The Fire Opal Read online

  The Fire Opal

  Regina Mcbride

  For Miranda, with love

  CONTENTS

  Prologue 3

  Part One

  The Coast of Rain and Shadows

  11

  Part Two

  The Spanish Ships

  105

  Part Three

  The Ice Barge

  159

  Part Four

  Beyond the Horizon

  WESTERN COAST OF IRELAND County Donegal Late Sixteenth Century

  3

  PROLOGUE

  ***

  When I was seven years old, my mother and I spent a July afternoon on the foreshore collecting kelp, which we planned to dry and burn for summer fires. It was a rare sunny day, the light blinding on the tide.

  On our way home, we reached the old ruins, a great edifice with towers, now roofless, and long since crumbled in the harsh salt wind. My brothers and I often played here, exploring and hiding among its walls and foundation stones.

  Mam's creel basket was so heavy she put it down and sat on the broken stone stairway of the ruin, where sea grass and maidenhair ferns grew through the cracks.

  She gazed out at the waves and the horizon, a faraway look on her face. Now and again that day, as we'd been gathering, I'd seen her lost in her thoughts, staring past the sea with this same earnest, distracted expression. I ached to know what she was thinking about, and now I asked her.

  4

  "I don't really know that I can explain it, Maeve," she said.

  "Try, Mam," I said.

  "When I look at the horizon, I feel"--she paused, searching for the right words--"a yearning for something, but I don't know what it is."

  She looked back at the horizon, and the same expression softened her features. She seemed so separate from me in that moment that it made me uneasy.

  "What could it be you're yearning for, Mam?" I asked, and touched her arm to bring her back.

  She shook her head vaguely.

  "Is it something you lost?" I asked.

  "Maybe." She smiled. "Something I lost long ago, before I was born."

  I stared out to where she was staring, hungry to understand. And that was when I heard a phrase of elusive music that dissolved when I strained to hear it better.

  "Mam," I said. "Did you hear music?"

  She looked surprised by the question. "No," she said. She got to her feet, picking up her heavy basket, and added,

  "Let's go home now."

  Later that afternoon, after helping Mam lay out the kelp to dry, I went back down to the ruins to see if I could hear the music again. Just as I was beginning to focus on the horizon, a tide rushed high onto the beach with unusual force, reaching me and surrounding my ankles, pulling me so that I fell in the sand. When the tide withdrew, it left a great

  5

  heap of kelp. Immediately I thought how pleased Mam would be if I gathered as much as I could and brought it home to dry with the rest. As I did, I spied an object, tangled in the vines and leaves. It was about six feet long and looked to be made of iron and other wrought metals inlaid with veined stone.

  I squatted down and gingerly swept ribbons of obscuring kelp away from it to get a better look. Decoratively engraved all over it were swirling symbols and animals with fierce faces and open mouths breathing fire. Embellished with leaves and fruits were the words THE ANSWERER.

  I saw that there had once been a sharp spear at the top, but most of it was now broken jaggedly away. Maybe it had served as a weapon for a giant. Only the elaborate handle was still well intact, though rusted and barnacled as if it had spent centuries on the seafloor.

  It was very heavy, and it took all my strength to turn it over. The other side was different. The carvings formed a kind of face with stylized features and a single swirling eyebrow over a large jewel eye--a kind of Cyclops. The jewel was both transparent and dim, with rich purple and brownish depths.

  As I was gazing into it, a dark embankment of clouds moved in and obscured the sun. I heard my brothers' voices on the hill above and panicked, feeling intensely possessive of this extraordinary object. I knew if they saw it they would take it. The two of them would be strong enough to lift it, and their games with it would be rough. They'd damage it or lose it somewhere.

  Hoping they wouldn't see, I struggled to place the object

  6

  back in the kelp, and inadvertently kicked a stone loose near a ruined pedestal. Turning, I noticed an opening under the broken stair. I knelt down and looked in, surprised to see a very low collapsed-earth room, in places only about four feet from the ceiling to the floor. It seemed a perfect spot to hide this object.

  As I pushed it with great effort, sliding it toward the opening under the stair, I felt a warmth under my hands and saw a shadow move along the surface of the jewel eye. I felt certain that the thing was looking at me.

  As the object fell onto the soft ground in the ruined room, I was sure I heard it moan and sigh, as if in relief. I lay there on my belly looking through the opening. "The Answerer," I whispered, wondering over the name. It sank slightly into the loamy earth.

  I was about to cover the opening up with stones when it began to rain, and my brothers' voices faded into the distance. They had not even seen me down here. With no urgency now to hide my find, I remained there lying on my stomach looking in.

  I decided that I would try to get the object out again, but a shower of mysterious red sparks fell from the low ceiling in the underground room and floated down over the Answerer, settling into the grooves of its embellishments.

  Farther back in the shadows, I noticed a kind of shelf or dresser, now collapsed. It appeared to be composed of white stone with a green matrix, some kind of marble, perhaps, emblazoned with red stars. Each time bits of light fell from the ceiling, the stars sparked with a red brilliance, and the

  7

  Answerer sighed like a sentient being. It seemed to belong here, and that filled me with a mysterious satisfaction. It was meant to be hidden.

