Echo of Glory, page 12
“Do you know what they’re arguing about?” Meg asked.
Niall clenched his jaw. “Everything and anything, I imagine. They’re both set in their opinions, but the main issue is that Kieran has a pet theory about a site he wants us to investigate, and the rest of us have other priorities to cover first. James has charge of the instruments, so Kieran spends a not insignificant amount of his time and energy trying to bully him into agreeing.”
James seemed to be holding his ground physically, but he had a belligerent hunch to his shoulders that suggested he felt cornered. “Poor James,” Meg said. “That can’t be easy.”
“It isn’t.” Niall’s expression darkened into a frown. “I’ve been trying to find a solution, believe me, but my hands are tied.”
His eyes had grown hard, remote, and Meg wasn’t sure whether that was because of what she’d said or because of the situation. She hastened to apologize. “I’m sorry. That was more of a physical observation. I didn’t mean to criticize.”
“You weren’t. It’s complicated,” Niall said, relaxing a fraction. “Then, too, James is patient about it all, which only makes it that much harder and more frustrating.”
“And Adam? He seems to be siding with Kieran. Or am I missing something?”
“I wish I understood the attraction,” Niall muttered almost beneath his breath. “Kieran is like a magnet for him, and on Kieran’s end . . . I can’t be sure. Either he genuinely likes Adam or he wants to get back at me for not taking his side. Perhaps a bit of both.” With a brief sigh, he shook his head. “Never mind all that, though. Give me a moment to go have a word with them—my daily useless effort—and I’ll take you around to introduce you properly to everyone so you can be getting to work. It’s time we gave you some of that adventure you were craving.”
He resumed walking, but James suddenly straightened and his head snapped up. “Because I don’t have to listen to you, that’s why!” James cried. “Leave me alone!”
The red-haired girl with the tattoos—Gemma, according to Meg’s mother—pushed herself up from her knees where she was working nearby and launched herself at Kieran with a snarl. “Right, that’s it. What’s it going to take for you to get the message? Leave off him, Kieran. I mean it.”
Niall ran after her, though whether that was to intercept or assist her, Meg wasn’t sure.
“Me?” Kieran spun around toward Gemma. “You’re the ones nagging at me, all of you. I can’t even offer an opinion or ask a simple question. And spare me the lecture, please. He does this on purpose, look at him. Playing on your sympathy, begging you to leap to his defense.”
He had a symmetrical face with a long, aquiline nose and narrow chin. Above this, his lips were out of balance, his upper lip stretched thin into a sneer, while the much fuller lower lip seemed more inclined to pout.
Gemma, seeing that expression, hissed like any angry mother cat. She snatched the soil-stained bucket of dirt that James was holding and shoved it into Kieran’s solar plexus. “I’m impressed you could say that without laughing, Kieran. Really. Now get to work. Take that over to the sifting screens.”
The whole site had gone quiet around them, and the cries of the gulls swooping overhead and the roar of the wind and the sea had grown too loud. Niall stopped beside Kieran and dropped a hand on his shoulder. “Might be best to do as Gem suggests, Kieran. Give everyone an opportunity to cool off.”
“I don’t work for her. Or him,” Kieran snapped, nodding at James.
He’d grabbed the bucket out of reflex when Gemma shoved it at him, and he stood there with it pressed against the pale blue cotton of his oxford shirt. Breathing hard, he darted a furtive look around, as if he’d remembered they weren’t alone and realized for the first time that the volunteers had all stopped to watch what was going on. Mottled patches of red crept up his cheeks, and he stormed between Gemma and James. But his foot caught on a severed root at the edge of the excavation trench, and he lurched into Gemma’s shoulder, knocking her so that James had to reach out to keep her from falling. The bucket tumbled from Kieran’s hands, scattering dirt across the trampled sod and Gemma’s feet.
