The Last Will of Moira Leahy: A Novel Page 5

  Never? My fingers curled as tightly as my toes. Too bad I'd forgotten about what lay in my hands. The pain shocked me; I couldn't swallow my gasp. I heard Garrick's voice as if in a tunnel--"What have you done?"--as blood oozed from my sliced palm.

  He brought me a damp washcloth and something to kill germs.

  "Be careful with the keris," he said as I cleaned the cut. "It's a true weapon." He sheathed the blade, but even with my flesh aching, I wanted it back in my hand.

  "The metal's so warm," I said. "Why is that? I never found the answer online."

  "Warm?" He slid me a knowing look. "A keris can do that. Bewitch a person. It has its own will."

  Humor him.

  "Have a care, dear Maeve. The little man in the blade may have plans for you."

  He left the keris on the counter when bells announced the arrival of his first customer. I don't know what made me do it. I picked up the blade and spoke directly to the bleary man in the metal. "Don't try to change me."

  An unwonted shiver slithered down my spine when the words filled my head: There will be no going back.

  SLEEP WOULDN'T THROW its prickly comfort over me that night, thanks in part to Faure's "Sicilienne." Like it had been in the past, music was just there, ever present. With one exception. Those old songs had been mine. Not the piano. Not even the sax. Just pure tone. And every major, minor, augmented, diminished sound had given me joy. This music just pissed me off. Mostly because the hammered keys in my forehead resisted the usual shutdown. I had a strong urge to reach below my mattress and dive right in. If you can't beat 'em ... But I knew better than to disturb the boogeyman under my bed.

  Instead, I unsheathed the keris and touched it, felt energy swim through my fingertips again. I peered through the aperture, hoping for some future glimpse--

  --and noticed a trickle of blood on the metal. I knew where that had come from; I looked at my hand.

  My efforts at scrubbing out the stain met with failure. The line merely grew long and thin. The sweet scent of citrus disappeared. I called Garrick the following day. He could fix it, he said, and invited me to bring it by when I could.

  I should've been reassured, and maybe I would've been if things hadn't seemed so strange lately. If the music stopped, would let me stop it. If Noel would come home. If I could get a decent night's sleep. If the stain didn't look so much like a strand of red hair.

  Out of Time

  Castine, Maine

  NOVEMBER 1995

  Moira and Maeve are eleven

  "What do you see?"

  Moira lay on a golden sea of elm leaves beside her sister. She thought all of the clouds looked like birds today, but she knew Maeve would think that was Pure Boring, so she lied a little. "I see a dragon and a great big ship. I think the dragon's at war with the people on the ship."

  "What's the dragon's name?"

  "Alfred."

  "That's a horrible name!" Maeve grabbed a handful of leaves and tossed it at Moira with a laugh.

  "Hey, who's telling this story?"

  Maeve stifled another giggle. "Okay. What's Alfred doing trying to be fierce, anyway?"

  "Maybe he wants to try something new. Would that be bad?"

  "Nope. That's why we're going to explore the world."

  "What if I don't want to explore the world?" Moira asked, testing, but Maeve's face seemed untroubled, her eyes back on the sky.

  "Of course you want to," she said.

  "I do most of the time." But Moira liked the crunch of elm leaves, too. She liked her roses. She liked Castine. She'd miss their family. "What should we name the baby if it's a boy?"

  "Alfred."

  They stopped laughing when Ian Bronya and his friend Michael burst through the clearing.

  "Look, it's the witches," Ian said with a mocking smile. "Catching frogs for your brew?"

  "Maybe we are," said Moira.

  Maeve stood when the boys stopped before them. "Hold still and we'll cut out your tongues," she said.

  "Try it." Ian reached into his pocket and pulled out a closed jack-knife. He tossed it toward Maeve, but she didn't reach for it, so it fell in the grass. He sneered at her. "Which one are you anyway?"

  Maeve tilted her head to the side and her face softened, just a little. "Guess."

