Nory Ryan's Song (10 page)

C
HAPTER
19

H
ow long had I slept? Was it hours or days? For the first time I wasn’t hungry. I wasn’t cold, either. It was as if I’d been leaning against the sunwarmed rocks at Patrick’s Well in June. Deep in the straw I could feel the roundness of Patch’s heel against my back.

But there was something I had to think about. What was it? I turned, just the smallest bit, but it was enough to lose the warm spot I had made. I folded my arms over my chest and curved my back, digging my chin down, folding myself into a ball.

The thing to think about: maybe it was just a sneeze coming. I wiggled my nose, but the straw was old, settled. It wasn’t that. I had a quick picture of Da standing outside our doorway one summer, the rick of hay caught on the edge of his pitchfork. “New bedding,” he said, and the dust of the hay had swirled in the sunlight like a shower of gold.
Ah, Da
.

It came back to me, as Patch moved again, whimpered. I had lost everything. Patch was going to die, and Anna. We were all going to die, the three of us, here in the straw, warm and cozy, but without food.

And then the other thing. The thing I’d been pressing out of my head. The cliffs. The sound of them, almost as if they were alive, screaming in the wind, and far below, the pounding of the surf with the spray shooting high into the air, and falling back and back, taking bits of rock and stone, and anyone who was clinging there.

Pale light came in under the door. We’d slept half the morning away. I reached out, and Patch moved closer in his sleep. Could Anna be asleep too?

Up on my elbow, I peered across the room at the other straw bed. If I had seen her that way last year I would have been sure she was a witch: wisps of white hair, wrinkled cheeks, long fingers clutching the coats that covered her.

I rolled out of the bed, my head throbbing, and felt her eyes on me. I went first to the hearth to blow the fire into life. Then I leaned over her. “Are you sick?”

She shook her head, but I wasn’t satisfied. “Do you have something to eat in the house?” I asked. “Is there anything for you at all?” But I knew the answer before she told me. The coin, the milk, the apple. I had taken them all.

“My fault,” I said.

She shook her head and said something to me, but she was mumbling. I caught the word
song
and then
Tague
. She reached up and patted my sleeve. Then she was quiet again, sleeping.

I looked back at Patch. There was nothing to him but a small fold under the clothes. The hand against his cheek was nothing but bones.

We had to have something to eat. Something more than water with roots and leaves Anna had saved. We had to have real food.

Anna spoke without opening her eyes. “They are starving to death in their houses,” she said.

“Yes,” I told her, a tap of pain in my forehead.

“We would have had enough,” she said, “even without the potatoes, if the English had left us the animals, the grain.”

I thought of Biddy and her sisters laying warm brown eggs in their baskets, Muc to have piglets one day. All gone down to the harbor and across the sea to the English.

Only the birds that flew over the cliffs in Maidin Bay were left.

I swallowed. It was there again. A picture of the cliffs, great monsters with the wind screaming, tearing.

I sat back on my heels, thinking I couldn’t do it, that no one could do it. But I heard Maggie saying, “You
will know what to do yourself. Great girl
, a stór.”

“I know a way to get food.” I reached out to touch Anna’s forehead. She had a fever. I went to the table and mixed the greens together, stirring as I watched her. A moment later I put my arm under her, lifted her, and made her drink. A sip, two sips. I hoped it would be enough.

I boiled water next, and put a handful of herbs to float in it for a soup. I raised Patch’s head to give him some, then left the rest of it on the floor next to him. “I will be gone a long time,” I told him, “and you will stay here.” I bit my lip. “Stay right in this warm bed.”

Outside I picked up two stones, one triangular and one perfectly round. I went back inside and left them for Patch to find next to the soup; then I wrapped my shawl around my shoulders and went across the field, thinking of Celia and Granda, wondering if they were alive. When I reached the Mallons’ house, I stopped. It was almost a miracle. Sean Red was huddled outside on the step in the pale sun. His head was down, but he looked up as I called,
“Dia duit.”
He smiled when he saw who it was.

I sat beside him, looking at his face. Something had happened to his teeth. They looked huge in his face. And then I saw that his teeth weren’t different but his face had changed. His cheeks were sunken and flat like Granda’s; his eyes were deep in his head. He looked at me and I knew he was thinking I looked terrible too.

“Oh, Sean,” I said. We moved closer, leaning against each other.

“I know where there is food,” I said slowly, the way I had to Anna. “Enough to keep us going. Maybe all of us. Your mother and Granny …”

“Granny’s gone.” He raised one hand toward the cemetery.

I shook my head. “But we didn’t pray over her.”

No wake, no funeral. And then I thought about it. No money for the food and the
poitín
at the wake. And who was left to come? People were trying to get a ship to America, or they were sick lying in the streets of Ballilee, or just wandering out on the road as Devlin put them out of their houses.

Sean looked as if he didn’t have the strength of Patch, but I couldn’t think of that now. “How are your hands, Sean Red?” I asked. “Are they strong enough to hold me on a line?”

His head was down again, his hands dangling.