Kieran stared down at it, fuming. Then to add ignominy to humiliation, a gull let fly its bowels overhead, and a long, thick cream of excrement plopped on the front of Kieran’s shoulder and oozed along the cloth. Kieran swore and kicked the bucket away. With Gemma and James in front of him partially blocking his path, he shoved them aside and headed back toward the tent. A ripple of shocked laughter followed in his wake.
Niall’s free fist clenched as he strode the remaining paces to where Gemma stood.
She was shaking as she looked up at him, but she tried to smile. “Somebody find me that seagull. I want to give it a big fat medal.” She shook her head. “You have to do something, Niall. He’s about as useful as a chocolate teapot, and if you don’t sort him out, one of these days, I’m going to have to murder him.”
“I’ll have another word with Graeme,” Niall said, raking a hand through his hair. “And I’ll speak to Kieran again once he’s had a chance to think. Try to reason with him—”
Adam whipped around to face him. “Why can’t you just let him use the ground radar like he wants? That’s all he’s asking, and you’re all being unfair—”
“Unfair? This dig isn’t Kieran’s personal playground,” Gemma snapped.
“But James—”
“James is only doing what we all agreed to do,” Niall said with an edge to his voice. “I don’t know what Kieran’s been telling you, but his opinion doesn’t get to count any more than anyone else’s, no matter how often or loudly he offers it. And that, mate, is the end of the discussion. As much as I love you, this is a problem for the staff to settle between us—which we will. Later.” He turned and smiled around at the volunteers. “I’m sorry, everyone. Clearly, we’re all passionate about our work, but I think that about concludes the entertainment portion of the morning.”
People evidently needed a release of tension, and there was an appreciative round of light laughter. Gemma crouched down to scoop up the dirt Kieran had spilled onto the grass, and Niall handed the box of doughnuts to Adam while he bent to help. Meg had already started to bend as well, and they collided on the way down, so that they both jumped back and rubbed their heads.
Gemma wiped her curls out of her eyes. “I’ll get this. It’s my own fault for letting my temper get the better of me, which happens a sight too often.” The smile she sent Meg was both good-natured and wry. “You’ll have gathered I’m Gemma—the other member of staff here—and that’s James.”
“Howya,” James said. “You must be Meg. Sorry to hear about yesterday.”
“It’s nice to meet you both,” Meg said, smiling at them.
James blushed, ducked his head, and gestured at the spilled soil on the ground. “Sorry about all this, too. I try to ignore Kieran, most days—”
“You shouldn’t have to,” Gemma snapped. “You’re a bloody saint, if you ask me.”
Adam, listening, snorted, and spun on his heel to hurry after Kieran, who, instead of heading to the sifting screens that stood on the far side of the tent, was marching in the direction of the bridge that led off Oileán Beag back to the larger island. Niall called after Adam. “Hold up, mate. I was going to ask you to help out at the cleaning station today. What do you think?”
“My stomach hurts,” Adam said without stopping. “I’m going back to the house. Or can’t I even do that without a lecture?”
As Adam spoke, Kieran reached the far corner of the white tent and crossed the remaining yards to the bridge just as a large, muscular man with sandy blond dreadlocks gathered into a ponytail was stepping off it. As narrow as the path and the bridge both were, there wasn’t room for two. Kieran and the other man both stepped aside in the same direction as they sought to avoid each other—and then they both moved the other way. Finally, the larger man stopped, laughing as people did in that situation, but Kieran—either because he mistook the object of the laughter or out of sheer frustration—lashed out and shoved the man, trying to move past him. With legs the size of tree trunks, the man didn’t budge and Kieran instead only succeeded in pushing himself off balance. Stumbling, he lurched off the path and onto the rocks above the cliff until the man yanked him back to safety. Kieran slapped his hands away, stomped over the bridge in a huff, and veered left along the road that led into the nearby abandoned village.
“Good riddance,” James muttered.
Adam snapped around toward him, his expression mutinous. “Why do you always do that?”
