Page 134 of A Winding Wave of Magic
“Just fine, Rob, just fine,” Jock replied. “Had a fine time escorting these two young people here. Caitlin’s well?”
“Grand, I’m sure, now that Jon’s here. Care to join us for tea?”
Jock licked his lips, but he shook his head and jangled his keys. “There’s a tour in thirty minutes I’m to be guiding. Another time, I think.” He handed the girls some sweeties fished from his pocket, then waved his farewells at us all as he got back into his car and drove away.
The man named Rob turned to Jonathan with a warm grin that reached his eyes. “Jonny.Conas atá tú, a ghrá?”
Jonathan allowed himself a tight, brief hug.
“How are you, then?” asked Rob, switching to English for what I realized must be for my benefit.
“Well, I survived the girls’ welcome, so it’s a start” Jonathan brushed off his pants, which I suspected would never be quite the same.
The sisters (I thought) giggled proudly and then turned their attention back to me.
“This is Cassandra Whelan, Rob. Penny’s granddaughter. Cassandra, this is Robert Connolly, or Robbie as he’s known to most of us.”
It hadn’t escaped me that the slight Irish that sometimes tinged Jonathan’s speech had been steadily returning since our arrival in Dublin, and was now nearly as thick as the man next to him. He might not have been born here, I saw, but this place was in his heart and soul.
Robbie shook my hand warmly and pulled me in for a hug before I could step out of reach. The typical chaos of a keen mind—the mind of a sorcerer—was cut immediately by the warmth and sympathy through the soft flannel shirt. A brief memory ofGran’s face the way it must have looked in her youth flashed through his mind, along with his grief.
She was so young, I might not have recognized her but for the sharp brown eyes that were both watchful and warm, wide lips pursed in concentration, and a hint of a smile. The high cheekbones and straight nose betrayed the lineage of some Viking raider. Auburn hair danced in the wind, and scents of salt water and seaweed filtered through the memory in tandem with the similar smells around me now.
I pulled back to look at him. “You did know her.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Mm, so I did,” Robbie acknowledged. “Did she not say so? Penny was a great friend to us here. We were very sad to learn of her passing.”
He gripped my shoulder a second more before letting go. I nodded in response, and he smiled in a way that made the skin crinkle around his eyelids. I grinned back. As first impressions went, I liked Robbie Connolly very much.
“Now then,” he said. “Let me introduce you to my daughters, otherwise known as the hellcats. The tallest is Bronagh, my eldest. And these are Enda and Iona, the twins. Girls, come say hello to your auntie Cassandra.”
Bronagh, a girl who stood just above my shoulder, shook my hand while the twins cowered behind her. Gray eyes like her father’s, with the same combination of mirth and mischief, peeked out from between strands of wayward mouse-brown hair.
“Deas bualadh leat,” Bronagh murmured, the gray in her eyes flickering brightly as she looked me over. A sorceress, more perceptive than usual.
The twins, identical with sea-green eyes, dark blond hair, and a generous collection of freckles speckling their cheeks and noses, hid behind their father, giggling as they reached out, oneby one, to tap my palm coyly before I retracted it. Their brief touches were enough for me to See that they were both seers.
“Why do you wear gloves in the summer?” asked the one called Enda, who was polite enough not to search in my mind for the answer herself.
“Eejit, can’t you See?” said her sister, who had no such compunction. “She uses them for protection. Otherwise, she’d See every little thing she touched.”
She continued admonishing her sister in a rattle of Irish too quick for me to follow. I gazed at their tightly clasped hands enviously—how lucky for a seer never to have to endure the loneliness of our existence through their adolescence. Even in the womb, they had always had each other.
I wondered if they had Seen each other even then.
“It’s lovely to meet you all,” I told all three girls before turning to Robbie. “I’m afraid your daughters have me at a disadvantage. I can read and write Irish all right because of my work, but I’m barely conversational.”
“Well, you’ll learn fast, then. We try only to speak theGaeilgeat home.”
“As they should,” said Jonathan with a wink at the girls. “Their fluency will only put them at an advantage, especially Bronagh.”
Bronagh made moon eyes at Jonathan, in response to which he flashed her a smile bright enough to make anyone blush. She abruptly picked up a rock and hurled it over the stone fence toward the ocean lapping lazily on the other side. She yelled something in Irish, and the rock transformed into a gull and continued flying off into the sea until she broke her gaze, at which point it became a rock again and dropped into the waves. Then the girl scampered as if she were as wild as the bird she had summoned, her sisters trailing behind.
“She’s wild, that one. I don’t know what she’ll do once she starts school this fall. Be a bit of a change, no doubt,” Robbie said.
We watched his daughters sprint through an opening in the limestone wall, dig their bare toes into the hard rock where the ocean tides flowed in and out, and commence picking up stones and hurling them into the water as hard as they could. He called at them in Irish, and they ceased throwing stones but continued running around on the flat limestone that took the place of a beach. Robbie turned back to us with a knowing look.
“I told them to be careful of the merrows,” he said with a dark glance my way. “They don’t relish being hit on the head. And you can’t be too careful with the girls, mm?”
