Like the other men in his family, young Patrick Michael Martin was color-blind.
Given that he could claim most of the small farming village of Glencar in County Kerry as family, Patrick was in good company in his inability to distinguish red, yellow, purple, or green from the miasma of grey tones that served as the landscape he saw out of his diminished eyes. Aside from the blue sky above, the world appeared to him as one long expanse of colorlessness in varying intensities. Having nothing to compare it to, however, he did not feel the loss.
In the early years of the Great Blight, just before the famine roared through, blackening fields and withering potatoes on the vine, the men of Glencar who worked those fields were at a unique disadvantage, because the initial signs of the scourge were subtle. The “white” Irish potato, originally brought back from the New World by the Spanish, revealed its disease first by going slightly green.
And the men of Glencar could not see the color green.
After many of them sickened and died from eating the blighted crop, the tenant farmers that remained gathered together one evening at dusk in Donovan McNamara’s barn to talk about the unthinkable—leaving Glencar and the rocky lands beneath Macgillicuddy’s Reeks, the tallest of Ireland’s mountains, where their families had farmed for centuries, both before and after the English came.
“The landlords are sending troops to evict anyone who’s in arrears in County Limerick,” said Oisin McGill nervously. “The village of Coyt is empty, the whole town of Ballincolly has gone to slave in the workhouses of Tipperary.”
“They are starvin’ down in County Cork, I hear,” whispered Eoin O’Connell. “The priests there said there were to be no more burials in coffins, to spare the money for food. Families are to put the dead in the ground in but the clothes they were wearing when they passed.”
“Landlord Payne says he will forgive our taxes and pay for our passage in exchange for leaving the lands,” McNamara said. “The crop may not be entirely lost yet, but how can we tell the good from the bad? Not one of us has color in his eyes. I’ve decided we will emigrate to America. I don’t know what else to do, and I won’t stay here to die on another man’s lands.”
“Nor will I,” Colm Martin, Patrick’s uncle, agreed. “I have children to think of. We leave after Mass on Sunday for Dingle. There are ships sailing from there every week or so now.”
Patrick’s father, Old Pat, cleared his throat. The noise in the barn fell away in the whine of the wind; Old Pat rarely spoke, and when he did, the men of Glencar listened carefully. Old Pat had been a sailor in his youth until two decades before, when he came home to farm his family’s ancestral land in Glencar. His wisdom was never doubted, especially regarding the sea.
“Those rickety ships be naught more than floating coffins,” he said, his voice gruff. “They’re packin’ three times the number they should be into ’em. You’ll be lucky if half of you live to see New York. I’d rather die here and be buried in the blighted soil of Ireland than be food for fish.” He rose slowly to leave, then turned back to his despairing neighbors and younger brother. “But then, that’s me. My son is grown, and can decide for himself. Aisling and I will stay. The rest of you, do what you must.”
The door of the barn creaked mournfully as it opened, and he was gone.
Patrick rose to follow him, only to be stopped by the hand of Donovan McNamara at his elbow. He looked down; Donovan’s hand had withered to arthritic bone covered with sagging skin.
“Young Pat,” Donovan said, “you must think of your mother. Aisling’s a young woman still; she’s not aged a day since your father brought her to Glencar before you were born. Old Pat may be ready to go to sod in Ireland’s arms, but your mother, now—”
Patrick nodded. He had been thinking the same.
All the way home in the darkness he wondered as he walked what he could say to his father that could possibly change the most stubborn mind in three counties, knowing full well that no such words existed. The stars winked bright above him in a sky that held no trace of moonlight.
The warm glow of the hearth fire shone in the windows as he came over the hill to his mother’s house where he still lived. Old Pat’s prized Irish draft horse, Fionnbar, was nowhere to be seen. Patrick opened the door quietly, in case his mother was already to bed.
Aisling sat before the fire, mending Fionnbar’s bridle. Her eyes sparkled upon beholding Patrick, and she smiled her customary slight smile, but she returned to her work without speaking. Both of his parents were given to using words sparingly.
