Chapter 11 Catherine
Catherine
The fire had burned low, a red eye in the black maw of the hearth, but Sully wouldn’t let it die.
He sat on the floor with his back against the stones, legs splayed and feet bare, tending the coals with the poker like it owed him money.
The rest of the house was a shroud—my mother asleep in the back room, my sisters breathing even and soft, my father out in the byre with the bottle for company.
I could have gone to bed. I could have left Sully to his watch.
Instead, I sat with him, knees folded, my back pressed to the bench, our hands close enough to touch but not quite.
He didn’t look at me, not directly. He kept his gaze on the fire, poking at the embers, shifting them until they hissed and glowed.
Every so often, he’d wince, a half-flinch when the left arm twinged.
The wound was fresh, the bandage already brown at the edges.
I wanted to scold him for moving it so much, but it would have been wasted breath.
Sully didn’t take care of himself, and he liked it that way.
“What’s it like, then?” I said, keeping my voice low. “The world you came from?”
He didn’t answer right off. He picked up a stick, snapped it, and tossed the halves into the fire.
Then he sat back, eyes squinting against the heat.
“It’s loud,” he said, after a while. “So loud you can’t think straight.
Even when it’s quiet, there’s always a hum.
Always a screen, always a clock, always something chewing at your head. ”
I thought of the church bells, the crows, the drunkards on market day. I thought of my sisters’ laughter, my father’s shouts, and the wind in the chimney. “Is it better?”
He laughed, but it didn’t have any bite. “Not really. Just different.”
I wanted him to say it was a miracle. I wanted him to tell me the future was gold and silk and safety. Instead, he let the silence creep in, the way he always did. I scooted closer and wrapped my arms around my knees. “Tell me something only you would know,” I said. “Something that proves it.”
He turned, finally, and looked at me. Not the way men usually looked at me—none of that weighing, none of that hunger. Sully looked at me like he was trying to memorize my face, like the shape of my mouth and the set of my jaw was a riddle he could solve if he stared long enough.
“In my time,” he said, “they have boxes that fit in your pocket. You can talk to anyone in the world with it. Take pictures. Send words, songs, whole stories, and they travel through the air.”
I tried to imagine it. A magic box that talked and listened. “That’s just witchery,” I said, smiling.
“Witchery or not, it’s real.” He grinned, a crooked thing. “You’d have loved it. You could tell everyone exactly what you thought, all the time.”
I snorted. “And you’d have hated it. No more hiding behind the plow.”
He didn’t argue.
He ran his thumb along the edge of the poker, then set it down, careful this time.
“In my time, there are these bikes. Not like your Da’s cart.
Machines, with engines, wheels thicker than your wrist. They go so fast the wind peels your skin back, and the noise makes your bones shake.
You ride with your friends, side by side, and it’s like you own the whole world, just for a little while. ”
He said it like a prayer, the way some men talk about the first pint after Mass.
I tried to picture it. “Did you do that? Ride the machines?”
He nodded, then flexed his left hand. “That’s where I got this,” he said, pointing at the shamrock tattoo. The skin around it was swollen, the green lines jagged. “It’s a mark, for the club. For family.”
I reached out, almost without thinking, and ran my finger along the tattoo. The skin was warm, the hair rough. “It suits you,” I said.
He didn’t pull away. For a second, we just sat there, my hand on his wrist, his eyes searching mine.
“I missed you,” he said. Not a question, not a plea.
“I missed you, too,” I said.
He let out a breath, shaky. “You don’t have to come,” he said, voice soft. “When I go. You could stay. Your family—”
I cut him off with a look. “Don’t be stupid. I buried you once already, Sully. I’m not doing it again.”
He looked at me, really looked. The pain was there, old and clean. I knew it as well as he did. We’d grown up on it, fed on it.
I let go of his wrist, but the skin remembered. “What’s it like, where you’re from?” I asked, softer. “Is it lonely?”
He shrugged. “Not when I’m with you.”
That did it. The tears came, sudden and stupid.
I wiped at them with the back of my hand, but he caught my wrist, pulled me close, and tucked me into his chest. The blood smell was strong, but I didn’t care.
I breathed him in. He held me for a long time, rocking a little, like he was trying to fix us both.
“Does it scare you?” I asked, voice muffled against his neck.
He thought about it. “It does,” he said. “But not as much as the idea of losing you again.”
I pulled back and met his eyes. “You promise you’ll protect me?”
He nodded, slow. “I’ll die trying.”
