Eoin started to scream.
The sound echoed in my head as I splashed towards her fading form, shouting for her to turn back, to stay. The red ball continued to slink away like the sun on the horizon, and I threw myself across the water, to the place where she had been, reaching for the pale suggestion of Anne that still remained. My arms came away empty. I bellowed her name and lunged again, insistent, and my fingers passed through a whisper of cloth. I closed my fist around the folds, drawing them to me like salvation, end over end, until my hands were filled with Anne’s dress.
I couldn’t see the shore or tell the water from the sky. I was caught between now and then, my feet on shifting sand, and I was enveloped totally in white. I could feel her, the line of her back and the length of her legs, but I could not see her. I wrapped my arms around the shape of her, refusing to relinquish my claim, and began to walk towards Eoin’s cries—a siren in the fog—drawing her back with me. Then I heard her say my name, a murmur in the mist, and as the white began to dissipate, the shore began to show herself, and Anne became whole in my arms. I held her body high against my chest, keeping her from the grasping water and the hands of time. When we fell to the pebbled sand, arms locked around each other, Eoin tumbled into the cradle of our bodies, clinging to Anne as she clung to me.
“Where did you go, Mother?” he cried. “You left me! Doc left me too!”
“Shh, Eoin,” Anne soothed. “We’re all right. We’re here.” But she did not deny what the boy had witnessed. We lay in a panting pile—limbs and clothes and reassurances—until our hearts began to quiet and a sense of reality returned. Eoin sat up, his fear already forgotten, and pointed happily at the innocent red ball that had found its way back to shore.
He untangled himself, freeing us from his clinging arms and unanswered questions. Then he was off, scooping up his ball and heading towards the embankment. Brigid had grown tired of waiting for supper and was calling to us from the trees that separated the house from the shore. But she would have to wait a bit longer.
“You were there, walking into the water,” I whispered. “And then you grew faint . . . like a reflection in thick glass, and I knew you were going to disappear. You were going to leave, and I would never see you again.” I had come to terms with the impossible. I had joined Anne’s rebellion.
Anne lifted her face, pale and solemn, and found my eyes in the twilight. She searched my expression for the baptismal glow of the new believer, and I proceeded to bear testimony.
“You really aren’t Anne Finnegan, are you?”
“No, Thomas.” Anne shook her head, her gaze locked on mine. “No. I’m not. Anne Finnegan Gallagher was my great-grandmother, and I’m a long, long way from home.”
“Jaysus, lass. I’m so sorry.” I brushed my mouth over her forehead and down her cheeks, following the rivulets that still clung to her skin and trickled towards her mouth. Then I was kissing her softly, chastely, afraid I would break her, the paper doll in the lough in danger of disintegrating.
T. S.
17
A TERRIBLE BEAUTY IS BORN
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
—W. B. Yeats
Like the sun coming out from behind the clouds, everything changed the moment I was believed. The storm receded, the darkness lifted, and I shrugged off the heavy layers I’d been cowering behind, warmed by sudden acceptance.
Thomas had been freed as well, liberated by his own eyes, and he began to shoulder my secrets with me, taking their weight onto his back without complaint. He had a million questions but no doubts. Most nights, when the house was quiet, he would slip into my room, crawl into my bed, and with hushed voices and clasped hands, we would talk of impossible things.
“You said you were born in 1970. What month? What day?”
“October twentieth. I will be thirty-one. Although . . . technically I can’t age if I don’t even exist yet.” I smiled and waggled my eyebrows.
“That’s the day after tomorrow, Anne,” he scolded. “Were you going to tell me it was your birthday?”
I shrugged. It wasn’t something I was going to announce. For all I knew, Brigid had known the “real” Anne’s birthday, and I doubted they were the same.
“You’re older than me,” he said, smirking, as though my advanced age was my punishment for withholding information from him.
“I am?”
“Yes. I turn thirty-one on Christmas Day.”
“You were born in 1890. I was born in 1970. You’ve got me by eighty years, auld wan,” I teased.
“I have been on the earth for two months less than you have, Countess. You are older.”
I laughed and shook my head, and he propped himself up on his elbow, staring down at me.
“What did you do? What did the Anne of 2001 do?” He said “2001” with carefully enunciated awe, like he couldn’t believe such a time would ever exist.
“I told stories,” I said. “I wrote books.”
“Yes. Of course. Of course you did,” he breathed, his wonder making me smile. “I should have guessed. What kind of stories did you write?”
“Stories about love. Magic. History.”
“And now you are living it.”
“The love or the magic?” I whispered.