  Moira felt her sister's wish to fool Ian and decided to go along with it. They'd tried this game a few times before. Two years ago, Moira had pretended to be her sister for an entire day at school, but when Miss Haskell had teased her about being in control of herself for once, Moira had felt oddly dispirited. She didn't mind fooling Ian, though. She leaned back and twirled hair around her finger, knowing it would look like her sister's today--unbound and littered with sticks and leaves. As an added touch, she sharpened her eyes on Ian and didn't blink when he looked hard at her. It made her a little nervous, that looking.

  Finally, Ian turned to Maeve and said, "You're Moira, but you're not usually such a bitch."

  Michael laughed.

  "You have a nasty mouth, Ian Bronya," Moira said, then looked at her sister. Maeve didn't speak, but her eyes had taken on their usual edge, and Moira felt her anger along with a surprising amount of hurt.

  Ian scrunched up his face and looked at them both again. "Which witch is which?" He took a step nearer, and Maeve met it until their noses all but collided.

  "I once saw a horse's behind that looked a lot like you," she said. "Smelled better, though."

  He laughed. "I was wrong. This one's Maeve."

  "Who cares about them?" Michael said. "C'mon. Let's move."

  "Where're you two going?" Maeve asked.

  "Come find out." Ian picked up his jackknife, then started with Michael out of the clearing. He turned and walked backward--toe to heel--a few steps, long enough to taunt, "Unless you don't have the balls."

  "Let them go. They're jerks!" Moira said. But Maeve shook her head and followed without her.

  That afternoon, as Moira trimmed back her roses for winter, she felt Maeve's curiosity and fascination. She became curious herself when she heard the screen door slam and saw her sister leap off the back porch in a cloud of dirt.

  "Follow me," Maeve said in a hushed voice.

  Moira brushed off her hands, then followed her sister across the yard and into their small shed. Maeve closed the door behind them.

  "Give me your finger," Maeve said, Daddy's best jackknife slipping out of her long sleeve to land in her palm.

  Moira hid her hands behind her back. "Why?"

  "Ian and Michael went to Hearse House and made each other blood brothers. Everyone in their club's done it as a sign of bravery and allegiance. They said we wouldn't have the guts--well, balls--to do it, but I told him we would, so let's."

  "But we're already blood sisters." Moira stared disbelievingly at her twin, who opened the knife with little regard for its sharpened edge. "What if you cut your fingers off? What if you cut mine off and I can't play piano anymore?"

  Maeve sighed. "Do you have a scab?" she asked, opening the jackknife.

  "I have scabs from working with the roses, but Maeve ..."

  Moira watched, fascinated, as Maeve pushed the tip of the knife into the fleshy part of her finger, until a small crimson bead appeared.

  Maeve looked up at her. "It's okay, Moira. Just scratch a scab off. That'll be good enough."

  Moira ran a finger over a rough bump near her wrist. Maybe it was the story of Fierce Alfred and the dragons or the fact that she hadn't blinked at Ian earlier, but she didn't want to settle for good enough. She held out her finger. "Here. Just be careful." She closed her eyes.

  It happened quickly: some pressure, a quick sting. When she looked again, her finger bore a deep red bead, just like Maeve's. "It looks like a ladybug." Moira giggled, excited and a little troubled at what they'd done.

  Maeve let the knife fall where they stood. "Now we'll always be joined, no matter what," she said, and pressed the twin incisions together--lifeblood mating with lifeblood.

>   "We're sisters, gooseball, of course we'll always be joined!" Moira tried to retrieve her hand, but Maeve held tight.

  "Wait, we have to say the words."

  "What? Till death do us part? This is silly!"

  "No, it's not good enough." Maeve gnawed her lower lip for a moment, then gripped Moira's hand with fresh enthusiasm. "I know! 'Even if I die, I'll be with you for always.' Say it." She ground their fingers closer.

  A little shiver ran through Moira as she said the words: "Even if I die, I'll be with you for always."

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ELING

  December arrived, and I tried to forget about the keris. Soon the semester would end, followed by a lengthy break, but for now I needed to concentrate on my job. Exam preparations and handholding for my most grade-anxious students always took top priority those last weeks of class.

