I’d take out the little skiff whenever I felt that Maeve wouldn’t be looking for it and row east, a bit farther every time, scaring myself shitless. The last summer I’d got so far that I could make out a hulking dark shape in the mist ahead: landmass. Ireland. I’d pulled round and rowed straight home again, elated and terrified. Then the weather had turned and winter came on, and there were months and months of stewing in the house and on the island. When summer came around again, though, nothing would have frightened me off.
I never knew how, but she was waiting for me at the little jetty. She had hidden the boat, and I might have ditched the bag and swum for it, only she said we’d go together.
“Where are you going, warrior?” Maeve doesn’t need to ask questions; the question is a monotone demand and more words than she has said to me in a long time.
“I can’t stay here. I can’t stay forever,” is all I can answer her. I try to soften it: “I was only going to go for a few hours, for a day. I’d come back.” It is the truth.
She looks down at her feet, and it’s the closest she’s ever come to backing down.
“It isn’t enough,” I tell her, making a helpless gesture at the woods, the sea.
Maeve gives an almost imperceptible nod. I watch her struggle and relent, or resign, or give up, maybe. In it, I hear her thinking that she should never have let me know about the skiff; she should have told me the sea was full of sharks.
“You’re so like your mam,” she says.
It takes me a small while to get the hang of rowing properly, but Maeve shows me a few strokes and then I’m steady enough and enjoying the breeze against the sweat on my skin. I watch the woods, the whole island, begin to get smaller. With every pull, I’m a little farther away from everything I’ve known in my life. I’m a little freer.
I pause to balance my hat farther back on my head, guarding the back of my neck against the sun, and breathe, and smile. I am the very happiest I have been since Mam died. I can feel the closeness of the winter, the frustration of the months and years of toil and worry lift off me in layers till I feel light and free. I tug on the oars harder, loving the feel of the wood in my hands and the breeze in our hair and the sense there’s a whole world beneath us in the sea and another ahead of us, a world we’re to join at last.
I’m sweating hard by the time the sun is a hand-width up from the horizon. I row another half hand-width before the ruined bridge that used to attach the island to the mainland appears above us. It is menacing; the hulking broken shadow of it is spooky and sad. People died up there. Right up there above me, leathered skin dries and shies back away from bones.
It is so good to be alive. Better down here, still trying, than up there. I crack my knuckles and set to again, and we move off toward the mist crowding the coast.
I row for a long time. Strong as I am, I know my arms will be sore come tomorrow.
Tomorrow.
Never has the word held such excitement for me, such terror. Who knows where we’ll be, tomorrow.