Once Upon a Star Read online

  She scrambled up and raced to the house. She came back with some wooden kitchen matches and a bit of red ribbon that she’d cut in a triangle.

  “Chain would be better, but we’ll be innovative.” She poked the tip of the long match into the side of the drawbridge, slid the other end into the castle wall. “Fortunately, the royal family here is having a ball, so the drawbridge stays down.” She set a second match in the other side.

  She broke a third match, looped her ribbon around it, then hoisted her makeshift flag on the topmost tower. “Now that’s a sand castle.”

  She plucked up the bottle of wine and poured for both of them. “To Dolman Castle.” A dream, she thought, they’d made together.

  After clinking her glass to his, she drew up her knees and looked out to sea. “It’s a beautiful night. So many stars. You can’t see sky like this in New York, just slices of it, pieces between buildings, so you forget how big it is.”

  “When I was a boy, I used to come out at night and sit here.”

  She turned her head, rested her cheek on her knee. “What else did you do when you were a boy?”

  “Climbed the cliffs, played with my friends in the village, worked very hard to get out of chores that would have taken less time and less effort than the eluding of them took. Fished with my father.”

  He fell into silence, and the depth of it had Allena reaching out to take his hand. “You miss him.”

  “I left him, alone. I didn’t know he was ill that last year. He never told me, never once asked me to come back and tend to him. He died by himself rather than ask me for that.”

  “He knew you’d come back.”

  “He should have told me. I could’ve brought him to Dublin, gotten him to hospital, for treatments, specialists.”

  “It’s always so much harder on the ones who’re left behind,” she murmured. “He wanted to be here, Conal. To die here.”

  “Oh, aye, to die here, that was his choice. And knowing he was ill, and frail, he climbed the cliffs. And there at the stone dance is where his heart gave out. That was his choice.”

  “It makes you angry.”

  “It makes me helpless, which is the same thing to me. So I miss him, and I regret the time and distance that was between us—the time and distance I put between us. I sent him money instead of myself. And he left me all he had. The cottage, and Hugh.”

  He turned to her then and pulled the chain at her neck until the pendant slid clear. “And this. He left this for me in that small wood box you see on the dresser in the bedroom.”

  The shiver raced over her skin, chill and damp. “I don’t understand.”

  “His mother had given it to him on his eighteenth birthday, as it had been given to her. And he gave it to my mother on the day he asked her to marry him, at the stone circle, as is the O’Neil tradition. She wore it always. And gave it back to him, to hold for me, on the night she died.”

  Cured in Dagda’s Cauldron. Carved by the finger of Merlin. “It’s yours,” she murmured.

  “No. No longer mine, never mine as I refused it. The day I buried my father, I came here and I threw this into the sea. That, I told myself, was the end of things.”

  There’s only one, the old woman had told her. It belonged to her. She had found it, or it had found her. And led her, Allena thought, to him. How could she feel anything but joy at knowing it? And how, being who he was, could Conal feel anything but anger?

  For her it was a key. For him a lock.

  Allena touched his cheek. “I don’t know how to comfort you.”

  “Neither do I.” He rose, pulled her to her feet. “No more of this tonight. No more castles and stars. I want what’s real. My need is real enough.” He swept her up. “And so are you.”

  9

  SHE COULDN’T SLEEP. No matter how short the night, she couldn’t bear to waste it in dreams. So she lay quiet, and wakeful, reliving every moment of the day that had passed.

  They’d ended it, she thought now, with love. Not the slow and tender sort they’d brought each other the first time. There’d been a desperation in Conal when he carried her into bed from the beach. A kind of fierce urgency that had streaked from him and into her so that her hands had been as impatient as his, her mouth as hungry.

  And her body, she thought, oh, her body had been so very alive.

  That kind of craving was another sort of beauty, wasn’t it? A need that deep, that strong, that willful could dig deep and lasting roots.

  Why wouldn’t he let himself love her?

  She turned to him, and in sleep he drew her against him. I’m here, she wanted to say. I belong here. I know it.

