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Claudia Stack

Willow Chapter 7: The Celtic Cross (serial novel)

2021-02-22
https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=3KYHuR_0Yh463cw00 Photo by Adrian Moran on Unsplash

Dusk was finally falling; the summer day had been long. The man, who some called Mick, deftly sent one more pitchfork full of hay to the front of Willow’s stall. The white mare was already munching contentedly, her head down. She nosed around in the hay for tender alfalfa leaves. The man always found a way to sneak her a bit extra. He patted her neck to say goodnight, but his mind was far from the stable.

Walking down the stable ramps, the man rubbed the silver Celtic cross in his pocket. It never tarnished, he rubbed it so often: For luck, in times of anxiety, or just out of habit. The intricate carving on the cross was wearing smooth. Still the workmanship was still evident, and one could only guess at the value of the emerald embedded at the center of the cross.

He left the main door of the stable where, going to the east, horses and riders would step out on their way to Central Park’s bridle paths. Going the other way, four blocks to the west, was Riverside Park and the Hudson River.

He paused for a moment to look in that direction, and thought about when he had arrived from Ireland accompanying four white horses. The cargo ship had passed the Statue of Liberty, rounded lower Manhattan, and docked. Mick did not know how the horses would be transported for the last leg of the journey to the Brown estate on the upper West side.

If the horses had been more fit, harnessing them to the carriage brought over on the same ship and driving them up Riverside Drive to the estate would have posed little problem. Yet three of the four horses had declined greatly during the rough voyage. They were thin, and despite his expert care, had developed fevers on the long ocean crossing.

Mick fretted endlessly over the horses on the voyage. He walked them in the narrow aisles of the ship’s hold, mixed buckets of warm mash, and brushed them. He still felt the sting of failure when the inspector on the Manhattan docks would not release the three sick horses.

It’s true that their breathing was labored and their ribs were protruding. Yet, he felt sure that if he could get the horses to a proper stable, he could nurse them back to health. The inspector shook his head. In a last-ditch effort to change the inspector’s mind, Mr. Brown’s personal secretary was dispatched to the docks with several large bills tucked into a folded newspaper. In the end, it was fruitless.

The three sick horses were led to the edge of the dock and shot between their eyes, their bodies allowed to fall onto a huge trash barge. Mick looked away. He led Willow into an enclosed wagon that would haul her the five miles uptown to the Brown estate. He rode inside the wagon with her, so only Willow saw the tears that he wiped with his rough fist.

The horses were the last four bred by his grandfather, who was known for producing strong but refined carriage horses. His grandfather crossed his prized Irish Draught horse stallion onto finer Thoroughbreds mares. When Brown’s buying agent had come in search of the best horses in western Ireland, it was only a matter of time that he would come calling at his grandfather’s farm.

Mick had been there when the horses were foaled, he had helped his grandfather to train them when they were playful three-year-olds, and then he watched his father strike a deal.

With his grandfather’s health failing and the mares already sold to pay debts, Mick knew selling the team of four was the best chance to save the farm. Still, he could hardly bear it. How could his horses be sent so far away?

Learning that he had been hired into the bargain as a groom, he was still conflicted. He had a young man’s impulse to see the world. Yet he knew that, if he left with the horses, he would never again see his grandfather alive. The deal was done, though, and he must make the best of it. Brown’s office obtained a visa for him, and they set out. Storms at sea had delayed them, and the three horses fell ill.

His mind turned back to the cross in his pocket. On the morning he left, his grandmother had lifted a stone in the yard. He stared in wonderment as she took a cloth packet from the hole beneath and unfolded it. The silver Celtic cross was revealed, along with a few coins. She folded them back up in the cloth, and pressed it into his hand.

“You never know when you might be needing this” she said “remember us when you pray.”

It was true. Over the years he had exchanged the silver coins for American dollars, but always he had saved the silver cross. The emerald at the center reminded him of the green of Ireland’s hills, and the carvings on the silver were so intricate that they seemed to have no beginning and no end.

Today, though, he steeled himself to go around the corner to the pawn shop, told himself it was only a temporary solution. Somehow he would get the cross back, but he needed money today. When his old landlord died, the estate had taken over the small brick building on Amsterdam Avenue where he lived and directed the management company to review all the leases. Mick had received the letter he dreaded: Notice of rent increase… we will no longer honor the lease negotiated in 1920 by your father…

It was trouble in one way, for somehow he would have to pay more rent each month. His wages at the stable were modest, and he didn’t want to draw attention by asking for more. In another way, he had dodged trouble, for building management had sent a letter instead of an agent. He had not been seen in person by anyone from that office in 30 years, but if he had they might have realized something unusual: His hair was the same salt and pepper gray, but it had not receded any further. There were wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, but no more than when he first moved in.

Time had worn on and fading memories, aided by a few strategic remarks from him, had helped conceal the strange fact that he had stopped aging in 1920, at the time of the explosion. The blast had knocked him out, and he awoke on Wall Street in the middle of smoke and fire. Mick had rolled into the water trickling in the gutter to put out the embers on his coat. He got up and ran without looking back.

Mac papered over the decades with a fiction that people accepted … that he had emigrated as a boy with his father, taken over his father’s position at the stable, and stayed on in their apartment. Except his father had never left Ireland. He had died within a year of Mick’s departure.

Three golden metal globes hung on chains above the door of the pawn shop . They swayed slightly in the wind. Their color was dull, and the globes had some dents and rust. Nevertheless, it was a symbol that had been understood since the Middle Ages, signifying a place where one could get a loan against something of value. Mick took a deep break and pushed open the door, holding the precious silver cross in his pocket.

The cross was timeless, and he had long since ceased questioning how he and Willow had also become timeless. They existed quietly in their suspended state, a tight triangle of man, horse and precious object, but he had no way of knowing what would happen when the cross was separated from him.

Click here for Willow Chapter 6: Maggie and Sarah

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