yes.”

Caitríona said, “Hnf,” which I felt was somehow condemning, and we all went and got in my car and drove to Croagh Patrick.

Sometime on Saturday night I’d sworn I would take up jogging Monday morning. I hadn’t, of course, expected to be in Ireland when I’d made that oath. Nonetheless, Méabh bounded up the damned goat trail leading to Croagh Patrick’s summit with the agility and speed of…well. A goat. And Caitríona, full of teenage resiliency, was barely a few steps behind her. I did have the excuse of lugging a suitcase full of bones, but mostly I was just in no condition to be running up mountainsides. I felt this was not unreasonable, as normal people didn’t climb mountains anyway.

Of course, I’d left normal behind a long time ago, a fact which Gary should be happily reminding me of right about now. I hitched the suitcase over a rock and threw out the promise to start jogging in favor of a promise to get him back. I’d already made that promise about a thousand times, but once more didn’t hurt. Especially if it got me out of jogging.

I walked into a wall and bounced off. The wall said, “You’re no fit warrior, Granddaughter.”

I sighed and edged my way around Méabh. “I’ll start running up and down mountains as a fitness regime next week. Right now I just need to…” She’d been in the way of my view of the path, and now that I could see it, I wished she’d stayed in front of me. “…I just need to get up that horrible, hideous switchback without killing