Awakening the Gods

by Kristin Gleeson

  The tide of people carried me along from the entrance and eventually up the road. They couldn’t all be headed towards the bus station, surely? It was then I noticed that some of them held placards emblazoned with words in vibrant colours. I tried to make out some of the words, and with a bit of craning and head tilting, saw words like “fracking” and “poison”.

  I went up alongside one of the people, a woman who was not much older than me, holding a short wooden post with her placard affixed to it.

  “Protesting?”

  She looked at me and smiled. “Yeah. You should come. It’s important that this man hears all our voices.”

  “Fracking, right?” I asked.

  She nodded. “This time. But that man and his company are poison. Literally.”

  I suppressed the English degree person’s urge to explain that she was mistakenly using the term “literally” in this case, as so many people were wont to do.

  She frowned and eyed me warily. “You’re not in favour of fracking are you?”

  “Oh, god, no,” I said. In truth it wasn’t ever something I’d considered, but this didn’t seem to be the time to mention it.

  Her smile returned. “Good. Because it’s a terrible thing for this country and this planet.”

  “It is, of course.”

  “And this man, with his billions, is trying to rake in more billions for him and his cronies by exploiting the earth and its treasures. But we won’t let him, will we?”

  I shook my head, though I felt such assurance was dubious given the record of this country and the other governments of the planet. The “we” had proved always too weak against “them”. At least it had seemed so to me.

  She linked her arm through mine. “You’ve nowhere more important to go, have you? Because this is the most important thing you have to do, today. Any day.”

  We were heading down across the river, this stream of people of which I was now part, and I looked at this woman and nodded, trapped by her arm and words And sure, what was the harm? I could go for a short while and then catch the bus west. It was Saturday, it wasn’t raining and wasn’t this the most important thing I had to do today and any day?

  “I’m Saoirse,” I said.

  “Cíara.”

  She introduced me to a few of the others around her as we moved in our herd towards the building Cíara told me belonged to the literally poison man.

  “What’s the company?” I asked after a while that had been taken up with fragments of crimes and misdemeanours.

  “Balor Energies Group,” said Cíara.

  I murmured the name. “Seems appropriate. Though maybe Baleful Energies Group might have a better ring to it.”

  Cíara laughed. “I like it. Pádraic Balor of the baleful eye patch.”

  “Pádraic Baleful eye,” I said. “Why eye patch?”

  “You’ll see. Can’t miss the bastard because of it.”

  “Oh, he sounds a proper villain, so,” I said.

  Cíara nodded. “Oh, proper villain.”

  We traded a few more remarks as we moved along, a comfortable rapport settling between us. It was a nice feeling and one that had gone some way to defuse the anger and settle the cork in Cork back on top of the bottle. Not all the way in, but just a bit. Enough that I could enjoy this exchange and perhaps direct any seepage out of the corked bottle towards this baleful eyed man of literal poison.

  We drew up by the building, the crowd large and thick around us. There was a definite energy here from the mixture of angry mutterings, strident comments, gesturing and gesticulations, all directed at the building entrance. An occasional shout or demand was issued for baleful-eyed man of poison to show himself, to give an account of himself. To face his accusers who charged him with crimes against Mother Earth.

  The term “Mother Earth” (capitalised of course) echoed through me and I flinched. It was close to home, and the home that it was close to was one I wasn’t prepared to entertain in or around. I wanted far away from that home. Suddenly, it all seemed to close in on me. This crowd with their indignation, their outrage and call to battle on behalf of the planet that they’d name as their mother. I had no mother, not one in any sense but literal/biological and so it held no meaning for me. Gone. I was gone. I worked my way through the crowd who seemed to surge forward at that moment, pushing me with it. A roar went up and I turned, just as I was shoved and pushed and in that forward momentum I spilled out onto one side of the crowd.

  I turned and saw the man himself. Mr Baleful-eyed man of poison, standing there in his Armani suit, grey haired slicked back, beard perfectly groomed and a large black eye patch covering his left eye. I gaped, drawn by the sight of him, the presence of him larger than life. Broad of chest. Broad of everything. And filled with power. He smiled. A smile of genuine disdain, dislike, and all the other “disses” that could knock a person back.

  “Bríd!”

  I turned at the shout, for no reason other than it was what my body did. A body that had no cause to betray me like that, would hear nothing of the silent scream inside my head as I saw Smithy approach me, his face filled with all kinds of worry, fear, joy and something else that couldn’t be, but my body knew and made its response.

  He grabbed me and wrapped me in his arms and kissed my head. “Oh, feck it, Bríd. What the hell are you doing here? It’s not safe.”

  I tried to pull from his arms, because I had to, the cork was rattling. His arms felt good, though and I tried to deny how good they felt. How warm and right and true. “Let me go. I’m fine.”

  He held me tighter. “No, you’re not.”

  I struggled against him. “Leave me be.”

  “Hey,” said a man near us. “She said to let her go.”

  Smithy gave me a frustrated look, releasing me except for one hand that clutched my arm.

  “Please,” he said his voice softer.

