A Country of Eternal Light Read online

  Praise For Ever The Hero

  "Harn's entertaining debut uses super powers as a metaphor to delve into class politics in an alternate America."

  Publisher's Weekly

  "If you want a gritty approach to super heroes with a literary twist that still levels buildings, has aliens, and government conspiracies, don't sleep on this."

  Wayne Santos, author of The Chimera Code

  “Gorgeous literary writing, sweeping themes about how capitalist gain has replaced empathy in American society, and Darby's usual amazing dialogue.”

  Sunyi Dean, Author of The Book Eaters

  “This was a fascinating, fast-paced, yet lyrical read about what commercialized super heroism might look like. Loved it and highly recommend!”

  Shelly Campbell, Author of Under the Lesser Moon

  "★★★★★ - Ever The Hero is highly recommended for fans of LGBTQ+ fiction, superhero genre readers and sci-fi fans alike."

  Readers' Favorite

  "Ever the Hero gives you complex social class commentary that grapples with the nasty visuals of some superhero stories, and even some ideas about the real-world implications of superpowers that feel like the next logical step after Watchmen."

  Umney's Alley

  "Superheroes and an alien threat within a dystopian society - all these individually, and seemingly endlessly, fascinating things are combined in Darby Harn's Ever the Hero."

  Making Good Stories

  "Ever The Hero is an absolute must-read for anyone who is even remotely interested in superheroes, and if this genre is to continue to grow in the literary world, books like this are a big reason why."

  J.D. Cunegan, author of The Jill Anderson Mysteries

  Copyright © 2021 Darby Harn. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-1-7370097-0-2

  Fair Play Books

  darbyharn.com

  Cover art by Al Hess.

  www.cultofsasha.com

  Please leave your review on Amazon and at Goodreads. Thank you for your support!

  Freedom

  I will not follow you, my bird,

  I will not follow you.

  I would not breathe a word, my bird,

  To bring thee here anew.

  I love the free in thee, my bird,

  The lure of freedom drew;

  The light you fly toward, my bird,

  I fly with thee unto.

  And there we yet will meet, my bird,

  Though far I go from you

  Where in the light outpoured, my bird,

  Are love and freedom too.

  George William Russell

  For Maeve

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Also By Darby Harn

  Chapter One

  There is success in death.

  Fish flop in confusion as the sea peels back to the mainland. Dinner tonight. Breakfast tomorrow, if I’m thinking of tomorrow. I leave them in the goopy, gasping muck. I keep walking. I am far now, farther than I can run when the tide returns. Bereft water jostles in pitted rock. Strands of seaweed coil around my feet. I feel your pull.

  Here I am.

  This buzz in the air. The tide coming back, surely. I look up, expectant. Meteors rip through the blue, faster than any wish can catch. Broken stalks of rainbows on the horizon. Comets like white lies. Three more today, competing with the big one they call Medusa, with all her snake tails.

  I wait for my success.

  The sea must have run off to the States with everyone else. That buzz again. Louder. Closer. The turboprop from the mainland comes out of nowhere. The plane hasn’t been over in weeks. Most days, high tide swamps the eastern horn of the island, the bit of Inishèan that can accommodate a runway. Right next to the cemetery.

  Take offs and landings.

  The sea is out. The plane is able to make a landing. He might have medicine, the pilot. Food. He’ll have room, for the trip back to Galway. Someone will get delivered today.

  I inch back through the green sludge of exposed seabed. Why am I careful? Why am I in a hurry to see someone else get what they want? The envy will keep me warm, I suppose. I run through the beach grass, out to the low road curving with the island. A dozen or so hopeful passengers run toward the landing strip from the village, tufts of clothes puffing out of their luggage.

  Buckled tarmac rattles the plane, but she lands. Props still whirring. He’s not going to be long on the ground, the pilot. I climb the drumlin cushioning the airstrip from the tides. The stranded tourists all clamor for a spot on the plane, as they’ve done every time since the ferry quit and stranded them here three months back. Three months.

  Feels like three years.

  Eight seats. A hundred people. More, like. I’m not envious. A few people pay their way on, and then the plane takes off again. Men and women fall down on the tarmac, heads in their hands. Denied, again.

  Colm’s little hatchback putts down the road toward the airstrip. What’s he out here for? He honks through the tourists, and pulls in to the car park. Someone gets in. A man. Lord God. There’s someone.

  Someone has come to the island.

  Someone scratches at the front door downstairs. Like they can’t reach the handle. I get this weightlessness in my chest, thinking it’s you. The lock turns and she’s always opening the door, Ma, letting out the heat, the life of this house.

  Away with you, she says.

