Reach of the Heron

By Angela Koenig

After an automobile accident takes the lives of her parents and nearly her own, Arkadia O’Malley faces a painful recovery. As she seeks custody of her younger sister, Rini, she must also contend with the obstruction of Irish law. Both Church and State oppose placing a minor child in the care of an unmarried woman. At the same time in Elsewhere, an elder world, she is introduced to the ancient lore of a shaman. When Rini is moved from a harsh orphanage to one of the notoriously cruel Magdalene homes, Arkadia’s efforts to reunite with her sister are aided by powerful women from this reality as well as from Elsewhere.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Affinity Ebook Press NZ Ltd
• Release date: Nov 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781988549828

Book preview

Reach of the Heron

Angela Koenig

2018

Back of the Book

After an automobile accident takes the lives of her parents and nearly her own, Arkadia O’Malley faces a painful recovery. As she seeks custody of her younger sister, Rini, she must also contend with the obstruction of Irish law. Both Church and State oppose placing a minor child in the care of an unmarried woman. At the same time in Elsewhere, an elder world, she is introduced to the ancient lore of a shaman. When Rini is moved from a harsh orphanage to one of the notoriously cruel Magdalene homes, Arkadia’s efforts to reunite with her sister are aided by powerful women from this reality as well as from Elsewhere.

Reach of the Heron

Copyright © 2017 by Angela Koenig

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-98-854982-8

First Edition

PDF, ePub, mobi

Published: Month Date 2018

This book is Published by

Affinity eBook Press NZ LTD

Canterbury, New Zealand

E-mail: [e-mail]

Editor: JoSelle Vanderhooft

Proof Editor: Alexis Smith

Cover Design by Irish Dragon Designs

Production Design: Affinity Publishing Services

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This work is copyrighted and is licensed only for use by the original purchaser and can be copied to the original purchaser's electronic device and its memory card for your personal use. Modifying or making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, without limit, including by email, CD, DVD, memory cards, file transfer, paper printout or any other method, constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Acknowledgments

I want to thank Affinity Rainbow Publications, especially Julie, Mel, and Nancy, for their support and hard work in bringing my books into actuality. Also I want to thank my home group for their continual inspiration: Anne L., Anne S., Diane, Jorjet, Kathy, Lynn, Margaret, Marilyn, and Sarah. Jackie, I miss you and wish you could have been here for this.

Arkadia O’Malley has needed her story told ever since Rebellion in Ulster saw the light of day, and I am so happy finally to share it.

Dedication

To my friends

Sharon, Nicole, Ella, and June

without them nothing is possible

Also by Angela Koenig

Rebellion in Ulster

Rendezvous in the Himalaya

Requiem for Vukovar

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Epilogue

About the Author

Other Books from Affinity

Chapter One

The heron glided just beyond the tall, narrow-trunked alders bordering the lawn, its passage never completely obscured yet never in full view. John Patrick O’Malley knew this bird, knew that the heron would soon be standing in the slough beyond the trees where frogs hunched on moss-covered logs and small, silvery fish darted through long-stemmed marsh grass. He had watched the heron’s glide from his study window ever since he and Elín and their youngest daughter, Rhiannon, had moved to the country. After a life lived in Dublin, this rural district contained many enchanting novelties to divert John Patrick from his work, but nothing distracted him more than the heron. He regarded the spear-beaked bird as both divine and ominous, complementary aspects reaching back to ancient Egypt and beyond.

John Patrick’s reverie was interrupted by the chatter of his nine-year-old daughter, heard through the slightly open window of his study. The words were indistinct but Rini’s excitement was unmistakable. He looked at his watch: past time for the train from Dublin to have arrived at the village station.

John Patrick. Elín tapped lightly on the open study door.

John Patrick turned toward the woman in the doorway. Unruly dark Irish curls framed a face whose perennial seriousness had softened only slightly with time. She often made him feel like a fisherman whose improbable luck had granted him the love of a selkie woman. He had never passed beyond the wonder that she had agreed to become his wife.

Is Kadie here? John Patrick gestured for Elín to enter. I didn’t hear a motor.

William Shay brought her with the post in his pony cart. She handed him a large manila envelope. Kadie’s with Rini.

John Patrick glanced at the envelope, thick as well as large, and then out the window. Arkadia, who was home for the Easter holidays, walked alongside Rhiannon toward a small, rock-enclosed flower garden. Fifteen years separated his two daughters. They looked as if they had emerged from some legend or ballad: dark-haired Arkadia, always solemn and cool as moonlight, beside fair-haired Rhiannon, who was a sunlit grove of songbirds.

