Editing Adventures of Dash Karp and Cat Flynn (section)

== Chapter 2 '''Cat'''==


'''Cat'''
	


The Glens of Antrim have long been considered the wonders of the North of Ireland. Nine in total, they range from farmland and field to forested highlands with waterfalls and secret pathways. It was in one such place, Glenariff, that a large population of Romnichal settled as far back as local history can recall. Apart, never quite a part, of the local culture, they lived in camps and travel was forever in their blood. Indeed, it is said that the Irish Gypsies were born to ride the wind and wave, though as so much that is said about their people....how much is charming poetic liscence and how much reality..well, we'll leave that to the reader to decide.




Among Clan Eireann there were several dozen families, one of which was the Flynn family. Steven as patriarch worked as a tinker, taking to the roads between country towns and into Belfast city for work, along with his own two eldest sons as soon as they could carry a pail. His wife Siobhan kept the family camp running with the aid and community of her own people, though where the merry sound of children running was throughout the Romnichal people, sadness too often visited the Flynns, most especially where their girl children were concerned. Married young, as were they all, and birthing young, Siobhan and Steven saw illness, hardship and the lack of medicinal cures take too many of their children over time. Siobhan kept to the Catholic ways, devoted even when she could not walk the miles from Glen to church, she kept her saints displayed and prayed with the fervor of the Virgin Mother herself for her children.




In the time of the Troubles, however, it was no good time to be Catholic in British Ulstermen Northern Ireland. It was never a good time to be Romnichal. Steven, as were so many, took up arms against the British and acted as both gun runner and thug as needed. It was in the uprising of 1910, downland of Belfast city that he found himself, as well as his two eldest (young though they were) caught in a British trap. Executed on his knees beside a dirt road, he watched Michael's body fall limp before his own world went black. Stories came back that Dermot, too, was left in that shallow ditch, but when the women went to carry back their dead he was not found. To this day it is assumed he died the same righteous but ultimately futile death as his Da and brother. 




With five young mouths to feed, Siobhan was in the same predicament as so many others were. The only joy to shine on her world that year was the birth of a girl child on the Summer Solstice. She always considered Catarina to be Steven's last gift to her. With parents and siblings olive of skin and ranging from chestnut to honey, the fair skinned raven haired child was said by some to be fae kissed from birth. Among her people there are many legends, customs and beliefs that have nothing to do with any man made church and everything to do with what they call the "Thin Spaces". After three hours of labor the girl child was spilled onto the green grass beneath a noon sky, a caul across her face that drew knowing nods and smiles from the women.




The plan had been to name the child, if female, Eireann Eileen Stephania in honor of her homeland and father. As Siobhan saw her child's dark eyes open, a quiet sort of depth to them as the pale body squirmed she broke with all tradition in naming trhe child then and there. Too many lost, she lifted the child, life cord a spiral connecting them and spoke her name as Catarina Mariah Siobhan. Back to a name from the old lands, melding with the name of the wind itself, her mother's seventh daughter, the name would live on, gods willing and grace allowed. 




Part 2 1910-1922




Catarina grew well despite less than sanitary and swank circumstances. Living amid the Clan Eiarran in Glenariff she took to the forested hills and secret paths as naturally as a doe. A petite child, she was quick to laugh, loved to play and had an affinity for the Thin Spaces from birth. Often as not she could be found sitting cross-legged near a fae ring chatting happily with someone that no one else could see. She grew to know the roots and herbs and flowers and their many uses and while the Troubles increased beyond Glenariff, her mother shielded her and her siblings from both war time and local trouble. Cat adored young children and the elderly, rarely spending time in idle gossip with her peers among the Clan. She was a wiry little worker, learning early that life was struggle but somehow she always seemed to be the one with a secret smile.




Youth suited the girl and it was not until she was seven that death crosed her path for the first time. Her brother Brandon fell ill after Samhain and though she brought him what herbs she could find in the frost covered ground and sat for hours singing to him and telling him stories, he grew sicker and sicker, the deep body shaking coughs wracking his body. It was close to midnight when his breath ceased, and yet she refused to leave his bedside, talking quietly with what she said was his spirit. Only as dawn broke did she open the wagon door, smiling faintly as her mother and sister tended to the body behind her. A strange girl. Touched by the sight. Fae kissed.




It was the thick cold damp of March that took her sister Maisie to her bed, broken by the couching that snapped ribs and took the color from her skin. Again, it was Catarina who brought her teas and sachets of roots and herbs preserved from the fall before. No remedy nor softly sung tunes could save the girl, and she too passed from the coughing sickness that Cat would not come to know as Tuberculosis for many years yet. Another small grave joined the others and again Siobhan turned to her saints and statuary for solace. Strangely, Cat spent many an evening as the weather warmed running and playing near the graves, laughter heard, and the other women sometimes paused their tasks, certain they heard more than one child, though whenever seen, only the raven haired dirt streaked young Cat was visible.




