To the Sea Page 20

  Before dawn of the day of the tide, he silently called her to him. She came out of the cabin and walked along the beach and out along the peninsula. He could see her through the mist and he watched as she walked closer and closer to him. She stood on the edge of the land listening. And she came. He watched her pale face come closer and closer to him as she fell through the green sea. He waited for her to reach for him. She turned to him and called him closer. He caught her and held her close. He brought her to the island. He had been calling her for three years and, even though she heard him from the first, it took all that time for her to come to him.

  He calls her still and in these last days she has been coming ever closer. He has come as close as he may. The rest of the journey is hers to make. But there is something more she must know. The next step comes at a price, and the price will be exacted. It is theirs both to pay but the biggest burden will fall to the girl with green eyes. She may fall with child. He cannot be there with her as a husband should to raise the child with her. She cannot come with him when he leaves. He will come to her rarely and their visits to the island will be few.

  A son is hers forever. If the child is a daughter, this child must come to Connery. Only one daughter. Their daughter will live with the beautiful young woman with black hair and green eyes for seven years but on her seventh birthday, the girl must be brought to her father. She will go with him and live the life of his people. It will be a wonderful life. He will be a good father. It is a role he has been preparing for his whole life. The child can never return to her mother. This is the price of their love. He will pay the price of not raising his sons or any other daughters she may have. He loves the woman. He will pay any price.

  At the end of his tale, they were both silent. She was remembering all that had occurred to her in the years he described. Had she called him? Had he called her out on the day of the tide into the water? She had felt something and she had gone. But she had also thought her step into the Perigean sea had been her last act in this world.

  And he thought her beautiful. He was the only person in her lonely life who had told her this. And he loved her. It was the most magical tale she had ever heard.

  In silence, she stood and began to smoor the fire. She went outside and stood in the cold darkness listening to the waves breaking on the little beach below the cabin. The sky was filled with stars but there was a cutting wind building from the north. It would arrive in force during the night. She could feel him calling her now. It was not a sound. It was a drawing of her being. A muffled whisper more within her head than without. She tried to remember how long that whisper had been a part of her.

  She did not know what to make of the tale’s ending. She had not borne any children with Lorcan. She may be barren. But if she was not, could she give up a daughter? She knew that babies died and that mothers accepted their loss and lived on to have other babies. Ornice had no clue how hard it might be to surrender a child. She knew only how hard it was for her not to go to Connery.

  She walked back into the dark cabin and across to her pallet. She climbed into her little bed and wished him a safe night. He uttered his usual words in his language and, like every night before it, the cabin fell silent. She lay awake in the dark. She was reliving his tale and making sure of her role in it. She could feel him calling her and she could hear her own silent voice urging him to her.

  Sometime in the darkest hours of the night, the storm blew in from the north. Ornice lay listening to the roar of the wind, the loud crash of waves against the rocks of the inlet and the muted soaking of the thatch above her. She rose from her pallet, removed her nightdress and went to Connery. He was waiting for her.

  The pattern of their final seven days on the island remained unchanged, but these days were like no others. Every touch, every shared task, every look between them was a joy previously unknown to Ornice. She craved the sight of Connery every minute of the day. His kisses were always in too short supply, no matter how often he bent his head to her. The sound of his voice melted her spine and her heart turned in her chest under his blue gaze. His touch was more than her desperate body could bear.

  Swimming together was ecstasy. She wrapped her naked body against his, eager for every adventure. She no longer clung to his back but faced him in complete embrace. She kissed him endlessly as they sped through the cold water. She breathed through him. Their bodies merged into one.

  Lying on the soft grass to warm themselves after the cold of the water, they found a deeper warmth from each other than even the hot sun could offer. Just to look upon Connery was a treasured delight. She sometimes woke before him and would watch his ethereally beautiful face relaxed in sleep. She thought her heart would break for love of him.

  The stories they told at night were now imbued with their new love. Ornice told many of the old tales that spoke of love with creatures from the other world. Seal men who seduced a faithful wife from her mortal husband, the love of an island woman for the handsome dark finman who, with his black heart, destroyed her and her people.

  Ornice wondered who Connery was. It was a thought always foremost in her mind. She knew if she asked him, he would tell her. But now that she shared his bed, she did not want to know that he was anything other than a Norse fisherman who had rescued her from the sea. She may bear his child. She prayed she would. She turned her mind pointedly away from what might or might not come after.

  Their last day together came too soon. There was nothing to say about it. There were no plans to make. The day had but one task to achieve. They both knew that many years might pass before they could be together again. Ornice didn’t know where Connery would go and why he had to go but she understood that their lives had crossed for a short time and that time was now over. Today they would go their separate ways.

  They stayed in bed until late morning. Neither wanted to be the first to rise and start this terrible day. Their last lovemaking was tender but bleak. They had no heart for it. Ornice sobbed in his arms afterwards but Connery had no words to console her. Near noon, they left the bed and the cabin. They got into the strange wooden boat and Connery raised the sail. They headed east. They sailed for hours. By late afternoon, Ornice could see the Mayo coast.

