The morning arrives with a slow lazy snow, its flakes falling fat and quiet, gathering on windowsills and fences. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. Out the cottage’s kitchen window, the sky peeks blue behind low clouds, and hints of the snow peter out to a weak sun. Around me are the remains of breakfast that I am to be cleaning up. Mum and Dad have gone market shopping in town while George sits quietly at the kitchen table, drawing in his thick sketchbook, which to me has become a symbol of all that is good: George’s vital passion to create something marvelous in the middle of uncertainty.
I watch out the window, my mind wandering from exams (Did I do all right with such a scattered mind?) to the presents I want to get for Mum and Dad (a new cast-iron pan) to Padraig and the kiss. Always back to the kiss. Thoughts of Padraig are persistent and never fail to bring a thrill, even as I try to tamp it down.
A blue car stops in front of the house.
The door of the sedan opens, and my thoughts snap to the present. Did Mum order something delivered—a Christmas present perhaps? A young man bundled in a black wool coat and hat climbs out of the car, wraps his red scarf tighter about his neck, and looks up to the house as if checking the address before walking toward the low gate that opens into the garden path to the front door.
Padraig.
Had my thoughts become so muddled that I made him up? Had I become so preoccupied that I could think of someone and then imagine he is ambling up my familiar stone walkway to the front door?
I rush from the kitchen, my breath puddling in my throat. I don’t have a name for my feeling; it’s a peculiar mix of excitement and worry.
He can’t be here. Not at my house. Not with George sick and me looking all mussy from sleep and not yet fully dressed and my parents gone shopping and . . .
He knocks.
George looks up. “Who is it?”
“I’ll get it,” I say. I walk past the hall mirror and glance at myself: a disaster, just as I thought. Messy dark curls are mushed up on one side from sleeping. I run my fingers through my hair, then hurry to open the door.
Padraig grins at me from beneath the flock of his cap. “Well, hello, Megs!”
“What in the world?”
“I have a surprise for you.”
I glance back to the kitchen. George still sits at the table and his back is to us. He’s drawing as if that’s all there is to do in the world. I grab my coat from the hook by the door and slip on my green wellies before walking onto the front stoop.
“A surprise for me?”
“Well, it’s for you . . . and George.” From his pocket he slips out a map folded in neat creases. He opens only the first flap. “See this?” He points.
I lean to look where his finger rests. In tiny words I read Dunluce Castle. I lift my gaze back to Padraig’s. “What’s this about?”
“We’re taking George there. Today.”
I cough a laugh, a kind of relief that this is a joke. “He already has a map. He’s drawn all over it.”
Now it’s Padraig’s turn to laugh, and it’s a full one. “No, silly. I’m taking you both there. In the car. On a ferry.”
I shake my head, look behind Padraig. When a car passes, I think it might be Mum and Dad and they’ll wonder why I’m standing outside in the snow with a boy they don’t know. But it’s not them. “That’s impossible. George can’t take that kind of journey and—”
“I have it all figured out.” Padraig jabs his finger at the spot on the map. “Well, perhaps not all figured out, because that’s part of the fun of an odyssey, not having it all squared away. Don’t you agree? But I have enough of it figured out to get us there and back home safely.” He pauses. When I have nothing to say, he plows ahead. “The castle is near my hometown of Crawfordsburn.”
“No,” I say even as I want to say yes. I must be sensible. If Margaret Devonshire is anything, she is sensible. I shake my head, then make a resolute face.
“I sort of expected you’d say that,” Padraig says with no hint of giving up. “That is, of course, a perfectly logical reaction.”
I want to be insulted, to be indignant and have a quick-witted response, but I fear he’s right. These last few days I’ve been questioning the fundamental value of only logic. Of logic’s ability to withstand what lies ahead in my life, in all our lives.
“Hear me out, Margaret Devonshire.”
I laugh when he uses my full name, then place my hand over my lips.
“It is an eight-hour trip. A day to be sure. A journey, but worth it, and such beauty along the way.” He opens the map wider and it flaps over his hand. “We drive from here to Holyhead, then take the car ferry to Dublin. After the boat ride, it’s a three-hour drive to the castle.”
“To the castle . . . ,” I say, like I’m starting to believe.
