The Mystery of Ireland's Eye Read online

  Copyright © 1999, 2018, Shane Peacock

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission from the publisher, or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, permission from Access Copyright, 1 Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario M5E 1E5.

  Nimbus Publishing Limited

  3660 Strawberry Hill St., Halifax, NS, B3K 5A9

  (902) 455-4286 nimbus.ca

  Printed and bound in Canada

  NB1372

  Cover design: Cyanotype Book Architects

  Interior design: Heather Bryan

  This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and places, including organizations and institutions, either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Peacock, Shane, author

  The mystery of Ireland’s Eye / Shane Peacock.

  Originally published: Toronto: Viking, 1999.

  ISBN 978-1-77108-615-8 (softcover)

  I. Title.

  PS8581.E234M97 2018 jC813’.54 C2018-901380-X

  Nimbus Publishing acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities from the Government of Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts, and from the Province of Nova Scotia. We are pleased to work in partnership with the Province of Nova Scotia to develop and promote our creative industries for the benefit of all Nova Scotians.

  For Johanna, conceived in a random act of love.

  1

  In the Eye of the Storm

  When we pushed off from the shores of Random Island the water was calm and friendly. But now, with Ireland’s Eye still a shadow on the horizon, the waves were growing higher by the minute. I clenched my jaw tightly and my hands shook as I dug in with the paddle: I was trying not to think of the dangers that lay ahead. Our kayaks were pointing straight out into the Atlantic.

  My mother and father were on either side of me. She was glancing anxiously my way between strokes, searching for any signs of nervousness, and I could see him ploughing forward just off my nose, staring intently at the swells in the water, wondering if this was too much for me. I looked towards our distant destination, my heart pounding. No matter what happens and no matter what they say, I’m not giving up: what lies ahead means too much to me.

  But in minutes the waves had grown even more, rising in front of us like foothills, their peaks nearly a metre high.

  “Keep paddling,” yelled Dad. “Keep yourself on top of the waves!”

  I did as he said and suddenly I was going twice as fast as I had ever gone in a kayak, shooting along on top of the waves like a surfer. In any other circumstance this would have been exciting, but I knew that falling into the icy waters of the ocean might be fatal and that if I couldn’t keep up with the waves, if I got between them, they would pitch me overboard. So I kept paddling, as hard as I could. But then the crosswinds started.

  Up on top of a wave, gusts whipping across my bow, I felt the kayak move sideways. It made me feel out of control and that isn’t something you ever want to feel on the ocean. Dad had warned me about it.

  “If you ever feel a loss of control, Dylan,” he said while we were practicing at home, “tell me and we will stop, wherever we are.”

  I had to fight to keep myself from shouting for help, from crying out that I would never make it: I was on the verge of absolute panic. The kayak was not only being shot forward by the growing waves but rocking sideways at the same time. Then another frightening thought began making its way into my mind: I was starting to think about how many metres of water were beneath me. Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands?! A weird kind of fear of heights washed over me, adding to my problems. It seemed as though I had just stepped off the top of a skyscraper, countless storeys in the air. There was nothing between me and the dark ocean floor but an ever-shifting mile of liquid. I glanced over at Mom. She was staring at me with a frightened expression on her face.

  “Dylan! Are you okay?” came her yell through the wind and spray.

  I couldn’t say anything. I turned my face back towards Ireland’s Eye and kept paddling like a zombie, surfing on waves that were over a metre high now, and still growing.

  We were well off the coast of Canada, out in the Thoroughfare, a sometimes-treacherous stretch of water several kilometres across that lies between the friendly shores of big Random Island and the distant, barren little Eye. Back in another time fishermen and sailors had to navigate through here just to do their jobs, fighting their way around this end of Random to get from its sheltered north channel to its south, or vice versa. Almost no one came this way these days unless they were well equipped with big, motorized boats, safe and powerful. The Thoroughfare is exposed to the winds of the mighty Atlantic, and when you come out of the gentler waters of the channels, it can hit you like a sandstorm. We had known all along that it could be dangerous, but we hadn’t counted on its deceptiveness. The Thoroughfare had fooled us and now it had us in its grip.

  In front of us Dad was motioning towards a small island. It was off to his left and had a little cove. We made for it. In five minutes, as we came into the cove’s protection, the waves had lessened a little. We pulled the kayaks together for a conference, bobbing around and banging into each other. Big drops of rain began plopping down on us, and then fell much harder, sounding like mini-machine-gun fire on the fibreglass.

  “Are you all right, Dylan?” shouted Dad.

  “Yes,” I said, the colour coming back into my face.

  “Do you want to go on?” asked Mom.

  “Yes.”

  She looked at me for a long time. “I don’t think so,” she finally said to Dad. “This is too much for him. It’s too much for me!”

  “I’m afraid we don’t have any choice now,” shouted Dad. “It’s farther back to Random Island than out to the Eye. We have to make a run for it!”

  “But why don’t we just try landing here?”

