Spellbound Read online

  SPELLBOUND

  Jeanette Baker

  CHAPTER 1

  In the small bedroom of her thatched cottage, Kerry Tìerney struggled to give birth to her third child. Sleet, thick and dangerous, slanted sideways, pounding against the windows, seeping under the door, leaving great wet puddles on the flagstone. Outside, the driveway glittered like glass under the falling ice and snow.

  Wind roared from the north, dislodging stones from un-mortared fences, uprooting stunted trees, ripping through power lines, overturning boats in the harbor, sweeping away henhouses, pony carts, street signs, everything not securely tied down.

  Lashed to the mooring, the ferry dipped and rose, a twig helpless in the endless cresting of the Atlantic’s mighty swells. The airport had been closed since early morning, all flights to the mainland canceled, throwing the island into an isolated darkness not seen in twenty years.

  Kerry had been pushing for nearly six hours with little progress. The child wouldn’t descend beyond the pubic bone. The midwife, Mabry O’Farrell, knew that her patient belonged in a hospital. She knew also that there was no hope of getting her there in this weather.

  “Come, lass,” Mabry urged, paying no attention to the white face and trembling hands of the young man by her side. “You can manage it. It won’t be long now.”

  “Why won’t he come?” Kerry moaned, writhing with the pain of another mounting contraction.

  Mabry ignored her question and moved between the woman’s legs, pushing them apart. This was the third time she’d been summoned to bring a child of Kerry’s into the world. It should have been easier than this.

  Suddenly Kerry cried out and her legs went slack. Her husband screamed. Alarmed, Mabry moved to the woman’s head, checked her pulse, and listened for a heartbeat. There was none. Immediately, she knelt down and breathed air deep into Kerry’s lungs.

  “What’s happening?” Danny shouted.

  Mabry inhaled and fastened her mouth over Kerry’s, breathing deeply, pushing down hard with the heel of her hand over the woman’s heart, once, twice, three times, four times . . . ten times. She breathed in again, twice, and pressed again and again and still again, repeating the cycle over and over. Mabry was crying now. There was little time left. If she didn’t act soon, the child would die as well. “Breathe, Kerry,” she begged silently. “Breathe.” Crucial moments ticked by.

  Finally she straightened. “Fetch me a knife, Danny, a sharp one, and see to your daughters.”

  The knife he brought to her was a carving knife, twelve inches long and serrated, with a brown handle.

  Mabry hesitated before taking it. “She’s gone, lad. You know that, don’t you?”

  Danny nodded.

  “I’m going to save your child.”

  Again Danny nodded. Mabry lost precious seconds waiting for him to leave the room. Her hands shook. Kerry was dead. There was no reason to disinfect the blade. She pressed the knife into the dead woman’s skin and watched the line of blood spread. Then she cut again, exposing the round pink uterus, mindful of the child so close to the blade. Feeling carefully to determine exactly where the baby was, she pricked the skin with the knife and slowly, delicately tore open the womb. Her hands grazed the baby’s cheek, his forehead. She reached in, found a leg and an arm, and lifted him from his lifeless mother. It was a boy, just as she thought.

  She suctioned the mucus from his mouth, heard his first strangled gasp of breath followed by the unmistakable mewl of a newborn, and watched gratefully as the blue tint of his skin turned to pink, heralding life.

  After wrapping him in a blanket, she laid him in the wooden cradle that had once belonged to his sisters, the cradle with the hand stitched blanket. Then she covered Kerry Tìerney with a sheet, sat down in the straight-backed chair near the bed, buried her face in her hands, and wept.

  Seventeen days later, Mabry stood on the bluff in front of her cottage, narrowed her eyes against the rare June sunlight, and focused on a spot in the distance where the unbroken expanse of sky met the sea in a blurred, slate-gray horizon line. It settled her, this communion with the distance, a place the ancients once called the summerlands, a place one could go for peace and meditation before time and progress had forever removed them from the path of humans.

