The Dark River

MAYA HAD BEEN guarding Gabriel for several days, but they had both avoided an intimate conversation. She was surprised by the short haircut Gabriel had received in London. His shaved head made him look intense-almost severe-and she wondered if he was beginning to increase his powers as a Traveler. From the start, Gabriel seemed obsessed by the framed photograph he had seen at Tyburn Convent. He had insisted on going to Skellig Columba as soon as possible, and Linden could barely conceal his annoyance. The French Harlequin kept glancing at Maya as if she were a mother who had raised an unruly child.

Gabriel had made a second demand once they began to organize a trip to Ireland. For the last two weeks, he had been living with some Free Runners on the South Bank, and he wanted to say goodbye to his new friends. “Maya can come in with me, but you stay away,” he told Linden. “You look like you’re going to kill somebody.”

“If I have to,” Linden said. But he remained in the van when they reached Bonnington Square.

The old house smelled like fried bacon and boiled potatoes. Three young men and a tough-looking teenage girl with short hair were eating supper in the front room. Gabriel introduced the Free Runners to Maya and she nodded to Jugger, Sebastian, Roland, and Ice. He told them that Maya was his friend and that they were both going to leave the city that evening.

“You okay?” Jugger asked. “Anything we can do to help?”

“Some people might come around asking about me. Tell them I met a girl and we’re going to the South of France.”

“Right. Got that. Remember, you always got friends here.”

Carrying his belongings in a cardboard box, Gabriel followed Maya back out to the van. They spent two days at a safe house near Stratford while Linden tried to get information about Skellig Columba. All he could learn on the Internet was that the island was originally the site of a sixth-century monastery founded by Saint Columba. The Irish saint, also known as Colum Cille, was an apostle to the pagan tribes in Scotland. In the early 1900s, the ruined buildings had been restored by an order of nuns called the Poor Clares. There was no ferry service to the island and the nuns did not welcome visitors.

***

THEY CAME OUT of the mountains onto a coastal road that ran between a limestone cliff and the ocean. Gradually, the landscape widened out to a marshland. Peat cutters worked in a distant bog, digging out bricks of compressed grass and clover grown during the Ice Age.

There were ponds and streams everywhere, and the road followed a winding river that emptied into a little bay. Rolling hills were on the north side of the bay, but they turned south to Portmagee, a fishing village facing a wharf and a low seawall. Two dozen houses were on the other side of the narrow road, and each reminded Maya of a child’s drawing of a face: gray slate hair, two upper windows for eyes, a central red door for a nose, and two lower windows with white flower boxes that resembled a toothy grin.

They stopped at a village pub, and the barman told them that a man named Thomas Foley was the only person who went out to Skellig Columba. Captain Foley rarely answered his telephone, but he was usually home in the evening. Vicki arranged for rooms at the pub while Gabriel and Maya walked down the road. This was the first time they had been alone together since meeting in London. It seemed natural to be with him again, and Maya found herself thinking about the first time they’d met in Los Angeles. Both of them had been wary of each other and uncertain about their new responsibilities as Traveler and Harlequin.

Near the outskirts of the village, they found a crudely drawn sign that announced CAPTAIN T. FOLEY-BOAT TOURS. They walked down a muddy driveway to a whitewashed cottage, and Maya knocked on the door.

“Come in or stop knocking!” a man shouted, and they entered a front room filled with Styrofoam floats, discarded lawn furniture, and an aluminum rowboat on a sawhorse. The cottage appeared to be a sinkhole for all the trash in West Ireland. Gabriel followed Maya down a short hallway lined with stacks of old newspapers and bags filled with aluminum cans. The walls squeezed inward as they reached a second door.

“If that’s you, James Kelly, you can bugger off!” shouted the voice.

Maya pushed the door open and they entered a kitchen. There was an electric stove in one corner and a sink filled with dirty dishes. An old man sat at the center of the room repairing a tear in a fishing net. He smiled, revealing a crooked set of teeth, stained dark yellow by a lifetime of smoking and strong tea.

“And who might you be?”

“I’m Judith Strand and this is my friend Richard. We’re looking for Captain Foley.”

“Well, you found him. What do you want him for?”

“We’d like to charter a boat for four passengers.”