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  As if in response, he heard the whinny of a horse in the distance. Patrick turned to see Old Pat, atop Fionnbar, crest the hill behind them. His father reined to a stop for a moment, then, sighting them, urged the draft horse forward, hell-bent for leather.

  Patrick felt the breath go out of his body. Then, in the crushing weight of the air’s return to his lungs, he ran back to Donovan’s horse and crawled up into the saddle behind his startled mother, kicking the poor beast into a canter, then a rough gallop.

  “Patrick,”Aisling gasped, “for the love of God—”

  “Hold to me,Mother,” he said. “Hold to me, and I will get you to the shore.”

  Mercilessly he urged Donovan’s horse on, straining to hold on with his knees, gripping the reins in one hand and Aisling with the other. He rode forward into the sea wind, the breeze whistling through his hair, gaining as much speed from the tired horse as he could, knowing that his father’s mount was the better, and not wishing to have to fight his way through, should Old Pat position himself between his mother and the sea.

  Finally, the tip of Bolus Head was in sight. Land’s end, the farthest point west that they could reach. Patrick rode until the rocky shore was too much for the horse’s shoes, then dragged back on the reins and leapt from the saddle. He turned and looked over his shoulder.

  Old Pat was within sight, perhaps two hundred yards behind him. His father was pitched forward in Fionnbar’s saddle, shouting something into the wind, its noise lost in the howl of it and the clatter of the horse’s hooves.

  “Come, Mother,” Patrick urged, holding his arms out to her. “Make haste.”

  Aisling allowed him to pull her down from the saddle, then looked behind her to the east, beholding Old Pat for the first time. She brushed the flapping locks of hair from her face, staring into the coming dusk, the sun sinking into the sea to the west lighting her back and shoulders with a bright glow. Then she reached into her pocket and drew forth her cap. The tiny pearls caught the light of the setting sun.

  “Mother,” Patrick said insistently, seeing Old Pat bearing down upon them, “he’ll be on us in a heart’s beat. Now for it!”

  Aisling continued to watch Old Pat, expressionless, as Fionnbar came to a halt. Then she turned to Patrick and smiled, the glow of joy that he had seen coming over her face once more, lighted by the vanishing sun. She took her son’s hand, squeezed it fondly, then placed the merrow’s cap in his palm.

  “Here,” she said simply.

  He stared at her blankly.

  “Take it, Patrick,” she urged, glancing over her shoulder as Old Pat dismounted and began to scramble over the rocks toward the shore.

  “I don’t understand,” Patrick said, his hand growing numb and weak with anxiety.

  “Save yourself, Patrick Michael Martin,” his mother said, smiling, though tears were starting to well in her eyes. “From the famine, and from all that has held you blind until now.”

  “Blind to what?”

  Aisling’s smile grew brighter. “You’ll see.”

  Patrick heard the exerted puff of his father’s breath behind him, but he was too thunderstruck to move. Aisling squeezed his hand again, then turned away and went to Old Pat, slipping her arm behind his back as he pulled her close.

  “You—young fool,” his father gasped, struggling to catch his breath. “Did ya not see what—you were—doing to Donovan’s poor old—horse? God in heaven above, boy.” The hen, caged in a basket that hung from Fionnbar’s saddle, squawked in protest as well.

  Patrick shook his head as if the sense in it had collected in the corners. “I don’t understand,” he repeated.

  “What’s to understand?” Old Pat asked crossly. “Take your mother’s cap, put it on your head, wade out into the sea, and be gone. There’s nothing more here for you now, lad. To stay behind guarantees a struggle to live that is likely to turn out badly; two can share a daily hen’s egg, but three can’t survive on that. To take to the sea in a coffin ship is to risk your life and your health. There’s no good choice but this one.”

  “You’ll be safe in the sea, Patrick,” Aisling said, leaning against Old Pat’s shoulder. “As my son, you are of the blood as well; take the cap and go to find your kin. They will teach you our ways.”

  “You knew?” Patrick asked incredulously. “You knew he had hidden the cap?”

