The Cliffs of Moher, May 17th, 1816

Dr. Larson had been hesitant to let Elizabeth out on her own, but eventually acquiesced after Samuel assured him that they would be fine.  Jenny thought Dr. Larson was much too cautious, but perhaps there had been some truth to his worries.  Even wrapped tightly in her woolen cloak, Jenny couldn’t stop shivering.  If she was cold, she had to guess that Elizabeth, wearing only a shawl and a muslin gown, was freezing.  Neither, however, complained about the unusual atmosphere.  The cliffs were worth the weather, and the view more than made up for any discomfort.

The sky was slate gray, yet bright with a certain solemnity.  Jenny and Elizabeth stood side by side, gazing down at the heaving waves, beating against the rugged shoreline.  At their feet, the grass rippled, shiny with dew.  It was the sort of day stories began in, ripe with a wary opportunity.

“An everlasting universe of things,” whispered Elizabeth, savoring the words as if they had a decadent taste.

“What?”

“It’s Shelley.  ‘Mont Blanc’.”  Elizabeth blushed, making her cheeks even pinker than they already were from the cold.  “It’s a magnificent poem.”

“Oh.”

The waves crashed against the shore, white foam bubbling and hissing.  The wind pinched at their faces.

“There’s a story about these cliffs, you know,” Jenny said.

“Oh?”

“The Hag of Beara.”

Elizabeth turned to her cousin, genuinely curious.  “Could you tell it to me?”

Jenny frowned.  She wasn’t exactly a storyteller, not like Elizabeth was a poet.  There was a great difference between producing and consuming something; it would be like saying she was excellent at laying eggs just because she collected them from the chickens every morning. 

Jenny nudged a small stone with her foot and watched it tumble down the Cliffs of Moher, falling deftly into the sand below, becoming invisible.  She fiddled with the bone in her pocket, a good luck talisman, she had decided.  Then, she sat down, and her cousin did the same.  Elizabeth did not seem at all concerned about the grass stains she would surely get on her cream-colored gown, and for all her imaginings, Jenny could not fathom how that was possible.  She hoped that someday she too might disregard such a fine dress.  For now, however, her dress was a dull brown, and her monster’s eyes were green.

Jenny closed her eyes and rested her hands in her lap.  A story—a good one, at least—required centering. 

She had first heard the Hag of Beara’s tragedy as she had heard each of her stories, sitting on her father’s knee before a spitting fire.  She strove to remember the color of his words—that part was the most important, after all.  She breathed in the memory, wrapping her arms around herself to draw in the story and keep out the cold.

“The Hag of Beara,” she began, “wasn’t always like that.  A long time ago, before there was sand or grass or even stars, she was a beautiful young woman, lovelier than any lass that’s lived before or since.  She had hair like molten gold and eyes blue as the sea, with bits of green sparkling in their edges.  And she was as powerful as she was beautiful, but she was also terribly alone.  You see, she was the only being on her little island.  That would not do.

“So one day, she lifted up four heavy stones, and tucked them into her apron.  She waded into the sea, which could only reach to her ankles, she was so tall.  And she tossed the stones, one to the east, one to the west, one to the south, and one to the north.  They made a plop! as they hit the water, and as soon as they did, they began to root themselves in place, and sprout grass and flowers and trees.  The stones came to life in that way, and blossomed around her.  Those stones became Ireland, and it wasn’t long before people landed upon them, and made them their home.

“The Hag of Beara was so pleased to have friends at last, that she shrunk herself down and joined the humans in their festivals, in their daily labors, in their births and their deaths.  She married and had seven sons, who became seven great kings of Ireland.  And she could not have been happier, or prouder.

“But there was one problem: she was immortal, and those she loved were not.  She stayed young while her husband withered and died, and as her children did the same.  She kept living, through six more lifetimes, six more husbands, six more sets of children loved and lost.”

Elizabeth frowned, her eyebrows knit together tightly.  Jenny cleared her throat and continued.

“All that pain became too much to bear.  The Hag of Beara could not die, but her sorrow lined her face, grayed her hair, wrinkled her hands, and hunched her back.  For all her power, she could not stop time, could not seize the arrow before it was fired from the bow.  All that remained of her past self were her eyes, brighter than before, hollowed with tears in her weathered face.

“The Hag of Beara—for that’s what she was now called—exiled herself to the Cliffs of Moher, a distant shore forgotten by time, just like herself.”

Jenny paused, allowing her next words to have the proper impact.  This was the best part.

“And she wailed, wailed all her pain into the sea, begging it, this great thing, even more powerful than herself, to set things right.  But the sea was silent, and did not reply.  And her tears did not carry her pain away with them, as she had half-hoped they might.  They only strengthened it.

