46. Among the Ruins
46
AMONG THE RUINS
What good to us your wisdom-store,
Your Latin verse, your Grecian lore?
— PADRAIC COLUM, “A POOR SCHOLAR OF THE ’FORTIES”
T he following day, after another harrowing afternoon of bread baking and shielding practice, Caitlin sent me to the village to fetch the girls from school. I left early and decided to stop by the local pub for a pint and to practice my Irish with people who weren’t constantly looking into my thoughts or examining my subatomic energy.
I was greeted immediately by Phelan, the pub owner, leaning against the old, aged wood of the bar top while he chatted with Jock and another man whose back was turned to me.
“ Dia duit !” Jock rose from his stool and folded me into a warm embrace.
I forced myself to welcome his friendly if inebriated thoughts about my appearance (or the lack of effort I’d put into it).Jock was the definition of kind, but he shared the opinion of many men his age that a woman of mine should put more effort into her looks in order to find a husband.
Nevertheless, his smile was warm and genuine as he stepped back and signaled to Phelan for a pint.
“Thank you,” I said in my best Irish.
Jock’s grin widened. “Anytime, love.”
The other man, who still hadn’t turned, emitted a quick stream of Irish too fast for me to parse, but Jock’s lingering hand on my shoulder told me that Phelan had made a homemade brew, and the man wanted me to try it.
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll try that.”
Phelan cocked a gray brow, then trudged off to the back room with an empty glass.
“Cassandra here is my best new student,” Jock informed the man as he steered me to a stool between the two of them.
“Is she now?” asked the stranger as I sat down. “Seems to me there’s a few phrases she needs to learn.”
He turned a pair of familiar flashing black eyes on me, this time flaring not with anger, but amusement. His pale skin, marred only by a small bluish swelling in the center of his forehead, was rosy in the warmth of the room, but even in the firelight, he seemed to shine.
The murúch from the beach. This time clothed in a faded red Henley and a pair of old jeans. And a smile instead of a scowl.
“I’m Caomhán.” He extended a hand.
I stared at it until he took it back, black eyes still dancing.
“No, you’re crazy ,” I said, prompting a chorus of hoots from Jock and Phelan, who set a pint of ale the color of Caomhán’s eyes in front of me. “What kind of idiot goes swimming in the North Atlantic without a stitch of clothing?”
“Are you still doing that?” Jock asked. “I thought it was only when you were a boy.”
Caomhán leaned farther back on the bar as if he had little investment in the question. “Suppose I’m something of an adrenaline junkie. The cold water gives a bit of a shock. Besides, I’d wager you’re no one to be pointing fingers, a weebird like yourself floundering about the waves. She broke her board on my head.” He pointed to the knot on his forehead.
I frowned. Wee bird indeed.
“Listen, you,” I said as I drew from my very best version of Gran when I was in trouble, pointed finger and all.
His eyes zeroed in on the finger with a cross-eyed expression until he looked back at me and laughed outright.
“I said, listen!” I was trying for imperious, though it only earned more chuckles. “I’ve been ‘floundering’ in the water my entire life, and considering I was the one with the necessary equipment, not to mention the only one following the appropriate rules of engagement, I don’t really think you’re in a position to be criticizing when it was you who swam directly into my board.”
I picked up my pint glass as Caomhán watched, still chuckling, with one black brow infuriatingly arched.
Well, I had thought it was a half-decent tirade.
I raised the glass. “ Sláinte ,” I pronounced, in the most haughty Irish I could conjure before taking a large gulp. Then I spat it all over Caomhán’s shirt.
There was a horrible pause. Then, Jock and Phelan broke into peals of laughter, clutching their stomachs while rivulets of beer dripped down Caomhán’s face as he jumped up.
“Jaysus!” he cried as he caught the bar towel Phelan tossed his way. “You can’t keep a thing to yourself, can you? Not even your drink!”
“‘Jaysus’ yourself,” I said, mimicking his thick accent. “You knew that beer was completely shite, didn’t you? Phelan, what is that stuff?”
