The Dust of 100 Dogs - A. S. King [28]
“I see you’ve been walking with the Carroll boy,” Aunt Mary said that morning.
Emer nodded a little.
“I’m glad to see you’ve made a friend, Emer, but you just can’t go around with a boy and not know the dangers.”
Emer continued to wash potatoes in a bucket of cold water.
“Boys have powers you don’t know anything about. And soon you’ll be too old to have a boy as a friend.”
Emer said nothing.
“There’ll be no more going off in the mornings to meet him at the spring well. You probably didn’t know I knew about that, but I know all sorts of things.”
Emer frowned. She and Seanie had spent a few mornings beside the well and the adjacent river, looking at each other. He still wouldn’t talk, and Emer didn’t know if he was the same sort of mute as she was. Could he not talk at all, or was he only hiding?
“Your Uncle Martin will find a fine boy for you in time. You see what a good lad he chose for our Grainne, didn’t you?”
Emer thought of her cousin’s husband. He was very like Martin, but Grainne seemed to like him. Emer found him brutish and simple.
“Besides, Sean Carroll is dumb. You can’t go marrying a dumb man. Especially you! That would be absurd!”
Emer looked up at Mary, who was pretty much having a conversation with herself. Why was she going on about marriage? Why hadn’t she said happy birthday? Surely thirteen wasn’t the age to start talking about marriage.
“You do understand what I’ve told you?” Mary asked, looking down at Emer. “Now that we’ve had this talk, you won’t go off with him anymore, will you?”
Emer shook her head no.
“Good. You’re a good girl after all.”
After finishing her chores, Emer walked to the spring well for more water. She couldn’t help but look around for Seanie. No other person in their village really understood the communication between them. Mrs. Carroll once spied from her door, watching the two teenagers walking silently, holding hands, making words with their fingers. Emer loved holding Seanie’s hand. It was like holding Padraig’s hand, or her father’s. She would squeeze from time to time, knowing that Seanie wanted to say something but couldn’t. His face would go a shade of frustrated pink. She would squeeze then, and Sean would smile a little and let go of whatever was troubling him. His first two months in the west had proved dismal, like everyone else’s there. He had grown slimmer and slimmer, and she could begin to see the shapes of his skeleton through his pale skin.
What Emer hadn’t noticed was that she was growing into a beautiful woman. Her legs were long and her cheekbones jutted out under her large blue eyes. Her hair, though thin and greasy, fell down her back in a plait, and wisps of it framed her freckled face. She was becoming the same woman who she used to dream would model her cape, the same woman she used to imagine walking around her home place with her mother. Womanhood was something she’d forgotten about since arriving in Connacht; her daydreams of awaiting suitors had disappeared. But Seanie Carroll changed that. From the first time they met, Emer was convinced he was the boy for her. She just knew it.
On her thirteenth birthday, Emer got no tidings, no affection, and no gift. Her uncle’s family never mentioned how fast she was growing or how pretty she was. There were no Candlemas celebrations in Connacht, aside from a dismal mass for the Blessed Virgin.
She let the entire day pass without finding Seanie. When night fell, she went to the bed she shared with her cousins. It was there she received the most precious birthday gift of all. Her mother spoke.
Emer, I miss you.
“I miss you too, Mammy,” Emer imagined herself saying.
You are becoming so beautiful! I knew you would. You were a beautiful child, remember?
“I remember.”
And clever! What mischief have you found in the west? Have you found a lookout?