Potatoes. Don’t think about potatoes, I told myself, and turned over, the straw rustling under me.
The next morning I was up earlier than I had ever been. I said my prayers as I went, not taking time to kneel next to the bed. I had to be at Mallons’ house before their rooster crowed.
I wasn’t so hungry now. Strange because we had gone to bed with headaches and stomachaches, and Patch crying the way he had while Maggie walked away to Galway port. I sang an old song of Da’s to comfort him until Celia threw a handful of bed straw at me, and Granda told us to say our prayers and close our eyes.
Now I crossed the field, watching for the Mallon brothers. I had to be sure they wouldn’t get themelves down to the strand before I reached them.
I thought about last night, coming in through the open door, my wrist stinging from one of the long nettles, but hardly paying attention to it, mouth watering over the potatoes that Celia would be cooking.
“It was a good plan, Granda,” I’d said, “we’re through the day and it’s time for a meal.”
But Celia had shaken her head. The small pile of potatoes we had picked so carefully seemed shrunken and the spots had spread and run into each other, leaving ridges of black. Celia bit her lip. “We have to get rid of these,” she said. “We can’t eat them.”
“We’ll cut the spots out,” I said. “We’ll do it carefully, then we’ll boil the good parts.”
“Do you suppose they’ll make us sick?” Celia asked.
“We have to try,” Granda said.
Celia looked at Muc in her corner pen. “We’ll give her a wee bite first, and see what happens.”
“I’m glad I’m not the pig.” I reached for the first potato and the knife that swung on its hook and began to cut. It took a long time. The potatoes were small to begin with and when I was finished the pile would fit in Patch’s cap.
We boiled what we had anyway, but there was no need to test them out on Muc. In front of our eyes, the bubbling water turned dark and the same dreadful smell from the fields was on us.
After Celia had thrown the whole mess out in the yard, pot, water, and praties, we’d gone down to Cunningham’s stream. We’d taken a bowl of his water and a few of his leaves back to boil for a bit of soup.
But there was no time now to daydream about yesterday. The Mallon brothers were just ahead of me under their currach. I called out to them and the muffled sound of their “Hello” came back across the field.
I ran toward them. “Let me come with you.”
They didn’t stop.
“I won’t take up much room,” I told them. “I’ll sit on the bottom, between the seats. All I need is a line and a hook.”
They moved away from me. Michael’s voice came from under the currach. “There’s no room, Nory, and you don’t know how to fish beyond the surf.”
“Please,” I said. “Please.”
I could hear Liam, too. “Ah, Nory,” he was saying, “ah.”
Was he feeling sorry for me?
Suddenly I was angry. Angrier than I could ever remember. I picked up a stone and threw it as hard as I could. It bounced off the currach with a small thud.
“What was that?” Michael asked.
“Let me come,” I called, but they angled the currach up and over the stile and started down the path toward the strand. I walked in back of them all the way, yelling, wanting to cry the way Patch had last night.
At last they took pity on me. They rested the currach on their hands and ducked their heads so I could see their faces. “Nory Ryan,” said Michael, “I know you are hungry. We are all hungry.”
“Let me …,” I began again, but I could see by their faces that the answer was no.
“Listen,” Liam said, “wait here for Sean. He is coming soon, to pick up the limpets and the mussels along the shore.”
“Limpets,” I said. “Fuafar.”
“If you are hungry enough you will eat them.” Michael blew his red hair out of his eyes. “And I think before we are finished, we will be glad to have even that.”
I didn’t say another word. I was still angry, and besides that, I needed a pail.
“Go up to the house,” Liam said, knowing what I was thinking. “Someone will give you a pail.”
They grunted with the weight of the currach as they went along the sandy path, but I didn’t waste time watching them. I turned and walked up to the door of the Mallon house. “Bless all here,” I called in through the open doorway.