  Above her, gulls circled the ancient Celtic fort of Dun Aengus. Below, a turbulent sea crashed against treacherous cliffs, reshaping, rounding, wearing away, one centimeter at a time, year after year, the island that for three millennia had seen the births of her ancestors.

  She knew the island better than anyone. She had always known it. It was part of her, the pulse of it beating through the soles of her feet in perfect harmony with the blood thudding in her throat, her temples and wrists. Ocean tides matched the ebb and flow of the life force within her, low, stretched out, calm in the morning, churning, energized, moon-touched as night deepened.

  Mabry was old, the oldest woman on Inishmore. She couldn’t remember how old. Once she’d known the details of her birth, but that was long ago. All who could have told her were dead now, buried beneath Celtic crosses and rich limestone turf, behind small, white-washed, thatched-roofed churches dotting the lush green of the island, an island three miles wide, eight miles long, an hour’s ferry ride from the mainland, an island where in winter time stood still and its eight hundred inhabitants reverted to the old ways, ways the mainlanders, with their computers and their cell phones and their trendy flats in Dublin, called primitive.

  With hushed voices, her neighbors whispered behind her back. A witch, they called her, cailleach, an ealain dhubh, one who practices Wicca. Mabry opened her eyes, looked directly into the friendly face of the spring sun, and laughed. Perhaps she was. Perhaps she did. Voices spoke to her, urging her to keep the sacred trusts, to ease suffering with her herbs, to counsel the sorrowful, and still she continued to live, long past the time when others had closed their final chapters.

  If that was witchcraft, so be it. Mabry had few illusions. Superstition had no place in her life. Experience and wisdom did. If others were too blind to see that living a long time gave a woman insights, she would make no attempt to educate them. Their superstitions brought her chickens, potatoes, and carrots for her pot. It gave her respect in the villages, something that came rarely to the old and feeble no longer able to earn their own keep.

  Only once had she doubted herself, and the doubt had cost her a moment in time, a moment when her common sense was suspended, replaced by a desperate fear that held her frozen, until sanity returned and she was able to practice her craft.

  It had been too late for Kerry Tierney but not for her unborn son. The woman’s life had already been predetermined, but the child was another matter. Mabry had done what was needed to avoid two deaths that day. Danny Tierney was another matter. The Sight had evaded her completely when it came to Danny.

  He had been a borderline alcoholic when times were good. The loss of his wife sent him over the edge of his already precarious control. Following her death he drank around the clock. Not two weeks after Kerry was laid to rest under the green limestone of Inishmore, Danny’s boat foundered aimlessly on a flat sea beneath skies as cloudless and blue as a spring morning. His body was found tangled in his nets.

  More than likely he would have come to a tragic end no matter what. Danny was born difficult, no matter how one turned it over. There was no polite way around the truth. The lad had few redeeming qualities. There were reasons, of course. Poor little lad, growing up with no mother, never mind a father who spent his life closing down the pubs. Normally Mabry didn’t torture herself with what-ifs. But she’d known Danny Tierney all his life, and she couldn’t help wondering if he’d taken another fork in the road, would it have turned out differently for him?

  She
sighed. If only Kerry had gone to Galway with her brother. Perhaps she would be alive today. But the girl was stubborn. She’d wanted Danny Tierney with the single-mindedness of a migratory bird whose instinct guides her, mindlessly, south, without the slightest notion of what awaits her once she lands. She was a woman island-born, island-locked, unlike her brother, Sean.

  Despite Kerry’s coaxing ways and her sweet, blue-eyed face, pretty where Sean’s was rugged, she hadn’t dreamed the dreams that moved her brother forward. There was a fineness in Sean, a quiet resolution, an honor where so few had any memory of honor. The essence that surrounded her brother and made him stand out from the rest had escaped her completely, and so she’d found her fate.

  Mabry, a woman with little patience for organized religion, crossed herself and muttered a quick prayer. Later, when the moon was high, she would come back here to this same spot. She would stand upon sprinkled salt, light a candle, and with water and wine anoint her eyes, her nose and mouth, her breasts, loins, and feet, while reciting the ancient invocation for health and healing. Bless me, Mother, for I am your child. Blessed be my eyes, that I may see your path. Blessed be my nose that I may breathe your essence. Blessed be my mouth that I may speak of you. Blessed be my breast, that I may be faithful in my work. Blessed be my loins, which bring forth the life of men and women as you have brought forth all creation. Blessed be my feet that I may walk in your ways.

