The Snowmelt River (The Three Powers) by Frank P. Ryan Read Free Book Online Page A

head. With the other kids making out like I was some kind of a freak.”
    Kate shook her head. “But I always thought superstitious people were—well, a little bit simple. And Padraig is far from simple.”
    “I’m not saying he’s simple.”
    Mark, who had been following the conversation, met Kate’s gaze with a wry smile. “Mo’s just the same. She’s as superstitious as hell. But she isn’t simple either. She’s just different.”
    Alan looked down at the daisy-strewn grass between his feet. “You know what she reminds me of? I’m not claiming to be arty or anything, but I recall this teacher who was trying to explain stuff like Picasso and modern art to us. She talked about some natural ability we all had when we were kids. The thing is, we lose it. Somehow that happens to most of us. We lose it when we grow up. That’s the difference between us and these great artists. They manage to keep hold of it. That’s what I imagine is going on with Mo. She’s one of those who keep it.”
    Mark looked at Alan.
    “Hey, I like Mo. No offense. Okay?”
    “No offense taken. I think you might even be right.”
    On one occasion Padraig brought Mo a finger-sized chunk of bog oak, as black as licorice. Mo cooed with delight when she accepted it from his hand. It looked like nature had sculpted it so it resembled a female form with one body that was the stem and three knots at one end that looked like separate knobbly heads. Up close, the heads were all different, like the three ages of womanhood. Mo stared and stared at it. But she didn’t sit down and draw it. Nor did she place it on one of her altars. Instead she kept it with her constantly, to be taken out and fondled, like a talisman.
    Nobody, not even Mark, understood this new twist. And if Padraig had an inkling he kept it to himself.
    All of a sudden, it was the last day of July and it felt as if the whole month had been simply too gorgeous to hold onto. Mo was squinting skyward, as if in a final appeal to the sun, where it was peeping in and out of cotton-wool clouds that seemed in no hurry to move along. How she wished this last month could have gone on forever, days so full of sunshine and laughter you wanted to slow them right down. But they just melted away anyway, one day merging into another, so that in the end the whole month of July had gone hurtling by in what felt like no time at all. A time spent building sandcastles on sunnybeaches. But the trouble with sandcastles is they stand only until the waves come in and sweep them away. And today, on this exceptionally sultry day, that wave was coming. Mo had sensed it build up, little by little, not out there in the Atlantic Ocean off the beach at Clonea, but within the bodies and spirits of her friends, and the terrible thing was that even though she knew what was happening she was utterly powerless to prevent it. It was there, already, in Alan’s angry expression as he put down the paperback he had been reading, pushing Mark and his cell-phone-cum-camera away with his foot.
    “Knock it off, will you, Mark? Don’t do that.”
    “Oh, look out!” Mark muttered as the phone fell from his grasp into the sand. “It’s hardly a crime,” he remarked while spitting on a tissue and attempting to clean it.
    “Hey—it’s not very nice to take pictures of Kate when she doesn’t want it.”
    “Oh, give it a rest, Alan!”
    “Grow up—both of you!” Kate mumbled at the squabbling boys, wiping sand off her arm where it had become embedded in her suntan lotion.
    Mo stared, and her gut squeezed in a spasm of worry about Mark. For weeks her brother had been developing a crush on Kate. Was Mark so stupid he couldn’t see that Kate had eyes for nobody other than Alan?
    Today’s trip to Dungarvan had just been another of the bike trips that were originally supposed to beabout hunting down threatened plants. Mo had been keen enough on the idea because, while Kate scoured the hedgerows and wild spaces for