Patrick hung his hat on the peg by the door and sat down on the stool near her feet. He watched her for a long time, her delicate hands weaving the leather strands back together seamlessly. Her face was thinner by a breath, no more, and Patrick noticed for the first time how much like the girls of Glencar she still looked, how beautifully shaped were her light eyes, how dark and thick her lashes. Donovan’s words came back to him as his eyes roamed over her long hair, freed from the ties that held it bound during daylight, now hanging in rippling waves to her waist.
Aisling’s a young woman still; she’s not aged a day since your father brought her to Glencar before you were born.
“Mother,” he said finally, reluctant to disturb her concentration, “the men concur. We must leave—the blight is spreading. Life, as hard as it may seem to believe, is about to worsen immensely. We should go to America with Uncle Colm and the others.”
“Your father will never agree to it,” Aisling said softly, her attention still fixed on her work.
“Aye, the Da is a stubborn man, but now stubbornness will lead to death, ‘tis for certain,” Patrick pressed, gentle in his tone but insistent in his words. “You are hale, Mother; God willing, you have many years ahead of you—”
Aisling did not look up. “Your father will never agree to it,” she repeated. She finished her work in silence, then rose and went to the curtain that demarcated their bedchamber. “Good night, Patrick.”
Patrick moved to her chair and sat in the darkness, watching the fire die down to coals, until the door opened, and Old Pat came in. He left his boots by the door, hung his hat and neckerchief on a peg, and disappeared behind the curtain without more than a nod. Patrick exhaled deeply and continued to stare at the coals until sleep took him.
Dawn found him there still, in Aisling’s chair by the hearth. He woke, feeling the chill of morning, got up and stirred the ashes, hoping to warm the house a little for his parents before leaving to tend to Fionnbar and the last remaining hen. He was at the well drawing water when Old Pat emerged from the house.
His father glanced around but did not appear to see him. Patrick watched, first in surprise, then in curiosity, as Old Pat made his way furtively behind the house, across the fields out toward the thinly wooded foothills of the high mountain of Carrauntoohil. His curiosity piqued, Patrick followed him, cutting through the sparse glades and high grass in which he had loved to hide since childhood.
There was something about that tall grass that had always pleased his soul, the way it undulated in the wind, even as it gave way to lower, brushy scrub closer to the hills. He had always been able to pass through the grass as easily as swimming through the water of a pond; Patrick hurried through it now, maintaining his distance while trying to keep his father in sight.
He followed him into the forest, taking cover in a grove of alders when Old Pat finally stopped some distance away. Patrick’s eyes had always been keen, and he could see the older man’s movements, even at a great distance, from his hiding place.
His father glanced around again and, noting nothing untoward, bent at the base of a rock hidden within a ring of trees. Patrick watched as he dug near the base of the rock, then, satisfied, made his way back through the woods again toward home.
Once Old Pat had been gone long enough to assure Patrick that he was not about to return, he emerged from the alder grove and hurried to the place in the tree ring when his father had been digging. The disturbed earth had been carefully covered over with dry leaves and brush, making it all but indiscernible.
He looked with more careful eyes at the place. Around the tree ring a circle of mushrooms grew; Patrick’s hands began to sweat as he looked back at the trees, old Irish oaks that must have been miraculously spared from the Tudor axes that two hundred years before had stripped the land clean of them to build Queen Elizabeth’s navies, or sprung from the acorns of those trees. He crossed himself hastily.
“A faerie ring,” he whispered. “God’s nightgown, Da, what are you about here?”
His first impulse was to run. Then worry and curiosity, coupled with fear for his father and a sense that their doom might as well be shared, won out over impulse. Patrick crouched on the cold ground and dug hastily.
He had to burrow beneath more than a foot of earth before his hand struck something smooth and hard. Cautiously, he brushed away the soil.
Within the deep hole was a sailor’s chest, bound in tarnished brass.
Patrick’s stomach tightened as his fingers ran over the lid, knowing that he was trespassing on something sacred to his father, and at the same time unable to resist. Believing the chest might hold a clue to Old Pat’s redoubtable decision to brave the famine rather than leave for a chance at life in America, he swallowed his discomfort, pried the rusty catch open, and lifted the lid.
Inside the small chest were many layers of linen, strewn with tiny clods of earth. Patrick hesitated, then brushed away the dirt and carefully lifted the linen bundle from the chest, sitting back on the grass of the forest floor as he unwound the fabric.
