What the Wind Knows(66)

“What story is it trying to tell?” she murmured, her voice rough with spent emotion. “The wind knows every story.”

“You tell me, Anne,” I whispered. “You tell me.”

“I had a teacher who told me fiction is the future. Nonfiction is the past. One can be shaped and created. One cannot,” she said.

“Sometimes they are the same thing. It all depends on who is telling the story,” I said. And suddenly I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t care where she’d been or what secrets she guarded. I just wanted her to stay.

“My name is Anne Gallagher. I was not born in Ireland, but Ireland has always been inside of me,” she began, as though she were simply reciting another poem, telling another tale. Our eyes clung to the fire, her body clung to mine, and I let her words take me away once more. It was the legend of Oisín and Niamh, where time was not flat and linear but layered and interconnected, a circle that retraced its path again and again, generation after generation, sharing the same space if not the same sphere.

“I was born in America in 1970 to Declan Gallagher—named after his paternal grandfather—and Hannah Keefe, a girl from Cork who spent a summer in New York and never went home again. Or maybe she did. Maybe Ireland claimed her when the wind and water took them away,” she whispered. “I hardly remember them at all. I was six, just like Eoin is now.”

“In 1970?” I asked, but she didn’t answer. She just continued, not rushing, the lilt and flow of her voice quieting my questions even as my head rebelled against my heart.

“We’ve traded places, Eoin and I,” she said, inexplicably. “Who is the parent, and who is the child?” For a moment, she was silent, contemplative, and I continued rocking, staying in one place while my thoughts went in all directions.

“My grandfather recently passed away. He was raised in Dromahair, but he left as a young man and never went back. I don’t know why . . . but I’m starting to believe he did it for me. That he knew this story, the story we’re living now, before I was even born.”

“What was your grandfather’s name?” I asked, dread coating my mouth.

“Eoin. His name was Eoin Declan Gallagher, and I loved him so much.” Her voice broke, and I prayed that her account would turn from parable to confession, that she would abandon the storyteller and just be the woman in my arms. But she pressed on, her agitation growing with every word.

“He made me promise I would bring his ashes back to Ireland, to Lough Gill. So that’s what I did. I came to Ireland, to Dromahair, and I rowed out onto the lake. I said my goodbyes, and I spread his ashes in the water. But the fog grew so thick I couldn’t make my way back. I couldn’t see the shore anymore. Everything was white, like I’d died without knowing I’d passed. A riverboat appeared out of nowhere, and there were three men on board. I called out to them, alerting them and asking for help. The next thing I knew, one was shooting, and I was in the water.”

“Anne,” I pled. I needed her to stop. I didn’t want to hear any more. “Please. Shh,” I soothed. I buried my face in her hair, muffling my moan. I could feel her heart pounding against mine; the softness of her breasts couldn’t mask her terror. She believed what she was telling me, every impossible word.

“Then you came, Thomas. You found me. You called me by my name, and I thought I was saved, that it was all over. But it was just beginning. Now I’m here, it’s 1921, and I don’t know how to go back home,” she cried.

I could only stroke her hair and rock back and forth, desperate to forget everything she’d just said. She didn’t take it back or laugh it off, but her tension slowly ebbed the longer we sat, lulled by the movement and lost in our private thoughts.

“I’ve crossed the lough, and I can’t go back, can I?” she murmured, and her meaning was all too clear. Words spoken could not be unheard.

“I stopped believing in fairies long ago, Anne.” My voice was heavy, like a death knell in the quiet.

She was still curled in my lap, but she pushed herself up from my chest so she could look me in the eyes, the waving strands of her hair creating a soft riot around her beautiful face. I wanted to sink my hands into that hair and pull her mouth to mine to kiss away the madness and the misery, the doubt and the disillusionment.

“I don’t expect you to believe in fairies, Thomas.”

“No?” My voice was sharper than I intended, but I had to get away from her before I ignored the howling in my heart and the warning in my veins. I could not kiss her. Not now. Not after all that had been said. I rose and set her gently on her feet. Her eyes were steady as she gazed up at me, their green warming to gold in the firelight.

“No,” she answered softly. “But will you try to believe . . . in me?”

I touched her cheek, unable to lie but unwilling to wound. But my silence was answer enough. She turned and walked up the stairs, bidding me a soft good night. And now I sit, staring at the fire, writing it all down in this book. Anne has confessed all . . . and still, I know nothing.

T. S.





16





TOM THE LUNATIC


Sang old Tom the lunatic

That sleeps under the canopy:

What change has put my thoughts astray

And eyes that had so keen a sight: