The Troubles (16 page)

     “All right ya muckers. We’ve at least tried but the gods have other plans.”  Anxiety and irony are inflecting his voice, as Lanary looks over his shoulder, lighting his gas lamp to assist us with its glowing, artificial light. 

     “Aye, I am chilled. Let’s get to the cover of the forest.” Kiera’s lithe, absolutely earnest voice, quakes with the chatter of cold lips. As we make our way down the nondescript path of sorts which we had each ascended earlier in the eve, gnarled and broadly scopic Yew trees seem to accost us with their far reaching branches from all four points of the compass. Rain cascades like tempestuous singular waterfalls, with journey’s end falling upon our drenched, steaming bodies. I can barely make out Kiera’s form as I not so gallantly and clumsily, stumble in an effort to keep up with her noiseless steps. The only tell of her location comes in hot gusts of steamy sweet breath, and with the second hand moist air filling my aching lungs generously, my body fiercely demands more oxygen, as our five some breaks into a mad dash down the hillside.

    “Bout ye birds? Are ye hurt?’’ I can hear a whimpering of a low feral distinction from the girl’s direction.

    “Tis not I, but yer cat.  She mustn’t like the rain.’’

     ‘’Aye.” I agree, sheepishly grateful, for the shadow of the night to not betray my flushed and embarrassed face, again a peculiar reaction to such a mundane exchange. I am off kilter.  Me customary, mature social eases seem to have abandoned me as soon as I recognized Kiera as the pale stranger, that had in a trance, gazed at me, as my mate lay dying in me arms a few weeks back. I had not been entranced in a callous way, but one that had generated an electric magnetism between one another.  Oddly, had I not been in such a state of emergency, I would have then and there, approached her, for never before, have I been so entranced by a woman’s allurement.

     The spectrum of lust to interest is a lengthy one for me and I am absolutely positive my sudden enchantment is one that is serendipitous and beyond my control or trepidation. This terrifies me beyond anything else I have ever faced; to love unrequited is the only model of marriage I have ever been privy to. I too loved my Mother yet she had abandoned me along with my struggling excuse of a father. Was I as undesirable as he?

      ‘There’s the boreen! Finally mates!’’ The small road lay before us and relief could be felt within the exhilarated atoms of our travelling fleet. With earnest relief Kiera grabs my hand and Ena’s as well. Her frigid small fingers melt instantly against my throbbing weather bitten palm. ‘‘Tis quite the eve, aye, Alastar?’’ Her gray eyes appear much darker than they were in the absence of moonlight and I still must, in my blindness, remind myself of their innocent yet compelling effect.

      ‘’Aye, bet ya lasses won’t be makin’ this trek again,’’

     ‘’Don’t be so certain, ‘bout that we’ve come accustom to adventures, ’’ Ena boasts somewhat naively as I can feel Kiera squeeze both hands in a measure to silence.

     “Didn’t mean nothin’ by it, Alastar. We came upon yer brother and assisted him. He spent the hours regaling us of you and Bobby Sands.” Kiera gestures to the confident young man that stride a few feet in front of us.

      ’’Quinn was the most curious and fearsomely loyal brother one could ever wish for. I s’pose I’m blessed he chose me to be his own.”  The water begins to chill the damp of our heavy, impotently useless clothing and I pull Kiera and Ena into a quickened pace, perhaps too exertive, for their smaller statures for we truly only have an hour at tops, before pneumonia, or worse, hypothermia, will overcome every last one of us. 

     “Quinn had been in a bad way but shite, had I known we would had walked him to yer very door.” Ena spits the consolatory words as her overtly guilty and nurturing nature has visibly shaken her.

    “Aye miss. I’m sure ya two would have.’’ My attempt at a gracious smile falls flat in the deafly, dark silence between us. I will not be returning home now. I am the one in the trenches, enlisted or perhaps conscripted, forever uprooted and to live and somehow exist in IRA owned buildings set up like wartime barracks.

