Giants

At least that was how it should have played out, but before we started the car, I saw a man round the corner, walking fast towards the inn. He was dressed in all black, with a knitted hat dragged down below his ears. It was hard to tell if it was the man from yesterday; he had no outstanding features. However, he looked around him like he was on the lookout. Cian pulled me down in the seat so we weren’t visible; thankfully we’d parked in the darkest corner of the parking lot. The man stopped outside the Inn, waited a minute and pulled up a phone. He talked into it for half a minute, then slowly opened the door and slid in. Cian looked at me, “Should we leave?” I gave a short nod, “Yeah, I think we need to get the hell out of Dodge.” I had just said the word before a crack sounded in the dark. This time I knew what it was, and so did Cian. “Agreed. Hold on.”

He stomped on the gas, sliding on the slippery cobbled road before we reached the wider road. We heard screaming from the inn when we sped past it, but we couldn’t stop now. Treasure hunting suddenly didn’t seem so fun.

¤¤¤

“Should we call the police?” I was looking behind me, tears rolling down my cheek. Cian glanced briefly in the rear-view mirror and shook his head, “No, let them do it. They had our room number. Hopefully no one got hurt. We need to find out where to go from now. Do we abort mission, or do we continue?”

How could I think about that now? If someone was hurt, it was my fault.

“Jamie?”

I banged my fists against my thighs, the sound unsatisfyingly low. “Stop! Just stop! How can I decide? It’s your book; what do you want?”

He gripped the wheel tightly, biting his lips together. “If we call the police, what can they do?” Do we think someone is after us because of a supposed treasure that’s been lost for centuries? I’m not Robert Langdon.”

“We don’t think someone is after us; there is someone after us; he’s inside a building shooting right now!”

The road was dark and wet; Cian concentrated on finding the way; I wasn’t helpful in my state. “Can you pull over? I can’t think straight.” He just gave me a side glance but found a small road to stop on; he drove a bit before turning the car around so we could see any cars approaching us. The silence when he turned off the car was deafening. I hid my face in my hands, sobbing.

“Baby, it’ll be alright.” I turned mindlessly to him, and he held me tight against his chest, letting my panic attack simmer. He wiped my chin and kissed me softly when I finally eased back. “You taste like the sea.” He smiled as I hiccupped and dried the last of my tears away. “I’m not surprised,” I answered sarcastically.

“Jamie, these last days have been wild, but I have never felt so alive. The clues, the stories, the treasure. And you. The biggest treasure of them all. I don’t want to stop now. This is like a quest. As you’ve said yourself, the book came to us. The clues and the way we found the astrolabe. It’s faith. We need to find it.”

His words echoed in my head. Faith… What would Dad do? He would have been down the road, nose down in the book. I swallowed the last of my tears and nodded. “OK.”

His smile was blindingly beautiful.

“Let’s find the treasure.” The car hummed to life, and we drove out on the lonely road.

“We need to get to the bridge.”

Cian pointed to the glove compartment, and I opened it to find a map. I frowned, “You know I have a phone, right? We can use google maps.” He looked embarrassed and concentrated on the road again as I tried to remember the name. I ended up typing in “Bridge of Tears” and found many. I typed in Dunfanaghy as well, and there it was.

“It’s just a 15-minute drive from here. Follow the road and I’ll tell you when to turn.”

We didn’t talk anymore; the silence was a weird kind. The tension was due to several things, the fantastic night we’d had, the attacker, the possibility of us finding the treasure. I asked him to slow down when I saw the road was near, it was small, so it was easy to overlook the anonymous turn. I pointed and the car crept down the bumpy road; after a while I could make out a stone fence. Cian saw it as well and stopped the vehicle. It was still dark; he let the lights on so we could see the road ahead us. He rummaged in the trunk and dragged out a flashlight. I was amazed by the practicality of this man; I hadn’t thought of that. I looked at him with a bright smile and a lifted eyebrow, and he blushed slightly, interpreting my impressed look correctly. “Hey, you bring the brains and I bring the stuff.”

