Chapter Fifteen
I’ve barely made it to the first standing stone before I have to stop to retie my bootlaces. The toes of my boots are scuffed and the tongues are limp and floppy. My battered old Doc Martens have seen better days.
Lawd, how my daddy hated these boots. He said I was too pretty to wear combat boots, but I kept on wearing them. I was smack dab in the middle of my rebellious phase, going to school in Austin, and hiding my Southern deb roots beneath layers of grungy denim, tattered flannel, and irreverent tees. The grungy rebel was soon replaced by the cowgirl rebel. By the time I graduated from the culinary institute and returned to Charleston, I was back to being the rebel deb, a Southern girl fighting against a well-established, genteel system. When I got the job at WCSC, I packed away my chunky-soled boots and grungy jeans and filled my closet with Charleston-appropriate attire. In that way, I seem to have traveled full circle.
I finish tying my boots and continue climbing, skirting around the thorny furze, until I reach the first stone, the one visible from my bedroom window. My boots sink in the spongy, wet ground. Water seeps in through the laces. I make a mental note to stop in at Finnegan’s, a pub/general store in the village, to see if they sell rain boots.
I keep climbing until I reach the sixth stone on the trail, the most elaborately carved of all the stones. Sitting on a flat boulder across from the stone, I close my eyes and say a little prayer for Daddy and Aunt Patricia. I am about to ask God to help me find my purpose and my place when I hear someone approaching.
“The stones can’t bring ya another tiara, banphrionsa.”
Mother Mary and Baby Jesus! Aidan Gallagher is not standing in front of me. He is not taunting me as I pray. I open my eyes and there he is, towering over me, a rucksack on his back, that half-grin, half-sneer on his handsome face. Ailean is standing beside him, great tongue lolling out of his mouth.
“Don’t you know you’re not supposed to interrupt someone when they’re praying, you arrogant—”
“You’re right,” he says, the grin-sneer sliding from his face. “Sorry.”
He sits down beside me and the scent of apples fills the air around us. Apples and heated skin, clean and manly. I don’t know what to say or how to feel about Aidan. He confuses me as much as his half-grin, half-sneer. Ailean flops on his side at Aidan’s feet.
“Tara,” he says, my name rolling of his tongue. “I am sorry, truly. Will ya forgive me?”
I look at him, see the sincerity shining in his blue eyes, and all the breath leaves my body. All I can do is nod my head.
We sit together, staring at the stone. I can hear him breathing, feel the heat from his arm warming my arm. I remember the way things used to be between us. So easy, like we were two peas sitting contentedly in a pod.
I look at him. “Aidan?”
“Yes.”
“What did Mrs. McGregor mean when she said my aunt was away with the fairies?”
He smiles and for a second the intense, gruff man fades away and the warm, lighthearted boy is sitting beside me.
“Some people believe the voices of the dead can be heard at night laughing with the fairies. They fall silent a year after their death, when they move onto the next world.”
“That’s a lovely thought, isn’t it? That our loved ones remain, unseen, laughing with the fairies. Do you think the dead stay behind for a while?”
Like the steady beat of timpani mallets on a kettledrum, the sound of rolling thunder can be heard in the distance.
“Are you asking if I believe in ghosts, Tara?”
“Yes.”
Something about his gaze changes. He is staring at me, but I have the strange feeling he doesn’t see me.
“I think some souls stay behind because they feel they didn’t finish what they were meant to do. Others stay to torture those who remain.”
He has a haunted, faraway look in his eyes, a forlorn, lost sort of look that makes me want to grab his hand and to pull him back to me. I consider telling him he sounds like an Emo girl, but I don’t think it is the right moment to tease him.
“That’s dark, Aidan.”
“Is it?”
“Very.”
“Death is dark, isn’t it?” He shifts his gaze from my face to a place on the horizon where the dark sky is being fractured by bolts of lightning. “Death is the dark cloud that rolls across our skies and robs us of light. It is massively brutal, and, often, massively unfair.”