  Before I left, and as the rain began to deluge me, I covered the opening in the stair with mud and stones.

  That night at home, with kelp burning along with the turf, the air in the cottage smelled of the ocean. My head pounded and my face felt hot. Soon I was delirious.

  Gripped by a high fever, I had my mother in a terror, thinking I would not survive.

  From my sickbed, I saw the Answerer standing upright near the hearth cinders, focused on me with its deep, brimming eye. I sensed that it was grateful to me for concealing it in the hidden room. But it remained by the fire for a long time, gazing across the shadowy, smoky air of the cottage room, as Mam and I had gazed across the sea toward the horizon.

  The next morning, my fever broke and I slept all day. I suffered amnesia with regard to the Answerer. I forgot about finding it the day before on the shore and hiding it possessively from my brothers. As if some spell had deprived me of the memory, I forgot I'd lain in the rain shivering because I did not want to take my eyes off it. I remembered it only vaguely as a presence that had stood near my sickbed.

  And so it was consigned to the realm of figments and ghosts, the shadows of impossible creatures that live in the feverish imagination of a child.

  8

  9

  Seven years later.

  10

  11

  ***

  Part One The Coast Rain and Shadows

  12

  13

  ***

  CHAPTER 1

  ***

  The March wind was wild that Saturday morning when I left the cottage with my brothers to go down the hill to the beach.

  I squinted and yawned in the mild sunlight as we descended from the promontory upon
which our cottage sat exposed to the full force of the Atlantic gales. I shivered, pulling close the collar of my oilcloth coat.

  None of us had slept well the night before.

  Our mam had been up crying, and though our da had done his best to calm her, she'd been restless and uneasy over something particular, something she spoke of only in whispers.

  Mam had not been fully herself since tragedy had struck our house the year before, when my baby sister

  14

  had grown sick and died. Now my brothers and I all wanted to shake off the long sleepless night we'd just passed.

  My brother Donal began to race toward the rocks where he saw our da's boat beached. "I'm taking the boat out!" he screamed.

  "The wind is too strong!" Fingal called out to him over the noise of the waves. "The boat'll be dashed to the rocks!"

  The waves broke and arched up, foaming and falling across the shoals.

  "Our vessel can ride those swells!" Donal shouted proudly. He stood near the boat but made no efforts to drag it into the tide. I knew he was just taunting Fingal, who was of a cautious nature. Even Donal, daredevil that he was, wouldn't tempt water so agitated.

  My brothers and I had helped our father craft the boat and had lined it threefold in fat sealskins. Mam said that if the boat had a soul, it was a seal's soul, the way it moved, long and dark and sure of itself, cutting the waters. So she had named it Mananan's Vessel after the Irish sea god.

  "I've an idea," Donal said with a desperate sort of exuberance. "Let's take the boat and leave Ard Macha for good and sail in search of the Holy Isles."

  "There's no such place as the Holy Isles," Fingal bellowed over the noise of the surf.

  "Many people have reported seeing them," Donal insisted.

  15

  "They're imaginary. They're only territories of the mind," Fingal said, the wind blowing so hard it carried his voice above us and sent it seaward.

  All my life, I had heard stories about those mysterious isles, where the goddess who had once ruled Ireland had exiled herself in centuries past. Some said the isles lay to the south, and others said they were to be found at a more northerly latitude. They were known by many names-- the Holy Isles, the Land of Women, the Country of the Perpetually Young, the Isles of the Dispossessed--and were supposed to be otherworldly places where extraordinary things occurred.

  "They have never been mapped or charted," Fingal said, always the one to require proof of things.

  Donal and Fingal were fifteen, one year older than I, and though they were twins, they could not have been more different. Donal had dark brown hair like mine and Mam's, and he was strong and solidly built, while Fingal had red hair like our da's and was slender. Donal was fiery and impulsive, while Fingal approached things with logic and caution. I often felt pulled between the two poles of their different natures, but today, Donal's wish to escape resonated strongly with my own feelings.

  Though the sun shone weakly through the clouds in the eastern sky, the horizon to the west was all mist. The idea of such an adventure, sailing to the west in search of mystical isles, appealed to me greatly. Mam's unhappiness had been wearing away at my spirit. I ached for the world to open up before me.

  16

  "I think it's sad that you don't believe in the Holy Isles, Fingal," Donal said.

  Fingal laughed. "I think it's sad that you do!"

  "Stop fighting about it," I snapped. "And you both know we can't take the boat out in this weather." The wind intensified, and our coats beat and rippled wildly around us.

  I envisioned the three of us in Da's boat, sailing through an otherworldly place, the dark clouds broken and ignited with green glimmering light. The Holy Isles were said to be a province altogether different from ours, lit by a black sun. I imagined the sea and the clouded sky illuminated by a dark planetary brilliance.