  Dad glanced towards the shore. “We can’t land anywhere here, not with these waves and that rocky shoreline. And if we stay in this cove the swells are soon going to be worse than the waves.”

  So we had no choice.

  “How far away is Ireland’s Eye?”

  “About half an hour in this stuff.”

  And so we went forward, back out into the storm, fighting for our lives. Fifteen minutes later, I was worn out but paddling with every ounce of energy I had, riding waves nearly two metres high, when Ireland’s Eye began to show itself. It seemed to come up suddenly in the rain and the wind, like a magical creature hiding itself until you could see the whites of its eyes. Crashing forward I noticed a caribou standing on the shoreline in the wind, staring out at us. There is life after all, I thought, on this mysterious island.

  But it was doubtful now if we would ever get near it. The closer we got to our destination the more the storm seemed to rage, as if it were trying to keep us away from the Eye, warning us to leave it be.

  A few minutes later, as we struggled along the southern shore, I noticed Dad out of the corner of my eye churning up beside me.

  “Don’t look at me!” he yelled. “Keep looking straight ahead! In five minutes, when we get near those rocks to your right, we are going to turn left and head towards the island! That’s where the town was! That’s where we can land! Mom’s going in first, then you, and I’ll bring up the rear!”

  I didn’t say anything this time either. My eyes were fixed on each wave as it
rose up, and on the bow of my kayak as it lifted out of the water and then crashed down.

  Mom darted in front of me and led the way. In a few minutes we began turning and then I could see the entrance to the island! But just as we approached the opening, the storm seemed to turn to gale force. The waves became mountains, so high I could no longer see anything, not Mom or Dad, or even Ireland’s Eye. A force that felt like a hurricane picked me up and lifted me high into the air. I twisted sideways, my kayak almost above me, desperately out of control. Then I felt myself going down.

  2

  How It Began

  It was nearly a year ago when my father first told me about Ireland’s Eye. We were at our cottage on a hot and lazy summer day, motorboats buzzing by and Sea-Doos thump-thump-thumping over any wakes they could find, and Dad was sitting in a lawn chair on our deck, absorbed in another book. That’s what he’s like: he’s either reading everything in sight, or he’s off on some adventure, climbing a mountain or crossing a lake somewhere in the Yukon or Alaska or Timbuktu. And when he’s not doing that, he’s planning something. The book he was reading that day was about Newfoundland and I could tell he was getting an idea because he was tapping his foot, and then, and this is always the biggest giveaway, he started vibrating his whole leg. Suddenly he jumped up, ran into the cottage, and came out again, the screen door slamming behind him. My dad is old-fashioned about a lot of things. He was carrying a map in his hand and soon had it spread out on the deck, holding it in place by leaning over it on all fours like a kid. I saw his finger trace something and then stop decisively. He lowered his head closer to the map and smiled.

  “That’s it,” he said excitedly.

  I had been walking the other way on the deck, trying to decide whether I wanted to go for another swim or listen to some tunes on Mom or Dad’s phone, but I couldn’t miss this.

  “What are you doing, Dad?” I asked.

  “Nothing.”

  That’s my pop, forty-five years old and going on ten.

  “What are you doing?”

  You have to get his attention.

  “I’m looking at a map of Newfoundland.”

  I came up to him and peered over his shoulder. His finger was pressed so firmly onto the map that it was turning white at the tip. I squatted down to see what he was pointing at. He hardly noticed.

  Newfoundland looked to me like the head of a moose, with a single thick antler going up at a cool angle, while down at his neck there were things hanging down, like whatever those things are on a rooster’s neck. My father had his finger just above them and almost out in the Atlantic Ocean, at the eastern end of the land. At the tip of his finger I saw a little island and then a smaller one. I leaned even closer, my cheek resting against Dad’s wrist. “Ireland’s Eye,” it read.

  “What’s that? What’s Ireland’s Eye?”

  When my father is interested in something a jet airplane could fly a foot over the cottage and he wouldn’t even notice, unless of course the vibrations disturbed whatever he was looking at. So I resorted to desperate measures. I moved the map.

  “Hey!” he said. “What are you doing?”

  “What’s Ireland’s Eye?” I asked again.

  He stared at me blankly for a moment. “Did you just ask me that?”

  I smiled at him.

  “Sorry. Uh…it’s an island in Trinity Bay in Newfoundland, almost out in the Atlantic.”

  “And you think it’s cool, don’t you, Dad?”

  “It’s very cool.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, first of all because it’s an island, and you know I like islands. And secondly because no one lives there. And thirdly….”

  My father is a lawyer, but he wishes he wasn’t. He loves dramatic things and he likes to be dramatic himself, at least at home. At work he is John A. Maples, respected barrister and solicitor, always very serious, and bored. As he told me about Ireland’s Eye, he paused with all the drama he could muster, and then said:

  “…because…right at its centre…way out there, on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean…there’s a ghost town!”

  And that was when I knew I had to go there.