No matter how fierce her mother's efforts to protect her children, especially her youngest, life intruded again when her brother Padraigh left the Glen to work and failed to return. Rumors were rife that he had joined Sinn Fein, but others believed he simply walked away from the poor conditions and the more nefarious rumors held he turned his back on Romnichal ways and followed a Protestant woman into the world of the Others. When WWI ended times were harder than ever in County Antrim and there was a movement afoot to deport and rid their fair Isle of undesirables, among whom the Romnichals were counted.




It could have been a slow trickle, but that was not the way the jackboots of the British military operated. It was December of 1921 and they descended on the Glens, Glenariff among them. Cat found herself herded into wooden sided wagons with her mother and sister, bereft as she watched the beloved hills and streams disappear as she was taken to the city of Belfast and housed from December until March in a warehouse in the north Londonderry district. Ill fed, ill clothed, the barefoot twelve year old was as much a prisoner as those who raised arms, confused and scared but spending her time caring for the very many who suffered grievously from the damp and cold and lack of food and medicine. No more herbs or roots to forage here, she sang too many across the veil to count. As spring came around that 1922 she found herself once more being transported, this time to a town hall where men in white suits and puffing on long cigars roamed the platforms. She was curious about what was going on, but it was not until a man paused by her and her sister that she knew, somehow, that her life was about to change. 

His name was Lucas Merritan and he was an employee of General Talliver, seeking indentured servants for his master's Barbados home. He certainly had an eye for her older sister, a shy girl who Cat could see at once was terrified. He tugged Ellen to the floor, directing her to dance, to entertain like a gypsy by Cat knew her sister preferred books over bohemia and she did not miss the annoyed surprise when Cat herself stepped down, pushing her sister back gently. A vivid smile and vibrant confidence rolled from the fair skinned child as she danced, the music entirely in her own mind. Bare feet stamped the wooden boards and though there was no costume, no tambourine, nothing but a dirty too thin child...the glamour held. 




They sailed for Barbados within three days, Ellen and her mother as well as Cat. The trip was difficult and unpleasant, but there was a trembling edge of curiosity for the child. Convinced she would at least be with her mother and sister, she stepped foot onto Barbados on the docks of Needham's Point on the southwestern coast of the tropical island. She clambered into the straw filled wagon with Siobhan, crying out as Ellen was seized by Lucas and drawn to a separate wagon. It would not be for some time until Cat came to know that her sister would serve her time as a servant in a far different way than Cat herself.




At twelve she was worked in many ways in the grand home of the General and his wife. The days were long and filled with menial tasks but she found a measure of joy in the sound of the ocean, the sway of the trees and even in the company of her fellow servants. The General was as kind a master as one could be who bought and worked children forced from their homelands could be. He was strict but never abusive with her and his wife was a solemn sorrow eyed woman after the loss of their beloved Aradia Jenice to an accidental drowning in the sea. It was after the child's death that Cat became close with the woman, and some said it was the drowned girl who joined them on their dusk walks along the beach fronts. Cat was the first to hear the shallow rattle in Lorraine's chest, to see the creeping greyness of her skin.




She was acutely aware of the bond between the General and his wife, and she found herself packing trunks as she was to be sent with Lorraine to a new place, a place they said treatment might be had. A mysterious somewhere called North Brother Island, located in America in a city called New York. She was only thirteen yet when they sailed, tears spilling as her mother waved from the dock. Her sister was unable to see her off, but even as the ship steamed away from turquoise waters she held a measure of hope. 




Maybe this new island would have the herbs and roots that would help Miss Lorraine. And a life cast to the winds, with travel at its core.....well...she was a Romnichal by blood, perhaps it was her destiny to be found there. 



Bio Part 3


North Brother Island was the new home of Riverside Hospital, a location to quarantine those who were suffering with contagious and all too often deadly diseases. It was more than well appointed, with Cat's favorite area being the stained glass gallery with its wrap around porch. When they first arrived in 1923 the Hospital specialized in typhus and tuberculosis, in fact word was that the lady in the laundry, Mary, was somehow integral in the spread of the disease. Cat kept her distance, holding the beliefs and superstitions of her people she also carried herbs and talismen against illness. It was not common for any of the residents to have serving girls and the nuns were more than happy to scorn the girl as a dirty gypsy and shoo her away at every turn. Luckily, Lorraine's money and clout as well as Cat's strange ability to know when someone would take a turn for the worse bought her the favor of the nurses. 
More than once she was found sitting crosslegged on the bed of a frail man or woman, singing softly and speaking in quiet whispers, the melange of Romnichal and Gaelic not spoken by any others there and yet the clouded eyes would focus on her fair face and raven hair, and slowly, peacefully, their spirits would leave the broken flesh and she would stay a while, singing them across. Make no mistake, she was as much admired for her smile and ability to spread a sense of peace as she was feared for her differences. Much of her time was spent with Miss Lorraine, tending to her needs, washing her laundry, wheeling her along the green pathways of the island. For fifteen months she stayed by the woman's side, listening to her tales of young life on Barbados, of life with the General. But as time went on, the stories became more a mixture of coherence and dream tales. She knew Miss Lorraine was fading, that the sickness filling her lungs and wracking her body was not responding to the treatments or to the fresh air so touted as key to recovery. 


