The Priest Hunter by Patrick O'Sullivan

Author:Patrick O'Sullivan [O'Sullivan, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dunkerron Press

Mary did not bother with shadows. She ran as hard and as fast as she could.

The priest lived in a cave on the mountain, past a stone that looked like a wheel, past the broken stump of a tower that, had it not been broken, would be twice as big as the castle over the mountain. From there she had to find a trail that ran through a field of flat, pockmarked stone, where purple flowers bloomed in the cracks, and yellow sometimes, too. There was a Mass stone up there, above the field of stone, and it was halfway over the mountain, large, and flat, with a rough crucifix carved in its surface.

Mary remembered going to Mass there once, but her mother said it was too close to the priest’s cave, and they had never gone back, because Mary’s gaze kept drifting to the trail that ran between two stones like fingers, where her mother said the cave was, in a gully, under a flat rock, where the opening looked like shadow.

Everything looked like shadow now. The moon had started to rise but it was not a good moon for running. It was a moon for hiding.

Mary found the finger stones, and she found the trail, but this part of the mountain was strange to her. She never came here, because if people saw her they might talk. It was too close to the priest. She did not know the ground, or the names of the stones, or whether the sounds of skittering stone against stone came from the cooling of stone, or from creatures she could not see, and did not know.

The priest’s cave might be next to her now and she might miss it.

She rested, panting, hands on her knees. She scanned the night for any sign of movement, for any spark of light. She was thirsty. She sniffed the breeze for the smell of even the tiniest fire.

Nothing.

There was one thing she did see, though, and it chilled her blood.

Her mother had not come this way.

Maybe the man had lied about that too. Maybe her mother was dead on the ground. The man was a priest hunter. Mary knew that when she felt the pistol.

Her mother had to be alive. She had to have come this way. If the man had killed her he would never find the priest.

Mary paced in small circles so that her legs did not cramp.

She saw it then, the gully, and she knew it was the right one. It would lead her to the flat rock, and the priest’s cave.

Mary heard rocks tumble, behind her, and it was louder than the sound of cooling stone or skittering feet.

She had been so stupid.

The man would never find the priest if her mother was dead.

Unless Mary led the man to the priest.

She looked up at the mountain, black and towering.

Her legs burned. Her lungs burned. She could see the priest’s cave.

Her mother said that she must never go over the mountain.

Mary rubbed her cheek.

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