His heart beat heavily in his chest; the wind blew through the glade, rustling the leaves ominously.
At the center of the linen wrappings was a delicate cap fashioned of a dark-colored fabric woven with pearls. Nothing more.
Patrick sat, lost in thought, while the wind whipped all around him, pondering the significance of what he had found. Finally, unable to make sense of it, he took out his handkerchief and painstakingly wrapped the fragile cap in it, stowing it in his pocket. He then rewound the linen and returned it to the chest, which he quickly reburied, obscuring the hole once more.
BY NOON THAT DAY Patrick had still not come to peace about his quandary. The handkerchief burned a hole in his pocket, his mind itching to make sense of it, why his father considered the pearl cap to be such treasure. And why had he not sold it, when he sold everything else of value they owned but Fionnbar? The beautiful horse was awaiting his leave-taking as well; Old Pat had offered him to the constable who patrolled the three counties and who promised to come by at midsummer to pay in grain. Money had ceased to be of much use; there was no food to be bought, even when there was coin in the pocket. Old Pat was worried that the constable, when he finally came, would be as empty-handed as everyone else.
At noon Patrick checked the hen. She had been a solid layer before the blight, and was fairly young, so while her eggs were small, she still produced one most days, even now that she was foraging in the grass in the absence of feed. She had laid that morning, and so Patrick was shocked to discover a second egg in the nest, gleaming white with a hint of milky blue, the one color he could distinguish.
This all-but-magical occurrence, and thoughts of the faerie ring, set his mind to thinking about Bronagh, the witch-woman who lived alone at the northern outskirts of Glencar. His uncle Colm had once accused Bronagh of stealing his milk in the form of a hare, back when Colm still owned cows. Bronagh had delivered Patrick, and most of the children in the village. She climbed nearby Carrauntoohil, the tallest peak in Ireland, gathering herbs for medicine and ceremony, and was said to celebrate the pagan feast of Lughnasadh, but still managed to attend daily Mass at Queen of Martyrs, Glencar’s tiny church.
Father Flaherty, the pastor of Queen of Martyrs, had publicly declared, after hearing her confession, that she was harmless, a bit daft, perhaps, and without question odd, but not in league with Satan, and therefore should be pitied as the forlorn and lonely woman that she was, to whom kindness should be extended whenever possible. Bronagh, in turn, had tended the priest in his final hours as he lay dying of typhus resulting from the blight, had brought him consolation and a spiced soup that had broken his fever, eased his suffering and helped him to sink into a peaceful, painless sleep until his passing.
Bronagh kept to herself unless a baby was coming, or an illness needed tending. She could sometimes be seen in her tiny, rocky garden, but otherwise remained in her odd hut that backed up to the foothills of Carrauntoohil.
Bronagh knew everything.
Before he could think better of it, Patrick was standing at the gate of her broken picket fence, a blue hen’s egg in his hand.
The old woman was hunched over in the corner of her garden, scratching futilely at the dry soil with her walking stick.
“Blight’s taken the turnips and the horseradish as well,” she said; her voice had the harsh sound of wood beneath the saw blade. She looked up then, and when her eyes lighted on Patrick they gleamed.
“Well met, Patrick Michael Martin,” she greeted him, shambling forward to the gate. “You’ve grown a good deal since we’ve last shared the wind. What brings you? Is someone ailing?”
“No, ma’am,” Patrick said respectfully. “I’ve brought you a hen’s egg.” He held it out to her.
The old woman’s face hardened slightly as she took the blue egg, turning it over in her hand and studying it. When she looked back up at him her black eyes pierced his.
“What is it you wish to know, Patrick Michael Martin?”
Awkwardly, he reached into his pocket and withdrew the handkerchief, carefully unfolding it to show her the pearl-laced cap.
“Come into the house,” she said.
Patrick took off his hat and followed her into the small white hut. A single stool and a hay pallet covered with a linen sheet were the only furnishings. A rusted black pot hung on a crane over the fire. All about the place were jars and sacks and open mats on which herbs and flowers lay drying. An open doorway out the back appeared to lead to an outdoor root cellar of some sort. Woven reeds forming a St. Bridgid’s cross adorned the wall, dressed with dried foxglove. The wind whistled through the open door, raising to his nose a thousand scents, spicy and sweet, sharp and musty, all at once.
