1962

Silver Mary was Black Mary of Kenmare when she was young, because of her raven hair. Boys told her she was the prettiest lass in County Kerry but she ignored them. A wild, dancing soul of seventeen years, she liked to paint in the countryside around the town.

She set out on an autumn morning just shy of Halloween with her sketchbook and pencils and a picnic lunch of potato cake, boxty, last night’s colcannon and a lump of soda bread. Past the Holy Cross Church and out toward the Cromwell Bridge she went. She scrambled over that mossy, grassy stone arch which was attributed to the Lord Protector but had probably been put up by ordinary monks – or maybe it had just grown from the two banks. But she’d drawn that lovely old thing twenty times at least.

And so back to the road, past the tourist office, a sharp left and through the gate at the bend of the road. Down the short path she walked to the circle of standing stones.

She was forever drawn to the stone circle but she couldn’t say why. Low fir trees grew all around, over which you could just glimpse Kenmare Bay. The grounds were well kept, the grass mowed so smooth that the place felt like a garden.

The stones themselves were fourteen low gray boulders and one three-foot slab. In the center of the circle, a heavy boulder rested on three smaller stones. Lord, the work it must have taken to drag that huge thing there! It had patches of lichen like Gran’s blotchy skin. Something could be done with that, she thought mischievously: draw the thing with Gran posing proudly by it, her eyes flashing with the same mischief as Mary’s own.

But today she wanted to draw something grand and big. And so up the sides of the hills she went, toward Killarney National Park. And at the last, she found herself with a breathtaking vista of Kenmare Bay and a glimpse of Loch Lein. She seated herself on a craggy tor, twitched her shawl around her shoulders, ate her lunch as briskly as she’d walked, then settled in to draw.

An easel and tubes of paint would have been too much to carry on a day when she wanted to go far and not be back until dinner. Gran would know she’d skipped school and would scold but they were too much alike for Mary to take much misery from that. Gran would be proud when she showed what she’d drawn. For she was an artist, easel or no.

Working in colored pencils, she fired off five quick sketches of the bay and the lake and the fierce green countryside. But the stone circle came into her mind again. Finally, she put her sketchpad down and stared off into the blue sky.

It wasn’t the boulder tomb in the middle which drew her, but one of the stones in the circle round. Off to the left as you walked up from the lane was a smallish stone, darker than all the others. Her head tilted as she teased out some memory or dream associated with this rock.

Why did she wish she’d knelt before that stone and touched it?

Her tongue crept into the corner of her mouth as she sketched the stone from memory. It was flattish on top, good for sitting, and had a small hole as though a stone-chewing gopher had burrowed up and out.

She was sure the Little People had a home in there.

Now that was mad. Firstly, she knew Gran’s tales of the Little People were just to make her laugh. Or to make her behave, but small chance of that! Secondly, the Little People lived in raths and those were earthen hills, not stones.

Why was she sure in her heart that if she watched that stone of a moonlit night, she’d see one of the Little People leap out with wild dark hair and a face full of secret mystery?

And there, she’d put it into her sketch: one of the fae, no bigger than her little finger, climbed from that hole feet first.

Well! She’d sneak out there one evening and have a look. The gate was locked at sundown but she knew full well that girls and boys snuck in there after dark. Her fair cheeks blushed at the tales she’d heard from Oonagh, who was sure to wind up with the Magdalene Sisters someday.

She stretched herself out. A sharp breeze picked up but here in this sheltered place, the sun felt wonderful. A bit of a nap would do her no harm. She closed her eyes and drifted, thinking of the faerie stone and the Torc Waterfall in Killarney National Park as she’d seen it on that motor trip with Gran. She and Gran, still a strong walker even at 65, climbed past singing, lacy waters to the high viewing point, cool spray on her cheek…

She sat up with a start, feeling as though her name had been called.

No, now that wasn’t it; she felt as if her dear sister had touched her heart and whispered, “Mary. Sweet love.”

Foolish. She was an only child.

Though she had nearly had a sister. A baby sister. Or an older sister? Tears behind her eyes, she touched thoughts she’d abandoned long ago.

Dad and Mum had prepared five-year-old Mary for the arrival of a brother or sister. Mary had hoped it would be a sister and had picked out her name, though she hadn’t told Mum and Dad. But Mum had been struck by a touring car, a noisy black monster, when she was only in her fourth month, knocked against a stone wall and her back broken. She had died of pneumonia a few weeks later.

Dad, blotchy face hard as the burial stone, told Mary harshly not to ask what the child would have been, that her mother and the unborn were both with God now. He was angrier at Mum now she was dead than he’d been even when she was alive.

For two and a half years miserable years she lived with a man who broke into sudden rages. Quietly she imagined the sister she might have had: a cute thing with raven black hair like her own, cooing warmly up as Mary held and cuddled her.

One night Dad had knocked her against the wall, called her a louse in a pig’s ear and wished she had died with her mother. After that, the younger sister became an older sister, a confidante, someone to sympathize, a little bit of the mother she’d lost.

Then her angry father took his pearl-handled shaving razor to his own throat and Mary blessedly went to live with Gran. The dream sister grew with Mary, always a year or two older, dark eyes dancing with secret amusement that made her ache sweetly.

Until the day she realized with a start that her secret one was kissing her softly on the lips, most unlike a sister.

After that, feeling like the priest’s eyes were on her, she pushed the fantasy away with a show of indignance. “I’m too old for this sort of nonsense,” she told herself, and kept the forbidden thoughts away.

It had been a few years now since she’d thought of any of this.

Her heart pounded. She must have slept. The afternoon air was golden but it was time she headed back. Even with her long strides she’d be lucky to be home by dinnertime.

But there it was again, the sound of a waterfall. And no sweet rushing stream like the Torc. This was a grandmother of a fall, pounding, surging. She scrambled to her feet. The sound came from just up the hillside, perhaps in the next glen or over the rocky tor. The hillside seemed to sing.

“Are ye there, love? Have ye coombe?” she cried, not sure what she hoped for. Anything seemed possible. As she scrambled through heather and bracken, the golden afternoon became pearl-soft moonlight. She rounded the side of a hill.

The moonlit scene took her breath away. Between two tall trees a gleaming lake blanketed the foot of a waterfall which pounded and throbbed, rushing and thundering down from somewhere that gleamed with pregnant mystery. Shocked into excited, quivering silence, Mary walked deeper into this world which she knew existed nowhere nearby.

Moments later, she stood on a rock at the shore of the lake. The waterfall called to her. She wished she could swim right up that wall of light.

She was not alone.

She knew she was not alone even before the hand touched her shoulder. How her heart leaped!

She let herself be turned by that hand that excited her so.

The dark eyes gleamed just as she’d imagined they would. A silver hand shimmered like moonlit water and caressed her face.

Mary stole just a glance back the way she’d come. But the door through which she’d entered this world was closed for now. No priest, Kenmare lad or grandmother would see her.

She could do whatever she wanted and none to know.

Nearly fainting with excitement, she faced those raven eyes and let the silver hand touch her heart.