  But she kept the words inside her, and simply took his mouth with hers. Soft, seductive, drawing what she needed and giving back. Slow and silky, a mating of lips and tongues. The heat from bodies wrapped close weighing heavy on the limbs.

  He drifted into desire as a man drifts through mists. The air was thick, and sweet, and she was there for him. Warm and willing. And real.

  He heard her breath catch and sigh out, felt her heart beat to match the rhythm of his own. And she moved against him, under him, bewitching in the dark.

  When he slid into her, she took him in with a welcome that was home. Together they lifted and fell, steady and smooth. Mouths met again as he felt her rise up to peak, as he lost himself, gave himself. And emptied.

  “Allena.” He said her name, only her name as he once more gathered her against him. Comforted, settled, he slipped back into sleep never knowing that she wept.

  Before dawn she rose, afraid that if she stayed beside him any longer in the dark she would ask—more afraid that if he offered some pale substitute for love and lifetimes, she would snatch at it, pitifully.

  She dressed in silence and went out to wait for the dawn of the longest day.

  There was no moon now, and no stars, nothing to break that endless, spreading dark. She could see the fall of land, the rise of sea, and to the west the powerful shadows of the jagged cliffs where the stone circle stood, and waited.

  The pendant weighed heavy on her neck.

  Only hours left, she thought. She wouldn’t lose hope, though it was hard in this dark and lonely hour to cling to it. She’d been sent here, brought here, it didn’t matter. What mattered was that she was here, and here she had found all the answers she needed.

  She had to believe that Conal would find his in the day that was left to them.

  She watched dawn break, a slow, almost sly shifting of light that gave the sky a polish. Mists slipped and slid over the ground, rose into the air like a damp curtain. And there, in the east, it flamed, gold, then spread to red over sky and water, brighter, and brighter still, until the world woke.

  The air went from gray to the shimmer of a pearl.

  On the beach, the castle had been swamped by the tide. And seeing what could be so easily washed away broke her heart a little.

  She turned away from it and went back inside.

  She needed to keep her hands busy, her mind busy. She could do nothing about the state of her heart, but she wouldn’t mope, today of all days.

  When Hugh came padding out, she opened the door so he could race through. She put on the kettle for tea. She already knew how Conal liked his, almost viciously strong with no sugar or cream to dilute the punch.

  While it steeped, she got a small pot from a cupboard. Conal had mentioned there were berries ripening this time of year. If she could find them, and there were enough, they’d have fresh fruit for breakfast.

  She went out the back, past the herb garden and a huge shrub covered with dozens of conical purple blossoms that smelled like potpourri. She wondered how they would look dried and spearing out of a big copper urn.

  Ground fog played around her ankles as she walked and made her think it was something like wading in a shallow river. The wind didn’t reach it, but fluttered at her hair as she climbed the gentle rise behind the cottage. Far off was the sound of Hugh’s deep-throated b
ark, and somewhere nearer, the liquid trill of a bird. Over it all was the forever sound of the sea.

  On impulse, she slipped off her shoes to walk barefoot over the cool, wet grass.

  The hill dipped, then rose again. Steeper now, with the mist thickening like layers of filmy curtain. She glanced back once, saw the cottage was merely a silhouette behind the fog. A prickle over her skin had her pausing, nearly turning back. Then she heard the dog bark again, just up ahead.

  She called out to him, turned in the direction of his bark, and kept climbing. On the top of the next rise was a scattering of trees sculpted by wind, and with them the bushes, brambles, and berries she hunted.

  Pleased with her find, she set down her shoes and began to pick. And taste. And climb still higher to where the ripest grew. She would make pancakes, she thought, and mix the berries in the batter.

  Her pot was half full when she scrambled up on a rock to reach a solitary bush pregnant with fat fruit of rich and deep purple.

  “The most tempting are always the ones just out of reach.”

  Allena’s breath caught, and she nearly overturned her pot when she saw the woman standing on the rough track on the other side of the bush.

