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shed. The field was picked bare, no plants showing their leaves, no lazy beds of potatoes, only a cart with one of its wheels propped up against it.
    She slipped into the shed, ducked under the pieces of roof that had fallen inside, and rolled herself tight in one corner with the bag in back of her. It would be hard for anyone to see her, she told herself.
    She fell asleep looking up at the sky with its dark gray clouds and the threat of rain and dreamed of Granda telling her the story of white birds, and strange worlds under the sea.

NINE
    SEAN
    It was dark in the hold of the ship, but not the same darkness Sean remembered on moonless nights in Maidin Bay. At home, as he stood in front of the house, his eyes would become used to the lack of light. He’d see the outline of the cliffs against the sky first, and then the stone walls of Nory’s house, and the shape of the boreen that led to Anna’s.
    But this!
    It was as if he were blind. If he raised his hand in front of his eyes, he wouldn’t be able to see his fingers or the shadow of his sleeve.
    But he couldn’t even raise his arms. Men stood on each side of him so packed in, he could hardly move. The water sloshed back and forth against his legs.
    How long had he stood like this, unable to sink down to rest? Hours? Days? Forever?
    How had he gotten himself to this? Lost Mam, lost little Patch, lost the cart?
    Around him was noise: the sound of men coughing, moaning, and from somewhere in back of him, someone was crying, a deep sobbing coming from his chest, and that sound went on and on. “This ship used to carry slaves,” someone said. “And now it carries the Irish.”
    It was almost as if he himself were crying. He took the same deep breaths the man took, could feel the same crying inside.
    Next to him a man was talking. Talking to him?
    “My name is Garvey, cook’s assistant. And I will get through this somehow.”
    “I am Mallon,” Sean said. “They call me Sean Red.”
    “But they call us ballast,” the man said. “Taking the place of whatever the ship was carrying on the way over. Taking the weight of it. We’re not men. We’re sheep or cattle or crates of wine to the English. We’re what keeps the ship from turning on her side.”
    Sean had known only two Englishmen: Lord Cunningham in Ballilee, and the one with the boots on the road. Once he and Nory had seen the inside of Cunningham’s house. It was because of a dare.
    “Climb the great wall,” she had said. “You’ll never do it.”
    So he’d done it, of course, and from the top of the wall he had dared her to creep up through the avenue of great trees. Together, breathless, they had come out at the very front of the house and ducked down in the shelter of the vines to look in the glass windows.
    The room inside was larger than his own house. The table in the center was the color of Anna’s blackthorn cane but gleamed in the light, shiny and smooth, and the chair legs were carved into the shapes of claws.
    “Wake up, lad,” Garvey said next to him. “You’re leaning on me.”
    “Sorry,” he said, trying to straighten himself. He remembered he had touched those windows, run his fingers over them, almost as if he were running his hands over that great table.
    He thought then of the Englishman with the boots, and his room filled with books that stretched as high as the ceiling.
    “What would someone do with all those books?” Nory would have asked.
    The walls of his own house were made of thick stones that had come out of the fields so long ago no one could remember when. Pa had whitewashed them with lime every year on St. Bridget’s Eve. By the next year, most of the lime was gone, and the stones had a greenish look to them. There were nails dug into the grout around the stones. And hung on those nails . . .
    “Wake up,” Garvey said again.
    . . . were fishing lines and a pail, the rush basket for potatoes. The loy for digging. Francey’s boots with holes in the soles. An old