Water and Stone
A green haze of fields slipped past the window, the blur of cattle and trees melting in with the lilting stream of Ruairi’s voice, the backdrop to all our Sunday drives since I arrived. He wanted to show me things constantly, tell me who lived where.
“So, my uncle lives in that house, well, when he’s not drunk in a ditch somewhere, and that’s the old farmstead, where my grandparents used to live. It’s falling down now. I think there are horses in it.”
His mother was born in the little cottage at the foot of the hill. He smiled when he said it, passing me another piece of his childhood puzzle. We pulled up the car and walked past the remains, up a stone path into the trees, the giant oak and ash towering high into the sky, our heads barely grazing their roots.
“So, what’s this place called again?”
“Knockma.”
“Knock what? Ha, you guys have such funny names.”
“Um, excuse me, Punakaiki.”
“Touché.”
“Now, somewhere here.”
We took a sharp turn off the track, venturing into the depths of the woods, the underbrush snagging at our feet as the ground suddenly became steeper.
“Man, I should have bought better shoes. I thought you said we were going walking in the woods?”
“This is the woods.”
“At the top of a bloody mountain.”
“Ah, hang on, you said yourself there are no real mountains in Ireland.”
“This feels like a bloody mountain.” I slipped, struggling over a low stone wall, my toes sliding in my sandals. “What are we looking for again?”
“The General’s grave.”
“And what, you’re related to him as well?”
“No, it’s just cool. I wanted to show you. They buried him standing up, would you believe?”
I surveyed the ground with suspicion, the trees parting into a small clearing, the rock before me snaking in strange formations, like water had slowly eaten into it over thousands of years. “In this ground?”
“Well, that’s what they say.”
We skipped over the porous stone, our feet jumping the dips and troughs, catching glimpses over the trees in front, snippets of a stretching view. Ruari stopped and pulled out a packet of cigarettes, the smell of smoke lingering back to me as I paused to take a breath. “Should you really be smoking up here?”
“I’m sure the General doesn’t mind.” He took a long drag as he scanned the treeline. “Speaking of, let’s try this way.”
We battled our way back into the bushes, fighting the branches and brambles, before the trees abruptly parted, the nettles and briars making way to a sudden wall of rocks that soared up before us.
“What the…”
We scrambled cautiously around them, the loose stones slipping under our feet, until we saw it wasn’t a wall but a mound, arching up into the sky above.
“Come on, let’s see what’s at the top.”
Before I could reply Ruairi was gone, his legs sending scree hurtling down the slope to meet me, as I cursed my shoes again and followed after him.
I couldn’t speak when I reached the top and before I could catch my breath I lost it again to the view, to the sudden feeling that we were standing alone, almost at the top of the world. I looked down at the pile at our feet, the hill upon a hill, hidden in the trees. “This can’t be natural, can it?”
“Man, I dunno. Sure, FÁS was up here years ago, cleaning up the track. You know, just giving them work like.”
I laughed out into the open air, kicking a stone so it spiralled and bounced down the bank. “What, you’re saying they piled up a bunch of rocks on the top of a hill for job creation? That’s pushing it a bit on the definition, no?”
He stood behind me suddenly, his body shaking gently with laughter as he wrapped his arms around mine and we both looked out across the fields towards Lough Corrib, our eyes following the water as it melted into the foothills of Connemara and, beyond them, the sea.
“Jeez, you don’t realise how flat the land is until you climb a little hill and see just how high you are.”
“Hey, enough with the little hill business.”
I smiled, leaning back into his arms, quickly losing myself to the horizon. “Well, whoever it was who put these rocks here, it was like they were trying to reach the sky.” I looked up at the ravens, circling and cawing above us. “It seems they nearly succeeded.”
❦ ❦ ❦
Inis Fáil, the island spoke to me, but it was not clear of what. We knew not were we sailing to our doom or our salvation. My Grandfather’s words only told of water, of an anger coming to fill our lungs, before he closed the doors to his great vessel and left us to the wrath of God. But Noah alone does not command the skill of wood and water. Three ships now to my name, sailing towards the Land of Destiny, searching for the edge of the world.
They had been at sea for months, months that drifted into years and Cesair no longer knew the seasons, hardly recognised the moon. They had set sail from Egypt as three, but were now just one, the sea harbouring no mercy for their task. And she knew it was at hand, knew that they must find soil to plant their feet, plant their hopes, before the great waters came.
Her dreams came thick and strong now, fear always lurking in the fraying seams of her vision, threatening to engulf her. There was a baby, small and swaddled, and she felt her arms heavy with the weight of the world, always waking when she slowly felt them break.