Phelan, who had already poured me a glass of water and a fresh pint of Guinness, shrugged and handed me Phelan shrugged and handed me both drinks with a wry smile. “A bad batch. Ginny’ll use it for bread. But you did ask for it, so I thought you knew what you were getting.”
Ginny, Phelan’s wife, ran the kitchen, which served traditional Irish fare that often included some kind of beer bread.
Caomhán had given up trying to clean himself up and was now back to grinning. I downed the water, then took several gulps of Guinness, trying to wash the taste of rancid mash off my tongue. Even though all three of the men had obviously been in on the joke, I quite unfairly wanted to blame it all on this stranger who hardly knew me yet had targeted me as public enemy number one.
“Careful, girl, or you’ll make yourself sick,” Caomhán remarked when I started on the rest of my beer.
I ignored him, finished the pint, and turned to Phelan. “How quickly can Ginny make up a fish sandwich?”
Phelan shrugged and held up a few gnarled fingers in response, which I took to mean a few minutes.
“Could I have one, please? To go?”
Phelan nodded and hobbled back to the kitchen on bowed legs, though not before Caomhán yelled, “One for me too!”
I glared at him. “Jock? Perhaps your next Irish class should be about how to put off unwanted advances from strange men. I’m sure a lot of the tourists could benefit.”
Jock guffawed but stifled his laughter with a gulp of beer when Caomhán shot him a piercing look.
“Caomhán’s just joking,” he said. “He’s a good man. We’ve known him all his poor life.”
Caomhán just moved his shoulders up and down and tossed a lock of straight black hair that fell into his face.
The thump of the sandwiches on the bar top interrupted us. I paid Phelan and left the pub with a farewell to him and Jock, whom I’d be seeing the next day in class.
“Oi, girl! Wait, will you?”
A few strides from the pub, I turned to find Caomhán striding after me, sandwich in hand. The soles of his black boots slapped the pavement.
“What do you want?” I asked. “Is the fish bad, too?”
Another grin broke through those sharp features, but he quickly reined it in and stuck out his other hand instead. “Let’s start over, shall we?”
I stared at his hand, not particularly eager to see the interior workings of a man who seemed so interested in making me a fool.
“I’ll not play you for a fool again,” he said, as if reading my mind. “Cassandra.”
For a moment, I wondered if he might be a seer, but decided against it when I felt none of the telltale pressure of someone trying to read my mind. Tentatively, I placed my hand in his. Almost instantly I could feel the familiar trickle of water and a deep hankering for fish flowing through his…flipper?
“You are a shifter,” I said, yanking my hand back and cradling it like a wounded paw. “A seal.” There was something very uncomfortable about his grasp. Like it would lead to a path deep inside myself where animal urges and instincts threatened to swallow the rest of me up.
“I am, of course,” he said evenly, as if I’d just pointed out he had black hair. “And you’re a seer. What of it?”
I balked. “You knew?”
“Of course, I knew. You fair reek of it.”
I wrinkled my nose, trying to figure out just what it was about me that smelled so distinctly seer-like. “They told me to watch out for people like you. They didn’t say it was because you’re annoying enough to drive a person crazy.”
“I apologized for the beer, didn’t I? A man can’t help but want a bit of fun.”
Caomhán fell into stride alongside me as I walked toward the end of the village, where the primary school stood amidst a cluster of other cottages. I still had a bit of time before the girls finished, so I decided to visit the nearby ruins of a medieval church, which was really just four stone walls sunken into a grass-covered knoll that almost seemed to have grown around them. It was a place where many on the island came for a bit of quiet. Unlikely with the man trailing me.
“Do you mind?” I asked over my shoulder. “This isn’t exactly the kind of place where jokes are appropriate.”
Caomhán loped beside me and kept his stride even with mine. “I’ve as much a right to visit me namesake as you have. No more jokes, I promise.” He held up both hands in surrender. His voice, though still full of humor, carried enough sincerity that I said nothing and continued up the hill with him.
