Moon Hook I - 8
Part I, Chapter 8 of an ongoing fiction series by Maura McHugh, published every Thursday, for subscribers of Splinister.
Read the first chapter in the series here.
Part I
Chapter 8
‘The Beach’
Daria lingered at the door and watched Muireann jet off on her bike towards the village, her black poncho filled with air and almost standing up behind her as she flew down the road. Sunset approached, and birds whistled their bedtime prayers.
A few minutes earlier, Muireann had sat up, almost sniffed the air, and glanced out the window. ‘The weather’s shifted. I best be going.’
Outside, lances of orange light holed tumbling clouds, opening up gaps in the sky.
Daria felt obliged to offer an alternative. ‘I can drive you home, and you can put your bike in the back of my car.’
Muireann’s expression indicated she’d never heard such a nonsense idea. ‘I’ll be home in fifteen minutes, faster than you in your lumbering beast.’ She stared at the breach in the clouds, now saturated with pinks and reds, with her intense scrutiny, as if reading an invisible screen.
‘We’ll have another hour of good weather, before it changes again. The sunset will be a beauty.’ She pointed to the rear of the property. ‘There are steps at the back down to a beach that’s only available during low tide. It will be a great time to experience it.’
She stood up and like the shift in the climate, Daria sensed that something had altered in Muireann. And Daria resonated with it: purpose. She had also lacked it for too long.
‘I’ll use the loo first.’
After her ablutions, Muireann laced up her boots in the hallway, and donned her poncho.
Daria opened the door to the salty breeze and a magical landscape, tinted marmalade.
Muireann stood by her, and said quietly, ‘You’ll feel it too, if you stay long enough.’
‘What’s that?’
‘The whole world moving.’ In the evening light, her face had a dreamy aspect. ‘The tides being pushed and pulled by the moon, the stories of the birds, the smell of a storm approaching, and the temper of the wind.’
She walked over to her bike and straddled it.
Daria called out, ‘Where’s your helmet?’
Muireann laughed. ‘I’ll be okay, Daria.’
Daria frowned, recalling stories she’d read of cyclist collisions and head injuries.
‘If it makes you feel better, I wear one when I’m off-island.’
Daria refrained from voicing concern. Muireann was an adult, and capable of navigating her home terrain.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow for the parade. It starts at five but come earlier to enjoy the vibe. We close at three but I’ll let you in.’
‘I’ll email you a contract and rates tomorrow.’
Muireann saluted, ‘Yes, boss!’ She grinned and kicked off in a spray of gravel. Daria suspected she was showing off.
Once Muireann vanished from sight Daria retreated and locked the front door. Without Muireann the house seemed quieter than before. Daria picked up her boots and carried them towards the kitchen so she could explore the back garden before night settled in.
Coral light suffused the glass tunnel. She paused in its centre and turned slowly as Muireann had done earlier. The outlined people in the panes winked in and out of view as she spun, their glittering edges animating so the figures appeared to shift and sway to an unheard rhythmic beat.
The experience was soothing and energising. She whirled a little faster and it morphed into a manic array of jumping bodies and a vibration buzzed her feet; Moon Hook’s tempo.
Daria stopped, but her mind seemed to continue to spin in circles with the cavorting figures. She hummed a snatch of ‘A-Tisket, A-Tasket’ and the world steadied again. She hurried into the kitchen; the day’s dying light bathed the room.
Jingling the keys in her hand as a focus, she approached the glass doors, and unlocked them, sliding them to either side and opening the room out onto the wooden deck and connecting with the elements beyond. Birds sang, gulls cried, the waves heaved backwards from the island in a strange reversal. She swapped her slippers for boots quickly.
The clouds had withdrawn as the sun’s yellow dollop dipped down towards its brilliant mirror in the ocean. The Hag’s teeth appeared as black stumps in the Atlantic’s surface. Hues of tangerine and plum, honey and lavender washed Daria’s skin. If she could smell colour it would be an autumnal fruit harvest. Daria closed her eyes, enjoying the gentle warmth of the November rays.