  I felt distracted though, my days full of incessant mind music, my nights littered with dreams of gushing water and that omnipresent door. In odd moments, I found myself researching crazy things, like "Empu for hire," only to come up empty-handed. I unearthed one possibly relevant and interesting book online, but it was out of stock. Maybe I'd ask Heather about finding it, or another like it, through an interlibrary loan over the break. More than once, I peered through the aperture in the blade--the one Garrick said could foretell my future--but only ever saw what was right before my eyes.

  I had to stop. I was becoming obsessed.

  It first happened in early December, as I sat hunched over my work during office hours. My skin felt stretched, like it was pulling away from my muscles and bone. Someone was watching me. I turned around, but no one stood in the doorway. Neither was there a soul in the hall. Plenty of times after that, I felt as though someone was following me, but I never saw anything suspicious.

  The sensation struck again the final week of lectures, where naturally many eyes (two or three pairs, anyway) were upon me. I stopped midsentence to scan the tiered hall, just in time to see a door shut. That afternoon, I found a slip of paper nailed to my office door, bearing a single word.

  Eling

  Foreign, and I didn't know it.

  I hoped Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" search would give me immediate gratification, but it just landed me on the Totton and Eling town council page. After several minutes of scanning similar pages--and just as I considered siccing one of the department's TAs on the mystery--I typed in the phrase "eling means." Javanese Mysticism appeared in several links. I clicked, skimmed one of the pages.

  Eling means remember.

  The site spoke of awareness, self-control, things experienced with the spirit. Nothing sensible. Nothing about the keris.

  Another link sent me to a site called Joglosemar and a page that read something like a prayer.

  I eling to my life ... I love the life of soul, the real life, the life of light, the life of Atma (the place of life), which are eternal, which could guide me to reality.

  I didn't understand this, either, but my eyes fixed on certain things.

  If I come back to where I belong, it will be a perfect life. I 'eling' to both of my parents, mother and father; I 'eling' to all my spiritual sisters and brothers. I 'eling' to true knowledge.

  Breathe during your prayer, it said. Breathe like a pregnant woman. Fill your stomach with air.

  You are going to be spiritually more sensitive and stronger. Some say you start to have the 6 sense.

  Eling means remember.

  Languages jumbled up in my mind as I did what I didn't want to do: I remembered. My mother upset when Moira and I refused to sit for Candy Land, when we told her we only wanted to play outside alone. My father's boat-building hands, holding our family together as well as he could. Poppy's smile. His short lessons in Italian and Spanish, all before the stroke. My mother again, breathing like a pregnant woman, happy with the promise of a new life. Castine: the hill, the lighthouse, the dark, the wind and rain. Ian. Moira. Moira. Moira. In my mirror. Under my bed.

  I got in my car and called Kit, my foot heavy on the accelerator, and felt a gush of relief when she answered.

  "What's going on?" she asked. "Are you sick?"

  "No, I'm not sick! Do you have some time? I'm practically in the parking lot of Betheny General."

  "Go straight to the cafeteria. I'll meet you."

  A SMALL MIRACLE, Kit was sitting at a table in the cafeteria when I arrived. I gave her a hug, registering an antiseptic scent in her hair, then sat across from her.

  "What's up? You okay?" She offered me her dinner--a plastic-wrapped burger with sweet-potato fries and applesauce.

  I wrinkled my nose. "I'm being followed."

  "What do you mean, followed?"

  I told her what I'd felt, and about the keris and the book and the note. "Do you think I'm paranoid? Wait--if paranoia's a symptom of something horrible, I don't want to know."

  She gave me wry smile, then dipped a potato chunk into a puddle of ketchup. "I don't know, Maeve, your feelings are usually spot on. Maybe you have an admirer. Don't act like it's impossible," she said when I sneered at her. "You're beautiful."

  "Stop," I said.

  "What?"

  "You know I don't put out the gimme-a-man vibe." I'd learned years ago how to avoid too-long eye contact and other forms of flirtation. If not for an absolute lack of connection with religion, I might make an excellent nun. Somehow I found myself with a fry in hand.

  "Yeah, but any interesting offers?"

  I wiggled the fry at her. "A grad student asked me out in September."