Bronagh went to the fireplace and ladled some water from the bucket beside it into the pot over the fire, then slipped the egg into it.
“I can make you root tea if you wish, Patrick Michael Martin,” she said, her hunched and bony back to him. “That and a bite of the egg you brought are all I can offer you.”
“No, Bronagh, thank you,” Patrick said hastily. “What can you tell me of the cap?”
The old woman turned, her eyes dark as tunnels in the backlight of the hearth fire.
“Where did you find it?” she asked. Her harsh voice was softer with import.
“In the forest back of the house,” Patrick replied nervously, suddenly wishing he had kept to himself.
“Ah.” Bronagh revisited the pot, stirring carefully. She sat on the stool, gesturing to Patrick to take the floor, which he did. “Your father must have hidden it out there, then.”
Patrick felt ice constrict in his veins. “Why would you say such a thing, Bronagh?”
The witch eyed him levelly. “Was it in a sea chest?”
“Aye.” Patrick cursed himself for the weakness in his voice.
“Then the cap must be your mother’s,” the old woman said.
“From their wedding? Is that why he saved it?”
Bronagh smiled. “You know that’s not the answer without even asking the question,” she said. “Within you, you sense that there is more.”
“Aye,” Patrick admitted, “though what that may be, I’m not certain.”
“Do you wish to know the truth, then? I will tell it to you if you want to hear it, though I suspect you’ll not thank me for it.”
“Go on,” Patrick said, laying the cap on his thigh to avoid touching it with hands that were by then covered in sweat.
“That is the cap of a murúch, a merrow,” Bronagh said. “A sea creature, part human, with the tail of a fish. You’ve heard the tales, no doubt—the dream of sailors, the daughters of Cliodhna Tuatha Dé Danann—they are real, lad. They live within the waves of the sea a thousand years or more, never aging, soulless; their immortality is in this life, not the next. When they finally die, they but turn to foam upon the waves. Your mother, Aisling Martin, is a merrow.”
“My mother is a devout Catholic,” Patrick whispered. “And a daughter of Ireland.”
“Aye, she may appear to be,” Bronagh nodded. “But if she is a merrow, it is naught but appearance. Everything about her that you think you know is an illusion, Patrick Michael Martin.
“The merrow lives in the depths, venturing close to the rocky shore—do you know why? Because deep within her there is a compelling desire to walk upon the land, to see the dry world. It is a desire beyond reason, and there is but one way for her to fulfill that desire.” The witch leaned closer to Patrick, who was trembling now as if with cold. “She must entrust her red pearl cap—red this is, Patrick, though you probably cannot see that—to the keeping of a human man, a sailor most often. If she does this, she grows human legs, the webbing between her fingers recedes. And then she can walk the earth and see the sights she has longed to see all her life.”
Bronagh rose and went back to the fire. She swung the crane out from the flames, fished the egg out of the pot with a spoon, and returned to the stool, cradling the egg in her ratty apron.
“Once a merrow gives her cap to a human man, however, it is as if she has given him control of what little semblance of a soul she has. The freedom and the joy she once knew in the embrace of the sea is gone, replaced by a meek, compliant nature. She becomes a gentle wife, a patient mother, a woman without a thought for herself. The ocean that is her birthplace and her home is forgotten, along with all the spirit that it once gave her; merrows are creatures of immense passion and humor, daring and full of spit and vinegar in their natural state. Now she is a shell, a hollow shadow of her real self. And the man who holds her cap likes her that way. She tends to his needs, gives him comfort and sustenance, bears his children, keeps his home, all the while remaining ever young and beautiful, even as he ages unto death. It is hard to blame him, I suppose; what man wouldn’t want such a thing?”
“You’re daft, Bronagh,” Patrick said testily. “My father adores my mother.”
“No doubt,” the witch said dryly. “But he adores her as she is, diminished, obedient, shallow like the landscape you color-blind gossoons see only in shades of grey, willing to believe that this is as the whole world is. It is not, Patrick—the world is a place of endless color, of vital, blooming color. Just because you do not perceive it does not mean it is not there.” The old woman sighed. “But, of course, in life men hold the reins, just as your father holds your mother’s cap in a sea chest buried deep in the forest.”
