Page 74 of A Winding Wave of Magic
Then he turned to look at a boulder jutting out of the ground a few feet off the trail, trimmed with ferns and lichen, and I stopped worrying about his thoughts as I Saw the world through his eyes instead. Instead of the mossy gray that it had been two seconds ago, the boulder was now a shimmering kaleidoscope of every color, with a steel undertone identifying it as the rock it was. Solid but still moving, albeit much, much more slowly than the frenetic activity flowing through the plants.
I enjoyed the show until Jonathan’s fatigue flowed through my fingertips. The lights twinkled, then began to fade. He dropped my hand, and the lights vanished.
I turned. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t keep asking. It’s harder now than the first few times, isn’t it?”
“Well, it’s not something I do just to look around. I generally only take enough time I need to deliver a spell, and then I stop. Sometimes I forget how pretty it actually is, so thank you for reminding me.” Jonathan smiled almost shyly.
I felt my cheeks heat in return. “Anytime you need more reminding, just let me know.” I held out my hand again in jest.
He looked but didn’t take it. His smile disappeared, but before I could ask why, he stepped around my reach and continued down the trail. “It’s going to rain soon,” he called over his shoulder. “We’d better get down the mountain.”
I looked up to find thick clouds drooping across the mountain’s peak and fog swirling through the trees. A fat raindrop landed on the tip of my nose, and I closed my eyes at the sudden pierce of clarity it provided. I for one never minded being caught in the rain.
“Sure,” I said reluctantly. “If you insist.”
By the timewe reached the parking lot, we were completely soaked through. Shivering in the parking lot, I suggested returning to the house to warm up by the fire. Jonathan was quick to accept.
“So, why Irish Studies, then?” he asked once we were both comfortably settled in the living room.
Perhaps it was the effect of the rain flowing down my body for the last hour, or perhaps it was simply Jonathan’s presence, but the house was completely quiet without the feeling of holding anything back. A fire of juniper and dried cedar flickered merrily while we lounged with cups of tea on the soft sheepskinrugs arranged in front of the hearth. Our raincoats were hanging on the porch, and I had lent him a pair of my dad’s old sweatpants while we waited for his clothes in the dryer. For the first time since I’d met the man, he looked as disheveled and unkempt as I usually felt. He kept pulling at his clothes like they physically hurt. I was having a hard time ignoring how attractive he was.
I sat cross-legged, feet in Gran’s hand-knit socks, as I leaned against the edge of the sofa. My mug heated my palms as I considered his question.
“Why not?” I replied. “I am Irish, on both sides. Maybe I just wanted to learn about my heritage.”
Jonathan snorted. “Says the woman turning her back on said heritage. Don’t be coy. It doesn’t suit you.”
I huffed. “Fine. It’s…hard to explain, I suppose. Well, you’ve read some Yeats, I know.”
“Of course.”
I snorted. “‘Of course.’ My mistake.”
Jonathan frowned. “W.B. Yeats is basic reading in most liberal arts programs.”
“That depends on where you go.”
Jonathan just sipped on his own tea, black with lots of cream, and waited.
It’s not like I hadn’t answered this question dozens of times. Everyone who has ever done advanced research has to explain exactly why they want to answer some esoteric question that literally no one else in the world is trying to answer. Devoting six to eight years of your life studying one small corner of knowledge is hard to defend, but we all have to do it. So, I usually trotted out the same stock answer. Family heritage, learning my history, and so forth.
But Jonathan wasn’t buying it.
“Do you remember ‘The Stolen Child’?” I asked.
He nodded, then proceeded to recite the final quatrain of every stanza in the poem:
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.
I sat with that, letting the rhythms of the poem wash through me, the same as they had nearly a decade earlier. “It was for a class—some basic poetry seminar with no real theme. But when I read it out loud in my dorm room, I cried like a baby. It was the first time anyone had ever written anything that sounded like…well, like what I felt like all the time.”
“Like a child taken by fairies?”
