The Fire Opal (9 page)

“He was clearly in search of something,” Da said.

“Some other ungodly relic, most likely,” Donal said, “but for what purpose, it is impossible to know.”

The closer I got to the bog, the more distinctly I could smell rot on the air. It was the same smell that had been there when Tom had unearthed the armor years before. I was stunned when I realized that it was similar to the rancid odor I had gotten a vague whiff of recently, when Mam’s presence had come.

“He found something,” I said suddenly.

“How do you know?” Da asked.

“I recognize the odor.”

Da and my brothers banded together with the local men and knocked on the Cavan door that day, but Mrs. Cavan said, “If he came to Ard Macha, he’s left again, for I haven’t seen a hair on his head.”

As they were leaving, Mrs. Cavan called out after them, “If you see him, send him directly to me. I miss him something desperate.” She made the sign of the cross.

No one saw him after that. As far as anyone knew, he was gone again.

Something was going on, I was certain. It was the rancid odor that terrified me for Mam, and I decided that I had to do something. I had tried to figure out where Mam’s self, or spirit or soul, was but had not been able to. The one thing I had in my power to do was to get a dress or make one, as similar to the dress in my vision as possible.

I pleaded with Da to take me to Killybegs, to any shop at all where I might buy sewing supplies, hoping to find the delicate metal fabric that had formed the dress at Muldoon’s.

“It’s about bringing Mam back,” I said.

“How, Maeve?”

“I saw it in my mind,” I said. “I was wearing a dress like the one I saw that time, and I was rescuing Mam.”

He looked at me with an expression of surrender. “I worry about you, Maeve, as I once worried about your mam. But in the end, she was right about Ishleen. I’m going to trust this desperate feeling in you.”

Da took me to a shop in Killybegs, but there was no metal fabric like it, and the people we asked said they’d never heard of such a thing.

I had to settle, in the end, for a strong silk with metallic sheen.

It cost Da dearly.

Though I had little skill at sewing, for two days and two sleepless nights, I struggled my best, cobbling together a dress as similar to the one at Muldoon’s as I could.

I finished it in the middle of the night when everyone was asleep. It fit me like a poor replica of the original. Still, I wore it outside. Carrying a lamp, I wandered the ruins and the surrounding shore where I’d once seen the mysterious woman who had given me the bottles.

For six hours or more, I went to every place I could imagine the woman might come, but nothing happened. I found myself growing more and more despondent over the hours, all my certainty draining away. I felt lost, my task hopeless.

As I went back in the direction of the hill, it began to rain. Just as dawn was breaking, I saw my father and brothers come out dressed for the downpour in their hooded oilcloth coats, getting ready to fish. I was soaked in my homemade dress.

They stood still when they saw me in my despondency. Somehow they seemed even more appalled than usual.

I swept past them and went inside, where I found Ishleen awake.

“Mam,” I pleaded to the inert, wistful figure whose eyes looked hopelessly past me into some unknown vision. “What do I do?”

The hope that had gripped me now for so long regarding the dress was utterly gone, and I wondered about my own sanity.

I sat down before the fire, shivering in the soaked dress, and cried. Ishleen touched my shoulder. When I did not stop crying, she went and opened the door. Miraculously, the sun had come out and was lighting the world, a clear day in high summer. I got up and looked out. The sea where my father and brothers were casting their net was as calm as new milk.

I took the dress off and hung it outside on the line to dry in the clement air. As it stirred there on a faint breeze, the poorly crafted garment looked sad and deflated, the bodice caved in, the shoulders and arms slumping unevenly. Silk, I realized, should not get wet like that. The sheen was gone, the cloth pocked and wrinkled. What had I thought I could create? And even if I had created
something close to the majestic dress at Muldoon’s, what, then, would that have meant? I felt as though I had fallen from a great height.

I went back in and lay down in the box bed, leaving my chores and responsibilities on hold, and fell into a heavy sleep.

Later in the day when I awakened, the dress had gone missing from the line. I did not go in search of it, and in some perverse way was relieved by its disappearance.

“Probably the wind has blown it away,” I said to Ishleen, though it had been a still day with only mild breezes.