Patrick ran his finger over the tiny pearls in the fabric, white pricks of light against a flat, dark background.
“What if I were to return it to her?” he asked.
Bronagh tapped the egg against the knobby white wall, cracking it. “You will both lose her forever if you do,” she said seriously, peeling away the shell. “A merrow only remains with her husband because he has hidden her cap. Should she find it, or be given it back, she would immediately seek to return to her home in the sea. She will abandon house, husband, child, without a second thought. You will never see her again.”
“No,” Patrick said harshly. “You are wrong, Bronagh.”
The old woman’s dark eyes met his, and there was deep sadness in them. “You asked for the truth, Patrick Michael Martin, and I have given it to you. I am not saying this to decry your mother. But there is great magic in the sea, a magic much too strong to resist. Your own father knows it; ask yourself why he brought her here, to this rocky place in the lee of the tallest of Ireland’s mountains, when all his young life he plied the sea by choice? I suspect that you yourself have never seen the sea. Your father knows what Aisling would do were she to find the cap—every sailor is versed in the lore of the merrow. He took her from the sea. She has forgotten her life there. But if you give her the cap, she will remember, and she will abandon all she knows of this world for a chance to return to it. She has been a prisoner of sorts all of your life, and before, ever since she left the sea. Everything she has done she has done against her will, but she does not know it.” Bronagh lifted the peeled egg to her mouth. “Perhaps it is kinder not to tell her.”
The only sound that followed her words was the crackle of the fire. Bronagh took a bite of the egg, watching Patrick as the young man wrestled with his thoughts. Finally, he stood and shook out his hat.
“Thank you, Bronagh,” he said hollowly. “May God sustain you.” He turned and walked to the doorway.
“Wait,” the old woman blurted, struggling to rise. “What are you about to do, Patrick Michael Martin?”
“I won’t be certain of that until I do it,” Patrick replied. “I still believe you are mad. But I think my mother is entitled to the truth. In another time it might not be so; were Ireland hale and fertile, I might be tempted to let things be. But my father’s insistence on remaining in Glencar is the weight that unbalances the scale. I cannot allow him to keep her here at the cost of her life, even if that costs him her love.”
Bronagh shook her head sadly. “He has never had her love, lad, nor have you,” she said. “All you have is her enforced fealty, against her will, nothing more.”
“Be that as it may, she has mine,” Patrick said. “And if in that I must let her go forever, then I must.” He put his hat on his head.
The old woman swallowed the last of the boiled egg and brushed her hands against her torn skirts.
“The day I caught you as you came into this world was a good one, Patrick Michael Martin,” she said. “May God grant you as many more good days as He is willing to.”
Patrick nodded his thanks and hurried out the door, brushing the sting of the cottage air and the water from his eyes.
HE STOPPED at Donovan McNamara’s place on the way home to beg the loan of Donovan’s remaining horse. It was nigh on three o’clock by the time he returned to the house.
Aisling stood in the road, waiting to meet him. Her face was serene, but her eyes held a tinge of concern. She said nothing, but eyed Donovan’s horse questioningly.
Patrick led the horse to her; he smiled, in the attempt to contain the torment that was clawing at his viscera.
“Is Da home?” he asked as he brought the beast to a halt.
Aisling shook her head.
Patrick inhaled deeply, then reached into his pocket and took out the handkerchief. He placed it in her hand, struggling to maintain his smile.
Aisling opened the linen square carefully, revealing the cap. Patrick watched as she stared at it for a moment.
Then, before his eyes, a change came over her.
She caught her breath, a shuddering inhalation that was part gasp, part laugh. Then she laughed again, a merry, bell-like sound he did not ever remember hearing before. A light seemed to ripple over her face, and when she looked up at him, she was smiling broadly, tears pooling in her eyes and beginning to run down her cheeks.
“Patrick,” she said, exhilaration in her voice, “will you take me to the sea?”
“ ’Tis true,” Patrick said in disbelief. “ ’Tis true what Bronagh said, then. You are murúch—a merrow?”
“Aye,” Aisling said, her face shining with excitement. “Aye, Patrick, that I am. Take me to the sea, please! Take me to Bolus Head.”
Patrick nodded numbly. “Do you—do you want to pack your belongings?”
