Chapter 6 #13
What might alert the child inside Phina to the change in the family’s circumstances?
It could be the quality of the peninsula light, which is not funnelled down between rows of terraces but is a lustrous grey glow from all sides.
Or the richness of the fresh milk that spores into its minuscule bloodstream, or perhaps the startling oxygen-rich blasts of bog air when its mother takes the midday meal to its father, who is out footing turf.
It might be the constant auditory presence of its next-in-line sibling, whose voice is higher in register and whose mouth is on a level with its head—the ebb and flow of questions, expostulations, reaches the unborn child as a muffled, watery song.
Or the sound of Enda’s fiddle as she practises, hour after hour, the first halting steps of a ballad or a tune.
It hangs upside-down, like a circus acrobat, in its briny cave, thumb in its mouth, waiting, absorbing everything this new landscape will offer it.
Rose doesn’t like the whine of wind down the chimney.
She doesn’t like the bulky thatch above their heads, or the chittering birds that land upon it.
She doesn’t like the louring manor house, with its numerous chimneys and its iron gates.
She doesn’t like the fields and bogs that, at night, are filled with all manner of animals—badgers and foxes, owls and hares—that shriek and battle, scuttle and devour each other.
What she does like, however, is the donkey.
A mournful yet intelligent beast it is, with long-lashed brown eyes that are full of sympathy for her fears and worries.
If she whistles, it will come, plodding over the field towards her, to rest its head on the stone wall, and she will rub the soft fuzz behind its ears and whisper softly to it.
It is here, sharing secrets over a wall with a donkey, Liam off at school and their father gone to see the viscount’s land steward, that Enda finds her.
“Come with me,” her sister commands, from behind her. Three words to strike dread into Rose’s heart.
Without turning round, Rose recognises this mood of her sister’s—bored, restless, belligerent—and she knows the best thing to do is to steer clear of her until it passes.
Enda has been practising her fiddle all morning, until Phina begged her to stop, just for a moment, so she could hear herself think.
“I won’t,” Rose says. Then, curiosity getting the better of her, she asks: “Where?”
“Away,” Enda says, with a sweeping gesture. “We’ll explore.”
Rose takes a step to the side, aiming to dart past her, but Enda is too quick: she steps into Rose’s path and grabs her round the arm.
“Come on,” she says, half pleading, half ordering.
Rose twists uselessly in her grasp. “Let me go. I just want to be in the house. Please, Enda.”
“Frightened, are you,” Enda jeers, “of being outside?”
Rose thinks of the black and impassive waters of the lough, the way you can see the weather coming at you from a long way off, slow and inexorable as an army, the jagged bulk of the mountain behind them, and says: “Yes.”
Enda is taken aback by this honesty, flummoxed. She casts a nervous glance around her, as if whatever Rose is afraid of might be coming for them. Then she squares her shoulders and changes tack.
“Rosie,” she wheedles, “we…we haven’t played out together for ages. Not since…well…ah, come on. Don’t you always have a good time with me?”
Rose’s tender heart is softening, of course, at the sight of her queenly sister brought so low as to be begging for company.
Enda takes her by the hand, and off they go, waving farewell to the donkey, pulling long grasses from the verge, and Enda is showing Rose how to wedge them between your thumbs and blow on them to produce a hilarious squawking noise, tripping together along the boreen, pushing sideways through the walls of the green tunnel and out the other side, until they are in a place Rose has never been, a damp and marshy stretch, which pulls and gobbles at their feet.
White and lilac flowers grow low to the ground and tall irises hold up their folded blooms to the sky; water pools in the low places, in their footprints.
Rose would like to crouch to examine the peaty puddles, to see what might live within them, perhaps pick some of the flowers for their mother, but she can tell that Enda won’t stop.
Enda’s mood is high, her cheeks flushed, her hand hot over Rose’s; she jumps with a flourish over the small streams that cut through the bog, reaching back to help Rose, and Rose can feel the calluses the fiddle strings have left on her sister’s fingertips.
Before Rose realises what is happening, they are walking between two gentle hillocks, towards a dense cluster of trees. She comes to a halt, pulling Enda’s hand.
“Da said we weren’t to go in there.”
Enda’s gaze darts longingly towards the thicket, then back to Rose. “He didn’t.”
“He did. He said: Never go into the copse.”
Enda treads back and forth, biting her lip, a flighty horse held by a bridle. “He meant a different copse. Not this one.”
Rose shakes her head, folds her arms. “I’ll not go,” she says. “And I won’t tell on you but if Mammy asks—”
Enda lets out an explosive, thwarted sigh. “Fine,” she snaps. “We won’t do it, then. But instead…” Enda thinks, furiously, standing on one leg, tapping a foot against her calf. “I know,” she says, seizing Rose’s hand, and pulling her back towards the boreen.
“What?” says Rose, anxious, for she has visions of Enda riding off on the donkey’s back, or her setting it free or—
“The faery fort,” Enda breathes, imbuing the words with drama and deliciousness.
Relief rises up in Rose, like a wave upon a shore, then pulls back, revealing dread and unwillingness. “I thought…” she begins, as she and Enda dive through the bushes and into the green lane, brambles and twigs clutching at their clothing, their feet swallowed by bog and sedge.
“You thought what?” Enda says distractedly, set as she is now on her course.
“Didn’t the widow say no one should walk into it because—”
“There has to be somewhere we can go!” Enda screams, gripping her hair with her free hand, dragging Rose along until she is forced to break into a run.
“Liam told me that Father Joseph said it has nothing to do with the faeries, that it was made by people who lived here in ancient times, that they built walls in circles, to keep out their enemies, and it’s called a ‘rath’ not a ‘faery fort’ and—” Enda breaks off, catching sight of her destination, and she lets go of Rose’s hand to sprint ahead.
Rose clambers wearily after her. “Enda,” she cries, “Ennnnn-daaaa! Wait for me, waaaaaaaiiiiiit,” but she knows her words, bleated and fluting, are useless. Enda never waits for anyone.
Rose toils up the slope towards the rath, her legs aching, her breath coming in ragged pants.
She can see, up ahead, the ringed mounds of the fort, softened by time but still discernible, the high and craggy mountain behind, a bird revolving through the clouds above with wide wings that end in finger-feathers, the tall form of her sister scaling the first grassy mound and disappearing from view.
“Enda!” Rose shrieks. “Where are you? I can’t see you!”
She breaks into a run, her feet slipping on the turf, envisaging her sister kidnapped by faeries or the púca or the ghosts of long-dead people or whoever it was used to live here.
She will have to do battle for Enda’s soul; she will have to challenge the ancients to a duel, using her wits and strength; and she must be sure to keep one eye closed at all times so that—
Her sister’s bright hair rises out of the grassy rings as she ascends another mound and sinks out of sight again. Not captured, then, not carried off into the earth.
Rose reaches the outer ring, entirely out of breath.
She will not go into the fort, she will not.
Let Enda face the faeries, the ill luck; she will remain here, just outside, close enough to watch Enda as she explores, but still at a safe distance from whatever it is that lives here.
She lets herself collapse to the ground, then crawls forward until she can see down into the fort.
There are three rings of earth, fitted one inside another, all covered with grass and moss.
The fort is shaped like a bowl, gently sloping to the centre.
In one place, just to Rose’s left, is a gap or an inlet in the perimeter, and it looks to her like a gate or a doorway, and she is picturing a procession of little men and women, coming in and out, when Enda suddenly shouts: “Rosie, watch out!”
There is an unaccustomed chime of panic in her sister’s voice. Rose scrambles to her feet, snapping around her head to see whatever Enda is pointing at.