Emily's House

by Natalie Wright

PART THREE

   

   

  The Rise of Dughall

   

   

  “The best way out is always through.”

  -Robert Frost

  38. UMBRA NIHILI

  “… to arise and live once more, flesh reunited with spirit, to walk again as a man, back from the Umbra Nihili, arise when all has been aligned to achieve your deepest desire.”

  These were the last words Dughall heard spoken before his thousand-year sleep. Cian uttered them as he completed his dark and forbidden magick at the end of Dughall’s life.

  Dughall and his army had wandered across Ireland and the whole of Europe searching for the chalice. Over time, the legend grew. Many came to believe that the chalice was the Holy Grail, the cup used by Christ at the last supper. But Dughall knew better. He knew the real power of the chalice. He didn’t care if they had it wrong. The fools. All the better for him.

  Little by little his army dwindled as his men tired of chasing a dream. They returned to their homes and families. Dughall had no family, only the quest.

  For many years he wandered, searched and fought battles. Eventually he grew old and knew his time to part this earth was near. But such was his desire for power and to achieve his lifelong goal that he was not content to go quietly into history.

  Dughall knew that Cian still had dark magick up his sleeve. As his last breaths drew near, he summoned the old wizard to his bedside to inquire of a particular ritual that he knew could help him achieve his deepest desire. Macha, ever faithful, brought Cian to his side.

  “Cian, old friend,” Dughall croaked. “I call upon you once again, as I did in the Grove those many years ago, to help me now with your dark arts.”

  Cian winced at the word friend. He couldn’t explain why he had allowed himself to remain with Dughall all these years, but it surely wasn’t friendship.

  “I have no charms or elixirs that will prevent your death, Dughall. You are a mortal, like all of us, and it appears that you will soon draw your last breath.”

  The façade of charm was gone from Dughall’s voice as he tried to raise himself up to confront Cian. “I know that, you old fool,” he growled.

  Macha flew to Dughall’s side and urged him to lie himself down once again. “What Dughall means to say,” interjected Macha, “is that he hopes that you have dark arts to help him direct his soul to that place that he longs to be.”

  “To Heaven?” Cian was incredulous. “Oh, malevolent one, there is no magick in this world or the next powerful enough to send your immortal soul to anyplace heavenly,” laughed Cian.

  “I’m not interested in Heaven or Hell,” snarled Dughall. “Don’t toy with me Cian. You know that I’m talking about the Umbra Nihili.”

  Cian grew quiet. The mere mention of the name brought chills to his spine.

  “You do not want to go there,” Cian replied.

  “I do. I know that you know how to make it happen, Cian, so don’t try to hold back on me. Your skill and knowledge of the dark arts is unmatched old wizard.”

  “Dughall, as much as I dislike you, and I truly do detest you to my core, I would not send my worst enemy to the Umbra Nihili. You do not fully understand what you ask.”

  “I understand that it is the only way,” Dughall choked out. With desperation in his eyes and his voice, he pled with Cian.

  “I am not done here,” he said. “You know that I am not finished. It is all that I have dreamed of. All that I have hoped for. And I can feel that it is close. Closer now than ever before. I will achieve my dream, Cian, even if I have to sever my soul and wait a hundred years in the Umbra Nihili, it is a small price to pay.”

  Cian had never seen such desperation in Dughall’s eyes. There was something more there, more than just a quest for power. The man was on a mission for something even deeper.

  “You do not know what you ask,” said Cian gently. “If you do this, you have no control you see. Your fate will be up to the gods, not your or I. And I do not know when, or even if, you will be able to come back. According to oral accounts, your soul will be reunited, and you will be thrust back into creation when all has been aligned for you to achieve your deepest desire. But that may never happen, you see. If you do this, you may have a fractured soul for all eternity, stuck in a place of nothing.”

  “I do not believe that will happen, Cian. I know that my quest will be achieved. I just know it. I need your help though, old man. You must perform the ritual so I can go to the Umbra Nihili.”

  Cian continued to plead with Dughall. “But you do not realize what you ask. It is not as if your soul will travel to heaven or even hell where you will be with other souls. You will be in the ‘Shadow of Nothingness’, in a place of no place. And you will be there entirely alone.”

  “That suits me well since I detest every living creature anyway,” snorted Dughall.

  “That may be true, but there is more that you need to know. You will not only be alone, but you will not have a body or ability to create. You will be a disembodied mind, alone with only your thoughts to torture you, perhaps, for an eternity.”

  “You may be tortured by your own thoughts, Cian, but I am not tortured by mine. My only agony is the endless prattling of others. My mind is set. I know what I am doing. Now will you help me willingly? Or will I have to use my last breath to coax this favor from you?” Dughall grabbed for the dagger he had stashed under his pillow.

  “You are in no condition to test your strength against mine anymore. Put that thing away before you hurt yourself. I will do this for you, against my better judgment. It is probably what you deserve anyway.”

  With that Cian turned to leave. “Where are you going?” Dughall shouted out.

  “To make preparations. You have used a fair bit of your remaining strength to threaten me so I imagine your time draws near. Rest and I will return to perform the ritual tonight.”

  Dughall flopped himself back down on his pallet to rest. His heart beat rapidly with excitement. Soon I will make the final journey to all that I desire.

  39. MACHA’S PROMISE

  Cian returned to Dughall’s cottage that night with a basket full of linen strips, vials of potions, and herbs and other plants. It was just a few hours after dusk and Cian found Dughall sleeping fitfully. He was still alive, but his breath was shallow.

  Macha was by Dughall’s side. Her wings, always reflective of her mood, were a muted blue and grey. As Cian walked in Macha brightened a little.

  “Do you have all that you need to do my master’s bidding?” she asked.

  “Yes, it’s all here. Why you stand by his side all these years is beyond me,” Cian replied.

  “I would ask the same of you, antediluvian one,” Macha retorted.

  Cian ignored her taunt and moved quickly about his work. He took a stick of sage that had been wound tightly, lit it in the fire, and then walked slowly around the room in a sunwise direction three times. Cian swirled the smoke above his head as he walked and muttered incantations.

  Once he had purified the air of the cottage, Cian pulled fine linen cloth out of his bag and dipped it into a bowl that had been filled with water that he had blessed and prepared with purifying herbs. He took the cloth and wiped Dughall’s face and body with it, doing his best to purify Dughall’s body before it drew its last breath.

  He could see that Dughall undoubtedly was near his end, as he did not protest being touched and bathed by Cian. In his fragile state, Cian thought Dughall looked much like any other man about to die. There was no trace upon his face of the sadness and fear he had inflicted on others. There was no evidence of the battles he had waged and the lives he had taken. There was only an aged man, skin greying and sallow, overtaken by the illness that raged in his body.

  Cian knew that he had to wake Dughall so that he could get him to drink the tonic he had prepared. He was hesitant to do so. Perhaps I should just let him die. It would be best for the fellow anyway – to pass to whatever re
alm best befit a man who had lived the life Dughall had chosen. That fate would be better for him than the Umbra Nihili, would it not?

  But Macha was right. Cian had a strange allegiance to this wretched man lying before him. He did not know the reason a brilliant former Druid and dark wizard spent so many of his precious years in the company of Dughall and his deceitful, ever-present companion Macha. Perhaps the allegiance was forged out of a shared quest to achieve the domination and power each sought.

  Cian had no time for philosophy. He had to make a choice, and he knew he would honor the request of his longtime companion.

  “Macha,” he said, “the time has come. Wake your master and have him drink this tonic. Make certain that he drinks it to the last drop.”

  Macha did as he requested and the small vial of bitter tonic seemed large in her small faerie hands. She woke Dughall and ordered him to drink the tonic. In his weakened state, he did not protest.

  As soon as he had swallowed the last bit his head fell back against the pillow. “Trying to poison me again, hey Cian?” he asked.

  “The tonic will prepare your body to more easily allow a portion of your soul to depart to the Umbra Nihili,” replied Cian. “Rest now.”

  Dughall kept his eyes open. He was tired but felt warmth coursing through his veins. His body felt as though every fiber tingled. There was certain aliveness in him that he had not felt in years.

  “Cian, this tonic is healing me. Now I am not ready to die, old man. Perhaps this ritual may wait another day.” Dughall’s voice carried with a strength it had not had for a long time.

  “Yes, the tonic is working then. You feel alive and tingly now, but it is just the tonic preparing your body for its long rest. You are not healed.”

  Cian pulled another bundle of dried herbs from his pack and lit the bundle. As the smoke rose from the herbs, Cian walked in a widdershins circle and muttered another incantation. The herbs smelled bitter and made Macha wrinkle her nose in distaste.

  “Must you fill the air with that foul stench?” asked Macha.

  “The odor matches the work that I do,” he said.

  After Cian’s bundle had burned to ashes, he worked quickly and mixed another potion for Dughall to drink before his last breath. “You will drink this right before you take your last breath.” He handed the cup to Dughall. The liquid was thick and viscous. Dughall wrinkled up his nose as he smelled the vile concoction.

  “Now this is most important,” Cian instructed. “As you feel yourself fade, recite these words over and over again. As you drink that draught of potion, repeat these words in your head. Repeat them as you take your last breath. Repeat them with every fiber of your being. You must believe these words and repeat them as a part of you moves to the beyond.”

  “What are the words, Cian?” Dughall asked.

   

  “I sever my soul,

  I sever my self.

  Go to the Umbra Nihili,

  Oh part of me that is lost,

  So that I may gain

  All that the whole of me desires.”

   

  “That is it?” Dughall asked.

  “Yes, that is it. But you must say it with conviction. And it helps if you picture in your mind your deepest desire. Picture in your mind that end that you seek as you say the words.”

  “Cian, what will happen to my body?”

  “After you have stopped breathing, Macha and I will anoint your body, wrap it in medicated linens, and enshrine it in a stone box. We will travel north with your body, as far north as we can to the place where the gods cover the earth in white all of the year. There we will bury it deep in the earth.”

  “When all is prepared for me to achieve my deepest desire, how will I be able to come back to a long-dead body buried deep in the frozen ground?” asked Dughall.

  “You will not be fully dead, you see, but frozen. Your body will be well preserved. In the moment that all conditions are met, the severed part of yourself will find its way back to its body and be reunited with the rest of you. You will be whole again and ready to wake.”

  “But how will he get out of the ground?” asked Macha.

  “Yes, how will I escape my stony tomb?”

  “Well, yes, that is a challenge, is it not,” said Cian. “I will be long dead by then and unable to help you.”

  A silence surrounded them, broken by Macha’s tinny pixie voice.

  “I can help him.”

  “How? Even though faeries are nearly eternal beings, you will not be able to know when your master has arisen.”

  “I will if I am buried with him,” she replied.

  The thought was too gruesome even for Cian. Buried alive with Dughall’s cold, lifeless body. He could think of nothing more horrible.

  “You know how it is, Cian,” Macha said. “In the cold, my body too will go to sleep. I can put a spell on myself to awake at the first stirrings of his body. I will be weak, but with my magick, I will be able to lift the stony lid and burrow us out.”

  “Macha, my dear little Macha,” Dughall interrupted. “I knew that I could count on you. You will be rewarded well for your loyalty. When I achieve all that I desire, yes, you will be rewarded well.” Dughall reached out his hand and lightly touched Macha’s cheek. Her wings blushed pink and crimson at his touch.

  “If you choose to spend an eternity frozen with this vile man, that is your choice,” said Cian. “All is prepared.”

  They waited by Dughall’s side for a few more hours. When the moon was high in the sky, Cian saw that Dughall’s breaths grew shallow again. Cian lifted Dughall’s wrist and could hardly feel a pulse.

  “It is time,” he said.

  Dughall began repeating the incantation, murmuring it aloud over and over again. “I sever my soul. I sever my self. Go to the Umbra Nihili, oh part of me that is lost, so that I may gain all that the whole of me desires.” He said it over and over again while picturing in his mind the vision of his deepest desire. He pictured himself entering the portal. He pictured himself victorious and powerful. He pictured himself with many subjects bowing before him.

  “I sever my soul. I sever my self. Go to the Umbra Nihili, oh part of me that is lost, so that I may gain all that the whole of me desires.” He knew it was time. He took a deep breath and swallowed the draught that Cian had made. As he felt the last of his breath go from his body, he repeated the incantation in his own mind. He pictured attaining all that he desired and fulfilling a promise made to himself, and to the dead body of his most beloved, all those years ago.

  40. DUGHALL WAKES

  Dughall awoke to an impenetrable darkness. He knew he was alive by the sound of his lungs coughing and wheezing as they sucked in the first air they had breathed in over a thousand years. As he lay in the dark rasping in breath, the reality of his new situation dawned on him.

  It worked. He was in his own body, alive again after so many years. But how to get out of this icy tomb?

  Dughall lay quietly for a few moments and tried to use as little air as possible. He heard a sound. It was muffled and sounded faint at first but grew louder. Someone is pounding on my granite coffin.

  After several minutes, Dughall heard the lid of his stony coffin opening. Fresh, cold air wafted over him. As his eyes adjusted to his surroundings, he could make out the faint shadow of a tiny being. Macha.

  Macha and Cian had built an underground tomb in the frozen wasteland. She had been true to her word and had put herself into a deep pixie sleep in the gruesome tomb. Besides the coffin, they buried items that Dughall would need when he arose. Warm furs to protect him when he exited the tomb; a torch and flint to light his way; cured meats and water sealed in airtight jars, and Macha herself whose magick was always of assistance to him.

  “You are with the living once again,” Macha croaked as Dughall stretched his arms. For her part, Macha looked exactly like she had a thousand years before except that her skin and hair were a dull, lifeless grey. Even her wings, once a beau
tiful iridescent rainbow of color, had become grey and without any hint of their former luster.

  “Yes, Macha, I live,” replied Dughall in a raspy voice.

  “You will need to drink and eat to regain your strength. Your body is much withered from lack of sustenance.”

  Dughall looked down at his hands and arms and could see that Macha was right. He still had flesh, but it was wrinkled like a raisin and clung to his bones. His skin was brown and weathered like a mummy, yet he was not a mummy. He was very much alive. But he looked like no more than a skeleton with flesh covering it.

  Fear gripped Dughall, a feeling that was most foreign to him. This was not what he had expected. He could not go out amongst the humans in that condition. He looked like a monster and would be tracked down and killed. How could he achieve his deepest desire looking like a mummy?

  As if reading Dughall’s mind, Macha said, “Do not worry. Your flesh will plump out again in time. With food and drink and the special cream that Cian left for you, you will look normal in a few weeks’ time.”

  “A few weeks? We do not have that kind of time. I need to get out of here now!”

  “You must stay in the chamber. You cannot complete your task in your present condition. Look at you,” she said. In Dughall’s mind he quietly conceded that irksome Macha was right. He could not even rise to leave his grisly stone casket.

  “Eat the stored food and drink,” Macha offered. “I will go in search of more food for you.”

  With that, she flew to the ceiling of their chamber and removed a large stone that had been left unsealed for their escape. Then Macha grabbed a small spade and dug furiously as she flapped and flapped her wings. It wasn’t long until Macha had a small hole, large enough for her to squeeze through and poke out the top.

  Macha flew down to Dughall and handed him a jar of cured meat and a sealed jar of water. “Eat this and stay here, Dughall,” Macha said before she flew away.

  Dughall had no intention of staying put, but he hadn’t the strength to raise his body out of the coffin. Cursed Cian. The old wizard had completed the spell but had neglected to care properly for Dughall’s body. Dughall had not bargained for being a cripple upon his return. He tried to scream out a curse in his rage, but it came out as a mere raspy strangled yell.

  In utter frustration and with nothing else to do, Dughall opened the jar and grabbed a handful of salty cured ox. It tasted like leather that had been covered in salt. Awful. Dughall chewed and chewed, swallowing it down with the stale water from the other jar.

  When Dughall’s jaw tired from chewing on the leathery meat, he lay back and envisioned his next steps. While in the Umbra Nihili, Dughall was still connected to the aether and the web of all existence. Even though he could interact with it in no way, he was able to know all that took place in all of creation.

  Dughall knew well why his soul chose to come back together at this time and place. Modern humans were building a most magnificent machine. “They think they are so clever,” thought Dughall. “They haven’t even dreamed of what that machine of theirs can do. So lacking in imagination, these modern humans.”