“I am going out on the cliffs,” I said. “Like Tague. I’ll take the eggs of the wild birds if I can find them.”

Still he didn’t answer. But wasn’t that like Sean, hating to open his mouth? I began again. “Do you think I like to talk to the top of your red head?” I tapped his shoulder. “It’s not your head I need, it’s your hands.”

He put out his hands and showed me the palms: red and purple, bruised, cut, and blistered. He couldn’t even bend his fingers.

I bit my lip so hard I could taste the blood. He’d never hold a rope; he couldn’t hold anything.

“They wouldn’t let me work on the road anymore,” he said.

I knew what that meant. The Mallons had no way of getting food.

I grabbed his sleeve, feeling the long bones of his arm underneath. “We will find a way,” I said. “We’ll have food for you and your mother, for Anna, and Patch, and we’ll hold ourselves over until we plant again, or until my da comes back.”

“And someday we will go to Brooklyn, New York, America,” Sean said.

“Smith Street,” I whispered.

In my head I saw the box with its bits of colored paper and the
R
that stood for
Ryan
.

“You can’t go down on a rope,” he said. “Tague was killed that way. You know that.”

“Do you think I’m going to die for want of food,” I asked, “when it’s there on the cliffs waiting for me?” But even as I said it I wondered if I could do it. I looked up across the fields. I could almost see Da there, and Celia and Granda, coming to save us.

C
HAPTER
20

“W
e can’t,” Sean said again.

“Will you say this all afternoon?” I asked him. “Until the sun falls away from us and the birds go back to their nests?”

He made a sound, but I didn’t listen. “First we’ll get the ropes,” I said. “Then we’ll go up to the cliff.”

“I will never hold you,” he said, putting his hands up to his face. “But you could hold me.”

“And how would you carry the eggs without breaking them?” I tried to smile.

He nodded. “We’ll tie the rope to my waist then and to the rocks. If we cover my hands with cloth, I will manage somehow, Nory.” He looked into my face. “I will never let you fall.”

“I know that, Sean Red.”

He looked back at the door of his house, a quiet house without the sound of his mother’s scolding. Was she lying in her bed, as sick as Anna?

I looked across the field. A small shape tottered toward me. I stood up. “Patch.”

“I’m coming, Nory,” he called. “Coming to find you.”

My hand went to my mouth. What could I do with him?

“We can’t take him,” Sean said.

I shook my head. There was no time to go back to Anna’s. And there was only silence in Mallons’ house. “We can’t leave him.”

“He’ll fall.”

I ran my tongue over my dry lips. “We’ll lash him to a rock. We’ll make sure he doesn’t fall. Somehow we’ll do that.”

He sighed. “Yes, all right.” He walked away from me then, going around the side of the house for his brothers’ fishing ropes, reaching for the cart to carry them, using his wrists rather than his hands.

He leaned into the cart, pushing it with his body, and stopped at the end of the yard so I could find a place for Patch on top of the ropes, a place so small that his feet grazed the ground. “I’ll pull it,” I said.

The climb was almost a dream, the rocky road under my feet, the road rising. The wind was just a breath at first, and then it tore at my face. There was a blast of it as we reached the top.
I am Maeve
, I thought, remembering the day I had twirled over the rocks singing, with nothing to worry about, with Maggie still home and the potatoes growing green in the field.

We sat near the well and rested, watching the birds soar over us, screaming back and forth to each other. Then it was time. I stood up, bent because of the wind, shivering, listening to Patch crying. “Cold, Nory, cold, cold.”

I went back and put my face against his, my arms around him. “You will build great stone walls someday.” I fluttered my eyelashes against his cheeks, rubbed his back. “Soon we will go back to Anna’s. I will cook you an egg, two eggs, Patcheen with the blue stone eyes.”

I reached under him with my arms and tugged him out of the cart as Sean began to uncoil the rope, using his arms, butting his head under it so it looped around his neck.

“It will be warmer back among the rocks,” I told Patch, “out of the wind.”

Patch shook his head. “Not there.” Someone had told him about the gray smoke men who lived in the rocks, I knew that.

I put my hands on his cold little cheeks and tried to think of what I could tell him. And then I said in my loudest, fiercest voice, “No gray smoke men will dare. No
sídhe
, no
bean sídhe
. I am Nora Ryan and I come from Queen Maeve and Mam and Granda and Da. And you, Patrick Ryan, are safe with me.”

And then I saw Sean Red and stuck my chin out so he’d know too that I meant what I said.

I turned back to Patch. “I’ll take a bit of rope, twirl it around you.” I tried to make it sound like a game. “You’ll be warm, Patcheen, you’ll dream of building a wall with blue stones.”

He was crying again, tears from the blue stone eyes.

I kept moving with him, trying to find a space to wedge him in. The place I found was almost a bowl, rocks curved up and around with just enough room for one wee man, I thought, or one small boy. But after I had wedged him in, I knew there was no way to tie him. Too loose and he’d slip out, too tight and he wouldn’t be able to move.

