48. Kilronan
48
KILRONAN
Although I am imperfect in many ways, I want my brothers and relations to know what I’m really like, so that they can see what it is that inspires my life.
— ST. PATRICK, CONFESSIO
A s the ferry docked in the harbor of Inis Mór, the largest of the Aran Islands, I wiped my palms on the sides of my jeans, feeling as nervous as I’d ever felt.
Why, I couldn’t quite understand. I was PhD, for the love of Brigid. I’d stood in front of grouchy scholars and listened to them poke through my intellectual abilities too many times to count. I’d braved classrooms full of irritable and apathetic undergraduates for six years. I’d withstood the horrors of the academic job market.
But what was waiting for me on this island seemed like one of the most intimidating things of my short life.
Penny had called out to Ciarán when she died, so I had assumed my grandfather was dead. But what if the shifter who had seduced her long ago was still alive? The idea of meeting the man responsible for my mother’s birth—who in all likelihood had abandoned the two of them before Gran was forced to leave Ireland—was overwhelming, to say the least.
What if he didn’t like me?
What if he turned out to be a horrible person?
What if this entire venture was a mistake?
Caomhán was slouched on the dock when I arrived, munching a snack of smoked herring in his uniform of worn jeans and a faded T-shirt while he eyed tourist girls meandering around the town.
“Knew you’d show,” he said as he hoisted my backpack over his shoulder and held out the small tin. “Herring?”
“If that’s not a giveaway to what you are, I don’t know what is.”
He bared his teeth and tipped the last of the oily fish into his mouth before tossing the tin into a bin at the end of the dock. “Smoked fish is a national snack, Cassie. It just means I’m Irish. As are you.”
I followed him into the town, which was substantially busier than Inis Oírr. There were several restaurants and pubs, many of which boasted outdoor patios with blue umbrellas shading people spending a holiday on the island, possibly here for the upcoming solstice celebrations. Music floated in and out of the pubs, along with the rabble that only accompanied crowds. The sound was strange after living in near-solitude for almost two months.
A large Celtic cross stood tall in the middle of the town’s crossroads, and the cobbled streets led up to several shops. I made a mental note to stop at the sweater market before leaving.
“A bit more going on here, isn’t there?”
I smiled, confirming that Caomhán had basically read my mind. “Is this where you go when you’re not in the water or badgering Jock?”
He snorted. “Not unless I want to be nagged to death. I’ve me grandmother’s old place on Inis Oírr, so I only come to Kilronan when I must. They’ve been biting my ear off about bringing you, though.”
I followed him up one street to a large house a few blocks off the main square. It was made of the same weathered, whitewashed stucco as many of the other buildings in the town, and it was easily the largest house in the village, a miniature fortress at the end of the pitted road.
Caomhán strode up to the bright red door. “Ready?”
Before I could ask ready for what, he pushed open the door, and we were met by chaos.
The foyer opened into a large, warm living room swarmed with people. I counted at least seven children ranging between two and ten rolling around on a thick braided rug while two women sat in rocking chairs, one nursing a baby, the other soothing a small child. Many shared Caomhán’s inky dark mop. Black hair like mine.
“ Dia dhaoibh !” Caomhán’s deep voice called, and as if on cue, the mass of children hopped up from their wrestling match on the carpet and tackled him to the ground. “Get off me, you mongrels!”
But Caomhán’s laughter rumbled through the room, and the children shrieked and barked some more in their joyful frenzy.
“Who’s this?”
A woman with thick brown hair threaded with gray and plaited over one shoulder appeared from a door across the room, holding a dishrag. Behind her, two other similarly hued girls appeared. The woman frowned when she saw me, but her eyes lit up when they dropped to the wrestling match at my feet.
“Oi! Let him free!” she snapped at the children, who immediately toppled back onto the carpet to continue wrestling with each other.
If I hadn’t known she was the matriarch of the house before, I did then.
“So, you finally decided to grace us with your presence, did you?” she asked Caomhán as he pulled himself up.
