CHAPTER 1
Irina Zarabaka had been practicingfor this moment her entire life.
Ever since she could remember, she'd been dancing. First in her kitchen, with her grandmother showing her the steps. Then there had been informal classes mostly meant to tire kids out. Eventually, real classes with a real Irish dance teacher, and then individual lessons through college. Irina had worked hard her whole life to win one competition after another, until she finally reached her goal: to dance inIreland.
Now that she was here, she was scared spitless.
What right did a girl with just one Irish grandparent, a girl from nowhere-in-particular USA, have to be competing on stage with realIrishdancers? People whose whole family lines were from right here in Cork City, or the county, or the country? Sure, there were lots of other competitors from all over Europe, all over the Americas, all over the world.
Irina was pretty certain they all had more right to be there than she did.
They sure looked like they felt that way. Women and men alike, gathered together, laughing, showing each other their moves, being applauded by one another and by their entourages.
Not big entourages, mostly. Not except for the actual local dancers. But it seemed like everybody else at least hadsomebodythere to cheer them on.
Irina didn't have anyone.
Grandma Catrina had died a long time ago, of course. Irina's parents had wanted to come with her, but they just couldn't afford it. And while Irina's friends would have loved to vacation in Ireland, they were all busy with work or their young families, while she was the lone nutcase out there pursuing a dream of dancing.
But at least she was doing it in Ireland, Irina told herself. That was what mattered. She'd promised Grandma Catrina that she would at least get to 'the auld country,' and that she would dance there in Grandma's memory. Now she was there, and she would do that.
She just hadn't known it would be terrifying.
"It's fine," she told herself. "It'll be fine."
It probably would be. The competition was being held at Cork Opera House, a modern glass-fronted building that looked totally out of place beside the old church-turned-museum that was right next to it. In the whole day and a half she'd been in Cork, Irina had noticed a lot of it seemed to be like that: old buildings right up against new ones, although she'd been inside a couple and discovered that the only old thing left about them was the facade that hid a new, modern build behind it. That was even more confusing than the old and new smashed up next to each other.
On the other hand, the oldest buildings in her home town were less than a century old, so Irina didn't really know what to expect anyway. She sat outside the opera house on a concretebench, watching people literally dancing across the plaza, arm in arm, their hair bouncing as they clattered hard-soled shoes against the stone. That was kind of what she'd expected, maybe. She'd just thought she would be comfortable enough to join them. She'd thought she would run into other dancers and start casual conversations and make friends.
Maybe she'd been too early. Pre-registration for the first night of the competition had started at ten this morning, and Irina had been there by 9:45, jittering nervously. There were a couple of German girls who knew each other also there, but nobody else. Irina had filled out her paperwork, gotten her badge, and been told to be back by "half five" for call. She had nodded with no idea what 'half five' meant, and instead of asking, slunk off to look it up on the internet.
Apparently it meant five-thirty.
It was only noon now.
If she sat here fretting all afternoon, she was going to be a complete wreck by five-thirty.
Jaw set, Irina got up and went to find somethingfunto do. Something that would take her mind off the competition.Anythingthat would take her mind off the competition.
An advertisement caught her eye as she walked up the riverside:The Shamrock Safari Wildlife Park,just a 15 minute train ride from Kent Station.
Kent Station, her phone said, was barely a 15 minute walk from where she was.
That would do. Irina gave a sigh of relief that she'd found something to distract herself with, and marched off toward the train station. She didn't care if the wildlife park was ridiculous and cheesy, which she expected it to be, with that name. It would still keep her busy for a few hours, and that was all that mattered.
It turned out,when she arrived at the back gates half an hour later, the Shamrock Safari Wildlife Park was actually kind of great. It spread out over half a small island, and was full of animals who got to roam the place freely.
Not all of them, obviously: all the big predators and things were in enclosures, but there were capybaras and peacocks and some kind of tiny, adorable monkeys, and lemurs and lots of other animals just wandering around. Most of them stayed a reasonable distance from the humans, although the monkeys were chattering from branches just out of peoples' reach as Irina wandered through the park. Flocks of geese rushed by, a pelican stood one-footed in a pond, and flamingos?—
—smelled awful, as it turned out. They were pretty, in their odd way, but Irina hurried past them and around a corner where the wind changed enough that she wasn't wheezing anymore. A park employee was at another bird enclosure, giving a cheerful lecture about red hawks and wildlife preservation that sounded interesting, but Irina wanted to keep moving and see everything she could. A cheetah paced her as she passed its enclosure, and just beyond that, another park employee was leaning against a glass-fronted enclosure, apparently having a conversation with the gorilla inside.
Irina couldn't help stopping. "Does he answer?"
The woman straightened up, startled, and laughed. "You'd be surprised at what he understands, at least. Welcome to Anavee Island. Can I answer any questions for you?"
"What does 'Anavee' mean?" Irina asked. The gorilla had come right up to the glass and was gazing at her with its dark brown eyes. She swore it looked surprised.
"'Animal,'" the guide said. "In Irish it's spelled 'a-i-n-m-h-i', but for the sake of tourism, we Anglicized it so people could say it."