I study his profile, the muscle working along his jawline, the way this light gives his beard a reddish cast, the jagged scar behind his ear, like a lightning bolt fracturing his smooth skin. In my mind, I see myself reaching out, tracing the puckered line with my fingertip, touching him in the easy, intimate way a woman might touch her lover.
A lover? The fairies must be playing tricks on me. “Aidan?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Do you still believe in fairies?”
When we were children, Aidan told me the most fantastic stories about fairies, ancient fairies who lived in grand forts beneath the piles of stones found in the hills around Donegal, soldier fairies who fought a magnificent battle near Ulster, wicked fairies who snatch human babies and take their places here on earth.
He turns his strange, vacant gaze back, fixing it on me. I smile and wait for him to return from his distant place. It is like standing outside an empty house at night, staring at the darkened windows, wondering what lurks behind them, then someone lights a candle inside and the windows glow with life and warmth. Slowly, the darkness behind Aidan’s gaze recedes and the warmth and spark of life in his sea blue eyes returns.
“If you’re Irish, there’s only one answer to that question,” he says. “Besides, if Mrs. McGregor thought I stopped believing in the fey folk, she would knack me bollocks in. Why?”
“I was just wondering. You used to tell me the best fairy stories. I loved listening to your stories.”
He smiles so softly, so sweetly, I almost forget he has grown into a massive snarling, tattooed beast of a man.
“Ya liked stories about selkies best.”
“Selkie stories are the best,” I say, laughing. “Remember how I used to look for selkie skins whenever we walked on the beach?”
“Yeah, yeah. I remember.”
“Now that I think of it, most of your stories involved mythological creatures who would transform themselves into beautiful women so they could seduce men.” I narrow my gaze on him. “A little pervy.”
He laughs.
“Puberty can make a fella a wee bit pervy, can’t it?”
My cheeks flush with heat. The world is one jacked-up, crazy-ass place, isn’t it? A few weeks ago, I was standing in the moonlight with my childhood sweetheart, listening to him tell me he was marrying another woman and now I am sitting by a sacred stone, talking about pubescent desires with Aidan Gallagher.
“What are ya thinking?”
“I am wondering if any of your stories involve mythological creatures who transform themselves into mortal men so they can seduce women?”
He laughs.
“Now who’s pervy?”
My cheeks flush with a new wave of heat. I look away, squinting at the distant charcoal smudged sky.
“Maybe we should go,” I say. “It looks like a storm is coming this way.”
“Nice try, banph . . . but you’re not getting off that easy.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ya asked me about the gánconâgh, didn’t ya?”
I frown.
“Gánconâgh comes from the Gaelic word gean-canagh, which mean love talker,” he says, his voice low. “He arrives just before a storm, appearing with a cloak of mist swirling around him. The birds stop singing and the cattle stop lowing as he roams through valleys and glens, looking for shepherdesses and milkmaids to seduce. When he finds a maiden, alone and unsuspecting, he whispers words of love in her ear, wooing her with his voice, until she yields her body and soul to him.”
The air around us feels charged with unseen currents, as if our slightest movement will result in a skin-tingling jolt of static electricity.
“Why did ya want to know about the gánconâgh?”
Because I think you are one of the dark fairies you used to tell me about, a creature who has donned the visage of a mortal man in hopes of seducing a woman. You’re certainly seducing me.
“It’s starting to drizzle.” I wipe a raindrop off my cheek. “If we don’t hurry we are going to get wet.”
A slow, naughty smile spreads across his face.
“You’re not afraid to get a wee bit wet, are ya?”
I stand up quickly, but Aidan grabs my hand.
“Come on,” he says, pulling me up the hill. “I know a place we can go until the storm passes.”
Aidan leads me over the hill to a small stone cottage with painted shutters. The red paint is faded and chipped and a few of the windows are missing panes, but the thatched roof looks as if it was recently rethatched. The rain is coming down, steady and hard, when he batters his shoulder against the old wooden door. The wood creaks and the door swings open. We hurry inside. The inside is surprisingly tidy, with an uneven flagstone floor and a large fireplace.