“ Aintín ,” he said formally, though with a smirk that didn’t match his solemn tone.
They traded a quick kiss before the woman turned to me, eyes sharpened as before.
“So?” she asked again, lapsing into Irish. “Are we bringing strangers home now?”
“Cassandra, this is my auntie, Aoife Mac Conmara,” Caomhán said.
Aoife reared like she’d been smacked in the face. “We’re sharing all our secrets with strangers, are we?”
“Check again, Aintín . She’s not as strange as you might think. It’s masked a bit by her power, but it’s there.”
Aoife’s eyes darted between us, and her slightly hooked nose twitched before her blue eyes popped open. “A seer? With Ciarán Mac Conmara’s blood?”
“I wouldn’t have believed it either had I not seen her in the water,” Caomhán concurred. “She’s no murúch , but the closest thing for a halfheart.”
“Halfheart?” I wondered.
“Means you’re not a shifter, though you’ve got the blood,” Aoife said curtly.
“We’ve all got a bit of animal inside us,” Caomhán clarified with a wink. “But shifters think those who can’t change are only living with half their heart.” He turned back to his mother. “Sure, and she’s family, Aintín . Come home to meet her kin.” He nodded toward the rest of the clan who had all stopped what they were doing to observe the interactions between us. “These are my cousins and yours too, Roisin and Maggie, and the rest are their weans. Say hello.”
I gave a feeble wave to the women and children all eyeing me openly. I suddenly felt like I had walked straight into a wolf’s den and was being considered for dinner. Family or not.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “What exactly is your relation to Ciarán?”
Caomhán’s eyes gleamed, and something about his smirk told me the answer before he even spoke. “He was my grandad’s brother. Me mam’s uncle. Aoife’s uncle as well.”
Aoife grunted, almost as if she would prefer not to acknowledge the relation.
“So that would make you…”
“Your cousin, like I said.” His mouth spread into a wide grin. “Isn’t that right, Aintín ?”
Aoife—otherwise known as my first cousin, once removed—just grunted again. Then she turned and barked a quick command. Without question, all the children and their mothers departed the room for the backyard.
“Come,” she said to me and Caomhán and without waiting for a response, turned on her heel and marched out of the room.
We followed her into a light-showered kitchen at the back of the house that looked more industrial than residential. One side of it was lined with shelves holding plastic vats and glass jars of varying sizes. On the stove, a stock pot full of something highly acidic was bubbling and making my eyes water, and on the enormous counter island, a huge fish was splayed open, mid-fillet next to a wicked knife.
Aoife put on a pair of plastic gloves from a box on the counter and picked up the knife to continue filleting the fish.
“Aoife and my cousins sell the family catch in the village and the fish markets in Galway,” Caomhán explained. “Some fresh, and they pickle the rest.”
I managed not to wrinkle my nose. That explained the smell of vinegar. “More siblings?”
“More cousins. Second or third, or maybe twice removed. I can never remember which comes from which mother.” Caomhán shrugged, almost as if it didn’t matter. “Most of the fishermen are my uncles, though. Plain men, but good on boats.”
“Did Ciarán’s siblings, ah, have a lot of children?” I asked as Aoife slid the knife under the fish’s spine with practiced ease, then yanked out the bones all at once before dumping them into a bin of scraps and setting the finished fillets into a box stuffed with ice.
“Grandda was a special kind of rogue, wasn’t he, Aintín ?” Caomhán slid onto a stool at the stainless steel island.
“No different than the rest of you,” Aoife cut back as she slipped a knife into the back of one particularly big herring. “Turn thirty-three, and you can’t keep your pecker between your legs.”
I nearly choked. Caomhán just shrugged, seemingly unphased by his mother describing him as a playboy.
“My father had children by at least six different women,” Aoife told me like she was describing the weather. “His brother was just the same.”
“And that…that doesn’t bother you?” I wondered.
