I was born around summer solstice, and that’s when we celebrate me getting older. Bigger and stronger. In the olden times, every day had its own special name, but Mam doesn’t know what they were called, and if she hasn’t them, probably nobody does. If there’s a nobody out there at all.
We celebrate Maeve’s birthday at winter sol, and mine at summer sol, and we’d celebrate Mam’s the first day snow fell. I don’t see why every stupid day needs a name. They’re mostly the same, and that’s if you’ve luck.
The summer sol I was seven was hotter even than usual, and I was awake and sweating when Mam knocked on my door and told me to hurry up and shift myself up out of that bed.
“Ready?” Maeve says to me once I’m downstairs, with a not-frown that is her way of smiling.
“To the village?” I ask.
I don’t go to the village by myself. It’s too far from the house, and there’s no point going without them because I’ll only have questions. I only ever have questions for them, and mostly they have silence and warnings to give me back. In the village there are buildings that burned long ago; there are faded pictures in rotting magazines I’m not to touch, of bright people with snowy skin and shiny hair. There’s all kinds of things making promises about different futures, before what happened happened.
“No,” Mam tells me. She’s touching the right side of her jaw carefully. The teeth on that side pain her.
“We’re going to the woods to celebrate,” Maeve says. She goes whole days barely speaking a word so seven together is a speech.
I pick up the bag that leans against the back door. There’s a warm, greasy smell off it. One of the hens was missing the day before, but I said nothing. I’m struggling, but the weight of it is suddenly lifted away.
“Give it me,” Mam says, swinging it over her shoulder, and Maeve throws her eyes upward.
We maneuver ourselves one by one through the back window and pick our way through the brush behind the house and head north. We stay quiet. The sun is hot on the nape of my neck. Mam and Maeve move ahead of me, quiet and neat, their shoulders nearly touching. Keeping an eye on both sides, keeping an eye on me. I try to copy the way they move, quick and graceful, their feet finding the best place to take their weight.
We are going to the woods, our favorite summer place. The bluebells are long gone, but the trees are leafy as they get, and there’s a breeze instead of the angry shrill of wind on the beach. It’s warm and friendly. The songbirds are singing their little heads off.
We unpack in a clearing at the top of the hill. There’s a chicken, roasted whole over the fire when I was off doing chores, and stuffed with herbs and eggs. There are cold baked potatoes and carrots and rhubarb too, and a little folded square of paper with salt inside it, and another of sugar. A feast.
My stomach gurgles loud, tight with the hunger, like always.
“Are you famished, little warrior?” Mam asks me, and reaches over to lift back a lock of hair off my damp forehead. Her eyes are smiling because she’s watching mine, and I can’t stop looking toward the bag with the chicken in it. Maeve takes it out and unwraps it carefully; the skin is crisp and brown. It was Speckles. She was old and a bully but my friend too. I look toward Mam.
“Mam. Mam. Is there anyone else on the island?”
The two of them look at each other for a second. I’ve asked before, but this is a campaign today. It’s my birthday and there’s more give to them both, a better chance they’ll answer me or at least give the usual responses in a new way. And I’m seven, near grown. This is what they’ve been telling me, that it’s time now to stop being a child, and that is something to celebrate too. Maybe it means they’ll talk to me properly. The way they talk to each other.
“Did you see someone?” Maeve’s voice, hard and sudden nearly like I’ve frightened her.
Mam is softer always. “There’s no one else here, Orpen. We’ve told you that.”
“But are there other people on the island of Ireland?”
I feel Maeve breathing a bit easier, but Mam is worried.
“We don’t know, is the answer,” Mam says in that way she has when she wants to not keep things hidden from me, when she wants to tell me everything. “We don’t know, baby. That’s one of the things we wanted to talk to you about.”
“I’m not a baby.”
“No, warrior,” Mam says, with a big, shaky sigh. “You can grow and read and write and add and subtract. It’s time for your real learning.”
“Time for training,” puts in Maeve, and Mam is looking at her seriously and nodding.
Maeve unwraps a potato and sprinkles salt on it. She loves her food as much as I do, and she’s eating this spud now to let me know I need to get going before my birthday feast is gone. Maeve knows what I’m doing exactly; she always does. She’s not one for eye contact, but she’s eyeing me now and she doesn’t look away and leave me off till I’ve a mouthful of Speckles instead of questions.
When I open my birthday present, it is knives.