  Dughall lay in his cold, hard home of the past thousand years, smiling a gruesome smile to himself. Soon, all that I have worked for will be mine. Soon, my most beloved, we will be reunited.

  41. THE FACE IN THE BUCKET

  It was a whole night and day before Macha returned. In that time, Dughall had forced himself to eat all of the briny meat and putrid water. Macha had been correct. His skin was plumping up. He looked slightly less gruesome than he did but still not acceptable to walk among humans again.

  “Macha, my favorite gnat. What have you brought me to feast on?”

  Macha flew down through the small opening to Dughall, all the while levitating several dead rabbits tied together by their legs. Dughall thought he saw one of them still twitching.

  “The Devil take you pixie woman, I am not eating half-dead hare.”

  “Raw meat has more energy in it,” Macha replied. “It will help you regain your strength faster. Blood is good for one like you.”

  “I have already tested my ancient gut as much as I care to by swallowing that retched ox. You will cook those for me.”

  “If you wish, but it will prolong your stay in this crypt, my intolerant one,” Macha quipped.

  With that, she began her work. She used her small but extremely sharp knife to skin the hares and gut them, removing the entrails. With the wave of her hand, she produced a large copper pot and set it over a fire that she conjured with the clap of her hands. She made a horrific stew of the rabbits in the pot with melted snow from outside. The stewing rabbits produced an odor most foul. Dughall was certain that his ancient intestines would surely seize up and cause his demise in one bite of Macha’s putrid stew.

  Macha practically forced the fetid stew down Dughall’s throat. For two more days, Dughall endured her force-feeding him the blood, guts and meat from the poor hapless hares that happened to have been in Macha’s path.

  Dughall also endured Macha rubbing the rank cream that Cian had created for him all over his body. Her small hands were more like cold claws than human hands. It felt like nails scratching him all over on his delicate mummy skin.

  But for all the torture that Dughall endured, the results were nothing short of miraculous. His hands looked more and more normal. The skin, less yellow and more white and luminous. He no longer looked like a skeleton but instead like an extremely thin older man. Dughall was finally ready to see what his face looked like.

  “Macha, fetch me a bucket of water so that I may look upon myself.”

  As Macha placed the bucket in front of him, Dughall braced himself for what he might see. He sucked in his breath and looked down into the smooth water of the bucket.

  The man he saw staring back shared little resemblance with the face of the man that he once knew himself to be. The man in the bucket had long, shaggy hair, not well-groomed short hair in the Norman style. The reflection had sallow cheeks and all the bones in the skull were clearly visible under the thin, papery skin. It was not the firm but fleshy masculine face that he once knew. To Dughall, he looked like the lowliest old beggar.

  But at least he looked human. He would need to set aside his vanity. Bide your time, Dughall, he thought to himself.

  “I am ready.” He said it to himself as much as to Macha.

  With that, he put on the fresh linen clothing and furs that had been put in his icy tomb so many years before. Covered from head to toe in fur, he looked the part of an old nomad from the north.

  Macha levitated Dughall out through the opening in the ceiling and into the wide-open snow covered north. Dughall squinted and covered his eyes. So much light. Slowly his eyes adjusted to the light of life again.

  Dughall wasted not a minute more. He knew he must make his way south. He trudged, Macha flittering beside him, for many days as he made his way to the ancient continent of his ancestors and of his former self. On to his destiny.

  42. THE MACHINE

  As Dughall made his way back to human civilization, he was amazed at how little the humans around him saw. Macha was with him for the entire journey. Color had returned to her skin and wings, though less vibrant than it had been before their long sleep. But the humans did not gasp in awe or hazard a second look their way. Not one human that Dughall encountered inquired about his pixie companion. How is it that they cannot see this diminutive yet strong presence beside me at all times?

  The more time Dughall spent among modern humans, the more he knew the answer to this perplexing observation. The humans were so busy with those things they called ‘cell phones’, with the tiny pads of letters, and looking at their small glass windows with moving pictures and words printed on them, that they did not notice much of the world around them. The modern humans constantly moved and talked. Dughall noticed that they seemed to live in a world built upon rationality and thus dismissed evidence of the magickal and mystical events and th
ings around them at all times. Dughall doubted they would notice a fire-breathing dragon scorching their arse until it was too late.

  All the better for him. A distracted mind is a mind easily fooled. He only hoped the humans at CERN were as distracted and easily befuddled as the humans he had encountered along his journey south.

  Within a few weeks, Dughall hoodwinked, swindled and downright stole food, clothing, money and all that he required not only to survive, but also to fund his way to the French/Swiss border. Dughall had a sharp mind wizened by the extraordinary amount of time he had been alive. He also lacked the conscience to deflect his attention with considerations of right versus wrong. Dughall easily worked his will on anyone he encountered.

  It wasn’t long until he found himself in Merino, Switzerland, site of CERN and the Large Hadron Supercollider, the LHC for short. All is working according to plan.

  Between his own formidable powers of persuasion and the help of Macha’s pixie magick, Dughall easily usurped the persona and credentials of the lead scientist on one of the collider experiments. Dughall was in charge of the most powerful machine humans had ever built.

  Even Dughall had to admit that the humans had achieved something quite remarkable in the creation of the LHC. The sheer size alone was commendable. There was no hint above the ground of what was happening below.

  Dughall delighted in the idea of the deceptive nature of the machine. Above, farmland and rolling hills. A mile below, a machine so powerful that it would force beams of particles to travel to within a fraction of the speed of light and smash into each other in violent collisions.

  The human scientists said that they wanted to look into the ‘face of God’ to see the beginning of the universe. Billions upon billions of their dollars spent to build a twenty-seven kilometer tube of superconducting magnets, some five stories tall, all for a hope to see back in time.

  Dughall laughed within himself at the thought. Humans, always so preoccupied with their past and their own existence. ‘Who are we?’ What a stupid question to ask, Dughall thought.

  As Dughall’s eyes swept over the computer screen in front of him full of numbers and formulas, he couldn’t help but have a smirk come over him. They are so focused on questions of their past and their existential nature, they miss out on the opportunity that lay right under their noses. If only they knew what will soon happen, he thought. So wrapped up in their computers, charts, formulas and self-importance. They may not even believe it when they see it.

  As Dughall waited for the computer to catch up its calculations to where he wanted it to be, his mind wandered. Wandered as it had done so often in the thousand-plus years he spent in the Umbra Nihili. Plenty of time then, and now, to remember his own history and the reason he risked his very soul to go to the Umbra Nihili. Time to contemplate his soul’s most fervent desire.

  It won’t be long now, my dearest one. Dughall recalled in an instant the suffering he had endured that brought him to that place of the deepest of human longing, a longing large enough to cause a person to commit the most despicable acts in the name of love.

  43. DUGHALL’S STORY

  Dughall remembered his childhood as though he had lived it just yesterday. He could close his eyes and inhabit the body of his youth as easily as if he had slipped on a pair of slippers. It was a trip he had taken many times during his long stay in the Umbra Nihili. While there were many much more pleasant memories he could have dwelled on, Dughall chose to focus his attention on the day that everything changed for him. It was the day that the true Dughall was born.

  He peered at the world out of deep brown eyes and watched as his mother gathered water from the town’s well. To say that he was close to her would be an understatement. He felt he was a part of her, and she a part of him. The slave’s life of abject misery can do that to two people who find themselves suffering through it together.

  Dughall was born into nobility in a small town in the beautiful Mediterranean countryside. His people grew grapes and olives and made wine known to all as a most excellent elixir. He was born into what could have become a relatively blissful existence, but such was not his destiny.

  One fateful day, a marauding band of soldiers came to his village, intent on taking what did not belong to them. Dughall’s father died protecting his family, cut down by a blade to his unarmored chest. Dughall’s mother wielded a small dagger and hid her boy behind her as two marauders approached her. Dughall never knew that his life was spared only because no soldier could bring himself to end the life of such a beautiful creature, Dughall’s own mother.

  A quick death may have been preferable to the life that followed. Dughall and his mother were sold to a middling merchant and into a life of slavery. In those days, slavery was rampant. It was not confined to a particular color, creed or town. There were only the conquerors and the conquered. If you were not the conqueror, you were as likely to be sold into slavery as to be killed.

  Many slaves toiled in fields or worked in a wealthy merchant’s home doing domestic chores. Still others endured a life far worse than any field hand or household slave. Such was the life of Dughall’s mother whose beauty was sold for the pleasure and use of the highest bidder.

  There were many nights that Dughall’s mother lay there, enduring the basest form of indignity and defilement, wishing for death to come rescue her from her horrid existence. The only thing that prevented her from taking the dagger of her nightly ‘companion’ and doing herself in was the knowledge that her son – her only ray of light – laid in the next room.

  Her son. He needed her, and that alone kept her alive from day to day.

  For Dughall’s part, his heart slowly hardened, day after day, week after week, seeing the suffering endured by his beloved mother at the hands of her master and those he so callously sold her to. She tried to stifle her own tears around Dughall, but he knew that her heart was dying inside her.

  The only pleasure of their day was in the quiet moments when no one else was around. Alone in their small quarters, she taught him. They both knew that it was strictly forbidden for her to teach her slave son how to read or write or to provide him any education. But Dughall’s mother used her waning energy to impart to Dughall all that she knew. She would not let her son, born of noble and educated parents, go through life an ignorant.

  She also taught Dughall about survival and patience. Even though he had learned to speak in the way of nobles and kings – and surely knew as much about writing and mathematics and astrology as any of them – he spoke to his master and to all others save his mother in the guttural language of peasants and slaves. He followed orders and endured the lash, given frequently not because he disobeyed but merely because it pleased his master to know that he could.

  “Bide your time, my dear son. You will rise above this place, I know that you will. You will grab upon the opportunity when the time is right,” his mother said one day.

  “How do you know, dear mother?” asked Dughall. “How do you know I will ever be anything but a slave?”

  She took Dughall’s hands in hers and looked deeply into the dark brown eyes of the only one she loved. “When I look in your eyes my son, I do not see the soul of a slave. I see in you a fearsome fire, not one easily extinguished by the lash of a slave master.”

  It made Dughall’s heart soar to hear such powerful and hopeful words from his dearest one. He believed in his mother with all his being and so when she stated with such conviction that she believed in him, he instantly believed in himself too.

  From that day forward, his spirits were lifted a little higher for he believed wholeheartedly in his mother’s prophetic words. “Bide your time, Dughall,” he would say to himself when times got tough.

  But as the years passed, it became more and more difficult to endure what was surely his largest torture. Each night he lay on his small cot beside the hearth while in the next room, he heard brutes use and abuse his mother. The anger welled and his heart blackened. He swore to himself ve
ngeance most cruel on his master who he held responsible for his mother’s daily suffering. And as he grew closer to manhood, he felt the time was coming when he would have his vengeance and he and his mother would escape their brutal bonds.

  “Bide your time, Dughall,” he said to himself in the dark. “Bide your time.”

  44. A PROMISE

  It was a day like most of the others that lay behind him. As usual he went to his master’s main grounds and cared for the livestock and repaired the buildings. It could be worse, he well knew. Mainly he was left alone to do his work in outside areas, away from others. Left on his own to ponder and think all day and plan his escape.

  He had decided that day was the day. He quickly finished his assigned tasks in record time. He could go home early. He planned to find his mother in their small quarters, through with her morning chores of gathering water and food and readying their evening meal. She did all this before she went to her own ‘work’.

  When he had left that morning at the first light of dawn, his mother’s ‘work’ was still with her, loudly snoring in the small room his mother slept in. This happened occasionally. The lousy oaf was too lazy to get up and out when he was supposed to.

  That day, as he approached the door to their small apartment, he felt coldness come over him. His belly tightened and seized up. With a huge feeling of foreboding, he ran to his home.

  The door to their dwelling was wide open. He stopped in the small doorway and instinctively listened. He dared not call out to his mother. He was small and quiet on his feet. If an attacker were still there, he would have the element of surprise.

  The abode was so small that it took but three steps to move from the entryway to the doorway of his mother’s room. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he peered inside. He quickly surveyed the situation and found no one in the room. He was about to turn around and leave to look for his mother when he heard a small whimper.

  He spun back around and quietly walked the two steps that it took to go to the other side of the small bed in the room. For all the years since that day – and there have been many – Dughall wished that he could excise from his brain the memory of what he saw.

  There, a mass of human flesh. Its face so black, blue and swollen it was barely recognizable as human. One arm dangled, lifeless, from the body. The other was bent at an odd angle, surely broken in two. And on the floor, a pool of blood that oozed from the pile of flesh.

  A part of him wanted to back away and to run. He wanted to run as fast as he could from the horrible sight. Run until he was sure that it was a nightmare and he’d come back to find his dear mother cooking their evening meal as always.

  But then he again heard a whimper and he knew it was real. The pile of broken and oozing flesh was his own mother, his only love, the flesh of his flesh. His reason to live. She was beaten and tortured beyond the capacity to rise again.

  Then a tiny voice, rasping and choking and trying to speak. He bent down nearer what used to be his mother’s face, nearer to hear what may be her final words.

  The power of his touch on her arm as he bent in close seemed to give her the strength to speak. “My dearest son,” she choked out. “Remember all I taught you.” She coughed and stopped. Dughall thought she had stopped breathing.

  But then she started again. “Your time is now my son. You will walk a path of greatness, my love.” Her breathing labored, gasping for air.

  “You must do something for me now, my son. Honor your mother,” she rasped.

  “Of course my most beloved,” he said. His tears choked his words and blinded him. “Anything you ask my mother.”

  “Take your small knife, my son, the one you use to cut rope. Use it now, my love, and plunge it deep into your mother’s heart. Use it, dear son, to end my pain.”

  Dughall felt he could do anything for her. He could kill their master with his bare hands. He’d smash the skulls of the slave owners in the whole province. He could do anything but the task she had asked of him. How can I silence the beating of the one heart that ever loved me?

  “Please,” she croaked. “Please … ”

  As he looked at the rasping heap of flesh that was once his mother, he knew that he had to release the one he loved from her broken shell. Dughall grabbed the small, dull knife from the pack around his waist. His master didn’t allow him to own a dagger, sword or weapon of any kind. The small knife was so dull it would barely cut bread. But it was all he had. He knew that it would be the power of the force of the thrust not the sharpness of the blade that would complete his task.

  With that thought, he summoned all the strength and love that he had. With a powerful thrust, he slammed that small knife into the still beating heart of his only mother. From the sound of her shallow breaths he knew that his knife had swung true. Within seconds, she drew her last breath then laid still, her glassy eyes still open.

  Dughall’s hand was still clenched around the knife handle while, with his other hand, he closed the lids of his mother’s eyes, never again to look upon her loving countenance. In that moment, his hand still on the hilt of the weapon that had taken the life force from his mother’s body, any love or compassion that Dughall may have had within him died. In that moment, the Dughall that would fight his way to the top ranks of the Norman army was born. The Dughall that would lay waste to entire villages on his quest for power was born. The Dughall that would one day risk his soul to bide his time in the Umbra Nihili was born. On that day, the Dughall that sits at the control panel of the most powerful machine humans have ever built was born.

  And on that day, in that moment, kneeling beside the dead body of his only love, Dughall made a pledge. Perhaps never before or since has one made such a fervent promise, a promise that would ring through the ages. A promise that would bind a person to risk their immortal soul. A promise that had the power to resurrect one long ago dead. A promise so strong, the desire to fulfill it blinds its maker to the risk of death to those around him, even to the whole of the planet, perhaps to the whole of the solar system in which the beautiful blue planet swirls.

  “Hear me now, any gods there be. Hear me now as I pledge this solemn oath, with all my heart and soul. From the depths of my being, hear my promise. I will find you, my beloved, and we will be together again. I will find a way to bring you back to my side and together, my mother, my queen, we will rule over all those who have had a hand in our suffering, and over their kin for all generations to come. This I promise to you, my love.”

  Having made his oath, Dughall rose and swiftly left the small dwelling where he had lived since he was an infant. He considered himself free and would no longer live the life of a slave.

  It was payback time.

