Forever by Pete Hamill Page A

Cormac to stay back for now, follow the dog, his face saying, Wait, son, I must do something first. Cormac understood. Following Bran to the horse, he looked around, but Mary Morrigan was nowhere in sight. He wondered if she’d told the men what had happened in the night (for in the time of feasts they spoke of all things) and then thought that she had not. And then wondered if it had happened at all, if it had only been a dream. Then, thinking: No, it was not a dream. I can smell her on me. The scent of pale roses.
    Bran and Thunder broke his thoughts. The great horse was slick from the journey, his black coat streaked with white foam. Cormac loosened the harness, hugged Thunder’s massive head, and led him to the hidden stream, where all three drank together from the silky current. The water was the color of the sky.
    Through the trees he could see the men now unloading crates from beneath a false bottom Fergus O’Connor had added to the cart, using one of his father’s tools to open each in an almost reverential way. Suddenly they were all holding new muskets. Then Fergus was showing them how the guns were used. This was what he needed to do first, Cormac thought, and he didn’t want me to be part of it. Men use muskets. And I’m not yet a man. Da must know that a bad time is coming.
    The men moved into the forest with the guns, and Fergus came to fetch his son, to hug him, to drink sky-colored water with the boy and the horse and the dog. Then they all gathered with the others for a small feast of eggs and bread, bacon and vegetables, washed down with icy water from earthenware mugs. The other women brought the food, young women, golden-haired, long-gowned, their bodies hidden. In his mind, Cormac could see their breasts and bellies and hidden hair. But none were made of the stained dark skin of Mary Morrigan, who was still nowhere in sight. The men grew flushed and excited, skin reddening, nostrils flaring, but not because of the women. “Let them come now ,” one said. “ Let them come, and we’ll be ready for them.” Another said, “ Aye, let them come, and we’ll fight them with their own weapons.” All talking abruptly, breathily in Irish, while Fergus said nothing. He had done his work, kept a promise to deliver the weapons; what was to happen with the guns was in the future. Cormac asked him where he’d gotten the guns. He answered that it didn’t matter. He said he hoped they’d never be used, that they would rust in their hiding places, because he hated the guns, which were mere machines.
    “But we must be ready,” he said, “if the English come for us.”
    Then they were leaving, Fergus exchanging somber embraces with the men and polite, grave nods with the women. Thunder was harnessed to the empty wagon. Cormac still could not see Mary Morrigan, and he ran through the trees to the cave, but she was not there. He felt that this was not right. Not right, after what had happened in the cave. Not right, to just go away without a word. All summer she’d been his teacher, of language and music and stories. And in the cave… He returned, breathless from running, to the cart. Bran hopped up between them and his father uttered a word in Irish and Thunder stepped off.
    Then at last Cormac saw Mary Morrigan. She was high on the slope of the hill at the mouth of the cave. He stood up in the wagon and waved. She made a small, sad, finger-curling signal with her ancient hand, and then was lost behind a screen of trees. As he sat down, his mind filled with images of dark and pliant skin, the flesh of roses.
    “It’s all right, son. She’ll be here when you come back.”
    “I hope. Because she says that a bad time is coming.”
    All the way home, they talked about what Mary Morrigan had told Cormac. “We must be ready, Da, ” Cormac said, and his father answered, “Aye.” The boy reminded him of his mother’s story, the tale of Joseph and his brothers and how the Pharaoh listened while the Hebrews