The rich smell of fresh coffee woke me from my latest lucid dreams, accompanied by the pop and hiss of fried eggs and sausages on the griddle. “Yum, coffee!” I called to Frank as I slowly stretched myself up off the pillow nest I had made and swung my legs over the side of the double bed pushed up against a cedar wall, just low enough that its inhabitant was unable to see out of the large picture window a couple feet above. I fumbled in the sheets for my socks after feeling the cold wooden floorboards on my feet. Once socks were secured and the rest of me was wrapped against the freezing morning in the extra quilt, I crossed the small hallway over to the kitchen, ready for something hot.
Frank passed me a handmade earthenware mug without even looking, keeping his eyes on the frying pan. “So glad we stopped at the Euro Spar yesterday. I woke up starving after all that late-night theorizing and researching.”
“Mmhmm,” I mumbled into my coffee mug as I pulled out one of the three leather stools that sat at the kitchen counter.
“So where did you sleep, the sofa?” I presumed, nodding over at the disheveled quilts and pillows on the old Ikea sofa and the still-closed door to the study, which likely held an unbothered futon and neatly folded linens. “I see you’re still totally against bed-sleeping.”
“Essentially yes, unless I have a tall, dark, and handsome Welshman to cuddle up with.” He winked at me and served up two eggs, two tomatoes, and two sausages for each of us, then joined me on a stool at the counter. I dug into my eggs, watching the bright yellow yolk flow in grateful silence. I cleared my throat as Frank wiped up his eggs with the butt of a piece of brown bread.
“I think I have an idea of how to start the fieldwork I need to do to prove my theory, finish the chapter on standing stone rituals, and rewrite the conclusion of Sully’s book.”
“You think you might have an idea?” Frank laughed through his nose, cheeks full of food, and loudly sipped his coffee to coat the rough egg-covered bread on the way down the gullet. “Well, that certainly sounds promising.”
I gave him a look as I cut into my tomato with the side of my fork and then refocused on my plate as I salted it to perfection. “OK, so I’m working on my confidence,” I quipped. “I have a couple coastal locations that would have been well connected in the Neolithic and possibly into the Bronze Age. They have the middens to prove it.”
“Trash?” he asked, gobbling down his eggs greedily. “Of course, the best evidence of trade is the trash.”
We couldn’t help but peer over the counter into the kitchen recycling bin, which sure enough held an empty bottle of well-known French mustard, the remains of a broken bottle of Spanish red wine, a jelly glass from jolly old England, and of course my guilty pleasure: American Oreos.
“There’s already proof that goods and foods were brought from nearby islands, so I’m keen to trace the rock art and positioning of the stone circles and compare them with one another and those on the continent.”
Frank sipped his coffee and listened intently, humming and groaning with agreement as I spoke, questioning myself, my theories, and the best location to start with. “You know, you’re not doing yourself any favors by questioning everything. I’ve never seen stuck-up academic types doubt themselves as much as you do.”
“I’m just going about the scientific process,” I stuttered, brushing off his criticism.
“Ha! Bullshit.” He slammed his fork down. The noise from the seagulls and waves outside seemed to stop. “Don’t you have a PhD? Aren’t you supposed to be a professor or something?”
“I just want to make Sully proud.” I looked down into my plate with one sausage and one tomato slice left. A stone had formed in my stomach, and I couldn’t finish them.
“Look around you, Edie! Where are we?” I looked up and around the kitchen, then behind us into the living room and out the glass doors into the sea beyond. “He’s not the top Neolithic monument archaeologist in the world anymore, Ed.”
I gave him a cold, emotionless stare, clearly not ready for what my best friend had to serve up to me alongside my eggs that morning. His voice softened, and he urged me to believe in myself as we embarked on this important research. “He’s not in the world anymore.” He grabbed my hand and smiled. “But you are.” I nodded, slowly, in agreement, but Frank wasn’t done. “It’s you now. And you did make him proud. That’s why we’re sitting in his damn house! Just because you didn’t feel love from your own father doesn’t mean Sully didn’t love you and that you’re not worthy and smart and capable. Don’t let that man who called himself your dad keep you down anymore.” I nodded and sipped my coffee, bitter and cold tasting instead of refreshing like it had been moments before. “You know who you are, Edie, and so did Sully. He’s the only person who knew you better than I do.”