“Yes, but if we’re to keep to my schedule, we’ll have to go now.” He looks at his watch. “It will be dark early, and we’ll need to get up to the northern tip of Ireland. No worries about food. I have a full picnic basket and a thermos of warm cocoa. I have a blanket in the back seat where George can lie down and—”
“So that means we’ll need to spend the night. Do you intend for us to sleep on the side of some Irish road?” I am clicking through every reason that this adventure is a terrible idea even as a growing and frightening giddiness indicates resistance is futile.
“My aunt Mary lives in Crawfordsburn. Well, honestly, many of my aunts and uncles and cousins and second cousins live there, but Aunt Mary is my favorite. She’ll take us in without alerting the family forces, I know it.”
“My parents will never allow it. Not at all. Not for a minute.”
“Are they home? I can talk to them.” He grins. “I’m good with parents.”
“I’m sure you are. I’m sure you’re charming enough to talk anyone into almost anything, but they aren’t home, and besides that, they aren’t easily charmed.”
“I don’t want to charm anyone, Megs. I want to take you and your brother on an adventure for Christmas. I want George to see the place he longs to see. I want to spend today with you.”
I could not have been more stunned if he’d picked me up and swung me around and kissed me again—but this time on my front stoop. A flash of sadness told me that the snowbank kiss was a one-time thing. A mistake at best.
“That is so nice, Padraig, but we just can’t. I just . . . can’t.”
“You wanted adventure . . .”
“I never said that.”
“Okay, then it’s George.” He smiles because he knows that will hook my heart like a fishing line.
“I can’t take him away from home on Christmas Eve . . . Eve.”
“We’ll be back home in time for Christmas Eve, for whatever your family has planned. To my mind, there’s no time like the present.”
“What if we get stuck? What if—”
“What if we don’t go and your brother never has his adventure? Actually, your parents not being home might be just the thing. We’ll leave a note. We’ll be safe. I promise.”
We’ll be safe. I promise.
I believe him. I believe the deep echo in his voice. The sky clear and bright, I think of George in front of the fireplace asking for only this for Christmas. I think of next Christmas when George likely won’t be here, and me wishing I’d taken the chance, broken through the stone wall of logic and fear. There is a courageous girl I want to be—not this girl I am at the moment.
I look into Padraig’s green eyes and I believe him.
We will be safe.
“Wait here,” I say.
I rush inside, running toward an adventure. Before I fully know what I’ve done, I write Mum and Dad a note.
Please forgive me in advance. I am taking George on a short overnight trip. I promise he will be safe and warm.
My heart is hammering with delight. Something is coming alive in me, racing toward the unknown. It’s an untested feeling I indulge, a surge toward adventure.
This is dangerous and wrong.
It is safe and right.
Everything is all mixed tighter.
I am taking him to Ireland to see the castle. We are with Padraig Cavender from university. His father is a mathematics professor at Reading, and Padraig has an aunt at Crawfordsburn. We will stay at her house. All will be well. I am sorry to take him without permission, but this is all he has asked of me for Christmas.
I love you.
Yours, Megs
Within minutes, a perfectly thrilled George with a self-satisfied smile is bundled into the back of the Wyvern on a bench seat of leather with blankets and pillows piled all around him.
I’ve brushed my hair and donned my favorite thick gray lamb’s-wool sweater, grabbed a hunk of cheese and a loaf of bread. I bring George’s sketchbook and his pouch overflowing with colored pencils. Padraig has a big wicker basket on the floor of the back seat. The car radio is playing “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square,” and George’s cheeks are aflame with adventure.
Padraig starts the car and then turns around to George. “It is lovely to meet you, George. If you look on the floor back there, you’ll find I’ve brought something for you.”
I sit in the front of the car, knowing I have about one minute to change my mind, but then George lets out a holler of glee that I haven’t heard in ages and I know I won’t. I turn in my seat to see that George has pulled from the floor a huge world atlas. He opens it as Padraig presses the gas.
We are off on the London Road of Worcester, heading toward Holyhead, then through Birmingham. It’s all too wonderful to believe.
“George,” says Padraig, “I think you are very, very brave.”
George nods solemnly and says in a very big voice, “Yes, but Peter didn’t feel brave when he stabbed the wolf chasing Lucy; he felt sick with fear, but he did it anyway.”
Padraig and I look to each other and smile; he reaches over with his free hand and pats my leg just as Bing Crosby’s voice sings from the car radio, filling the cab with the music and words of “Jolly Old St. Nicholas.”
Padraig joins Bing, singing in a tenor voice that gives me a thrill of happiness. “Lean your ear this way.”
George joins in. “Don’t you tell a single soul what I’m going to say.”