“Might have, once. But if I held a grudge against every woman who fell under his spell, we’d have no friends west of Dublin,” Aoife said as she attacked the fish again. Ciarán, though…I didn’t know he had any. So who’s your gran, then? Your type lives a bit longer than ours, but we might have known her. I never knew Uncle was with a seer. He was frightened of them, like everyone else.”
“That’s funny,” I said. “Seers are terrified of shifters.”
“Except you,” Caomhán said with a leer, then proceeded to tell his mother the story of how we met.
Aoife’s stern expression didn’t change, but her eyes glimmered at me. “Your grandmother,” she pressed when he was finished.
I hesitated, unsure if I should say. But though I didn’t have the keen sense of smell these distant relations had, I found I could sense something else about them—the fact that I could trust them.
“Her name was Penelope,” I said. “She went by Monroe.”
At that, both Aoife and Caomhán froze.
“Do you mean Penelope áine O’Briain ?” she said, using the Irish version of Gran’s real surname.
I nodded. “You knew her?”
Aoife and Caomhán glanced at each other and back at me.
“Well, you could say that,” Aoife replied slowly. “There’s not a fae in all of Ireland that doesn’t know Penny O’Brien. And of what she took when she disappeared. The murúch, the lost mage, and her Secret, fled from their island home. Never to be heard from again.”
“ Dia ár sábháil ,” Caomhán murmured. “So she’s alive, then? And what of Ciarán?"
Both leaned in, their fathomless black eyes seeming more animal than ever.
I swallowed thickly. “I—no. No, she’s not. She—she died. A few months ago. As far as Ciarán, I never knew him. I don’t know what happened to him.”
“So, that’s who you were mourning in the church that day.” Caomhán nodded as if something made sense.
“Penny was murdered,” I said, hating the way my voice still shook when I said it out loud. “By someone called Caleb Lynch.”
The air inside the kitchen grew heavy and still.
“Caomhán,” Aoife said slowly as she set the knife down. “I think we shall move our little chat to the office. Take Cassandra in there and open up the good whiskey. I’ll bring the glasses.”
Once we were seated in a dark-paneled den lined with club chairs and a beaten executive desk in one corner, Aoife handed me one of the glasses Caomhán had helpfully filled with whiskey and waited for me to take a sip before starting.
“Well, then,” she said. “Let’s hear it.”
I hesitated. I was supposed to keep these things secret, wasn’t I? And yet, it was becoming clear to me that these people were some of the family Penny had risked her life to find. Kinship seemed to shine through both of the familiar faces, and my tongue loosened the moment I’d set foot in this house. I’d never looked at anyone and seen so much of myself before, and the familiarity of it all was unsettling, to say the least.
Keep it hidden, Penny had told me.
And yet, as Jonathan had said, it was the time for truth.
I’d been holed up in that little house for weeks, trying and failing to find myself in solitude.
But solitude had been the story of my life, and it hadn’t gotten me anywhere.
So, I made a decision.
“You can’t tell anyone,” I began.
Caomhán snorted. “Well, I’ve no great love for the Council, considering I’ve been working against them for the last twenty years.”
“Working to get yourself killed, more like,” Aoife added dryly.
“Why should we have to keep ourselves so secret?” Caomhán retorted. “A thousand years of repression, and this is what happens. A seer with more power than anyone’s seen for generations, and she’s got no idea what to do with any of it.”
My jaw dropped. “What—I—how do you know that?”
Caomhán grinned, revealing two incisors slightly longer than I’d expect on the average person. “I could smell your power the minute you stepped on the island, Cass. Plus, you mumble to yourself when you’re waiting for waves. Didn’t you know that?” He turned back to his aunt. “Were we not all obsessed with keeping hid, maybe Cassandra would have grown up with a bit more acceptance of herself.”
“What do you mean, you’re working against the Council?” I said once I’d recovered from my shock. “What have you been doing?”
“Fae liberation. From rules. Stupid feckin’ laws chasing us into shadows.” Caomhán shook his head while he fingered his glass. “I’m tired of having me life controlled by a bunch of sasanaigh . And I’m not the only one.”