When she opened them again, she noticed the sun’s rapid descent, and walked to the path between the moulting shrubs. For the first time she could see the pale square block of the studio in between the trees and plants. A large white corrugated door allowed entry. Curious, Daria pushed through the branches overhanging the short side-path until she stood in the gravelled semicircle in front of it. Another path along the side of the house joined the space. A heavy padlock anchored the door to the ground. She checked and noticed she did not have a key for it.
It was second space off-limits to her during her visit. Considering Niamh’s tastes, she imagined it was full of odd sculptures, half-finished paintings, and racks of artists’ tools. Maybe one day she’d see inside.
Sensing the rush towards night, she returned to the main path and approached the edge. A thick metal railing impaled the ground several meters from the drop and led to railings on either side of rock steps cut into the cliff. A small gate barred entry, but Daria had keys to its lock, and swung it open. She stepped onto the heavy metal landing before the steps, and looked down through the gaps in its pattern.
Fifteen metres below she spied the crescent of a white sandy beach fringed with foam. For one sickening moment it rushed up at her, so she tilted her head back up to distract herself. Daria noticed how the cliff continued to rise rapidly after Niamh’s house. Far up in the distance, the tall stone tower house at the centre of the Vallens estate was etched against the sky. Originally, it was the O'Conaire stronghold, and where the Emerald Heart group had camped over forty years ago. There was a new modern building attached, with a vast expanse of glass facing the ocean, and reflecting sunset colours.
Daria grasped the railing on both sides and walked down the stairs slowly, aware it might become slippery as she approached the bottom. Only the last ten steps had a few pieces of seaweed, and when she stepped onto the soft ground and looked around a breath of astonishment escaped her.
She stood in a sheltered cove with a small cave gaping behind her. She breathed in the smell of salt, dead fish and seaweed. The rasp and wash of the withdrawing waves bounced off the space making her feel as if she was inside the ocean. The sun touched the horizon and appeared to dissolve into the water, shimmering in a mango fizz. From this vantage point she could see dots of white upon the Hag’s teeth—colonies of birds and their effluent—and the grassy tufts on top.
Daria moved to the water’s edge, her boots sinking into the saturated sand, gauging the patterns of the waves. Multi-coloured shells and rocks peppered the area, and bladderwrack splayed out in clumps. A troupe of tiny birds danced away and took to the air as one. She dipped her fingers into the salt water, which numbed her skin instantly. She’d read once that the oceans were a repository of humanity’s memory: they devoured and spit out people, treasures, and garbage. And in the deepest dark, under gigantic pressure, primal secrets lurked. Only revealing their knowledge during gargantuan storms.
When Daria was eight years old, on the ferry to Ireland with her Mam, uncertainty ahead of her, her Mam said: ‘We all come from the sea, so we love and hate her, and she loves and hates us too. With the passion of family.’ The wind had whipped her mother’s hair into streamers, and spray lashed her face. It was the first time Daria noticed the lines around her eyes, and the recurring insight twinged that her mother was not the same as other mothers.
She’d turned and glanced at Daria and smiled her crooked smile. ‘But if you learn her cycles you’ll be fine.’ She spread her arms wide as if embracing the entire world. ‘Don’t worry chicken, today she’s in grand humour. She grants us safe passage through her realm.’ She paused and leaned closer. ‘We have an arrangement.’ She tapped the side of the nose. ‘Payment’s not due for a long time yet.’
Her mother’s mythical debt collector had arrived during Daria’s teens, and after that the Mam she remembered as a child ebbed away in successive waves.
Daria crouched down and with her finger inscribed in the sand, ‘Fiadh Shawe’, and drew a heart around it. The waves would lap over it later, and perhaps they would return a mote of her original spark.
A cracking noise diverted her. A large piece of driftwood smashed against rocks further out. The ocean played with it, teasing, releasing, and dragging it back out, until a wave gulped it whole.
The sun vanished, and violet light pervaded.
Daria climbed the steps, out of the shadows of the cliff, and into the final exhale of day.
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