The cold rains of March were sweeping across the Island in the early morning, the fifteen year old girl sat once more upon a bed, singing softly, her hands clasped tightly around the brooch in her hands. Emerald set in gold, Miss Lorraine had been give it as a gift by her mother in law in Britain many years ago. The piece was worth a small fortune for the gem alone, but the tale behind it as a piece taken from the coffers of Belfast long long back when the British first staked claim to what had been the Irish monarch's goods.......well, Cat was pretty sure it was a legend only. To her, it was precious for the woman who had given it to her, told her to keep it, use it to make her way. The woman who had called her daughter before the life faded from her eyes. 


Funerals and such were rare on the Island, too many bodies and not enough families to dare set foot on the Island to see them off. Cat was there though, blue eyes haunted as she watched the plain pine box lower into the simple grace, a single cross marking the resting spot of Miss Lorraine and the end of whatever path she had come to know in life. The nurses asked her to stay on, to continue to help, but the nuns wanted the fae kissed Gypsy gone and set in motion a plan to have her returned to Barbados, property as it were of the General. That was all Cat needed to hear for her to be very certain that she was not going back to that life. Standing on the edge of the cemetery on the Island she could see the buildings of New York City across the water rising high and close. The weather warmed and the Solstice came, her sixteenth birthday finding her wearing all she owned, two dresses and a coat, some coin and the brooch in her pocket and a spirit unable to conceive of failure as she snuck aboard the cargo ferry that departed, having dropped its food and linens. 


Summer 1926 was a bustle in the streets of lower Manhattan. A girl alone was easy prey for too many and yet Cat was not quite like other women. The Romnichal had a gift of spinning speech into truths from pure lies and she managed to parlay a small room in the Blue Star boarding house in exchange for telling the fortune of the landlord's wife, a corpulent Scotswoman poor enough to not give the Gypsy girl overmuch trouble. With the nation's liquor dry in principle, Cat soon came to know precisely the sort of people who knew which alley doors to knock on to find the party. She was not a drinker, but she was young enough and able to portray innocent well enough to run bottles for the Broken Anchor in the alley between Mott and Elizabeth. That was how it started but her raven hair and slim build, combined with a naturally outgoing personality soon drew the eye of one of the speak easy's managers. 


Joseph was a straight up thug really, hailing from Belfast though, he had the scent of home and as he spent more and more time with her at his private table in the club the pair bonded. He, clearly, saw in her the budding cutpurse and charming front. She, to naive by half as sixteen became seventeen, saw him as a source of safety and strength in a city that was no one who lived there's idea of a golden American dream. Oh she knew his friends and partners were criminals to the last of them, but she was for better or worse at ease in their company. They kept her safe and clothed, fed and sheltered and the tasks they asked in return were far less onerous than what many young girls had to sacrifice. 


It was Autumn of 1927 when she lay with him for the first time, utterly clear that while it was not love, it was comfort and touch and she found that she quite enjoyed the physicality. Known as his girl, she made her money reading palms, telling fortunes, reading tea leaves and generally allowing him to exploit her exotic heritage. It was one moonlit night on the roof of the boarding house beneath a full moon that he first saw her dance. The dances she knew were alive, sensual, uninhibited and filled with the wild freedom of the Romnichal and he got the spark of an idea. Much more coin to be made on stage than in petty number running and bottle smuggling. He set her up under the stage name Exotica, Gypsy Flower of the Far East...laughable really given her coloring. But in the revealing dress of her people and in the smoky darkness of the clubs, no one cared what her name really was. Her clothing stayed on, and she rebuffed all efforts to bring her home, but it was not the life she sought. 

Over the course of the next six years she became a well known entertainer, at least in the circles she traveled in. Queen of the back alleys was better than servant in the high court, no? She took advantage of the mystique of her heritage even though there were precious few opportunities to really touch the spiritual here, catering to those who paid well for private tea leaf parties or seances. Always careful to pull back from the reality of the mournful spirits, by experience knowing that even the best paying clients did not really want to know how close their dear departed were.