“Your namesake, huh?” I asked as we reached the ruins and stepped into the shade provided by the sunken church.
The air was cooler down here, and the grass grew lush and thick, protected from harsh sea winds and benefiting from consistent care by the islands’ residents. I sat down on a rock and took out my sandwich.
Caomhán began unwrapping his too. “ Sea , me gran was a great one for church. She used to come to this one almost every day when we lived here. Said she felt the Holy Spirit, so my mother named me after this place.” He shrugged. “It’s a bit much to be named after a saint. Maybe that’s why I try so hard not to be one.”
I nodded, knowing something about the pressures of a namesake. “So you did grow up here, then?”
“In that wee house over there.” He pointed to a cluster of small white houses. “Just haven’t been back for some time.”
“Does your grandmother still live there?”
He shook his head. “No, she’s been dead these past ten years.”
“And your parents? Do either of them still live here?”
“My father is a miserable cunt. Left me mam before I was born, and she’s gone too. I’ve never met him.”
“My family is gone too,” I offered.
We fell quiet, munching our sandwiches and listening to the sounds of thrushes playing around the fallen church. I knew something of that kind of loss, the sort that made you want to stay away from a place. As much as I loved Oregon, it would be a good long while before I’d venture back.
“So why are you back?” The question seemed important, but once I said it, I immediately felt like I was prying.
Caomhán, however, cocked his head as if I had posed a conundrum he hadn’t even considered. “You can’t just read my mind?” His lopsided grin earned another dirty look just the same, which, of course, only made that stupid smile widen. “I can’t really say, actually. But if I had to—and knowing you, you won’t let me do otherwise—I’d wager there’s something about the island for me. Have you ever felt that a place seems to live and breathe and act all on its own? It speaks to you like it knows you’re family and cries to your heart until you return. I suppose I felt it was time to come home.” He snorted through his nose. “You think me mad.”
I shook my head. “No, I don’t think you’re mad at all.” I had felt those odd callings he spoke of, but I wasn’t sure I would again. Not for a long time. “I’m sorry about your parents, though.”
“That’s kind of you. Though I’d guess you know something of loss yourself. Happened recently, did it?”
I furrowed my brow. “Is it that obvious?”
Caomhán raised his nose to the air. “You wear it like a perfume.”
I chuckled. “Loss has a scent too?”
He closed his eyes, took a deep breath through his nose, and held it for a long time like he was savoring a fine bouquet. “Everything has a scent. It doesn’t smell bad, loss. Just strong when it’s new. Sort of the way a forest will overwhelm you when you can’t find your way out of it.” He opened one eye. “Yours hasn’t aged yet.”
I looked down at the ground. “I lost someone close to me in February.”
“I’m sorry for that as well.”
He didn’t push me to say more, and I didn’t offer. We finished the rest of our sandwiches, and I crumpled up the wrappings and stuffed them into my knapsack to save for the Connollys’ compost bin. Robbie was maniacal about composting everything for the farm’s voracious soil needs.
“I have to run some other errands,” I said as I stood and brushed grass off the back of my jeans. Something made me hesitate to mention the girls. “You walking back?”
Caomhán lay back against one stone wall and shook his head. “No, I’ll stay a bit longer now I know we’re proper friends. Commune with the spirits and such.” That irreverent grin broke the somber mood. “You go on.”
“All right." I stopped just before climbing out of the sunken remains. “I hope…you find whatever you’re looking for here or whatever it is that’s called you. You know, so long as you don’t drop in on me again.”
“You never know. Maybe I already found it.” He held my gaze for a moment before closing his eyes toward the sun. “Thank you for the chat, Cassandra. I’ll see you back in the water again, I’m sure.”
I was rewarded with another small smile before I turned to leave.
“And, Cassandra?”
I turned back and found him looking straight up through the absent roof of the church, where the clouds played across the wide blue sky.
“It’ll get better,” he said and closed his eyes.