  He said a few more words, but I couldn’t hear him for the crowd who were pushing closer, moving us forward towards the entrance. I tried to keep my balance and looked around me, Smithy’s hand still clutching one of my arms.

  “Oh, feck it all,” said Smithy. “Quick, we need to leave. He’s seen us.”

  “What?”

  “Balor. He’s seen us.”

  I looked over to Mr Baleful-eye of the Poison, Baleful Poison-Eye. The name was getting better and more improved as it repeated itself in my head. Until I looked at him and the humour and wit left me, but the name remained as it swelled and congealed into the poison that it was and could even almost literally be. For that face, with its patched baleful poison eye was directed at me. The good eye, or the eye that had no patch, because good seemed to have no part of his eye or any other part of his face, was looking at me. It wasn’t a benign look, but a look filled with rage and hatred so incomprehensible except when it was coupled with the word “poisonous”, being active that it was. Active in a way that I didn’t resist Smithy when he grabbed my hand and took off running. We ran fast and hard and I knew nothing about our direction, only that I wished that I could run faster and that my backpack wasn’t bouncing so hard against me. I threw it off and tossed it aside, kept my precious flute case, my breath coming hard and fast, my legs striving for bigger and faster lengths.

  Smithy suddenly pulled me inside a building and to a short, dark hallway where he hugged me tight to his chest, my head buried in his shoulder while we panted, trying to catch our breath.

  “Did we lose him?” I whispered.

  Smithy put a finger over my lips and shrugged. He motioned for me to wait where I was and quietly made his way to the end of the hallway. I could see now that it was some kind of office building, all but one office locked and dark for Saturday. I waited and listened hard when he disappeared around the corner, my breath held, chest tight.

  When he returned I could just about see in the dim light that his expression had eased somewhat. I released my breath.

  “Is he gone?”

  He shrugged and to
ok my hand again. “For now, maybe, but we can’t take any chances. We’ll go out the back and circle around the building.”

  “Where will we go? Did you bring your bike?”

  “Shhh. No time for questions, just do as I say.”

  We made our way out of the back entrance, past the one lit office, a solicitor’s, whose blinds were thankfully drawn. Once outside again, Smithy walked rapidly along the road, heading towards the river. We crossed over, finding a stream of people heading towards the shopping district. Once there he cut through one of the buildings, and then out through the back, until we were once more out on the road.

  He made a winding progress through various buildings and out again, and eventually came along the river once more. It was a slow and laborious progress, but I made no complaints, my sense of urgency picked up from him.

  Eventually, he stopped by the river. There was a small patch of ground that was more dirt than grass, and further along the river I could see longer and greener stretches of ground. He gave a low whistle and then a short one, murmured a few words and somehow a boat came from somewhere.

  In view of what I’d experienced in the past few months it seemed ludicrous that I should question the somehow and the somewhere, but my mind kept trying to make sense of it. I opened my mouth to voice the somehow and somewhere questions but Smithy put a finger to my lips and shook his head.

  “No questions, remember? Just do what I say.”

  I shut my mouth, the somehow and somewhere questions lost in my throat because of Smithy’s look, the desperate, fearful look that had lurked there, and the voice that matched it.

  He got into the boat, helped me into it and pushed off with one of the oars. We drifted a moment and then the current caught us, strong enough to take hold, but not fierce enough to give me pause. There were no seats, just the empty boat, a few cushions and the oars. Without a word, Smithy laid down in the boat and pulled me into his arms, laying my flute case beside us.

  24

  Smithy

  “Close your eyes,” Smithy said.

  He watched as she slowly did as he asked. He nearly grinned. He could see that she was at war with herself about whether to challenge him at every point, to ask all the questions that were so obviously racing around her head. That was his Bríd, he knew that without any doubt now.

  He pulled her under him, protecting her from the sight of anyone who happened to see them at this fragile juncture in their journey. His hair and the back of his jacket were nondescript enough. Her eyes flickered open at the movement.

  “Not to worry,” he said softly. “It’s just anyone looking can only see my back.” He smiled. “A very unimportant looking back.”

  She frowned, not entirely convinced. “But if he’s looking for us, he would think it odd.”

  “It’s all right,” Smithy said. “It’s only for a few moments. After that we’ll be safe.”

  She opened her mouth to say something more but he shook his head. “Wait. For now, just close your eyes.”

  With doubt still present in her eyes she closed them and once again Smithy could view her face without the querying and piercing looks she gave him through eyes that he saw in the light of day were indeed now Bríd’s. Even the feel of her against him now, the softer limbs, bigger hips and breasts were hers. But the face was even more so, now. The fuller lips, the precious nose was all and more of what he remembered, what he knew to be Bríd.

  He ached with the knowledge, with the pain of her, here, under him. His beloved. He could feel his body respond to her, to the physicality of her, but also the spirituality of her. It rose up and seeped right through his skin to the depths of his soul. It joined his and spun and wove again, the joy of it, the purity of it just wrapping around him inside and out.

  With great effort he tried to disentangle it. Not yet. He knew that. He uttered the words instead that would begin the journey, the path that he knew must be and it must not involve her.