Seeing everyone looking at him, he froze, then he took off at a run toward the bridge, the dirty cast clutched against his stomach, his agitation transmitting itself to the gulls that had perched along the top of the tent as he pounded toward it. They launched into flight in unison, screeching and wheeling in the air.
“So, that went well.” Niall stared after Adam with every muscle clenched. Head bent, he ran a hand over the back of his neck, and he gave Gemma a slow, reluctant grin. “I hate to ask, but—”
“Sure, I’ll look after things here.”
He nodded. “Not that going after him will make things any better between us, but I don’t have much choice. The mood Kieran’s in, there’s no telling what he’ll say—and that’s the last thing Adam needs.”
“What if I went instead?” It wasn’t any of Meg’s business, none of it, so she wasn’t sure where the suggestion came from. She knew only that Niall was in a no-win situation and both he and Adam were miserable. And clearly there was something going on between Adam and Kieran, something that made Adam identify with Kieran, which could be both a problem and an opportunity.
Niall studied her. “Are you sure?”
“As long as you don’t mind trusting me with him. I can say I feel guilty about his stomach because I brought the doughnuts. And you have things here that need your attention.”
Niall clasped her arms, looking down at her with so much warmth and worry and gratitude that it was hard to meet his eyes. “Thank you. Honestly. I’m afraid I’ll push him toward Kieran even more if I go after him—or signal that I don’t trust him. If he is with Kieran, don’t try to intervene. I don’t want you in the middle of that. But if you do get a chance to talk to him alone, just make certain he’s all right. I hate that I spoke to him the way I did just now, and he seems to open up with you more than he does with me.”
Meg loved how much Adam mattered to Niall, not only as a responsibility, but as a person entitled to self-respect. She loved, too, that he wasn’t afraid to let her see his pain and fear, at least not where Adam was concerned. Niall’s own pain, she suspected, was buried a great deal deeper.
“Strangers are easier to talk to sometimes,” she said, “because they matter less. It’s the people we care about who are hard to face.”
Black Sky
“It is the unknown we fear when we
look upon death and darkness, nothing more.”
J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

The absence of twenty-first-century sound seeped gradually into Meg’s awareness as she followed Adam down Dursey Island’s single road. Grass growing in the middle of the track cushioned her footfalls, which would have, in any case, been muffled by the wind and the white crests of the waves along the cliffs. Adam had disappeared around a bend, so ahead of her there was only a row of power lines, the green hillside broken by yellow furze and lichen-flecked rocks, and the gray ocean changing colors beneath a racing cloud, and by the time she had rounded the edge of the slope, Adam had slowed from a run to a jog. A trio of sheep wandering on the road trotted awkwardly out of his way, but then they paused to watch him pass, their ears flicking and their mouths still ruminating on the grass they had been chewing before he’d come along. Meg wondered whether they had been deliberately let loose to graze on the commonage or if they’d escaped from one of the ancient fields, the outlines of which had probably been marked in stone a thousand or more years before and had since remained essentially unchanged.
Time on Dursey seemed altered once she’d stepped off the cable car, as if a decade was little different from a century, or even a millennium. Looking across the fields that hung off the spine of the island and sloped to the very sheer edge of the cliffs, she could imagine herself standing here the day before the O’Sullivan massacre, seeing these same sheep trotting along the track, hearing the same mournful calls of gray-winged gulls who called out as they circled overhead like echoes of long-dead voices crying out in joy and pain and grief. The ancientness of it all dwarfed her own life, her own concerns, and she wondered if Adam felt any of that here, whether it was a help or a hindrance. Most likely, he was too young and locked inside himself to notice.
