No Dominion The Walker Papers - By CE Murphy Page 0,107

there now, just the seed of darkness.

The darkness and the shadow she cast herself, of the rising green.

Band-Aids and Bog-Men

“Band-Aids and Bog-Men” takes place about a month after SHAMAN RISES, the 9th and final book of the Walker Papers, but contains no spoilers for that book.

THEN.

Auntie Sheila was a tall woman whose black hair grew wild and whose nose was as pointed as her wit. She wore skirts and strong boots, for she said knees were easier to clean than jeans and that there was no sense risking your ankles climbing up and down the mountainsides. And climb she did, up the Reek eight times a year, up Croagh Padraig, Saint Patrick’s holy mountain, to say holy prayers on holy days. The strangest thing was that the Reek was always empty when Auntie Sheila went up, even if it meant there were a hundred tourists coming down and looking as if they weren’t sure why.

Caitríona O’Reilly was a little afraid of her aunt, but that had never stopped her from scrambling up the loose scrim that called itself the pilgrim’s path on the Reek to watch Sheila MacNamarra lay down her prayers. The same way every time, first striding North East South and West to touch the ground, and in the last year or so Caitríona had fancied that she saw a flare of white, like the aurora borealis bursting up from the earth, when Auntie Sheila finished that circle. Then she wandered the mountain’s small top, avoiding the chapel at the front-center, and laid her palms against the rocky soil time and time again. Sometimes pain creased Auntie Sheila’s face, and sometimes she flinched like the ground had burned her, but she never stopped. For an hour beneath the open sky each time, she laid her hands on the earth, and at the end of that hour she walked her circle the other direction to unwind it, and came back to the switchback trail leading down the mountain.

Until Caitríona was thirteen, Auntie Sheila pretended that she never saw her at all, not even when she swept by Caitríona’s hiding place at the edge of the mountain. The year Caitríona turned thirteen, Auntie winked when she passed by, and all the times after that, Cat crept closer and closer to the mountaintop, trying to see more clearly. Auntie never stopped her, but nor did she tell her what it was she was doing, beyond what was clear: blessing the holy mountain, as if a site for Christian pilgrims needed a pagan’s help as well.

For there was no question of that, at least. Auntie went to the mountain on the old high holy days, on Imbolc and Beltaine, Lughnasa and Samhein, and on the quarter-days as well: the solstices and equinoxes, or close enough as didn’t matter. “Every day is holy somewhere, to someone,” she said to Caitríona the summer Cat turned fifteen, the first words she’d ever spoken to Cat as they came off the Reek together. Caitríona, in trainers and cut-off jeans, was cold and wet to the bone after a summer storm had lashed them on the mountaintop. Sheila was every bit as wet, her denim skirt sodden and sticking to her legs, but her boots gripped the slippy mountainside more surely than Cat’s trainers did, and Sheila gripped Cat’s arm in turn, keeping her arright. “I like to come on the old holy days, but if I can’t make it then I come as close as I can. It’s what’s in your heart that counts, Caitríona.”

“What’s in yours?” Scree shifted under Cat’s feet and down she went, Sheila’s grip not strong enough after all. Scrapes and bruises appeared as if by magic, but her head hit last and there were no stars to be seen, thanks be to God. She sat and turned her hands up, palms abraded, and Auntie Sheila clucked like a good maiden auntie and pulled Cat to her feet.

“All that’s in me heart now is getting me auldest niece off this hill alive,” Sheila said cheerfully. “Ask me again on another day and perhaps I’ll tell another tale. Now I’e a plaster for ye when we get back to town, but ye mustn’t take it off for three days.”

“You always say that, Auntie.”

“And I always mean it, and I trust ye’s always listen.” Auntie Sheila gave Caitríona a green-eyed glare that made her laugh and squirm at the same time, for as often as the cousins listened, they also didn’t. No one could