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The dog barked at him.
“Sorry. I forgot. You’ve got your priorities, too, haven’t you?” He flung the stick and grinned as the dog chased after it. An Irish wolfhound, rescued from a German couple who had rented one of his cottages a couple of years back, intending to make Ireland their home. After a taste of one Irish winter, they’d packed their bags and left. Rufus had become his by default.
Chin cupped in his hand, Niall studied the bruised-looking clouds again, then decided against going back for the camera. The second time that day, he thought as he started across the fields, that he’d had to forgo a bit of inspiration. The first time had been the American girl. He had a vivid mental picture of her on the grass by her fallen bike. Glaring up at him. Strands of red hair had escaped her black wool cap, and he’d fought an impulse to pull the bloody thing off her head and watch her hair tumble free.
She had green eyes. Not flecked with hazel, as he often saw, just pure green. And freckles on her forehead and throat. Seven of them over the bridge of her nose. He’d counted them. They probably multiplied in the summer. He thought of the summer he’d spent in America a few years back. California. It had been very hot, he remembered. But so beautiful you forgot about the heat until you got burned.
He walked out to the edge of the cliff, peered through the clumps of purple-red valerian. About halfway down, a rocky outcrop formed a shelf that ran for several miles and eventually down to the beach below. As a boy, he would ride his bike along the narrow ledge, thrilled at the danger of riding high above the ocean. He walked on for a mile or so, the wind tugging at his coat, his thoughts drifting.
When the talk started after Moruadh’s death, he had wanted only anonymity. An escape from the hostile stares and murmurs that seemed to follow him everywhere he went. He’d considered America. New York, perhaps. Los Angeles. Any big city.
And then one day as he walked out across the fields, he had seen, as though for the first time, the vast wideness of the sky, the heather-colored landscape. He had felt the wind on his face, tasted on it the faint tang of salt from the Atlantic. And, in that moment, he had known he could never leave Ireland. He might be estranged from those around him, estranged from himself if it came to that, but here was where he belonged. Nothing would drive him away.
The dog bounded back across the grass and Niall threw the stick again. He’d stood at the car door and watched the American girl ride off, red hair streaming behind her. Stood there until she disappeared from view. Unable to remember what it was he’d been about to do before he met her. For some reason, he’d wandered back to the grassy patch where she’d fallen. Sometimes you did things without really knowing why and this was one of those times, he supposed.
As he’d bent to take a closer look at the tracks her bicycle tires had left, his hand brushed across something hard and flat beneath the grass. When he pulled the blades aside, he’d found a lichen-covered stone. Next to that stone, there’d been another, and another. A half-dozen of them in all, formed in a circle.
A cromlech. They were all over Ireland, circles of stones, half buried in the earth. Left there by farmers too superstitious to move them. They were also known by another name, the thought of which made him smile. Fairy rings they were called. She had fallen into a fairy ring.
Moruadh, who had claimed that rooks nesting in the turrets of the castle spoke to her, would have called it a sign.
Five minutes later, he pushed open the door to the tourist office. Annie Ryan and Brigid Riley were eating sandwiches as they stuffed envelopes. Both of them gave him looks that suggested he was about as welcome as rain at a picnic.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Maguire?” Annie asked.
“I have those pictures you’d asked me to develop for the festival.” Annie was one of the organizers of Cragg’s Head’s yearly music festival, and he’d offered to photograph some of the musicians for advertisements she was running in the local paper. He glanced down at the envelope in his hand. “So I thought I’d drop them off.”
“Ah, good.” Annie put her sandwich down and reached for the envelope. Brigid had started eating again, but she didn’t take her eyes off him.
“I was also wondering about Elizabeth.” He looked at Annie. “When I spoke to you last night, she hadn’t come home.”
“She still hasn’t.”
“And you’ve no idea where she might be?”
“None at all.” Annie’s gaze was steady on his face. “The Gardai are keeping an eye out for her.”
He nodded. “Last weekend when she came up to my place,” he said after a moment, “she said something about seeing some friends up in Donegal. Maybe—”
“I didn’t know she was up at your place, Mr. Maguire,” Annie interrupted. A chair creaked as Brigid shifted her weight. “Elizabeth said nothing to me about being there.”
As he had the night before, Niall heard the accusatory tone in Annie’s voice. “What I was suggesting, Mrs. Ryan,” he said, “was that perhaps she was staying with friends up there. It might be something you’d want to look into.”
“I’ll do that.”
“Well, I hope you hear something soon.” He ran his hand across the back of his neck, glanced down at the posters on her desk. Finally, he looked up at her. “And are you keeping busy these days, Mrs. Ryan? At the bed-and-breakfast, I mean?”
“It’s a bit early in the year for the tourists. I thought there might be a few for the festival, but there’s no one so far.” Annie folded up the waxed paper from the sandwiches, then brushed some bread crumbs into her hand. “I’ve just one guest right now,” she said with a glance at him. “After she leaves, there’s no one until late June.”
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