  They sailed into the shallow waters of Ornice’s cove in the dark of evening. There was a soft rain falling and they were both drenched through. Connery held her and kissed her and she wished she could die in that moment. She could not grasp what was happening. Connery was leaving and she was returning to Lorcan. They sat not saying anything as the boat rocked gently. He would not rush her but she knew it was time to leave. She crawled out of the haven of his arms, dived out of the boat and swam the short distance to the beach. When she stood on the sand and looked out into the bay, the boat was lost in the dark and rain. She listened for Connery but could not hear him.

  He was not calling her anymore.

  Ornice was back. She returned to her parents’ house where she was welcomed with tears and embraces and prayers. People from settlements up and down the coast came to see the miracle that was Ornice returned from the sea after a full moon cycle.

  Stories of selchies and even stranger sea creatures were told late at night with shakes of grey heads and frantic crossings of trembling bosoms. Saints preserve us. The old tales were true. Here she was. Proof enough. And there was something new and otherworldly about her, for certain. Some said that no good could come of it while others held that fortune was just around the corner. There was nothing luckier than a selchie.

  Ornice lay in her settle at night and listened to the old people as they sat around the fire telling the tales they always told on the darkest nights. But now mixed in with brave Etain; and Cuchulainn, the boy warrior; and everyone’s favourite Ferdia of Connaught, was the tale of Ornice. Already she was Ornice the Black. She did not recognise herself in the tales. She had tamed a Perigean tide and seduced the mightiest of the sea people. A king for certain. He could not resist her. He had made her his queen. Th
is was Mayo and she was its daughter. Her tale became legend. She was the newest warrior of Connaught. Ornice listened but held her peace.

  Lorcan came to her parents’ house every day but he held back from her. She had told her parents she would not return to his cabin until she felt strong enough. She knew she must return; she was his wife. But Lorcan would have to wait until Ornice was ready. She stayed in her parents’ cabin for two months. By then her life had changed again. She knew she was with child. It was time to face her husband and her future.

  Ornice walked to the cabin at the end of the cove and waited outside until Lorcan returned from his work at the end of the day. She stood as she spoke to him. What he had done to her could not be forgiven; not here or in heaven itself. She was back and she was with child. If he touched her again, she would kill him. He might beat her once or violate her once but it would only be once. He would sleep or turn his back and then she would kill him. She was not afraid of him anymore. She had faced death and returned.

  He was smaller than she remembered. And weak compared to Connery. Ornice was no longer the young girl who had bent to her husband’s cruel will. She demanded he make her a bed. She would return to his cabin in two days. She would never return to his bed.

  Lorcan could not have his way over this new Ornice and, as her belly grew, he did not try. Ornice thought of Connery constantly. She could not see him or hear him, as hard as she strained her ears and her heart. She wondered how she had heard him before she knew of his existence and yet now she could neither hear nor summon him. Her growing belly was the only reminder in this world that he did exist.

  She knew she was not the only one watching and waiting for her time to come. No one in the cove shared their wild predictions with Ornice about the child she would have but she knew the stories ran wilder than even she could imagine. Her mother often wept when she was with Ornice. She feared for her daughter’s new life. Some of the old women dragged forth the old prayers that only they remembered. Any severe weather or storms triggered new tales of Ornice’s pact with the sea people and even stranger stories of what might happen when her magical child was born among them. Ornice hugged her belly in her bed at night and dreamed of Connery. Surely he would protect their child.

  In the middle of that cold winter, her mother and Ailish delivered Ornice of a baby boy. Ornice cried with relief. She had lost so much already, she could not give this little one up. Ornice watched as Ailish frantically checked the baby’s tiny hands and feet, trying to hide her actions from Ornice. Ornice knew Ailish was checking to see if they were webbed. That was the mark of the sea people. She saw the surprise in Ailish’s eyes as she gazed upon the baby. He was not one of the dark ones. Not one of the sea people. He was just a little baby, pink and beautiful and crying loudly. The two women said nothing but it was clear that while this child might not be visibly one of the sea people, he was also not Lorcan’s.

  If they had not seen him born, the two women would have doubted he was Ornice’s. But Ornice knew him. He had soft tufts of snow white hair and his leaf-shaped eyes were a startling bice blue. Her mother and Ailish exclaimed they had never seen a colour like it. Ornice knew it and loved it. He had Connery’s wide mouth and, although his little face was round and pink, Ornice knew it would fill out into the broad planes and angles of his father’s beloved face. She wanted Connery here to share this joy. He had given up much and she loved him the more for his sacrifice.

  She named her son Fingal. It was a name left over from the time of the Norsemen. This little one was a white stranger amongst them.

