Echo of Glory, page 21
“What?” James shook his head. “Why does it matter when he took it? This afternoon—or this morning. Gemma was working on sheep bones at the dig site most of the day, so I couldn’t leave the volunteers to go do site surveys. The equipment was locked in the village, but Kieran has a key. He could have taken it anytime. I didn’t check every item in there—the place was dark and the shovels and GPR and the tablets were in their usual places. It looked all right, but you’re right. I should have checked more carefully.”
His words, his actions, everything was possible, plausible. Meg had seen him herself at the dig off and on all day, working with the volunteers, checking any little thing that anyone found, inspecting what remained in the sifting screens, slicing fresh sod away from the soil to expand the excavation grid. And Kieran was the one who was volatile and dangerous—she had seen that, too.
She wanted to believe James, she did, but still there was that prickle on the back of her neck that she’d learned long since was usually her subconscious mind noticing details or anomalies that her conscious self couldn’t process quick enough.
And it was James who Adam disliked, not Kieran, and Adam had watched them both for weeks.
She pulled out an old reporter’s trick. “Well, we’re not going to figure this out here. We should head back. We’re getting cold and wet, and it’s a waste of time standing in the field when Kieran isn’t here. I’m sure we could all use something warm to drink.”
“Exactly,” James said, nodding with evident relief.
Meg took two steps back toward the village, then she paused. “Out of curiosity, though, James—and I’m sorry, it’s just that I don’t understand archaeology very well. Wouldn’t it have been easier to give Kieran what he wanted all this time and get him to stop pestering you? Why didn’t you want to survey out here?”
“This again?” The beam of the flashlight blinded her as James moved his hand impatiently. “It’s not that I didn’t want to—look, there’s a reason metal detectors are illegal in Ireland. We have to be licensed to use them even for an archaeological site because it’s the only way we ensure a methodological framework. Documentation. Context. All that takes time and patience. Somewhere like Dursey, that’s even harder, right? There could be important sites across most of the island. St. Michael’s was thirteenth or fourteenth century and built over a much older church. There’s the ruined monastery by Oileán Beag and a place name in the middle of the island suggests a possible third church site. Then there are holy wells, Neolithic standing stones and artwork, probable Bronze Age burials, a hill fort with a series of tunnels. Another separate tunnel may have been part of the Corr Áit complex where Morty Óg O’Sullivan kept the men he was taking over for the Irish Brigades. That same site was likely also used by the Viking slavers, but its origin is prehistoric. There could be finds anywhere—not rich, glamorous ones probably, but that doesn’t mean they don’t deserve attention.”
“And that’s not what Kieran wanted?” Meg asked.
“He wanted to prove his theory. That’s not what we’re supposed to do.” The wind stripped the emotion from James’ voice, making it even harder to read, and with the beam of the flashlight in front of him, Meg still couldn’t see his expression. Rain dripped from her hood, running in cold streams down her face. Mingling with the salted wind, it stung her eyes and the raw skin beneath her stitches.
She switched on the portable lantern Adam had given her and pivoted to scan the soggy field where the brush rustled and swayed and the grass was being pummeled by the downpour. There was no sign of Kieran, no movement, no luminous figure that might have been anything at all—Kieran with a flashlight or a bean sidhe or a figment of Meg’s imagination. In the pressing darkness she sensed only wind and rain and the distant sheep and a story she would have bet her soul was there, somewhere, lurking in the shadows. The kind of story that made her heart quicken, but it was also more than a story: it was real, with real people, real problems, and fear of what it all meant was already beginning to make her stomach roil.
“Okay, we really should get back,” she said, meaning it this time. “I’m sorry, Adam, but even if Kieran is out here, we’re not going to find him. Not like this, and for all we know, he might be at the house by now. We can all check the village together on the way, make sure he isn’t there, and then let’s go get ourselves dried off and sit down and figure out what to do next.”
James shone the flashlight around the field one more time, then he lowered it. “We need to find him,” he said in an odd, strained tone. “We have to find him.”
It was the first thing that he had said that had the ring of absolute truth, and Meg found herself wanting to reassure him as much as she wanted to reassure Adam. “We will,” she said. “We absolutely will.”
Damp Skin
“We’re each of us alone, to be sure.
What can you do but
hold your hand out in the dark?”
U RSULA K. L E G UIN
The Wind’s Twelve Quarters

There was no evidence of Kieran in Kilmichael, so they continued on to Niall’s cottage in Ballynacallagh. Adam said nothing to James—he didn’t speak at all but followed with a jutting chin and wary eyes when James settled in the kitchen, dropping into the chair across the table from him. He then refused to budge when Meg asked him to come help her with something in the living room, which worried Meg all the more because she couldn’t question Adam meaningfully in front of James. Fortunately, within fifteen minutes, Niall arrived.
He was preoccupied as he stepped inside the cottage, kicking off his boots in the entry before removing his dripping coat and not even noticing that the floor was already wet enough to soak his socks. He didn’t notice that the kitchen door had opened, either, and Meg stood watching him, relieved and happy to see him, and nervous about that happiness.
