Born in Fire (20 page)

“You’re to eat that sandwich,” Tim ordered as he slid another pint down the bar. “Not study it.”

“I am.” To prove her point, Maggie took a healthy bite. The pub was warm and comforting. Time enough tomorrow, she decided, to wipe the film off old dreams. “Will you get me another pint, Tim?”

“That I’ll do,” he said, then lifted a hand when the pub door opened again. “Well, it’s a night for strangers. Where’ve you been, Murphy?”

“Why missing you, boy-o.” Spotting Maggie, Murphy grinned and joined her at the bar. “I’m hoping I can sit by the celebrity.”

“I suppose I can allow it,” she returned. “This once, at any rate. So, Murphy, when are you going to court my sister?”

It was an old joke, but still made the pub patrons chuckle. Murphy sipped from Maggie’s glass and sighed. “Now, darling, you know there’s only room in my heart for you.”

“I know you’re a scoundrel.” She took back her beer.

He was a wildly handsome man, trim and strong and weathered like an oak from the sun and wind. His dark hair curled around his collar, over his ears, and his eyes were as blue as the cobalt bottle in her shop.

Not polished like Rogan, she thought. Rough as a Gypsy was Murphy, but with a heart as wide and sweet as the valley he loved. Maggie had never had a brother, but Murphy was the nearest to it.

“I’d marry you tomorrow,” he claimed, sending the pub, except for the Americans who looked on avidly, into whoops of laughter. “If you’d have me.”

“You can rest easy, then, for I won’t be having the likes of you. But I’ll kiss you and make you sorry for it.”

She made good on her word, kissing him long and hard until they drew back and grinned at one another. “Have you missed me, then?” Maggie asked.

“Not a whit. I’ll have a pint of Guinness, Tim, and the same thing our celebrity’s having.” He stole one of her chips. “I heard you were back.”

“Oh.” Her voice cooled a little. “You saw Brie?”

“No, I
heard
you were back,” he repeated. “Your furnace.”

“Ah.”

“My sister sent me some clippings, from Cork.”

“Mmm. How is Mary Ellen?”

“Oh, she’s fit. Drew and the children, too.” Murphy reached in his pocket, frowned, patted another. “Ah, here we go.” He took out two folded pieces of newspaper. “‘Clarewoman triumphs in Dublin,’” he read. “‘Margaret Mary Concannon impressed the art word at a showing at Worldwide Gallery, Dublin, Sunday night.’”

“Let me see that.” Maggie snatched the clipping out of his hand. “‘Miss Concannon, a free-blown-glass artist, drew praise and compliments from attendees of the show with her bold and complex sculptures and drawings. The artist herself is a diminutive’—diminutive, hah!” Maggie editorialized.

“Give it back.” Murphy tugged the clipping away and continued to read it aloud himself. “‘A diminutive young woman of exceptional talent and beauty.’ Hah, yourself,” Murphy added, sneering at her. “‘The green-eyed redhead of ivory complexion and considerable charm was as fascinating as her work to this art lover. Worldwide, one of the top galleries in the world, considers itself fortunate to display Miss Concannon’s work.

“‘“I believe she’s only begun to tap her creativity,” stated Rogan Sweeney, president of Worldwide. “Bringing Miss Concannon’s work to the attention of the world is a privilege.”’”

“He said that?” She reached for the clipping again, but Murphy held it out of reach.

“He did. It’s here in black and white. Now let me finish. People want to hear.”

Indeed, the pub had gone quiet. Every eye was on Murphy as he finished the review.

“‘Worldwide will be touring several of Miss Concannon’s pieces over the next year, and will keep others, personally selected by the artist and Mr. Sweeney, on permanent display in Dublin.’” Satisfied, Murphy placed the clipping on the bar, where Tim craned over to see it.

“And there’s pictures,” he added, unfolding the second clipping. “Of Maggie with the ivory complexion and some of her fancy glass. Nothing to say, Maggie?”

She let out a long breath, dragged at her hair. “I guess I’d better say ‘drinks for all my friends.’”

“You’re quiet, Maggie Mae.”

Maggie smiled over the nickname, one her father had used for her. She was more than comfortable in Murphy’s lorry, with her bike stowed in the bed and the engine purring, as did all of Murphy’s machinery, like a satisfied cat.