“What is this place?” I ask, stomping my feet.
“A derelict shepherd’s cottage.”
“So, a shepherd used to live here?”
“Or a shepherdess,” he says, winking.
My body begins to tingle again. I untie my sweater from around my waist and pull it over my head, shivering from the cold rain, but also eager to put another layer between me and the dark fairy.
Aidan shrugs out of his rucksack, unzips one of the compartments, and removes a thin green field blanket, rolled up tight. He sets his rucksack down on the ground and spreads the blanket out beside it, inviting me to sit. I sit on one corner of the blanket and fiddle with the strap of Mrs. McGregor’s umbrella, suddenly shy.
Aidan pulls two dark bottles out of his rucksack and hands one of them to me. “Have a drink, we’re going to be here awhile.”
I take the bottle and look at the woman on the label, a beautiful woman with long red hair floating around her head, a tattered silver shroud hanging off one of her slender shoulders, and a scythe in her skeletal hand. Her mouth is open, as if she’s about to scream.
“What is Ban . . .” I struggle with the strange word printed on the label.
“Bánánach Brew,” Aidan says. “It’s a craft cider.”
“Cider? You filled your rucksack with hard cider?” I laugh. “Silly me. I only brought a sweater and an umbrella on my hike.”
I twist the cap off my bottle and take a sip. The flavor of crisp, tangy apples fills my mouth.
“Mmm, this is good.”
“Ya like it, then?”
Aidan watches me carefully as I take another sip. I hold the cider in my mouth, on my tongue, before swallowing, so I can savor the flavors. The cider packs a tart, powerful punch, but then mellows, leaving a sweet, apple-y aftertaste.
“It’s like taking a sip of expensive champagne and then biting into a candy apple. It’s good,” I say, looking at the label again. “Very good.”
Aidan nods, the corners of his lips pulling up in a furtive smile, and then takes a sip of his cider.
“What is Bananck?”
“Bánánach,” he says, pronouncing the word as if he is about to hock a mouthful of saliva. “It is a creature from Irish mythology, a female specter that haunts battlefields.”
“Yikes! That’s morbid.”
Aidan doesn’t respond. He leans back and studies the label. He’s slipping away again, retreating to a place in his mind. I can feel it.
“Do you hike up here often?”
“What?” He blinks at me. “Hiking? I wasn’t hiking.”
“You weren’t?” I say, pointing to his rucksack. “What were you doing then? Running away from home?”
“I was returning from home, actually.”
I frown because the Gallagher cottage is located between the castle and the village, not up in these hills.
“I don’t live with me aul fella anymore.”
“Of course you don’t,” I say, embarrassed. “I don’t know why I assumed you would still be living with your father and sisters. I guess I froze you in my mind, where you have lived as a lanky, laughing eighteen-year-old boy.”
“I’m not that fella.”
“I know.”
“But ya wish I was, because ya don’t like Aidan Gallagher, the man.”
“I don’t know Aidan Gallagher, the man.”
“What do ya want to know?”
Everything. Where have you been? Where do you go when you get the faraway look in your eyes? Why don’t you laugh like you used to? Do you have a girlfriend? Did she break your heart? What is up with all of those tattoos?
“Did you miss me?” I say, smiling and batting my lashes at him.
“Of all of the questions ya could have asked me, that’s the one that’s been gnawing away at ya? Did I miss ya?”
I take another sip of my cider and feel emboldened. “Is that a yes?”
He rolls his eyes and takes a swig of his cider.
“Well? Is it?” I prompt.
“Yes.”
My heart skips a silly beat. “Where do you live now?”
“I have a wee cottage on some land just over the next hill.”
Go ahead. Ask him. Do you have a girlfriend? Just say it. Do you have a girlfriend?
“What does that tattoo mean?”
He frowns.
“Which tattoo?”
“The one over your heart.”
“It says, Buaidh nó Bás. Victory or death. It’s the Gallagher motto.”
