Page 1 of The Scald Crow
1
Ireland is a mystical place where Faerie belief lives.Na Daoine Maithe—the Good People, the Other Crowd, Them––referred to with reverence and fear.
Calla
“I’m sorry, lass. There’s nothing I can do. The rental company wants the vehicle back to Dublin.” The tow truck driver gazed toward me through warm blue eyes, my broken rental car hanging from the tow bar of his mud-splattered truck.
“Dublin? But I’m going to Ardara.” How could I have known the flock of black-faced sheep dotting the sloping green hills would scatter across the road the exact moment I reached for my cold cup of double-double dark roast coffee? I grappled with the steering wheel, twisting hard left and away from those deep, endearing eyeballs. Submerged axle-deep in the boglands? Well, I didn’t expect that.
The car had bounced off the road, flew over the ditch, and lurched to a hard stop, deploying the airbag and knocking me senseless. I wrestled with the airbag, stabbing it with my handy dandy utility knife—something every woman should always carry.
“I’ll run ye over to Donegal town, but I can no go to Ardara.” The man scratched his forehead with grease-stained fingers. “There’s a wee fair about today. Ach, but you’d need your wits about ye, lass. ’Tis a sharp crowd.”
“A fair? No. I can’t go to a fair, not like this.” I extended my muck-stained hands. “Look at me. I can’t believe this happened.” I planted my hands on both sides of my face, dragging my fingers down my cheeks and spreading more muck.
“Aye. Aye.” He turned to his flip phone, punching numbers with a fat finger. “Don’t worry, lass. I’m after a mucker going your way.”
“A mucker?” He didn’t answer my question. He chatted into his phone, nodding his head with every pause while I relived my moment of despair.
The open window had offered the only means of escape. I scrambled head-first, fell flat on my face, and kissed a chorus of heather and heath. The peat gurgled its welcome, wrapping me in a wet blanket of earth and sea, wool, and wet dog. Slime oozed between my fingers. Yellow bees buzzed around my head.
The nice man spoke into his phone with a quick Irish lilt. I couldn’t understand a word he said.
“To be sure, to be sure.” He ended his call and then smiled. “It’s sorted, lass. Oisin will come around the bend at any moment. He’d be happy to give you a wee lift. Aye, that he would. That he would.” He nodded.
Shadowed thoughts filled my mind.
Would the water-breathing lung suck me into its depths, inhale the nutrients from my body, leaving my remains pickled for the next millennium? Or could the groaning mass be a portal into the underworld, a threshold between this world and the next?
“Oh-sheen?” My situation slammed me in the face. Somehow, the wrinkles on the tow truck driver’s face lent some credibility to his character. But now my future lay in the hands of a man called Oh-Sheen.
“Aye, Oisin O’Donnell. Talk the hind legs off a donkey, that one. Those were likely his sheep after running ye from the road. Ach, nothing to be scundered about, lass. ’Twas an odd wind this morning likely unsettled the wee beasts.” He lifted his nose, taking stock of the blowing currents.
“An odd wind? Okay. How will I know this Oisin fellow?” Hugging my backpack to my chest, I watched the man, my very only best friend in all of Ireland, climb into the cab of his tow truck.
The bog had determined my fate and spat me out. Knee-deep in the resinous heathland, I plucked one platform sneaker after another from the muck, launched myself forward, clung to the slippery bank, and discussed the rest of my life with the bees.
My thoughts scattered with the goddamn sheep.
“He’ll be driving a tractor hauling a clatter of turf. You can’t miss him. Now you stay put, lass. And he’ll likely find you.” He leaned out the window, then pulled away, leaving me in the middle of the road, wondering what in the world ‘turf’ could be.
The sheep, every single one of them, grazed away, oblivious to my predicament.
“Okay,” I said into the cloud of exhaust, peering after my broken rental vehicle. I wondered how long I should wait. By my calculations, Ardara was another hour away by car. The wind intensified, whistling over each blade of grass. I planted my hand on my head, saving my ball cap just in time.
I looked in every direction, searching the glacial landscape for any sign of life. White cotton balls danced on long stems. Mats of heather blanketed the rolling slopes. Who’d have thought a watercourse of muck would flow beneath those vibrant banks? I swallowed hard, appreciating that dangerous beauty for the first time.
I walked back and forth, pacing from one side of the road to the other. No tractor. No trailer. No Oisin. I dropped my backpack onto the pavement.
The clouds shifted, blocking the midday sun. The sheep lost interest and wandered far and away, one by one. Two magpies jumped onto the road—one for sorrow, two for joy. I repeated the familiar nursery rhyme in my head. The curious birds pecked the earth, swiveling their pretty heads in every direction.
A fast-moving vehicle loomed larger by the second. Hope flirted with my heart when the engine screeched, protesting the driver’s heavy foot. I glanced toward the gurgling bog, unable to commit to another mud bath.
Tires whirred, grinding the pavement. The car’s rear end swerved sideways, and the driver emerged from the sporty car.
My mouth dried. My heart fluttered. I looked up and up again at the long drink of water. Formed from the crags of Iron Age rock, the man embodied the essence of an ancient Celt.
“Would ye be the wee lass in distress?” His voice painted images of misty glens and shadowed lakes, cloud-capped mountains, and rolling green hills—Ireland, the Emerald Isle, a land of a thousand hellos, or something like that.