  Perhaps it would be enough. It never hurt to offend either of the deities.

  She shivered despite the sun. There was no help, no prayer, no invocation, no spell to prevent what would come. Sean would return to the island for Kerry’s children, but there would be no peace. They were Danny’s children, too, and Danny had a mother, an outlander, an American, a sun-worshipper with lacquered nails and a laugh like music, a woman who’d stayed long enough to bear a man’s two children, long enough to break his heart.

  Her mouth twisted. Foolish were the sons of Adam to think they could alter the course of destiny. Mabry was forty-seven years old before she knew that she would never leave the island, never sail down a canal in a gondola with a dark-eyed man, never feel the heat of a brilliant sun on that spot on her head where the hair parted. She was ten years older before she realized it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but the sky and the sea and the spring coming in after the long, gray, wet months of winter.

  CHAPTER 2

  Sean O’Malley loosened his tie and sat down in his favorite theater seat, the farthest one to the left in the first row. He stared down at his program with unseeing eyes. The debut of his play, the one the critics had praised for its “uniquely Irish voice,” had come and gone, as had the audience, the musicians, the lighting crew, and the janitor, leaving him alone in a fog of numbing darkness. Three weeks ago his success would have meant everything. Now the attention was no more than a nuisance, an obligation that took him away from the island and Kerry’s children, his two nieces who had lost everything, his nephew who would live his life without knowing his mother.

  Sean had been connected to his twin as he had never been to another human being. Kerry’s death had been a severing, a shock of such horror and magnitude that for days he’d been unable to work, to write, to think or even speak. He’d walked around the spacious, light-filled home he’d bought for himself in Salthill’s exclusive residential area in a myopic daze, scattering his belongings around him, setting down a pencil, a tea cup, a fork, a manuscript page, the turf bill, forever lost in a clutter as hopeless as the condition of his mind.

  People died. Sean knew that as he knew the sun rose in the east and that the ride to Inishmore from Rossaveal on the morning ferry was so choppy a hesitant sailor frequently lost his breakfast. What he had not known, what he could not accept, was that it was Kerry who died. Kerry with three small children, a husband, and all of life ahead. Kerry with her welcoming hearth and her lovely pirate’s smile and her voice that when lifted in song put the sirens to shame.

  Sean dropped his head into his hands, the emptiness of his loss too great for tears, his future looming before him. He had little experience with caring for children. But he had a reasonable income and a housekeeper. Quite simply, there was no one else.

  If it meant a bit of inconvenience on his part, so be it. He would take a leave from the university, concentrate on his plays, and stay on the island until he could win the girls over to the idea of relocating with him to his house in Salthill. Meanwhile, he would tie up loose ends on the mainland and try his best to get through the funeral and wake.

  Newport, California

  Mollie Tìerney sat on the bar stool of her mother’s newly remodeled kitchen and stared out the window. Life had a way of flattening out the highs, of putting things into perspective, of reminding a person not to expect too much or run the risk of grave disappointment. Murphy’s Law, Kerry would have called it if she had been able to communicate at all. But Kerry, Mollie’s sister-in-law and pen pal of nearly six years, her link to her family in Ireland, was dead.

  Three months ago, with Kerry’s encouragement, Mollie had accepted a teaching fellowship on Inishmore. Her eyes filled with tears. Now she would never meet the gentle young woman who had been her friend.

  Mollie’s mother, Emma Reddington, stood at the counter and nervously rubbed a nearly nonexistent water stain marring the gloss of the cobalt blue Mexican tile. Near her elbow, a glass of Cakebread Winery’s finest chardonnay sat neglected, false courage for a dreaded journey.

  Mollie broke the silence. “What does Dad think about Danny’s will?”