But then he looked up and spotted her, and his tired preoccupation lifted, giving way to the smile that made her feel lighter, too. “Well, hullo,” he said. “You’re a welcome sight.”
Her own smile grew wider without permission. Too wide, probably, and too foolish, so she went straight to business. “Did you find anything?”
“I take it that means you didn’t?” He closed the distance between them until they were mere inches apart.
Still not sure what to say, she glanced back at the kitchen door. She had to tell him something, though, so she put her finger to her lips, then caught his hand and tugged him toward the stairs. Keeping her footsteps light, she led him up to the landing, then hesitated, standing there in the darkness with the sound of the rain on the roof and the smell of his damp skin and clothes making the air feel close.
“I’ll be honest,” he said, “this wasn’t the way I imagined you coming upstairs.”
There was a low note in his voice that made her aware of his fingers curled around hers, and she wondered if she had kept hold of his hand out of selfish weakness. Need. She let go but as she slid her fingers away, he caught them back and drew her into the bedroom out of sight from below. He picked up her other hand and held that, too.
How was it that such small gestures could be both hopeful and disconcerting?
With their fingers twined together, he made her aware of every inch of skin and of the miracle of sensation that was the human hand.
“What happened?” he asked.
She explained about finding James and the metal detector out in the Kilmichael field, leaving out her own odd impressions. Still, she had the feeling when she finished that he had heard her fears. For a long moment he was silent, and then he said, “You didn’t believe him?”
“I don’t know what I believe. It’s clear that Adam is convinced he’s lying—but I think Adam is hypersensitive to the idea of people not listening to each other right now. Everything James said was plausible.”
“But it could have been he was searching for the metal detector and not for Kieran?” Niall asked, studying her.
“Why, though? And if he was, he didn’t know where it had been left, so I don’t think he was the one who put it there. The question is, what do we do now?”
“We talk to Adam. Or more importantly, listen to him—something I should have been doing better all along.”
“And Kieran?”
Niall rocked back on his heels and released her hand. “If Gemma and Liam haven’t found him by the time they come back, I’ll go to Kilmichael and ring the police. Who knows if they can get a search team over here in this storm, but I think we need to try.”
Swords
“Scars have the strange power
to remind us that our past is real.”
Cormac McCarthy
All the Pretty Horses

“What did you do to Kieran?” Adam demanded as soon as Meg had left the kitchen and the door had swung shut behind her. “I know you did something. Where is he?”
James sat at the table, both hands curled around his glass. His eyes lifted to Adam’s, then dropped again, and he raised the glass and swallowed the rest of the whiskey down. His voice was hoarse when he answered. “If he went out there somewhere with my equipment, it’s not my fault. But that’s why I went to look for him. I didn’t want him caught in this storm.”
Adam hated the make-believe sincerity, the bollocksness. James fooled everyone with that, the way he made himself a victim.
Without Meg the kitchen was heavy and cold, empty, and Adam felt the weight of his own weakness in the silence. He should have made someone listen.
“Kieran told me you’ve been sneaking out at night,” he said to James.
“Did he tell you he snores so loud it’s impossible to sleep?” James retorted. “How about that he took the better bed and uses all the hot water in the shower and leaves his clothes around so it’s like living in a pigsty? You can’t sleep when your mind is cluttered.”
Disgusted, Adam shook his head. “Why did you go back to Kilmichael? Why did you say the metal detector was in with the equipment when it wasn’t?”
James’ glass crashed into the table, liquid splashing out onto the wood. His face pinched into a snarl. “Niall needs to put a leash on you. Don’t you think I get enough grief from Kieran? What do you want from me, Adam? Do you know what it’s like having someone nagging at you all the time? Wearing away at you? You do know, don’t you? You look the type to be picked on at school, so why can’t you understand?” His eyes slid over Adam, and one side of his mouth lifted in a sneer. “Or are you one of the hangers-on? The ones so desperate to be accepted you’re willing to make life hell for someone else.”
Adam’s gut twisted uncomfortably, but he looked away. “It was you who never gave Kieran a chance. You got everyone on your side.”
“There shouldn’t have been sides. This is my work, my career. And it’s none of your business.”
Adam stood up slowly. “Where is he? You know something, I can tell.”
“I don’t—and anyway, I don’t care! And that’s it. I’m through answering questions. I’ve tried to make allowances because of your mother, but you’re a bloody menace. You’re meddling in things you can’t begin to understand.”
Adam wanted to pummel him—hit him and keep hitting him. He was sick to death of people treating him as if he didn’t matter. As if his opinion didn’t matter. “Kieran’s my friend!”
“Don’t be naïve. He isn’t.” James reached for the whiskey bottle again, and then he straightened and looked back at Adam with his expression gone blank and cold. “The Kierans of the world don’t have friends. They have people who are useful to them and others they keep around to make them feel better about themselves. That’s all you are to someone like him—an audience. You show him what he wants to see in himself so he doesn’t have to face the mirror.”
In his damp clothes with the rain bulleting against the wide-paned windows, Adam found that he was shivering. Tears that wouldn’t reach his eyes burned in his throat and collected in a great pool deep inside his chest. He wanted to say James was wrong. And he was wrong. He was. Only what he’d said made Adam think of Declan and Rory at school, the way they’d hounded him until he’d started laughing with them so they’d leave him alone.
