June 1886 Dawrosbeg, County Galway, Western Ireland

“And again, Miss Coyne. We need to tame that brogue of yours if anyone’s to understand you outside of Dawrosbeg.” The rumpled tutor bends over Mary Agnes as she sits, sums and maps and papers strewn across the Laffey’s worn kitchen table. Last night, right here, her gram served her a fish cake held together with stale breadcrumbs and one precious egg. Grace sat with her, not eating.

How many times has Gram gone hungry? To feed me? Mary Agnes thinks.

One might think living by the sea the Irish wouldn’t go hungry, but one would be mistaken, every fish accounted for, and all that’s left after foraging for scanty shellfish is carragheen, and there’s just so much you can do with seaweed, slick and unwieldy, as you’re bemoaning the ground that has betrayed you, again, again.

“What do you mean?” Mary Agnes says to her tutor. “Everyone here understands me well enough.”

“What if you were to go to Dublin? They’d say, ‘she’s right off the farm, that one.’”

“As if I am ever going to go to Dublin? Galway City, maybe. They would understand me there.”

“Be that as it may, Miss Coyne, I say, let’s try again. You never know when you might travel abroad. Why, just yesterday, I scaled Bengoora, and, if it weren’t for the fog, I might have been able to see America.”

America.

“Can I walk with you the next time?” she asks.

“It mightn’t be proper, a young girl going off with her tutor alone.”

“I don’t care what people think. I want to see for myself.”

“That’s a conversation for another day,” Seamus says, as he holds up a slim volume. “A Child’s Garden of Verses. Robert Louis Stevenson.” He opens the book and begins to read:

I should like to rise and go

Where the golden apples grow—

Where below another sky

Parrot islands anchored lie . . .

Mary Agnes rolls the words around on her tongue: Abroad. America.

“Have you ever been to a parrot island?” she interrupts. “The Sandwich Islands? Tahiti, perhaps?”

Seamus looks up, his spectacles askew. “I’m afraid not, Miss Coyne.” He rubs his eyes. “Although I would jump at the chance. I’ve been to Southampton once, saw the tall ships heading out to sea and thought . . . oh, never mind, back to the poem now . . .”

Mary Agnes looks past the trim, unkempt young man to the open window behind him. The mottled clouds have parted and weak sun throws shafts of light into the yard. Chickens scamper and peck for food outside the window, as if they’ve heard her. Mary Agnes’s heart quickens. Enough of this being cooped up inside. I should be outside today! She clucks.

“Miss Coyne!” Seamus slams his hand on the table. “You are incorrigible!”

“Sorry, master. It’s just . . .”

“Just what, I may ask?” His face darkens.

“My mind tends to wander.”

“Since when?”

“Since I was a child. Maybe four. Or before.”

“Then we shall have to put an end to that.”

“I don’t want to put an end to it!” Mary Agnes says. “Didn’t Mr. Stevenson say, ‘I should like to rise and go?’ You just read that. His mind is wandering too. To Tahiti.”

The tutor shakes his head. “You’ve a point there.”

“I don’t want you to think I’m not listening, I am,” Mary Agnes says. “But I don’t want to miss anything.” She motions toward the window, where the sun has broken brightly after the morning’s rain. A rainbow arches over the sea, its red, orange, yellow, giving way to green, blue, dark indigo, violet.

Seamus sighs. “Maybe it’s you that’s teaching me, then.” He puts down the poetry book. “Up now. Let’s go outside. Take paper and pen. We’ll look about and write it all down until our hands cramp, and then we’ll have our tea.” He smiles kindly at her.

They sit on the sparsely grassed knoll overlooking the sea, he on a blanket of his own, and she on the ground, her soiled skirt tucked underneath her. She is wearing one of her grandmother’s skirts now, a faded green one let out at the hem because of her height. Mary Agnes observes Seamus as he scratches in his notebook. She looks toward the beach and wonders when her granddad will be back. Every time she sees his lanky form coming up the lane, she breathes a sigh of relief. Another two boats have gone missing in the last week, but thankfully not from Festus’s fleet.

“It would kill him,” her gram whispered to her when she heard the news. “First the Coombs and now the O’Neills. It’d be the death of your granddad if he lost any of his men.”

Mary Agnes looks toward the horizon. No boats coming in yet. She shields her face from the wind and turns to the tutor.

“What is it you’re writing?”

“I dabble in poetry.”

“So do I. Read to me.”

“I couldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“I’m afraid it’s not very good. Not like my friend Yeats. We’re at university together.”

“What does he write?”

“I’ve a letter here somewhere.” Seamus rustles through his haversack, his stringy hair obscuring his face. “Here it is.” He unfolds a piece of yellowing paper. “He’s submitting a poem to The Irish Monthly. It’s called, ‘The Stolen Child.’”

“I’d love to hear it.”

“‘Uh’ as in ‘luhve,’ Miss Coyne, not ‘oo’ as in ‘loove.’”

“I’d ‘luhve’ to hear it.”

Where dips the rocky highland

Of Sleuth Wood in the lake . . .

“What’s Sleuth Wood?”

“Listen this once, Miss Coyne. We will discuss it afterward.” He continues in his high tenor voice. Mary Agnes wonders if he sings; if he did, he would have such a fine voice for it.

There lies a leafy island

Where flapping herons wake . . .

“I love herons, the way their wings swoop down in layers of grey and—”

“Miss Coyne! Please!” Seamus wipes his face with a handkerchief.

She presses her thin lips together and nods. “I’ll listen now.”

Come away, O human child!

To the waters and the wild . . .

Seamus drops the letter. “I will never be as good as he is.”

Mary Agnes reaches for the parchment. “Let me read. Please.”

Seamus hands the crinkled paper to Mary Agnes. She stares at the words for a full minute, her eyes roving down the page. She tilts her head to the side then and reads in a loud voice from the beginning of the stanza.

Come away, O human child!

To the waters and the wild

With faery hand in hand

For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

She scowls. “Whatever might he mean, master, ‘the world’s more full of weeping’?”

Seamus rubs his eyes. “It means”—he stops, thinks a second, resumes—“two things, the way I see it. To delight in your childhood, as fleeting as it is, lass. You can never get it back once—”

“Once what?”

He clears his throat. “Once the world shows its”—he stumbles for the word—“underbelly to you.”

“Well. That’s already happened to me,” she says matter-of-factly.

“And you mean?”

She colors. “I shouldn’t say. Not to you.” She hands the letter back and doesn’t meet his eyes.

Seamus avoids looking at her. “I am pained to hear that, Miss Coyne. You are wiser than most your age. No wonder your granddad has such high hopes for you.”

“Does he now? I’ve got high hopes for myself.” She looks at her instructor straight on.

“Marrying well? Like Lady Gregory?”

“Not marrying at all! And not dependent on anyone, much less a man, excuse me for saying, sir.”

She stands and then stops. She turns back to Seamus, who looks more unkempt than an hour before, if that is possible. “What is the second meaning of the poem?”

“That’s for another day, Miss Coyne. I’m afraid I’m all used up for one day.”