Without breaking the stride of the song, I sing off-key, “Christmas Eve is coming soon; Now you dear old man . . .”
The three of us join in laughter.
Padraig sings the entire song, tapping the steering wheel, knowing every word. His voice is beautiful with the lilt of his Irish accent, but also with something I hadn’t known: his singing voice is as melodious as Bing’s. My voice, meanwhile, is as out of tune as an abandoned piano, but I care little for how I sound. I am singing with Padraig and George, and we are with St. Nick.
Watching the English countryside fly by the windows of Padraig’s car, I am as nervous as I am excited. Every mud-splattered sheep, every black cow, every thatched-roof house and smoking chimney are brilliantly vivid in the snowy countryside.
George naps and I put my feet on the dashboard, something Dad never lets me do. We laugh, and the feeling is like growing wings. Within a few hours, we arrive at the ferry port, where we see the monstrous metal ship that will carry us across the Irish Sea with Padraig’s father’s Wyvern inside.
Once the car is in the ferry and we’re riding the waves, Padraig and I get out of the vehicle and walk to the metal railing. We feel the wild wind that makes it too difficult to talk. George naps in the back seat. It’s so cold I can’t feel my fingers. Mum will be frantic with worry, and I can only hope my note will soothe her somewhat.
We land in Dublin. Back in the car, Padraig tells George stories. One here, another there, sometimes nothing more than a poem or song. We drive along winding Irish roads where hedges sometimes brush the side of the car. Villages with small churches and corner pubs rush past.
Both George and I had faded off to sleep when Padraig stops the car. We awake with a jolt, my neck cranked to the right. I am mortified: Padraig has probably watched me sleep with my mouth open like a turtle’s. Just before winter’s early nightfall, we arrive at Dunluce Castle’s ruins on the basalt outcropping of the seacoast.
George opens his car door and jumps out before I can say a word. Padraig and I get out and join him. He’s standing with his face lifted to the castle. He is bundled in coat and sweaters, his scarf about his neck and high above his lips, his black wool hat low on his forehead. All I can see of him are his eyes, and they are as wide as they have ever been, taking in the view of the castle in the evening’s fading light.
“We made it just in time,” I say. “George, we made it.”
Padraig nods. “Yes. We don’t have long.”
The three of us gaze up at a luminescent Dunluce Castle as the sun eases low behind it.
* * *
It is just as George had imagined, and this is all he wanted for Christmas. To know and see a place in the real world that can be transformed into something wondrous and unknown in another world.
Yards out past the cliffs, the sea thrashes the jagged and steep rocks with all its might, then retreats, only to try again. These broken walls and half crumbled towers had been seen by a young boy named Jack, who turned it into a magical place where goodness and love conquered winter, and a lion rose from the dead, and four children unexpectedly sat on royal thrones.
If George squints just right against the setting sun, he can see the castle intact and whole.
Padraig crouches next to him. “Jump on my shoulders, and we’ll get closer,” he says, his Irish accent flowing like a song.
George does it and instantly is above the ground, taller as if he has grown, as if he has become a man who can walk seven feet high and see the world from there. As the castle looms closer, George thinks of the Irish fairy folk Padraig told them about on the drive. Padraig said they live inside this world, in a fantastic place where seven years equals one. George thinks of Lucy in Narnia, gone for hours and hours, though her sister and brothers think she’s been gone only for minutes. George thinks of his life and how short and how long it will be. He thinks of Jack Lewis at nine years old, gazing at this castle, tucking it away in his memories, turning it into Cair Paravel.
George knows this quest will be the adventure of his life. He snuggles closer to Padraig’s warm woolen scarf as Padraig talks in a lyrical storytelling voice.
“The Scottish clan of McQuillan built the castle on the cliff edge—”
George interrupts. “When Megs starts a story for me she says, ‘Once upon a wardrobe not very long ago and not very far away’ and then she tells the rest. It’s the beginning.”
Padraig laughs and his shoulders shake. “Well, look at that. Your sister is a storyteller.” He glances back at and her and jiggles George’s legs. “Okay, here we go. Once upon a wardrobe, not very long ago and not very far away, the Scottish clan of McQuillan built the castle on a cliff edge, believing it would keep them from being conquered, but it didn’t.” He points. “The McDonough clan had spies that helped them scale the cliff walls there with ropes and baskets to conquer the McQuillans.”
