Page 162 of A Winding Wave of Magic
“So why are you back?” The question seemed important, but once I said it, I immediately felt like I was prying.
Caomhán, however, cocked his head as if I had posed a conundrum he hadn’t even considered. “You can’t just read my mind?” His lopsided grin earned another dirty look just the same, which, of course, only made that stupid smile widen. “I can’t really say, actually. But if I had to—and knowing you, you won’t let me do otherwise—I’d wager there’s something about the island for me. Have you ever felt that a place seems to live and breathe and act all on its own? It speaks to you like it knows you’re family and cries to your heart until you return. I suppose I felt it was time to come home.” He snorted through his nose. “You think me mad.”
I shook my head. “No, I don’t think you’re mad at all.” I had felt those odd callings he spoke of, but I wasn’t sure I would again. Not for a long time. “I’m sorry about your parents, though.”
“That’s kind of you. Though I’d guess you know something of loss yourself. Happened recently, did it?”
I furrowed my brow. “Is it that obvious?”
Caomhán raised his nose to the air. “You wear it like a perfume.”
I chuckled. “Loss has a scent too?”
He closed his eyes, took a deep breath through his nose, and held it for a long time like he was savoring a fine bouquet. “Everything has a scent. It doesn’t smell bad, loss. Just strong when it’s new. Sort of the way a forest will overwhelm you when you can’t find your way out of it.” He opened one eye. “Yours hasn’t aged yet.”
I looked down at the ground. “I lost someone close to me in February.”
“I’m sorry for that as well.”
He didn’t push me to say more, and I didn’t offer. We finished the rest of our sandwiches, and I crumpled up the wrappings and stuffed them into my knapsack to save for the Connollys’ compost bin. Robbie was maniacal about composting everything for the farm’s voracious soil needs.
“I have to run some other errands,” I said as I stood and brushed grass off the back of my jeans. Something made me hesitate to mention the girls. “You walking back?”
Caomhán lay back against one stone wall and shook his head. “No, I’ll stay a bit longer now I know we’re proper friends. Commune with the spirits and such.” That irreverent grin broke the somber mood. “You go on.”
“All right." I stopped just before climbing out of the sunken remains. “I hope…you find whatever you’re looking for here or whatever it is that’s called you. You know, so long as you don’t drop in on me again.”
“You never know. Maybe I already found it.” He held my gaze for a moment before closing his eyes toward the sun. “Thank you for the chat, Cassandra. I’ll see you back in the water again, I’m sure.”
I was rewarded with another small smile before I turned to leave.
“And, Cassandra?”
I turned back and found him looking straight up through the absent roof of the church, where the clouds played across the wide blue sky.
“It’ll get better,” he said and closed his eyes.
47
INVITATIONS
Wearied by my restlessness, rather than refreshed by my transient slumbers, I arose with the dawn…
— LADY SYDNEY MORGAN,THE WILD IRISH GIRL
Afew weeks later, I still hadn’t heard anything from Jonathan. It had been more than six weeks, and his spot at the end of the table, closest to the door, stayed empty.
When I finally sacrificed my pride and asked Robbie about him one evening over a bowl of chicken and barley stew, he only shrugged and shook his head. “You know Jonny.”
But the truth was, I didn’t. Maybe I had been privy to certain parts of his mind, but those moments were fleeting. Maybe it was common for him to disappear for months at a time. Or to kiss a woman like he loved her and vanish without a trace.
I turned over a spoonful of barley with a scowl. Better I didn’t think alongthoselines.
About to take a bite of her own bowl, Caitlin snorted.
Don’t say a word, I thought, knowing she was listening.
She chuckled, but to my surprise, cooperated.