  Her hair was dark and hung past her waist. Her eyes were the moody green of the ocean at dawn. She smiled and rested her hand on Hugh’s head as he sat patiently beside her.

  “I didn’t know anyone was here.” Could be here, she thought. “I—” She looked back now, with some alarm, and couldn’t see the cottage. “I walked farther than I realized.”

  “It’s a good morning for a walk, and for berry picking. Those you have there’d make a fine mixed jam.”

  “I’ve picked too many. I wasn’t paying attention.”

  The woman’s face softened. “Sure, you can never pick too many as long as someone eats them. Don’t fret,” she said quietly. “He’s sleeping still. His mind’s quiet when he sleeps.”

  Allena let out a long breath. “Who are you?”

  “Whoever you need me to be. An old woman in a shop, a young boy in a boat.”

  “Oh.” Surrendering to shaky legs, she sat on the rock. “God.”

  “It shouldn’t worry you. There’s no harm meant. Not to you, or to him. He’s part of me.”

  “His great-grandmother. He said—they say—”

  The woman’s smile widened. “They do indeed.”

  Struggling for composure, Allena reached under her sweater, drew out the pendant. “This is yours.”

  “It belongs to whom it belongs to…until it belongs to another.”

  “Conal said he threw it into the sea.”

  “Such a temper that boy has.” Her laugh was light and rich as cream over whiskey. “It does me proud. He could throw it to the moon, and still it would come to whom it belongs to when it was time. This time is yours.”

  “He doesn’t want to love me.”

  “Oh, child.” She touched Allena’s cheek, and it was like the brush of wings. “Love can’t be wanted away. It simply is, and you already know that. You have a patient heart.”

  “Sometimes patience is just cowardice.”

  “That’s wise.” The woman nodded, obviously pleased, and helped herself to one of the berries in the pot. “And true as well. But already you understand him, and are coming to understand yourself, which is always a more difficult matter. That’s considerable for such a short time. And you love him.”

  “Yes, I love him. But he won’t accept love through magic.”

  “Tonight, when the longest day meets the shortest night, when the star cuts through with power and light, the choice you make, both you and he, will be what was always meant to be.”

  Then she took Allena’s face in her hands, kissed both her cheeks. “Your heart will know,” she said and slipped into the mist like a ghost.

  “How?” Allena closed her eyes. “You didn’t give us enough time.”

  When Hugh bumped his head against her legs, she bent down to bury her face in his neck. “Not enough time,” she murmured. “Not enough to mope about it, either. I don’t know what to do, except the next thing. I guess that’s breakfast.”

  She wandered back the way she had come, with Hugh for company on this trip. The fog was already burning off at the edges and drawing into itself. It seemed that fate had decreed one more clear day for her.

  When the cottage came into view, she saw Conal on the little back porch, waiting for her.

  “You worried me.” He walked out to meet her, knowing his sense of relief was out of proportion. “What are you doing, roaming away in the mist?”

  “Berries.” She held up the pot. “You’ll never guess what I…” She trailed off as his gaze tracked down to the pendant.

  “I’ll never guess what?”

  No, she thought, she couldn’t tell him what had happened, whom she had seen. Not when the shadows were in his eyes, and her heart was sinking because of them. “What I’m going to make for breakfast.”

  He dipped a hand into the pot. “Berries?”

  “Watch,” she told him and took her gatherings into the house. “And learn.”

  He did watch, and it soothed him. He’d wakened reaching for her, and that had disturbed him. How could a man spend one night with a woman, then find his bed so cold, so empty when she wasn’t in it? Then that panic, that drawing down in the gut, when he hadn’t been able to find her. Now she was here, mixing her batter in a bowl, and the world was right again.

  Was there a name for this other than love?

  “You really need a griddle.” She set the bowl aside to heat a skillet. “But we’ll make do.”

  “Allena.”

  “Hmm?” She glanced back. Something in his eyes made her dizzy. “Yes?” When she turned, the pendant swung, and caught at the sunlight.

