Page 26 of Heart of the Wren
“What’s the matter with you?” he asked.
I followed them into the kitchen to find Eddie nailing up a blue tarpaulin over the empty window frame. I hadn’t noticed any banging but the hammering was quite loud. Not wanting Eddie to overhear, I said nothing about my meditation or the phone call.
“The Wren Day song has been in my head since I heard the children sing it at school,” I said. “The wren, the wren, the king of all birds…”
Lorcan set about helping Eddie.
“Why do you call itthe king of all birds?” Eddie asked.
I pulled out a chair. “The Irish for wren isdreoilín, which means trickster. Legend has it that, one day, all the birds gathered to choose their king. To decide, they came up with a simple contest: whichever bird could fly the highest would be crowned.
“As the birds prepared to take flight, the wren hid in the feathers of the eagle because he had never seen any bird fly as high as the eagle. All the birds took wing, going as high into the clear summer sky as they could. And as each one reached their limit, they dropped lower and lower. One by one, the birds fell until only the eagle remained. Exhausted but confident in his victory, the eagle started to descend only to hear a tiny voice cry out, “I am the king! I am the king!” The clever wren had waited until the eagle was ashigh as he could go, then flown out from his feathers and climbed higher still, for the wren had not tired himself one bit.
“Furious, the eagle refused to accept defeat, saying he had used all his strength to win the contest. “If the eagle can use strength to win,” said the wren, “then why can I not use my wisdom?” And so the clever little wren was crowned as king of all birds.”
Lorcan stopped, mid-hammer swing. “He was standing on the shoulders of giants.” He wiped his nose on the back of his hand, then resumed his hammering.
Chapter 16
LORCAN
I KNOCKED on the door of my own bedroom. Dara had asked for some privacy while he meditated after dinner and it had been a couple of hours. A shuffling of feet and the whoosh of a leg being thrust into a pair trousers preceded the plodding of heavy bare feet. The door clicked open.
“Sorry,” Dara said. “I think I dozed off. It happens sometimes.”
He was shirtless and again I tried not to stare at his chest or his broad shoulders with their clusters of tiny freckles. “I was wondering,” I said, “if you’d like to come with me fora drive tomorrow?”
“Oh?” Dara picked up his shirt but didn’t put it on. His chest flexed, making his soft, pink nipples jump… as well as my willy.
“The snow is easing off and hopefully we won’t get any more overnight.” I scratched my cheek. “Is, ah, is this what you meant when you said it had to snow sometime?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Yeah, sorry. Sometimes when you put the weather off it sort of builds up and comes back stronger.”
I nodded as if I understood. “I need to get away from the farm for a few hours. Michael and Eddie can look after things. I know what Bullseye says but I don’t just work all the time.”
“Only most of the time?”
I hung my head a little. “And I thought it might give us a chance to talk. In private, like.”
He lifted his arms, flashing the ginger hair of his armpits before letting his shirt slowly fall over his body.
I followed its journey down Dara’s beefy, hairy chest, over his round belly, to his wide waist.
“I’d love to,” he said.
???
We set off early the following morning. I turned the radio up and let the music fill the car. Dara tapped along in time to the beat. Neither of us spoke much but it didn’t matter. Though he had the look of a dyed-in-the-wool rocker, he was surprisingly knowledgeable about music in general and a huge fan of Alison Moyet in particular. He sang along to her version ofThat OleDevil Called Love,giving it his all in a carefree manner I envied. Like his usual voice, his singing was husky but comforting. A welcoming hug home. A glass of hot whiskey and cloves after a long, cold day in the fields.
“I spend a lot of time driving,” he said. “I listen to the radio all the time. It’s easier than lugging a bunch of cassettes around but I made an exception for Yazoo. I saw them live once, in Bristol.”
“For some reason I only pictured you driving around Ireland,” I said.
“I do, for the most part. I was over in Wales for a job at the time.” He tapped the door in time to the music. “A fella I knew was being bothered by a ghost and he wanted me to come and get rid of it.”
I glanced at him a couple of times, trying not to take my eyes off the wet road. “A ghost?”
He nodded. “It never did any harm but people were scared.”
