Chapter 18 Toolie #2
We stopped before full dark. The wind was up again, chasing clouds over the moon, lighting the clearing with a fitful, sickly white.
We found a spot half-ringed by boulders, the remains of a cottage smashed to rubble by cannon.
I let Catherine and the girls have the dry side, nearest the ring of old birch.
Maeve set the pack down hard, then started fussing with the bread and the blanket, not looking at me.
Nora gathered sticks from the brush, breaking them into kindling with snaps too loud for comfort.
I hung back, checking for movement, for the sound of more Redcoats or worse.
But the night was still, except for the crackle of Nora’s fire and the occasional groan from Declan as he sat to check his leg.
I felt the adrenaline drop out of me all at once, leaving my skin cold and my teeth loose in my jaw.
When I finally joined them, I sat on the farthest rock, separate, hands bleeding slow into my lap.
The girls huddled around the beginnings of a flame, Nora working the flint like it owed her a favor. Maeve tore bread into hunks, eyes fixed on the moon. Catherine watched the fire, shoulders hunched, hair falling forward to hide her face. She was ten feet from me, but it could have been a mile.
Declan prodded at his bandage, then bit down on a stick while he poured a splash of gin over the wound. He hissed, then laughed, a low, bitter sound. “Burns like hell,” he said.
No one replied. The fire caught, finally, and shadows leapt up to circle the clearing.
I stared at the flames, trying to keep my brain blank, but the memories flooded in anyway—the pop of the soldier’s windpipe, the way the rifle butt felt in my hands, the blank terror in the boy’s face when I broke his arm.
I’d done worse in my time, but not in front of Catherine. Never before.
“Eat,” Maeve said, shoving a hunk of bread at her sister. Nora took it without a word.
I was about to say something, maybe an apology, maybe just a joke to break the silence, when Maeve shot me a look sharp enough to cut air. She stood, paced to where I sat, and stared down, hands on her hips.
“You want to tell us what that was?” she said, voice flat.
I met her gaze. “What do you think it was?”
She shook her head, disgust curling her lip. “It wasn’t you, O’Toole. I’ve seen you fight. You never looked… like that.”
I shrugged. “There’s no clean way to do it. Not anymore.”
She snorted. “You dragged us from our home with fairy tales of futures we can’t even imagine. You said you’d keep us safe, but you just make more danger. For all of us.”
Nora piped up, voice tight. “We could have run. We didn’t have to kill.”
Maeve spun to glare at her, then back at me. “What happens to us when you’re done? What about our neighbors, our land? You don’t get to walk away from the world you leave behind.”
I felt the words slam into me. I tried to answer, but my tongue felt thick. “If we stay, we die. If not by English hands, then by hunger, or worse. You think I like it?”
She leaned in, voice a hiss. “And what of our souls? What happens when you rip us from the time God gave us? You think that’s better?”
Declan limped over, laying a gentle hand on Maeve’s arm. “Let him be,” he said. “He’s done what he can.”
She shook him off, but sat, glaring at the fire. Nora huddled closer to Catherine, who still said nothing. I stared into the dark, letting the guilt settle in my chest, heavy and cold.
Declan sat next to me, grunting as he lowered himself to the stone. For a while, we watched the fire together. I wanted to thank him for the rescue at the castle, for the healing, and for the map. Instead, I just stared at the smoke until my eyes stung.
“You know,” Declan said, voice low, “when I was a boy, I thought heroes were made by killing the right men.”
I glanced at him. “What changed your mind?”
He shrugged, the movement tight from the pain. “Killing’s easy. It’s the living with it that takes the work.” He watched the girls at the fire. “You think you’re saving her. But you can’t save someone who’s already given up on you.”
I felt the words bite, but I didn’t argue. He looked at me, real close, like a priest sizing up a confession.
“I can’t go with you, O’Toole,” Declan said. “Not to your tomorrow.”
The words didn’t make sense at first. I tried to process them, but he kept talking.
“My flock is here,” he said, gesturing at the wasteland.
“Not in your time. These people need someone to bury their dead. To forgive the last sin. Even if it’s only a handful left.
” He looked at his leg. “This wound will fester. Maybe I’ll die in a week, maybe not.
But this is where I belong. I can’t cross over. Not even if you ask.”
I didn’t know what to say. “You could start over. In the future.”
He laughed, a hollow sound. “Priests don’t start over. We just keep the faith until there’s nothing left.” He gripped my shoulder, strong even now. “You’re not a bad man, Sully. But you need to stop thinking the world is waiting for you to fix it.”
I nodded. He let go.
For a while, we sat in silence, just the fire, the wind, and the distant call of an owl hunting over the empty fields.
Maeve stood, stalked over to the edge of the clearing, and stared out into the dark. I caught her wiping at her eyes, quick and mean, before she turned back.
Catherine got up, too, but instead of joining me, she walked into the trees, slow and unsteady.
I wanted to go after her, but something in me recoiled—the memory of her flinch, the way she hadn’t looked at me since the soldiers.
I watched her disappear into the birch, her figure a ghost among the white trunks.
Nora came to my side, arms crossed over her chest. “She’s scared of you,” she said, not unkind. “We all are.”
I nodded. “That makes two of us.”
Nora sat at my feet, picking at the grass. “Why did you come back?” she asked.
I thought about it. “I wanted another chance. I wanted to do something right, just once.”
She nodded, as if she understood. “It hurts to be left behind.”