Aisling laughed again. “That won’t be necessary. Let us be off.”
As if in a dream, Patrick helped her mount Donovan’s horse. “Do you at least wish to wait until Da returns, so that you can bid him good-bye?”
“No,” said Aisling. “Come. Let us not tarry.”
THE RIDE SOUTHWEST to the sea was not at all what Patrick had expected.
The heaviness in his heart at the knowledge of what would happen when they reached the end of the peninsula gave way fairly quickly to amazement at the change in Aisling.
She sat before him on the horse, her long hair loose and free in the wind, the sun on her face, chatting merrily, something in all his life he never had known her to do.
All the way she told him stories of the sea, tales of the warm shallows where fish of brilliant colors swam between sharp living rocks, of cold depths where broken ships lay in their graves, their decks, masts, and wheels slowly becoming part of the ocean floor, as if the sea were sculpting them the way an artist transforms stone. She told him of her people and their ways, the lazy merrow men sunning themselves on the jagged cliffs of Connemara or the rocks of Small Skellig, guzzling rum gleaned from the wreckage of those ships, and the schools of seals that swam alongside those of merrow children. And she sang him wordless songs in a voice that both haunted him and caused silver shivers to resonate through his soul. The sheer joy that had taken her over was infectious; it was cherished time, this journey to land’s end with a mother he had loved from childhood but no longer recognized.
She never mentioned his father.
Only at night when they slept, or during the moments in daylight when they stopped to let the horse drink and rest, did the melancholy return, deep, abiding sadness at the despair he knew would be the lot of Old Pat for the rest of his life. He prayed silently for wisdom, for forgiveness.
Honor thy father and thy mother.
How do I do both, Lord?
All the things she had made with her hands—the delicate tatted lace, the clothing, the sweaters of worsted wool—she had left behind without a thought; Patrick knew she would not need them in the sea, but the readiness with which she had abandoned everything that had been built over the course of her life as Old Pat’s wife, as his own mother, thudded hollowly in his head.
Everywhere along the way were signs of the blight—empty huts and storage silos; bare fields that should have been rich with foliage, but instead held only the blackened leaves and withered crop; potters’ fields with row upon row of freshly turned earth mounded in scores of graves. Patrick and Aisling stopped at each long enough to say an Ave from atop the horse, particularly the ones outside of what had once been homes where entire families had been buried, the smallest mounds no more than a yard in length. A little church stood empty, its door banging in the wind. Even in the places where people lived still, there was emptiness; the eyes that watched them as they traveled through were hollow with hunger, in faces drawn and shrunken from disease.
Finally, after two days’ ride with little to eat but that which could be begged or found along the way, the crash of the waves off Ballinskellig Bay could be heard. Patrick saw ripples of spray rising above the ocean even before the old horse crested a hill enough to catch a view of it. He reined the horse to a stop and slowly slid to the ground, transfixed.
The wet wind slapped his hair wildly as he stared out into the endless blue of the sea, the color of it filling his eyes. Even though it was mixed with shades of grey, subtle tones he could not distinguish, it was still the most vibrant, moving panorama of blue he had ever seen, like the living sky, rolling and crashing against the rocky beach. In the distance, he saw the dark rise of Skellig Michael, wrapped in fog and wind.
“How could he have kept you from this?” he murmured, fighting off the deep sense of longing that was twisting around his soul. “How in the name of God above could he have taken you away from here, and kept you in the shadow of the Reeks?”
As if in response, he heard the whinny of a horse in the distance. Patrick turned to see Old Pat, atop Fionnbar, crest the hill behind them. His father reined to a stop for a moment, then, sighting them, urged the draft horse forward, hell-bent for leather.
Patrick felt the breath go out of his body. Then, in the crushing weight of the air’s return to his lungs, he ran back to Donovan’s horse and crawled up into the saddle behind his startled mother, kicking the poor beast into a canter, then a rough gallop.
“Patrick,” Aisling gasped, “for the love of God—”
“Hold to me, Mother,” he said. “Hold to me, and I will get you to the shore.”
Mercilessly he urged Donovan’s horse on, straining to hold on with his knees, gripping the reins in one hand and Aisling with the other. He rode forward into the sea wind, the breeze whistling through his hair, gaining as much speed from the tired horse as he could, knowing that his father’s mount was the better, and not wishing to have to fight his way through, should Old Pat position himself between his mother and the sea.