  45. DUGHALL’S REVENGE

  As he sat at the LHC control center, Dughall’s musing became enjoyable to him. He brightened as he remembered going to his master’s home, intent on revenge. He had the element of surprise as he had always been a dutiful slave, not one to backtalk or show any signs of rebellion. His mother prepared him well for just such a moment.

  “Why are you barging in here boy,” the master bellowed as Dughall kicked through the door. “You belong out with the hogs and filth, not in your master’s home.”

  “Maybe this will be my home now,” he impertinently responded.

  “What?” his Master yelled. His eyes raged at Dughall. “You will leave my sight at once and go back to that hole with your whore mother before I beat you to within an inch of your life.”

  “You will take back what you said about my mother just now, you swine of a man, or so help me,” Dughall responded with fire in his eyes.

  “You have gone too far slave. You have lost sight of your place in life.” The master reached for his sword lying on the table beside him.

  But the old, fat merchant was slow, his reflexes dulled by hours of drinking wine. Dughall knew it was his moment. He leapt for the sword with impressive speed and agility. Before the merchant had risen fully from his chair,
Dughall had the sword in his hand.

  “Look here boy, you can barely hold that blade, let alone wield it,” the merchant sneered at Dughall. “Lay the weapon down and I may choose to spare your sorry life,” the merchant pled.

  Dughall had to admit that it was, in fact, difficult for him to hold the sword. It must have weighed more than twenty pounds. He was strong for his age but being only fourteen, it took all the strength of both his arms to hold up the sword. But Dughall’s desire welled up from his core, a will forged by years of suffering and abuse.

  There are some who live such a life and in their suffering, they grow immense compassion and peacefulness with all of existence. In others, the years of torment and observation of ill will among their captors breeds a hatred and anger that is unmatched.

  From that place of ultimate despair and sadness over the loss of his only love, from that place of deepest desire to have her revenge, from that place of wholly unchecked anger and hatred, Dughall summoned a strength of body and will that surprised even him. Dughall lunged at the rotund merchant and plunged the man’s sword deep into his belly. The merchant’s dull eyes were filled with surprise as the warm blood that had pumped through his portly body spilled out, great torrents of crimson.

  Dughall stepped back a few paces as he watched the merchant fall to the floor. Dughall stood by and watched with a rising feeling of glee as the life force once powerful in the large man spilled across the floor.

  The merchant sputtered as he said, “Help me. Help me, boy.”

  Dughall laughed heartily at the merchant’s words. “Help you? Help you?” he said incredulously. “Old man, I’m the one who put the blade in you. Why should I bother to take it out until I am assured that the last breath has passed from your rancid lips?”

  “But what of your immortal soul, boy? If you kill me, what will come to your immortal soul?”

  Dughall bent down so he could look the dying merchant in the eye. He smirked the smirk that would become one of his defining features, born in that moment.

  “Well, old man, I suppose your soul, if you have one, awaits the same fate as mine then.”

  “But I haven’t killed anyone,” the merchant choked out.

  “Ah, but you have. You killed my mother.”

  “No, I didn’t,” the merchant pleaded with Dughall. “Please, you have to believe me. I didn’t get anywhere near her. I didn’t kill her. It was someone else then.”

  “You may not have been the one who beat her and bloodied her and left her in a heap for me to find, barely recognizable as my own beloved. But you are the one who sent her each night to her real death, the death of her soul. And you are the one who sold her life for a price to the one who did her in. How much did you get for it, huh? How much you filthy rotten pig?” Dughall took the hilt of the sword and twisted it.

  The merchant choked out muffled screams of agony as Dughall inflicted pain to his once master. “Please,” the old man pled. “I am sorry,” he whimpered. “Please … ”

  “Too late you fetid scum. You shall die here, alone and broken and suffering, just as she did. And if you do have a soul, it surely will rot in a hell worse than any you can imagine for the horrible crimes you have committed in your life. And while it is indeed a pleasure to watch you die in agony, I must be off.”

  With that statement, Dughall gave the sword one last painful twist and turn before he drew it out of the near dead body of the merchant. He took the merchant’s napkin and wiped the blade clean of its owner’s blood.

  “A fine sword,” he said aloud. “It shall come in handy on my quest.”

  With those words, he turned his back on the merchant and left him to die. Dughall had taken the first steps on his path to becoming a bloodthirsty conqueror. He found killing far too easy and in a way pleasurable. In the years to come, he would find that with each new death, it became easier and easier to end the life of another like one would swat a gnat or a fly. Anyone who stood in the way of all that he desired was to him like a mere insect, of no consequence. In time, he stopped counting the number of human lives he took along his path to conquest.

  Sitting at the control panel of the LHC, it was no different. All the humans around him, the team of thousands, they were of no consequence to him. Even those in the nearby towns and villages above, what should he care if they too perished when he implemented his plan?

  There was a slight gnawing feeling in the pit of his stomach, a feeling foreign to him for so many years. What is this? He could not place it, but it seemed a bit familiar. Why do I feel this edge in my gut? Perhaps it was something he ate or a human virus trying to bring him down with an illness.

  Just then Macha appeared by his side with news. It was upon casting his eyes on her face that he realized what that horrible feeling was in his stomach.

  Dughall felt a pang of guilt. He was slightly amused with himself. He didn’t realize he could still feel that. Apparently he had a pang of guilt over the probable loss of Macha.

  To be expected, after all, he reassured himself. She entombed herself for over a thousand years just so she could help me to resurrect when the time was right, he thought. She has been a faithful servant.

  Of course, if she hadn’t entombed herself and put herself into the deepest pixie sleep, she probably wouldn’t be alive today, he rationalized. Yes, that’s true. She would have gone the way of all the other pixies and faerie folk. Vanished with the rest. Vanquished by humans and stamped once and for all out of existence.

  The faerie people were so blind to the nature of their own condition. As times changed and humans left their ways of nature worship and chose the one God, the faeries retreated away from humans to survive, never fully realizing that they needed the interaction with humans to exist.

  Macha may, in fact, be the last of her kind, thought Dughall. But his mind could go no further down the road of guilt or sympathy. For Dughall, that road was short indeed and a dead end.

  The sacrifice of one pixie, it is no matter if I can achieve my most fervent desire, he thought. In fact, Macha is probably prepared to sacrifice herself for me. With that thought, the pinching feeling in his belly ceased. He sat upright and with a clear purpose.

  Nothing would get in his way, not even the death of the world’s last pixie.

  46. PIECING IT TOGETHER IN DUBLIN

  As Liam drifted to sleep on the small bed, he hoped that he’d wake from his nap to find myself back in the States, the whole thing just a crazy nightmare. Instead, he woke to find Fanny flopped on her stomach on the other bed, maps spread out in front of her. It looked to Liam like she was trying to look busy rather than actually doing anything.

  On the other hand, Jake was the picture of concentration, intently reading a webpage on his laptop. His hair was more tousled than usual, his eyes rimmed in red and bloodshot from hours of looking at a computer screen.

  Liam stretched his arms above his head and breathed deeply. He wasn’t in a dream after all. His daughter’s life depended on his belief in their outrageous story.

  “Jake, you found anything interesting?” he asked.

  It took Jake a minute to register a voice from the outside world. He slowly turned and ran his hands through his shock of now jet-black hair, pausing as if to collect himself.

  “Well, I don’t know if I’m getting anywhere with this, but I have an idea. It’s a bit off the wall.”

  “Off the wall? More off the wall than our best friend disappearing into another dimension?” asked Fanny.

  “Okay, well maybe not that off the wall. Okay, check it. Dughall’s supposed to want to get to the Netherworld, right?”

  “Yeah, that’s what Hindergog said.”

  “Sure but what’s he after? I mean, why does he want to go there?”

  “That’s the mystery, isn’t it nub?”

  “Don’t be short with him Fanny.”

  “Yeah, work with me on this. What I’m saying is we have to know what this guy is after. What does he think he can find in t
he Netherworld?”

  “I don’t know. Hindergog didn’t say anything about what the psychopath wanted.”

  “But the story he told had clues.”

  “What kind of clues? What do you think he’s after, Jake?” Liam asked.

  “Well he was power hungry, that much we know. And he clearly didn’t care who got hurt in his quest for power, so we know he’s dangerous.”

  “Yeah, but Jake, we don’t know what’s in the Netherworld really. We may have to wait for Emily to come back to answer that,” Fanny said.

  “That’s what I was thinking too, but then I started to think about what Dughall might think he’ll find there. You know it doesn’t matter what he’ll actually find there, only what he thinks he’ll find.”

  “Okay, that’s riveting, but we don’t know that either.”

  “I think we do have some clues about that. Dughall heard the story of the well from that guy that he killed – what was his name?”

  “Cormac,” offered Fanny.

  “Yeah, Cormac. Anyway, according to Hindergog, Cormac told Dughall all about the Sacred Well and the portal and the torc. And then there was the pixie … ”

  “Macha?”

  “Yeah, Macha. Sounds like she knew a lot. She probably told him things too. He probably knew a lot about the Netherworld, or at least what people thought was on the other side of that Well.”

  “That’s some good deduction, but I’m not following what you think that tells us about why Dughall wants to enter the portal,” Liam said.

  “Yeah, or how you think he’s going to do it. He doesn’t have the torc you know. Hey, you know, come to think of it, if he doesn’t have the torc, he can’t get through the portal, so what are we worrying about?”

  “Ah, you see, that’s just the question I had. We know he wants to go to the Netherworld and badly. And if Hindergog and those in his world are so worried, they must know something we don’t and that must mean there’s another way in.”

  “Right, some other portal,” said Fanny.

  “Or, a way to create a portal,” Liam said.

  “Exactly Mr. Adams! That’s what I’m thinking. And here’s the biggest clue that Hindergog gave us. He mentioned a large machine being built by humans.”

  “We build a lot of big machines,” said Fanny.

  “Yeah, but not many of them have any capability of opening a portal to another dimension. There may, in fact, be only one … ”

  “The super collider!” Liam shouted.

  “That’s right. The Large Hadron Collider at CERN.”

  Jake and Liam locked eyes for a moment while the truth of what they’d said passed between them. The butterflies in Liam’s stomach and the chills up his spine told him that they were onto something.

  “Okay, would one of you like to let me know what we’re talking about?” screeched Fanny.

  “Mr. Adams, you do the honors?”

  “Sure, Jake. Well Fanny you may have heard of atom smashers before.”

  “Nope. Doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “Oh, okay. How to explain this? Well scientists – physicists mainly – build these giant machines called colliders or atom smashers so that they can do experiments on the nature and structure of matter.”

  “Still not following.”

  “They smash atoms together Fanny to see what happens,” said Jake.

  “All right, you don’t have to get all testy with me.”

  “You should pay more attention in science class.”

  “You should stop being such a nerd.”

  “Okay, stop fighting you two. Fanny, atoms are extremely tiny, but they contain a lot of potential energy. Our understanding of atoms is what enabled us to build atomic bombs.”

  “Oh, those kind of atoms.”

  “Well, everything is made of atoms and atoms are made of smaller bits of stuff. Particles. And when you collide these particles you get massive amounts of energy and observe what comes out of the collision. That’s what scientists are doing at the LHC. They want to see what is produced by the collision of particles at near the speed of light.”

  “But if they do that, won’t it make an explosion like a bomb?”

  “No, they aren’t colliding whole atoms, only subatomic particles. There won’t be bomb-size explosions, but when they smash the particles the mini explosions produce even smaller bits of matter. And that’s what they’re studying, those mini bit particles.”

  “I sorta get what this collider thing is doing, but what does this have to do with Dughall?”

  “Well, if Jake’s theory is right, and I’m betting it is, Dughall may be trying to use the LHC to create his own portal.”

  “Not following,” said Fanny. “I thought this thing was smashing particles. They plan to open up a doorway to another dimension with this machine?”

  “Well no, that’s not in the plan. I don’t think anyone is even theorizing about that,” Liam said.

  “It’s a long shot, but it’s all we’ve got. Fanny, remember the static electricity we felt at the portal?”

  “Yeah. It was like we’d been rubbed with a giant balloon.”

  “And remember the silvery mist we saw?”

  “Jake, I’m not a science geek like you. Just spill it already.”

  “Okay, here’s what I’m thinking. The static electricity and the silver mist are both related to mega amounts of electromagnetism.”

  “Yes,” Liam said. “That’s right. And where is there more concentrated electromagnetism than anywhere else in the world?”

  “The LHC,” offered Jake.

  “What do magnets have to do with the colliding thingy?”

  “It’s complicated Fanny, but essentially the collider uses immense magnets, five stories high, to accelerate the particles through a massive circular tube twenty-seven kilometers around. The magnets both accelerate and bend the particles around the huge circle to get them to great speeds before they collide.”

  “Yeah, so the most powerful superconducting magnets ever built are at the LHC.”

  “And so you think Dughall will use these magnets … ”

  “To open a portal,” said Jake.

  “But how?” asked Fanny.

  “That I don’t know. Do you have any ideas, Mr. Adams?”

  “Well, first of all, I don’t see how he’d get anywhere near the LHC. I mean this is a huge compound with hundreds, if not thousands, of people around all the time. And the collider itself is a mile underground. And it’s not like you just flip a switch and turn the magnets on or off.”

  “Yeah, I was reading about it,” said Jake. “It takes weeks to cool it down enough to operate at full power.”

  “Exactly. It has to be super cooled to -271° Celsius to be operational. And there’s a whole command center with many people and oversight. I just don’t see the possibility of Dughall being able to use the LHC in any way.”

  “We may not see how he’d do it, but we can bet he’ll try to find a way,” said Fanny. “Mr. Adams, you weren’t there to hear Hindergog, but from his story, one thing’s for sure. This Dughall guy is pure evil and he’s smart. If there’s a way, he’ll find it.”

  “I agree with Fanny,” said Jake. “We have to assume he’ll find a way.”

  “So we don’t actually need to know how he’s going to do it. All we need to do is make sure he doesn’t get anywhere near the LHC,” said Fanny.

  “You’re right Fanny. You know what that means?” Liam asked.

  “Road trip,” said Jake.

  “Exactly. You guys up for another road trip?”

  “As long as we’re not walking,” said Fanny.

  Jake was already packing his laptop.

  Liam knew they had to go to CERN, but it meant leaving Emily – or at least the place where she was last seen. He felt doubt about whether he was doing the right thing, but he knew he had to do something. Sitting around a small hotel room with Fanny and Jake wouldn’t bring Emily back.

  By late afternoon, t
hey were on a plane to France where they would get a train to the small town on the Swiss/French border that was the headquarters of CERN.

  47. A PRESENT FOR MISS EMILY

  “Miss Emily, are you ready to go now to your next Master?”

  It was Hindergog. Even with my eyes closed in silent meditation, I knew his voice.

  “Ready? I don’t know if I’m ready exactly. But you’re here, so I guess it must be time to move on.”

  “Lies again Youngling. I thought we were through with lies,” croaked Madame Wong from her resting spot under the large maple tree. “You know you are ready.”

  “Yeah, okay. She’s still busting my chops though,” I said as I smiled at Hindergog.

  “Come, Miss Emily. I will take you.”

  “Okay little guy but just give me a minute to say goodbye to Madame Wong.”

  She rose from her lotus position but still came only to my chin. I had to bend down to embrace her.

  “Thank you.” Tears came to my eyes. “I’ll never forget you, Madame Wong.”

  “Madame Wong will be ghost that haunts your memory,” she cackled.

  “Yes,” I laughed. “You will haunt me for sure.”

  “You will be my special little bird, Miss Emily,” Madame Wong said then disappeared. Not only did Madame Wong disappear, but her little cottage, the giant maple tree, even the well, meadow and stream were gone, swallowed by the insubstantial mist and fog of the Netherworld. It was like it had never been there at all.

  “Hindergog, where did she go?”

  “Hard to say.”

  “But she was here, right? I’m not going loco am I? There was a little Chinese woman here, and a small house and a tree?”

  “Yes, those things were here.”

  Hindergog walked away from me into the silvery mist that engulfed us again.

  “Hindergog, where are we going?”

  “I must deliver you to your next Master.”

  “Yes, but who is it? Who am I going to see? What will my next master be like?”

  “You will see,” he said as he scurried along in front of me.

  After a while, Hindergog stopped. He turned to me with a most serious look on his face.