  Emma flushed. “I haven’t told him yet.”

  “I thought you were going to tell him weeks ago. Did you change your mind?”

  Emma’s lips tightened stubbornly. “Weeks ago Danny and Kerry were still alive. The situation wasn’t urgent.”

  “Mom, you have to tell him.” A thought occurred to her. “You are going to bring them back here, aren’t you? You wouldn’t give up Danny’s children, not when he left them to you?”

  Her mother stared at her with a look Mollie had never seen before. It frightened her, as did the words that came from her mother’s mouth. “I will never give up Danny’s children, not even if it means I lose everything else. That’s the least I owe him.”

  “What about Dad?”

  “I haven’t figured everything out yet. When I do, I’ll tell Ward. There are legal issues to consider. I’m not sure I can bring Irish citizens out of Ireland into America, no matter what their parents’ will stipulates. I’ve discussed all of this with an attorney. He’s working on it, but I may have to come home for a while after the funeral.” Emma bit her lip. “I hate to leave you there all alone, Mollie. You have no idea what it will be like, all by yourself, on Inishmore.”

  “I won’t be alone, Mom. People live on the island.”

  “Yes,” Emma said woodenly. “I suppose they do.”

  Mollie sighed and gave up. There was no point in interrogating her mother. She was upset enough. Her reasons for keeping the contents of her son’s will from her second husband were her own.

  Mollie knew that the provisions of her brother’s will had mystified her mother. Emma didn’t understand why he would choose her in the first place. For years, when he’d come to visit in the summers, she tried to reach out to him, to overcome the wall that months of separation erected higher and higher every year. But Danny was stubborn, his father’s son, Emma said, immune to the lure of the California promise. He preferred the island, his father, and the life of a fisherman.

  When Emma received her copy of the will drawn up by a Galway attorney, signed by her son and his wife three months before their third child was due, she’d shared her misgivings with Mollie. Three small children. She was fifty-six years old, no longer young, and she hadn’t seen Danny in nearly ten years. He refused to come to California, and she was not welcome on Inishmore. But then she realized it was nothing more than a technicality. People didn’t die young anymore, not both parents, not even on In
ishmore where the conditions were still terrifyingly primitive, wet, cold, and Third World.

  Kerry’s death had shaken her, as did the cavalier way she was informed, a week too late for the wake, one week before her son was lost forever in a deceptively calm Irish Sea.

  Inishmore, Ireland

  Mollie turned up the collar of her calf-length coat with one gloved hand and stuffed the other deep into her pocket in search of warmth. With the exception of her mother and Ward, she knew no one, not even the young man whose funeral she had traveled eight thousand miles to attend, her brother, Daniel Tierney.

  On the other side of the casket she recognized Caili, her five-year-old niece. The child clutched the hand of the man who, Mollie sensed instinctively, was not an islander. He stood motionless, his face carved into hard, grief-pulled lines, staring at the freshly dug grave. The older girl, Marni, her face pinched with a look that tore at Mollie’s heart, leaned against him.

  Patrick Tierney, the stranger who was her father, stood on the other side of the closed coffin, facing the black-garbed islanders who’d braved the icy winds and driving rain to pay their last respects. A woman Mollie didn’t know held Kerry’s new baby, the baby who had cost his mother her life.

  The world was gray. Mollie stared helplessly at the horizon line, her eyes straining to separate sea from sky. The only color her frozen, gray-locked mind could distinguish was the green of the hills, rolling grasslands dotted with gray stone walls surrounded by gray ocean, suffocated by gray sky, pelted by gray rain. How could they bear it, these solemn islanders with their chapped, wind-red faces, their fingers blue and numb with cold, their hair wet and lanky, pasted to their skulls by the relentless weather?

  She closed her eyes and prayed, not for her brother and sister-in-law, long beyond the rain and bitter cold, but for the children they had left behind and the silent, stoic islanders who had come to bury one of their own, despite the cold, the wind, and the water penetrating their dark wool clothing, seeping down upturned collars, loose cuffs, and low-cut rubber boots, drenching them to the bone.