Finally, the tip of Bolus Head was in sight. Land’s end, the farthest point west that they could reach. Patrick rode until the rocky shore was too much for the horse’s shoes, then dragged back on the reins and leapt from the saddle. He turned and looked over his shoulder.
Old Pat was within sight, perhaps two hundred yards behind him. His father was pitched forward in Fionnbar’s saddle, shouting something into the wind, its noise lost in the howl of it and the clatter of the horse’s hooves.
“Come, Mother,” Patrick urged, holding his arms out to her. “Make haste.”
Aisling allowed him to pull her down from the saddle, then looked behind her to the east, beholding Old Pat for the first time. She brushed the flapping locks of hair from her face, staring into the coming dusk, the sun sinking into the sea to the west lighting her back and shoulders with a bright glow. Then she reached into her pocket and drew forth her cap. The tiny pearls caught the light of the setting sun.
“Mother,” Patrick said insistently, seeing Old Pat bearing down upon them, “he’ll be on us in a heart’s beat. Now for it!”
Aisling continued to watch Old Pat, expressionless, as Fionnbar came to a halt. Then she turned to Patrick and smiled, the glow of joy that he had seen coming over her face once more, lighted by the vanishing sun. She took her son’s hand, squeezed it fondly, then placed the merrow’s cap in his palm.
“Here,” she said simply.
He stared at her blankly.
“Take it, Patrick,” she urged, glancing over her shoulder as Old Pat dismounted and began to scramble over the rocks toward the shore.
“I don’t understand,” Patrick said, his hand growing numb and weak with anxiety.
“Save yourself, Patrick Michael Martin,” his mother said, smiling, though tears were starting to well in her eyes. “From the famine, and from all that has held you blind until now.”
“Blind to what?”
Aisling’s smile grew brighter. “You’ll see.”
Patrick heard the exerted puff of his father’s breath behind him, but he was too thunderstruck to move. Aisling squeezed his hand again, then turned away and went to Old Pat, slipping her arm behind his back as he pulled her close.
“You—young fool,” his father gasped, struggling to catch his breath. “Did ya not see what—you were—doing to Donovan’s poor old—horse? God in heaven above, boy.” The hen, caged in a basket that hung from Fionnbar’s saddle, squawked in protest as well.
Patrick shook his head as if the sense in it had collected in the corners. “I don’t understand,” he repeated.
“What’s to understand?” Old Pat asked crossly. “Take your mother’s cap, put it on your head, wade out into the sea, and be gone. There’s nothing more here for you now, lad. To stay behind guarantees a struggle to live that is likely to turn out badly; two can share a daily hen’s egg, but three can’t survive on that. To take to the sea in a coffin ship is to risk your life and your health. There’s no good choice but this one.”
“You’ll be safe in the sea, Patrick,” Aisling said, leaning against Old Pat’s shoulder. “As my son, you are of the blood as well; take the cap and go to find your kin. They will teach you our ways.”
“You knew?” Patrick asked incredulously. “You knew he had hidden the cap?”
“Of course,” Aisling said, her brows drawing together in surprise. “ ’Tis a highly prized thing, that cap; you didn’t think we would keep it in the cottage where the landlord or some other English thug might come upon it and steal it?”
“If you knew where it was, why did you not take it back, then, Mother? Does not a merrow long to return to the sea above all else?”
Aisling looked at his father and smiled. “Not above all else, Patrick. ’Tis true I would have been spared from the famine if I had returned to the sea, but I did not wish to be spared if it meant going without your father.”
“Did you think you found that chest by happenstance, lad?” Old Pat asked, amused. “You must have known I was leading you there—surely you did not think I would have missed seeing you, followin’ so close? You think I’m blind, lad?”
“You’re—you’re in on this together,” Patrick said incredulously. “If that be so, why did you give chase, Da? I about met my death from heart failure, trying to outrun you.”
“Of course we are ‘in on this together,’ you young cur,” said Old Pat with equal measures of scorn and fondness in his voice. “As we are in everything together; that’s the very definition of holy matrimony. We decided that this was the answer the night after the meeting in Donovan’s barn. We discussed it in bed that night, as you slept beside the fire. I was to meet you both here. And I gave chase because you ran. I came to bid you farewell and take your mother home.”