“I’m thinking I’m a wee bit drunk, Murphy.” She stretched and sighed. “And that I like the feeling quite a lot.”

“Well, you earned it.” She was more than a wee bit drunk, which was why he’d hauled her bike into his lorry before she could think to argue. “We’re all proud of you, and I for one will look upon that bottle you made me with more respect from now on.”

“’Tis a weed pot, I’ve told you, not a bottle. You put pretty twigs or wild flowers in it.”

Why anyone would bring twigs, pretty or otherwise, into the house was beyond him. “So are you going back to Dublin, then?”

“I don’t know—not for a time, anyway. I can’t work there and work’s what I want to do right now.” She scowled at a tumble of furze, silvered now by the rising moon. “He never acted like it was a privilege, you know.”

“What’s that?”

“Oh, no, it was always that
I
should be privileged he’d taken a second look at me work. The great and powerful Sweeney giving the poor, struggling artist a chance for fame and fortune. Well, did I ask for fame and fortune, Murphy? That’s what I want to know? Did I ask for it?”

He knew the tone, the belligerent, defensive slap of it, and answered cautiously. “I can’t say, Maggie. But don’t you want it?”

“Of course I do. Do I look like a fleabrain? But ask for it? No, I did not. I never once asked him for a blessed thing, except at the start to leave me alone. And did he? Hah!” She folded her arms across her chest. “Not much he did. He tempted me, Murphy, and the devil himself couldn’t have been more sly and persuasive. Now I’m stuck, you see, and can’t go back.”

Murphy pursed his lips and pulled smoothly to a stop by her gate. “Well, are you wanting to go back?”

“No. And that’s the worst of it. I want exactly what he says I can have, and want it so it hurts my heart. But I don’t want things to change either, that’s the hell of it. I want to be left alone to work and to think, and just to be. I don’t know as I can have both.”

“You can have what you want, Maggie. You’re too stubborn to take less.”

She laughed at that and turned to kiss him sloppily. “Oh, I love you, Murphy. Why don’t you come out into the field and dance with me in the moonlight?”

He grinned, ruffled her hair. “Why don’t I put your bike away and tuck you into bed?”

“I’ll do it meself.” She climbed out of the lorry, but he was quicker. He lifted out her bike and set it on the road. “Thank you for escorting me home, Mr. Muldoon.”

“The pleasure was mine, Miss Concannon. Now get yourself to bed.”

She wheeled her bike through the gate as he began to sing. Stopping just inside the garden, she listened as his voice, a strong, sweet tenor, drifted through the night quiet and disappeared.

“Alone all alone by the wave wash strand, all alone in a crowded hall. The hall it is gay, and the waves they are grand, but my heart is not here at all.”

She smiled a little and finished the rest in her mind.
It flies far away, by night and by day, to the times and the joys that are gone.

“Slievenamon” was the ballad, she knew. Woman of the Mountain. Well, she wasn’t standing on a mountain, but she thought she understood the soul of the tune. The hall in Dublin had been gay, yet her heart hadn’t been there. She’d been alone. All alone.

She wheeled her bike around the back, but instead of going inside, Maggie headed away from the house. It was true she was a little light-headed and none too steady on her feet, but she didn’t want to waste such a night in bed. Alone in bed.

And drunk or sober, day or night, she could find her way over the land that had once been hers.

She heard the hoot of an owl and the rustle of something that hunted or hid by night in the higher grass to the east. Overhead, the moon, just past full, shone like a bright beacon in a swimming sea of stars. The night whispered around her, secretly. A brook to the west babbled in answer.

This, this, was part of what she wanted. What she needed as much as breath was the glory of solitude. Having the green fields flowing around her, silvered now in moon- and star-light, with only the faint glow in the distance that was the lamp in Murphy’s kitchen.

She remembered walking here with her father, her child’s hand clutched warmly in his. He hadn’t talked of planting or plowing, but of dreams. Always, he had spoken of dreams.

He’d never really found his.

Sadder somehow, she thought, was that she was beginning to see that her mother had found hers, only to lose it again.

How would it be, she wondered, to have what you wanted as close as your fingertips, then have it slip away? Forever.

And wasn’t that exactly what she herself was so afraid of?

She lay on her back on the grass, her head spinning with too much drink and too many dreams of her own. The stars wheeled in their angels’ dance, and the moon, shiny as a silver coin, looked down on her. The air was sweetened by the lilt of a nightingale. And the night was hers alone.