Elín joined John Patrick to stand at the window. Accompanied by a black-and-white setter named Orion, their daughters arrived at the wildflower garden Elín and Rini had been working on since moving from the city. John Patrick knew that Arkadia was as inclined as he was to prefer plants in the pages of books, but he also knew her interest in Rini’s chatter was more than mere courtesy. Even as a child Arkadia had possessed an appetite for knowledge of every sort, surely a genetic gift from her scholarly parents. John Patrick thought his judgment was not entirely swayed by parental fondness when he deemed her the best student he had ever taught. He imagined that Arkadia’s mind probably resembled his own study, where volumes overflowed the shelves and fell into stacks on the floor with scant regard for author, era, or subject. Indeed, she had read most of them, even those in Latin and Old Irish.

Look how they love each other, Elín murmured softly and took his hand.

A surge of emotion made John Patrick slow to answer.

They’ve always been like that, ever since we brought Rini home. You would have thought we made her just for Kadie.

John Patrick had not forgotten the envelope he was holding. He looked at it again. The postmark was in German. He was tempted to open it immediately but he also wanted to go and greet Arkadia. Three months and more had passed since her last visit from London, where she taught medieval literature at a convent school.

Work can wait. Elín read her husband’s mind. I want to sort a few things for supper before we go into the village, so why don’t you and the girls go for a walk?

John Patrick glanced again at the envelope that could contain hopes dashed as easily as hopes fulfilled. He had invested so much time and money in this project that now, reluctant to be disappointed, he was relieved to postpone opening the envelope. He slid it under the dark leather desk pad.

Papa! Rini ran toward him as he emerged from the house. Papa! Kadie’s here.

Hello, Papa. Arkadia turned toward her father with a smile that reminded him of sunlight appearing through clouds. She was very like her mother.

John Patrick held his arms wide and gathered Arkadia into a warm hug. Almost as tall as he was, Arkadia buried her head against his shoulder, and he caught a scent of citrus from her dark hair.

Hello, darling. William Shay brought you?

I met him at the station and he offered to drive me in his pony cart. I enjoyed that. Not a very talkative man, is he?

But a good neighbor and he keeps the yard in fine order. He knows all the country matters that turn me into a complete idiot. And he lets Rini ride with him in the cart whenever she can.

Papa, come with us. We saw the heron and I told Kadie that it hunts in the swamp just past the trees and that I’d show her. Orion loves the swamp.

I’d like that, Arkadia said. It was too cold and rainy to go walking when I was here at Christmas. I still haven’t seen all of your new home.

Not so new anymore, but that’s a grand idea. Your mother suggested a walk, too, and when we come back we can all drive up to O’Hara’s. The market is just past the station, off the main road from Dublin.

Come on, Orion! Here we go down rivers of the windy light! Rini and Orion ran ahead toward the path into the alders.

Ever since we’ve moved to the country, she’s decided to be Prince of the Apple Lands and keeps begging for a pony.

You owe her one, you know.

Now how can that be?

You named her for the Celtic horse goddess. Arkadia gave him an arch look.

Holy Brigid! Please don’t remind Rini. I’ll never hear the end of it and she finds enough reasons of her own.

Arkadia laughed and took her father’s offered arm. As they walked the path Rini had taken through the tall trees that bordered the lawn, John Patrick pointed out woodland features and boundary markers.

I haven’t given up hope of finding some old, gray, moss-covered stone with words in ogham carved on it.

Good luck to you. Is the marsh yours too?

The not-so-despondent slough? Good grief, no. I’d feel like I had some responsibility to research all matters relating to sloughs and swampland and marshes if I did. I was raised in Dublin, remember, and I prefer my country to be literary. That’s why I appreciate William Shay and his few words. If he were one of those men who try to explain why we ought to trim the north hedge but not the south, or how a combustion engine works on a mower, I fear I’d immediately move back to the city. I’m sure he thinks I’m just a West Brit Dublin fellow trying to become a country squire.

You? West British? I hope you talk to him in the Irish and let him know your roots grow deep here in Ireland.

Right, and I must remember to have Elín lecture his wife on Irish rebels when she comes by to clean. But I want to hear about you. How is it to be teaching a school of girls?

I like it. I have a class on Spenser that is sheer delight—for me if not for the girls. I’ll have to be there longer before they let me have Chaucer. Everyone wants to teach Chaucer. How about you and Mama? How is she?

Working on Casement. Researching the life of Roger Casement apparently requires a state of perpetual outrage.

Not the same, then, as studying Druids?

Who are ever a source of endless satisfaction, as you well know. And speaking of the elders, remind me later that a letter just came from Aachen.

The one I brought? Did you open it?

No. I wanted to see you first. John Patrick couldn’t refrain from grinning.

Remind you? I wonder how you’ve been able to leave it behind.

