And of course, Maggie, my imaginary friend, was my first mate. Maggie. Mary. They were the same even in the dream. Perhaps even more the same. Her hair was like mine, wild and dirty, bits of hay and grass stuck in the snarls. Our swords clashed. We giggled and chased each other around the outside of the house. Mother yelled at us from inside but we ignored her. We were living a life of freedom on the high seas. We were unstoppable.
When my sword slipped and smacked her wrist and she began to cry, I held her and apologized over and over again. I’m sorry, Mary, I’m sorry, I need you. You’re my best and only friend.
She stopped crying and giggled again, the mistake forgotten. This was when we first became friends; not in the dream, but when I was five. It was around then that Father stormed out of our lives, off to start another family. I probably had half brothers and sisters scattered all across Ireland. This was when they screamed at each other day and night. This was when I began hiding in the cupboards, listening to the fights, jamming my fingers in my ears until it hurt.
That little beasty isn’t mine!
She is yours too, Malachy Ditton, she has your devil in her! Your eyes!
No eyes of mine, witch! Eyes from Hell! Don’t come at me with that broom, you’re the one gone and fecked a demon!
Even when they knew I was in the cupboards crying and hearing it all, they wouldn’t stop. When he left, she said it was just the drink that made him say all those mean things. But I knew there was truth to it, felt it deep in the place where secrets go to fester. Eyes from Hell. My eyes had always been strange and black, not like other children’s. Sitting in the cupboard, I wished for a friend who didn’t care, for someone who wouldn’t beat me in the schoolyard because of the way I looked and was.
Mary saved me. No, Maggie. I called her Maggie. It didn’t matter. I chased her around the house and I was happy for a while. She didn’t care that my eyes were black or that my mother was odd.
Around and around we went, shrieking with laughter, smacking each other on the shoulders with our sword-sticks. Then she ran away from town and I followed her, into the wood, to the parts of the cove where I was never supposed to go. I hated listening to my mother’s superstitious nagging. Her stories were dazzling but couldn’t be true. Fairies and devils and all sorts in the wood. It was just a bunch of bushes and grass and trees, nothing scarier in there than a rabbit ready to startle you.
I followed Mary into the wood, up a hill, running out of breath but loving every second of it. I’d be hided for this when mother saw how dirty my feet had gotten. It didn’t matter. I ran after her, giving chase, little legs working hard. We crested a shallow hill and stopped short, oohing and ahhing at the sweet fairy ring that had sprung up around a kind of natural well. I picked up a stone and tossed it into the water, laughing.
“What if a water spirit’s inside?” I asked.
Suddenly it was night. The dream didn’t feel fun anymore. Mary was there but she looked sad. She sat next to the fairy ring and shook her head.
“You shouldn’t throw stones. That could be someone’s house.”
That was silly. What could live in that water but a fish or frog? I tossed another stone in, but it did not plop. Someone had caught it. Someone angry. A gray-green figure slid out of the water, its face and shoulders covered in slime. It was naked, but all I could see were its huge silver eyes.
“Little greedy child,” it whispered, hoisting itself higher until it loomed above us. I heard myself scream. “You disturbed the water and now I shall take her back home. She’s mine again, little greedy child, and you are alone. You are alone. . . . Alone . . .”
The thing snatched Mary by her hair and pulled, dragging her into the water, plunging back below, her small legs kicking, thrashing, spraying murky water in my face. I toppled in after her, crying, reaching for her. . . . But she was gone. I stared helplessly into the surface, but it only reflected my face and the stars.
I heard her voice from deep, down below.
Don’t cry, Louisa, I’m only going home.
Chapter Nineteen
The first crack of thunder jolted me out of sleep.
One crash and then another. Nature’s horrible fury shook the barn. I nearly leapt up off the hay bale, the book on my chest clattering to the floor as more thunder rumbled overhead. My dreams had been full of dark, swirling entities and someone crying far away, obscured by a misty curtain I could not penetrate. It was my mother’s voice in the dream, calling to me, begging for something, but the words were pulled apart like tufts of yarn before they reached my ears.
Fell winds pounded the barn walls, and below I heard the horses stamping their feet in alarm. The thunder rattled in my bones, and my hands shook as I retrieved the book. It had fallen open on the last page I’d read before sleep took me—page ninety-eight: “The Enduring Mystery of the Lost Order.”
The Lost Order would have to wait. Just below the howling winds and thunder, I heard voices outside. That didn’t make any sense, not unless Chijioke was gathering up the last of his gardening materials before the storm struck in earnest. But it was not his voice I heard moaning in between blasts of lightning, and it seemed too late an hour for cleaning up the yard tools. Peering out the window, I saw the moon at its highest point, glittering behind storm clouds. Midnight.
At first I thought perhaps someone had become lost and wandered onto the property, calling for aid. But when I crossed to the opposite window and pressed myself close to the cold glass, I saw instead that a solitary figure stood with arms raised in the space between the house and the back gardens. She had a woman’s slender build and small hands, and she seemed not to mind at all that a tempest raged around her.
Her words carried to the barn but I could not make them out. And so I bundled Mr. Morningside’s book back into my skirts and climbed down the hayloft, stepping lightly as I rushed past the pawing, snorting horses. Here it was again, my damned curiosity. I could climb back up into the hayloft and try to shut out the storm and sleep, but instead I was throwing open the barn doors, plunging out into the swirling winds, and shielding my eyes from the bits of grass and dust swept up into the atmosphere. It felt like the full weight of heaven was bearing down upon me, more than just the elements, more than just icy air and thunder.
I tumbled forward at once, foot caught in one of the yard’s many holes. Sprawled out on the grass, palms wet and skinned, I squinted into the storm, crawling onto my knees and then rising to my feet, stumbling ever closer to the figure in the clearing. Who was this person, facing down the will of the sky itself, hands raised fearlessly, feet planted sturdy and strong? It felt private, like I was intruding on her intimate conversation with the clouds. Her voice rose and fell in a kind of chant, and fragments of it sped toward me on the chill fins of the winds.