Emerald Magic_ Great Tales of Irish Fantasy - Andrew M. Greeley [54]
Bronagh knew everything.
Before he could think better of it, Patrick was standing at the gate of her broken picket fence, a blue hen’s egg in his hand.
The old woman was hunched over in the corner of her garden, scratching futilely at the dry soil with her walking stick.
“Blight’s taken the turnips and the horseradish as well,” she said; her voice had the harsh sound of wood beneath the saw blade. She looked up then, and when her eyes lighted on Patrick they gleamed.
“Well met, Patrick Michael Martin,” she greeted him, shambling forward to the gate. “You’ve grown a good deal since we’ve last shared the wind.What brings you? Is someone ailing?”
“No, ma’am,” Patrick said respectfully. “I’ve brought you a hen’s egg.” He held it out to her.
The old woman’s face hardened slightly as she took the blue egg, turning it over in her hand and studying it.When she looked back up at him her black eyes pierced his.
“What is it you wish to know, Patrick Michael Martin?”
Awkwardly, he reached into his pocket and withdrew the handkerchief, carefully unfolding it to show her the pearl-laced cap.
Bronagh breathed deeply.
“Come into the house,” she said.
Patrick took off his hat and followed her into the small white hut. A single stool and a hay pallet covered with a linen sheet were the only furnishings. A rusted black pot hung on a crane over the fire. All about the place were jars and sacks and open mats on which herbs and flowers lay drying. An open doorway out the back appeared to lead to an outdoor root cellar of some sort.Woven reeds forming a St. Bridgid’s cross adorned the wall, dressed with dried foxglove. The wind whistled through the open door, raising to his nose a thousand scents, spicy and sweet, sharp and musty, all at once.
Bronagh went to the fireplace and ladled some water from the bucket beside it into the pot over the fire, then slipped the egg into it.
“I can make you root tea if you wish, Patrick Michael Martin,” she said, her hunched and bony back to him. “That and a bite of the egg you brought are all I can offer you.”
“No, Bronagh, thank you,” Patrick said hastily. “What can you tell me of the cap?”
The old woman turned, her eyes dark as tunnels in the backlight of the hearth fire.
“Where did you find it?” she asked. Her harsh voice was softer with import.
“In the forest back of the house,” Patrick replied nervously, suddenly wishing he had kept to himself.
“Ah.” Bronagh revisited the pot, stirring carefully. She sat on the stool, gesturing to Patrick to take the floor, which he did. “Your father must have hidden it out there, then.”
Patrick felt ice constrict in his veins. “Why would you say such a thing, Bronagh?”
The witch eyed him levelly. “Was it in a sea chest?”
“Aye.” Patrick cursed himself for the weakness in his voice.
“Then the cap must be your mother’s,” the old woman said.
“From their wedding? Is that why he saved it?”
Bronagh smiled. “You know that’s not the answer without even asking the question,” she said. “Within you, you sense that there is more.”
“Aye,” Patrick admitted, “though what that may be, I’m not certain.”
“Do you wish to know the truth, then? I will tell it to you if you want to hear it, though I suspect you’ll not thank me for it.”
“Go on,” Patrick said, laying the cap on his thigh to avoid touching it with hands that were by then covered in sweat.
“That is the cap of a murúch, a merrow,” Bronagh said. “A sea creature, part human, with the tail of a fish. You’ve heard the tales, no doubt—the dream of sailors, the daughters of Cliodhna Tuatha Dé Danann—they are real, lad. They live within the waves of the sea a thousand years or more, never aging, soulless; their immortality is in this life, not the next. When they finally die, they but turn to foam upon the waves. Your mother, Aisling Martin, is a merrow.”
“My mother is a devout Catholic,” Patrick