CHAPTER TWO
Sarah loved the bonfire nights the best. They didn’t do it that often, but when they did they gathered the whole compound together around the center cookfire to tell stories—even the gypsies. It helped remind her that this was her family now—these forty odd Irish people, old and young. She grinned at Fiona who sat across the campfire with her husband Declan. While gatherings like this usually involved music, especially when the gypsies were in attendance, storytelling bonfires were quieter affairs. The sleeping toddler in Fiona’s arms, wee Ciara, would be able to enjoy the cradle of her mother’s arms and Fiona could relax knowing the child couldn’t be safer.
Siobhan Murray sat next to her old childhood friend, Margaret Keenan, and the two old ladies giggled and whispered like teenagers. Unlike Siobhan, Margaret had never been a great beauty as a girl. In fact, the stark angular planes of her face matched her sharp tongue. To nobody’s great surprise, Margaret had never married.
Mike sat next to Sarah. As the leader of the compound, he often spoke at these gatherings, even if he didn’t usually tell stories. There were others who did that better. Sarah caught a glimpse of John sitting with Tommy Donaghue. Maybe the bonfire nights didn’t totally take the place of Netflix binging as far as John was concerned, she thought with a smile, but Sarah thanked God her boy had them instead.
John had been disappointed to realize that it wasn’t Halloween they’d be observing tonight, but its precursor Samhain. Mike had explained that Samhain was a high druid holy day observed by the ancient Celts.
All John heard was there would be no candy or reason to wear scary costumes.
Gavin sat a few families away from Fiona, his arm around the girl Regan. You couldn’t live in a community as small as this one and not realize the two had taken to each other but they seemed to have accelerated their attraction in the last couple of days. Sarah glanced at Mike but he was looking at the elderly man standing in front of the fire, who was the first storyteller. Nothing escaped Mike’s notice and Sarah knew he’d observed his son with Regan. She also knew he didn’t approve.
Mickey Quinn held out his hands to prompt silence before he began. The Irish, as master storytellers, had all the confidence in the world that they would get the stage conditions they desired. Old Mickey had been speaking and telling stories for too many years not to know he’d have everyone’s rapt attention before long. He could wait for it.
One by one, everyone around the flickering bonfire became silent. Mickey waited until only the sounds of the horses nickering in their stalls could be heard before he began.
“I’ll be telling you the story of the Horned Witches of Slievenamon,” he intoned, his voice deep and resonating. Mickey had no family in the compound and because he shared little, there was a lot of mystery surrounding why that was. But he was a hard worker and one who would volunteer for the worst jobs—burying the dead, or scraping maggots from carcasses.
Sarah looked at Mike, who was watching Mickey with full concentration. She had to smile. The only thing more serious to an Irishman than telling stories was listening to them.
“One night,” Mickey said in his clear Irish accent, “when her family and servants were asleep a very rich woman sat combing wool when there came a knock at the door. Startled, the woman answered, ‘Who is there?’ ‘I am the Witch of one Horn’ came the answer. Thinking one of her neighbors needed help, the rich woman opened the door, and a woman with a huge horn on her forehead and her hands full of carded wool entered. She sat down by the fire and began to card the wool.
“Then a second knock came to the door. The mistress opened the door, and a second witch entered, with two horns on her forehead, and a spinning wheel. She began to spin, and the door continued to knock until twelve women sat round the fire. Each had one more horn than the one before. The third witch had three horns and the last one twelve.
“As they carded the thread and turned their spinning-wheels, they sang an ancient rhyme. Soon the mistress discovered she could not move nor utter a word, for a spell of the witches was upon her.
“One of them called to her in Irish, demanding that she rise up and make them a cake.”
Sarah’s attention in the story waned and she looked around the audience as Mickey’s words carried clear and strong in the night air. Somehow Gavin and Regan had disappeared. Sarah wondered if Mike had noticed. She looked over Mickey’s head and saw by a flash of lightning heavy rain clouds were moving over the compound.
“…and so the rich woman sat down by the well and wept. Whereupon a voice came upon her and said, ‘Go to the north angle of the house, cry aloud three times and say, The mountain of the Fenian women and the sky over it is all on fire.’
“When she did what the voice told her to do the witches inside the house rushed out with shrieks and fled to Slievenamon, cursing the Spirit of the Well.”
Sarah whispered to Mike under the applause as Mickey took his bows and then his seat, “That is truly the worst ghost story I ever heard.”
“All ghost stories come from Ireland. We invented them.”
“That’s not true and thank God for it. It made no sense.”
Mike laughed and pulled her close to him. Fiona and Declan rose and after a nod to both Sarah and Mike retired for the night.
“Did you notice Gavin and Regan left?”
“I did,” Mike said. “If I have to send out a bleeding search party, I’ll be none too pleased. Are you cold?”
“No, I’m good.” But she shivered. It was a chilly night but it wasn’t the temperature that made her tremble. Something felt wrong. She couldn’t put her finger on what.