  “Of course,”Aisling said, her brows drawing together in surprise. “ ’Tis a highly prized thing, that cap; you didn’t think we would keep it in the cottage where the landlord or some other English thug might come upon it and steal it?”

  “If you knew where it was, why did you not take it back, then, Mother? Does not a merrow long to return to the sea above all else?”

  Aisling looked at his father and smiled. “Not above all else, Patrick. ’Tis true I would have been spared from the famine if I had returned to the sea, but I did not wish to be spared if it meant going without your father.”

  “Did you think you found that chest by happenstance, lad?” Old Pat asked, amused. “You must have known I was leading you there—surely you did not think I would have missed seeing you, followin’ so close? You think I’m blind, lad?”

  “You’re—you’re in on this together,” Patrick said incredulously. “If that be so, why did you give chase, Da? I about met my death from heart failure, trying to outrun you.”

  “Of course we are ‘in on this together,’ you young cur,” said Old Pat with equal measures of scorn and fondness in his voice. “As we are in everything together; that’s the very definition of holy matrimony. We decided that this was the answer the night after the meeting in Donovan’s barn.We discussed it in bed that night, as you slept beside the fire. I was to meet you both here. And I gave chase because you ran. I came to bid you farewell and take your mother home.”

  Patrick took off his hat and ran a hand through his hair. “The witch,” he said to Aisling in amazement. “Bronagh told me that, should I return the cap to you, you would not be able to resist the magic of the sea.”

  Aisling smiled again. “Some magics are stronger than others, Patrick.”

  “Despite being blessed with some uncommon wisdom, Bronagh does not know everything,” Old Pat added. “She assumes that what she knows about the lore of merrows and sailors applies to every mer-row, every sailor. ’Tis folly.When a sailor drowns, it is often said that he has married a merrow. Faith, I didn’t want to do it that way. So I merely asked one for her hand instead.”

  In spite of himself, Patrick chuckled.

  Aisling reached out and took his arm. “Remember, Patrick, you are born of both sea and land. The sea holds a powerful magic, ’tis true. But you are a son of Ireland, the most magical realm in all the dry world. You will be at home in both places.When the time is right, when the famine is over, come back to us. If we be living still, we will welcome you home to the Reeks.”

  Sadness crept over Patrick’s face.

  “And if you are not?” he asked.

  Aisling squeezed his arm. “If not, then I suppose I will see you in heaven.”

  “But Bronagh said that you do not have a soul.”

  “What does anyone but God know of the soul?” his mother said. “I can tell you this for certain, Patrick Michael Martin: wherever your father goes, in this life and beyond, I am ever there.We share a soul—and we are both part of you. That should be enough to lift us all from the waves to heaven, don’t you think?”

  “Aye, I do,” said Patrick, struggling to keep his eyes from over flowing. “Just tell me one last thing, Mother—when I gave you back the cap, why did you change so?”

  Aisling blinked. “Did I?”

  “Aye,” said Patrick. “Your face took on the glow of the sun, and you laughed merrily, in a way I don’t remember hearing before. It was magical—or so it seemed to me. I could believe that you were hearing the call of the sea, that magic that Bronagh said you would be unable to stand against.”

  His mother grinned broadly.

/>   “What you saw was joy, Patrick, joy in the knowledge that the blight will not take my child, this son of land and sea, as it has taken so many other mothers’ children. Life here on the land has not been easy of late; in fact, it never has been. It is the life I choose, to stay here with your father, come what may. I know that you will be safe now. Sad as I am that you are leaving my house, how can I but be happy for you? You will now see what you have been missing. Fare thee well.”

  He came into their embrace and remained there until the sun touched the edge of the sea, spilling its light along the horizon. Then he put on the cap and ventured out in the water with one last glance over his shoulder.

  Aisling and Old Pat stood, arm in arm, watching him go. Like all those parents who had sent sons to war, or children to the New World in search of life beyond the coming death, they held to each other, their backs straight against the loss, braced together.

