C H A P T E R  8   -  M ó r t a s  n a  d t o n n t a Â
The rain was beating hard on the ground and somehow, in all the confusion she had lost him. She called his name, but her voice dissolved in the mad crashing of the waves and violent swishing of the wind. It felt like the world was about to come down on her and in the air suffused with cold and salt it was hard to breathe.
The storm came suddenly this time. No warning was given before the skies turned black and winds picked up. One moment they were looking for the lost girl, the next everything was dark and blurry, cold rain assaulting their shoulders.
Órlaith turned around and around in the darkness, trying to see something to cling on to, make her way to the lighthouse, lock herself in and try to reach Brian some other way, but there was nothing but rain and the occasional burst of lightning that blinded her to everything around her. She was close to tears now, not of desperation, but pure pain. The salty air burned her eyes and flogged her skin until it felt hot and ached. She hid it behind her sleeve and pushed on, moving in the direction she hoped the lighthouse stood. She never got as far as the lighthouse though.
She was stopped, just at the edge of the path, when a small, curved body hit her side, sending he flying across the underbrush into ice cold sand. She hit her head on a old, rotting boat carcass as she went down, wincing at the sudden flash of pain. When she opened her eyes she was cradling a shivering tiny body to her.
‘They’re coming, they are coming,’ it kept repeating, over and over again in a hushed, raspy tone, only stopping for a moment to cough. It clung to her with crooked, white fingers and when she tried to pull it off, the boy screamed, shaking his head. ‘Please, please, I can’t… I want to go home… please…’
For a second she believed she may have hit her head a little too hard and was hallucinating the whole thing. She blinked up at the tear-streaked face, opening and closing her mouth. The fear in the boy’s eyes finally broke through her daze and she pulled him close into a hug, whispering, ‘I got you. I got you. We will take you home now. We will…’
The boy stared crying then, strong, broken gasps that shook his frail frame and pushed him deeper and deeper into her. She covered him with the hug, soul and body, rocking him for what seemed like hours before a dimmed glow of a lantern appeared over them and she looked up into Brian’s shocked, huge eyes.
‘Jesus fuck,’ he gasped, staring at the boy with pure horror, ‘you found him.’
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