  "And you went out, and after eating a meal of oysters and cheap beer, you had wild monkey sex in the backseat of his--"

  "I don't date students."

  "Or other professors."

  "I don't want to mix business and ..."

  She stared at me. "The word that escapes you is pleasure. Where exactly are you going to find it? You don't leave the apartment to go anywhere but school or the grocery store. I've never heard of a love match made while weighing olives in the deli section."

  "Why weigh olives? Besides, how would you know where I go? When's the last time you stayed in our apartment for more than a three-hour stretch? When's the last time you had a date or wild monkey sex? Kettle calling pot! Come in, pot!"

  "For God's sake, eat the fry."

  I stuffed it in my mouth. "Oh, I forgot someone," I said, midchew. "A colleague asked me out before Thanksgiving. You'll enjoy this. He asked if I was a lesbian when I turned him down."

  Kit coughed into her napkin.

  "Heimlich?" I offered, but she shook her head.

  "And you said ...?"

  "'I wish!'"

  She chortled. "I know a few, you know. Really nice women. I can introduce you if you'd--"

  "I am not a lesbian!" I slouched low when a few faces turned our way.

  Kit glanced at a group of hunky physicians, then back at me. "So now the whole cafeteria understands you're a heterosexual and thinks I may not be--"

  "Sorry."

  "--tell me, how's Noel?"

  I guess I deserved this. "He's still in Europe. He's not even coming home for Christmas. Garrick wonders if he'll ever come back."

  "Stop torturing him and he'll come back."

  "Stop torturing me! I have nothing to do with it," I said. "God. He's trying to find his mother. Can we talk about my stalker already, before you're paged away or something?"

  She leaned forward. "You haven't seen anyone? This is all based on feelings?"

  "Yeah, feelings." My thumbnails picked together metronomically. "Your brother's not in town, is he?"

  "No, Ian's off a coast somewhere." She threw her crumpled napkin on her plate. "Won't you tell me what happened with you two? Did it have something to do with Moira?"

  "Kit, don't." She knew the rules. No discussing the past, period. "I have to admit, though ..."

  "What?"

  "I've thought a lot about home lately. Memories."

  "Aw, Maeve. Regressi
on isn't such a bad thing, you know." She covered my hands with her chapped ones. I hated when she acted like this--as if it was her personal calling to be my protector--about as much as I appreciated it.

  "Don't use psychobabble on me, Kit."

  "Regression means you revert back a little."

  Revert back? Like being attracted to things you had as a kid, buying the tool of a wannabe pirate? I'd admit nothing.

  "I'm not reverting," I said. "And I don't want to go back."

  "Sometimes regression comes before you take a big leap forward," she said, just as her pager went off.

  IT WAS A roller-coaster ride to the end of term. I rushed right along with my students: grade the finals, tally the marks, post them. And just like that--whiplash--the semester was over. This always brought on a mild case of the blues, probably because I had a like-hate relationship with free time. I forced myself to lie on the couch and watch two hours of TV that first weekend night--a behavior that felt more foreign than any language I taught.

  Sleep became more difficult, too. Sunday night was particularly bad; apprehension swelled in the back of my throat like a beached whale. Sometime around 1:00 a.m., the phone rang.

  "Dad?" I waited a beat. "Mom? Is it you?"

  No answer, but I knew someone was there. Long seconds passed before the line went dead.

  I wouldn't think about Ian. I wouldn't eling.

  I went back to bed, and tried to relax my muscles and my mind, sleep. I imagined her so clearly, though. Moira in the grass with her keyboard, chewing the end of her ponytail. Gliding her fingers through sun-cooked water on the seat of our boat as we planned our future.

  I tried to picture my saxophone, my fingers over its cold neck, but just as I managed it, it turned into Noel's warm one. My second attempt was no better: I stood naked in a field of brown grass with my sax, blowing soundlessly through the mouthpiece. Noel was there, too, fully clothed and flipping through his passport. I threw down my saxophone and covered my chest when he looked at me. They all changed into something ... other. Noel, the sax, and the passport grew forked tongues and coiled at my feet. I ran away, blades of dead grass catching between my toes, but I knew it was only a matter of time before one of them caught me.