  As he moved into the waves he felt a familiar sensation, recognizing it after a moment as the same one he had always felt when moving through the undulating waves of summer grass. There was a welcome to it, as there had been on the land, and in that moment he realized he had felt the call of the sea all his life, even far away in the mountains of Macgillicuddy’s Reeks.

  When the water crested his shoulders he began to swim, and as he did, he felt his legs melt away, forming a deeper muscle, powerful, moving together as one. Then it was as if he was moving through the air, at home in the element of water, and elation swelled up inside him.

  Patrick turned in the sea and looked back to the rocky coast at the tiny shadows still standing, side by side, in the dusk; he thought he saw one of the shadows wave to him, but he was unsure. He lifted a hand in return, a hand with a slight webbing of skin between the fingers now. He looked farther up and suddenly saw the green hills rising, verdant in their splendor, the purple mountains beyond, the summer slopes bathed in a glorious array of the bright colors of the land, scarlets and crimsons, delicate yellows and the palest of lavenders.

  In his ears he heard his mother’s voice, one last time.

  Save yourself, Patrick Michael Martin, from the famine, and from all that has held you blind until now.

  Blind to what?

  You’ll see.

  Below him, the ocean swelled, no longer grey, in blue-green splendor, gold below. He knew its deeper treasures were his now, could hear the sea wind calling, heard the song from the depths, the same wordless tune his mother had sung to him on the way to this place, telling him not of what she missed, but what lay in store for him.

  He dove into the waves and went off to find it.

  Banshee

  BY RAY BRADBURY

  It was one of those nights, crossing Ireland, motoring through the sleeping towns from Dublin, where you came upon mist and encountered fog that blew away in rain to become a blowing silence. All the country was still and cold and waiting. It was a night for strange encounters at empty crossroads with great filaments of ghost spiderweb and no spider in a hundred miles. Gates creaked far across meadows, where windows rattled with brittle moonlight.

  It was, as they said, banshee weather. I sensed, I knew this as my taxi hummed through a final gate, and I arrived at Courtown House, so far from Dublin that if that city died in the night, no one would know.

  I paid my driver and watched the taxi turn to go back to the living city, leaving me alone with twenty pages of final screenplay in my pocket, and my film director employer waiting inside. I stood in the midnight silence, breathing in Ireland and breathing out the damp coal mines in my soul.

  Then, I knocked.

  The door flew wide almost instantly. John Hampton was there, shoving a glass of sherry into my hand and hauling me in.

  “Good God, kid, you got me curious. Get that coat off. Give me the script. Finished it, eh? So you say. You got me curious. Glad you called from Dublin. The house is empty. Clara’s in Paris with the kids. We’ll have a good read, knock the hell out of your scenes, drink a bottle, be in bed by two and—what’s that?”

  “Tell you later. Jump.”

  With the door slammed, he turned about and, the grand lord of the empty manor, strode ahead of me in his hacking coat, drill slacks, polished half boots, his hair, as always, windblown from swimming upstream or down with strange women in unfamiliar beds.

  Planting himself on the library hearth, he gave me one of those beacon flashes of laugh, the teeth that beckoned like a lighthouse beam swift and gone, as he traded me a second sherry for the screenplay, which he had to seize from my hand.

  “Let’s see what my genius, my left ventricle, my right arm, has birthed. Sit. Drink.Watch.”

  He stood astride the hearthstones, warming his backside, leafing my manuscript pages, conscious of me drinking my sherry much too fast, shutting my eyes each time he let a page drop and flutter to the carpet.When he finished he let the last page sail, lit a small cigarillo and puffed it, staring at the ceiling, making me wait.

  “You son of a bitch,” he said at last, exhaling. “It’s good. Damn you to hell, kid. It’s good!”

  My entire skeleton collapsed within me. I had not expected such a midriff blow of praise.

  “It needs a little cutting, of course!”

  My skeleton reassembled itself.

  “Of course,” I said.

  He bent to gather the pages like a great loping chimpanzee and turned. I felt he wanted to hurl them into the fire. He watched the flames and gripped the pages.

  “Someday, kid,” he said quietly, “you must teach me to write.”