He paused and stood up, heading toward the back door, messy plates ignored on the kitchen counter. That first morning cigarette was a craving I understood even though I hadn’t been a regular smoker in over seven years. Frank was, though, and he saw the knowing response in my eyes and lit me one of his cigarettes without me having to ask.
“The car is gassed up. The map in the dash. Beef jerky, water, and chocolate still in the backpack from our excursions yesterday. I’d say we’re just one museum curator’s granddaughter short of a real Da Vinci Code adventure,” Frank joked.
I laughed, breathing smoke out through my nose into the freezing gray spring morning. The fog had lifted just enough so that I could see the edge of the most western Scottish islands jutting out into the sea, and I felt an invigorating tingle in my toes at what lay ahead, even though it was sure to rain the entire time based on what I could tell from the cloud cover. Frank took a long drag of his cigarette and grabbed the corner of the tattered quilt I held around my shoulders, lifting it just enough to cozy up next to me and wrap it tightly around both of us, snuggled up against the morning frost.
“OK, but we’re going to need a better coat than this,” I said.
We both laughed, and our foggy breaths floated out and over the sea, mingling on the horizon between Ireland and Scotland.
No doubt a serious coat was needed for this excursion. The North Sea ferries, including the one to Lewis, ran between March and October, but it was a risk to step on board in those bookend months, especially on the Irish Sea, which was always unpredictable. “It’s calm enough—you’ll be fine.” Frank waved off my incurable seasickness.
“We still have two months until Beltane. Ancient people didn’t sail until then.” I could practically hear Frank rolling his eyes. “Don’t discount them; they knew these seas better than we do,” I protested. “And for the record, me being seasick is most certainly related to my genetic predisposition for vertigo, so there’s not much I can do about it.”
“Here. Lie down and close your eyes; I’ll tell you when we’re there.” Frank handed me his balled-up The North Face jacket, opened a book, and gave me a reassuring pat on the head. “We’ll be there in an hour and forty-five minutes.”
As we stepped off the ferry, Frank lit a cigarette, and the slow pull and burn reminded me of the fire ritual we had been discussing in the car on the way up to the ferry departure point. It was a beautiful, winding road, full of the most dramatic vistas one could imagine, and it was all I could do to keep from throwing up on the myriad switchbacks, despite my overall enjoyment of the drive. The trick was being behind the wheel, but that was never something Frank would allow when it came to his precious refurbished 1994 classic Mini Cooper. He was most proud of it, however, because he had managed to squeeze it from an old lady who had had it for twenty-five years at the remarkable price of six hundred quid, which he liked to remind me of regularly. Anyway, it was nice to not have to pay for the rental car, and Frank had brought his Mini over on the ferry from Holyhead, Wales, that past Christmas when I had arrived. It made more sense for him to keep the car here in Northern Ireland since I had a house and he lived on a boat in London’s canals.
“I have a house.” That sentence still tripped up on my lips and was unbelievable, even though it had been over a year since Sully had told me he was leaving it to me. I had spoken those words out loud without realizing, and Frank gave me a bizarre look, shaking his head and laughing to himself at my random outburst of thoughts as we stood, awaiting the minibus that would arrive any minute to drive us up to the highest point on the island, the location of the stones. “Remember what you said in the car on the way here?” I asked, drifting back to our conversation from earlier.
“If you look at the wheel of the year, the eight pointed star of Celtic holidays and spirituality, now considered a neo-pagan symbol and largely denoting our own significant calendar dates in the Western world, half the festivals make up the X.” I made a crossing motion on the dashboard with my hand, envisioning the top left corner of Samhain connecting down into the bottom right hand corner with Beltane and then from the top right corner of Imbolc down to the bottom left-hand corner of Lammas or Lughnasadh. “It’s called a cross quarter,” I continued, “while the others, the main solstices and equinoxes, form a cross,” and on the dash and in my mind, I drew my finger straight down from the due north, Yule, the winter solstice, to due south, midsummer, and from east to west, the spring equinox, Oster, to the fall equinox, Mabon. I thought about how the most famous and prevalent image of a cross over an X might illuminate my point further: The Union Jack. “Everyone knows that the X on the flag of Scotland is meant to represent the crucifixion of Saint Andrew since he is the patron saint of the country, and of course the cross on England’s flag is St. George’s cross. Maybe it’s not a coincidence but rather Christianity superimposed over Celtic paganism, and the Saint Andrew’s Cross of Scotland is also the cross quarter part of the wheel of the year because Scottish monuments are aligned with those festivals, and English monuments are aligned with the solstices and equinoxes.”