“You have to stay here, Patcheen, stay still, don’t move. It’s a place to fall. Will you stay?”

Sean was calling me now. “Hurry.”

I could see the shadows falling across the cliffs. My legs ached, and my arms. It was hard to think. “Sleep,” I told Patch. “I’ll be back, back in a moment, back in a while.”

I slipped down off the rocks, onto the bare ground of the cliff where Sean was waiting, the rope curled around his shoulder.

“Listen, Nory,” he said. “You have to turn into the rope as the wind spins you. Test each rock with your foot before you rest on it. You have to be quiet, be quick, and watch your face, your eyes. The birds will fight to save their nests.”

I put up my hand. I didn’t want to hear any more.

“There’s a ledge,” he said. “I don’t know how far down. But we’ve seen it from the shore. There are chinks and cracks and messy nests.”

“With eggs,” I said, reaching for his cap. “I’ll fill this, you’ll see. But we have to hurry.” My lips chattered. “Patcheen will be up.”

“I’ll watch him,” he said, but I knew he’d be holding the rope, watching me. If Patch wandered onto the edge …

Stop
, I told myself, and in my mind,
Celia
.

I couldn’t think about that. Instead I’d think of the eggs round and warm in my hands. I’d think of opening them, one for me and one for Patch. Think of spooning a warm egg soup into Anna’s mouth. Think of Sean.

Sean kept talking as we sat ourselves on the ground and wound the rope around our waists, wound ourselves together. His face tightened as the rope touched his hands.

It was beginning to rain, a soft slanting rain that went through my shawl. We stood up and danced away from each other, pulling on the rope at our waists, to be sure it was tight. I pointed. “I’ll go down that way.”

“A brave child like my son,”
Anna had said.

Please let me be brave
.

“Don’t face the sea, face the rocks,” Sean said. “Don’t look down.”

I watched him wedge himself in, his feet up, his hands wrapped in a cloth holding the rope. “I’ll hold my own weight,” I said, “you know that.” I didn’t say what we were both thinking. If I lost my footing and fell, he’d have to depend on the strength of his body and the rocks to keep me from going into the sea. He’d never be able to use his hands.

“If you’re in trouble,” he said, “the rope will tighten against me. Otherwise it will be slow and steady, and you will give a tug on it once in a while so I know you are still …”

“Alive.” I tried to grin at him. “Bringing you an egg for your breakfast.”

“Two eggs.” He tried to smile. “There is a hole in my stomach where there should be food.”

I touched his hand, made the sign of the cross over myself …

And took a step.

And another.

And turned my back away from the sea.

And lowered myself down, one rock at a time, feeling with my toes, testing each rock as Sean had said, to make sure it would hold me.

And rested, catching my breath, leaning my head against a slab of a rock, my feet on a wide flag.

And listened with my eyes closed to the sound of the wind and the surf and the spray crashing against the cliff below.
Don’t look at the sea
, but I had to look over my shoulder, a quick look, the quickest look.

The clouds drifted across the sea and away again, making patterns of light on the water in the distance, and suddenly the sound of what I was hearing, the whistle of the wind across the cliffs, the booming of the surf, was music. And at that moment I felt like Queen Maeve.

I felt Sean tugging at the rope. He must have wondered why I had stopped. I tugged back with my free hand to let him know I was all right.

From there it was not as hard. I made music in my own mind to go with the music of the cliffs. And my hands held each rock above and my feet found the right places one after another …

Until I reached down and there was no rock under me. I circled the air with my leg, toes pointed, searching for something, a rock, a ledge. Suddenly there was a screaming in my ears and a great flapping of wings against my head and in my hair. Claws raked my forehead, opening a cut. Blood ran over my eye and down my cheek, and I screamed with the same sound as the bird.

Without thinking, I let go of the rock to beat it away. I dropped, one hand still holding the bird’s legs, feeling the dizziness as the sea below tilted and moved up toward me. With a sickening crunch I landed on the ledge.

The screeching of the bird stopped and I saw that it was dead under me. I moved as far away from it as I could on the edge, so far that my back was up against the wall of rock. I could feel Sean pulling on the rope. I tugged again and lay there, thinking I’d never get up, never get away from the bird.

I saw the nests above me, within my reach, and got up on my knees, shouting, waving my arms, to be sure there wasn’t a bird on a nest that would startle me into falling again.

The birds wheeled above me, screeching, their powerful wings flapping. I took the eggs quickly, searching out the largest ones, putting them carefully in Sean’s cap, nesting them in bits of grass to be sure they wouldn’t break. I left an egg in each nest.

And then I was finished. There was more to eat in that cap than we’d had in days. I pictured the eggs bubbling gently in the boiling water, tried to think how long they’d last, because I’d have to do this again, and again, until Da came back, or Celia and Granda.

I crawled back along the ledge, trying not to look at the poor dead bird, its feathers blowing in the wind.

The bird. What would Celia think of me if I left it there? A giant of a bird, more than one meal.

I reached out and touched it.
Fuafar
. And then I tied it to my waist and began to climb back up the cliff.