  I didn’t know why. It didn’t make any sense for a twelve-year-old to go out into the ocean in a kayak, not with the waves and swells I would have to face. And it seemed pretty well impossible that my parents would let me go, especially Mom: she would freak out if I even brought up the idea. She’d go herself, of course. If Dad was going, she’d be there.

  But something was telling me I had to see Ireland’s Eye too, not a voice or anything like that, just a feeling, something that made goosebumps come out on my skin and made me feel funny in my stomach when Dad said, “…way out there, on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean…there’s a ghost town!” I knew there was something on that island I just had to see.

  “You’re going, aren’t you, Dad?”

  “You bet, Dylan. By this time next year, we’ll be turning that corner out of the windswept waves of the Atlantic and looking up at the serene beauty of Ireland’s Eye, a vision of what has been in the distance.”

  My father can get poetic when he’s in the mood. “Next year, eh?”

  But he was lost in the map again, seeing himself battling the ocean, feeling the first sighting of the ghost town on the hill.

  Next August I would be thirteen years old. I had a whole year of growing, of maturing, of learning to be a good kayaker and an excellent swimmer. But most importantly I had a year to convince them that I should go too. As for Ireland’s Eye, whatever it was that drew me grew stronger with every day.

  * * *

  Both Dad and I needed something to distract us that year. My grandfather had died in the spring and we both missed him terribly. Grandpa had been just about my best friend. Saturday nights in the winter we often got together at his house to watch hockey. We rarely missed a game. Grandma had never been a hockey fan, Mom thought it was too violent (I don’t know what she based that on, since I don’t think she ever saw a single game), and Dad felt that watching anything was a waste of time. “Why watch what you can do?” he used to say, though he never played the game.

  So Grandpa and I were a little island of excitement on hockey nights at his house, with a calm, rational, slightly disapproving sea of sensible relatives all around us. We loved the colour, the speed, the courage, and the inventiveness of what we watched, and for those few hours we were like one person, and I think that person was very young.

  The only thing we disagreed about was the history of the game. I wasn’t very impressed by stories about old players who would never play again. I loved what was happening now, what was speeding around in front of me on the TV. That was it. Grandpa knew this and tolerated it, and he tried to find ways to make me listen to his stories. A Gordie Howe story, for example, would start with, “You know, Sidney Crosby is pretty good, only Howe was better. I recall the time…” and off he would go, while I shut my ears and watched Crosby rocket-power down the ice, leave a defenceman in his vapour trail, fire a laser into the top corner, and pump his fist in the air as a funky bass line throbbed through the arena.

  Grandpa was born in the 1930s, but it was the ’40s and early ’50s he loved to talk about. That was when the Leafs were the undisputed kings. Six Stanley Cups in ten years, led by a gentleman without peer named Syl Apps, the heroic young “Billy the Kid” Barilko, frozen in time and immortal at the tender age of twenty-four, and of course, Grandpa’s favourite, Teeder Kennedy. Hard-driving, never-say-die number nine, the glorious captain. The spirit of Teeder Kennedy, in Grandpa’s eyes, was still alive and well.

  I heard all of this and much more, time after time. I nodded my head as we watched TV, and his stories went in one ear and quickly out the other.

  “The history of the game,” Grandpa would say, “has to be valued. History should be valued throughout life. The people who
came before us made important contributions.”

  “Sure, sure,” I said to myself, stifling a yawn, “but they’re dead.”

  And now…so was he.

  I missed him at my own games. We were both centres and we used to talk about why it was the best position. You had so much more freedom. And you had to be a good skater, none of this up and down the wing, or stay at home and mind your own zone. Wingers and defencemen had to put up with that, but we were free to use our imaginations on the ice. A centreman can almost feel the wind in his face, even in a stuffy arena. We can skate anywhere: up and down, behind the net, in front of it, crisscrossing back and forth, moving the play in one direction or turning it around and sending it the other way. The game always has a flow to it, whether it be fast, slow, or jerky, and centres can join it, work in it or against it, even slip in and out of it. Grandpa used to say that a centreman was the artist on the team, but a tough artist, of course.

  I had a pretty good season, despite missing him. And I know what it was that made me play well. It was Ireland’s Eye. I’d look for Grandpa at the spot in the rink over the penalty box where he used to stand, a cup of coffee in his hand, never shouting, just watching me closely. For an instant I’d be shocked not to see him. Then I’d remember he was gone, so I’d think of Ireland’s Eye.

  To get there I would have to have the strength, skills, and maturity of an adult, and it would have to show. So even on the ice I worked at being more grown up: I took fewer penalties, I was more of a team player, I took power skating lessons, and spent hours practicing my wrist shot. Gone were the temper tantrums, the big celebrations after a goal, and all the board-banging slapshots. Dad didn’t know much about hockey, but I convinced him to come to a few games, and on the way to the rink I’d talk about how the more mature players performed. Then I tried to show him that I was that sort of player. I doubted at first that he noticed. I’d look over at him and he’d have his usual dreamy look on his face, his mind off in the clouds thinking up another adventure. But one day on the way home he surprised me.