To be honest, I’m slightly afraid to open it. It’s from Herr Rickard, my agent, but I don’t know if he found a manuscript or not. What if he tells me it’s not what I hope? Any road—the envelope’s not thick enough to be the key.

The key? Arkadia shook her head. You make it sound like something from a second-rate novel.

But there must be such a thing. Or such things. Twenty years a man or woman had to train and study to become a Druid. Some part of that learning must still be somewhere. Oh, I don’t expect to really find a key, but they were too canny a folk to have let it all disappear. They knew that the Roman Church’s rise to power was inevitable, so I’m sure that any number of them took positions in the new religion and brought their craft with them.

Arkadia had heard versions of this theory many times. John Patrick’s enthusiasm for the ancient things he taught his university classes, his yearning to know everything possible about the early Irish world, had been passed on to her when other children her age were given dolls.

Have I ever told you that the sainted Patrick is said to have burned eighty books of the Druids? Eighty vessels of wisdom that are now lost forever?

Yes, Papa, you have. At least a hundred times.

Lord love us, between your mother and me, Kadie, how did you ever manage to stay sane? John Patrick almost managed to look remorseful.

Perhaps sanity is overrated.

But think what it would be like if we could find even one of those books. John Patrick’s enthusiasm was not to be dampened long, not in the presence of his daughter who had long been a colleague.

It would truly be a miracle, Papa. Do you really believe that some day we’ll find a treasure trove of manuscripts?

"No, probably not, though stranger things have happened. They’ve found a Roman library at Herculaneum. They found the cave paintings at Lascaux. My hope is that we may find something hiding in plain sight. Some old poem like the Song of Amairgin will actually be recognized as code and we’ll finally understand what we’ve always had."

Is that what’s in the envelope I brought?

John Patrick glanced around before lowering his voice although there was no one to overhear for miles.

Last month during my trip to Cologne, Herr Rickard told me that he had learned of some manuscripts that survived the war, even though the monastery they were in was severely damaged.

Why Germany? I don’t recall that there were many Druids in Germany.

But there were Irish monks who went to teach the Franks at Charlemagne’s capital in Aachen. Herr Rickard is from Aachen, which is not that far from Cologne. In those days, the struggle was still being waged between the Irish Church and Rome, though Rome was clearly winning by then. It’s very possible our monks brought something of the Druids with them.

Possible, if our monks were still the Druids you’d like them to be, but why has something only been found now?

John Patrick drew a deep breath.

During the war, a monastery near Aachen feared for the safety of manuscripts stored in its old cellars, manuscripts no one had been interested in for centuries. Some went missing and, periodically, have been turning up on the market. I’ve hired Herr Rickard to keep me on his permanent list of clients who are notified of new discoveries.

John Patrick heard laughter and splashing from the slough but ignored it. He had been waiting to tell Arkadia what he hoped to discover, and he could see from her intent look she was catching his excitement.

Remember how parchment was reused?

Yes. Parchment was too valuable for the Christians to destroy pagan books, much as they wanted to, so pages were usually erased by scraping and then used again. Some old works have been recovered because, with our modern techniques, we can make out the older writing beneath the newer.

Exactly. Herr Rickard wrote that he has a manuscript that begins in Latin but, after a few pages, continues in what may be Old Irish. I paid him to have photocopies made of some pages and sent to me. I’m hoping that’s what the envelope contains.

Arkadia’s eyes were wide as she stared at John Patrick.

Just imagine, he continued, that some monk who secretly held to the old ways disguised a Druid book by erasing only the first few pages and then copied onto them some suitably pious Latin text.

But, Papa, the experts say the Druids were forbidden to write their learning.

I’ve heard that, John Patrick said solemnly. Then he grinned. I’ve also heard there are experts who say there never were any Druids.

John Patrick and Arkadia exchanged smiles that were not unlike the grins of wolves catching scent of prey.

As they emerged from the trees, Arkadia caught the rich odor of the marsh and she inhaled deeply. Earthy and damp, the smell stirred something elemental. She stopped abruptly as she suddenly felt disoriented.

Papa! Kadie! Where have you been? Hurry, the heron is there.

John Patrick gazed in dismay at his youngest daughter. It was debatable who was muddier, Rini or Orion. Arkadia used the moment to regain her composure.

Oh, Rini. Your mother will kill me.

I slipped and it was Orion’s fault. He pushed me.

Orion pushed you? Could you say this in front of Father Ryan?

Rini considered for only a few seconds.

Yes. It’s true. He was very excited but he didn’t mean to make me fall down. Come on, you two.

The group began walking again, but Rini turned back.

Kadie, do you think dogs have souls? Father Ryan says they don’t.