  “What is it Hindergog? Do you have something to tell me?”

  “Something to give you,” he said. He pulled a small item out of a pocket hidden on the inside of his tweed vest. The parcel was wrapped in beautiful purple cloth.

  “What’s this?” I asked as he handed it to me.

  “This … this is something that will help you. Something I made many, many Earth rotations ago. Something I made for my first mistress.”

  I gently opened the cloth and couldn’t believe my eyes. Inside was the most elegant dagger. It had a smooth, sharp silver blade, but the hilt was gold and encrusted with precious gems, some of a type that I had never seen before. The gem at the top was perfectly round and set in gold. At first it was milky white like an opal, but as I studied the jewel it began to change and flicker. The gem became perfectly clear and seemed lighted from within. Then I began to see pictures in my mind like a movie in my mind’s eye. Fanny and Jake were on a train. Fanny was leaning on a man that looked familiar. Who is that?

  Dad! It was my dad, and he didn’t look like a zombie anymore. It was my own dad, back from the undead. And he was on a train with Fanny and Jake. But going where?

  The jewel then clouded over again and became milky white. “Hindergog, I just had a vision. Did the jewel at the top here – did it make my vision happen?”

  “The Sight Stone. It’s exceptionally rare indeed. Probably the last one of its kind in all the universe. Yes, it enhances the sight.”

  “But these visions I have, are they telling the future or showing the past?”

  “Sometimes the sight shows us things as they are. The truth of a situation. Sometimes the possible future, sometimes past.”

  “But how do I know? I mean how am I to know which is which? How can I be certain of what I’m seeing?”

  “Ah, that is the trick now, isn’t it? With experience, Miss Emily, you will know what you see. What did you see?”

  “I saw Fanny and Jake on a train and the weird part was, they were with my dad.”

  “Why strange for your friends to be with your father?”

  “Well, because my dad has been sort of lost since my mom died.”

  “Lost? I thought he lived with my young mistress.”

  “Yes, well he lives with me but you know, it’s like he’s not quite there. He walks around and goes through the motions, but he’s not present. Do you understand?” I could see that his brow was furrowed.

  “I think I understand your meaning. You did not expect to see your father in the crystal. What do you think they were doing?”

  “I’m not sure. That’s why I’m asking you for help. They were on a train. But is that something they’re doing right now? Or something they already did? Or something they’re going to do?”

  “The one who has the vision is in best place to answer that question. I did not see your vision. I do not know the meaning of it. Reach out with your feelings about it. What did you feel when you saw the vision?”

  “Hope. Yes, I felt a surge of hope.”

  “What think you then of the vision? Past, present or future?”

  “I think it’s present. I think I was seeing what they’re doing now in our world.”

  “Probably right then.”

  “But it still doesn’t answer the question. Why would my dad be on a train with Jake and Fanny?”

  “Only time will answer that riddle,” said Hindergog.

  We walked along in silence for a while. But then I had to ask a question that had been burning in my mind.

  “Hindergog, was this Saorla’s dagger?”

  “Yes.”

  “The one she took her own life with?” I asked as I held it gingerly.

  “Yes.”

  “But Hindergog, how did you get this? You were here and Saorla in my world.”

  “It does not matter how it came to me, but it did. It found its way back to Hindergog,” he said as his eyes misted up.

  “But Hindergog, I can’t take this. You loved Saorla very much, and this is the only thing of hers that you have. You keep it, little guy. I can’t take it.”

  “You must have it Miss Emily. It belonged to Saorla, but it was forged by my hand for my first mistress and was held by every High Priestess since. You must have it now,” he said.

  “This is an honor, Hindergog, truly. But I’m not a High Priestess yet. I don’t feel ready for such a valuable thing.”

  “Miss Emily, you are next High Priestess. You must have the dagger. It will help you. Like the torc about your arm, the dagger has much magickal energy. You need it more than old Hindergog.”

  “What magick does it have Hindergog?”

  “You have experienced the Sight Stone. It is a sacred stone from my own world, the only one that still exists. It will help you with the sight, not that most of the High Priestesses of the Order of Brighid needed much help with that.”

  “Well I do. Do I have to do anything special to use it?”

  “Just by holding it, you will receive a boost to your own sight and inner guidance. But there is more. It is more than just a dagger. That object you hold can become any object that you need it to be.”

  “What? It will change into whatever I want? Oh, is that just here in the Netherworld?”

  “No, mistress, even in your world its alchemic powers are the same. It will become whatever is needed by the person who holds it.”

  “That’s amazing,” I said as I looked at it closely.

  “But know this Youngling. If the holder of the dagger ever seeks to use it for their own selfish ends instead of for the highest good of all, then it will cease to have any magickal powers at all. It will become a useless hunk of metal.”

  “So basically use it for good, not evil. Got it.”

  “It’s more than use it
for good, Miss Emily. Do not use if for your own selfish purpose. That is the key.”

  “Don’t be selfish. Okay, I can do that. Thank you, Hindergog. This truly is a wonderful surprise.” I bent down to hug the little guy.

  Hindergog seemed a bit flustered and like he didn’t know what to do. Finally, he lightly patted my back with his furry hands.

  I let him go and he smoothed his vest and walked again.

  “Miss Emily is ready now to meet her master.” It was more of a statement than a question.

  “Yes, I’m ready,” I agreed.

  For what I wasn’t sure.

  48. EMILY’S SECOND MASTER

  “Miss Emily, I must leave you.”

  “You can’t leave me,” I whined. “I’m stuck in this blasted mist again. I need you to help me find my way.”

  “You must find your final master on your own,” he replied.

  “But how, Hindergog? You gotta’ give me some kind of clue.”

  “From your desire to learn all that you need to learn to fulfill your destiny. When you have that in your heart, your master will appear to you.”

  “I should know by now that nothing here is easy.”

  “’Tis quite easy if you concentrate. Just focus, Miss Emily. I am away.” He began to dematerialize.

  “Hindergog, wait! Will I see you again?”

  “You will see me again if the fates allow.” He disappeared into the fog.

  What now? I stood there for a few minutes, not sure what to do next. I decided to focus on my task and began to walk again.

  I soon found myself rambling along rolling hills and green meadows, with stands of large oak and ash. There were little medieval cottages with straw-thatched roofs, and I walked on a path made of stones. It was a majestic place.

  As I walked I pondered my destiny. I had learned so much, but I still didn’t feel ready to face Dughall. I wasn’t sure what I needed to learn, but my time with Madame Wong had taught me that there was so much that I didn’t know and even more that I didn’t understand.

  As I pondered those things, my surroundings began to change. My stone path changed to a modern sidewalk. The small, medieval cottages replaced with Midwestern homes made of brick or clad in white siding.

  My pace quickened along with the beating of my heart. This sidewalk was all too familiar. Could it be?

  Up ahead a house. A house well known to me.

  I began to run and before long found myself at the front of my own house. But it wasn’t the house I’d left. No, the house before me had beautiful red petunias and sweet William growing in the flowerbeds. And there was a smell wafting from the house. I sniffed the air and smelled chocolate chip pancakes and coffee and bacon.

  I practically leaped to the red door. Red, just as my mother had made it. My heart felt like a train rolling down a track in my chest. My throat was dry. I don’t think I could have spit if my life depended on it. My hand reached out to the doorknob. I hesitated a minute then slowly turned the knob and opened the door.

  I stepped inside and my feelings were confirmed. Muriel wasn’t there. Wherever I was – whenever I was – it was a place and time before Muriel entered the scene. The house was filled with the golden walls and the vibrant hues of my mom’s Technicolor paintings.

  I somehow found the voice to yell out, “Mom?” There was no answer.

  I walked from the front hallway to my left into the formal living room. It was exactly as I remembered it from when my mom was alive. Nothing changed. But it was empty.

  Back out to the hallway and straight across from the formal living room into the dining room. It too was exactly the same – frozen in a time past. The large, round antique oak dining table and worn Oriental rug over the wood floor juxtaposed with my mom's large, brightly covered canvases. But that room was empty too. There wasn’t a sound in the place.

  She has to be here. She just has to be. I followed the scent of the pancakes to the kitchen.

  I didn’t slow my pace, but my feet felt like they were walking in quicksand. As I walked through the kitchen door, I saw her. Her back was to me, but I’d recognize that hair anywhere.

  “Mom!” I ran across the room to hug her.

  She turned to me. My heart nearly stopped. The woman looking at me was my mother. Same golden red mane of wavy hair cascading down her shoulders. Same emerald green eyes. She smiled the same warm, embracing smile I remembered from my childhood.

  She wrapped her arms around me, and it should have been one of the most incredible moments ever, but –

  “Wait, this isn’t right,” I said. “You have the face of my mother, but you are not my mother, are you?”

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  “I think you’re like a shadow of her, but you’re not real.”

  “You have been told that this is not the world of spirits.”

  “I know, I know. It’s just that, I want so badly to see her again. Why do you appear to me with her face? Why torture me with the sight of her?” I was at the point of tears.

  “I torture you not, dear child. You see the face that you want to see. If it is torture, then it is you that torture yourself.”

  “Who are you then?”

  “I am the one your ancestors called Brighid.”

  “You are the goddess?” I asked incredulously.

  “I am a goddess to some,” she replied. Her voice was soft and melodic yet strong. It was strange. Even though her lips moved, the voice seemed to come from someplace other than the body in front of me.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever really believed in God,” I said.

  “You are experiencing me here, now, with your senses. What do you believe now?”

  “My world has been turned so upside down ever since I first saw Hindergog. I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

  “That’s a fine answer Emily. Yes, keep your mind open. Observe. Consider. Answers will come to you in time.”

  “Goddess, I would like to see your true face. Can you show me who you truly are?”

  Her whole body and demeanor changed. She seemed to grow larger and yet at the same time less substantial. She became a shimmery vision. Instead of the common clothes of a human in my time, she wore a long gown that seemed to skim her body yet be a part of it as well.

  But it was her face that caught my attention the most. Her face was my mother’s face, but then it was Saorla. As swiftly as it became Saorla, it changed yet again to another woman with auburn hair. Her face would stay one person for maybe a few minutes, no more, then swiftly morph to another woman’s face. There were women who looked much like Saorla and my mother, but there were others with dark hair and eyes. Some had dark skin, others had fair skin. At one point I even recognized the face of Madame Wong. I was glad to see the familiar visage that I had come so accustomed to. But as soon as I got excited, the face morphed yet again into another unknown woman. Each time this bizarre metamorphosis happened, the head of this being glowed a different color.

  “Who are all these women? I wanted to see your true face.”

  “This is the true face of the goddess. Each woman from your world who has visited me here has envisioned me as she would. The goddess is created in the likeness of humans.”

  “Wild. I always thought we were created in the likeness of God. But Goddess, I want to see your true form. Please show me your natural state.”

  “My natural state is one that cannot be readily accepted by your human senses,” she softly replied.

  I was totally mesmerized by Brighid. At first her gown seemed like a silky material gently blown about her in a breeze that didn't exist. But the material – and that isn’t quite the right word for it – was like nothing in our world. It was as if someone had spun pure silver into a fabric then woven throughout it an iridescent material in shades of blue and turquoise and purple, then set the whole thing into motion. It was like she wore a shimmering, iridescent liquid.

  Being in her presence I felt content and at peace.
I wanted to stay there, with the Goddess, forever. I was with a presence of pure love. I could create anything I needed or desired. Why ever leave?

  “Emily, you will leave when the time is right. You cannot stay forever in the Netherworld.”

  “But why do I have to leave? Here I am in your presence and I feel a happiness and contentedness I’ve never felt before.”

  Her entire being became even brighter. She smiled and said, “Oh yes, and I enjoy your company too. I have always relished my time with your ancestors and the other humans who have found their way here. Such fascinating creatures, humans. Few of your kind realize the wondrous miracle of being human. To exist in your glorious bodies. Within those shells of water that house your Anam, you can create. That is a rare gift.”

  “But here in the Netherworld I’ve created anything that I want.”

  “While it is true that while here you can think and therefore conjure those things that you would like to have. But surely you must have noticed by now that your creations here are but a pale comparison to that which you create in your own space and time.”

  I hadn’t thought about it before, but it was true. I created chocolate chip pancakes in the Netherworld, but they lacked something. It wasn’t quite right.

  “I shall enjoy our time together, dear Emily, as I hope that you do as well. But your corporeal world needs you.”

  I had learned and done so much in the Netherworld that at times it was easy to forget why I was there and what I’d left behind. The faces of Fanny and Jake and even my dad flooded my mind. Thinking of my friends and my dad brought a wave of sadness over me. Madame Wong had kept me so busy, I didn’t have much time to stop and think about home.

  “I do miss my friends. I think I may even miss my dad.”

  “We shall begin your training then, dear one, so you may return to your world and those that you love.”

  “I have been here so long, at times it feels like I’ve always been in the Netherworld. But in all this time, I honestly don’t understand exactly where I am. Am I in a dream?”

  “No, not a dream. You create dreams in your own mind and are not shared with others. This we are experiencing together.”

  “It feels so dreamlike.”

  “The Netherworld is what your scientists might call a parallel world. If you think of space, your Earth and the Netherworld exist in the same space.”

  “What a mind trip. I’m not sure I understand it. Are there other worlds like this one?”

  “Oh there are many other realms though no two are exactly alike. Your world is a fairly rare occurrence in the great scheme of the web of all that is.”

  “Can people from Earth go to these other worlds, like I’ve come here?”

  “Yes.”

  “But that’s another question. How exactly did I get here? What happened?”

  “Yes, these things seem difficult to humans. You were there, in your world, standing on what felt like solid ground. The next minute, you were here in an ephemeral world of mist and fog. You have these magnificent bodies with your ability to create and then fully encounter through your senses the delights of your creations – or the horrors of your creations as the case may be. Your bodies and minds are incredible, but they also limit you as well.

  “Humans say ‘I have to see it to believe it’. Instead, you must believe it before you can see it.”

  “Are you saying that I needed to believe in the Netherworld in order to come here?”

  “That is helpful, yes, to believe. If all humans believed, all could go anywhere they wanted. In order to come here, you had some help though.

  “The Sacred Well of your ancestors was sacred because it was known to be a place where what your ancestors called the ‘veil’ between our two worlds is thin. Your scientists may find that there is a higher level than usual of electromagnetic energy at the Sacred Well.”

  “I don’t think my ancestors knew anything about electromagnetic energy.”

  “Oh, they did not have those words for it, but they were more in touch with the unseen than modern humans. They could feel the same things you felt. The hair rising on their bodies, the tingling sensation. They knew there was a strange and magickal energy in that place. And the ancient torc that you wear on your arm helped you to come here as well.”

  “The torc is magick?”

  “Magick is your human word for it. It is no mistake that the torc is made of twisted, coiled gold. Gold is an excellent conductor of energy.”

  “I never thought of it before, but it looks kind of like a bundle of wires.”

  “There is a reason the transport objects for electricity in your world are made of coiled wire.”

  “So the torc is like a conductor?”

  “It helps the wearer to achieve the resonant frequency required to come to this realm.”

  “Goddess, you have revealed so many faces. Have you been visited by many humans?”

  “Yes, I enjoyed my interaction with humans for millennia.”

  “What happened?”

  “Humans changed.”

  “How so?”

  “They stopped believing. They stopped having faith. They want ‘proof’. Everything they must see with their eyes. All experiences come through their body now. They have lost touch with Akasha.”

  “Yes, I see what you mean. I didn’t know that before I came here. But now, seeing what I’ve seen, knowing what I know … ”

  “That is it. Now you know, not just see.”

  “Yes.”

  “As humans lost faith, their need for gods and goddesses faded.”

  “But on Earth now, there are religions with billions of followers who believe in God.”

  “There may be a few that truly believe with their Anam that there is a life after they leave their body and many more hope that there will be such an existence, but even fewer still know that they are infinite beings, part of the web of all things. You do not have to believe in a god. You are god.”

  “I wish everyone could have the experience that I did in the dark wood.”

  “All can have that experience and know what you now know, if only they open their heart.”

  I had wanted so badly to have these questions answered, and I was so riveted by our conversation, that for a while, I forgot why I was there. But then the vision of Jake and Fanny with my dad on a train came back to me.