Granny Mallon sat on her heels near the fire smoking her pipe, and Mrs. Mallon was at the hearth. They both nodded. “Dia duit, Nora.”
“Is Sean here?” I began. “And could I have a pail, please?”
Mrs. Mallon jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “A pail outside, and Sean around the back of the house.”
I could see how hungry Sean was as I turned the corner. He had always been skinny, but overnight the color had gone from his face, and his eyes were huge, like Patch’s. “We will catch us some fuafar limpets,” I said. “And some black mussels, too.”
He smiled at me, patting his pockets, looking for dulse, I knew. Then we started for the path to the beach. I loved this path. As the path turned one way, we’d see a bit of the sea, and then as it wandered another, the sea would be lost and the grass would be high as our heads, and blowing with the sound of whispers, music just for us.
As we went down, the cliffs in back of us rose higher and higher, and the gannets and kestrels wheeled and dipped. I thought that Brooklyn, New York, America, could not have been as beautiful even with its diamond streets.
We were at the last turn now. I knew what I’d see next: the sea stretched out in front of us, waves crashing onto our little strand, with not a soul in sight except for the Mallons as they ran into the surf with the currach.
I stopped at the end of the path, my mouth open. The strand was filled with people. People I never saw at the water’s edge. People I saw only during the time of the fair. They had walked a long way to get here. Some gathered seaweed and the others looked for limpets and mussels.
Our mussels.
Our fuafar limpets.
Sean and I looked at each other. “Hurry,” he said.
We began to run, the sand dragging at our feet. At the water’s edge we started to dig, getting into everyone’s way, splashing, the sand under our nails and crushed shells biting at our feet. Around us people called to each other.
Suddenly it was silent, as silent as it could be with the waves running high and throwing themselves up on the rocks at our feet.
What was happening?
I looked first at the currach. It was just beyond the waves now, and Liam and Michael were bent over the oars.
Next to me a woman held a small clump of black mussels, her skirt soaked with spray. Her mouth opened as she turned, staring.
I swiveled around, shading my eyes. Lord Cunningham on a huge white horse was coming toward us from the bottom of the path.
My heart jumped, even though I knew it was all right to be there. It was not Lord Cunningham’s beach, after all. It was not his ocean.
Still, I knew there’d be trouble.
He shouted as he pounded across the strand toward us, the sand spewing up in great circles.
Cunningham rode into the surf so that the horse was in water up to his knees, and the sea licked at the lord’s boots. “You!” he shouted at the currach, waving his riding crop over his head. “Come back.”
Next to me Sean shook his head, his face and hair peppered with sand.
The Mallons stopped rowing, their oars raised, and Cunningham rode another few feet into the surf. Michael said something; I could see the anger on his face. Then Liam dipped his oars into the water again. They began to row toward the shore, riding in on a wave, and Sean ran to help them beach the currach.
“What is it?” Sean asked. “What?”
Around me the women were backing away, so there was a space between us. In the middle of the space were Cunn
ingham, the horse, and the currach at the water’s edge.
“The currach belongs to me now,” Cunningham screamed. “To me.”
CHAPTER
12
I was still on the beach later that day, gathering limpets. Sean and his brothers were gone.
The currach was gone too, gone to pay for the Mallons’ rent from last year. Gone, not even for Cunningham to use. “What would he want with the sea, and the cold, and the aching hard work?” Liam had said. “What would he want with the danger?”
Devlin had locked it up with chains on the pier in the harbor. It would be there, with the tar on the canvas drying and cracking, until great holes appeared and the currach wasted away. It wouldn’t be the first time. There were others there, waiting for the owners to pay the rent they owed and get them back, but it never happened.
But I couldn’t think of the currach now. I had to eat something right away. I couldn’t wait for the hen that Celia would cook.
I didn’t even want to think about the hen. What we were doing would not be a good idea in the end. It would mean one less egg every day. I imagined a mountain of eggs, each of them sizzling in a little pan, gone like Mallons’ currach.