CHAPTER 28: Is treasa dithis a dol thar an atha na fad o cheile. (Two should stay together when crossing a ford)

     Kiera Flanagan…’’I am buggered. I must get some shuteye!’’ Ena sleepily rubs her forehead. The pungent musk of burning kindling and sodden firewood percolates and steeps into a sooty thick tea with the sweet, wet birch catching alight in outbursts that paint the antiquated white walls in her figure’s purview. The combination of dew and ash intermingling in a dance of contradiction, gives both warmth and credence our eve’s grand undertaking.

      “Aye, Ena. I’ll handle our mess of clothes and be up to catch a nod in a moment,’’ I state, as I make myself useful by the fire which is crackling and hissing quietly, with the feeble strength of frenzied incendiary implosions. We had been delivered rather gallantly to my vacant void of an inheritance, when I had involuntarily trembled at the prospect of being alone, after such a jarring and equally exhilarating night. I had caught myself desiring to prolong the company of Alastar Taggart, however exhibiting more prudence, he had made another date for us to all resume our reverential death ritual to our prospective relatives. Ena, as my professed sister, had the instinct to invite herself into my cold dwelling, devoid of lifeblood.

     I am above the tussled-dream-addled body of a young woman as another lies on the floor in the darkness of shadow, just barely out of my line of sight. Vibrant blue and green colors run in and out of one another allowing silhouettes to become obscure as though I am gazing upon a painting in the renascence period. There is such a light weightlessness that I look down in an attempt to find my body and find without characteristic incredulity, that it has been replaced by nothing; not air, not a ghostlike mirage, but wondrous nothingness. How am I seeing anything with my physical form? The girl on the bed stretches an arm off from her porcelain, almost perfect face with a bored yawn and I see my own visage in her hibernation. Without will or reason, I observe myself gathering momentum and gravitating into an alternate dimension of sorts. Abruptly, I am in the unknown land of the Fae, as a nymph-like, white haired fairy, regards me quizzically with a obviously disabled newborn infant in her arms. “Tis yer baby Kiera!’‘ she tells me.

     ‘’Me child?’

     ‘’Aye girl. She is yers.’’ She slaps the lustfully crying baby into arms that are now miraculously realized into being. The enticing, humanistic fairy is now embracing a healthy twin materialized from either the obvious sibling to the deformed morose infant that is heart wrenchingly seeking nourishment from my bare breast. “Feed her Kiera. To shun her would be a curse onto ya and yer family.’’

     ‘’Why did ya take me child?’’

     ‘’What child?’’ Warm tears fall upon the infant’s soft pink misshapen forehead as I yearn desperately for my own offspring, which the fairy has now abducted. Yet, I cannot reject the fairy’s gift of life, no matter what troubles and ailments the little magical beast might come with.

       I awake with sudden, spiking alertness that betides with the habitual dread of releasing the trance that occurs with dream’s ensnarement. To be frequented by a fairy, whether it is reality or not, is to be haunted by misfortune and bad luck. The fable of the fairy’s trick to abduct a healthy infant and replace it with a disabled one was perhaps the most despicable human explanations for nature’s deformities and I will not allow the subject of my dream to fall into antiquated prejudices. I am my own critical thinker and not all that is pagan is wise. To get up to an empty house past ritual sunrise arousal is jarring and I blink furiously to adjust to the bright midday sunrays that fan through my lace curtains athwart my single bed headboard. My former past life begs me to reminisce naively of my once platitude conviction, of innocent joy and contentment. My future providence of being an orphan, is a wound I must bury in sorrowful penitence, one I will visit I am sure at a future date.  This repression is allowing commonplace existence its own maturing, perhaps into true humble contentment. I fear I cannot bear any further hardship yet the visitation from my imagination’s own mirage is now beyond my variable control and luck or fate has taken its course.

     I make my way through my home and the sorrow born impulse of selling it is giving me courage and release as I regard and assess heirlooms of monetary value and those useless, yet sentimental belongings that we Flanagan’s have gathered, whilst living and now exiting Belfast. I will leave and start anew away from all memories of this blue-collared, narrowly misguided, city and ferry upon every street corner that is named after my brethren or my so-called enemies.