The village of Ballynacallagh, when she reached it, was eerily quiet, too. A few scattered houses with blank, abandoned windows stood shoulder to shoulder with the roofless stone husks of earlier dwellings. Some of these had been converted into additional livestock sheds with roofs of painted tin, and the fields around a small cluster of buildings were speckled with cows and sheep. A few chickens scratched in yards where Mary Elizabeth and others like her commuted every day from their homes on the mainland to tend the farms that had been in their families for generations.
Apparently, more people lived full time on the island now than at any time since the 1970s. A handful of the old farms had been purchased in the past two years, Fergal had said, some by a local farmer who was converting them into holiday cottages and others to transplants who didn’t have children and were looking for solitude: a writer and his wife, a graphic designer, a retired couple down from Dublin. And a few of the farmers still stayed overnight now and then. The habitable houses were spread between two of the island’s three villages, Tilickafinna on the distant end and Ballynacallagh closest to the cable car, while Kilmichael not much beyond that was completely vacant. But walking on the empty road with only Adam in front of her, Meg had the eerie feeling of being entirely alone and remote from her usual life, as if, at any moment, time could peel away without her having noticed and leave her stranded in another century. She wondered if teenage boys had been any easier to reach in a different age, or whether they had always been the same.
Afraid to spook Adam, she didn’t call out to him, and he didn’t seem to know she was hurrying behind him until he turned onto a path in front of a two-story yellow house with chimneys on either end. Catching a glimpse of her as he paused to unlatch the gate, he seemed visibly surprised to see her coming up the road.
“Hey,” she called out. “I wanted to make sure you were all right. It wasn’t the doughnut, was it?”
“No.” He stood with his hand on the latch, but he didn’t go in. That was something.
Meg increased her pace and was breathing hard by the time she reached him.
“You didn’t need to come,” he said, not quite looking at her.
She hadn’t fully worked out what she was going to say, but it was easier, sometimes, to get someone to open up if she confided in them first. “It was a little awkward for me, to be honest, after missing the orientation yesterday. Everyone else knows each other already, which leaves me as the odd man out. Do you ever have that feeling? Can I come in a minute? I’m more out of shape than I expected, so I’d love a drink of water.”
Adam gave one of his trademark shrugs, but he fumbled with the latch, then pushed the gate aside and held it for her. “They’re mostly all right. The volunteers anyway.”
“But not the rest?” Meg picked her way along a path of mossy stones set into pads of soft tufts of grass.
Adam edged around her to shove the door open, and she followed him inside, where the living room was painted the same shade of yellow as the exterior of the cottage but wide, wood-framed windows looked straight out toward Oileán Beag and the endless Atlantic. A staircase climbed to what must have been the bedrooms overhead, and Adam moved through into a narrow kitchen. Making a point of not making eye contact, he removed a glass from a cupboard and went to the refrigerator. “Water or lemonade?” he asked. “Both are cold.”
“Lemonade sounds great.”
He poured it out for her, then got another for himself. She leaned back against the counter while he slumped into a chair at the table.
The drink rested pleasantly on the verge of sweet and sour, and Meg allowed herself the luxury of savoring it in silence, but then she moved to sit beside Adam without looking at him. Like the angels from her favorite—terrifying—episode of Doctor Who , some people seemed only to come to life when you didn’t look straight at them.
“It’s nice out here,” she said. “Quiet.”
“That’s not my idea of nice.”
“ Too quiet?” Meg laughed. “I guess I would have thought the same thing at your age. I remember my dad dragging us camping one summer—by which I mean something nowhere near as rustic as this. A rental house at a lake in Virginia. Four bedrooms, a motorboat, jet skis, and a big screen television. My sisters and I spent the whole time arguing, and my mother finally drove us three hours away to go shopping so my dad could have some peace. I think back now and wish I had it to do over again.”
Adam flicked a look at her, then stared down into his glass.
Meg tried again. “Was your mom a peace-and-quiet kind of person? Or did she love the city?”
“She couldn’t bear silence. Played her music all the time.”
“What kind of music did she like?”
“All sorts. Whatever she could sing with.”