  The star seemed to flash straight into his eyes, taunting him. Without moving, Conal took a deliberate step back. No, he would not speak of love.

  “Where are your shoes?”

  “My shoes?” He’d spoken with such gentle affection that her eyes stung as she looked down at her own bare feet. “I must have left them behind. Silly of me.”

  “So you wander barefoot through the dew, pretty Allena?”

  Words strangled in her throat. She threw her arms around him, burying her face at his shoulder as emotions whirled inside her.

  “Allena.” He pressed his lips to her hair and wished, for both of them, he could break this last chain that held his heart. “What am I to do about you?”

  Love me. Just love me. I can handle all of the rest. “I can make you happy. If only you’d let me, I can make you happy.”

  “And what of you? There are two of us here. How can you believe, and accept, all I’ve told you and be willing to change your life for it?” He drew her back, touched a fingertip to the pendant. “How can you, Allena, so easily accept this?”

  “Because it belongs to me.” She let out a shaky breath, then took one in, and her voice was stronger. “Until it belongs to another.”

  Steadier, she took a ladle from a drawer and spooned batter into the skillet. “You think I’m naive, and gullible, and so needy for love that I’ll believe anything that offers the possibility of it?”

  “I think you have a soft heart.”

  “And a malleable one?” The cool gaze she sent him was a surprise, as was her nod. “You may be right. Trying to fit yourself into forms so that the people you love will love you back the way you want keeps the heart malleable. And while I hope to be done with that, while I’m going to try to be done with that, I prefer having a heart that accepts imprints from others.”

  A patient heart, she thought, but by God if it was a cowardly one.

  Deftly, she flipped the pancakes. “What hardened yours, Conal?”

  “You’ve good aim when you decide to notch the arrow.”

  “Maybe I haven’t reached into the quiver often enough.” But she would now. Movements smooth and unhurried, she turned the pancakes onto a
platter, spooned more batter into the pan. “Why don’t you ever speak of your mother?”

  Bull’s-eye, he thought, and said nothing as she set him a place at the table.

  “I have a right to know.”

  “You do, yes.”

  She got out honey, cinnamon, poured the tea. “Sit down. Your breakfast will get cold.”

  With a half laugh, he did as she asked. She was a puzzle, and why had he believed he’d already solved her? He waited until she’d emptied the skillet, turned it off, and come to the table to join him.

  “My mother was from the near village,” he began. “Her father was a fisherman, and her mother died in childbirth when my own mother was a girl. The baby died as well, so my mother was the youngest and the only daughter and pampered, she told me, by her father and brothers.”

  “You have uncles in the village?”

  “I do. Three, and their families. Though some of the younger have gone to the mainland or beyond. My father was an only child.”

  She drizzled honey on her pancakes, passed the bottle to Conal. He had family, she thought, and still kept so much alone. “So you have cousins here, too?”

  “Some number of them. We played together when I was a boy. It was from them that I first heard of what runs in me. I thought it a story, like others you hear, like silkies and mermaids and faerie forts.”

  He ate because it was there and she’d gone to the trouble to make it. “My mother liked to draw, to sketch, and she taught me how to see things. How to make what you see come out in pencil and chalk. My father, he loved the sea, and thought I would follow him there. But she gave me clay for my eighth birthday. And I…”

  He paused, lifted his hands, stared at them through narrowed eyes. They were very like his father’s. Big, blunt, and with strength in them. But they had never been made for casting nets.

  “The shaping of it, the finding what was inside it…I was compelled to see. And wood, carving away at it until you could show others what you’d seen in it. She understood that. She knew that.”

  “Your father was disappointed?”

  “Puzzled more, I think.” Conal moved his shoulders, picked up his fork again. “How could a man make a living, after all, whittling at wood or chipping at hunks of rock? But it pleased my mother, so he let it be. For her, and I learned later, because in his mind my fate was already set. So whether I sculpted or fished wouldn’t matter in the end.”