  “I’m so glad that you have answered my questions. These are things that I’ve wondered about since I came here but I was afraid to ask Madame Wong. She probably would have hit me with that darned cane of hers.”

  The Goddess softly chuckled. Her laugh filled me on the inside and brought a smile to my lips. “Yes, Madame Wong lacks the patience for questions.”

  “But I’m not here with you just to have my questions answered, am I?”

  “You tell me, young one. Are you ready to fulfill your destiny?”

  “I don’t feel ready.”

  “If you do not feel ready then you are not ready.”

  “What now?”

  “Now you delve deeper into the mysteries of Akasha.”

  49. THE DUGHALL ENIGMA

  “We must talk young Emily about our friend Dughall.”

  “From what Hindergog told me, Dughall is no friend of mine.”

  “A wise human once said, ‘If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself’. You have learned much about yourself here in this land of mist and fog, have you not?”

  “Yes, Goddess, I have.”

  “Then it is time for you to learn about your enemy. What do you think he is after?”

  “I thought you knew! You must know.”

  “It is a simple thing to know the hearts of humans, but not so simple to know the plans of one who is no longer quite human. Dughall spent many years in the Umbra Nihili, perfecting his ability to hide his thoughts and plans from all, including me. I have ideas about this dark one. But you Emily, must understand him if you are to stop him.”
>
  “I don’t think I want to know anything too deep about him.”

  “If he is successful with his quest, it will surely lead to the destruction of your world and perhaps even this one. If you are to end his quest, you will need to know something of the man that you are destined to meet.”

  Brighid told me Dughall’s story. I learned about his enslavement as a child, the horrible life of his mother, his escape and the Umbra Nihili. It was hard to listen to it. At time, I found myself feeling sorry for him. But as the story went on, my anger rose.

  I lost my mom too. Okay, she wasn’t a slave and wasn’t killed at the hands of another. But I watched her be tortured by the alien tar being. My dearest one got snatched from me too. I didn’t go on a murderous rampage.

  “It is one of the mysteries of humans. Infinitely fascinating creatures.”

  “What mystery?”

  “That two different individuals, in similar circumstances, can choose such divergent paths. You walk the path of yellow bricks. Dughall walks a path paved with the broken and scoured bones of his enemies.

  “Now you know his story. What do you think he is after?”

  I reflected on the story. It was clear to me that Dughall wanted power and revenge. But there was more to it too. After a while it dawned on me. Maybe he was more like me than I cared to think. And maybe like me, he wanted to be reunited with one he lost. As soon as I thought it Brighid’s robes shimmered ever brighter.

  “He wants to find his mother,” I said.

  “Yes, smart girl.”

  “But why does he want to come here? I have learned that this is not the place of human spirits.”

  “No, it is not.”

  “Maybe he is mistaken. Maybe he thinks it is and boy will he be disappointed when he gets here. He’ll find nothing but mist and fog.”

  “Ah, that would be the fates playing a cruel joke on one who deserves such a joke.”

  “Do you think that is what will happen then, if he makes it here?”

  “The portends of the future speak of another possibility.”

  “Then what is it? What could he hope to find here?”

  “Ah, that is one of the mysteries for which we will need to go deeper.”

  “Mysteries? You mean there is more to this place than I’ve seen?”

  “Much more to the mysteries, my Youngling. Much more.”

  “You will teach me then, won’t you? If I’m to defeat Dughall, I have to know all there is to know about this place.”

  “You will learn the mysteries that you need to complete your task. Perhaps someday you will return to learn more mysteries. Now, it is time.”

  “Time for what?”

  “Time to learn about the mystery of time.”

  “Time is a mystery?”

  “Time, space. Here, there. Yesterday, today, tomorrow. All just different names for one. If you learn this lesson, you will have a most powerful weapon, one that will help you defeat Dughall.”

  As always in the Netherworld each question was answered with a riddle wrapped inside an enigma.

  “More riddles Goddess.”

  “What is life without riddles young one?”

  I thought that I’d seen every strange thing there was to see in that place. I was wrong.

  50. PUT YOUR BOAT IN

  “Your scientists say that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light,” said Brighid.

  “Yeah, I think it was Einstein that came up with that.”

  “Very limiting, isn’t it?”

  “Well it’s a limit set by Mother Nature.”

  “Nature set no such boundary. The true boundary is the one created by the human mind. Einstein was a bright man. Very smart, but very wrong.”

  “Wrong? You’re saying Einstein was wrong? So we can travel faster than the speed of light?”

  “You can be anywhere that you want in an instant.”

  “But how is that possible? We haven’t even made it to Mars.”

  “Emily, you have seen the truth of my statement, yet still you allow what you have been told to limit you. Did you not experience the web of all things?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “You knew what it was and could sense it with all your being even though you had left your human body behind. That is because you are the web and it is you.”

  “Yes, I knew that. I could feel it.”

  “Why then child do you question your ability to be anyplace within the web whenever you want?”

  “You mean right now, if I want to, I could be on Mars in an instant?”

  “Yes. But you may want to leave your human body behind for that journey. Mars is not particularly hospitable for humans.”

  “But how?”

  “It is a choice. Your Anam is not limited by space or by time.”

  “Wait a minute. Time? Are you saying we can also travel through time?”

  “Time is a fiction created by the human mind. You have also seen that for yourself. You have been living in a world without time.”

  “I’m not sure I understand what time is. It seems impossible to go back in time because the past is over. And it seems equally impossible to travel forward to something that doesn’t exist yet. And Madame Wong’s always croaking about being in the ‘now.’”

  “Madame Wong’s advice is accurate as always. It is best to stay in your present moment and let the stream take you. But time is much like a stream.”

  A stream appeared before me. It babbled over rocks and meandered through a meadow and disappeared into a thick wood.

  “I have created a stream so very much like one you may find on your planet. Do you see how the water flows?”

  “Yes, but it flows in only one direction.”

  “’Tis true young one, ‘tis true. But what you see around you when you are in the stream, do you agree that what you observe of your surroundings depends much on where you put your boat in?”

  I had to think on that one a minute.

  “So if the stream is like time, then if I put my boat in – back there, by the big willow … ”

  “Then that is what you observe.”

  “And that’s like the past.”

  “Yes.”

  “But if I put the boat in way up there, by that big oak … ”

  “Then you are with the oak at that moment.”

  “And that is like the future?”

  “Precisely.”

  “I can put my boat in the stream wherever I want to. So are you saying that the same is true of time? I can go to any time that I want simply by choosing it?”

  “Your Anam is eternal. You already exist in all places that ever existed and all time that ever was or will be. Once you fully incorporate this into the core of your being, your Anam will then be able to travel to any place that it wants to because, you see, you are already there.”

  “Akasha.”

  “Yes.”

  I felt like I had to sit down. A sturdy chair appeared behind me. I fell into it and sat in a brain fog stupor.

  “Your bodies and all your creations seem so solid, permanent and real to you. So hard for you to accept that you can cast it aside whenever you like and be wherever and whenever you want solely by your desire to do so. And even harder to comprehend that, with practice, you can even take that body with you. This lesson has been the hardest for the humans I have met.”

  I was barely listening to the Goddess at that point. My mind raced. If I could be anywhere or anytime that I wanted I knew exactly where I wanted to be. Home. And not the one that included Muriel the Mean and Zombie Man. No, I wanted to go to the home with a mother singing and painting vibrantly colored flowers and making Sunday breakfast.

  “Yes, you can go there. But the past is a tricky business for the soul traveler.”

  Her voice brought me out of my reverie. What is she saying about tricky business?

  “What do you mean ‘tricky business’? I though you said I can go wherever and whenever I wanted to?”
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  “Oh you can but that does not necessarily mean that you should.”

  “But I was happy then. I want to feel that way again, if only for a minute or two. To see her smiling face. To hear her laughter, like a million bells ringing. To feel her hug … ”

  Tears sprang from my eyes. My longing to see my mother again was so great that I don’t think Brighid herself could stop me even if she wanted to.

  “Perhaps the best way for you to learn the tricky business of which I speak is to experience it for yourself. Yes, humans do seem to learn best by doing, even if it is painful.”

  “So I can go there now?” I could barely contain my excitement.

  “You are already there.”

  “But how do I go?”

  “The same way you let yourself be one with the web of all that is. You simply let go of your conscious mind. Be one with all that is and choose your time and place. You will be there instantly.”

  I still sat in the chair that I conjured. I sat back and relaxed my whole body. I followed my breath as Madame Wong had taught me. I focused on the in and out, in and out. My breath like a gentle wave. Once I was in a deeply relaxed meditation, I imagined a stream and I pictured myself in a rowboat. I paddled my rowboat slowly. The water lapped at my boat and the paddles made little ripples in the water. I traveled down the stream. I imagined that the stream was a path to the house of my childhood. As I relaxed and focused on my breath and the stream, I felt the chair beneath me disappear, but I didn’t fall to the ground. Focus Emily. I knew that if I lost focus, I was likely to fall on my keister.

  The boat followed the current down the placid stream. Soon I was enveloped by a thick fog and couldn’t see more than two feet ahead of me. It seemed like an eternity that I drifted slowly in that fog, all the while I concentrated as hard as I could on the house filled with my mother’s laughter.

  The mists cleared and the fog lifted. I was no longer in a boat floating down a gentle stream. I was walking up a very familiar sidewalk toward a very familiar house.

  It was like déjà vu all over again. Will I finally have what I’ve hoped for?

  51. THE SLIPPERY SLOPES OF TIME

  As I walked up the wooden steps and onto the creaky porch, it felt different than when I’d first met the Goddess. The house was no longer shrouded in mist. This was utterly familiar. Same red door. Same snapdragons and sweet William in the front flowerbed.

  My face lit up in a huge smile. I was home.

  I opened the door and the smell of chocolate chip pancakes filled my nostrils. Coffee, bacon. Sunday morning breakfast at my house.

  I practically ran to the back of the house and to the sunny kitchen. I couldn’t wait to hug my mom once more. I wanted to wrap my arms around her and bury my face in her hair, all earth and spice. And I wanted to hear her laugh.

  But as I neared the kitchen, I stopped and listened to their voices. I heard my mom laugh as if at the funniest joke ever. My dad chuckled and flipped the page of his newspaper. My dad chuckling? I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard my dad laugh.

  And another familiar voice. I knew the voice as if it was my own. It is my own.

  I crept down the hall and peered around the corner to get a view of the kitchen scene. My mom stood with her back to me and flipped a pancake on the griddle. My dad was hidden behind his paper with a cup of steaming coffee in front of him. He wasn’t a zombie back then, but he did bury himself in his paper every Sunday morning.

  And sitting at the breakfast bar counter was another familiar face. It was a seven year old me. I was holding court, trying my best to make her laugh. I loved to see her smile. And from the looks of it, I was doing a good job of it. I had my cheeks stuffed full of pancake and was acting like a monkey while eating. I loved making her laugh.

  A dilemma occurred to me. If I barged into the kitchen, they were going to wonder who I was. They may not believe me. And if they did believe me, I couldn’t very well pick up my life where I left it off. I’m fourteen now, not seven. The past already had a me in it.

  What do they always say in science fiction movies? If you go back in time, you can screw up the whole time line and change the future. What if my little seven-year-old self saw me and that screwed up her head to know her future?

  My heart thumped loudly in my chest. I wanted to run into my mom’s arms. She was so close. And it was really her, not a goddess or ghost of her. Her arms would be warm and soft and real, just like I remembered. I wanted just one more hug. One more look into her eyes. One more smile on her face just for me.

  Maybe there is a way.

  I crept back down the hall and outside. I took a deep breath and rang the doorbell. I knew my dad wouldn’t take his nose out of his paper to get the door. And my mom didn’t let me answer the door when I was little. She has to come. She just has to.

  I closed my eyes and waited. I tried to remember to breathe so I didn’t pass out.

  I heard the door open. I opened my eyes. There she was.

  “Hello. Can I help you?”

  “I hope so.” My voice cracked.

  “Do I know you? You look familiar.”

  “You know me very well, Mom.”

  She lost her easy smile and all the color drained from her face. She didn’t exactly look frightened, but she took on a serious tone.

  “Emily?”

  “Yes. It’s me. Seven years from now.”

  She yelled back into the house, “I’ll be back in a minute. Liam, can you take your pancakes off the griddle?” She shut the door behind her and stepped out onto the porch.

  “I’m not even going to ask how, but I do want to know why. Why have you come here?”

  What to tell her? If I told her the truth, she’d know she was going to die. That seemed a heavy thing to lay on someone. And then there was the rest. If I told her the truth, she’d know her daughter would be in such grave danger.

  “I had to see you again.” Tears began to roll down my cheeks.

  Then it came. It was the thing I’d missed most about her and the thing I’d most longed for. She enveloped me in her arms and wrapped me in her warmth and her scent. I had grown a lot since I was seven and was almost as tall as her. My head came to her shoulder and I rested it there. I breathed in the warmth of her body and the earthy spiciness of her. She held me for a good long time and I let her. I let her hold me and stroke my hair as I cried and cried and cried.

  I didn’t want to learn more about streams of time and Dughall and the Netherworld. I didn’t want to save the world or be a warrior or a priestess. I wanted to stay there, in that place, with my mother.

  I wanted to find a way to stay. I could be a long lost cousin. That’s it! A cousin that they took in.

  “Emily, tell me the truth. No lies between us, ever. Right?”

  “No lies.”

  “Okay then. Why are you here?”

  I couldn’t get the words out.

  “Does something happen to me in the future?”

  I nodded yes.

  “I see. And you came back here to see me again because you miss me?”

  Again, I nodded my agreement with her words.

  “But there’s more, isn’t there? You’re involved in something. It must be something big. How else could you do this – I mean be here?”

  Again I nodded.

  “Are you in trouble?”

  “Not exactly trouble. Danger maybe, but I’m not the one causing trouble.”

  “Good. I mean that you’re not in trouble. But danger, I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “I don’t want to be in danger anymore. I don’t want to go back and save the world. I want to stay here with you.”

  “Oh Emily, I know you do. I know you do sweetheart.” She lightly stroked my cheek. “But you can’t stay here. This isn’t your time any longer.”

  “I know, but I can be a cousin or something. We can make up a story, no one will know any better.”

  “But if you have a mission in you
r own time and you don’t go back, who will complete that task in your place? And what if the task isn’t completed at all?”

  I didn’t have answers for those questions. Okay, I had answers, but I didn’t like them. The truth was, there wasn’t anyone to take my place. I can see it now. I’m the only one in my own time and space with the knowledge to take Dughall down.

  “But … I miss you so much,” I sputtered out through huge tears.

  My mom’s eyes misted too. This was pretty heavy stuff for her to take in. But she handled it with grace as always.

  “Emily, listen to me.” She put her hands on my shoulders. “You are my daughter, and no matter what time or place we’re in, we are always with each other. Don’t you know that by now? Don’t you know that I’m always here?” She put her hand on my heart.

  “I know, I know.” Tears spilled down my face. “But it isn’t the same. No amount of enlightenment is going to take away the fact that sometimes I just want a hug from my mom.”

  She hugged me tightly to her again. “I know, dear Em, I know. It must be so hard for you. We’re so close.”

  “You don’t know the half of it.” I remembered in a flash my years of torture at the hands of Muriel.

  “Muriel? Oh no. Well, please try to remember that you are stronger than her Emily.”

  “I don’t know about that. She packs a pretty mean back hand.”

  “I don’t mean just physically. I mean your spirit. It’s strong. Inside, Muriel is quite weak.”

  “I don’t think I have to worry about her anymore. Before I left, I think I taught her to back off from me.”

  “So you’re going back?”

  “I’m going to have to do the right thing here, aren’t I?”

  She simply nodded and her eyes filled with tears.

  “Don’t cry. Oh please, I don’t want to see you cry.”

  “These are just a mother’s tears of joy and pride. Look at you! What a beautiful and radiant girl you’re growing up to be.”

  “I don’t feel beautiful. Mostly I feel awkward and out of place.”

  “Oh, that will pass. You’re almost through that, I promise. Stand tall and remember who you are – the real you – in here.” She again pressed her hand gently to my chest. “And remember Emily, I’m always with you.”

  “I know. I know that now.”