“Caomhán!” I said suddenly, recalling the short conversation Jonathan had had with the murúch in Dublin. “The Order, whatever that is. They’re tracking you.”
Caomhán leaned back in his chair with a satisfied expression. “Well, I should hope so. Otherwise, I’m not affecting a thing, am I?”
“There was another shifter I met,” I said. “In Dublin. A friend of Jonathan’s. We met him at a pub called The Roving Raider.”
“Ah, that’d be Cary, though I wouldn’t say he and Jonny are friends, exactly. Aintín , wasn’t old Cary a sweetheart of yours once upon a time?”
“He’s a gobshite,” Aoife pronounced but didn’t argue the point.
“What else did he say?” Caomhán pressed. “Aside from mentioning yours truly?”
“That someone named Beatty was killed,” I said. “And a raven was seen flying from the scene. I’m pretty sure they meant Caleb Lynch. Er, Jonathan’s father.”
He paled at that and quickly glanced at Aoife, who confirmed what I said with a quick nod.
“Damn,” he said quietly. “I didn’t know.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to be the bearer of bad news.”
Caomhán shook away my fear. “It was always coming. The war’s just creeping closer. It’ll be even here soon enough.”
I frowned. “What war?”
“Between those who want out of the Council’s grip and those loyal to their cause. It’s not just Caleb Lynch who wants what Penelope O’Brien was hiding, Cassie. We’re dying, all of us. And we need the cure.”
I frowned. “Dying? Who’s dying?”
He gestured around the room, as if there was something there I should see. “The fae. Little by little, all the magic in the world is decaying, like a cancer’s killing it off. There’s fewer of us now than there were even fifty years ago, much less five hundred or two thousand, when the Council first began. More and more fae are having plain children. Others have been dying too early, never knowing their true selves. We became obsessed with secrecy and stopped telling the young who they really were. ‘Natural selection,’ they called it. But it’s just death in a bottle.”
“And you think coming out will change that?” I said.
“There’s some who think the Secret of the Magi is Pandora’s box, with hope still left inside. Sure, and I’ve heard that one. Maybe it’s the elixir of life. A map to the fountain of youth. So Caleb Lynch wants it because he thinks it’ll make him live forever since he gave it up the first time to a siren’s call. But others think hope comes in the form of something different.”
Now I leaned closer too. “Like what?”
Caomhán shrugged before tipping back a slug of whiskey. “Dunno. But I think the real secret is the one we’re all keeping. And I’ll fight to the end of my days, whether that happens in forty years or four hundred, for us to give up that particular ghost.”
“I don’t see how that’s related to our mortality,” I said. “Or Penny’s Secret.”
“Nor I,” Aoife concurred. “Never have.”
“So you think he’s wrong?”
“I think we deserve to live the way we want, as we are, death or not,” she said. “I don’t care about immortality or the Council or any of their shite. But I do agree with my nephew on one point. Secrets ruin the soul. They eat you up inside. Ours is killing us, I believe that, so it’s time to let it go.”
I was quiet for a long minute. Was that what was wrong with me? Had Gran been all wrong the entire time, hiding my status and so much of the fae world from me? Was that the reason that every time I used my abilities, everything devolved into chaos?
“Smell that?” Aoife murmured, watching me.
“Sure, I do,” her nephew replied. “Comes off her in waves, I’ve noticed. When she’s turning over something in her mind. Something important.”
“I never realized how much shifters have in common with seers,” I said dryly, eliciting sharp laughter from my audience.
“What is it, then?” Aoife prodded. “Is it related to why you’ve come here?”
I swallowed, unsure of how much exactly to tell them. Clearly, they knew more about the rumors surrounding Gran than Jonathan or anyone else probably realized. But they didn’t know about my inheritance, my status as an oracle, or the fact that the box Gran had been guarding was currently in a closet on the Connollys’ second floor.
