“This is stupid.” I am nearly grown, taller than Mam now, but I sound like a child even in my own ears. I’m hungry and cross. “I don’t know why we can’t go back and get food.”
“We’re not on Slanbeg; there’s nowhere we can go for food. What you have with you is all you have.”
It had been settled eventually; I was to go with them to the mainland. Before we get this far, even, I am to sleep out with Maeve on Slanbeg, to practice, somewhere safe. Every time I think of the way they threw around this word, safe, my fists curl into themselves till my knuckles go white. I’m older now and wiser to the secrets they keep from me.
“To practice what?” I ask.
“Practice being scared.”
We are pretending we are on the mainland, that we could be attacked at any minute. I am thinking about roasted chicken with crackled skin. And, always, of being away.
“I’m not scared,” I tell her.
“Don’t be a fool,” Maeve says to this. She’s trying to go easy on me, I know, but she keeps forgetting. She does try, so she does, if I haven’t Mam nearby to soften things for me.
“You have to learn how to be in control of your body,” Maeve tells me. “Food isn’t in control of you. Water is not. The weather isn’t in control of you. Not even skrake. Only you are.”
I try to ignore the gnarling of my stomach so I can think about this, but I’m too annoyed. I’d have packed food if she had let me. I finger the knife strapped to my leg, testing its edge, letting it dig into my skin. Maeve is sitting opposite me, on a grassy tussock to keep her bottom out of the damp bogland. Her legs are bent on the ground, crossed at the ankles with her arms on her knees, her stick balancing. She looks content, actually, happier than she is usually in the house, though she’ll be hungry as well.
“Close your eyes and concentrate on one thing,” she says.
“I am concentrating on one thing,” I tell her. I’m rarely so cheeky.
“Whisht and concentrate on something else. Your toe.”
I’m so angry I want to act out, to strike, to get up and walk home. That might give them another excuse not to let me off Slanbeg, though. I’d be here forever, till they die and I’m alone, and then I’d die too. I could cry, I want so badly to see something other than the island.
“Cross your legs like mine, close your eyes,” Maeve says. “Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. Do it slowly, think about it while you’re doing it.”
I look away, and back again. I feel prickles of sweat in my armpits. I am trying to work up to something, to ask her something that Mam wouldn’t answer, wouldn’t even entertain.
“Maeve.” I know it’s useless, but I still have to try. Just in case. And this is soft as she’ll ever get with me. “Tell me about Phoenix City.”
Her eyes snap open and flash on to mine; she is suddenly furious. “Where did you hear that name?”
I can’t tell her I’ve been secretly picking through debris in the town. Looking for trouble, she’d call it.
“I’ve seen it written,” I say. “In the village.”
“Cop on to yourself, Orpen, and stop reading nonsense,” she says, getting hold of herself again. “That’s not what Muireann taught you for.”
There’s no use, I think, none at all. I cannot make her tell me things she does not want to. But I know, I know nearly for sure, that Phoenix City is a place. Is or was.
We glare at each other but eventually, as always, I do as she says and cross my legs the way she has hers. The rough grass scratches my ankles. My heart is hammering. She is angry, still, though she’s trying to hide it. If I dared to ask about banshees, her head would probably pop off.
“Concentrate, Orpen.”
I try. We are quiet for a long time, and I think about Phoenix City, but I notice, too, the smell of the air. It is pungent with a healthy, robust wetness. I open one eye a crack to see if Maeve is watching me. But hers are closed, and she looks calm and unalterable.
“Feel your heart rate slow. Let your breathing slow.” Her voice is quiet and softer than usual. I close my eyes again and breathe in the rich air.
We sit there, in the damp bog, thinking about our breathing.
We’re meant to pretend we’re on the mainland, which means there’d be something for me to hunt. Maybe I’d see a deer. Maybe we could build a fire. We’ve been practicing too, where it’s safe for a flame, where skrake won’t see it, which is almost nowhere, according to Maeve. In buildings sometimes, or if you find a cave.
“Concentrate.” Maeve cuts through my thoughts. “Direct all your mind’s energy to your toe. Don’t think about how it looks, how long the nail is, whether it’s clean or dirty. Just focus on your feeling of it.”
I try.
“Sometimes your mind will wander,” Maeve says quietly. “That’s fine. Recognize that it’s wandering, and bring it back to the task at hand. Practice this over time, and it will wander less.”
We are quiet for a long, long time. Every time I start thinking about my stomach, distracted by the gurgling noises it makes, I try to catch hold of it the way you would a rope, and think again about the big toe on my right foot. I think about Mam, pottering about in the empty house by herself, and I feel lonely for her, frightened for her, even, but then I shake that off too.
Time passes.
Maeve’s voice breaks in softly. “Now, imagine your toe slowly getting warm.”
I imagine my cold toe getting hot, and I think it works a bit, though I don’t let on to Maeve, and we keep practicing. After a long time we switch the concentration to my stomach; acknowledging it empty and then imagining it filling up.
Maeve says to me that we’ll be practicing this technique a lot in future, and in the end I’ll be able to go for days with no food without the hunger impacting too much on my abilities.
“We should have done this earlier on,” she says, and I don’t know if she means imagining things about my toes, or practicing for getting off the island.
Then she does an odd thing. She reaches over and puts her hand on my head in a gentle way, a way she hasn’t managed since I was very young. I tense up as soon as she reaches for me, getting ready, but she only takes her hand away and then she smiles at me. It’s odd being here with her, without Mam. We spend time together when we’re training but not like this.
“Being able to control ourselves,” she says, “is the essential difference between us, and the skrake, and between us and men.”
“When can we go to the mainland?” I ask.
“A little while yet. Your mam and I will go again before we do.”
“Why, why can’t I go with you?”
“You know why.”
I don’t answer and look away to hide the wetness of my eyes.
“The skrake are dangerous,” she says. “We want to make it as safe as possible, that’s all.”
“And what about people?” My voice is stiff, but I want to ask all the questions I might get answers to now, since she’s talking.
“They’re dangerous too,” she says, and I think I’m probably lucky to get that much out of her, but then she goes on. “Men are dangerous. But we’ve been looking,” she says. “Sleep now.”
And I do. I fall asleep, which goes to show how frightened I was, I suppose in the end, which was not at all. Not with Maeve beside me.