From Across the Ancient Waters Read Free

then?”
    “They say she was cursed with the evil seed.”
    “Where did you hear such a thing, Niamh?”
    “From them that know.”
    “Nobody knows who she was, except that she came from over the water, where the man should never have gone looking for a woman. I hear she had the blood of Irish kings in her veins.”
    “Now ‘tis you who’s spinning tales, Eilidh. How would an honest man like Barrie have got such a wife? Whether her blood ran blue or no, I can’t say, but ‘tis more likely that of knaves.”
    “Aye, ye may be right. There’s rascals and kings alike above us.”
    “Whatever the color of her blood, the mother passed
something
to the girl that was not altogether of this world.”
    “Unless it came from her daddy.”
    “Codnor Barrie? No, I’m thinking it must have come from the mother or the grannie’s side.”
    “No matter. ‘Tis with us now. And none can escape whatever it be till she’s gone back to wherever she came from.”

T WO
    The Gray Cliffs of Mochras Head
    T he course taken by the girl as she disappeared from the two observant busybodies led south of the village. Beyond the grazing cattle behind her, she ascended a gradual slope of uncultivated moorland and soon arrived onto the precipitous promontory known as Mochras Head.
    Having completed her errand of grace, she skipped merrily over the terrain of gentle green as if possessing no care in the world. That the plateau across which her steps carried her overlooked a peaceful sea from a height of at least two hundred feet above the craggy coastline caused this Celtic nymph no alarm. She had roamed every inch of these regions since she could walk. The mystery of the sea lay in the depths of her being. Her soul felt its majesty, though she knew not why. These high perches above it were her favorite places in all the world.
    Her father taught her that the cliff distinguishing this seawardmost point on the eastern curve of Tremadog Bay was not to be feared, and she trusted her father. Only she must keep three paces from it, he said. From there she might feast upon the blues and greens and grays of the sea to her heart’s content and dream of what lay beyond.
    Though they knew nothing about her, everyone in the village knew that the girl’s mother had come from across these waters. Codnor Barrie loved the sea for his mysterious wife’s sake. His daughter shared the mother’s blood and was likewise a child of the sea. The father saw in young Gwyneth’s countenance daily reminders of the only woman he had ever loved. He knew that the sights, sounds, and smells of the water drew the girl and made her happy. Whatever evil the women of Llanfryniog attributed to the radiance shining out of them, the far-off expression in Gwyneth’s pale young eyes kept the melancholy memory of his wife quietly alive in the humble man’s heart.
    The girl paused and stooped to her knees. She then stretched flat onto her stomach and propped her chin between two small fists. There she lay and gazed out to sea.
    It was a warm afternoon in early June. The fragrance of the new spring growth of grass on which she lay wafted gently on the warm sea breezes. What rose in her heart as she lay on the grassy carpet were feelings and sensations no words could explain, no images contain. The world’s splendor exhilarated her spirit. For Gwyneth Barrie, that was enough.
    How long she lay, she could not have said. When the sun shone and school was over and her papa was at the mine, time did not exist. The sea stretching out like an infinite blanket of green, the moor above it, the hilly woodland rising away eastward toward the peaks of Snowdonia—these all comprised the imaginative playground of her childhood. She was at home on every inch of the landward expanse of them.
    The sea beyond, however, remained an intoxicating mystery. She could stare at it for hours. Yet still it withheld its secrets.
    She knew that her mother had lived somewhere on the other side of it, and