  When Fingal was still less than one year old, the inevitable happened. Lorcan was a man and he was Ornice’s husband. She was naive to think that he would simply sit by in their cabin and watch as she raised another man’s child. Lorcan had heard the stories. Who knew what creature had fathered this child he was expected to raise as his own? He watched Ornice move around the cabin and suckle the child and pour all her love and bodily warmth onto the little white-haired monster. He watched her small hands stroke the baby as he fell asleep in her arms, he watched them both sleeping in the narrow bed he had made for her, and Lorcan hungered for her bodily warmth, her affection, her swollen breasts. He wanted her woman’s body as much as the baby did. She was so attentive to the baby. He had only to stir in the night or begin to whimper and Ornice went to him. Her body was for him alone. He took all Ornice could give him and still cried for more. Lorcan lay in his bed at night listening to Ornice humming quietly as the baby suckled and gurgled his joy.

  Late one night Lorcan dragged her from her bed and into his and did what he had been itching to do for the long year past. His lewd words were in her ears again. And his words were clear. She would comply and give her husband as much of herself as she so freely gave to the sea creature, or herds of creatures for all he knew, who had fathered her damned baby. The bairn could cry until Lorcan got all that he desired. On that desperate night in her husband’s bed, Ornice did all that was demanded of her and eventually Lorcan released her to her own bed and her sleeping child.

  Being in Lorcan’s bed was more awful than she remembered. More awful than could be borne. Ornice would not allow it to happen again. She thought about leaving but where could she go? Lorcan would come after her and who could blame a husband if he did? She knew she must make good her threat. She would kill him.

  Lorcan was nervous around her at first. Following the night of his attack, he slept with one eye open and made her eat from his bowl before he would start his meal. After a week in which Ornice did nothing, he grew cocky.

  On a windy night during this time, as she lay awake in the dark, Ornice knew how to end her misery. A group of seals had arrived in the cove and they had come close into the shore on the rocks off the peninsula. Seals had not been in the cove for many years. Not in her lifetime. Lorcan had admired them from the beach. There were several big bulls, including one massive golden bull, and a dozen pretty females. Their skins would earn enough money for a year and the oil money would be a bonus. Good drinking money. Lorcan especially coveted the golden bull. Its skin would bring him a fortune. Ornice would encourage Lorcan to go after them. They were seals who did not know the danger of man. They were almost in the shallows. They could be easily caught and killed. He could be tempted. She could tempt him.

  After two days of Ornice taunting him for being too scared to go and fetch such fine seals sitting right in front of him, Lorcan succumbed. He got in his little currach with his spears and knives and nets and headed out to the wide neck of the cove. She did not watch him go and she did not know what happened but the overturned currach was washed up on the shore at high tide and Lorcan was gone.

  Within one month of Lorcan’s death, two men had talked to Ornice’s father about her hand in marriage. People wanted to be close to the power of the selchie. Everyone accepted that Ornice was one of the sea people. She could almost laugh at the nonsense of it. She had learned to be a strong swimmer with Connery’s daily lessons, that much was true, but that hardly made her a sea creature. Everything that had happened to her had been Connery’s doing. And she may never see him again.

  The last thing Ornice wanted was to be married again. She wanted Connery, and since she knew she could never marry him, she wanted no one. She was eighteen years old. She had many years in front of her and she must make a life for Fingal and herself. She could fish. She was the granddaughter of a fisherman and had been out many times with her grandfather and brothers when she was younger. She was not strong but she could catch enough. She had a garden, chickens, a milch cow, a cabin and Lorcan’s currach. She and Fingal would not need much.

  Ailish was happy to take care of Fingal along with her own little one, Rory, when Ornice went out that first day with her nets. To the amazement of everyone in the cove, her trip was spectacularly successful. She filled her two nets in a morning and returned with her currach full. This was to be the way of it. When Ornice went out, all the fish of the sea – cod, herri
ng, turbot, mackerel – raced to her nets.

  The other fishermen were quick to notice and soon Ornice had a little fleet behind her. The fishing was generous for them all. After a month of such fishing, the other fishermen asked Ornice to accompany them in one of their boats. She did not need to fish. They would split the catch between them all. And soon there was no need for Ornice to go out at all. The fish came to the nets just knowing Ornice was in the cove.

  The selchie tale grew. As she earned good money from the others’ catches, she repaired the cabin and settled into a comfortable life. She missed Connery but she learned to live with her gnawing loneliness. He would surely come back to her. He had said he would come to her when he could. Her life was now one of waiting.

  When Fingal was a chubby bairn running along the beach on his newfound wobbly legs, Ornice became restless. She sat watching her son but her mind was out beyond the breakers. She had difficulty sleeping that night and the next, and she spent the third night sitting alone on the sand looking out at the dark sea. On the fourth night she was certain. Connery was calling her. She could not hear him but she was being pulled into the sea and to him. This time she did not walk out along the peninsula. She raced back to her cabin and picked up her sleeping son from his bed. She took him to her mother and, without any explanation, she ran out into the night. She dragged her little currach down the sand and set sail into the darkness.

  The wind had picked up but she was flying faster than the wind. She was heading west. She knew where she was going. She placed her hands on the seat and let herself be taken. She must have fallen asleep but she woke suddenly as the currach beached on the pebbly shore. Connery was standing beside her, wet and breathing hard. He picked her up and she covered his dear face with kisses and murmurings of love. He held her tight.