He took my hand and we walked carefully down the rocky road to the small bridge together. “What are we looking for?” He let the light travel over the stones. “I’m not sure; maybe he made an inscription? I don’t think he would have mentioned it if it hadn’t had significance. It’s not that far away from the town.” I hunched down to look closer while Cian leaned over the edge. “What if the American found the whole treasure?”

“I have thought about that. I think Every divided the treasure. Why should he leave it all in one place? That’s just stupid. I’m guessing Kingsley Porter found that piece and ran away to mainland Europe, and lived a happy life with his lover. But I am convinced there is more. The clues continue after the island.”

He looked satisfied with my reasoning and kept looking after anything that looked foreign. “How are we supposed to find anything?” He whined. We both stopped in front of a stone with inscriptions in Gaelic. “It’s just a plaque remembering the loved ones who left.” Something nagged me, “Yes, but this would have stayed.” Cian frowned, “What do you mean, stayed?” I let my fingers follow the words embedded in the stone. “Like the stone on Inishbofin, symbolizing the place of the cow. If it had been me, I could have chosen a spot like this for my clues, so it wouldn’t risk getting moved. No one moves a plaque, do they?”

He raised his eyebrows, “Jamie, it doesn’t reveal anything. It says,

Fad leis seo a thagadh cairde agus lucht gaoil an tè a bhì ag imeacht chun na coigrithe. B’anseo an scraradh. Seo Droichead na nDeor.”

The Gaelic words rolled over his tongue and blended into the night.

“It means something like “Family and friends of the person leaving for foreign lands would come this far. Here was the separation. This is the Bridge of Tears.”

I took the flashlight from him and studied the stone closer. What was lurking in my brain? I closed my eyes to envision it better; I knew there was something… Still with my eyes closed I asked Cian to go and get the diary from the car. He obliged without answering, and I could hear the car door slam in the silence of the early dawn. A thought struck me, “Maybe we should turn off the lights? They are sure to be visible from a long distance.” I knew I was being paranoid, but better safe than sorry. Cian turned when he heard my loud whisper, and I regretted my decision when I sat in the dark waiting for him to return. I shone the light his way so he wouldn’t stumble. He gave me the photocopy and I hoped my memory was correct. “Here, hold this and light up the pages for me.”

I found the passage quickly, it was a tedious entry about some cattle he wanted to breed on his farm when he got home, but the signs in the marrow caught my attention. I hadn’t thought much about it at the time, but the spot I had taken for a streak or doodle might as well have been a teardrop. And under the teardrop there were numbers. Again, they held no significance out of context, but I had to try it out. Trust your gut and all that. Cian looked at me like I was crazy when I explained it to him, but when I reminded him of the astrolabe we found in the hearth, he shrugged and waved me on.

“Right, I read the numbers; you find the letters that match.”

“You think it is that easy?”

I rolled my eyes, even though he couldn’t see it in the dark. “You have any other ideas?” I rubbed my arms, thankful for my heavy coat and gloves.

“All my other ideas are about different ways of warming you.” He followed up with a wink, and I laughed. It did help.

It was a trial-and-error sort of way, and after many tries, we had a set of words. We could not know if it was the right words, but it was what we had. I looked down at the paper and read them up loudly.

“FALSE SUN, A BIG MAN, NIGHT, SEA, SCAR, HEAD.”

Cian sighed, “Is there anything in the diary helping us further?” I turned a few pages, “No, not that I can see. Let me think loudly.”

I stood and looked around me; the sky slightly brighter in the east but the moon was clear. I pointed to it. “False sun. It could be the moon. That we need the moon to see the clues?” He looked uncertain, “Why the moon? It would have been easier in the daytime.”

“Ok, a big man. Do you see any? Ireland is famous for its giants; could he mean something like that?”

The landscape shapes around us were blurred in the dark; Cian pointed to something to our right. “If we’re stretching, that formation of rocks could look like a man?” I squinted the way he pointed. He was right. And I would bet it wouldn’t look like that during the day, hence the following word: NIGHT. I slapped his shoulder, “Nice spotted; I think you’re right!” I took the flashlight and started walking; Cian followed me quickly, uncomfortable in the dark. “What now?” I pointed the beam toward the big man.

“We need to find out if the “man” has a scar on his head.”