George listens. He doesn’t have to dive so deep into his imagination as when Megs tells him all the facts, because Padraig is really good at telling a story.
“And there”—Padraig points up to the far edge of the castle—“Is where the kitchen crumbled and tumbled right into the sea.”
“You’re making that up,” George says.
“Sure, I make up loads of stories, but that’s true as true can be.”
George laughs. “Were people in the kitchen when it happened?”
“Oh, yes. It’s said that a young boy ran to get something for the cook, and when he returned they were all gone—kitchen included, as if it had disappeared into thin air.”
“Oh, tell me another one.” George realizes that real stories can be just as fantastic as made-up ones.
“Underneath the castle,” Padraig says as they bow into the wind and make their way closer, “is a cave. They call it the Mermaid’s Cave.”
Padraig keeps talking, and his words whip about them as he weaves stories of mermaids and pirates. Padraig walks across a long stone bridge that arches over a craggy furrow of land. George feels safe on Padraig’s shoulders, watching as an eagle might. The stone bridge leads inside the castle, which of course is nothing but squares of earth and rock, of broken walls, the rooms and furnishings centuries gone. Where they have gone—the people and the kitchen and the furniture and the decorations—is a mystery, but what remains are stories. And George wants to hear every one of them.
After they cross the bridge, Padraig sets George down on the earth. Megs is behind them, and they are the only people there. “It is Cair Paravel,” George says.
“You know,” Padraig says as if he’s just thought of it, staring far off over the darkening sea, “in Gaelic, kaer means ‘castle.’”
Megs takes in a quick breath and George feels the night coming fast. No one speaks. They stand at the edge of the cliff, roped off and safe high above the rocks where waves crash, turning into white and silver foam.
* * *
I look at George, and he is more spirited than he has ever been. I see it in his eyes and in his straight shoulders. He’s facing the medieval world that helped build the world of Narnia. Our trio stands there for a long while above the wild sea, silent and watching. George wanders a few feet away to the far end of the ruins, hobbling in the layers and layers of coat and sweaters I have made him wear.
“This is . . .” I pause for a lack of words.
Padraig fills in the blank spaces. “It’s an adventure of our own making.”
“Yes, it is,” I say.
Dunluce Castle is not just a pile of old stones on emerald hills. It’s an ancient whisper of Ireland and her stories. It’s the seed of a story where a great lion appears, and it is the symbol of my brother’s bravery.
It is much, much more than a pile of old stones.
George stands at the edge of a shattered wall where he runs his hand along the rocks.
“You know why he wanted to see this, don’t you?” I ask Padraig, my voice tremulous. I am so grateful to him, and I don’t know how to tell him. It’s too big of a feeling for me to speak.
“Yes, I know why,” Padraig says. “George knows you can take the bad parts in a life, all the hard and dismal parts, and turn them into something of beauty. You can take what hurts and aches and perform magic with it so it becomes something else, something that never would have been, except you make it so with your spells and stories and with your life.”
Tears overflow my eyes. I can’t stop them. I don’t even want to. “Mr. Lewis said not to try and assign bits of a life to a story—”
“I know,” Padraig says.
“But all the bits and pieces and scraps of a person’s internal life are the ingredients of a life story. Here I can see that clearly,” I say.
“And there’s something more,” Padraig says, so quietly that it almost sounds as if the whistling wind in the stones repeats his words. “Something undefinable. That’s where Mr. Lewis’s stories break all the bonds, Megs.”
I’m transported by Padraig’s wisdom. With Dunluce Castle rising above us, I start to understand. “Mr. Lewis’s kinds of stories—the fairy tales, the myths, the universes all wrapping themselves around other worlds—are inside ours.” I look to Padraig. “These stories make us remember something we forgot. They make a young boy want to hop out of a bed and see the ruins of a castle. These kinds of stories wake us up.”
“Yes!” Padraig takes my face and the rough wool of his mittens scratch. I smile and feel my cheeks lift, cradled in his hands.
“The way stories change us can’t be explained,” Padraig says. “It can only be felt. Like love.”
Time stands still, I swear it does. It takes a huge breath and holds it, waiting for what? I’m not sure.
Then George is next to us and he pulls at Padraig’s hand. “Hurry! See the sun melting into the water.”
And time lets out its breath.
The three of us look toward the remnants of a sunset, the wind trying to steal our hats and whipping hair into our eyes and mouths. As night falls, we are quiet, the only tourists audacious enough to brave a windy winter evening in a ruined castle.