Amhrain na hEireann (Songs of Ireland)

Beeswing

I was nineteen the summer that I first met her. It was warm and muggy that year, and the city was miserable. I needed a job badly, so I took a position in a steamy. It was there I first saw her.

I was walking through a cloud of smoke and it was as if she just appeared. She was carrying a basket of laundry, and she looked up. Our eyes met, and I stood still, my shirt stuck to my back with sweat and steamy water.

She smiled. "Hello." That was all she said at first. She went on her way, brushing lightly against my hip as she passed.

I stared after her. One of the other men nudged me. "She's trouble, Torin. Don't get involved with her."

The next day she came to me during lunch. "You're Torin, hm?"

I nodded, swallowing a bit of sandwich. "And you are..?"

"Catriona. People call me Cat." She brushed her hair behind her shoulder and it zigzagged wildly down her back.

I grinned. "Ah."

She sat down beside me. "How long have you been here, Torin?"

And that was the beginning. We ate lunch together after that and it wasn't too long before she came home with me.

She had this look she gave people that put them under a spell. Her eyes would widen as if in surprise, and she would draw in her breath. It put me in mind of an animal.

One night we were talking. "Torin..."

"Mm..."

"Torin...you've got to take me out of this place. If you don't, I'll lose my mind."

I rolled over on one elbow. "What do you mean? My flat?"

She laughed, but looked at me earnestly. "No. Your flat is fine. I mean this town, the steamy, all of it. It puts me in mind of a factory, it does. And I'm not the factory kind."

"Sure, you aren't!" I wrapped an arm around her. "You're the only one of your kind, Cat."

She laughed again and went back to sleep, but I lay awake for a long while, thinking of something she had said the first night. "I'll stay as long as there's no price on love."

"Love always comes with a price," I had said then. "You don't mean that?"

"I do mean that. And no matter what you're thinking now, you wouldn't want me any other way than this," she declared confidently.

One day I quit my job at the steamy and told her we were leaving. We walked out of that town with our belongings on our backs. She walked beside me, laughing and stepping so that her zigzag hair bounced. I caught a few strands and wrapped them around my hand for a while. That night we slept on the roadside, and for a few nights after that as well, until we came to a small market town.

She nudged me. "You're good at tinkering, Torin. We'll set up here for a while." So we did. I spread out my tools and waited for business to come along. And come along it did. That day I repaired five pans.

After a few days in that town, Cat woke me up with a nudge. "We'll be moving on today."

I sat up sleepily. "Will we?" I mumbled.

She nodded and rose. "We will." We left after breakfast that day, me following Cat's bouncing hair down the road. The sun caught her hair and turned the zigzags light brown as she skipped ahead.