Grania stopped to look at him. ‘What are you doing now, avic?’ she asked curiously.
The boy turned at her voice, and looked up with the same vague, forlorn expression, not having evidently heard or understood. Then when she had repeated her question:
‘It was the little stones,’ he said dreamily.
‘Well, and what about the little stones, child?’
‘’Twas something the little stones was telling Phelim. The wind is bad to the little stones. The stones cry, cry, cry. There is one little stone here that cries most of all; there is no other stone on Inishmaan that cries so loud.’
Grania stooped and looked at the pebbles as if to discover something more than common in them.
‘Do all the things speak to you, Phelim?’ she asked inquisitively.
‘Then they do not; no, Grania O’Malley. Once Phelim heard nothing. The wind was gone; there was nothing—nothing at all, at all. All at once something said, “There is nothing now on Inishmaan but Phelim.” Then Phelim was more afraid of Phelim than of anything else, and he began to screech and screech. He screeched—och, but he screeched! Phelim did screech that night, Grania O’Malley!’
‘Arrah, ’tis worse you are getting every day, child, with your nonsense,’ she said with a sort of rough motherliness. ‘Here, come away with you; we’ll go look for Murdough Blake on the rocks yonder: maybe he’ll give you a fish to take to your mammy. Come!’ She stuck her spade upright in the soil as she spoke and held out her hand.
Phelim got up and trotted obediently beside her down the slope. Having crossed the sandy tract, under the broken walls of the old church of Cill-Cananach, they got out upon the rocks beyond, half hidden now by the rising tide.