Page 133 of A Winding Wave of Magic
I cocked my head.So don’t toy with me. Just be honest and tell me what you want. Or don’t want to.
Confusion rippled from his mind along with a heavy sigh.
Perhaps you don’t know what you want?I questioned.You just need to be honest about that as well.
Another sigh.It’s not that, Cass. I know very well what I want. The problem is that I can’t have it.
And what is it that you want?
The tires crunched over the gravel as my question traveled through both our minds. Jonathan pulled his hand away, then turned over the back of his seat to face me.
“I want you,” he said softly, so low that Jock couldn’t hear him. “I’m trying desperately not to, but I can’t seem to help it.”
Joy beat like a butterfly’s wings in my heart at the frank admission, but there was nothing of it on his face. We watched each other as the car pulled down a tiny gravel drive.
“But it still can’t happen?” I wondered just as quietly.
Jonathan didn’t need to reply. I could See the answer—along with a strong will to keep a number of emotions and thoughts reined in—in the elegant, frustrated lines on his face.
“Then that’s that,” I said.
The car stopped, and he turned back to the front. But before he got out, his green gaze caught mine through the rearview mirror. Frustration and longing flickered there—which I was sure he could see in my face as well.
39
CONNOLLY COTTAGE
May your home always be too small to hold all your friends.
— IRISH PROVERB
About a hundred feet from rocky cliffs that gave way to the sea on the southwesternmost part of the island stood a house, homely and small. Like most of the houses we had passed on the way here, it was built of whitewashed stone, with a tapered red brick chimney and a weathered wooden porch wrapped around one side, bleached nearly white from the constant exposure to the elements. A jumble of old bicycles was parked inside a small, covered port at the end of the dirt drive, and a large garden was protected from the wind by limestone walls stacked a bit higher than the other borders of the property.
“Thank you,” I offered Jock a tip once he deposited my board and bags on the ground beside me. “For the tour and the help.”
“Thankyou, love,” he said, tucking the five-euro bill away in his back pocket. Then he yanked me to him in a surprise hugwhich inundated me with nothing but benevolence. He was wary of me, but mostly because he cared so much for Jonathan.
Don’t break his heart, he thought.
If he doesn’t break mine, I thought back, though I knew he wouldn’t be able to hear me.
“Enjoy your stay on the island,” he said as he released me. “And come see us at the Cultural Center if you’re of a mind to learn a bit of Irish. Jonny?”
“Thanks, Jock.”
Three girls who couldn’t have been more than twelve came flying out of the house, shrieking Jonathan’s name in between yips and squeals and Irish exclamations before they tackled him against the door of the station wagon.
The girls, whoever they were, had the rare talent of breaking Jonathan’s polish. His shirt was untucked, coat muddied as they fairly dragged him to the ground. And he didn’t seem to mind at all.
“Ah, let me be!”Jonathan’s protests emerged between bouts of laughter, the deep kind from the gut. This was a different Jonathan, a warm, goofy, almost boyish young sorcerer, so different from the melancholy man who had eyed me in the car and pushed me away last night.
“Bronagh! Enda! Iona!Fag án fear bocht ina n-aonar!”
A man with shaggy gray-brown hair and brown eyes, who looked to be somewhere in his early fifties, emerged from the house. The girls, still giggling furiously, gave up their torment of Jonathan, who by now was breathing heavily on the ground, covered in dust and sand, and looking up at the sky with a lopsided grin.
My heart gave an enormous thump, and I looked away before he could catch me staring.
“Jock,conas atá tú?” The man slapped Jock familiarly on the shoulder before tugging Jonathan up from the ground. The girlsstayed seated, now watching me warily as they tore bits of grass from the gravel.