Arkadia’s sense of balance had been restored. She looked to John Patrick for some guidance, but her father kept a neutral expression. Rini saw the look.

Papa says that if there are souls, then dogs have them.

Papa is rarely wrong, Rini.

Oh, you’re just like him. Mama says of course they do even if Father Ryan says they don’t.

What do you think?

I don’t know. Her voice grew small. I’m not sure I know what a soul is. Sister Cecilia talks about souls all the time. She always has us pray for the Poor Souls in Purgatory, but if Orion has a soul, would he have to go to Purgatory? You go to Purgatory for venial sins, and pushing me, even if it wasn’t on purpose, might be a venial sin.

I’m not sure I know much about souls either, or sins for that matter. There was no condescension in Arkadia’s response. Let’s think about it, then, you and I.

All right, but not now. Look! Rini could stay sober only so long. She dropped her voice to a whisper and pointed. There’s the heron.

They had paused where the path turned and skirted the grassy edge of the marsh. In the misty distance, hummocks, tiny islands really, rose above the water, appearing to float in the haze. The larger ones held the dark shapes of trees. Here and there among the islands, skeletons of trunks with jagged branches stood above the water like ghostly sentries. The heron was not far from shore, motionless, gray against a line of tall green reeds. A slight breeze, like a passing hand, ruffled the reeds, and the motion served as contrast to the bird’s fixed stand. Rini tiptoed to the edge of the water, holding Orion’s collar although he seemed unlikely to attempt swimming or even barking.

Once again Arkadia felt odd, as if she were being absorbed into the scene, as if it were eternal and she had always existed in its presence. Her mind seized on the term déjà vu as she focused on the heron. It was familiar, like a character from a book, like an image translated from mythology into the real world.

Do you think herons have souls? Arkadia asked her father as assurance that forming words was still possible.

John Patrick took a long moment to answer.

Sometimes I think that herons collect souls.

Arkadia would remember her father’s answer.

I often see it from the view of a fish, John Patrick continued, or a frog who suddenly sees death about to strike from above.

Narrow-necked and sharp-beaked and glittering-eyed, the bird posed as an eternal being beyond human understanding, beyond compassion. They stared at the heron, entranced by its otherness. Half-formed thoughts of ambassadors, of emissaries from far-off realms, attempted to take shape in Arkadia’s mind.

They say cranes guarded Manannán’s palace. John Patrick broke the spell.

Oh, Papa, you’re an unregenerate old pagan.

So says Rini’s Father Ryan. I’d hardly met the man before he began chastising me for giving my daughters heathen names. I think he’s one of those conservative Catholics who wish they could excommunicate the lovely man in Rome, John XXIII. He’s careful with me, though, because I told him I’ve found some curious matters regarding the early Irish Church and Pelagianism in my research. He keeps asking me what I’ve found. I think he’s worried I might have uncovered some scandal.

Pelagianism? Wasn’t that a heresy? Arkadia’s knowledge of Roman Church history was considerable, but she did not live in daily excursions along its byways and brambly paths as John Patrick did.

Oh yes! Saint Augustine accused Pelagius the Briton of doctrinal errors and also had enough power—read that as enough cronies—to get Rome to accuse him of heresy. Even now no good Catholic wants to hear anything bad about Augustine.

John Patrick was back in his favorite element, speculating about the centuries when Ireland first came under the sway of Roman Christianity. If the Druids were meat and drink to him, the various heresies and heretics were often dessert.

And I would love to discover that Pelagius’s work was learned from Druids.

Arkadia wanted to be away from the swamp. She took her father’s arm and urged him to continue walking.

Heathen names, the priest says? I’d say you just gave us both a good start. I would be so miserable if you and Mama were true believers.

Careful, lass, this country is still in the hands of the Papists even if this new John, the twenty-third of his name, is said to be a liberal.

A liberal Papist? We’ll see. And I am always careful, Papa. Don’t I teach in a convent school? There are times I’ve had to bite my tongue over matters that would drive you mad.

†

Elín O’Malley was waiting as her brood approached the house.

Rhiannon O’Malley, how did you and your dog ever get so muddy? You look like you’ve been slogging through a swamp. I suppose your sister and father were talking and let you run about on your own. You’ll have to clean up before we go, even if we aren’t taking your father’s new car. Hurry now, O’Hara’s Market closes early on Wednesdays.

The only person in the

Reviews for Reach of the Heron

[DaisyTeragram · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Interesting but pretty inscrutable to me, so I cannot really say what it is about. I didn't enjoy it because I don't understand what happened, most especially at the end, when clarity would have made a difference. It was not a satisfying ending, but by that point, I'm not sure how much I cared. The writing was good, and error free, but I didn't like the style. It was so literary that I wasn't able to follow all the plot points.