  That dog. Border Collie. I know without moving a muscle. Not that I could move. Legs sore from standing the whole night through beside your cot. Sheets white and unwrinkled from the day you left them. I limp to the window. The dog scratches at the refuse bins, overflowing at their tops. He knocks one over and weeks of empty cans and bottles roll down the low road curving with the island. Inishèan from one end to the other is karst stone, but on the eastern coast it bunches, in earth and grass.

  Aoife comes up the road. Morning sun behind her. Every loose, manic strand of her hair a cyclone of fire. Litre bottles under each arm. She picks up a pair of knickers that must have fell out someone’s bag yesterday. She pockets them and then she sees me in the window. The statue. She smiles like someone who’s been caught stealing.

  The smile is gone before I’ve left the window. Aoife gives a knock on the door, for what I don’t know and she’s down there, calling for Ma. Pots and pans shift in the sink. The faucet gushes and then sputters. The pipes groan. The house aches. The house has given up all its blood.

  “Iris,” Aoife says. “You up, love?”

  Aoife wads up the brittle, yellowed newspaper carpeting the living room into an ever-expanding ball. The rubbish bin lifts off the floor with the stuffed bag as she pulls it out. A sticky note falls from the cupboard. CLEANING SUPPLIES. I strain my thumb reapplying it. Why bother. All my memos fra
y and curl and go to the floor, where they pick up fuzz and dust on their adhesives or end up stuck to the newspaper I put down. RINSE YOUR DISHES. TURN OFF THE TAP. KEEP THE DOOR LOCKED.

  “Why are you bothering with that, Aoife?”

  “You’ve got gnats in here,” she says.

  “There’s no one going to come by and collect it.”

  “Still and all. Did you hear?” Aoife says, her voice a whisper as she shadows me through the kitchen. What do we whisper for when we gossip. We’re all talking the same shite. “Someone got off the plane. From the States. He’s staying in the apartment above the pub.”

  “Down at the pier?”

  “He brought Colm a case of whiskey. The Jameson’s.”

  Of course, he’s money. The flight from the mainland had to cost him near as much as it did getting out of the States, with oil being what it is. The whiskey, God only knows. A case of whiskey will keep Colm in customers for weeks. The pub is the only thing still open down there.

  I don’t know what this man could be here for now. He must be one of those idiots you see on the telly. Going out to the rims of those new volcanoes opening up in the Pacific, or come to surf the giant waves here. Boys chasing their deaths, like. Boys always chase death.

  I suppose they think they can catch it.

  I look out across the angry bay. “What’s he here for?”

  “He barely speaks. Barely drinks. If he nurses a tit the way he does a whiskey… I gave it a go. Nothing doing.”

  “Is he for men?”

  She shrugs. “I don’t think so. How would you know?”

  “Have you never met a gay person, Aoife?”

  The hair falls back in her eyes. “I’m not one for minding other people’s business.”

  “She says, fresh from her surveillance of the American.”

  “I’ve read all the books in the library, Mairead.”

  The cupboards are bare. Cargo ship used to come two, three times a week. It’s not been since the sea went strange. There’s not much beyond fish we catch. The lambs we slaughter. The eggs the chickens yield.

  Aoife sets a pot on the burner. We’ve electricity and little else. She strains the litre bottles she brought with her into a Pyrex bowl she sets in the center of the pot. She turns the burner on low so it’s a slow boil and puts the lid over the bowl, upside down. Steam condenses on the surface, and runs down the handle in little drops down into the glass, salt free.

  “Look at that,” she says. “Bleeding science, that is.”

  “Why are you boiling water?”

  “The reservoir is dry, Mairead. It's been for days now.” Did she tell me? Did I care? “I saw this on the telly. I figured it was just more government shite, but it’s brilliant.”

  “Is the tide out?”

  She brushes the hair out her eyes. “It’s in enough I got this without any bother. I’ve got to refill these again before I head up to the nursing home. Do you want to come along?”

  I look out into the empty yard. “I don’t think so.”

  “You could come back to the home, for an hour or so. I can pour a bath for your Ma in the staff loo, yeah?”

  Aoife sets the rubbish by the back door. Most of it has just gone out into the fields since the collection stopped.

  “Youse are out of the diapers, I take it.”

  “I don’t know, Aoife.”

  “Come back with us. And then I can pour you one. We can scrub up together, like we did as girls. They just threw us in the sink together, our mothers. Like dishes. What do you say?”

  Ma shuffles into the kitchen, coat on like she’s going somewhere. She sees the radio and remembers.

  “Not today,” I say, but she switches it on anyway.

