Philip Casey

Photo owned by Boocal (cc)

The Tins
and The Pale Lady
Rights available.

They looked up to see Miolmór, with his peace­ful eyes, and Niamh, who was almost as big as the whale, floated up to kiss him. Then they sang to each other.

Miolmór was too brave to com­plain, but they under­stood that all was not well in the West­ern Ocean. The mor­tals were tak­ing over everything from the top to the bot­tom, and the ocean was so full of noise there was hardly any­where a whale could find peace.

He wasn’t grumbling. It was just the whale song of the present day which would be passed down the gen­er­a­tions, as it always had been. The mor­tals would soon learn the value of silence. He had lived long enough to know that dis­asters happened when the mor­tals for­got their way, but after a while they learned it again, and all was well.

the story

Kate and Danny are twins, who live on the West­ern shore with their father, Cor­mac, a fish­er­man, and their mother Estrella. When they are small chil­dren, they pro­nounce ˜Twins” as ˜Tins,™ so they become known as The Tins and are so close that they speak to each other by tele­pathy, or what they call ˜telepy.”

Estrella dies when they are two, leav­ing them con­fused and lonely. As they dis­cover from a school­yard bully when they are seven, ˜she walked into the sea.” So they listen more and more to the old stor­ies which Mrs Janey, the woman who looks after them when Cor­mac is fish­ing, and by the time they are eleven, they ima­gine their jour­neys to the heaven of olden times, Beg Ara, The Land Beneath the Sea. They go there with the aid of Miolmór, the Great Whale, and a fam­ily of dophins who sur­round them with pro­tect­ive light.

But is it their ima­gin­a­tion, or are they really the chil­dren of Niamh, the twenty-five thou­sand year old Sióg who became human as Estrella for three years because she fell in love with their father, Cor­mac? After they have had their adven­tures in the Five Isles of Beg Ara (The Isle of Many Fears, The Isle of Dan­cing, The Isle Enchant­ment, The Isle of For­get­full­ness, and The Isle of Vic­tor­ies), they are ready to hear the true story of their mother from Cor­mac, and why she walked into the sea.

The Tins and The Pale Lady

CHAPTER ONE :: THE TINS LEARN SOMETHING TERRIBLE

Kate and Danny Joyce are twins, who live on the West­ern Shore, and are known to every­one as The Tins. They share the gift of tele­pathy, which they will call telepy.

The Tins are just over two years old, and their story begins now because it is import­ant that you know what hap­pens at this time, so you will under­stand why they meet the Pale Lady and go on their adven­tures to Beg Ara, The Land Beneath the Sea, when they are eleven.

They live in a beau­ti­ful but lonely place on the West­ern shore, with their father Cor­mac, a fish­er­man and small farmer, and their mother, whose name is Estrella, which means star.

Kate has red hair like her father, and Danny has golden hair like his aunt, but their mother says she had golden hair once, too, so he gets it from her. Estrella has dark skin and long black hair now.

Estrella trav­elled to the West­ern shore from a sunny coun­try. The West­ern Shore is often wet and misty, but she fell in love with Cor­mac, and stayed to marry him. Cor­mac owns a fish­ing boat which Kate and Danny call Pudda, because the sound its engine makes is pudda pudda pudda.

Estrella has been on the West­ern shore for three years, and she has been happy, and so the Tins have been happy, but as our story opens she is sad, and this fright­ens the Tins. But at the moment they are asleep for their after­noon nap.

They wake to the sound of Mama cry­ing. She is tidy­ing up their toys, and as she stands up, the sun comes out and fills the room with light, and Mama cries even more. They rub their eyes, and sit up on the sofa. They don’t know what to think so they start cry­ing and Mama sees them and rushes to them.

‘Oh, dear Tins,’ she says, hunk­er­ing down and brush­ing the hair out of their sleepy eyes with her hands. ‘Don’t pay any atten­tion to me. I had a scary dream, that’s all.’
‘Scary, Mama?’ Kate asked.
‘Yes, my darlings.’
‘Scary?’ Danny asked.

‘Oh, I dreamt I was very old,’ Mama said, and she laughed, and she read to them from their favour­ite book, The Green Lion, and they were happy again and they toddled out to the sunny yard to play. They stopped to listen to the sound of the sea fall­ing on the shore. They loved the sea.

A few nights later they couldn’t sleep. They knew some­thing was wrong with Mama and Dada, so they slipped out of bed and went to the land­ing from where they could see the liv­in­groom. Mama and Dada were talk­ing quietly by the fire, but the Tins knew they were sad. Dada had a book in his lap but he closed it.
‘Are you sick?’ he asked Mama.
‘No,’ she said.

Dada stood up and put the book on the table and looked out the win­dow.
‘So you’re going to leave us,’ he said.
‘How did you know?’ she asked, and she was cry­ing quietly.
‘I just did,’ he said.

Kate and Danny looked at each other, and their hearts star­ted to beat in a way that wasn’t nice.
‘Are you home­sick?’ Dada asked Mama. ‘We could go on a hol­i­day. I know times aren’t good and money is scarce, but we’ll man­age some­how.’
‘It’s not that. I don’t miss home.’
‘Then you don’t love me any­more,’ he said, turn­ing to her.
‘Oh Cor­mac!’ she said, rush­ing to him and put­ting her arms around him. ‘I love you so much.’
‘Then why are you leav­ing?’ he asked, and his voice was like when you cry with your mouth full.

She turned away from him.

‘Please sit down,’ she said, and it was then that she saw the Tins, who tried to hide but it was too late.
‘Go to bed!’ she shouted and they scampered away and pulled the bed­clothes over their heads.
So they lay there in the dark­ness, try­ing to think of some­thing nice, but they couldn’t because their hearts were going pudDA pudDA pudDA.

After a while, Mama came in to see them, but they telepied each other to pre­tend to be asleep and she went away. They wished Mrs Janey was here to tell them a story. Mama and Dada told them stor­ies, but Mrs Janey, who was a widow from a house up the road who minded them some­times — she was best. Her eyes would open wide and her face would scrunch up, and she could be a mon­ster or a fairy or a horse or a crow all in the same story.

But Mrs Janey wasn’t here tonight, and so their hearts kept thump­ing, and so they telepied each other to think about Dada’s Pudda com­ing home on the sea, with lots of fish, and when they thought of Pudda going up and down on the waves, with Dada inside, they drif­ted off to sleep.
Mama was there when they woke up the next morn­ing. They were scared but they said noth­ing in case she’d get angry.

When Mama and Dada brought them to Lake Ailinn to see the four swans who lived there, everything seemed like it had always seemed, and when Mama was still there the next day, and the day after that, they for­got about their fear that she would go, and went back to being happy again.


© Philip Casey, 2009