That was neither help nor comfort, of course, when she was teaching me to swim by throwing me into the icy sea. That’s how I learned, unwillingly; she kept heaving me in no matter the weather or how I wailed. She would toss me off the rocks that erupted from the water (not so far from the collapsed cave) and I would sink. The first few times she rescued me; then she let me go. Let me plummet for so long that I thought I’d drown and I realised the only way to survive was to save myself with the long strokes and powerful kicks Aoife herself used. I’ve wondered for years if she’d have let me perish in the end… or if I’d waited just a moment more would she have dived in after me again, pulled her hopes and future from the waves in the form of a sputtering, coughing, terrified three-year old.
Just hang on to whatever’s solid, Óisín would say, but it took me a long time to realise he meant I had to rely on myself: I was the only solid thing in that angry sea.
How long I stare is a mystery but I’m pulled from my reverie when I see two figures striding across the grass. From their direction they’ve come out from under the postern gate and are heading towards the spot where the church once stood, however briefly. One is in a long black mourning gown, the wind plucking at her veil, which she flings back with irritation so it trails behind her like a wing.
‘What’re they talking about, do you think?’
I didn’t notice Brigid come up beside me. She’s short and dumpy, blonde curls, pale grey eyes, but her voice is lovely and she sings when asked. No one asked her for Óisín’s sending-off, but then no one sang him away at all.
I glance sideways at my cousin. The colour in her cheeks is high as if she’s annoyed or embarrassed or she had to work up the courage to speak to me or she’s afraid I won’t reply. We’re not friends. Not anymore. Once we were. When Óisín still ran the office in Breakwater – before he sold it to Aidan – I would get to visit with Brigid. She would come out to Hob’s Hallow too, and we would play. It didn’t matter, then, that she wasn’t a “proper” O’Malley; I didn’t listen to Aoife’s contempt for the lesser branches. It went on for years and I thought she was my best friend, but when you’re fed crumbs of resentment and pride, when you lose trust in someone…
‘I don’t know,’ I say. Then add, because there’s no shame it in, at least not for me, ‘Perhaps a loan.’
‘This house will fall, you know.’ Yet she says it with no trace of spite, just a kind of sadness, like she’s speaking of an old pet soon to die.
‘I know.’ And then we watch the two figures outside in silence.
Aoife’s almost as tall as Aidan; she’s talking avidly, hands waving. I can see her expression: sly, wary, hungry and smart. And Aidan, listening intently, looks a little like her. When he opens his mouth, the features rearrange into a different creature, the son of a thinned blood, and then both their faces are lost to me as their direction changes and they walk toward the camouflaged horizon, into a wind that carries the breath of a storm.
3
The library has a high ceiling, once painted with scenes of our maritime glory, but largely the art is obscured by cobwebs and smoke grime and has been for as long as I can remember. A face peeks through here and there, a limb, a roiling cloud, a ship’s sail, a sea monster’s tail, but mostly what’s there is up to the imagination. When I was small, I wouldn’t look lest I conjure a nightmare of those elements. Back then I thought there couldn’t be worse things than bad dreams. Three of the walls are covered by overflowing bookshelves, and the fourth is mostly window, swathed with red curtains, thick with dust, to keep the night and the worst of the cold at bay.
Aoife’s in an embroidered housecoat of the deepest maroon, hair piled high, silken silver, no trace of the darkness of her youth; there’s a glass of winter-lemon whiskey by her elbow and she’s seated in one of the threadbare wingback chairs, staring into the flames of the hearth. Not long ago she gave a deep sigh that I recognised as a letting go, a signal that from here we move forward. But to where?
I’m still in my mourning gown; I spent the afternoon farewelling guests, then helping Maura clean up the mess because Aidan took his borrowed maids home with him. Afterwards we packed three baskets with as many leftovers as possible, and I walked to the three tenanted cottages to deliver them. There’s more food than we can get through and someone at least should benefit somehow from Óisín’s passing. The Kellys and the Byrnes were grateful; the Widow O’Meara accepted what I brought but gave me the same look she always does, and I hurried away just as I always do.
I go to one of the shelves and take a book down from its place nestled between family histories, and tomes of maritime law that my grandfather loved more than anything of flesh and blood. There are many volumes with the golden “M” on their spine that denotes “Murcianus” – Murcianus’ Little-known Lore, Murcianus’ Mythical Creatures, Murcianus’ Strange Places, Murcianus’ Songs of the Night, Murcianus’ Book of Fables. There is even a Murcianus’ Magica, but it is an incomplete version, the true one having been lost centuries ago in the sack of the Citadel at Cwen’s Reach or so it’s said.
But the one I take down is different, heavy in my arms and I hold it