She smiled, shut her eyes and slept.

Chapter Eleven

I
T
was the cow that woke her. The big, liquid eyes studied the sleeping form curled in the pasture. There was little thought in a cow’s head other than food and the need to be milked. So she sniffed once, twice, at Maggie’s cheek, snorted, then began to crop grass.

“Oh God have mercy, what’s the noise?”

Her head throbbing like a large drum being beaten, Maggie rolled over, bumped solidly into the cow’s foreleg and opened bleary, bloodshot eyes.

“Sweet Jesus Christ!” Maggie’s squeal reverberated in her head like a gong, causing her to catch hold of her ears as if they were about to explode as she scrambled away. The cow, as startled as she, mooed and rolled her eyes. “What are you doing here?” Keeping a firm hold on her head, Maggie made it to her knees. “What am I doing here?” When she dropped back on her haunches, she and the cow studied each other doubtfully. “I must’ve fallen asleep. Oh!” In pitiful defense against a raging hangover, she shifted her hands from her ears to her eyes. “Oh, the penance paid for one drink over the limit. I’ll just sit right here for a minute, if you don’t mind, until I have the strength to stand.”

The cow, after one last roll of her eyes, began to graze again.

The morning was bright and warm, and full of sound. The drone of a tractor, the bark of a dog, the cheerful birdsong rolled in Maggie’s sick head. Her mouth tasted as if she’d spent the night dining on a peat bog, and her clothes were coated with morning dew.

“Well, it’s a fine thing to pass out in a field like a drunken hobo.”

She made it to her feet, swayed once and moaned. The cow swished its tail in what might have been sympathy. Cautious, Maggie stretched. When her bones didn’t shatter, she worked out the rest of the kinks and let her gritty eyes scan the field.

More cows, uninterested in their human visitor, grazed. In the next field, she could see the circle of standing stones, ancient as the air, that the locals called Druid’s Mark. She remembered now kissing Murphy good night and, with his fading song playing in her head, wandering under the moon.

And the dream she’d had, sleeping under its silver light, came back to her so vividly, so breathlessly, that she forgot the throbbing in her head and the stiffness in her joints.

The moon, glowing with light, pulsing like a heartbeat. Flooding the sky, and the earth beneath it with cold white light. Then it had burned, hot as a torch until it ran with color, bled blues and reds and golds so lovely that even in sleep she had wept.

She had reached up, and up, and up, until she had touched it. Smooth it had been, and solid and cool as she cupped it in her hands. In that sphere she had seen herself, and deep, somewhere deep within those swimming colors, had been her heart.

The vision whirling in her head was more than a match for a hangover. Driven by it, she ran from the field, leaving the placid cows to their grazing and the morning to its birdsong.

Within the hour she was in her studio, desperate to turn vision into reality. She needed no sketch, not with the image so boldly imprinted in her mind. She’d eaten nothing, didn’t need to. With the thrill of discovery glittering over her like a cloak, she made the first gather.

She smoothed it on the marble to chill and center it. Then she gave it her breath.

When it was heated and fluid again, she marvered the bubble over powdered colorants. Into the flames it went again until the color melted into the vessel wall.

She repeated the process over and over, adding glass, fire, breath, color. Turning and turning the rod both against and with gravity, she smoothed the glowing sphere with paddles to maintain its shape.

Once she’d transferred the vessel from pipe to pontil, she heated it strongly in the glory hole. She would employ a wet stick now, holding it tightly to the mouth of her work so that the steam pressure enlarged the form.

All of her energies were focused. She knew that the water on the stick would vaporize. The pressure could blow out the vessel walls. She would have done with a pontil boy now, someone to be another pair of hands, to fetch tools, to gather more glass, but she had never hired anyone for the job.

She began to mutter to herself as she was forced to make the trips herself, back to the furnace, back to the marver, back to the chair.

The sun rose higher, streaming through the windows and crowning her in a nimbus of light.

That was how Rogan saw her when he opened the door. Sitting in the chair, with a ball of molten color under her hands and sunlight circling her.

She spared him one sharp glance. “Take off that damn suit coat and tie. I need your hands.”

“What?”

“I need your hands, damn it. Do exactly what I tell you and don’t talk to me.”