Chapter 80: The Sister in the Mirror

I ran up the pier with the ring in my hand and Declan behind me and the fog came with us and swallowed the village.

The green door of the hall was open. The stairs were empty. The room above the hall was open and the lamp was on the table and the old woman was asleep in the bed in the corner and Ahern's case was on the table open and empty and the wolf on the door was on the floor with his hands behind his head and his eyes on the ceiling.

“She came up the stairs,” he said. “The Alpha came up the stairs with a wolf behind her and she said, I am going to sit with my aunt, and she went past me and she was in the room and then she was out of it and she went down the stairs and I did not stop her because she is the Alpha.”

“And the case?”

“She opened the case and took a thing out of it and put it in her coat and went out.” He sat up. “She was not alone. There was a wolf with her in a hood and he did not speak and he did not take his hood down.”

I stood in the room above the hall with the ring in my hand and the old woman asleep and the window open and the fog outside.

And then the mind-link opened.

It was not Declan. It was not a memory of Declan’s and it was not the grief of the boathouse and it was not the fear of a father. It came through the link like a hand coming through a wall, and it was a memory, and the memory was not mine and it was not his.

There was a woman in a mirror.

She was standing in front of a mirror in a room I did not know and she was brushing her hair and her hair was gold and it was long and it was going grey at the temples. She was in a grey coat that had seen weather and her face was the face of the woman who had come into the hall this morning and put a package on the table and said, I am Siobhan.

And the woman in the mirror was not my sister.

She had my sister’s hair and my sister’s coat and my sister’s way of standing with her weight on one hip. But the face in the mirror was not the face I had grown up with. It was a harder face. It was a face that had been in the north for a year and had come back with a thing behind the eyes that my sister had never had.

I stood in the room above the hall with my hand on the table and the memory went on.

The woman in the mirror put the brush down and said, “How much longer?” and a voice behind her said, “Until the vote. Then we go back to the north and we take the boats and the co-op and the shore and there is not a wolf in Galway who can stop us.” And the voice was my sister’s voice and the woman in the mirror was not my sister.

I came out of the memory on my knees on the floor of the room above the hall with Declan’s hands on my shoulders and his face white.

“What is it?” he said. “What did you see?”

“My sister is not my sister.” I got up. “The woman who came into that hall this morning and put a package on the table and said, I am Siobhan is not my sister. She has my sister’s hair and my sister’s coat and my sister’s voice and she has been in this village for two days and not one wolf has looked at her and asked who she is.” I put my hand on the table. “And there is a thing about the memory that I have to say out loud. It came through the link and it was not yours and it was not mine. It was hers. She is a wolf and she has a mind-link and she has been in a pack and the pack she has been in is the pack in the north and she is linked to it and she is linked to Eileen and Eileen is linked to her and there is a wolf in that pack who has a link to me.” I looked at him. “Declan. The bond in my chest. The true bond. It is between me and you. But there is a second thing in my chest that I have been feeling since the hall this morning and that I took for the bond and that is not the bond. It is my sister. My real sister. She is alive and she is in the north and she is in a pack and she is linked to the woman who took her place.”

Declan stood in the room above the hall with his hands at his sides.

“Then who is in Athlone?” he said.

“Nobody is in Athlone. The cottage with the white gate and the red shed is a cottage with nobody in it and Margaret is a woman who has been paid to answer a telephone and say the word Dún.” I put the ring on the table. “And the woman who came down that shore road this morning is the woman who has been in the north for twenty years building a pack and who has been telling this coast that she is the heir of Maeve and she is not. She took my sister’s face and my sister’s name and my sister’s claim and she came into this hall and she has been standing in it for two days and the whole co-op has been looking at her and seeing a claimant.”

“Then where is your sister?”

“She is in the north. She has been in the north since April and she has been in a pack of banished wolves and she has been linked to a woman who has been using her.” I picked up the ring. “And there is a thing about the ring that I have been carrying since the pier. The woman who came into this hall this morning put the true ring of Maeve on the table and the enforcer put it in his case and the case was in this room and the case was opened by the Alpha and the ring was taken out and the ring went onto a boat in the fog and the boat grounded on the slip.” I looked at Declan. “The Alpha did not take the ring. The Alpha took the case and opened it and gave the ring to a wolf in a hood and the wolf in the hood took it to the boat. And the boat was called the Star of the Sea and it is the boat that took my sister north in April and it has come back in the fog with nobody on it and my sister’s ring on the deck. That is not a theft. That is a message. Somebody is telling me that my sister is in the north and that the ring is the only thing of hers that has come back.”

Declan was at the door.

“Where are you going?”

“To the headland,” I said. “The moon is up at nine and the whole co-op is on the shore road and the woman who is not my sister is going to be on that headland with the woman who is the Alpha and there is a thing about tonight that no one has said. If the woman who is not my sister fights on that headland in my sister’s name and loses, then my sister’s claim dies with her. And if she wins, then the woman who has been in the north for twenty years takes the seat and the whole of it is a lie.” I put the ring in my coat. “So I am going to the headland and I am going to stand in front of the whole co-op and I am going to say what I have seen. Not a claim. Not a challenge. A thing that is true and that the whole village is going to hear.”