  “Good. Now, I have to go back inside and tend to a precocious young girl and what is probably a pan full of burnt pancakes.”

  “Yeah, he didn’t take those off, did he?” I said with a chuckle.

  “Emily, take care of yourself. You’re stronger than you think.”

  “Yeah, probably.”

  We hugged for a long while and finally our tears subsided. She stepped away, turned her back and walked into the house. As she closed the door, I saw her smiling face one last time.

  I stood there for what seemed like an eternity. I wasn’t sure it was physically possible for me to move my feet, but eventually I got them to walk down the sidewalk.

  As I walked, I thought about my mom and how happy it made me to see her again. But soon my thoughts wandered to the Goddess and to Dughall and then to Fanny and Jake and Zombie Man. They truly needed me. They were counting on me, and I couldn’t let them down.

  As I was thinking that, I realized that I was back in the mist and fog. I looked up and there was Brighid, her shimmering face changing and morphing.

  “You found your way back.”

  “You sound a bit surprised.”

  “Perhaps. You long so much to be in the presence of the corporeal form of your mother. I admit that I doubted whether your devotion to your friends and father was enough to draw you back.”

  “I’m not sure what drew me back, but I’m here anyway.”

  “Yes, and I am glad that you chose to come back. Did you enjoy visiting your past?”

  “Well yes, in a way. But I see what you meant. It is tricky business. There was no place for me there. So I’m guessing if I go to my future it will be the same. I’ll already be there?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m afraid I gave my mom too much information. She knows that she’s going to die. Will that affect the timeline? Will it change things?”

  “It unfolds how it unfolds.”

  “I’m not sure I’m ready, Goddess, to take on Dughall. I don’t know what to do yet. I feel lost.”

  “You will know when it is time.”

  “But that’s just it, we don’t have time. I need to act now. I’ve already been here so long.”

  “Emily, you know and yet you do not allow yourself to see. Did you not just experience with your own senses your ability to slip into any time that you want?”

  “Yes, but if I’m already there – well, I hardly see the sense of it.”

  “Ah, but for many months of your Earth time, you have been here, not there. Here in a place of no time.”

  The realization of what she was saying took root in my brain. She just said many earth months.

  But then that second part. If I had been in the Netherworld, then I wasn’t really in the human world. Will the mind trip of this place never end?

  “So you’re saying that I can just slip into whatever time I want since I left and voila! Problem solved?"

  “Yes. You know this to be true.”

  It was like a large weight lifted off my shoulders. I didn’t have to hurry. I could take my time. There was no time in the Netherworld. All the time and yet no time.

  “Okay, so now what? What else must I know before I can take care of our Dughall problem?”

  “Now fair Emily, you must rest. It has been a long time since you allowed your body to sleep. Rest and when you wake, we will complete the training you need for your task.”

  The Goddess pointed to a door that appeared out of the mist. I opened it and went inside to a cozy room with a large bed covered in pillows and a plush duvet cover. I crawled in, covered up and drifted off instantly to a deep sleep.

  I needed that rest. It was the last time I slept for a very long time.

  52. DUGHALL AT THE LHC

  “Sir, I think there’s a bit of any error in your instructions for the experiment.”

  “There are no errors,” Dughall coolly replied.

  “But Sir, if we enter the codes you wrote, it will pulse the particle streams at a very high frequency.”

  “Yes.”

  “But Sir, we don’t know what will happen to the machinery at such a high frequency pulse.”

  “I do.”

  The young man stood with his mouth hanging slightly open. Was his boss a mad man? Or was he as in command as he seemed?

  “Are you going to input the program or shall I find someone more capable?” Dughall asked.

  “I … I can do it. I will do it. It’s just … well I have to tell you my concern here. No one has tested this. We don’t know what will happen down there.”

  “Mr. … what’s your name?”

  “Schaeffer, Sir. Ted Schaeffer.”

  “Mr. Ted Schaeffer, I am well aware of the capabilities of this machine. I would not order this program if I was not sure of the outcome. Now, you have exactly one minute to get to your station and click at the keys or I will find someone to replace Mr. Ted Schaeffer.”

  Ted Schaeffer practically ran from the room. He was uneasy going about the day’s work, but he was even more uneasy staying in the room with his project supervisor. He knew it was crazy, but he had a strange feeling that his boss wouldn’t just fire him from the project, but meant to harm him if he didn’t comply.

  Once Ted Schaeffer had left the room, Macha said, “Dughall, you’re enjoying every minute of this, aren’t you?”

  “Why, whatever do you mean dear little Macha?” Dughall batted his eyes coyly at her.

  “You know what I mean. Toying with the humans.”

  “Toying with Mr. Ted Schaeffer? Why ever would you say that?” Dughall had a hint of a smirky smile on his face. When Dughall smiled he
looked like a cross between a snake and hyena.

  “You enjoy sitting back, like the cat with a mouse, stringing them along, luring them step by step to your trap.”

  “Ah, I am not setting a trap for them, Macha. They are of no consequence to me one way or the other. But if they get caught in a trap, well so be it.”

  Dughall sat back and monitored the progress of Mr. Ted Schaeffer. He had never seen a human move his fingers so fast on the keys of a computer machine. The man typed as if his life depended on it. Dughall smiled to himself at this thought because, of course, Mr. Ted Schaeffer’s life did depend on it.

  53. HOSPITALITY, CERN STYLE

  Liam, Fanny and Jake arrived at CERN but made it no farther than the first security gate.

  Fanny had suggested that they arrange for a tour to get inside. But Jake said that plan was too ‘Scooby Doo’ and Liam had agreed with him.

  Instead, they went with Liam’s straightforward plan. Since Liam was a theoretical physicist, he suggested that he ask to speak to someone inside. He had thought that they would listen to him.

  But Liam was wrong. Apparently CERN thinks anyone who shows up at their gate claiming there’s a terrorist inside their compound is either a loon or a terrorist themselves.

  Why the guard gate went for option #2 when approached by a middle-aged guy and two teenagers from Chicago, one can never know. They weren’t sent away, but they weren’t allowed in either. Instead, they were escorted to a separate building by military-type security guards.

  Liam felt like he was being hauled to Guantanamo Bay. Branded a potential terrorist meant CERN could throw them in a room without windows, no one phone call, and pretty much hold them there was long as they pleased.

  “This is crazy!” Fanny yelled when they were finally alone in their ‘hospitality suite’.

  “Shh! You want them to hear?” Jake scolded.

  “I don’t care if they hear. They’ve got their heads up their butts so far they’re probably hearing bowel sounds. Oh, sorry Mr. Adams.”

  “It’s okay Fanny. I have to say I agree with you.”

  “I don’t care where their heads are, we gotta’ get out of here,” Jake whispered.

  “Captain Obvious, as usual,” Fanny replied. “And why are you whispering?”

  “’Cause, Einstein, this place is probably bugged like crazy.”

  The three looked at each other silently.

  “Jake’s probably right,” Liam whispered. “If you think you have terrorists in your custody, you’d want to spy on them while you’re giving them your ‘hospitality.’”

  That’s what the guards called it. They said, “Please enjoy our hospitality while we check out your credentials,” then they locked the door of the small tin can of a building. It had only one room filled with four bunk beds and a small bathroom.

  The situation seemed so improbable to Liam. What kind of credentials are two fourteen-year-old kids supposed to have anyway? Their reality hit Liam like a ton of bricks. He was harboring two runaways, one of who faked a passport (federal felony) and both of who recently robbed an ancient grave of a protected antiquity (an international crime).

  “What was I thinking, bringing you two here with me? I was trying to keep you kids out of trouble. I may have just gotten you into even bigger trouble,” he said.

  “It’s not your fault, Mr. Adams,” Jake offered.

  “Yeah, we came ‘cause we wanted to,” said Fanny. “We’d have followed you here even if you said we couldn’t come.”

  “But this isn’t your fight. It’s mine now.”

  “Wrong. It’s our fight. We promised Em. We’re not going to abandon her now,” said Jake.

  “Yeah, we’ve come too far to be dealt out,” said Fanny.

  “Well, now I don’t think you could be ‘dealt out’ even if you wanted to be.”

  “If only they believed us,” Jake said.

  “Yeah, ‘cause if they don’t, then they’re going to get an unwelcome surprise.” Fanny made a slashing motion across her throat.

  “Gee, Fan, no wonder we were thrown into this tin can. You’re going around making threatening statements and talking smack.”

  “I’m not threatening. I’m just saying we told them the truth. If they’d bother to remove their head from the dark place it’s in, they might investigate and find out there’s a guy in their facility that wasn’t there a few weeks ago. And if they’d only check they’d see he doesn’t quite add up.” Fanny raised her voice to make sure any listening ears would be sure to hear her.

  “You’re probably right Fanny,” Liam said.

  “But what’s he going to do here, Mr. Adams? And if he’s here, how’d he get in. As we’ve seen, security is high.”

  “My guess is he faked credentials to get inside.”

  “Prolly killed someone,” Fanny offered.

  “Now why would you say that? You’re so melodramatic.”

  “You heard Hindergog’s story. This guy’s like evil incarnate. He killed plenty of people back then, in Saorla’s time. You think he wouldn’t kill some wimpy scientists dude and steal his cred to get in here?”

  “You’ve got a point,” Jake conceded. “Okay, so maybe he could find a way in. But then what? I mean, how could he open a portal? For Em to cross over, she needed to be at the portal at the Sacred Grove and she had to have the torc and say a magick spell.”

  Liam had pondered Jake’s question nonstop since they’d left Dublin. He felt close to an answer, but it was still hovered just outside his reach.

  The three sat in the bunkhouse for several hours before Liam gave in to exhaustion and stretched out on one of the bunks and dozed off.

  Liam slept fitfully on the hard cot and dreamed. He was jolted wide-awake by the words ‘pulsed resonant frequencies’ repeating in his mind. It was as if someone had shouted the words into his ear and woke him up.

  Fanny and Jake were asleep. Liam bolted up and shook them both awake.

  “I’ve got it. I know how he’s going to do it,” he nearly shouted.

  “What? How?” Jake asked sleepily as he yawned.

  “By pulsing resonant frequencies,” he stated matter-of-factly.

  Fanny and Jake looked at Liam as if he had suddenly sprouted a second head.

  “Huh?” asked Fanny.

  “The giant magnets of the LHC. That’s why he’s here. If he pulses the frequencies of the magnets at an extremely high rate of speed … It might just work.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Jake. “What would that do?”

  “Well, it has been largely theoretical you see. The Philadelphia experiment and other more fringe stuff is based on this principle. It’s theorized by some that if you rapidly pulse and focus really large electromagnetic frequencies, you could transport an object to other places instantaneously.”

  “Or people?”

  “Yes, or people. At least that’s what some have theorized. But it has been fringe science, not something that anyone with credentials has worked on.”

  “Okay, you lost me at the word pulse,” said Fanny sleepily.

  “Shut up Fan, this is serious.”

  “Don’t get your tiny pants in a twist Jake. I don’t follow all you’re saying Mr. Adams, but if you think you’ve got it, I believe you.”

  “Thanks Fanny. But I don’t know what good any of it does us when we’re stuck in the hospitality suite.”

  54. DUGHALL AT CERN

  As Liam, Fanny and Jake tried to find a way out of their situation, in a room littered with dirty coffee cups and half-empty Coke cans, a bored young security officer listened to the idle chatter of his American ‘guests’. He spoke very little English so he didn’t see the point in him being the one assigned to this task. These people must not be much of a threat or else they would have assigned someone else. He was low man on the totem pole so he always got stuck with the cession de merde.

  Little did the three American ‘guests’ know that they needn’t hush their voices or whi
sper to keep secrets. They also didn’t know that loudly emphasizing a point wouldn’t help either. For all intents and purposes, their communication was completely unmonitored, a fact which proved to be a helpful turn of events for Dughall.

  Mr. Ted Schaeffer’s hands worked feverishly as he typed the coded instructions to make the machine a mile underground perform as commanded. The instructions were highly unusual and Ted Schaeffer knew it.

  Most of the experiments at CERN were straightforward enough. Power it up, cool it way down, and when everything was a go, accelerate particles, collect the bits of stuff created by the collisions, then send all the data to a huge conglomeration of computers around the world to crunch numbers.

  An immense and complex machine but a relatively straightforward idea. Spin, collide and collect.

  But the experiment that his strange new supervisor handed him was unlike anything else. He would have gone over Mr. Dughall’s head too if it weren’t for the nagging feeling that his life depended on his fingers quickly and accurately entering the codes commanded by his new boss.

  Ted Schaeffer wasn’t a physicist so it wasn’t his job to know all the intricacies of the reason for an experiment. But he was an engineer, and he knew the machine. And because he knew the machine, he knew that oscillating the frequencies of the magnetic energy created underground in the collider as rapidly as requested by Mr. Dughall could have disastrous effects.

  But the guy seemed like he knew what he was doing. He was so sure of himself. Maybe I’m wrong. Ted Schaeffer cast his doubt aside and typed like a madman.

  Even at the feverish pace that Mr. Ted Schaeffer typed, it took days for him to enter the complex instructions required to order the machine to perform as Dughall required. Dughall’s impatience almost got the better of him. It took extraordinary self-control, not to mention a swift kick from Macha, to keep Dughall from strangling Ted Schaeffer a few times.

  “Remember your prize,” Macha said. Her tiny body delivered an amazingly strong kick to Dughall’s behind just in time to stop him from putting his hands around Ted Schaeffer’s neck and squeezing the life from him.

  It took weeks of work at CERN, not to mention over a millennium in the Umbra Nihili, but finally the day was at hand. All was aligned. Finally, Dughall would triumph.

  “Macha, repeat to me the instructions one more time so that I am sure that your tiny faerie brain gets it right,” hissed Dughall.

  “After more than a thousand years of putting up with you, I still do not know why I do, you awful piece of rotted human flesh,” Macha retorted. “I will repeat your instructions though even a faerie with half its wits would find it no harder than beating their wings.”

  “Just tell me woman. We have only one shot.”

  “All right, all right. It is simple. In one hour, you will make your way down to the accelerator and drink the potion I brewed for you. Remember, the protective effect will last only five minutes at most, so you must be right on the mark. If you are there any longer, you will freeze instantly.”

  “I know that Macha. You are telling me my part. What I am concerned about, my little gnat, is that you remember your part.”

  “At exactly the appointed time, I will press that green button and put in the code you have typed for me. I will hit the enter button then sit back and watch all hell break loose.”

  “If all goes right, yes, you will have quite a show. Hundreds of crazed humans will go insane with fear at the same time. I am only sorry that I will miss out on the fun.”

  “If all goes as planned, you will be through the portal and on your way. But Dughall, if this works … ”

  “What do you mean if? My calculations are exact. It will work.”

  “Yes, well when it works, what will happen here? The portal you create will be tremendously unstable. It could rip the fabric of space time.”

  “That is the idea my dear Macha.”

  “But what will happen to it? Will it grow? Or collapse on itself?”

  Dughall had expected her question and was surprised that it had taken Macha so long to ask it. She was an annoying flea of a faerie at times, but she was exceedingly bright for her kind. The tiny remnant of humanity still hidden somewhere inside Dughall had some unpleasant feelings about what may happen to Macha when he created the anomaly.

  The truth was that there would be a mighty explosion that would destroy the machine the humans had spent so much money and time to create. But since it would occur a mile underground, it likely would have no effect on the humans up top.

  But that wouldn’t be the end of the story. And he couldn’t bring himself to tell Macha the truth. If creating the portal took the life of Macha as well as all the others at CERN that was of no matter to Dughall. It was a sacrifice that he was willing for them to make.

  55. STUCK INSIDE A TIN CAN

  “We can’t stay in this tin can forever,” whined Fanny. “We have to do something.”

  “How long do you think they can legally hold us here?” asked Jake.

  “I don’t think they’re concerned with the legality of holding us,” said Liam.

  “These idiots aren’t going to stop Dughall. We’ve got to do it,” said Fan.

  “Do you have any ideas? Because the last idea I had got us into indefinite detention,” Liam said.

  “First we gotta’ escape this place.”

  “Good luck with that,” said Jake.

  Fanny ignored Jake’s remark. “I’ve been laying here looking up at that vent and thinkin’ I can fit into that. It’s got to go somewhere.”