  He was relaxing now, accepting the inevitable, full of true admiration.

  “Someday,” I said, laughing, “you must teach me to direct.”

  “The Beast will be our film, son. Quite a team.”

  He arose and came to clink glasses with me.

  “Quite a team we are!” He changed gears. “How are the wife and kids?”

  “They’re waiting for me in Sicily, where it’s warm.”

  “We’ll get you to them, and sun, straight off! I—”

  He froze dramatically, cocked his head, and listened.

  “Hey, what goes on—” he whispered.

  I turned and waited.

  This time, outside the great old house, there was the merest thread of sound, like someone running a fingernail over the paint, or someone sliding down out of the dry reach of a tree. Then there was the softest exhalation of a moan, followed by something like a sob.

  John leaned in a starkly dramatic pose, like a statue in a stage pantomime, his mouth wide, as if to allow sounds entry to the inner ear. His eyes unlocked to become as huge as hen’s eggs with pretended alarm.

  “Shall I tell you what that sound is, kid? A banshee!”

  “A what?” I cried.

  “Banshee!” he intoned. “The ghosts of old women who haunt the roads an hour before someone dies. That’s what that sound was!” He stepped to the window, raised the shade, and peered out. “Sh! Maybe it means—us!”

  “Cut it out, John!” I laughed, quietly.

  “No, kid, no.” He fixed his gaze far into the darkness, savoring his melodrama. “I’ve lived here ten years. Death’s out there. The banshee always knows! Where were we?”

  He broke the spell as simply as that, strode back to the hearth, and blinked at my script as if it were a brand-new puzzle.

  “You ever figure, Doug, how much The Beast is like me? The hero plowing the seas, plowing women left and right, off round the world and no stops? Maybe that’s why I’m doing it. You even wonder how many women I’ve had? Hundreds! I—”

  He stopped, for my lines on the page had shut him again.His face took fire as my words sank in.

  “Brilliant!”

  I waited, uncertainly.

  “No, not that!” He threw my script aside to seize a copy of the London Times off the mantel. “This! A brilliant review of your new book of stories!”

  “What!” I jumped.

  “Easy kid. I’
ll read this grand review to you! You’ll love it. Terrific!”

  My heart took water and sank. I could see another joke coming on or, worse, the truth disguised as a joke.

  “Listen!”

  John lifted the Times and read, like Ahab, from the holy text.

  “ ‘Douglas Rogers’s stories may well be the huge success of American literature—’ ” John stopped and gave me an innocent blink. “How you like it so far, kid?”

  “Continue, John,” I mourned. I slugged my sherry back. It was a toss of doom that slid down to meet a collapse of will.

  “ ‘—but here in London,’” John intoned, “ ‘we ask more from our tellers of tales. Attempting to emulate the ideas of Kipling, the style of Maugham, the wit of Waugh, Rogers drowns somewhere in midAtlantic. This is ramshackle stuff, mostly bad shades of superior scribes. Douglas Rogers, go home!’ ”

  I leaped up and ran, but John, with a lazy flip of his underhand, tossed the Times into the fire where it flapped like a dying bird and swiftly died in flame and roaring sparks.

  Imbalanced, staring down, I was wild to grab that damned paper out, but finally glad the thing was lost,

  John studied my face, happily. My face boiled, my teeth ground shut.My hand, struck to the mantel, was a cold rock fist.

  Tears burst from my eyes, since words could not burst from my aching mouth.

  “What’s wrong, kid?” John peered at me with true curiosity, like a monkey edging up to another sick beast in its cage.

  “John, for Christ’s sake!” I burst out. “Did you have to do that!”

  I kicked at the fire, making the logs tumble and a great firefly of sparks gush up the flue.

  “Why, Doug, I didn’t think—”

  “Like hell you didn’t!” I blazed, turning to glare at him with tear-splintered eyes. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Hell, nothing, Doug. It was a fine review, great! I just added a few lines, to get your goat!”

  “I’ll never know now!” I cried. “Look!”

  I gave the ashes a final, scattering kick.