“As she wept, her whole self became sticky with sorrow, so that she could not escape from it.  The Hag of Beara had turned herself to stone, and her cries into the steady, endless waves.”

Jenny pointed to a rock structure, tall and thick, with a long protrusion at the top that could have been a nose.  “That’s the Hag of Beara.”  She lifted up her hands, as she had seen her father do perhaps a hundred times before.  “And her cries are all around us.  It’s said that once a year, the earth joins with her in mourning, and that’s how we have winter.”  Stories always had a lesson at the end like that, a reason for being.

Pausing, Jenny waited for Elizabeth’s reaction.  Her cousin smiled softly, her eyes faraway, even farther than usual.  Jenny realized then that her father had been correct; Elizabeth was the spitting image of her mother.  “That’s a beautiful story,” Elizabeth said.

Jenny realized that she must have told it wrong.  “It’s not beautiful; it’s sad.”

Elizabeth turned her strange, absent eyes to the horizon, her pale profile stark against the gray sky.  “All sad things are beautiful,” she said, as if this were the most obvious thing in the world.

Jenny followed her gaze, pointed at the cloud-dusted horizon.  It too was sad.  And it too was beautiful, Jenny had to admit.  She hadn’t thought that ordinary things could really be beautiful.

But she still didn’t agree with what Elizabeth had said.  Jenny didn’t want to argue with her cousin, so she didn’t say the truth, which was that some things really were just sad.

This summer, for instance.  Perhaps there was something morosely magic about rain or clouds, or poetic about mist-gray skies.  But there was nothing beautiful about ruined crops, the anxious whisperings of her parents, the grumbling in her stomach, the clawing in her insides.  The sun always hiding behind clouds thick as mortar.  None of that was beautiful.  She couldn’t resent Elizabeth for not understanding that, though.  Tragedy could be enchanting when it wasn’t touching you.  Wasn’t that what stories were all about?

Elizabeth untied her bonnet and closed her eyes.  She let the cool breeze play with her auburn curls as she meditated.  She looked like she could have been the Hag of Beara, at the start of the story, perfect, and beautiful, and alone.

“If I had hair like yours, I’d never wear a bonnet,” Jenny blurted out.  She was immediately mortified by this admission, and longed to bury herself in her own lank brown hair.

But Elizabeth smiled at her kindly.  “I wish I had your hair.  Mine’s not the style in London.  I used to get teased about its color, when I still went to dances and teas.”

“You mean you don’t go to them anymore?  Why not?”

Elizabeth plucked a blade of grass and twirled it in her fingers, like she’d done with the bone currently sitting in Jenny’s apron pocket.  “People didn’t like my hair,” she said.  Jenny usually failed to be perceptive, but even she knew that was a lie.

It hadn’t occurred to her that Elizabeth’s condition precluded her from rich-people things.  Perhaps unfairly, she’d assumed that life went on, even for the mad.  The place where Elizabeth had stayed— “the Retreat”—must have been quite lonely.

“I think I’ll have to write a poem about her,” Elizabeth said, peeling her blade of grass down the middle.  “I understand her too well not to.”

“Who?  The Hag?”

Elizabeth nodded.  “I don’t blame her for turning to stone.  Not at all.  That’s what it’s really like, to lose people.  You lose yourself along with them.”

Jenny shivered.  She’d never been unlucky enough to lose someone she loved.  She had come close, of course.  There were hungry years, like this one, where nearly everything was lost.  But stories weren’t meant to make you think of sad things like that.  They were meant to do the opposite.  They were meant to make the sad things disappear.

“Elizabeth,” she said, “it’s only a story.”

Elizabeth smiled wisely.  “No such thing.”

“No such thing,” Jenny echoed.  She smiled back, scrunching her nose.  “I think I like that, Elizabeth.”

Elizabeth laughed, and her breath exited as steam in the cold air.  “I suppose the Hag’s having a rough go of it this year,” she said.  “Not one but two winters.”

Jenny nodded with enthusiasm.  “I was thinking just the same.”  She really was.  No one ever thought the same thing as her.

“Jenny?”  Elizabeth looked at her intently, her beautiful face both shining and solemn.  “It’s fine if you call me Elsie.  Everyone does once I know them well enough.  It’s just that most people never do.”

She must know Dr. Larson very well then, Jenny thought.

“But I feel that we know one another,” Elsie said.  She spoke with just a touch of desperation, as if she needed her words to be true.  “It’s like you’ve said; we’ve met before.”

“Yes.”  Jenny nodded.  “We have.”  She smiled as Elizabeth—Elsie—did the same.  Elsie suited her much better.

The two listened as the Hag of Beara wailed in waves.  The ocean’s sharp sound and scent was crisp in the summer-winter air.