  “And what about the cameras up there watching us?” Jake pointed to the security cameras mounted from the ceiling.

  Fanny thumbed her nose directly at the nearest ceiling mounted camera.

  “Nice, real nice. We’re in serious trouble and you’re being a wise ass. Are you trying to get us sent to prison?”

  “Okay, genius, since you’re so smart, why don’t you come up with a way to divert their attention while I shimmy my butt through that vent so I can try to find a way to get us out of here.”

  Jake and Fanny’s bickering became like a background buzz to Liam as he concentrated on the potential of Fanny’s plan.

  “Hey, you two stop arguing for a minute. The cameras don’t move”

  “Yeah, so?” asked Jake.

  “So, that means that we can move them. Then, when none of them are focused on the vent, Fanny can get into it without being seen.”

  “Brilliant Mr. A,” said Fanny.

  “I don’t know about brilliant, but it’s worth a shot.”

  Liam boosted Jake up so that he could adjust all the cameras, taking care not to be seen while doing it. It wasn’t easy, but within a half an hour, they cameras were repositioned so that none of them looked directly on the vent Fanny planned to climb into.

  “Ready, Fan?” Liam asked.

  “As ready as I’ll ever be. What should I look for?”

  “A room without anyone in it would be nice,” Jake said.

  “I know that nub. I mean, any particular kind of room you can think of?”

  “If you can find a supply room or equipment room, that might be a safe bet,” Liam offered.

  “Okay, the man with the plan, that’s what I’m talking about. Well, here goes.”

  Jake and Liam boosted Fanny up to the vent. She easily opened the vent screen and hoisted herself into the airshaft.

  “Yuck! This place is disgusting.”

  “Oh please, it can’t be any worse than your room,” said Jake.

  “Shut it nerd.”

  That was the last thing they heard Fanny say. Jake and Liam sat quietly and listened to Fanny’s body banging the metal airshaft as she shimmied along. After about five minutes, it was once again silent as Fanny disappeared into the bowels of CERN. All they could do was sit and wait for Fanny to return with a key so they could escape their tin can prison.

  56. DUGHALL’S PLAN IN ACTION

  With the help of Macha’s en
chantments, Dughall was able to slip past any watching eyes and into the elevator shaft. He rode the elevator for many minutes as it made its way a mile underground to the belly of the giant collider. Dughall had synchronized his watch to the collider’s clock many times. He’d waited over a thousand years to achieve his goal. He wasn’t about to let a stupid mistake stand between him and the portal.

  Patience was not Dughall’s forte, but the task required precision. He could wait a few minutes.

  As he stared at his watch, it seemed as though time moved backwards. He waited by the door to the collider corridor for the right moment to down the draught Macha had brewed for him. He stared so intently at his watch that it almost hypnotized him. Dughall nearly missed the exact moment to drink the potion.

  It is time. Dughall chugged the vile and viscous liquid down in one big gulp. Macha made this taste foul just to spite me.

  As planned, Dughall waited exactly one minute then detonated the explosive he had planted at the door hinges. The small explosion was enough to blast open the time locked steel door. It was time to test whether Macha’s potion worked or not. At -271°, if it didn’t work, he wouldn’t have time to think about it.

  Dughall pushed the door off of its blasted hinges. He knew as soon as he did that Macha’s potion had worked. If it hadn’t, the deep chill of the collider would have frozen him nearly instantly. Instead, it was as if there was an insulating bubble around his body that protected him from the deep freeze. But Dughall had not a second to spare. He raced down the interior corridor of the circular collider as fast as his legs could carry him. He knew that it was about a quarter mile to the five-story high mega magnet that he was looking for. He had timed himself and knew that if he ran as fast as he could, he could make it there in about two minutes.

  Dughall didn’t need to search for the magnet. Dughall knew as soon as he saw it that his plan had worked. He had reached his destination. He could see the portal and there was no one to stop him.

  Though he had only about one, maybe two minutes to spare, Dughall couldn’t help but stare at the tremendous sight. The giant superconducting magnet was itself enough to inspire awe. Though built by human hands, it was a masterpiece of technology and had a beauty of its own. Miles of wires, circuits and electronics bound together in a colorful symmetry.

  But topping it by far was the extraordinary beauty of the portal that lay before him. In the center of the giant magnet was a small hole, no larger than a small child, dwarfed by the size of the magnet itself. A silvery mist poured from the hole. It was both ethereal and majestic. Dughall also heard a faint hissing sound, like electricity flowing through power lines built by humans to conduct electricity from one place to another.

  In the few seconds that he had stared at the portal it grew twice its size. He knew that he had less than a minute before it became unstable and was gone forever. I must act now or lose the opportunity I have waited so long for.

  If anyone else had been in the corridor with Dughall at that moment, they would have seen something truly rare and a bit disturbing. Dughall smiled.

  57. ESCAPE FROM THE TIN CAN

  Fanny had been gone only about half an hour when Jake and Liam heard what sounded like a large clap of thunder.

  “What was that?” asked Jake.

  Liam quickly walked the five steps required to reach the tiny barred window and looked outside. Not a cloud in the sky.

  “There’s no weather out there. It must have been an explosion,” he said.

  They looked at each other in silence for a moment. Both knew that what they had heard was an explosion and they knew who had caused it.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” asked Jake.

  “If you’re thinking that that clump nugget is trying his best to blow this place to smithereens, yes, that’s what I’m thinking.”

  “And are you also thinking that we can’t sit here one more minute?”

  “Yep, I’m right with you. We may have a chance now. With the explosion, they’re probably distracted. Old Dughall might have given us the diversion we’ve been waiting for.”

  “Right. But we’re locked in here.”

  “The only way out is the way Fanny left and there’s no way I’ll be able to fit through there,” said Liam.

  A few minutes later, they heard a scratching and thumping noise from overhead.

  “You’re not locked in anymore,” said Fanny. She jumped down from the air vent.

  “Fan, it’s good to see you and all, but you were supposed to unlock us from the outside.”

  “Don’t get your shorts in a knot, Jakester. I’ve got the keys.” Fanny jingled the keys at Jake. “We can unlock it from the inside. I didn’t want to be seen coming in that way.”

  All three ran to the door. Fanny’s fingers shook as she tried to work the keys to find the right one to unlock the door.

  “Hurry, Fan,” said Jake.

  “I’m going as fast as I can man. There’s like 20 keys on this thing. Hey, did you guys hear that explosion?”

  “Yes,” answered Liam.

  “You guessing it’s that butthead Dughall?” Fanny asked.

  “That’s our guess.”

  “Yeah, so hurry. We gotta’ get to the control room of this thing and make sure they’re shutting down everything before the whole place blows,” Jake implored.

  Fanny found the right key and the door swung open into a deserted hallway. They ran down the corridor and found the door to the outside. They had been holed up in that tiny room plus a bath for days. All three took a moment to breathe in the fresh air and feel the warm sun on their skin as they stepped into the outdoors. But they knew time was not a luxury for them at that moment.

  “This way,” said Fanny. “When I was taking my little trip through the air shaft I think I found out where to go.”

  They ran as fast as they could, following Fanny closely. They weren’t the only ones running. People were coming out of every building at the facility running to exactly the spot Fanny led them.

  “By the looks of it, we’re heading in the right direction,” Liam said.

  They followed the crowds and, like salmon swimming upstream together, soon found themselves in the thick of command central. It would seem that after an explosion in their facility that CERN would go to high alert for terrorists. Instead, the explosion and ensuing alarms and shut down protocols made such a huge distraction, the trio was able to breeze into the main operations room without anyone trying to stop them.

  In the middle of it all was one poor young guy getting his rear chewed out by a whole gang of scientists. Security guards surrounded his chair as gray-hairs fired question after question at him. He looked like he was about to vomit on their shoes.

  The three fought their way through the crowd to get a closer look.

  “You entered these codes, even though you knew that they were likely to cause a problem?”

  “Yes, Sir … I mean Mr. Dughall … well, he ordered it, Sir. And I figured he knew what he was doing as he’s the physicist here, not me.”

  “You figured? Well you figured wrong, young man. Now we have a class A mess down there. The whole of magnet number two is blown to bits and who knows what else is destroyed.”

  “Yeah, it will take weeks for it to warm up enough for anyone to go down and have a look,” offered another scientist.

  “What do you want us to do with this fella?’” asked one of the security guards.

  “Probably ought to take him to a holding room until the police can question him thoroughly about this,” said the man who appeared to be the head of the operation.

  “Wait,” Liam shouted.

  All at once, the grey-hairs turned to see who was interceding in their business.

  “Wait,” he said again as he approached the small crowd around the poor chap in the chair. “We have to stop him,” Liam said.

  “Stop who? And who is this guy? Hey, you don’t have credentials to be here,” said the head scientist.r />
  “Look, we came here to warn you about Dughall, but your security guards there wouldn’t listen to us. We’ve been here … how long have we been here?”

  Jake looked at his watch. “Two days.”

  “Yeah, like he said, we came here two days ago to warn you about this guy and your fellas there locked us up in one of your ‘hospitality suites.’”

  The head guy swiftly turned his eyes on the security guards and glared even harder at them than he had glared at the poor man in the chair.

  “You knew of a possible breach in our security two days ago, and you did nothing!” he shouted.

  “Well their story Sir, if you heard it, well we thought they were either kooks or terrorists themselves trying to make a diversion.”

  The head guy turned to me. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Liam Adams. I'm a theoretical physicist from the University of Chicago. It’s a long story how I got this information about Mr. Dughall, but you have to believe me, that small explosion was just the start. We have to get down there to stop him, now.”

  “Mr. Adams, I don’t know how you know something that our so-called intelligence here didn’t pick up on, but if you’re a physicist, then you must know that we can’t just pop down there. The temperature will kill anyone who tries to enter the corridor. And your Mr. Dughall tried to go down there, he’d die instantly. So I don’t think we have to worry about him any longer.”

  “Well, on that you’d be wrong,” chimed in Fanny.

  “Who is this girl and why is she here?” asked the scientist.

  “She’s with me. Look, I know this is hard to believe. I didn’t believe any of this at first either. But this guy Dughall, he’s not exactly … human.”

  There was a silence in the room so thick you could cut it. Then the small group started with furtive looks at one another. The security guards said, ‘See, we told you he's a kook’, with just their eyes.

  “He was human, like a thousand years ago, but now … well he’s been brought back from the near dead so I guess you’d call him a mummy.” said Jake.

  “Or a zombie,” offered Fanny.

  “Okay, I’ve had enough of this. I don’t need any more distractions. Security, take Mr. Schaeffer here and these American guests back to holding for questioning by the police.”

  Just as they were about to be hauled off again for another stint of detention, there came a loud shout above the noise of the crowd.

  “Sir, Sir. You gotta’ see this. You’re not going to believe it,” said one of the security guards at a monitor on the other side of the room. The whole crowd shifted to the other side of the room where the guard was watching a security tape.

  “What have you got?” asked the lead scientist.

  “Here is the tape from the camera focused on magnet housing number two, the one that exploded. Look here at two minutes, ten seconds before the explosion.”

  All eyes stared at the screen as it clearly showed a tall, dark haired man walking toward the magnet. The camera was trained on the magnet housing so it showed the man only from behind. But clearly there was a man walking toward it.

  Within seconds, a more extraordinary thing showed on the screen. There, in the magnet itself, a small hole was forming. It wasn’t a hole from an explosion, but was instead like a window opening that appeared to look into another world entirely. As each second passed, the opening grew larger and larger as what appeared to be fog billowed out.

  And then, clear as day, Dughall ran into the center of that opening and disappeared. He was there one instant, gone the next.

  Within seconds of Dughall’s disappearing act, the portal that he had created exploded. The camera picked up the fire and shrapnel coming toward it, then nothing. The explosion knocked out the camera too.

  For a second time in less than ten minutes, you could hear a pin drop in a crowd of no less than twenty-five people. And then all eyes turned to Liam, Fanny and Jake. There was an awkward, stunned silence until the lead scientist spoke in a hushed voice.

  “I don’t know how you knew these things, Mr. Adams, but all that you stated appears to be true. I’ve seen the evidence for it, but I still can’t believe it. But somehow this man … or thing … was able to breach our security, obtain a willing partner to enter his malicious code, and enter a facility cooled to minus 271° without freezing to death.

  “And to top it off, he created an anomaly that somehow created what appears to be a wormhole or transportation device of some kind. The perpetrator of this horrendous crime has fled from justice.”

  “Sir, I don’t mean to stop you, but the other truth is that what he created down there is extremely unstable. I’ve done some calculations while in your holding tank and we need to act fast to get this thing under control. We’re wasting precious time here.”

  “You’ve already started calculations?” he asked.

  “Yes, well, as I said, I had a pretty fair idea what he was up to. I started working out calculations for what would likely happen if he succeeded and, well, it’s not a pretty sight.”

  “Mr. Adams, I sincerely apologize for all that you and your kids have been through. I need to impose on you again though and ask if you can please work with my team here. Share with them all that you know. Bring them up to speed so that we can nip this thing in the bud before it causes more damage.”

  It was the invitation Liam had waited for. Liam was in his element when working on a problem or solving equations. He had felt so helpless and incompetent at helping Emily. Now I can be of use to her and hopefully bring her back safely.

  “I’m happy to help however I can.”

  “Okay then, let’s get going,” said the lead scientist. He immediately created teams and divvied up work.

  Liam dove in and got to work with his team. But after a few minutes, he remembered Fanny and Jake. Liam went over to the corner of the room where Jake and Fanny stood, their eyes tired and their faces pale with lack of sleep.

  "You guys are dead on your feet. Why don't I see if there’s an expendable intern or someone here to take you to town, get a hotel room with a comfy bed and some warm food?"

  “I'm not going anywhere,” said Jake firmly.

  “But Jake, there’s no reason for you kids to stay here. You’ve done everything you can. Besides, it’s safer back in town.”

  “I'm not leaving,” said Jake.

  “Yeah, we’ve come this far. We want to be here if Emily comes,” said Fanny.

  “She’ll be here, Fanny,” Jake said testily.

  “Okay, okay Jake. Don't knot up your panties again. I’m just sayin’, I thought she’d make it here in time to stop him. I’m worried about her.”

  “I know you want to do everything you can to help Emily. We all do. But right now, there’s nothing you can do here. This is work for an old fart scientist like me,” Liam said with a wink. “The best thing for you to do right now is to get some well deserved rest and food.”

  “Mr. Adams, don’t you get it? I’m not leaving without Emily,” Jake said.

  Liam knew he’d lost the battle. “Okay, okay. You can stay. But just hang out back here, out of the way. And promise me if there are more explosions that you’ll run, okay? Run as fast as you can out of here and don’t wait for me or for Emily. Do you promise?”

  Both Fanny and Jake nodded.

  Liam wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do to let them stay. Maybe I should have fought harder to get them to safety. Not only did he feel responsible for them, but after all they’d been through together, he had begun to think of Jake and Fanny as part of his own family. He just wanted them to be safe. But if he didn’t get back to work and find out how to stop the anomaly, they wouldn’t be safe even at a hotel in town. No one would be safe.

  58. DUGHALL AND THE PORTAL

  Dughall expected pain or at least some discomfort from passing through the portal like he had felt going to the Umbra Nihili. Instead, it was painless. It was like walking through a door. One moment he
was running through the collider corridor toward the large magnet. The next he was running in a land made entirely of silvery mist and fog.

  The entities of the Netherworld, thinking they can send a mere child to stop me. What fools they are. And where is she? The whelp did not even make it to the collider.

  Dughall briefly considered that he should look for her, but he quickly dismissed it. He didn’t need to worry about her or anyone. No one knew where he was going. All that was left to do was to still his mind and focus on the time and place he longed to be. He knew he would end up there instantly so long as he could focus his mind. He had no worry that he would not be able to accomplish the proper concentration. He’d had over a thousand years in the Umbra Nihili to practice focusing his mind.

  Dughall remembered the time and place he wanted to be. He had obsessed about it for so many years that it was easy to put himself there in his mind. All he had to do was close his eyes and picture the scene.

