Halloween Journey— A story for the season

The day was no more than an hour old when Ellen set out on Halloween for her hike.

Huge stones, which seemed to be growing out of the fields, looked purple in the new light. A stout wind cut across the flat limestone land where there was no vegetation to be seen, only rock. This place, called the Burren, stretches for miles across the western part of County Clare.

It was impossible not to feel the eeriness of the place, Ellen thought. In its fields of stones there was little color and the Burren picked up all its character from the changing sky.

The sky of western Ireland can change on a breeze from blue to moody gray to high rushing clouds black as rage, and then back to innocent sun once more, all in the space of half an hour. And so, in turn, the Burren changes its shape and the emotion it offers.

Ellen had read a little about it. In fact, she had a book on the place in her pack along with a lunch of bread, apples, cheese and water. She was toting another book on traditions and folklore surrounding Halloween, which had been transformed, she had learned, from an ancient feast day of the Celts.

Her worst fear, she would tell people, was to be stuck somewhere without a book.

But other things, things just ahead of her this day, would be infinitely more frightening.

A novelist, she had signed a publishing contract on her 32nd birthday for a new book more than a year ago. Her deadline was now just around the corner and she’d done practically no work. A friend at home in New York told her about a cottage on the remote coast of Clare that was available to rent for a song.

She knew immediately upon moving in six weeks ago it was perfect. Since she’d arrived, she’d done nothing but write — no pub, no gatherings, just furtive expeditions to the little grocery in the village below the cottage and then, as she wrote to her friend, “I spend my time in a little room with imaginary people.”

But this was untrue.

Two very real people accompanied her when she was alone in that little room. Her novel was an autobiographical account of the relationship between herself and her older sister — by three years — Danielle.

Ellen had always been the less pretty one, the clumsy one, the introvert to Danni’s golden girl beauty and celebrity, not just in the family, but also at school and in the neighborhood. Ellen’s novel was about coming to grips with that, and a secret she had kept deep within herself.

Some days she wrote almost around the clock in the little room. But last night the thought came: This is a crack-up waiting to happen. So she organized her pack, slept well and stepped out just after dawn for a day off to see what she would see.

• • •
Although the Burren may look lifeless, it’s not. Botanists from all over the world come in the spring to search for rare plants that grow in every available piece of soil and from the fissures of the limestone. Arctic plants grow side by side with those found only in the tropics.

No one knows why or how the seeds came to Clare. In the autumn when the naturalists have gone, the Burren lies brooding along with the sky, a place that seems too old, too full of secrets to be interested in anything except its own strange self.

Around noon Ellen sat at the base of a limestone hill, had her picnic and read a bit about Halloween’s roots in Ireland. It had been a pagan two-day feast, called Samhain, celebrating the end of summer, with bonfires, games, and people dressing in disguises — a day and night, the Celts believed, when there was only the thinnest of veils between the living and the dead.

She walked all day, her mind filled with her novel, which had become not an artistic venture, or even work to fulfill a deadline, but a burden, a curse, and yet she couldn’t stop thinking about it, replaying scenes that featured her and Danni, until she was shaken out of the thoughts when she realized she was lost.

The last light was sinking over a bare, distant mountain and the landscape was disappearing in darkness. She had no idea where she was. She’d been hiking for hours and had not seen a soul. Digging in her pack for her phone she stopped, thinking: Who to call? The police? Where will I say I am? Swinging her pack onto her shoulder, she momentarily lost her balance, stepped on a stone and twisted her ankle.

It was now completely dark, the wind was up and she was freezing. What to do?
Ellen limped on, the weak flashlight of her phone showing just the next several feet in front of her, and then the light fell on a roadside. She was at a crossroads.

Salvation. Soon she heard music and saw light coming from a house. There was music, voices singing, others buzzing in conversation.

• • •
Ellen was immediately welcomed into the party, where a fiddler played, kids ran and played games, and mulled wine was offered. Nora, a middle-aged woman who seemed to be the matriarch of the crowded place, immediately made space for her on a couch near the fire, put a pillow under her ankle and brought ice.

Ellen was the star of the party, the honored guest, the American they could feed and fête, and laugh softly at how the Burren had almost claimed a victim. A man named Donal said he’d see her home whenever she was ready. Nora brought her to a long table where she and some children were making small crosses from dried rushes, called, she said, St. Brigid’s crosses.

Handing her another cup of hot, spiced wine, Donal explained that the design was originally made by the Celts to represent a “sun wheel,” but when Christianity came to Ireland it was given the saint’s name and designated as a cross.

Nora finished braiding the rushes and, without a word, placed a cross in Ellen’s pack on the floor, saying, with a smile, “It can’t hurt.”

The wine had gone to her head, and when she stood, her ankle burned with pain. It was decided she should stay the night. A bed was turned down in a small room and Nora built up the fire before wishing her goodnight.

Ellen began to thank her, with tears forming, when Nora put her palm to her cheek, and said, “Ah, it’s nothin’. You’ll sleep, and the rest will take care of itself.”

She woke in the dark room, thinking someone had stoked the fire, but it was dark in the grate. A light was forming at the window, and out of it, like smoke rising from a flame, Danni was standing. Her sister came a bit closer and Ellen could see she was holding something in her cupped hands, offering it to her.

Danni stopped, and smiled, opened her hands, and water flowed to the floor.

Resentment didn’t begin to describe Ellen’s teenage years, and when Danni was diagnosed at 16 with lymphoma, it became worse for Ellen. The novel she was furiously writing explored the feelings of guilt and bitterness the younger sister felt as heroic Danni soldiered gracefully through her illness, achieving sainthood by everyone who knew her.

But the worst was when Ellen confronted a secret desire that Danni would die and she’d be done with her.

The horror of her wish — which had come true — had never left her.

Now before her, Danni had offered something by simply opening her hands and letting the water flow.

• • •
She woke to what sounded like thunder. There was a sweet and sour smell, and Ellen, lying in straw, stared at a brown cow, barrel-bodied, bug-eyed and bawling, saliva swinging from her mouth.

She realized there was a man standing behind the cow, staring at her.

“Are you all right, then?” he asked, tipping his flat cap back on his head. “Gave me a fright, seein’ you there. Come on,” he came over, “and let’s get you out of this.”

The soft straw clung to her as she rose, and she thought: My ankle is fine. Outside the morning was bright. A small herd of cows were mesmerized by the sight of her. The Burren stretched away, running up to some low gray hills.

“There was a house,” Ellen said.

“No house,” the man said. “Not for a hundred years.” He introduced himself as Michael.

She explained how she’d been lost last night, was taken in by Nora and Donal, but soon stopped speaking since Michael was looking away. She could see his embarrassment and pity for her. “A dream,” she said.

“It was a good night for dreaming,” Michael said with a soft smile, adding that she wasn’t the first person who had been lost on the Burren to take shelter in the old cow byre. He offered to give her a lift home.

On the drive he was silent, and Ellen stared out the window. Yesterday morning she had thought of this place as remote and cruel. But the Burren had offered up its gifts, and now was beautiful in the changing light of the morning.

She decided to ditch the novel she was writing along with the heartbreak it was fueling.

Searching in the pack for her notebook, Ellen found it nestled next to Nora’s St. Brigid’s Cross, or sun wheel, and wrote on a fresh page, “The day was no more than an hour old when she set out on Halloween for her hike.”

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