“I see what you mean by Christianity superimposed over paganism, the way Easter adopted the Ostara or Spring Equinox festival,” Frank offered. “But what if it’s not an act of assimilation or appropriation? I mean, what if they’re truly trying to keep a part of the previous culture alive by intertwining the two?” Frank asked. “The creators of the country flags had to appeal to the crusaders with their saintly designs, but maybe they had a double meaning.”
“Have you ever been to the lighting of the Tlatchga fires on Halloween in Ireland?” I asked. Frank laughed in response to the rhetorical question, which I knew the answer to. “There’s this local man. Near Tara, but I’m not even sure where he’s from. Maybe county Tyrone? He’s not from Meath, I know that. Anyway, I think he comes south…or—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah—get to it.” Frank’s patience with my dilatory way of explaining my revelations was waning. Some people simply didn’t have his grasp on the human language, I often reminded him.
“Anyway, he lights it every year, still, this O’Riordan guy, to remember the fire festivals and the people who celebrated them. Do you think that’s all it takes for a legacy to survive? One person to remember?”
“So as long as old O’Riordan is doing it, these people and their most important fire festival ritual, at the beginning of the new winter, remain alive?” Frank posited. I held my paper coffee cup with both hands, inhaling its warmth as deeply as possible.
“Well then, would you predict,” I began as we pulled up to the station to grab the morning ferry out to the island, one of only two departures that day, “that this damn Irish ferry is leaving thirty minutes early?” I reached over and laid on the horn as Frank rolled down the window, waving his arms uselessly at the tiny boat on its merry way to the neighboring Scottish Isles.
I kicked the dash. “What are we supposed to do for three hours until the next one?”
“Pull up the timetable on your phone,” Frank demanded. “We’re here. We might as well walk over and see what it says on the board over there; maybe it will explain the early departure.”
We strode over, and lo and behold, as Frank read, “Twelve thirty is the summer departure time when there are three crossings at nine, twelve thirty, and four. It’s twelve and three in spring and fall. None in winter.”
“Damn!” We both said together.
I said, “I’m barely going to have time on the island to get the information I need at the stone circle before sundown.”
“Wishing you had some five-thousand-year-old boat technology right about now?” Frank asked.
“You have no idea,” I responded. “Modern people are pretty helpless when it comes to stuff like this.” I covered my face with both hands in despair.
“I could probably row a Viking long boat faster than the ferry,” Frank added helpfully, then with more gusto went on, “Fancy a pint at the pub, then?”
“Yes,” I responded with a huge sigh. “I’ll pay this time.”
“Bangers and mash too?” Frank asked.
“Bangers too,” I affirmed, and we hiked off to the neighboring pub. I wasn’t sure how much it would help my usual seasickness, but it seemed like a good idea.
“Edie. What’s that short for?” the bartender asked me in a local lilt as he cleaned glasses methodically. I turned from the conversation I was having with Frank, one in which he was apparently using my name enough for this friendly bartender to overhear.
“Edana,” I answered, smiling. He looked stunned.
“What were you expecting—Edith or Edwina?” Frank asked.
The bartender blushed. “No, no. It’s just very Irish. And I wasn’t expecting that,” he answered with a wink.
“I thought you were named after the character in Kindred because your mom was reading it when she was pregnant with you,” Frank said.
“I was. But Edana is also the Irish word for ‘fire,’ Mr. Linguistics Expert,” I answered.
“How appropriate,” Frank replied, brandishing his lighter.
The bartender smiled and pointed to a nearby side door that Frank could slip out to have a smoke. “You should come to the Beltane fire we have in Donegal next month,” the bartender said. He was probably ten years older than me, with piercing blue eyes and black hair. “Hello…Edana?” I had drifted into thought a moment too long.