I almost laughed, but didn’t.
It was dark now, full dark, and the fire barely held back the night.
I lay back on the rock, watching the moon carve the world into cold silver.
I thought of the years in the future, the machines, the noise, the hum of things always just out of reach.
I thought of how, even there, I’d never felt less alone than I did right now.
I must have dozed, because the next thing I heard was hoofbeats, coming fast. Declan jerked upright. Maeve was up in a flash, knife in hand. Nora scrambled to Catherine’s side. I rolled off the rock, crouched low, scanning for movement.
A horse burst into the clearing, foam at the mouth, the rider hunched and dark, face hidden by a battered cap. He pulled up hard, nearly falling off the saddle. His boots hit the ground with a squelch.
He looked at us—at me, at Catherine, at the ragged crew circled around the embers. His face was smeared with mud and blood. He carried a message in his hand, sealed with black wax.
He pointed at Catherine. “For you,” he said, voice hoarse. “From Kilbride.”
She moved slow, as if in a dream. She took the note and stared at it.
Catherine’s hands shook so hard she could barely tear the wax.
I watched her thumb dig at the black seal, watched it crumble into the dirt.
The note inside was folded twice, the edges stiff with dried blood or maybe mud—I couldn’t tell in the moonlight.
She read it once, then again. Her eyes didn’t blink.
She started to speak, but the words failed her. Her knees buckled, and she sat down hard on the grass, the letter still clutched in her fist.
Nora was at her side in an instant, arms around her. Maeve stood behind, rooted, her shadow thrown huge on the stones. The fire spat and hissed in the sudden wind.
Declan stepped to the messenger, took his elbow, and guided him a few paces off. The man looked shell-shocked, face pale above his filthy collar. He kept glancing at Catherine, then at me, as if expecting a fight to erupt at any second.
Catherine stared at the paper, eyes wide and unseeing. For a moment, I thought maybe the words hadn’t registered yet. I prayed to whatever still listened that they never would.
She spoke in a whisper, so thin I almost missed it. “They’re gone,” she said.
Nora hugged her tighter. “Who’s gone?”
Catherine opened her hand. The letter slipped out, drifting to the ground. Maeve snatched it up, read, then gasped.
She read it aloud, voice cracked but clear.
From Kilbride:
They came at first light, four of them, uniforms black as night.
They asked for Catherine, asked for you.
Your mother and father said they knew nothing.
They beat your Da, but he spat in their faces.
They shot him in the yard. They hung your mother from the old cherry tree.
They burned the house. I escaped. I am sorry.
— Kip Malloy
Nora shrieked, a sound like a rabbit in a snare. She pressed her face to Catherine’s shoulder and sobbed. Maeve went white, then red, then white again. She crumpled the letter, then hugged Catherine from behind, sandwiching her between the two sisters.
I wanted to move, wanted to go to her, but my feet were locked to the stone. I felt every word like a nail through the bone.
After a minute, Catherine looked up. Her face was wet and raw, eyes rimmed in red. She fixed me with a glare so sharp I thought it might kill me on the spot.
“This is your doing,” she said. The words were flat, almost calm, but they landed like a fist.
I shook my head, but she cut me off.
“If you had stayed dead, they’d be alive. If you’d never come back, my family—” She broke off, her voice shattering. “You changed everything.”
She tried to stand, but her legs wouldn’t hold. Nora and Maeve lifted her, each holding her up on a side.
Declan came back, his hand resting gently on her head. “It’s not his fault, girl,” he said, but she didn’t even look at him.
She looked at me, just me, and the hate in her eyes was something new.
“You killed them,” she said, not a whisper this time.
I felt my knees go. I dropped beside her in the mud, hands out, palms up. “I’m sorry,” I said, but even I could hear how small it was.
She recoiled, pulled away from me, her whole body shuddering.
“I never wanted this,” I said. “I came back for you, for us. I just wanted to—”
“Live?” she spat. “You wanted to live, so you took the rest of us with you. Into hell.”
Maeve glared at me over Catherine’s head. “You’re a curse, O’Toole. A walking curse.”
Nora hid her face in Catherine’s dress, shaking.
I didn’t know what to say. There was nothing to say.
Declan watched, his face blank, then turned to the messenger. “Go,” he said. “Go back to Kilbride. See if there’s anyone left.”
The messenger nodded and ran, boots squelching in the mud, the sound fading into the night.
The clearing went silent except for the crackling of the fire and the distant howl of dogs somewhere out in the fields.
Catherine pulled free of her sisters, staggered to her feet, then turned away from all of us. I saw her silhouette against the fire, the curve of her belly outlined in red-gold. She wrapped her arms around herself and let her head hang.
I wanted to follow. To comfort her. To be forgiven, somehow.
But I knew, then, that she never would. I sat in the mud, blood seeping from the cut on my hand, the sting a dull echo of the pain in my chest. No one spoke to me.
Not Maeve, not Nora, not even Declan. They gathered around Catherine, whispering, holding her, building a wall I couldn’t breach.
The moon went behind a cloud, and the world went black.
I stared at my hands, at the ruin of the old tattoo and the new blood glistening in the lines. I flexed the fingers, slow, just to feel something. To remember I was still alive.
Maybe that was the curse, after all.
I watched Catherine, just a shape in the night now, and wondered if the grave had been a better place. At least there, I hadn’t hurt anyone.
At least there, I’d been at peace.