  As if sensing his shift and the next, Bríd’s eyes flew open and met his. Above them, the sky yawned, bright and filled with a light that was more. A light that was pure and shone around them and in them. There was light all around, nothing but light. They floated, the current beneath them soft and almost undetectable.

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  “The Time Between Time.”

  She blinked. “The Time Between Time. What do you mean? What’s that?”

  He kissed her forehead lightly. “It’s the place where no time is present. The place between worlds. We’re safe here.”

  “You mean Balor can’t follow us here?”

  Smithy shook his head. “No. Only one of the Tuatha De Danann can access it.”

  She blinked at him, bit her lip and nodded.

  “And he’s after me.”

  “Us. But especially you. He knows without you I am nothing. I can do nothing. My weapons are useless.”

  She opened her mouth to speak, but he put his finger on it. “I know it. I’ve known it for a long time. Without you I’m not whole, the magic is gone. Surely you know that now?”

  “But the whistle,” she said softly.

  He smiled sadly. “The whistle was made with your music still singing in me, the touch of you, however briefly, still spinning and vibrating in me.”

  She stared at Smithy, filled with confusion mixed with disbelief, but at the corners, at the back of it all, there was a growing knowing.

  “Oh, Smithy,” she said.

  “Goibhniu.”

  She pursed her lips. “Goibhniu” she said softly. “I know nothing of this. I promise you. There is no memory of any of who you claim I am.”

  He sighed. “There’s no ‘claim’ about it, Bríd. It just is. You just are. And Balor wants to destroy you. Destroy us.”

  “But why me in particular? Why not you? I have no memory of any of it, so why would he go after me?”

  He turned away from her. “Not only are you key to my magic and I the key to yours, you were there with the Fomorians. You know all their secrets, their weaknesses.”

  She inhaled sharply. “Did I betray the Tuatha de Danann? Is that why I was with the Fomorians?”

  He shook his head and started to speak.

  “No, wait, it’s coming back to me.”

  He looked at her hopefully. “You remember?”

  “No, no. Not in the way you mean. I remember what my grandmother said. I mean what Anu said,” she corrected herself. “Or whatever the hell, she’s called,” Saoirse muttered.

  He grinned, charmed for just a moment by the small petulant outburst.

  “So Anu explained it to you all, then. Good.”

  She sighed. “I suppose. Though there’s so much that I don’t know. I feel as though I’m coming in at the end of the show. Or the drama play.”

  He snorted lightly and stroked her hair. Oh the feel of it, silken, just as he remembered. “I can imagine. And I’m sorry. But hopefully this will end soon and you’ll be safe.”

  “Are we to remain here, so?”

  “In Time Between Time?”

  “Yes. You said yourself it’s a place only the Tuatha De Danann can go to.”

  “There are many of the Tuatha de Danann who would seek us out and bring us to either world.”

  “Either world?”

  He gave her a sorrowful look. It was all that she’d lost the understanding, the depth of knowledge and the rhythms and joys blended with sorrows that made all its parts.

  “The Otherworld mo croí.”

  She stilled and he didn’t know if it was the endearment or the mention of “Otherworld.”

  “Otherworld?” she said softly.

  “We are in the place and time between the world we just left and the Otherworld. The world the Tuatha de Danann inhabit. Or the sídhe, as some call us.”

  “Sí Beag, Sí Mhor, little fairy mound, big fairy mound,” she said, musing. “Like the music air. Those sídhe.”

  He gave a light laugh. “I suppo
se. It’s been trivialised.”

  “And paddy whackeried, to be sure, to be sure,” she said with the most exaggerated vaudeville Irish accent he’d heard.

  “Hmm,” he said. “I didn’t know you were a leprechaun.”

  “No,” she said eyes wide. “But sure, wasn’t that you in the film, Finian’s Rainbow?”

  “You mean the one holding the pot of gold? Ah, no, that was Fred Astaire. A different kind of little people, but so very big with his dancing.”

  It was good, this feeling right now, this bantery, jokery light exchange that just made him joyful and happy and so filled with her in his arms, able to love her in a light but wonderful way that wove them into each other but left the weft and warp of the pain strands out on the edges.

  “Is that where we’re going?” she said. “To the Otherworld? To Sí Beag, Sí Mhor?”

  “Well, it’s more a medium sized fairy mound, rather than a small or big one.”

  She laughed again, nestling down into his neck. “Will it take long to get there?”

  Not long enough, he thought. He forced a smile that would push away those weft and warp strands of pain that had suddenly crept into the weave. “Are you asking are we there yet?”

  “No, not at all. In fact, I would like to stay here for hours. For days. For weeks. Can we do that?”

  He kissed her lightly on the lips, stealing it quickly in case the theft of such a kiss would produce a rejection and retribution he wouldn’t be able to afford.

  “No, mo grá. We can’t stay here that long, because in the two worlds time moves on and in measurements that are far outside of what you may think. As it is, we are stealing time from our lives. In both worlds. It may only be a few days in the Otherworld, but in the world we just left it could be weeks. Or months.”

  She stared at him, eyes wide, filled with confusion, disbelief and finally acceptance. “Ah, not so bad, then. In some fairy stories, it’s centuries.”