“Edie,” I replied and smiled back at him. “Um, I don’t know about that.”
“Well, you won’t have to worry about the ferry timetables.” He laughed, clearly referencing the conversations he had overheard in which Frank and had I tried to blame one another for who had misread the schedule.
“Will there be hawthorn bushes?” I asked, and he nodded.
“And I suppose I don’t have to tell you when it is.”
“Midnight on April thirtieth,” I replied.
He winked at me in reply, and I was annoyed. Not at the overtly male gesture or apparent eye moisture problem he was developing. I was annoyed with myself for feeling something from it. But if I felt something from it, then the next thing really threw me for a loop. “You sure do know a ton about ancient Irish customs and folklore for a wee American girl.”
I stared back at him, wanting to declare my worthiness, my full knowledge, but I held back. I thought about Sully and how he would be curious about such an accusation and not offended. I smiled, imperceptibly, and Frank entered the side door loudly, already in deep conversation with me, spilling the top of his Guinness, an Irish sin, and I was thankfully startled out of my feelings.
“Edie, how the hell are we going to prove that these stone monuments were a collective, interconnected series of monuments in the Neolithic if we have to depend on these damn unreliable ferries?” Michael, the bartender, raised his eyebrows, and to this Frank replied, “Present company excluded” and plopped down beside me.
“He is talking about f-e-r-r-i-e-s.” I blushed.
“Aye, I know.” Michael smiled.
“All I can do is present my theory and the data to support it; that’s enough to have it considered, especially alongside the growing evidence of boat technology that allowed movement between the islands.”
Michael was pretending not to listen now, but I felt him perk up at my confident reply. Then he was talking up another customer in my peripheral vision. I suppose it’s his job, I thought.
“And if they were moving between the small Hebrides, why would they not move between the larger islands?” Frank asked, rhetorically. “And if they were taking time to build boats and sail from port to port, then what would keep them from going inland? Who is to say that the stonemasons from Orkney didn’t visit the Stenness Circle on Lewis or the smaller circle on the Isle of Arran or even Stonehenge down south?”
“Precisely! They are the cohesion of a culture; these types of precise structures are virtually nonexistent outside of Britain and Brittany, just like the spiral symbols that sometimes adorn them and the passage tombs that came before.”
“But aren’t the stone circles all different ages? Like, Orkney and Callanish stones are hundreds of years older than Stonehenge in Southern England, and Stonehenge is hundreds of years older than some of the local ones here.” Michael the bartender was back at it, but I had to admit I was impressed with his knowledge.
“You’re right,” I answered, “but I think that actually supports my theory.” He raised his eyebrows again and slid another Guinness over to Frank, giving him a wink. “Monument culture dictates that the cultural center shifts through time and generations to new locations. This would explain moving stones from Wales to Salisbury Plain for Stonehenge or moving stones from the Wicklow Mountains for Newgrange, for example. They wanted to keep an aspect of the old monument, but the new one needed to function differently for their new needs and developing culture, so there were nuances to the stone circles, but they didn’t completely abandon the older ones. They still held significance.”
“Well, if you think this map of the henges will lead to a buried treasure, I’m here to help you, love,” Michael said.
“What are you, a pirate?” Frank joked.
“Don’t call me love,” I added, and Frank covered his mouth in an effort not to laugh.
“I know the stones in the area well,” Michael insisted. “Not just the henges, the passage tombs and Iron Age tombs as well.”
“Oh,” I said, a bit sheepishly.
“You could say I grew up wit’ it. And yeah, the locals gravitate toward different monuments depending on which fire festival it is.” I didn’t know what to say.
Luckily, Frank stuck his hand out for a shake and said, “Then you’re our man, Michael!”
“So I’ll see yous in Donegal on Beltane, then?” he asked as the loud horn of the ferry blared from outside, and we reflexively grabbed our coats and bags.
“Maybe,” I said as I wrapped my scarf around me twice and threw my bag over my shoulder. “Thanks for the tip!” I called.
“A ferry waits for no man,” Frank said as he guzzled his remaining Guinness, slammed it down, and ran after me.