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By Root 745 0

where broken ships lay in their graves, their decks, masts, and wheels slowly becoming part of the ocean floor, as if the sea were sculpting them the way an artist transforms stone. She told him of her people and their ways, the lazy merrow men sunning themselves on the jagged cliffs of Connemara or the rocks of Small Skellig, guzzling rum gleaned from the wreckage of those ships, and the schools of seals that swam alongside those of merrow children. And she sang him wordless songs in a voice that both haunted him and caused silver shivers to resonate through his soul. The sheer joy that had taken her over was infectious; it was cherished time, this journey to land’s end with a mother he had loved from childhood but no longer recognized.

She never mentioned his father.

Only at night when they slept, or during the moments in daylight when they stopped to let the horse drink and rest, did the melancholy return, deep, abiding sadness at the despair he knew would be the lot of Old Pat for the rest of his life. He prayed silently for wisdom, for forgiveness.

Honor thy father and thy mother.

How do I do both, Lord?

All the things she had made with her hands—the delicate tatted lace, the clothing, the sweaters of worsted wool—she had left behind without a thought; Patrick knew she would not need them in the sea, but the readiness with which she had abandoned everything that had been built over the course of her life as Old Pat’s wife, as his own mother, thudded hollowly in his head.

Everywhere along the way were signs of the blight—empty huts and storage silos; bare fields that should have been rich with foliage, but instead held only the blackened leaves and withered crop; potters’ fields with row upon row of freshly turned earth mounded in scores of graves. Patrick and Aisling stopped at each long enough to say an Ave from atop the horse, particularly the ones outside of what had once been homes where entire families had been buried, the smallest mounds no more than a yard in length. A little church stood empty, its door banging in the wind. Even in the places where people lived still, there was emptiness; the eyes that watched them as they traveled through were hollow with hunger, in faces drawn and shrunken from disease.

Finally, after two days’ ride with little to eat but that which could be begged or found along the way, the crash of the waves off Ballinskellig Bay could be heard. Patrick saw ripples of spray rising above the ocean even before the old horse crested a hill enough to catch a view of it. He reined the horse to a stop and slowly slid to the ground, transfixed.

The wet wind slapped his hair wildly as he stared out into the endless blue of the sea, the color of it filling his eyes. Even though it was mixed with shades of grey, subtle tones he could not distinguish, it was still the most vibrant, moving panorama of blue he had ever seen, like the living sky, rolling and crashing against the rocky beach. In the distance, he saw the dark rise of Skellig Michael, wrapped in fog and wind.

“How could he have kept you from this?” he murmured, fighting off the deep sense of longing that was twisting around his soul.“How in the name of God above could he have taken you away from here, and kept you in the shadow of the Reeks?”

As if in response, he heard the whinny of a horse in the distance. Patrick turned to see Old Pat, atop Fionnbar, crest the hill behind them. His father reined to a stop for a moment, then, sighting them, urged the draft horse forward, hell-bent for leather.

Patrick felt the breath go out of his body. Then, in the crushing weight of the air’s return to his lungs, he ran back to Donovan’s horse and crawled up into the saddle behind his startled mother, kicking the poor beast into a canter, then a rough gallop.

“Patrick,”Aisling gasped, “for the love of God—”

“Hold to me,Mother,” he said. “Hold to me, and I will get you to the shore.”

Mercilessly he urged Donovan’s horse on, straining to hold on with his knees, gripping the reins in one hand and Aisling with the other. He rode forward into