A week later, Tom Cavan’s mother, short and bent and wearing a flowered scarf on her head, came to our door.

“I’m taking a pony and trap into Dungarven tomorrow, Maeve, to buy fabric to make new curtains. Wouldn’t you like to be coming along?”

I was surprised by the kindness of the gesture. Mrs. Cavan had never offered to help me with Mam or Ishleen. I knew she had always resented me for having told her husband about Tom’s transgressions, and I knew she felt I was responsible for his having been sent away from Ard Macha. But maybe, having heard that my spirits were low, she’d softened to me.

“Thank you, Mrs. Cavan,” I said. “I would like to come.”

When I told Da about it later, he said, “I’ve a few
emergency coins stashed away. Why don’t you take them and buy yourself some small trinket?”

I hugged him. He’d been worried about how sad I’d been lately.

The shop in Dungarven reminded me of Muldoon’s Fine Imports. Both were situated on rough-and-tumble wharves, where rope, tackle, leather and farm supplies were sold. The shop was, as Muldoon’s had been, an anomaly encased in its own mist.

A bell rang when we opened the door. The shop matron looked up at us in acknowledgment, but was busy speaking to two other customers dressed in lavish clothes, a mother and a daughter.

Mrs. Cavan went directly to some little glass bottles while I veered away toward a mirror, which I approached nervously. We had no mirrors at Ard Macha; in the past few years I had seen only the faint smear of my reflection at home in the copper pot, so it was always distorted. The self looking out from the other side was different from the reflection I’d seen years before at Muldoon’s. My cheekbones were more prominent, my features were no longer soft but defined, and all over my nose and cheeks there was a light dusting of small freckles. There was something grave about my expression.

Gradually, the longer I looked, the less I thought of the reflection as being me. This image, I thought, gave the impression of someone formidable and complicated. I felt envious of this other in the mirror, as if she lived in
the atmosphere of glimmering lights, an entirely different, more powerful and elevated existence than the one I lived. And as I stared at her, she wore the metallic dress and was standing in a vast frozen room. I heard a chandelier tinkling in the cold around her. The vision dissolved suddenly, leaving me in confusion.

I left the mirror and approached the bottles of scent, watching with absorption as the mother and daughter, wearing an elaborate system of scarves and jackets, huddled and gasped over the various perfumes, applying them to their wrists and squealing as they smelled them. The intense, almost cloying scent of flowers distressed me. The hems of their skirts were embellished with frills of lace, and I wondered why they would expose such fine lace to the certainty of mud. How did they manage to remain protected from it? That such a thought would occupy my mind made me think of how out of place I was here.

I moved off and looked at creamy ovals of soap displayed in a cut crystal bowl. With a tentative and trembling hand, I stroked the rounded surface of one of the soaps.

Suddenly Mrs. Cavan was at my side. She peered closely into my face and squeezed my wrist.

“I have a confession to make, Maeve,” she said. “I didn’t really come here for fabric. I’ve come for only one reason. I’d like to buy you something.”

I gazed at her, hardly believing my ears.

“You’re so lovely a young lady, and I think you deserve to have something nice. You see, Tom is coming home.”

For a moment I did not understand the connection.

“Why is he coming back, Mrs. Cavan?” I asked. “He doesn’t like to fish or work the ground.” She remained quiet, looking at me. I suddenly understood what was happening, and my heart dropped.

“Tom has done well for himself. He sent me the money to buy you any gift you like. Even if it’s a dress, I’m happy to purchase it for you. He says it was you who inspired his success. He no longer needs to fish or work the ground. He has wealth, and you know he’s had his eye on you since you were children. You are nineteen and he is twenty-one, both good ages to marry. So,” she said, “pick out a gift.”

“You’re too generous, Mrs. Cavan, and as much as I’d like to, I can’t accept.” I gave her an unwavering look.

Her eyes flashed, and I knew she registered my reluctance in regard to her son.

“There are other local girls who would be thrilled—”

“I know there are,” I said plainly, unmoved. “Maybe he should ask one of them.”

