Page 117 of A Winding Wave of Magic
“Your flat now,” Jonathan corrected me. “And there will be time for that. You’ll have to go to England anyway since the Council convenes in Northumberland. Not very close to London, but on the same island, at least.”
The island in question had not yet come into view. I opened my window, which only revealed a slate-blue ocean as far as I could see. The Aran Islands, a trio of tiny limestone villages where Gran had been raised and spent the majority of her girlhood, had good surf, or so Google said. It would be cold, of course, but I was used to that after years in Oregon. More importantly, a rare “perfect wave” regularly broke just off the coast of County Clare. I chose to focus on that, and all thoughts of dark mumbling shadows, vise-like constrictions, and ice-cold mothers seemed very far away as I contemplated what was ahead of me.
Three hours later,we landed at a private airport outside of Dublin and were shuttled through customs within ten minutes of disembarking. No crowds. No jostling shoulders. No spats of memories or thoughts I did not want to know.
I could definitely get used to this.
Overhead, clouds settled atop the skyline, an atmospheric cape that sent pangs of homesickness through my chest, for all it looked like Oregon. The air had the same heavy, dampness of Manzanita, though with little of the salty wind. The ends of my hair were already starting to curl. I tugged a thin cashmere cardigan from my backpack. One of Gran’s hand-me-downs, it was a favorite of mine, wearing at the elbows.
“I think you’ll like Dublin,” Jonathan said as we waited for a taxi.
“Oh, I do like Dublin,” I said, pulling my arms through the sleeves.
“You’ve been here before?”
“Just the docks. Reina and I took a freighter to Europe when we were sophomores. Did the whole sightseeing thing around Europe, staying in hostels and whatnot. We had a few hours here before the boat to Liverpool, which we mostly used to grab a Guinness at a pub fromUlysses.I remember it being old and smelling a lot like pipe tobacco. But I liked the weather because it felt like home.”
“Joyce was a siren, you know. A bloody crazy one, too.”
“How do you know that?”
Jonathan didn’t answer my question, just gave me an “Of course he was, stupid” look and simply said, “Do you think a human could have writtenFinnigan’sWake?”
He had a point. James Joyce’s final book was two thousand pages of obtuse, coded prose only a few steps removed from gibberish. One of my professors had challenged his students to read as much of the book as we could—and, more importantly, bring some kind of understanding to it—within the sixteen-week span of the semester. Fueled by strong Irish whiskey and homemade soda bread, my group had met twice weekly and made it approximately three pages into the text.
Jonathan and I were able to load our things into the back of a black cab, positioning my surfboard so it stuck through the back seat in between us. The cabbie was a friendly fellow with coarse gray hair that tickled his collar and matched the bushy mustache hiding his upper lip. As he helped me into the back seat, the cabbie’s hand brushed mine, and I Saw the feral mind of a shifter, though the contact was too brief to identify exactlywhat sort of animal he was. An opossum, maybe. Or some other kind of rodent.
When I looked up, he nodded as if to confirm my Sight. “Pleasure,bean feasa. Welcome to Dublin.”
“‘Wise woman’?” I wondered to Jonathan over the edge of the surfboard. “Do I appear particularly smart?”
Jonathan’s face shuttered.
“Where to, then?” asked the driver once he was back in the front seat.
Jonathan rattled off an address, and we sat back for the drive into the city.
“Did you talk much to anyone when you were here last?” asked Jonathan. “On your college sojourn, that is?”
“No. The pub was about as social as we got, and I could only bear it for one drink. We tried to stay away from people, for the most part. Why?”
This time I was rewarded with a shrug. “Dublin’s known for having an unusually large concentration of…us. The usual ratio of fae to humans in a city is somewhere around one to fifteen or twenty, and much smaller if you visit rural areas. But here it’s higher, around one to ten, plus a lot of half-humans like yourself who never manifest, but know about our world. Almost enough to allow us to talk freely. It also makes it much harder to track other fae because of the mixture of so much energy.”
I looked out the window, suddenly suspicious of the large group of punk-dressed youth loitering at an intersection. Two of the girls had pink-tipped Mohawks, and their laughter seemed to reach inside the cab.
“They’re not,” Jonathan said, following my gaze, his eyes glittering for a brief second. “Trying too hard. But the one on the edge of the group, the mousy girl with the ratty Chucks, she’s a shifter.”
We passed brick buildings reminiscent of Boston’s, but larger, crumbling in places, and covered with thicker layers of grit. The solemn exteriors, which varied on spectrums of gray, beige, and maroon, were disrupted at their centers by the doors brightly painted in primary colors. Against the mantle of gray and sheen of drizzle not unlike Oregon, the cheery blues, reds, and yellows seemed like a way to welcome as friends whoever crossed their thresholds.
The cab turned onto a cobblestoned street in the Old City and pulled up outside a small boutique hotel whose door was painted a vibrant cerulean blue. The Carson Hotel was guarded by a wrought iron fence and impossibly thick laurel bushes that gave way to ivy climbing up a cracked stone exterior.1792was engraved above the lintel.
Jonathan and I got out while the driver unloaded our luggage, leaning my board against the bags on the curb. I took in a deep breath, inhaling the scents of wet plants, wafts of cigarette smoke, and beer that floated up and down the street from the many pubs situated above and below the sidewalk. Beneath the smells, energy pulsed. I wondered what Jonathan Saw when he cared to look.
Jonathan was right about the fae presence here. The cabbie had barely tried to mask his canine instincts as he drove, head on a constant swivel, nose ever-sniffing at the air through his open window. Once I even caught him panting.
He wasn’t the only one. The porter who emerged from The Carson fairly glowed, his siren’s aura pulsing from his flawless white skin and ruddy brown hair like a halo. When he smiled, my knees felt like they were full of water, a casualty of a siren’s overt charisma and charm. I was glad I was a seer and wasn’t relegated to wearing my power on my sleeve that way, safely concealed where no one would see it.
Or could they?
