Free False Mermaid by Erin Hart Page B

sleep well.”
    “Good night, Cormac. Thanks again for the tune.”
    She hung up, and placed one hand over his picture on the screen. To her surprise, an instant message popped up beneath her fingers:

—
Oiche mhaith.

    Followed almost immediately by another:

—P.S. I like hearing you say my name.

    She recalled the first time she’d spoken it aloud, in the conservation lab at Collins Barracks in Dublin. They were standing over an exam table, discussing the fate of the red-haired girl from the bog, and in her agitation she had touched his hand, addressed him by name for the very first time. “Cormac,” she said aloud into the darkness.
    They were both treading across no-man’s-land, unsure where to put a foot down. She reached into her pocket for the hazel knot, studying the faint wrinkles in the greenish bark, the dark brown marrow of its angled ends. A charm against mischief, he had said. A protection. She couldn’t tell him how it had rescued her from danger this very night. Nor could she ask the host of questions that tumbled around inside her brain—how long did the charm’s peculiar powers last, and just how far did they extend? What if she wasn’t the one who needed protecting?

9

    Cormac leaned forward, pulling hard on the oars, pushing against the aft seat with his legs. Another twenty minutes and he’d be completely spent. It was just after seven o’clock, but the sun had been up for nearly three hours, and glorious light fell against the wall of black clouds that obscured the western horizon.
    The conversation with Nora had unsettled him, but at least she seemed pleased with the tune. He should have told her the name—what had stopped him? He poured his frustration into the rowing, pushing himself against the limits of his own strength, feeling the strain in his shoulders and thighs. The distance between him and Nora seemed to grow in that brief conversation, and for the first time he understood that it might be a span he couldn’t leap. But he’d made the decision, booked the ticket. It was too late now to turn back. With each oar stroke, he tried to wipe away his fears of the future, to concentrate on the task at hand.
    The water was relatively calm today. Of course this wasn’t the smooth river sculling he had grown accustomed to in Dublin, more like the rough seas he’d plowed back home in Clare. But the motion was the same, tucking one oar handle under the other in a thoughtless, rhythmic repetition he found calming. It cleared his mind, helped him to see things outside the clutter and noise of everyday life. The first morning up here, he’d inquired at the local post office at Glencolumbkille, asking if there was a local rowing club, or anyone who might let him take a skiff out for an hour or so. He’d headed off to Teelin harbor this morning before anyone at the house was up, hoping to get in a good workout before going back to tell his father that he was leaving, booked on a plane that took off from Shannon tomorrow morning.
    As he rowed below Sail Rock, a group of seals pushed up alongside him, heads poking out of the water. The frank curiosity in the dark, liquid eyes made it easy to see the connection people felt with them. There was something almost human in their aspect. What else couldhave fueled the long-held suspicions that they could slip from their skins and walk about on land, even bear human children? How amazing it must have been to live in an age where gods and men, animals and spirits mixed together freely, where shape-shifters and hybrid creatures were taken for granted. Or perhaps the old beliefs masked a darker reality. If what Roz was discovering was true, the story of Mary Heaney’s disappearance might implicate a whole community in her violent death. How much better if the villagers of Port na Rón could somehow convince themselves that she was a mysterious changeling who had simply returned to the sea?
    Cormac looked into a pair of heavy-lashed, dark eyes that