John walked over and sat down next to Mike and stretched out his legs in front of him. He was growing. It was hard to believe he was already fourteen years old. Since the bomb, he’d had to do so many things well beyond his years.
“No offense,” he said to Mike. “But that was one crappy ghost story.”
Sarah laughed. “I already told him.”
“What did them having horns have to do with anything?”
“It’s likely that the old stories don’t fit so well in modern times, ”Mike said, picking up his pipe and lighting it. “I think that’s the value of them.”
Many of the other families were leaving with their little ones and the few who were left, moved closer to where Mike sat and pulled out pipes and jugs of poteen and homemade beer.
“What do you mean?” John asked. A movement caught his eye and everyone turned to see Gavin and Regan, hand in hand, coming back to the fire. They sat down to listen.
“Well, the stories stay true for hundreds, nay, thousands of years,” Mike said. Sarah noticed his brogue became stronger the more whiskey he’d enjoyed.
“How’s that even possible?” John said. “Five hundred years ago did they even write stuff down?”
“Oh, aye,” Mike said, warming to his tale. “In any village, they’d all recite the stories and if someone had a different version, they’d vote to either go with the new version or stay with the old. That way there was always the one story told the same way.”
“Makes sense, I guess,” John said. “But in the States, we dress up as vampires and witches and go from house to house in the dark. It’s really cool.”
“Sure, we do that here, too,” Mike said. “Or, we used to. I imagine they still do back home, eh?”
America had been only marginally affected by the bomb—a bomb they had triggered by their behavior in the Middle East. There was no doubt the average American was still trick-or-treating back home. And everything else. As if nothing had happened.
“You’re too old for that sort of thing anyway,” Sarah said to John with a smile.
“I know.”
“But tonight isn’t about giving away candy and wearing super hero costumes,” Mike said. “Halloween came from Samhain which is a very real, very…scary druid holy day.”
“Tell ‘im, Da,” Gavin said. Sarah could tell he’d been drinking so she knew Mike could tell too.
Mike went on as if he hadn’t noticed.
“Tonight is about fairies and magic,” he said. “The druids believed the very trees and bushes would come to life on Samhain, and the rabbits and the fox would sit in judgment. Have you heard of the Wicker Man, lad?” he said to John.
“Blimey!” Gavin said. “I forgot about him.” He pulled Regan closer to him, his arm draped over her shoulder. Her eyes were glassy as she looked into the fire, as if she’d been drinking too.
“Well, the Wicker Man is a ghoul more than fifteen feet high who rises up from the verra earth to taste the flesh of the living.”
John gulped and glanced at Sarah. She smiled at him.
“But Samhain,” Mike said, reaching for Sarah’s hand, “is also a way to honor the Earth. I think, in the old days, when you got your food from the land, whether that was in crops or the animals that roamed it, you had a stronger sense of gratitude to nature.”
“But that’s pagan,” John said.
“Exactly so,” Mike said. “And when the Romans came to Ireland, they put an end to the druids and their ways of worshipping the natural world.”
“What kinds of ways?” John asked.
“Oh, well. Sacrificial offerings, to be sure.”
“Human?”
“Upon occasion. In the fall, when Samhain takes place, it’s a time of death, ya ken? There’s no more harvest and winter’s coming. It’s time to kill the animals you’ll need to survive until spring. Or the animals you don’t have enough fodder to keep.”
John nodded thoughtfully. “But why would the druid priests kill people, too?”
Mike let out a long sigh and Sarah realized he was tired. She squeezed his hand.
“Well, it was a long time ago, John lad,” he said. “But sacrifices are almost always made in order to please some deity or to get something. And for most of Ireland’s history I’d say that came down to survival. What do I have to do, who do I have to kill, to keep myself and my family alive? Sure, it’s no different when America was just beginning and life was hard?”
“Yeah, maybe,” John said, glancing over the bonfire to the towering trees of the forest that surrounded the compound. “I just don’t see our founding fathers tying a goat to a rock and waiting for a tiger to show up.”
“I should say not,” Mike said, standing and pulling Sarah to her feet. “Ready for bed, darlin’?”
Sarah leaned over and kissed John on the forehead. “Don’t be up too late,” she said. “That’s when the goblins come out.”
She and Mike left the circle to the sound of laughter to make their way back to their cottage. Sarah was to remember this evening later with warmth but also terrible pain. The sounds of the young people laughing, the smell of the bonfire as it ate the wild cherrywood. The next morning, a stark gray dawn showed a world so radically changed that nothing would ever be the same again.
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Susan Kiernan-Lewis lives in Florida and writes mysteries and romantic suspense. Like many authors, Susan depends on the reviews and word of mouth referrals of her readers. If you enjoyed Heading Home, please consider leaving a review saying so at your favorite ebook distributor or on Goodreads.com.
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Heading Home
Copyright 2013
by San Marco Press.
All rights reserved.