“I can’t explain it entirely,” I said. “Not—not yet, if you don’t mind. But it will require me to meet the Council sooner rather than later. So, I came here to apprentice with Caitlin Connolly. Learn my abilities in ways I never did before. And I’m… struggling, to say the least. But it, um, starts much earlier than that.”
I went back and told them of Gran’s death, but not the package that had arrived. As I described her horrible end, both Aoife and Caomhán shuddered. I talked about meeting Jonathan as the executor of Gran’s estate, and the fact that I was inheriting her position on the Council. And then, without mentioning the part about being proclaimed an oracle, I explained as best I could the nature of my abilities. Their relationship, the touch. The pandemonium of it all.
“So I’m wondering if your theory has something to do with my problems,” I finished. “Maybe I can’t control these things because I’ve been in the dark for too long. Caitlin says I have to find my shape to control things, but maybe I can’t. Maybe something in me died, just like Penny.”
Aoife watched me for a moment more, nostrils twitching as she inhaled. Then she got up without a word and left the room, only to return a few minutes later carrying a bowl of water. She set it on the desk in front of me and resumed her seat behind it.
“Do you See anything now?” she asked. “In that chair, maybe? Something important that happened here?”
I was about to shake my head—since having this conversation, any of the bits and pieces of memories attached to the house had quieted. Perhaps with my focus on family. I really didn’t know. But as soon as she mentioned it, a vision of a little girl with brown pigtails and a blue pinafore sprang from my touch on the chair arm. An adorable, gray-eyed child, pouting as she received chastisement. For what, I couldn’t tell, because just as quickly, she was overrun by sights, smells, and sounds of all sorts.
I pressed both hands to my ears and squeezed my eyes shut. The visions ceased. “I did just then. Too much, as always.” It was like a faucet that either ran at full blast or nothing at all.
“You said you feel calm in the water,” Aoife said. “At peace.”
I nodded. “That’s correct. Penny taught me a mantra, actually, to help calm my Sight.” I closed my eyes, and Gran’s weathered, wise face came to mind. “Touch the water. Breathe the air. Feel the earth. Light the fire. Hear the silence.”
A loud snort emitted from in front of me. I opened my eyes to find both Aoife and Caomhán not even bothering to hide their laughter.
“What?” I demanded, temper flaring. “What’s so funny?”
“Calm down,” Caomhán replied. “Jaysus, Cass, if I didn’t know you had shifter blood before, I would now.”
“Isn’t it just like a witch to steal our song?” Aoife commented.
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“That’s a lullaby we sing to the kids, teaching them to control their more, ah, feral instincts,” Caomhán explained with a toothy grin that made him look more like a shark than a seal. “I’m guessing Penny learned it from Ciarán and taught it to you.”
“Not entirely,” Aoife said. “She left half out. Added a line to fit her message.”
“How does it go, then?” I wasn’t sure whether to feel hurt or fascinated. It was such an essential part of my upbringing, this mantra.
“Well, it’s typically in Irish, but I’ll give you the English version for your sake.” Aoife cleared her throat, then sang in a competent, if plain voice:
Touch the water
Breathe air
Light the fire
Hear the silence
Scent the wicked
Taste the good
Kiss thy love
To know thyself
She opened her eyes, which sparkled with knowledge. “There’s more, but that’s the heart of it. Calms the weans at night, teaches them not to act like wolf pups all the bleedin’ time.” She nodded at the bowl. “Put your hand in that, then.”
Touch the water .
I shook my head. “Caitlin says no coping mechanisms. Nothing to quiet my mind. We’re trying to open it. And then focus.”
“Have you ever tried to See when you’re in the water?” Aoife asked. “Instead of using it to make your visions go away?”
I opened my mouth to say no but realized I couldn’t. Gran’s mantra had always been a way to find silence, and so I’d always thought of water as an antidote. Nothing more.
“Try it,” Aoife urged. “Humor me.”
Cautiously, I dipped my fingers into the bowl. Once again, that gorgeous calm spread through me, slithering about my mind like a balm to the insanity I was constantly fighting off. It was cool and clean, and I was loath to let it go.