And then I thought about the limpets sloshing around in a pail of seawater. Slimy. Cold. Poor people’s food, we called them. Last hope.
It was milk I wanted, a sea of milk with great lumps of potatoes, an ocean of milk to drink until I was full.
Anna.
Would she trade me a cup of milk for the limpets in my pail?
I ducked into Anna’s doorway, thinking about the first time I had gone into her house. I had edged my way into the dimness, peering into the corners, ready to run if I saw one of the sídhe, her hair long, her fingers bony, watching me.
But Anna’s house was like ours: a hearth with banked-up ashes, a bed of straw, a three-legged stool. There was more, a table covered with dried pieces of moss and buttercups. Tiny bits of faded green and brown from the plants around Maidin Bay.
I set the pail of limpets down on the floor. “Dia duit.”
Without my asking, she lifted the pail of milk in the corner. A small pail, with milk in the bottom. She poured it into a wooden cup.
The milk still had a bit of froth on top. It was creamy with bits of yellow fat, even though the cow was thin as a rail.
I closed my eyes. Suddenly I felt weak. If I had to watch her put the cup to her mouth and drink that milk, I would lie down on the floor and not get up again.
Anna stopped pouring, then looked at the cup. She poured in a bit more until the milk was almost to the top. A sea of white surrounded by the rim of the cup …
… and she gave it to me, holding my hands with her own, lifting the cup to my mouth. I had never tasted anything better. Leaves of dulse, a bit of meat shredded into soup on Christmas Day, the sticky red candy that Da had bought us after the harvest one year were nothing like this sweet milk.
I didn’t stop drinking until the cup was empty and I began to think about Anna’s dry hands holding mine. She was so small I had to look down at her, down at the little white cap on her head, the thick creases across her forehead, the faded blue eyes in the folds of skin.
I ran my tongue over my lips, feeling the last drops of milk as she took the cup and hung it on a hook over the hearth.
How could I ever have been afraid of her?
“The madra is gone,” she said.
“Gone? Maeve? How could that be?” Maeve with her ears flying, her tail waving. Maeve protecting us at Cunningham’s stream.
“I don’t know what happened to her.”
How sad Anna looked. She shook her head, then went to the table to chop a pile of nettles. “These will make a good soup,” she said.
“The Mallons lost their currach.”
She looked up at me quickly. “Because of the shed they built?” she asked. “Devlin raised the rent. They couldn’t pay.”
“Yes.”
“And it may be that they will lose their house.”
I nodded. No currach meant no fish. If they couldn’t sell the fish or eat the fish … It was too much to think about.
Anna was leaning on the end of the table, her stick propped up next to her. “The English want us out of here.” She raised one shoulder. “They want our land for sheep, they want it for themselves. You will see. They will offer little help when we starve this winter. They will put us out on the road without a care.”
“You sound like Granda,” I said.
“Yes.” Her back was toward me now. She reached for bits of green, mixing them with something else. “This is good for toothaches,” she said, staring up at the bottle as she filled it.
By that time I remembered the limpets floating around in the pail by the doorway. And I owed these to Anna too, for the milk. I went outside and came back with the pail, water sloshing.
One hand on the table, she pushed at the pail with one bare toe: greenish brown water, a few strands of sea grass, and limpets moving gently.
“Fuafar,” she said, and we both laughed.
“They are for you,” I said.
She looked at me, eyes narrowed. “My son, Tague …”
“He was the cliff fisherman,” I said, suddenly realizing.
“He would go down on the strand and bring back …”
I leaned forward to listen, thinking about the story of Tague. A rope slung around his waist, whipping out and out and down. And because he reached out too far, the wind had pulled him off the cliff.
Anna stopped speaking and put up her hand. I heard it too. Voices calling. Voices calling, “Nory.”
“Nor-rrrrrrrry.” That was Celia.
“Nor-rrrrrry.” Sean Red.