“You know what your real problem is?” James continued. “You’re afraid you’re more like me than you are like Kieran, that’s your trouble. And you don’t want to be. You think siding with the Kierans makes you stronger. Makes you matter more. You think it’s better to be stronger, that you’ll save yourself that way. But you won’t. That’s why we’re here now on this godforsaken island, why there was a massacre here. Because not enough people ever stand up to say something isn’t right unless they get a return out of it, admiration or money or power. Meanwhile they go along, bend over backwards searching for the common ground with the people who are holding swords against their throats.”
The empty glass glinted beneath the overhead light and the bottle of whiskey stood a few inches away on the table. The pressure of the tears Adam was holding back built up inside him until he thought his eyes would explode, everything that had happened in the last six weeks, his whole life, everyone telling him over and over how he didn’t understand, how he was wrong.
James was twisting everything. Everything.
It hadn’t been like that. It was Kieran who no one had listened to . . . wasn’t it? And Adam had tried to stand up, that was exactly what he’d done. He’d tried, and everyone told him not to make trouble, to be good. They were always telling him to be good, and he’d done his best. He’d tried not to mind when things were crap and nothing ever got better, when it only got worse and worse and then Ma was gone and he did mind. He minded everything, and he hated James and all those people who’d lied to him and all the pressure building inside him, building and building and building, the pressure and the emptiness of knowing something was wrong and no one would listen to him because he was just a stupid kid. But they were adults and they couldn’t see. They wouldn’t see. And he’d tried to tell them. He had, and they hadn’t listened.
Only maybe James wasn’t wrong, either, not completely. Because after a while, he’d stopped hating Declan and Rory, hadn’t he? He’d stopped hating that he had to laugh while they pantsed Aidan Wells or took photos up Kathleen Farrell’s skirt or made Tariq Ahmed give them his new trainers. He’d stopped hating them and he’d started hating Aidan and Tariq and all the other stupid kids who didn’t fight back.
Snatching the glass off the table, Adam threw it against the wall as hard as he could. He threw that, and he threw the half-empty bottle, and the explosions shattered the pressure inside him and left him breathing hard while the fragments rained down against the table and the chair and the floor and the honey, vanilla, and pencil eraser smell of the whiskey filled the air until he couldn’t breathe.
Imagination
“Many that live deserve death.
And some that die deserve life.”
J.R.R. T OLKIEN
The Fellowship of the Ring

They found the body in the morning before the sun had fully risen. Niall awoke on the sofa downstairs to an unfamiliar weight pressing on his shoulder and the sound of someone banging on the door. Blinking the sleep out of his eyes, he realized the warm weight was Meg curled against him, and for a moment he resented whatever had woken him. But she raised her head and looked at him, then brushed two fingertips along his cheek as if she was as surprised and delighted as he was to find themselves waking up together.
Then the banging came again, and reality crashed over him like a wave. “Kieran,” he said, jumping up and running to the door. “That has to be him.”
It wasn’t Kieran, though; it was the police. A man and a woman in fluorescent yellow garda coats, who must have come over in the boat once the storm had broken.
“Niall Sullivan?” the woman asked.
Niall nodded, feeling a queasy sense of déjà vu that left his heart pounding and his mouth dry with more than morning breath. He glanced up the stairs where Adam was—hopefully—finally asleep and pulled the door open wider. “Have they found him?” he asked. “Is he safe?”
“I’m Sergeant Harrington and this is Garda Foran,” the woman said.
And Niall, recognizing the quiet tone of voice, gave a heavy nod. “You’d better come in, so.”
They wiped their feet on the still sodden mat inside the door but made no move to remove their coats or shoes. Mindful of Adam, Niall led them toward the kitchen, past Meg standing beside the sofa, doing the best she could to smooth down her clothes and hair.
In the kitchen, Niall stopped awkwardly. “Can I get you some tea? Or coffee?”
The kitchen was colder than the sitting room, the glass of the windows still beaded with rain, but the sky was already lightening to lavender and the sea was stained red by the sun approaching the horizon. When the police had said they’d welcome tea, he gestured them toward the chairs at the table and went to the sink to fill the kettle.
Meg hovered by the door. “Are you just getting here?” she asked the guards. “Or have you found something already?”
The two gardai exchanged a look, and it was the sergeant who answered. “They’ve had the helicopter out from Shannon,” she said gently, “and I’m afraid they’ve spotted a body in the water. They haven’t been able to reach it yet, but they’ve got boats coming. It shouldn’t be much longer.”
It. A body.
Niall took a deep breath, thinking of Kieran and what a sod he’d been, but no one deserved to die alone in a storm, at twenty-seven, with their whole lives stretched out in front of them. He imagined how cold and dark it must have been. How lonely.
He’d left his hand on the kettle too long with it on the burner, and the fact that it was hot finally penetrated his brain fog. Jerking back, he realized his palm was red and stinging, and he stared down at it with a strange sense of disconnection. “They’re sure it’s a body?” he asked. “There’s no chance of a rescue?”