“Now touch the chair again. See what happens now.”
Hesitantly, I dropped my other hand to the chair arm. At first, nothing happened. The room remained still and quiet, with Caomhán and Aoife both watching me closely.
I shook my head in frustration. Why did it have to be this way? All or nothing. Chaos or perfect peace? I didn’t want much. Just to See the little girl. I wanted to know her story.
As if on command, the brown-haired girl in the blue pinafore bloomed in front of me, sitting on this very chair, along with a man with much darker hair that reached his shoulders crouched beside her.
His eyes weren’t gray like hers. Instead, they were a bright, oceanic blue I recognized. Like my own.
“Please, Da,” the girl begged, tears welling around her eyes as she clutched a dolly to her chest. “Please don’t go. Why do you have to go?”
“Aoife,” he hummed before kissing the girl’s head. “One day you’ll understand. Love is the most powerful thing in the universe, and my brother’s has disappeared. I must find them before they’re gone forever. Can you understand that, a stor ?”
The girl hiccupped and nodded as she reached up to hug her father. Though she didn’t understand him. How could she?
“I’ll be back,” he said into her dark pigtails. “As soon as I can find my brother and Penny and bring her home, I’ll be back to see you. I promise.”
Before she could answer, the vision floated away. I looked down and realized my hand had risen from the chair arm just like hers. I pulled my other hand from the bowl of water.
“What did you See, then?” Aoife asked. She and her nephew traded glances. “Something sad, I’d wager. And familiar.” She sniffed. “Do you smell that?”
“Like Grandda,” Caomhán agreed. “Haven’t scented that for years.”
“It was you,” I said as I dropped both hands to my lap, my left fingertips still wet. “You’re the little girl in the blue pinafore. Oh, Aoife, I’m sorry you had to say goodbye to your father like that. Especially if—if my family had anything to do with it.”
Aoife’s hardened face softened slightly. “Oh, that. Well. It’s long past now.”
“Do you know what happened to him?” I wondered. “Did he ever find them?” I didn’t think so. My mother would have said something about her own uncle. Wouldn’t she?
Aoife shook her head. “No, he was killed a month after he left.”
“Murdered, more like it.”
Aoife looked up. “Caomhán, don’t start.”
“Don’t start what? You want to ignore the fact that the bleedin’ Council killed your father?”
“He fought arrest.”
“For being his fuckin’ self in front of one fuckin’ human!” Caomhán shouted. “Killed. What’s fair in that?”
The two of them bristled at each other for a full minute, and for a moment, I wondered if both might transform into seals right here in the office just so they could wallop each other properly. It was clear now what was responsible for their feverish support of living openly as fae. Doing so killed Aoife’s father. My great-uncle.
Above the door, a clock chimed three.
I stood up. “I should get back. The last ferry to Inis Oírr leaves in thirty minutes.”
Aoife nodded and stood too, along with Caomhán. They walked me to the door of the house and opened it. Children’s laughter floated through the air—the sounds of a raucous family unit, built mostly on strong women.
Something else we had in common. Or once had.
“Thank you for having me,” I said honestly. “I hope to come again.”
“You’re welcome next week for lunch,” Aoife said. “And whenever you need to talk. About anything at all.”
“I—” I stopped, unsure of what to say. It wasn’t that I wasn’t sure I could trust them—that doubt was completely gone at this point. But I didn’t want to endanger them anymore than anyone else involved in this strange plight of mine.
“Thank you,” I said again. “I appreciate it.”
“The thing about murúcha , we’re clannish creatures,” Aoife said. “Once you’re in, it’s for life. There’s no one you can trust more than family.”
She set a thick paw on my shoulder. Certainty and knowledge flooded my system, along with the memories of a girl on the knee of a dark-haired man I recognized as her uncle. My grandfather.
She squeezed and let go. “Welcome to the family, cousin. You need anything—anything at all, mind—don’t hesitate to ask.”