“The history,” he murmured, but his eyes were bright and soft on my face, and he leaned in and kissed me lightly before pulling back. We had discovered that kissing halted conversation, and we were both as hungry for the exchange of words as we were for each other. The words made the kisses mean more when we finally circled back to them.
“What do you miss?” he asked, his breath tickling my mouth, making my stomach shiver and my breasts ache.
“Music. I miss music. I write while listening to classical music. It is the only thing that sounds like stories feel. And it never gets in the way. Writing is about emotion. There is no magic without it.”
“How did you write to music? Do you know many musicians?” he asked, confused.
“No,” I giggled. “I don’t know any. Music is easily recorded and reproduced, and you can play it anytime you want.”
“Like a gramophone?”
“Yes. Like a gramophone. But much, much better.”
“Which composers?”
“Claude Debussy, Erik Satie, and Maurice Ravel are my favorites.”
“Ah, you like the French men,” he teased.
“No. I like the piano. The period. Their music was beautiful and deceptively uncomplicated.”
“What else?” he asked.
“I miss the clothing. It’s much more comfortable. Especially the underwear.”
He grew quiet in the darkness, and I wondered if I’d embarrassed him. He surprised me every once in a while. He was passionate but private, ardent but reserved. I wasn’t sure if it was just Thomas or if he was simply a man of the times, where a certain dignity and decorum were still de rigueur.
“It’s a great deal smaller too,” he murmured, clearing his throat.
“You noticed.” The sweet ache began again.
“I tried not to. Your clothes and the holes in your ears and a million other little things were easy to rationalize and ignore when your very presence was so unbelievable.”
“We believe what makes the most sense. Who I am doesn’t make sense,” I said.
“Tell me more. What is the world like in eighty years?” he asked.
“The world is full of convenience. Fast food, fast music, fast travel. And because of it, the world is a much smaller place. Information is easily shared. Science and innovation grow by leaps and bounds in the next century. Medical advances are staggering; you would be in heaven, Thomas. Discoveries are made with inoculations and antibiotics that are almost as miraculous as time travel. Almost.”
“But people still read,” he murmured.
“Yes. Thankfully. They still read books.” I laughed. “‘There is no frigate like a book to take us lands away,’” I quoted.
“Emily Dickinson,” he supplied.
“She’s one of my favorites.”
“You love Yeats too.”
“I love Yeats most of all. Do you think I might meet him sometime?” I was half kidding, half serious. The thought that I might meet William Butler Yeats had only just occurred to me. If I could meet Michael Collins, surely I could meet Yeats, the man whose words had made me want to be a writer.
“It might be arranged,” Thomas murmured. The shadows in my room were mellow and moonlit, softening but not obscuring his expression. His brows were furrowed, and I smoothed the small groove between his eyes, encouraging him to release the worrisome thought that perched there.
“Is there someone waiting for you, Anne? Someone in America who loves you most of all? A man?” he whispered.
Ah. So that was the fear. I began shaking my head before the words even left my lips.
“No. There is no one. Maybe it was ambition. Maybe self-absorption. But I was never able to give anyone the kind of energy and focus I gave to my work. The person who loved me most in the world no longer exists in 2001. He is here.”
“Eoin,” Thomas said.
“Yes.”
“That might be the hardest thing to imagine . . . my little lad, grown and gone.” He sighed. “I don’t like to think of it.”
“Before he died, he told me that he loved you almost as much as he loved me. He said you were like a father to him, and I never knew. He kept you a secret, Thomas. I knew nothing about you until that final night. He showed me pictures of you and me. I didn’t understand. I thought they were pictures of my great-grandmother. He also gave me a book. Your journal. I’ve read the first few entries. I read about the Rising. About Declan and Anne. About how you tried to find her. I wish now that I’d read everything.”
“Maybe it is better that you haven’t,” he murmured.
“Why?”
“Because you would know things that I haven’t even written yet. Some things are better left to discover. Some paths are better left unknown.”
“Your journal ended in 1922. I can’t remember the exact date. The book was full, all the way to the last page,” I confessed in a rush. It was something that had bothered me . . . that date. The end of the journal felt like it was the end of our story.
“Then there will be another book. I’ve kept a diary since I was a small boy. I have a shelf of them. Fascinating reads, all,” he said, his expression wry.
“But you gave that one to Eoin. That was the only one he had,” I argued.
“Or maybe that was the only one you needed to read, Anne,” he offered.
“But I didn’t read it. Not all of it. Not even close. I didn’t read any entries past 1918.”