  Six past and now time for today’s obituaries. Katie Burke, Kilmurvey, Co. Galway, 14th October, suddenly, sadly missed. Iranian quake toll rises. Russian oil fields under water. The Pope condemns American abortion initiative for all remaining pregnancies. Scientists hold vigil over Saturn, her rings scattered like a snowdrift across a country road. All her moons buckshot. Jupiter suffers the most, swollen and bruised like an aging prizefighter, determined to die in the ring.

  The government handed out these little LED tickers. Alarm clocks, like, to put on the refrigerator. Counts down the seconds until the rogue black hole intersects the orbit of earth. A year from now. That’s all we have left.

  If that.

  The tides will drown us first. One of the comets will hit us. A planet or a moon will, or comes close enough to yank the earth from its orbit. What difference does it make? What difference is cancer? Parkinson’s. A heart attack. A bullet. A car. A black hole. All our deaths are projectiles, hurtling through blood streams or interstellar space or dark coastal roads at targets with no proper sense of the size of the barrel they’re swimming in.

  I switch the radio off. “I don’t want to hear this.”

  Ma goes behind me and throws it back on. “This is my only getting out, girl.”

  “You brushed your hair today,” Aoife says and Ma sees Aoife in her scrubs and she becomes anxious. Breathless. “Did you brush your teeth? You have to keep your schedule, Iris. Like we said. It helps you remember.”

  “Don’t say it,” she says. “You’ve not put me in the home.”

  “Not this again, Ma. You are home. Aoife’s here to visit.”

  “Aoife,” she says, remembering again. “Aoife’s been helping me while you were away in the States, girl.”

  “I’ve been home, Ma. Since Da.”

  “Aren’t we meeting you at the pier?”

  “Is that what you’ve got your coat on for?”

  She grips the belt, surprised. “Caoimhe… Caoimhe and I are…”

  “Who’s this Caoimhe you’re always on about?”

  “We are going to… now I just had it. Do you know? Do you know what I’m saying? Do you know?”

  Lord God. She goes on, and on, and on. Do you know? Do you know? Do you know? as if the more she says it, the closer she’ll be to unlocking whatever riddle it possesses.

  Do you know?

  “Go and watch telly, Ma. I’ll put a pot on.”

  She shuffles into the living room. TV bristles with static. Water gurgles. I pour a cup. The pill bottles in the cupboard have gone from baby rattles to empty change jars.

  “You’re doing better than we are at the home,” Aoife says.

  Ma can’t reach the cupboards. She’s like a child. I’ve found pills stuffed down the crevices of her recliner. Under the soles of her shoes. Part of me thinks she’s doing this consciously, but so little she does now is conscious. I grind a Selegiline to powder and drop it in the cup with a tea bag. Before her sickness, Ma was clever. She saw the lines in everything, even people, all their cracks and fissures.

  “You’ve been careful with the morphine?” I say.

  She nods. “I don’t know how much longer I can hold on to it, though. I’ve been trying to tell you, Mairead. I don’t know how much longer we can do this.”

  “You’ve been ringing Dublin?”

  “Every day. And every day they say the same bleeding thing. They’re on repeat, they are. There’s no petrol. And so there’s no drugs. There’s no relief. There’s no transporting the residents to the mainland. We’re on our own.”

  “What about the news? Have you tried them?”

  “Do you maybe want to come back and make some calls?”

  I stir the tea. “I don’t know.”

  “You roped me into this volunteering business. I’m no nurse. I’m no administrator, Mairead.”

  The spoon rattles around the cup, swirling with its own vortex. “Neither am I.”

  Even before the black hole was discovered and everyone decided they were relieved of paying their taxes, money for health services was scarce in the islands. For years before all this, we couldn’t find a general practitioner to help cover for Da when he was sick, let alone eventually replace him. The order to evacuate came down and our help
stopped coming. I went from volunteering the three times a week at the home to shaming any able bodied girl on the island to cover the place full time.

  I tried.

  I tried to maintain the rotation where I worked a few days a week. The volunteers dwindled to Aoife and one or two others. I slept there. I ate there. I lived there and every half hour I called home to check on him.

  He’s grand, Ma said, when he was already gone.

  Aoife sits at the table. Knackered. “We’re nothing without you.”

  “I should never have started with that place. I should never have left him… I should never have left him.”

  “Mairead… I know I can't understand…”

  No one can understand. No one can know this fear, this exile from you and don’t say it’s forever. Say there’s more. Say there’s a God and Heaven and reasons, even if God and Heaven and reasons exist only to hurt me.

  “It was an accident,” Aoife says.

  The dog sniffs around the edge of the stile outside, before trotting down the road. An accident, she says. As if it’s no one’s fault.

  As if no one is to blame.

  Ma tsk tsks at some impropriety on the telly. Some grievance she holds but can never bring herself to say.