Patrick took off his hat and ran a hand through his hair. “The witch,” he said to Aisling in amazement. “Bronagh told me that, should I return the cap to you, you would not be able to resist the magic of the sea.”
Aisling smiled again. “Some magics are stronger than others, Patrick.”
“Despite being blessed with some uncommon wisdom, Bronagh does not know everything,” Old Pat added. “She assumes that what she knows about the lore of merrows and sailors applies to every merrow, every sailor. ’Tis folly. When a sailor drowns, it is often said that he has married a merrow. Faith, I didn’t want to do it that way. So I merely asked one for her hand instead.”
In spite of himself, Patrick chuckled.
Aisling reached out and took his arm. “Remember, Patrick, you are born of both sea and land. The sea holds a powerful magic, ‘tis true. But you are a son of Ireland, the most magical realm in all the dry world. You will be at home in both places. When the time is right, when the famine is over, come back to us. If we be living still, we will welcome you home to the Reeks.”
Sadness crept over Patrick’s face.
“And if you are not?” he asked.
Aisling squeezed his arm. “If not, then I suppose I will see you in heaven.”
“But Bronagh said that you do not have a soul.”
“What does anyone but God know of the soul?” his mother said. “I can tell you this for certain, Patrick Michael Martin: wherever your father goes, in this life and beyond, I am ever there. We share a soul—and we are both part of you. That should be enough to lift us all from the waves to heaven, don’t you think?”
“Aye, I do,” said Patrick, struggling to keep his eyes from overflowing. “Just tell me one last thing, Mother—when I gave you back the cap, why did you change so?”
Aisling blinked. “Did I?”
“Aye,” said Patrick. “Your face took on the glow of the sun, and you laughed merrily, in a way I don’t remember hearing before. It was magical—or so it seemed to me. I could believe that you were hearing the call of the sea, that magic that Bronagh said you would be unable to stand against.”
His mother grinned broadly.
“What you saw was joy, Patrick, joy in the knowledge that the blight will not take my child, this son of land and sea, as it has taken so many other mothers’ children. Life here on the land has not been easy of late; in fact, it never has been. It is the life I choose, to stay here with your father, come what may. I know that you will be safe now. Sad as I am that you are leaving my house, how can I but be happy for you? You will now see what you have been missing. Fare thee well.”
He came into their embrace and remained there until the sun touched the edge of the sea, spilling its light along the horizon. Then he put on the cap and ventured out in the water with one last glance over his shoulder.
Aisling and Old Pat stood, arm in arm, watching him go. Like all those parents who had sent sons to war, or children to the New World in search of life beyond the coming death, they held to each other, their backs straight against the loss, braced together.
As he moved into the waves he felt a familiar sensation, recognizing it after a moment as the same one he had always felt when moving through the undulating waves of summer grass. There was a welcome to it, as there had been on the land, and in that moment he realized he had felt the call of the sea all his life, even far away in the mountains of Macgillicuddy’s Reeks.
When the water crested his shoulders he began to swim, and as he did, he felt his legs melt away, forming a deeper muscle, powerful, moving together as one. Then it was as if he was moving through the air, at home in the element of water, and elation swelled up inside him.
Patrick turned in the sea and looked back to the rocky coast at the tiny shadows still standing, side by side, in the dusk; he thought he saw one of the shadows wave to him, but he was unsure. He lifted a hand in return, a hand with a slight webbing of skin between the fingers now. He looked farther up and suddenly saw the green hills rising, verdant in their splendor, the purple mountains beyond, the summer slopes bathed in a glorious array of the bright colors of the land, scarlets and crimsons, delicate yellows and the palest of lavenders.
In his ears he heard his mother’s voice, one last time.
Save yourself, Patrick Michael Martin, from the famine, and from all that has held you blind until now.
Blind to what?
You’ll see.
Below him, the ocean swelled, no longer grey, in blue-green splendor, gold below. He knew its deeper treasures were his now, could hear the sea wind calling, heard the song from the depths, the same wordless tune his mother had sung to him on the way to this place, telling him not of what she missed, but what lay in store for him.
He dove into the waves and went off to find it.