Read Online The Summer King by O.R. Melling - Free Book Online Page A

other passengers, he had the soft lilt of an Irish accent. Though he wore jeans and a T-shirt and appeared otherwise normal, Laurel sensed something unusual about him. She found herself wondering if he had fairy blood.
    “Where are you going?” he asked her.
    “Achill Island.”
    “The Isle of the Eagle,” he said with a nod, and at her puzzled look, explained. “It’s said the name comes from the Latin word aquila , meaning eagle. The King of the Birds used to be plentiful on Achill, both white-tailed and golden eagles, but now they’re extinct in Ireland.” A shadow crossed his face. “Hunted out of existence.”
    “You know a lot about birds?”
    “I like to read them,” he answered. When she raised an eyebrow, he smiled. “They are messengers of the gods. If you can interpret the patterns of their flight, you can learn many secrets.”
    Laurel wasn’t sure if he was serious or not. She indicated the black birds circling the sky.
    “So what are they saying?”
    A mischievous look crossed his face.
To see one raven is ill luck, ’tis true
But it’s certain misfortune to set eyes upon two
And meeting with more—that’s a terror!
     
    Then he laughed. “I’m speaking in riddles. You may have heard of a ‘murder’ of crows? According to some, the collective term for a raven is a ‘terror.’”
    Laurel shuddered involuntarily as she thought of the bird-man. She was considering telling Fionn about him, when their conversation was interrupted by one of the children.
    “Sandy wants to know where you’re going,” she said to Laurel, handing her a map.
    “You mean she’ll drive me there?!”
    The kindness of strangers.
    “Well, we’d hardly drop you off in the middle of nowhere,” said Fionn. “It’s not on the way.”
    He unfolded the map. It was hand-drawn and crinkled with age. The place-names were written in gold ink, and fantastical beasts marked the four corners.
    “It’s beautiful,” she murmured.
    “Thank you. I copied it from a map in a monastery on the Continent.”
    “Were you a monk?”
    “In one of my lives.”
    Laurel didn’t know what to say. There was a time when she would have dismissed such remarks—and the one who made them—as ludicrous. Now she wasn’t so sure.
    He touched the map reverently.
    “Here lies Loch Béal Séad . The Lake of the Jeweled Mouth. This is Leitir Bhreac . The Speckled Hill. This, Inisbófin . The Isle of the White Cow. And here is the place I mentioned. Trian Láir , roughly translated to ‘the Middle of Nowhere.’”
    “It really exists!” she said, astonished.
    There was a ripple of laughter around them.
    Outside, the night had grown darker. The landscape was lost in shadow; lonely fields of scutch grass, bog, and stone. She caught her reflection in the window opposite and was startled by what she saw. The face looking back at her was more like Honor’s, fey and dreamy-eyed. Who was she becoming as she journeyed through a strange countryside to an even stranger future?
    Fionn regarded her solemnly.
    “There is a great sorrow upon you,” he murmured, “and you so young.”
    She looked away.
    He tapped the map lightly.
    “Be sure to avoid this place now. The coldest spot in all Ireland.”
    Laurel bent her head to see where he pointed. She read the name out loud.
    “Birr.”
    Her laughter slipped out before she could catch it, even as the others joined in. It was an old gag but a good one, and he had got her fair and square. It was the first time she had laughed since Honor died.
    “Fionn Mílscothach!” Sandy called back. “Thar’s ole honey-tongue workin’ ’is magic.”
    Pulling over to the side of the road, she got one of the men to take her place. She invited Laurel and Fionn to join her in the back of the bus where they sat at a booth in the little kitchen. Someone brought them a pot of fennel tea.
    Sandy asked to see Laurel’s hand and gazed a moment at her palm.
    “Ye mun take care where ye go in th’ night,” she