Emerald Magic_ Great Tales of Irish Fantasy - Andrew M. Greeley [52]
Aisling’s a young woman still; she’s not aged a day since your father brought her to Glencar before you were born.
“Mother,” he said finally, reluctant to disturb her concentration, “the men concur. We must leave—the blight is spreading. Life, as hard as it may seem to believe, is about to worsen immensely. We should go to America with Uncle Colm and the others.”
“Your father will never agree to it,” Aisling said softly, her attention still fixed on her work.
“Aye, the Da is a stubborn man, but now stubbornness will lead to death, ’tis for certain,” Patrick pressed, gentle in his tone but insistent in his words. “You are hale,Mother; God willing, you have many years ahead of you—”
Aisling did not look up. “Your father will never agree to it,” she repeated. She finished her work in silence, then rose and went to the curtain that demarcated their bedchamber. “Good night, Patrick.”
Patrick moved to her chair and sat in the darkness, watching the fire die down to coals, until the door opened, and Old Pat came in. He left his boots by the door, hung his hat and neckerchief on a peg, and disappeared behind the curtain without more than a nod. Patrick exhaled deeply and continued to stare at the coals until sleep took him.
Dawn found him there still, in Aisling’s chair by the hearth. He woke, feeling the chill of morning, got up and stirred the ashes, hoping to warm the house a little for his parents before leaving to tend to Fionnbar and the last remaining hen. He was at the well drawing water when Old Pat emerged from the house.
His father glanced around but did not appear to see him. Patrick watched, first in surprise, then in curiosity, as Old Pat made his way furtively behind the house, across the fields out toward the thinly wooded foothills of the high mountain of Carrauntoohil. His curiosity piqued, Patrick followed him, cutting through the sparse glades and high grass in which he had loved to hide since childhood.
There was something about that tall grass that had always pleased his soul, the way it undulated in the wind, even as it gave way to lower, brushy scrub closer to the hills. He had always been able to pass through the grass as easily as swimming through the water of a pond; Patrick hurried through it now, maintaining his distance while trying to keep his father in sight.
He followed him into the forest, taking cover in a grove of alders when Old Pat finally stopped some distance away. Patrick’s eyes had always been keen, and he could see the older man’s movements, even at a great distance, from his hiding place.
His father glanced around again and, noting nothing untoward, bent at the base of a rock hidden within a ring of trees. Patrick watched as he dug near the base of the rock, then, satisfied, made his way back through the woods again toward home.
Once Old Pat had been gone long enough to assure Patrick that he was not about to return, he emerged from the alder grove and hurried to the place in the tree ring when his father had been digging. The disturbed earth had been carefully covered over with dry leaves and brush, making it all but indiscernible.
He looked with more careful eyes at the place. Around the tree ring a circle of mushrooms grew; Patrick’s hands began to sweat as he looked back at the trees, old Irish oaks that must have been miraculously spared from the Tudor axes that two hundred years before had stripped the land clean of them to build Queen Elizabeth’s navies, or sprung from the acorns of those trees. He crossed himself hastily.