Chapter 79: The Alpha's Ring in the Fog

The pier was quiet and the moon was up and the man on the deck of the Star of the Sea stood with a rope in his hands and his face turned toward my sister.

“You were on the pier at Killybegs,” he said. “In the summer of 1994. There was a crowd and there were men with a net and there was a woman with gold hair at the back of the crowd and she did not run.” He put the rope down. “I have thought about that woman for three years. Every time I shift I think about her. I thought she was a thing I had made up.”

“I was there,” my sister said. “I was in Killybegs for a year. I was living in a room above a shop and I was working in the fish house and I was not a wolf in that town. I was a woman who had come up from the south and who kept to herself.” She came along the pier and stopped in front of him. “And there is a thing I have to say to you and I am going to say it badly and I am sorry. Your name is Daniel Flannery and you were born in the winter of 1976 and you were given to the Flannerys of Killybegs by a woman called Deirdre who was told to take you out of this village and bring you up somewhere else and never tell you where you came from.” She put her hand out and did not touch him. “I am your mother.”

The man on the deck did not move.

“That is not possible,” he said. “My mother is Mary Flannery and she is in Killybegs and she is sixty years old and she has been my mother all my life.”

“Mary Flannery is the woman who brought you up and she is your mother and I am not going to say she is not.” My sister’s voice was steady and her hand was still out. “But she did not bear you. I did. In this village, in the winter of 1976, and I gave you to Deirdre because I was nineteen years old and my mother was dead and my father was dead and there was a woman in this village who was taking children to the north and I could not keep you and I could not let her have you.” She put her hand down. “And I have been looking for you for twenty one years and I have not found you and I have not said your name out loud since the night Deirdre took you out of this village.”

Daniel Flannery stood on the deck of the Star of the Sea with the moon on his fair hair and his broad face and he looked at my sister for a long time.

“There is a thing I have to ask you,” he said. “And I am not going to ask it kindly. If you are my mother, why did you not come for me in 1994? You were on that pier. You saw me shift. You saw the men with the net. And you stood at the back of the crowd and you did not run and you did not come to me.”

“Because I was a wolf who had run from this village and who had a broken mark and who had nothing,” my sister said. “And because the men with the net were from the north and the woman who took you was from the north and I did not know whether you were safe or whether you were a thing she had made. And because I was frightened.” She looked at him. “I have been frightened for twenty one years. It is not an answer. It is the truth.”

The man on the deck was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “There is a thing about the north that you should know. The Flannerys are not the family that took me. The Flannerys took me from the family that took me. In 1978 there was a woman in Killybegs called Mary Flannery and she was a wolf and she had no child and she went to a house on the hill above the harbor and she took a boy of two years out of it and she brought him home and she told the whole town he was her sister’s child.” He looked at my sister. “The house on the hill belonged to a woman called Eileen and she had four children in it and none of them were hers. She had taken them out of a village on the west coast and she had brought them up to be claimants and she had a boy of two who was going to be the heir of a great pack and Mary Flannery took him out of that house in the night and she has been hiding him ever since.”

Declan was beside me on the pier and his hand was on my arm.

“Then there are four children,” I said. “Four children taken out of this village and brought up in the north to be claimants. And one of them is standing on that deck and one of them is in the hall and one of them is called Korkut and one of them has been in the north for twenty years telling this coast that she is the heir of Maeve.” I looked at Daniel. “Do you know the names of the other three?”

“I know one of them,” Daniel said. “There was a girl in that house who was older than me and she was called Eileen and she was the one who was going to be the claimant. And there was a boy who was younger than me and he was called Daniel and he died in 1980 and he is in the ground in Killybegs.” He put his hand on the rail. “And there was a fourth child who was taken out of the house in 1979 by a woman from Galway and I do not know whether it was a boy or a girl and I do not know where it went.”

The fog came in off the sea.

It came in fast and thick and it swallowed the pier and the boats and the harbor lights and the moon, and the whole world went grey and white and wet, and the Star of the Sea was a shape in it and the man on the deck was a shape in it.

And then there was a sound out in the fog. It was a boat, and it was coming in fast, and it was not one of the boats of this village.

We heard the engine and we heard the hull hit the wall of the pier and we heard a man shout and then the fog moved and a boat came out of it and she was old and she was low and she had a mast down and she was holed along the waterline and she was coming in on the swell with nobody at the helm.

She came alongside the Star of the Sea and grounded on the slip and the whole pier shook, and Declan and Cormac and Daniel got down onto the slip with ropes and made her fast, and I went down after them with the lamp.

She was called the Star of the Sea and she was out of Donegal and there was a man on her who did not speak and did not take his hood down. She was the boat that had taken my sister north in April.

There was nobody on her.

There was a coil of rope on the deck and a lamp that had gone out and a bucket and a man’s coat over the rail. And there was a thing caught in the rope on the foredeck, a thing that had been tied to the cleat and that had come loose and that was lying on the planks in the fog.

I picked it up.

It was a ring. It was silver and heavy and the band was wide and the face of it was a crescent moon and inside the band there were letters and a date.

Declan took it out of my hand and turned it to the lamp and his face went white.

“That is Siobhan’s ring,” he said. “That is the true ring of Maeve and it was on my sister’s finger in the hall this morning and she gave it to the enforcer and the enforcer put it in his case and the case was on the table in the room above the hall.” He looked at me. “This is the ring that was in the case. And the case was in the room with the old woman and the old woman is in the room and the door is on the stairs and there is a wolf on the door.”