She took a deep breath and seemed to decide not to let this dissuade her. “I saw you looking at this,” she said, pointing to the oval of cream-colored soap I had touched. “You’ll at least let me buy this for you.”

She asked the shop woman for a single cake of it, and I watched as it was wrapped in tissue paper and placed in a pale lavender box embellished in gold ribbon.

“I’ll pay for it,” I said, and pulled out the coins from my pocket, placing them on the counter. The shop woman looked at them, then narrowed her eyes at me. The corners of her mouth strained.

“It’s fourpence ha’penny for this soap,” she said, giving me a condescending look. “This soap is
French
!”

Mrs. Cavan laid a shilling on top of the coins, and the hard look melted from the woman’s face.

As we traveled back to Ard Macha in the pony and trap, I thought of the silliness of the pampered girl and her mother, the meanness of the shop matron. The atmosphere had lost its heightened sparkle for me. And worst of all, the beautiful soap in its exquisite package had lost its sensual incandescence and had become nothing more than a fragrant-smelling bribe. Mrs. Cavan saw me as the wife of her mean-spirited son. Rarely had she shown me any kindness before. Why had I imagined there had been some pure intention behind her offer to take me to Dungarven?

All the way home, though, she made attempts to engage me in chatter. I sat leaning to one side, staring at the passing fields.

It was dusk when we arrived back at Ard Macha. I thanked Mrs. Cavan and was about to scale the hill when I was startled to see Ishleen talking to a woman in a gray-green dress down near the beach.

“Who is that woman?” I asked.

Mrs. Cavan stared darkly, and I felt that she knew who the woman was but wouldn’t say. Her expression made me afraid for Ishleen, and I began running toward the beach.

“Ishleen!” I cried, but she was too near the roaring tides to hear me.

The woman spotted me coming and grabbed Ishleen’s arm. In that moment there was a sudden commotion of birds—swans and falcons and herons flying overhead, feathers and down from their wings floating and descending around Ishleen and the woman. As birds alighted at various places on the stones, a swan landed at the feet of the woman in gray-green. It thrust out its chest and beat its huge wings, and as it did, it transformed into the woman who had once given me the little bottles. The woman in gray-green let go of Ishleen’s hand and backed away several steps, then dove into the sea.

As I ran toward them, the birds that had alighted rose again into the air, and the woman in white turned back into a swan, rising with the others and flying in arcs over the sea as I took Ishleen into my arms. From that moment on, I would think of the woman who had given me the bottles as the Swan Woman. We watched her and the others flying into the distance, the evening sky gone almost fully dark.

Ishleen said she did not know who the woman in gray-green was, but that she had promised to take Ishleen to the place where she said Mam’s soul was waiting for her.

The next day when I was driving the cows back up the hill, Tom Cavan jumped out from behind the wall, startling me so badly that I screamed. After I caught my breath, I was amazed by the way he was dressed: in an
elegant, long fitted coat with tails, crafted of sky-blue velvet. His light brown hair was longer and carefully combed, the curls keeping their shape stiffly in spite of the wind. Though still recognizable as the boy who had taunted me all my life, he was now a man and he looked different, much taller and wider in the shoulders. The bone structure of his face was stronger, and he wore a mustache on his upper lip.

“Aren’t you glad to see me back, Maeve? My mother told me what a beauty you’ve become, and she was right.” He took a step in my direction.

“Stay away from me, Tom Cavan!” I cried, all my frustration and fury directing itself at him.

“You have spirit, and I’ve always liked that!”

“Stay away from me!” I practically spit the words at him, and now his face darkened.

“You’d like to leave here, wouldn’t you? You’d like doctors for your mam, and nice things for your sister and yourself.”

“Why are you dressed like that?” I was about to tell him that he looked like a right idiot, when I suddenly felt afraid of him. Maybe it was the faint wafting of the unpleasant odor, apparent now and again from behind the strong cologne he wore, that made me think he was responsible somehow for what had happened to Mam. It seemed to me that he and his mother were involved in some way with the woman who’d tried to lure Ishleen toward the sea.

I rushed away from him, suddenly terrified to have left Ishleen alone.

CHAPTER 9