  My two brothers were restless, full of energy and uncertain what to do with it. They ran closer to the water and began kicking stones, making them skid across the water. I saw Fingal bend down, finding something among the flotsam from the tides; then the two of them came running back.

  "Look what I found, Maeve." Fingal held up a jagged piece of something shiny. "A mirror. There's enough sunlight that I can start a little fire with it."

  The three of us squatted down near a clump of beach grass.

  "You see, you get the sunlight in the mirror," he said, angling it back and forth with blinding flashes, "and shine it on the grass."

  We formed a kind of wall around the grass, blocking the wind. Fingal moved the mirror very carefully, and a

  17

  blade of grass began to burn; soon, two other blades near it caught on fire.

  A sudden loud commotion of birds sounded from the estuary around the rocks to the north. Gulls circled overhead, screeching wildly. As we stood, the wind put out our little fire.

  We ran toward the noise, balancing precariously on the stones and leaning against the rock wall, making our way to the estuary. Tom Cavan, a boy a year older than my brothers who lived in the cottage closest to ours on Ard Macha and whom we'd known and disliked all our lives, was clutching tightly to a bit of slippery cliff shelf, stuck there, not certain how to get down safely. A large gull swept back and forth past him, its beak open, threatening to bite. That was when I noticed the hatchlings that lay dead below on the stones.

  I pointed them out to my brothers.

  "You devil! You lout!" Donal yelled at him.

  "Help me, O'Tullagh!" Tom cried. "One of you climb over and around the other way and give me a hand up."

  "No! You monster!" Donal yelled.

  "You're getting your due! I hope she plucks your eyes out!" Fingal said.

  "And why do you care so much about these nuisance birds?" Tom asked.

  One of the hatchlings squirmed and moved its hardly formed wing.

  "Fingal," I said, touching my brother's arm. "One of them is alive."

  18

  He went over to it and squatted beside it. "The poor creature is still breathing," he said, and lifted it very carefully, holding it in one cupped hand.

  "I don't think it's long for this world," Donal remarked, looking closely at it.

  I touched the hatchling gingerly with one finger, and it blinked and gave a little spasm. Sensing its suffering, I went mad with anger at Tom.

  "If it wouldn't make me as low a creature as you, I'd pick up a stone and throw it at you!" I shrieked, trembling so I could barely control myself.

  Tom turned his wind burned face in my direction, wearing an expression I'd often seen come into his eyes: a cool fascination, almost as if it entertained him to see how outraged he could make me. At such moments, he seemed indifferent to my brothers' anger with him. It was my reaction to his cruelty, my frustration with him, that he seemed to revel in. His green eyes glinted with a spark of orange as he stared at me.

  For as long as we could remember, Tom Cavan had gone wild each spring, dropping the eggs of gulls from cliff rocks or throwing new hatchlings from their nests. And he shot down birds he never intended to eat. My brothers and I policed him. Da had said that Tom would likely grow out of that bad behavior, but now Tom was sixteen and seemed worse than ever.

  It was a constant source of shock to me that the three girls our age who lived in the nearby valley were all completely smitten with Tom and professed to be jealous that his cottage was so close to mine. They found my

  19

  contempt for him as incomprehensible as I found their feelings for him. None seemed remotely moved to change her opinion when I explained the cruelty he was capable of. Each shrugged it off as something boys did.

  Tom lost his precarious hold on the side of the cliff and fell down about seven feet to the rocks. He winced, probably having hurt his hip bone, but managed to get up, slipping once or twice. His only way out of the estuary was to come past where we stood. Fingal handed me the injured hatchling.

  Donal and Fingal grabbed Tom by the shirt an
d dragged him over the rocks and back toward the beach.

  "I hate you, Tom Cavan!" I said, turning away so that I wouldn't have to see his face anymore.

  "He's got his slingshot, too." Donal pulled it from Tom's pocket and threw it into the sea. "He's likely been shooting birds as well as knocking them from their nests."

  "We're telling your da what you've done!" Fingal cried.

  I stayed behind, struggling to catch my breath. I wondered what to do with the poor hatchling. I knew that once a baby bird had fallen from the nest, the mother and father would not accept it back. I decided I would take it home, and was about to when it shivered convulsively and the life went out of it. My face burned hot in spite of the wind, and tears began to flow.

  I laid the creature next to its dead siblings and knelt down near them.

  The wind came up high. The sky darkened, and a belt

  20

  of rain moved in suddenly, bringing with it a procession of squalls. The water came so far inland that it drenched my skirts to the knee and swept over the baby birds, washing them into the sea. For a few moments they bobbed on the back of a wave, and then disappeared.

  Back on the higher beach, I looked up toward the cottage, and though the rain began to soak me, I did not want to go home. It seemed to me that things were much too slow to change here on Ard Macha. My mother's un-happiness would not lighten. And Tom Cavan had never learned his lesson, only become increasingly wayward, untrustworthy and cruel.

  But it was something else, something I had heard Da say to Fingal quietly by the fire the night before, that made me not want to go home. He'd said that he was afraid for our mam ; that the grief over losing little Ishleen had been too much for her, and he feared that her mind was no longer right.