I set my cider bottle on the floor beside me and look at Aidan, reaching my hand out and gently touching the scar behind his ear with my fingertips.
“How did you get this scar?”
He stiffens. “Ya don’t want to hear about that,” he says, grabbing my hand and pushing it away from his head. “Believe me.”
The unspoken subtext in his words: Mind your own damn business, dahlin’. Chastened, I do what any Southern woman does when she commits a social faux pas: I change the subject by making polite small talk.
“How is Catriona?”
“Grand,” he says, relaxing. “Our Catriona is grand. She’s in Galway on a Hen Weekend.”
“Is she engaged?”
“Cat? Engaged?” He chuckles. “No, our Catriona is not engaged. Her best mate is getting married. She is probably on the tear, having a deadly time.”
“How nice.”
“She can’t wait to see ya again.”
“I can’t wait to see her. It’s been a long time.”
I lean back on my elbows and look at the window, the beads of rain sliding down the broken panes of glass, the frames painted red, and feel as if I am in an episode of Black Mirror. Everything is the same—Ireland, Tásúildun, Aidan—and everything is different. Sitting in this abandoned cottage, listening to the wind howling through the stones, smelling the wet thatch over our heads, feeling the nervous excitement of being alone with Aidan, it’s as if I never left Ireland, like my doppelgänger returned to America and lived my life these last ten years.
Aidan lays down beside me and puts his arms behind his head. “What are ya thinking?”
“I think someone cast a time spell on me.” I look at the damp thatch of sandy blonde hair on top of his head, and I have a powerful urge to touch him again. “The Gullah believe time is a mystical thing that can be manipulated. They believe you can put a root on someone and it will freeze them at a certain point while the rest of the world continues on.”
“Put a root?”
“A voodoo curse.”
“A curse? Why?”
“It feels as if we have been here together forever, that time has continued around us, but we have stayed the same as we were when we were young . . . but I also feel as if I don’t know you at all. I don’t know myself anymore, either. Do you know what I mean?”
He turns his head, looking at me through his thick eyelashes, and my breath catches in my throat.
“I know what ya mean.” He smiles. “The posh clothes, caked-up face, and fussy hair. I don’t know ya, either.”
“What?”
“Eat some chips and have a Guinness, will ya? You’re too fecking thin.”
I hear Grayson’s voice in my head, When’s the last time you ate a Goo Cluster?
Did I stand too close to one of B. Crav’s polo ponies because my heart aches something fierce, like a thousand-pound thoroughbred just kicked me in the chest.
“Do you have any idea how hard I have worked to shed my pudgy, fudgy middle, how many boxes of Fiddle Faddle and cartons of Goo Goo Clusters I have had to forsake to fit into a size four . . . ish?” I am weeping like a televangelist caught in a sex scandal. “If I’ve learned one thing it’s that no matter how damned hard you try; you’re not going to please everyone.”
He waits until I am done pitching my hissy fit and then reaches his arm out and pushes my elbow. I fall on my back beside him. He rolls over, props himself up on one elbow, and looks down at me.
“What are ya on about?” He brushes a lock of hair off my face. “You’re beautiful, Tara. You’ve always been beautiful.”
“You think?”
He smiles.
“I know it, as sure as I know me name is Aidan Pádraic Gallagher,” he says, his voice low and tender.
I look up at him, losing myself in the depths of his blue, blue eyes, swimming back through time to when I was an innocent girl, holding my breath and hoping a handsome Irish fella would kiss me in a rowboat in the middle of a lough in Donegal.
Everything is different—and everything is the same.
He leans down and presses his lips to mine, a sweet, undemanding kiss that makes me forget about the years and differences between us.
I am just a girl and he is just an Irish fella.
An Irish fella with whiskers that tickle my cheeks and lips that taste like apples so sweet they make my teeth ache. That’s the way I would describe what I am feeling: a deep kind of aching. I think I have been aching for a long time.
I close my eyes and let Aidan kiss me, and for a little while, I forget about the unfulfilled and unrealized dreams that have been gnawing away at me, paining me something fierce.