Nory Ryan's Song Read Free Page B

myself.
    Head down, I walked along the Mallons’ path. Sean’s brother Long Liam was lugging rocks around the side of the house. They were piled as high as his waist. “I will build a shed for meself,” Liam had told me. “I’ll put me feet on one wall at night and me head on the other without having to curl over like a snail in the house with three brothers.”
    I didn’t want him to see me with my red face and teary eyes so I kept walking, the mud coming up between my toes. I climbed the stile to the cemetery and started across. First was St. Erna’s shrine. The statue was old and chipped so Da had built a stone roof over the saint’s head and a wall around his back. “It’ll keep the old monk out of the rain for another hundred years or so,” he had said.
    Next I stopped at Mam’s grave and said a quick “May the angels lead thee into Paradise.” I remembered Mam tossing hay in our field with Da one fall day. Dust and bits of straw had swirled around us, and Mam had asked what we’d like to name the baby that was coming.
    I had looked up at the well. “If it’s a boy, it should be Patrick.”
    Mam clapped her hands. “That’s what we’ll do, Nory.”
    I had danced around the field with Da, singing, “We’ll call him Patch.”
    And now Mam was under the grass and Maggie would be off to America. What would Da say when he came up the road from Galway and Maggie wasn’t at the top of the hill waiting for him?
    I saw Sean coming, looking for me. He must have heard the news. I stood up quickly, wiping my eyes, and in my hurry ripped my toenail on a stone. I sank down again and rocked back and forth, holding my toe. And by then, Sean was there, sitting next to me, neither of us saying a word, until I dusted myself off. “It’s time to go back,” I said.
    I looked toward Anna Donnelly’s house. I’d have to go there, but not until after the wedding. I promised myself that. And something else. I told myself I’d never let Maggie know how terrible I felt. I could do that, couldn’t I? Sing and pretend to be happy until she took the road to Galway.
    Could I?

C HAPTER
5

    A nd so I didn’t cry, not when I saw the bag Maggie had made to take with her, and not when I hung our good dresses outside to air on a rope. I tried to listen as Maggie taught me how to smoor the night fire. “Here, Nory, see. The fire has never gone out. Not once in a hundred years. Cover it over with ash, but leave one piece of turf burning so you can blow it into life in the morning.”
    Then, at last, it was Maggie’s wedding day. We opened the door early to see the sun and the good luck it would bring. It was there coming up over the hill, even though ragged bits of mist still hovered over the fields, and the cliffs were hidden under a cover of gray.
    Father Harte said the blessing, and afterward, Paddy Mulligan’s bow flew over the fiddle strings as Long Liam’s fingers pounded the skin of his drum.
    That night flames shot up from the bonfire in front of the house, and Maggie danced with Francey, danced in Mam’s red dress, her hair streaming out in back of her. We clapped for them, all of us, the Mallons, the cousins who had come from Ballilee, and even Anna Donnelly, leaning against the wall, her pipe in her mouth. I sang until my voice was hoarse, and in between, Sean Red pulled me up to dance around the doorstep with my green dress, the wrinkles mostly out now, swirling around me.
    “You look like Queen Maeve herself,” Sean said, smiling at me.
    When the hills in back of us began to brighten, Francey took up one of my hands and Maggie the other. We circled the house to the music and had one last dance together, Granda and Celia, and Patch half asleep, all of us laughing and crying as we held each other.
    It seemed we’d hardly slept when it was day, the day I dreaded. They’d leave this morning to walk the road to Galway to board the Emma Pearl . They’d never come back to Maidin Bay. A long road, it was. Da had