She had chosen Fintan, although he wasn’t really hers, so few men left, their duty to the group. They spent the nights whispering into darkness, into thin boards that held their hope, his hands upon her stomach.
“Do you think we will see the sun again? Feel its warm breath on our skin? I begin to think we will not.”
“We have not come this far to lose faith now.”
“I fear for you sometimes more than I fear for the others. You and Ladra and Bith. The three of you alone must now carry us through the water, must sow the seeds of our souls in the new land. I want to see myself in the eyes of my children before I succumb to the bowels of the earth. But I’m afraid it is too much.”
“I know my task and I won’t fail you.” He stroked her hair as he looked up into the wood above him, wondering at his own words. “Try and sleep now.”
She swam in the dark waters of her dreams before lurching suddenly, touching her arms as her mind laboured, searching for the sound of babies crying, before she realised it was something else that screamed into her ears.
“Land, we see land!”
They made landfall with the morning tide and she kissed the sand that stood to greet them, ran its fine grain through her fingers, letting is slip softly from her hands to catch upon the wind. They tallied up their numbers, so few from what set out. Only fifty women and three men had survived the arduous journey. She did not know was this the place that was to save them, all she knew was the stirring in her belly, the kiss of tiny feet moving gently in her stomach. All she knew was they must hurry.
❦ ❦ ❦
The rain started, lightly at first, the thin drops playing off the trees, falling like tears. But as the days wore on the water pummelled into the sodden earth, like a drum beat that followed them, chased them along the forest floor, the ground slowly turning less solid, less reliable with every hour.
Cesair remembered when she once welcomed rain, welcomed the lush promises of fertile land, a good harvest. Now she could only think of the rain as a prison, each drop like a bar falling to surround them. She had never feared water like she did now, and her breath quickened as she felt her feet move faster through the muddy underbrush.
“We must make haste and seek sanctuary in the mountains. We must go north and find higher ground.”
“The land is flat Cesair, and already the men grow weak.” Banba searched Cesair’s face as she looked out across the misty haze. A warrior, she was the strongest of all the women, but even her heart felt the weight of their mission.
Cesair watched the rain fall, felt the waters in her mind as they raced towards her, filling up every space, every crevice, until she felt them resting in her lungs.
She coughed suddenly, scanning the weary group as it dragged itself behind her. “We have but days, we must keep going.”
❦ ❦ ❦
It was Ladra who died first, his body frail from his task, yet his seed still alive in their company, the women labouring over their growing stomachs as they left him under branch and twig. They could not stop for long, but as the rain continued to fall many more found they could not endure.
“Cesair, Bith has also fallen. We have not the strength to even bury him. We must rest. Even you cannot go on with this pace.”
“No! I will not die with the anger of God in my lungs. With the burden of sin that is not my own.”
“There is a hill ahead, we must rest.”
Cesair touched her belly and felt a kick, a tiny foot touching her hand as if in protest. “We rest, but at the top.”
They made camp just below the summit, huddling under root and tree, and it was as night fell that Cesair felt more than a kick, a pain that seared over and over through her flesh, a wrenching inside of her that she knew wasn’t right. She cried into the trees as she felt the life inside of her slip away, felt the weight of their task finally devour her.
“Promise me, Fintan, that you will keep going. Promise me.”
Fintan held her hand as he swore again he would not fail her, but as her life seeped from her eyes, so too did he slip away into the trees.
❦ ❦ ❦
They tarried for days as the rains continued to fall, as the lands before them turned from green to grey, the water rising with every hour. Banba ordered the women not to stray from their duty but she could see already they were lost. Still, they worked as if in trance, first one stone then the next, the pile lain on Cesair’s body soon turning into a mountain.
In the end there were but two, the bodies of the others resting in the stones, the waters finally surrounding them. They shivered as they sat, their arms around each other as they watched the world slowly close in about them.
“Will the even remember us, do you think?”
Banba searched the horizon, her vision strewn with tears. “Surely they must.”
❦ ❦ ❦
We stood on the mound for what felt like hours, watching the crows dive, the green lines of the fields below drifting into each other as the clouds rolled in. I picked up a stone, my fingers running its smooth edges, its cold weight suddenly heavy in my hand.
“Watcha reckon, nearly pint time?” Ruairi smiled as I placed the rock gently back amongst the others.
“Yeah, we better head down. It looks like rain.”
Claire Loader is a New Zealand born writer and photographer now living in Galway. Her poetry and prose have been published in various magazines and anthologies, including Poetry Bus, Splonk, Crannóg and The Cormorant. Shortlisted for the Alligham Flash Fiction Prize in 2019, she was a winner of the Women’s Speak Poetry Competition in the same year and has recently been nominated for the Forward Prize.
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