     I had the rare audacity this afternoon to send a message to Alastar Taggart and I await his arrival with such new daring interest I can barely sit nor stand still for a moment. My long, slim legs wrapped by the customary navy blue thick cotton slacks are fidgeting and cajoling like a newborn colt excitedly curious and clumsy in survival. My long auburn waves, which I have freshly shampooed with a delicate tangerine scented shampoo, have been gathered into a French braid with but a few tendrils of silken curls escaping to frame my delicate jawline. My skin is fresh and clear with not a blemish to take attention away from my cosmetic-free appearance.

     Bang, bang, bang…Rapping on the front door startles me as I quickly take a final appraisal in my grandmother’s mirror. “Not bad. He won’t be appalled, but not beautiful enough for his interest, Kiera,” I chide myself.

     ’’Good afternoon, Ms. Flanagan.’’ Alastar Taggart’s voice is low and husky and he mulls his tongue over my sir name appreciatively. “Ya must be buggered after last night’s circus of events.’’

      Lost in obvious concern is his proclivity for me. “Aye Mr. Taggart, I am.’’ I playfully regard him by his formal last name. “Ya know me name is Kiera and are ye just gonna stand there on me porch for the neighbors ta talk or will ya come in?’’

CHAPTER 29: Bidh an t-ubhal as fearr air a’mheangan as aired (The best apple is on the highest bough)

     Alastar Taggart…I stumble in embarrassment at Ms. Flanagan’s brash, audacious quip as I make my way through the Flanagan household threshold and land clattering with an overtly loud thud an inch away from Kiera’s surprised prone chin which she has angled up in an avoidance of physical contact. The shorn, sleek black hair of my crown grazes against her high cheekbone as my eyes cast a supine decline connection. My downcast gaze catches a glimpse of healthy rose, pink lips capturing their quick exhale as my own breath hides in uncharacteristic abashment deep in my abdomen. ‘‘Forgive me darlin’. I don’t know what came over me.’’ I fondly wink at her, misrepresenting my flurry of nervousness, as she flushes, glowing responsively from the overt confirmation of my affection. She abruptly angles her back to me and I realize I might not have disarmed but humiliated her. Perhaps this girl has never been courted.  Has her alluring demeanor been dormant until now? My dominant male ego attempts to convince me that I have been the one to awaken it.

     ‘’How’s yer Da, Alastar?’’ As she walks gliding with a dancer’s grace into her parlor, I trail just a few feet behind her absently admiring the view of her rhythmic hips and swaying shoulders. With her back to me, I can fully regard just how exquisitely beautiful Kiera is. Though she is dressed demurely, in slightly baggy slacks and a white cotton T-shirt, I manage to admire her fit, slim athletic build; I should have known she was a prime female specimen from the force of physical endurance she had displayed two nights ago.

     “Me Da will be fine, I’m sure of it,’’ I am not certain of this because I honestly have not seen him since my brother’s funeral where he had been so inebriated he had sworn at the minister and caused a scene of such humiliation I had then and there vowed I would not enable his behavior and until he has a grasp on his addiction I would not act as his son. My younger siblings are now on their own with him and I am desperate to provide safe housing for them. Realizing how strange that has sounded, I add, “though it is terribly sad for me whole family.’‘

     ‘’Well ye are lucky to still have a family.’’  Her honesty shines bright and sincere from her gray eyes as she smiles sadly in my direction. I can barely contain my shock at the young woman’s candor.

     ‘’Aye Kiera, I am the more fortunate.’’ She hides her eyes as they mist over and instead methodically begins to go over her newly laid plans.

     ‘‘I’ll be gone and rid of this house. What I cannot bring with me I’ll sell.’‘

     ‘’What can I do today to be of service?’’ I ask my newly acquired friend, frankly acknowledging to myself the interest in further romantic pursuits is the only reason I have come over today.

    ‘‘Well I have no menfolk to assist with the heavy furniture, therefore ya looked to be more than capable when we met.’’ She blushes as she subconsciously appraises my forged in the shipyard steely physique. I laugh at her shy endorsement, the levity of laughter cutting through the mournful weight of loss that we both are carrying like boulders on our young shoulders.

      The house smells of grimy desertion and sharp synthetic poisons as we walk into the back where a small kitchen resides. The caustic scent of cleaning agents stings my eyes and as I cough, I croak out, “Whoa! Kiera have ya just bleached yer bloody gaff?’’