Read Online The Ghost of Grania O'Malley by Michael Morpurgo - Free Book Online

and watched the reflected clouds moving across the pool. She was remembering the earring and how she had found it there before. And then she knew she wasn’t remembering it at all, she was looking directly at it. It was there, right in front of her eyes, lying at the bottom of the pool. It was like an echo in her mind, this feeling of having been somewhere before and then the same thing happening, in exactly the same place and in exactly the same way, like a dream, only clearer, more real. She reached down into the water, shattering the clouds, but Jack’s hand was quicker than hers.
    â€˜Jeez, what’s this?’ he said, dangling the earring in front of her eyes.
    â€˜What does it look like?’ a voice spoke from behind them, a voice Jessie recognised at once. ‘You’ll be needing the pair, I thought.’ They turned. She was the woman from the mirror. She was the woman from Jessie’s dream. And she was here and now and barefoot on the rock, her hair all about her face.
    â€˜Well, have you no manners at all?’ she said. ‘You’re gawping at me like a pair of gasping salmon. Look around you. It’s just like you said, Jack. Isn’t this the most perfect place in the entire world? My mountain this, my hill. I fought for it, we all did. We spilled good red Irish blood for it, and I’ll not let them do it. I won’t. But I’ll need help.’ And then to Jack: ‘That was a fine speech you made. Did you mean it?’ Jack nodded, backing away now and taking Jessie with him.
    â€˜Now where do you think you’re going to?’ She sprang down off the rock, lithe like a tiger, a sword hanging from her broad leather belt. She was about Jessie’s mother’s age, a little older perhaps and certainly stronger. There was a wild and weather-beaten look about her. ‘Would I hurt you? Would I? Haven’t I just given you my own earrings? Gold they are, Spanish gold. I filched them myself from the wreck of the Santa Felicia, a great Armada galleon that washed itself up on our rocks – a while ago now. And there’s a whole lot more where they came from, my life’s winnings you might say – or what’s left of them anyway.’
    She drew her sword and flourished it at the sea. ‘These are my waters. You sail in my waters and you pay your dues. I took from anyone who came by, English, Spanish, Portuguese – all the same to me, all perfectly fair and square and above board. But if they didn’t pay, well then, I took what was mine. Wouldn’t you? A poor pirate’s got to earn her crust somehow. How else is she to live into her old age? Tell me that if you will.’
    Jessie sat down because she had to, because her legs wanted her to. It could not be what Jessie was thinking, because what she was thinking was impossible; but then maybe she had to believe the impossible might just be possible after all. The woman now striding towards her said she was a pirate, that the Big Hill was her mountain. It could be no one else. It had to be . . . but then it couldn’t be. She had been buried in the abbey hundreds of years ago. Jessie had seen the gravestone. They had read about her at school, the Pirate Queen of Clare Island. Mrs O’Leary’s pub down by the quay was named after her.
    Jessie screwed up all her courage, and then spoke. ‘You’re not . . . you’re not Grania O’Malley, are you?’
    â€˜And who else would I be?’ she said.

6 GONE FISHING
    THEY WERE ALONE AGAIN ON THE HILL. IT WAS as if time had stood still, and they had just rejoined it. For some moments they simply stood and stared at each other. Then Jack looked down at his hand. ‘It’s gone. I had it. I had the earring,’ he whispered. ‘I found it in the pool, didn’t I?’ Jessie nodded. ‘And she was here, wasn’t she? I wasn’t dreaming it?’ He didn’t wait for an answer.