“Nor-rrrrry.” Even Patch.
Something was wrong. Was it Granda? I backed away from Anna at the table.
“Take the limpets,” Anna said.
I shook my head. “For you.”
“I have enough,” she said.
“Nory.” One voice started as soon as the other had stopped. Sean’s the deepest. Celia’s a little higher. Patch’s baby voice.
I picked up the pail by the wire handle and ducked out the doorway, waving my other hand so they could see me across the field. But when they did, they started to run. “Hurry,” they called.
I followed them, leaving the pail in back of the stone wall where no one could find it. Then I flew across the field so I could catch them before they turned down to our house. But instead they were following the road to Ballilee.
CHAPTER
13
“A package,” Celia said when I caught up to them. Her nose twitched with excitement. “In the post office.”
“From Maggie?” I took a breath. “It must be.” We had never gotten something from the post office, not once in our whole lives.
“Michael Mallon was there in Ballilee,” Celia said, “and they told him.”
We looked at each other, Celia reaching out so our hands met.
It was a long walk and the road was stony. We kept to the edge to walk on the soft weeds that grew next to the hedges. As the road twisted we caught glimpses of the sea below, and the strand still filled with people.
More people I didn’t know. People who didn’t live in Maidin Bay or even nearby.
“They will strip the earth,” Anna had said.
And the sea, I thought, watching fishermen jog each other as they tried for a catch with ropes and bits of string. Granda said there was a world just like ours on the bottom of the sea where the sídhe planted potatoes in the sand and drank tea from tiny shell cups. Horses galloped past their houses on the way to a sea city. Granda had said if you bent your ear to the water on a dark night, you might hear the horses neighing.
I’d always meant to bend my ear to it. I stood there for a moment until Celia tugged at my arm. “Hurry,” she said.
At the top of a small hill Ballilee spread out before us. The church, the rectory, a row of houses; and in back of the hot
el, someone emptied a pail of dirty water. A crowd of people had gathered in front of the bakery. They were begging for food. Some were mothers with tiny babies in their arms.
Babies with big eyes.
Celia hesitated. I took her arm. “Try not to look.”
We had never been inside the post office. Could we walk in by ourselves? We peered in the window at Brennan, the postman, in back of the counter. Another man was there too, gathering a pile of envelopes for the hotel.
Patch was the brave one. Before we could stop him, he pushed open the door and was inside. Sean was next, looking back over his shoulder at us.
I put my head in the air so Celia wouldn’t think I was afraid and sailed inside in back of the other two.
“There is something for us,” I said.
Mr. Brennan looked across the counter. “A package.”
“Yes,” Celia breathed.
Maggie. Maggie had sent us something all the way from Brooklyn, New York. Mr. Brennan pointed to a box on the shelf. It was scribbled over with writing; bits of colored paper were stuck to it.
What was inside? What could it be? I tried to think. Could Maggie have pried diamonds out of the Brooklyn streets? Did the diamonds belong to everyone? Could you do that? Would we be rich?
I’d give Anna a coin straightaway, and more besides, much more. I’d get back the Mallons’ currach and tell Liam I was doing it for him even though he hadn’t let me come with him. I’d buy Patch penny candy and Granda a jar of poitín. But first I’d buy food. We’d eat and eat.
But maybe the box held warm things to wear. Granda was cold all the time. And a shawl for me, one with fringe. Red it would be, my favorite color.
Or food.
I had to laugh at myself for thinking of that, laugh as I felt my stomach folding itself together, so hungry. What food could be sent all that way and still be good inside the package?
No, I was back to diamonds. That was what I’d hope for.
But Mr. Brennan didn’t reach for the package. He looked out the window at the people gathered in front of the bakery. They were begging, yelling for food. Someone threw a rock through the window, and the people climbed in over the broken glass. The baker, a cut on his cheek, slipped out his door. Then he was outside, running down the street, away from his rolls, and his bread, and his penny buns.