Sean O'Meara and the Ring of Murdrun

Sean had always been a sickly boy. Having been born three months prematurely, from the day of his birth he had been stricken with bouts of fever that had wracked his tiny body, preventing him from developing properly.

For the first six months of his life it was not known whether he would live or die. He seldom cried, or smiled, the only evidence of the excruciating pain he was feeling being reflected in the soft, blue eyes that seemed to forever plead for relief from his everyday torture.

His inability to move his limbs normally had caused his muscles to be soft and unresponsive, especially those in his legs. When the age had come for him to learn to walk, special braces were needed to support his underdeveloped body because his legs were like limp spaghetti, unable to support his growing weight.

By the age of four, the strength of his legs had declined to the point where even the best of bracing designs were unable to allow him to stand erect, and he was relegated to being pulled about in a coaster wagon by his parents, or older brothers.

Because of his inability to exercise properly, his entire body slowly lost muscle tone and, as the months and years passed, loss of appetite was slowly draining him of what little strength remained.

By the time he was twelve, he was so frail that his older brothers, and even his two younger sisters, could pick him up and carry him about with ease. He was little more than a ghost of a child; a living, breathing skeleton whose sisters could easily pass one of their bracelets completely up his arms to his shoulders.

Falling asleep was the hardest thing for him to do. Every night was the same, except that each succeeding night seemed to bring increasing pain. He would lie awake until the wee hours of the morning, peering into the darkness until exhaustion finally brought merciful sleep, and he would dream anew that his body was whole, just like all the other children of his village.

His mother, too, found it impossible to sleep on many nights, wondering what she could have done to make her Lord punish her tiny son so severely. As a result of her self-imposed guilt, her once fiery red hair had turned prematurely gray, and deep wrinkles had formed around her eyes and mouth, evidence of the deep pain she, too, was feeling.

She would sit for long, lonely hours with bowed head and tearful eyes, saying her rosary in the hope that in some way she could compensate for whatever wrong she had done, and be forgiven. But the endless days dragged on with no response from her God, and she looked forward with dread to her son’s death.

Sean lived in a small, windblown cottage on the top of a rise, in Clare County, overlooking Galway Bay. The town was no more that a cluster of small, quaint homes, barns, a church, and a pub. A cobblestone street a quarter mile long and just wide enough for two horse-drawn wagons to pass ran East and West through the center of the town, with most of the houses facing the street.

Once a week a grocer’s wagon would arrive in town carrying all the provisions the townspeople would need, or could afford to buy, for the coming week.

Because of the huge expenses of his son’s medical treatments, Sean’s father did not have enough money to buy him a new wagon, and had built the one he was being carried in. Although a bit clumsy, and not as elegant as the store-bought kinds, it was sturdy and well constructed for its purpose. In the bottom was a small compartment in which his father would put hot stones warmed in the kitchen stove. When lying on the sheepskin mattress and covered by the thick eiderdown blanket his mother had made, the retained heat from the stones could keep him toasty warm for hours on even the coldest of days.

Sean’s favorite place to spend the day was near the ocean, almost at the edge of a sharp cliff that fell almost vertically to the stony beach four hundred feet below. He was fond of watching the ocean, especially the tossing, green ocean of mid-winter, when the angry waves would reach heights of twenty to thirty-five feet, smashing into each other and throwing spinnerets of spume high into the air.

On less angry days he would watch the fishing boats as they set out for their early morning catch, the fishermen well familiar with the sight of his small, lonely wagon outlined against the sky. They would wave to him, and occasionally blow their whistles for him. On days when the wind was blowing out, he could not hear the whistles, but knew they were blowing from seeing the white shaft of steam that rose from the top of the wheelhouse.

Out of long habit he had chosen a special place to sit, twenty feet from the edge of the cliff and near a large clump of gorse that gave some protection from the usually harsh, bitingly cold North-Westerly winds that swept in from the North Atlantic Ocean.