Page 49 of The Scald Crow

“You just told me Middle Earth is beneath you. What did you call it? A cesspool of sadness?” I smiled for the first time today.

“Yeah, well. I’m bored. I want new friends. You understand, don’t you?” She didn’t look up from her task. Her fingers twirled, tying more and more intricate knots.

“I met someone. She saw me.” I leaned on the half-door, admiring her work. Had I become blind to the cruelty? Hardened to their ways? Accepting of Them?

“So?” she graced me with a regal stare.

“She has your eyes,” I recalled my encounters with the dark-haired beauty. Her dove-grey eyes and Elven voice enchanted the crowd.

“Aye?” She looked at me with a passing interest.

“She saw through the glamor. She spoke to me.” An awareness flowed through me, one I should have seen. The girl carried herself as Nemain did, and her mannerisms were strikingly similar. “She sang at my father’s burial.”

“What’s her name?” Her gaze narrowed, and I wondered if she read my mind.

“Calla. Calla Sweet.”

* * *

Colm

The local radio program, “Good Morning Ardara,” was broadcast through the television’s surround sound system. Poppy, the show’s host, engaged in a lively conversation with the most recent caller, discussing the importance of carbon sequestration and the rewetting of raised boglands.

“Mam, I had to go.” I sat back in the high-backed chair. Taking her hand in mine did not calm her ire.

I had left Ireland for one reason only—to escape the pain.

Poppy reiterated that increasing the water table could transform a compromised site from a carbon source into a carbon sink.

“Did you, Colm? You spent a lifetime away from us.” Mam spoke the hard truth.

Back then, I saw no way out. My head was a dark, foreboding space. My life revolved around one thing—finding Ciarán.

“There was nothing left for me, Mam.” The words sounded selfish, even to my ears. I had left Ciarán and everyone I loved behind. My brother looked up to me, and I let him down.

Swept away by the Faeries—the old folks say. The tales lived on in that little town. The young girl from Glenties on the eve of her wedding. Jim McGovern during the hurling championships of 2012.

Ciarán on Samhain—when the passage to the underworld opened, and the undead searched for breathing souls.

“You had your differences. What father and son ever think alike? I know how he was when an idea struck him.” She hugged me, pressing her greying head against my chest.

“It was for the best, Mam.” I left with what money I had and started a new life. I tossed about for months and drank myself into a dark place. Women. Whisky. None of it mattered, but then the clouds cleared. It began with a phone call. The voice on the other end of the line was Eamon. “I have a job for you, laddie. If you’re able.” He threw me a lifeline, and I took it. I buried myself in other people’s pain and, in doing so, escaped from mine. I settled into my new life, neutralizing risk and executing covert operations—as a ghost.

Eamon—I pictured the unassuming man, the mastermind behind black operations for the Irish government. Some would call him a doddering old man.

“Would you be playing with the internet again?” She peered over my shoulder at the computer screen. “’Tis the lass who sang at your da’s burial.” Calla’s face smiled back. The headline blasting… Calla Sweet, Rich Girl Lost. The scathing article purported Calla—a spoiled debutante with a checkered past, alleging mental illness and excessive substance abuse.

“It is Mam…” My Faerie girl, an heiress to one of the most enormous fortunes in North America. Yet there she was, living in a crofter’s cottage in the small town of Ardara.

I saw her: bright-eyed, sharp as a tack. My mind denied those accusations. I was, in a word my father would use—gobsmacked. I considered every conversation, her actions, and her reactions.

An inheritance from an older man who, by all accounts, had led a simple life. The connection eluded me, yet the possibilities seemed endless, daring me to dig deeper and to stay.

“Such a lovely girl, Colm.” She placed her hand on my shoulder, squeezing gently.

“Why would you say that, Mam?” Her aura haunted me, pressing down on me, consuming me.

“Ach, a Mam knows such things. Did you see today’s paper, luv?” She flattened the newspaper on the table, smoothing the corners with care.

---