“But all the bits and pieces and scraps of a person’s internal life are the ingredients of a life story. Here I can see that clearly,” I say.
“And there’s something more,” Padraig says, so quietly that it almost sounds as if the whistling wind in the stones repeats his words. “Something undefinable. That’s where Mr. Lewis’s stories break all the bonds, Megs.”
I’m transported by Padraig’s wisdom. With Dunluce Castle rising above us, I start to understand. “Mr. Lewis’s kinds of stories—the fairy tales, the myths, the universes all wrapping themselves around other worlds—are inside ours.” I look to Padraig. “These stories make us remember something we forgot. They make a young boy want to hop out of a bed and see the ruins of a castle. These kinds of stories wake us up.”
“Yes!” Padraig takes my face and the rough wool of his mittens scratch. I smile and feel my cheeks lift, cradled in his hands.
“The way stories change us can’t be explained,” Padraig says. “It can only be felt. Like love.”
Time stands still, I swear it does. It takes a huge breath and holds it, waiting for what? I’m not sure.
Then George is next to us and he pulls at Padraig’s hand. “Hurry! See the sun melting into the water.”
And time lets out its breath.
The three of us look toward the remnants of a sunset, the wind trying to steal our hats and whipping hair into our eyes and mouths. As night falls, we are quiet, the only tourists audacious enough to brave a windy winter evening in a ruined castle.
Twenty-Three
Chara
I wake in the creaky cottage of Padraig’s aunt Mary in Crawfordsburn. Her house is a tiny thing, made of whitewashed plaster with a thatched roof. I hear a fire crackling in the main room as morning rises outside, painting the world alive. Padraig slept on the couch out there, while his aunt has slept nearby in a tiny alcove on a cot. They’ve given George and me the bed.
George is asleep, curled next to me like a puppy. His soft sounds of sleep are comforting. He breathes in and out so easily, as if this journey has made him healthier. Dare I hope?
I lie as still as I can, recalling yesterday as one remembers the lines to a poem recited over and over.
We arrived at Crawfordsburn after dark. I called Mum and Dad on the pay phone in the village to let them know all was well. After assurances that we’d kept George warm and fed, Mum hadn’t sounded mad—although she was reserved. I wondered what I would come home to today: anger or fear, disappointment, or worse.
Amazingly enough, right now none of that matters so much.
Yesterday matters.
George’s adventure matters.
Our adventure matters.
My heart feels as if it dropped a rock in the sea below the broken castle. Or perhaps my heart has opened up in a swirl of laughter and wind, sweeping aside logic that had kept me so locked up. Logic—it can’t help me in the soul things that matter.
I sneak my tingling arm out from under George and shake it awake. Morning creeps through a window covered in white lace, and I see George’s notebook. His many-colored pencils are poking from a leather drawstring bag. I lift the notebook to see what he drew in the late-night hours before we fell asleep. He hid the pages from me, and I drifted off to the sound of the pencil scratching across the pages.
In his notebook is a rendering of Dunluce Castle.
George’s drawings are becoming better and better. His talent can be observed roaring to life in the progression of these sketchbook pages. Dunluce Castle is jagged on a green hillside overlooking a riotous sea. But here is not the castle we saw. Here it is restored and whole, triangle flags flying from the highest towers, walls intact, and windows reflecting the sunlight and overlooking the sea. He found its hidden wholeness.
When I turn the next page, I see a lion standing at the edge of the cliff, his head thrown back and his mane tangled in the wind. His mouth is open in what must be a mighty roar, bellowing across the sea.
I begin to cry. All that has been locked inside bursts forth. I shake with the tears, and it wakes George, even as I try to swallow my sobs.
He stirs and then sits, touches my wet cheeks.
“Don’t cry, Megs,” he says. “All will be well.”
*
When we emerge for breakfast, Padraig’s aunt is as congenial as one might dream up an aunt to be. She is as round as she is tall, and her hair is bundled up like a ball of wool on top of her head just as it was last night when I met her. Her dress, resembling a tablecloth we have at our cottage with blue and yellow flowers scattered across the fabric, is swaying about her as she bustles to make porridge and tea.
“Oh, Padraig, my boy,” she trills. “You must stay and say hello to Uncle Danny and Auntie Sorcha. Liz and small Padraig and Thomas and James will be so disappointed.”
Padraig rips off a piece of the soda bread she is wrapping up for our journey. He gobbles it with a smile. “Aunt Mary, I must get these two Devonshire treasures home. I took them away and their parents are quite worried. They don’t yet know how trustworthy and kind I am.” He winks at his aunt and she bursts into laughter—not because it’s not true, I can tell, but because he’s so frank and unassuming.
They love each other; I can see that.
I realize that Padraig is a boy—no, a man—who says the truth. He is the man he appears to be. His charm isn’t a cover, as it seems most boys’ charms are, but instead is an outgrowth of his true-blue character and wit.
Soon enough, though, loaded down with bread and apple jam in a basket she gives us, Aunt Mary kisses me straight away on the cheek, holding my face in her hands as if she has known me all her life and loves me the same. She then sits in a chair to face George and places her hands on his shoulders, looks him in the eye so long that he eventually throws his arms around her and she around him. I look to Padraig, who watches them, and we both blink back the tears.
After a few hours’ drive, during which George reads the names of countries and towns he flips to in the atlas, we are back on the ferry to England. The sun brightens the sky with a new day. For the rest of the drive home to Worcester, George sits in the back seat with the atlas as his friend, a smile on his face.
We are quieter on the drive home, the radio playing while the countryside flashes by. We are each in our own worlds, thinking of yesterday and what it might mean. My absolutely stunning realization that stories are a kind of answer, the same as any physics equation, will take me some time to fully absorb. It was as if I had seen the periphery of a large foreign landscape, and soon all of it would come into view.
When we finally drive through Worcester, it is late afternoon. The town is preparing for Christmas Eve services and gatherings. Padraig stops the car at the main square, and we all glance around.
The village twinkles under lights that have been strung from lampposts to storefronts and back again, a zigzag of lights swaying in a biting winter wind. Tonight everyone will be out. The local parish will perform a live nativity scene after finishing communion and a candlelight service. The townspeople will greet each other cheerfully with “Happy Christmas” and “Noel.” Hugs and cheek kisses and all-around gaiety will surround the small makeshift stable in the middle of the square.