Dinosaurs on Other Planets by Danielle McLaughlin

Author:Danielle McLaughlin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2016-08-09T04:00:00+00:00

At Kinnego the light was silver, the sea and sky gray, and the wind that snatched at her breath had a sharp, almost metallic, edge. Anytime he had spoken of this place he had always spoken of the light and now, early morning, the beach deserted, she understood what he meant. They had traveled from Dublin the day before but had left late, then stopped too long in Derry, so that it was dusk before they drove north along the Foyle. The sea was already slipping into darkness then, the cabin lights of a boat carried like a lamp up the estuary, and as they passed through Quigley’s Point, Moville, Greencastle, small dark shapes cut the air above the water: birds, perhaps, or bats from the trees that grew along the shore road.

—

WAKING THAT MORNING IN his brother’s bungalow, she had pulled back the bedroom curtains to get a proper look at the sea and had found herself staring at a concrete wall, roughly plastered, set no more than three or four feet back from the house. Beneath the window, filling the space between it and the wall, was a tangle of orange netting, half a dozen crudely cut lengths of galvanized sheeting, and a stack of plastic boxes stamped with the logo of a fisherman’s co-op.

“It’s a boat shed,” Jonathan said from the bed, and she had turned to see him raised on one elbow, watching her in amusement.

“But why here?” she said, gesturing in disbelief to the wall. “Why block out the sea, the light?” It was cold in the bedroom, her breath misting the glass as she leaned closer to the window. The net held remnants of the sea: strips of black, leathery seaweed, thin as bootlaces, and a handful of barnacles. “Imagine,” she said, conscious of his eyes on her as she shivered in her nightdress, “what a view like that would be worth in Howth.”

He had laughed, patting the pillow next to him. “You’re not in Kansas now, Dorothy,” he said, and as she climbed back under the blankets he put his hand on the jut of her hip and pulled her close.

They drove to Kinnego first thing after breakfast, before anyone else was up. They parked at the top of a rocky headland, and as she stepped out of the car the wind almost pulled the door from her grasp. Below them the bay lay wide and empty, the cliffside a tangle of green, bushy vegetation sloping to the water. She held his hand as they descended the steep path to the beach. “A ship from the Spanish Armada was wrecked here,” he said, putting an arm around her waist to steady her. “An old Venetian trading ship, converted for battle.”

She stopped and tucked her hair down the back of her jacket to keep it from blowing about her face. “Did many people drown?”

He nodded. “Aye, and the locals ate the ones that didn’t. Or so we were told as children.”

“That’s a myth, obviously,” she said.

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