The road started out easy enough, and the day was so soft and warm Annie felt bathed in a glow of gentle light. Then the base of her right pole slipped on a loose rock, jarring her shoulder and wrenching her tender knee. She stumbled, cursing, but stayed upright. The sun bore down. Sweat prickled her armpits and ran down her spine. Gritting her teeth, she called on the blind determination that had carried her around track ovals in spite of a hairline fracture in her left metatarsal, or a strained groin, or an IT band so tight it felt like guitar strings fused together. It pushed her toward the Old Woman.
Annie continued until she saw signs directing the way toward Kilcatherine Church. She was close, but her feet led her up the drive, onto the grounds of this seventh-century monastic ruin perched above Coulagh Bay. Gravestones topped with Celtic crosses leaned heavily toward the earth like old men bent by the weight of their years. The church itself was barely more than a jumbled collection of roofless walls, a patchwork of stones covered on top by mosses and ferns. Enchanted, Annie wended her way slowly among the gravestones and stood in the shelter of the church walls, smiling up at the tiny cat face carved into the stone above an archway, Kilcatherine’s famous Cat Goddess.
“It’s a fine day for walking, so.”
She was greeted by a tall, thin woman of an indeterminate age, wrapped in a dark-green, knitted cardigan over a loose polyester dress, her salt-and-pepper hair piled at the back of her head, her sharp green eyes peering at Annie over cat-eye glasses.
“You’re all alone? You’re a little peaked.”
Annie straightened her spine and tried to even out her stance. She couldn’t help the wince as she put weight into her stiff right side. “It’s been a long couple of days,” she admitted.
“Well, you’re headed to just the place.” The woman’s smile softened the sharp planes of her cheekbones and forehead. “The Old Woman will give you peace, and if you give her a chance, she might even heal some of those hurts.”
“The Old Woman … do you mean the Hag of Beara? How did you know I was on my way to see her?”
“You have that look about you. Searching for something deeper, something to make you whole.”
Tears started in Annie’s eyes as she looked into the piercing green ones that saw into her soul. “Who are you?” she whispered.
“Oh, I’m Róisín, but that’s not important. An Chailleach Bhéarra is the name you’ll be remembering. And you can’t miss her. If you get to Kilcatherine Village, you’ll know you’ve gone too far. Just turn around and try again. She’ll find you.”
“That’s what I’m hoping,” Annie said. “I’m hoping to be found.”
“Who’s to say you haven’t been so already?” Róisín lifted her glasses from her nose and dropped them to her breastbone, where they hung from a chain like an old-fashioned schoolmarm’s. “Ask the Old Woman,” she said. “She’ll tell you.”
Annie left the church grounds and continued on the small lane. Rounding a bend, she came upon a Range Rover tucked into a turnout beside a stone wall. Annie recognized the West Ireland Excursions sticker on the back bumper. Around a bend, a brown, arrow-shaped sign pointed west and proclaimed in white block lettering: An Chailleach Bhéarra—Hag of Beara—500 m.
She stopped to contemplate the obvious choice: to go back the way she’d come and save the Old Woman for another day, or accept fate, with all its aggravating tendencies.
His tanned legs, covered in fine golden-red hair, were stretched out toward the sea. She couldn’t see anything else, but those legs were unmistakable; so was her sense of relief. From the moment she’d seen Daniel’s car parked off the road, she’d willed him to be here waiting for her, called to this place by the same force that had brought her up the mountain. The Old Woman was in control now.