I laughed, a wet, ugly sound. “We’ve already tried that.”
He grinned, then winced when his left arm twinged.
I wiped my nose. “Show me something from your world.”
He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a coin. It was heavy, round, stamped with a skull and a wheel. He handed it to me.
I turned it over in my palm. “What’s it mean?”
He pointed at the skull. “We wear it on our jackets. It means brotherhood.” He pointed at the wheel. “It means freedom.”
I liked the way it felt. I tucked it into my dress, close to my skin.
He leaned forward, eyes shining in the firelight. “If you could go anywhere—any time—what would you want?”
I thought for a while. “Somewhere there’s no hunger. No one telling us who to be, or what to believe.” I looked at him. “Somewhere you’re not running from the grave.”
He touched my cheek, just once. “I’ll find it for you.”
The words burned, sweet and sharp. “You’re a liar, Sully O’Toole.”
He laughed, and this time it was true.
We sat close and warm, until the fire went to coals and the world outside thawed from black to blue. I dozed with my head on his shoulder, woke when the wind rattled the window.
He shifted, careful not to wake me, but I caught his hand before he could move away. “Are you leaving?”
He shook his head. “Just thinking.”
“About what?”
He looked at me, all the way through, like he could see the thoughts before I spoke them. “About how this is the only time I ever felt alive.”
I snorted. “You’re not exactly alive now, are you?”
He smiled. “I’m alive enough.”
He reached for something in his boot—an old habit, from before. Instead, he pulled out a length of leather cord. He looped it, knotted it, then knelt in front of me, slow and careful so as not to open the wound.
He took my left hand and tied the cord around my finger, tight enough to leave a mark.
“A ring,” he said, voice thick. “So you remember.”
I stared at the cord, then at him. “I’d remember anyway.”
He gripped my hand in both of his, eyes swimming. “I crossed time itself to find you, Catherine Dunn. I’ll cross it a hundred times more, if that’s what it takes.”
My vision blurred. I wanted to tell him it was impossible, that the world would swallow us whole.
Instead, I just nodded, once. He leaned in and kissed my palm, right at the base of the ring finger.
His lips were dry, but it was the warmest thing I’d ever felt.
I held the hand up, admired the crude knot, the way it fit me and no other.
He sat back on his heels, breathing heavy, waiting.
I said, “You’re a fool,” but I couldn’t stop smiling.
“Do you want to see the dawn?” he asked.
I nodded. We opened the door together, stepped into the cold, and watched the sky go from steel to gold. In that moment, I wasn’t afraid. Not of the soldiers, not of the priest, not of the world ahead. He was real, and he was mine, and I’d cross time for him, too.
A sound cracked the calm. Hooves on wet stone, pounding hard and fast. I grabbed Sully’s wrist out of reflex, but he’d already gone still, a predator scenting trouble.
“Maeve and Nora?” he asked, but his voice said he knew it wasn’t.
I shook my head. “Too soon. They’d be on foot from the mill.”
The hooves drew closer. Not a troop, not a cavalry charge.
One horse, frantic, tearing up the lane.
A black shape rounded the bend and skidded to a halt at our gate.
The rider nearly slid off the saddle—long brown cloak flapping, hair wild.
I recognized him, even through the mess. Father Declan O’Shea.
He half-fell, half-dismounted, clutching his left thigh. His face was a paste of sweat and dirt, eyes wild, jaw clenched against pain. When he saw us, he staggered forward, boots dragging furrows in the mud.
“Please,” he gasped. He made it three steps before his leg buckled and he slammed into the ground, cloak pooling around him like a collapsed tent.
Sully got there first, lifting the old man under the arms. I grabbed the horse’s reins and lashed it to the fence, then sprinted back to help Sully half-carry, half-drag Father Declan into the kitchen.
He reeked of blood, holy oil, and something bitter—fear or adrenaline or both.
He tried to talk, but I cut him off. “Sit. Let me see.” I pressed him into Da’s chair and ran my hand up the outside of his leg.
His cassock was torn to ribbons and soaked through with blood, fresh and sticky at the seam of his thigh.
“English?” Sully asked.
Declan nodded, face gone gray. “Patrol at the crossroads. They’re rounding up anyone with a rebel son, anyone with a name they don’t like. I tried to warn the Kellys. They caught me on the way back.” He tried to smile. “Missed the vein, at least.”
Sully found the whiskey on the shelf and poured a half-glass. He held it out to the priest, but Declan waved it off. “Save it for the pain.”