Of course she would be. I looked for a compelling argument and came up fast on, “Crack?” because admitting to larking off to Dublin for a drug fix seemed a little brash.
Both the Irish women said, “Fun,” and Caitríona added, “The parties, the parade and all. Me sisters and I went for a bit of crack and now I’m home again and whatever you’re doing, I think I’ll be part of it.”
“Oh. Okay. No, wait. I meant okay, that’s what crack is, not, like, cocaine, and not like okay you can come al—oh, to hell with it, fine, come on then.” I had better things to do than argue with people who wanted to get in over their heads. She’d scare off soon enough, and in the meantime, “You can show me where the grave is. I don’t really remember.” I set off the direction she’d come from, hauling the carry-on behind me.
Caitríona ran to catch up, then to pass me, then to eye the suitcase. “What’s that?”
“Mom’s bones are in it.” It hadn’t been practical to keep them in the coat, which was not, after all, especially baglike. Caitríona’s eyes bugged. “Really, you’re happier not knowing. I should probably warn you we’re going to burn them, too.”
She stopped dead. I almost crashed into her, and she hopped into motion again. A few steps later she said, “She’d like that so, but sure and you’ll have the town up in arms if you’re setting fire to the cemetery. You should bring her up there, to the Reek. To Croagh Patrick. She’d like that even more.”
Magic lit up within me, fishhook tugs that signaled approval of Caitríona’s suggestion. I turned to look at the mountain that dominated the western skyline. There was a lingering low fog, but the mountain was clear and the chapel atop it was almost visible if I used my imagination. I so very much did not want to haul a suitcase up a three-thousand-foot mountain.
“We called it Cromm Crúaich. My father fought a battle here when they first came to Ireland,” Méabh said. “Who is Patrick?”
“He was…” I didn’t really want to give her Saint Patrick’s whole story. “A holy man after your time. He did a pilgrimage on that mountain so they named it after him.”
“Patrick defeated Cromm on the mountain.” Caitríona gave Méabh a good hard stare. “Cromm was an old god and Patrick banished him along with all the snakes in Ireland. Who are you?”
“She’s Méabh,” I said again. “Honestly, are you sure you don’t want to go home? It’s too early in the day to be climbing mountains, isn’t it?”
Caitríona turned her good hard stare on me. “No.”
Well. No arguing with that, then. I sighed and turned back to the car, bumping the suitcase along behind me. “You really think she’d like to be burned up there on the mountain?”
“Oh, yes. She wasn’t even a pagan, was Auntie Sheila. She was something else all her own. Connected, like. Connected to everything. Are ye like her?” she said to me, and I startled guiltily.
“Not very much, but in some ways, yeah.” Wow. Prevarication 101, that was me. “Yes.”
Caitríona said, “Hnf,” which I felt was somehow condemning, and we all went and got in my car and drove to Croagh Patrick.
Sometime on Saturday night I’d sworn I would take up jogging Monday morning. I hadn’t, of course, expected to be in Ireland when I’d made that oath. Nonetheless, Méabh bounded up the damned goat trail leading to Croagh Patrick’s summit with the agility and speed of…well. A goat. And Caitríona, full of teenage resiliency, was barely a few steps behind her. I did have the excuse of lugging a suitcase full of bones, but mostly I was just in no condition to be running up mountainsides. I felt this was not unreasonable, as normal people didn’t climb mountains anyway.
Of course, I’d left normal behind a long time ago, a fact which Gary should be happily reminding me of right about now. I hitched the suitcase over a rock and threw out the promise to start jogging in favor of a promise to get him back. I’d already made that promise about a thousand times, but once more didn’t hurt. Especially if it got me out of jogging.
I walked into a wall and bounced off. The wall said, “You’re no fit warrior, Granddaughter.”
I sighed and edged my way around Méabh. “I’ll start running up and down mountains as a fitness regime next week. Right now I just need to…” She’d been in the way of my view of the path, and now that I could see it, I wished she’d stayed in front of me. “…I just need to get up that horrible, hideous switchback without killing myself. Does anybody have anything to eat?” The last real food I could actually remember eating was a sandwich sometime early Saturday afternoon. There’d been some candy and potato chips since then, but they didn’t count.
“You will not want to have eaten, for this.” Méabh passed me again, taking long easy strides up the mountainside while I drooped. Ritualized magic apparently went hand in hand with self-denial. Cleansing the body and spirit and all that crap, I guessed, but since no food was forthcoming there wasn’t much reason to bitch about it now. I was going to eat half a cow when we got back down to ground level, though.
“I’ve eaten.” Caitríona surged ahead to catch up with Méabh. “Will it be a problem so?”
Méabh gave her a considering look. “Have ye the power?”
Cat glanced back at me, then settled on Méabh. “Like Auntie Sheila? No. Me Gran had it, but then, she was Sheila’s mam, too. We all thought one of us cousins might have it.” She said that like it was my fault, which in a way I supposed it was. Probably if Mother hadn’t had me, the magic would have come to the fore in somebody else. It didn’t seem likely it would just die out after several thousand years of coming down the line.
“Then it should be no trouble. It’s Joanne we’ll be looking to for the circle.” Méabh glowered at me over her shoulder. “Should she survive the walk up the hill, at least.”
They were starting to piss me off. As a rule, the healing power I commanded didn’t think much of me utilizing it for personal gain, but I took a deep breath and tapped into it, searching for the cool rush of strength that would buoy me through the last couple hundred yards up the mountain.
Instead my arm cramped, muscle around the bites twisting as if using the magic within me only encouraged the impulse to transform. I clenched my fist, afraid to look and see it had become a wolf’s paw, but it closed normally. Or as normally as it could, when the muscles used to close it had big teeth marks through them. I swallowed down a whimper and dared peek at it.
The bite itself was starting to look hot again. Not quite as bad as before, like my brief shape change had bled off some of the infection, but it was building again. For the first time I thought maybe I should do what other people did, and go see a doctor. Maybe I would. After I got done climbing a mountain and burning my mother’s bones.
On the positive side, panic over the idea of turning into a werewolf gave me a plenty-big boost, and I trotted up the rest of the mountain on Méabh’s and Caitríona’s heels with no problem.
The view was incredible, with the Atlantic spilling off to the west and half of Ireland glimmering through soft mist around and behind me. Not for the first time, the old country steeped me in magic and power, in presence and in continuity. There was a peace to it unlike anything I’d ever encountered in Seattle. I understood why Saint Patrick had stayed up there for forty days, absorbing everything that Ireland had to offer.
So it really was a pity about the residual human sacrifices staining the mountain so deeply it felt like a mallet to the head.
Читать дальше
Конец ознакомительного отрывка
Купить книгу