  It was a bright, sunny day in a small village in the south of Italy. He was a fourteen-year-old boy walking home from his morning duties for his master, ready to enjoy his midday meal with his beloved mother. He smelled the scent of the cedar trees mixed with the smell of olives and honeysuckle climbing the walls of the cottages he passed. He was jubilant because it was the day he planned to take his mother and escape their slavery.

  Dughall knew exactly where to jump into the stream of time. He had dreamt of it for years. Dughall longed to see the eyes of his mother’s attacker and take the man’s life. Dughall looked forward to boundless joy when he finally did what he’d wanted to do for countless years. He would plunge a knife deep into the man’s chest and twist it. He looked forward to watching the man suffer as the man had Dughall’s mother to suffer.

  Dughall took a deep breath and opened his eyes. Before him was the familiar room of the confinement of his youth. There was a small hearth but there was no midday meal cooking. He did not waste a second lingering in the small outer room. He knew the action was in the next room.

  Just as he had done so many years before, Dughall walked as quietly as a leopard, taking care not to show himself. But he heard no whimper from his broken mother. Excellent. I am here in time.

  His knife was at the ready. Dughall could have brought with him a very sharp, excellent hunting knife from the future time. He chose, instead, to use the same type of dull work knife of his youth. Anything too sharp and precise would hasten the jackal’s death.

  He turned the corner knife in hand, ready to take the man by surprise. But as he entered the room, he did not see the man who he intended to kill. What he saw instead was a surprise to him, and a most unfortunate complication.

  59. HIS DEEPEST DESIRE

  I don’t think Dughall could have looked more surprised. His dark hair and heavy eyebrows rested over a gaunt face that looked like it had been chiseled out of stone. His eyes landed first on me. His look of surprise quickly gave way to a look of pure rage. I think he would have leapt upon me and killed me on the spot if his mother hadn’t spoken.

  “Is this my son?” she asked incredulously.

  Dughall’s eyes immediately shifted to the woman standing across from me. At over six feet tall, his frame towered over her mere five-foot body. Her jet-black hair was matted to her face by sweat and she looked care worn. But beneath the wear was a woman of incomparable beauty in any time.

  “Mother, oh dearest mother,” Dughall said at last. He had a softness in his voice that seemed impossible from such a hard and brooding face. He went to her and knelt down. Dughall rested his head against her stomach and embraced her. I watched as she gently caressed his hair.

  “My son, look how you have grown. I do not understand what magick brings you or this angel who has slain my attacker to me, but of both, I am most glad,” she said.

  It was at that moment that Dughall looked down beside him and finally saw the dead body of the man that had been his mother’s night ‘companion’. Instead of being pleased that I had taken the jerk out for him, Dughall looked on me with fury.

  “How dare you come here and defile my childhood home? You witch!”

  “Dughall, mind your tongue,” his mother said. “This angel of the future came just in time. That man was set on doing me great harm. I do not think I would be alive if she had not come when she did.”

  “I know he was going to do you harm, dearest mother. That is why I came back to this time. I came to stop the brute from slaying you mother.

  “Oh mother, you have no idea what I have been through. You do not know of my suffering, my death, the countless years of horrific ennui as I waited. I had to bide my time. All that I have done I did so that I could come back to this time and prevent this jackal from taking your life. But this Brighid’s whelp witch from the future has ruined it all. She has ruined my moment, mother!”

  “Dughall my sweet, nothing is ruined. Be glad for the help dear son. I am well and unharmed. You can go peacefully back to your time knowing that I am safe.”

  “Back to my time? Mother, I have no time. Do you not see? I belong here. I always have. You are a part of me, Mother, and I a part of you. And I have waited, mother, oh so long I have waited.”

  I could swear I saw tears come to his eyes. Is it possible that Dughall has feelings? Is it possible that he could be human again?

  “Dearest one, do not fret. You can stay. We will figure it out. Do not worry any more dear son.” Dughall’s mother continued to stroke his hair.

  “Yes, mother, and together we will rule this land. Oh, I have dreamed it and planned it for so long and now, all the forces are aligned. Now is the time mother. You will be a slave no more. You will be a queen.”

  “With the help of the angel, our slavery will end today to be sure. But a queen? Why I have no such sights.”

  “This child save you? But mother, I will free you. And together we will rule, I promise you that. I will make those who have held us suffer as we have suffered. Revenge will be ours!”

  She took his head in her hands, one palm on each side of his face and looked long and deep into his eyes.

  “You are my son, that is true, but a part of you has surely been lost.”

  “What are you saying mother? I am your son, as I have always been.”

  “I did not teach my son to seek revenge and glory.”

  “But you did, Mother. You always told me that I was exceptional and destined for greatness. You taught me to bide my time until I could prove myself.”

  “Yes, it is true that I always saw in you a potential for greatness. But I never taught you to seek revenge or to inflict suffering on others. Is that what you thought I wanted for you? My poor son. All these years that is what you thought I wanted for my dear son?”

  “Of course mother, to rule over the land. We will have riches and power. And with all that I have learned from the future, we will rule over a vast empire. The entire world will be ours. Do you not want to be a queen mother? To have all that you desire?”

  “Dughall, my son, my heart’s only desire has been to see you happy. Not pleasure from gold adornments or beautiful women on your arm or power. No, all I have wanted for my son is that he know happiness within himself.” She put her hand over his heart as she spoke.

  “What are you saying mother? Are you saying that you will not come with me? That you will not help me as I conquer this land then rule by my side?”

  “No Dughall, I have no desire to build an empire with you. I am content to receive the help of this angel to escape my captivity then live with my son, young Dughall, in an honest life. That is all I have ever wanted.”

  Dughall’s face looked as crestfallen as a dog that sat, begged, stayed and rolled over then didn’t get the promised treat. While still kneeling, he looked away from us both for a moment then slowly rose.

  Dughall may have learned a lot of things while in the Umbra Nihili, but he apparently didn’t learn to close his mind to the sight. In a flash, I knew what he meant to do.
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  The jeweled dagger that Hindergog had given me was sheathed at my waist. I held the Sword of the Order in my hand, its blade still wet with the blood of the man I’d already killed.

  Dughall grabbed the sword from the sword belt of the dead man. It was a fat, well-worn broadsword. It wasn’t nearly as elegant of a weapon as the Singing Sword in my hand, but if I gave Dughall an opening, he’d be able to kill me with it.

  Dughall must have been stronger than his body looked. He had no problem picking up the large, heavy sword and he was able to hold it with one hand. Dughall wasted no time and lunged at me. I easily parried his attack and stepped to the side. His sword caught only air.

  His eyes were dark with anger as he slashed at me. I used my sword defensively and easily blocked his swing.

  “I am not your enemy, Dughall. I was only trying to help you.”

  “You lie. Your so-called Goddess is a spiteful wench. She sent you to shame me.”

  “No. That’s not how it is at all.”

  He thrust his blade at me again and nearly nicked me, but I stepped backward and his attempt to run me through missed by a few inches. Close call.

  I had stepped backward as far as I could. My back was against the wall of the tiny room. Dughall’s looked changed from anger to amusement. He could see that my back was against the wall.

  I chanced a quick look up to see if I could fly over him. The ceiling was too low. If I tried to perform a somersault, I’d end up bashing my head against the ceiling. My only option was to fight and hope that my new-found strength was enough to fend him off.

  Dughall came at me again with all the fire and fury that he had saved up and intended to unleash on the man who lie dead on the dirt floor. My arms moved as if on auto-pilot. I tried my best to be in the flow of things as Madame Wong had taught me. I was alert and aware.

  At least I thought that I was. But in a brief moment of inattention, Dughall’s heavy sword knocked the Sword of the Order out of my hands. It caught me by surprise and for a second, I thought myself a goner. But then something inside me clicked and I remembered the dagger sheathed at my waist.

  I moved to the side, dodged and ducked his attempts to kill me as I fumbled with the sheath at my waist. My hands were shaky as I tried to open the fabric fastener and retrieve the dagger. I kept moving as Dughall continued to swing at me. He landed a solid slice to my left arm and I could feel the warm blood trickling down my forearm and onto my hand. I finally got the clasp open and grabbed the dagger. Panic began to set in as I contemplated how I’d take out a man wielding a long sword with a short dagger.

  Size does not matter. Focus. Be one with Akasha.

  It was Madame Wong’s voice in my head. My months of meditating, of defending myself against the swats from her cane, the countless hours chopping wood. It had all been for that moment.

  I took a deep breath and tried my best to ground myself. I allowed the cleansing air to fill me as I focused on being one with the stream.

  Be one with Akasha.

  I could feel the air molecules move before I saw his blade come at me. My arms moved instinctively as I blocked his blow with the small but strong dagger.

  The sight stone on the hilt of the dagger began to glow and it changed from milky white to as clear as mountain water. In an instant, I could see in my mind’s eye what Dughall would do next. I knew what angle he’d come at me and I could see where my dagger needed to land.

  I thrust upward and knelt at the same time. I heard the whoosh of Dughall’s sword catching air as I felt my dagger find purchase in Dughall’s gut.

  My hand still held the dagger as Dughall fell to his knees. His face was nearly level with mine. His mouth was open with shock as he looked down at the wound that blossomed crimson through his shirt.

  “How?” he asked.

  I let go of the dagger and he fell over. He lay with his eyes open. I watched as he sucked in his last gasping breath then he breathed no more. His dark, brooding eyes were glassy and hollow.

  Before that day, I’d never killed anyone. But there I stood in a tiny room littered with the bodies of two lives I’d taken in one afternoon. My stomach roiled and lurched from the smell of blood, sweat and urine. I was nauseous too from the deed I’d done. Maybe it was right to kill Dughall. I had, after all, defended myself. But I still felt sick that I’d actually taken the life of another human being.

  I looked over and Dughall’s mother had fallen to her knees. She wept quietly.

  I didn’t know what to do or say. All I could think to say was, “I’m so sorry. Please forgive me. I didn’t want to have to kill your son.”

  “You do not need forgiveness. You did not kill my son,” she said. “My son died many years ago. This thing was a demon.”

  She crawled across the floor to his dead body and cradled him in her lap. “My poor, dear son.” Fresh tears broke out in her eyes and fell to his face. The tears made his stony face glisten in the late morning sun.

  I leaned against the wall and slid down. I’d willed myself not to puke, but I didn’t have the strength left to fight off the tears that threatened to fall. I felt fat tears slide down my cheeks.

  “Why do you weep?” she asked. “He was your enemy. He tried to kill you.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I’m crying because I should have hated him, but in the end, I felt sorry for him. Maybe it’s because I’ve been away from home for so long. Maybe it’s because I don’t know if my dad and my friends are out of danger or not. And maybe I’m crying because it seems like I prepared for this forever and now it’s over.”

  She didn’t say a word but gave me a brief warm smile. As I sat in that tiny room filled with the stench of two dead men, I could see why Dughall became the madman that he was. His mother was more than just a mom. She had a warmth, compassion and knowing about her that was rare. I could see why he loved her so much. A love that fierce can drive a person to do all kinds of crazy things.

  Before long we heard the sound of another person entering the small abode. “Dughall,” she said.

  It was, in fact, the young Dughall. He was about my age. The young Dughall didn’t have the hard-chiseled brooding look about him yet. And his hair wasn’t jet black but was instead flecked here and there with red highlights from the sun. His skin was bronzed by the southern Italian sun rather than alabaster white. His eyes were the same dark brown, but the eyes of the young Dughall were more playful and warm, less like two lumps of cold, unforgiving coal. If it wasn’t for the fact that I knew how he turned out all grown up, I might have thought he was cute.

  Without saying a word between us, Dughall’s mother and I settled on a story about the two dead bodies that didn’t include a future Dughall coming back in time. The young Dughall had no way of knowing that the large dead man was indeed himself from the future.

  Using my sight to guide me, I helped them escape their bondage and set out on a new life. Who knows, maybe it will turn out different for Dughall. He hadn’t, after all, had to endure watching his mother die.

  I said my goodbyes and prepared myself to go back to the Netherworld. I wanted to spend some more time with the Goddess before I went back to my own time. I still had a lot of questions for her. And like she said, I could jump back into my time whenever and wherever I liked. So why not stay a while longer, really figure some things out?

  I looked forward to getting answers and then a long rest. But you know, things don’t always work out like you plan.

  60. AFTERNOON AT THE HORROR MOVIES

  When I was ready to go, I got myself to a quiet spot on top of a hill dotted with cypress and olive groves. It was a beautiful place, and as I closed my eyes to mediate on my return to the Netherworld, I thought maybe I’d like to go back there some time. Maybe I’ll come back and check up on the young Dughall. If he’s going wonky again, I’ll kick him back to right.

  I concentrated on my breath as Madame Wong taught me but soon doubt crept into my mind. How do I return to the Netherworld? After al
l, the portal I used to enter it was far away from there and in another time. I wasn’t near any known vortex of energy.

  But I knew that doubt would prevent me from returning not only to the Netherworld but also to my own time. I focused all that I had on the Goddess. My mind held the image of her shimmery blue-green ever changing face. I concentrated on how I felt when I was with her. Soon, the peaceful feeling I’d had in her presence filled me. Match her frequency.

  When I felt like it was the right time, I opened my eyes. I blinked my eyes open and I was back in my kitchen where I’d first met Brighid. And she was there as well making chocolate chip pancakes.

  “I thought you might be hungry,” she said.

  From somewhere deep inside came long, riotous laughter. The kind where you think you might pee yourself.

  “Did I say something amusing, dear one?” she asked.

  “No, you didn’t. I’m sorry it’s just this whole situation. I’m still not sure any of it has been real. I may be in my tree house at home right now, asleep after the slap to my head from Muriel, and I’m in a delirium dreaming this whole thing.”

  “Yes, that is possible I suppose. But you are here with me, whether a dream or not, so you may as well eat.” I swung myself onto a stool at the counter and she placed a large plate of steaming pancakes in front of me.

  They were just as I liked them. Smothered in butter and dripping with maple syrup.

  After I wolfed down about a half-dozen pancakes, I was ready to ask some questions. I had so many questions still inside me. I wanted to ask why are we here? Where did we come from? Where will we go when we die? Is there a God? If so, where did he or she come from?

  “Yes, you have many questions.”

  “I want to know everything.”

  “I know you do, young one. In time, in time. You already know the answers to many of your questions if you allow the answers to come. Others you will find in time.”

  “I don’t feel like I know anything anymore.”

  “Good.”

  “Why is that good?”

  “Not knowing is closer to allowing the truth than knowing all.”

  “So what you’re telling me is that you’re not going to answer my questions right now.”

  She didn’t say anything but smiled at me.

  “Okay, but I have to get an answer to this one last question. Am I now a High Priestess?”

  “You have become a warrior and have learned some of the mysteries. But no, Miss Emily, you are not a High Priestess yet. Perhaps someday you will come back to the Netherworld and learn more of the mysteries of Akasha. Then, perhaps, you will become a High Priestess.”

  “I would like that.” I took a big gulp of café au lait to wash down the starchy cakes.

  “What now then?”

  “You return to your own space and time.”

  “But when in time do I go?

  “Ah, that is an excellent question. I think that this will help you decide.”

  In an instant, we were no longer in my kitchen but in the misty, foggy, timeless nowhereness of the Netherworld. And before us was what looked like the portal that I came through the first time. But instead of being a hole, it was more like a movie screen. I could see vague images appear out of the mist.

  “Watch Emily at the unfolding of critical events that have happened in your space-time while you have been in the Netherworld.”

  With a wave of her hand, the picture became clear. It was like I was watching the ghost of a movie. The images were there but with an ethereal shimmer. It was like they were there but not quite.

  As ephemeral as they were, the images showed me what had happened. I saw Fanny and Jake go to Dublin. I saw my dad on the plane and then meet up with them. He was no longer Zombie Man.

  It was hard to watch without feeling a ripping tide of emotion within me. I thought I was as good as dead to him. I had convinced myself that he didn’t care enough to look for me.

  I had been so wrong. I could see in the replay of a life that had happened without me that he did care. All he could think of was saving me. And he was helping out Jake and Fanny to boot. Go figure.

  As the scenes played out, it felt like they were moving faster and faster until at last I saw my dad, Fanny and Jake holed up in a little building at CERN. Then Dughall’s smirky face ran into the portal he created. After that, the images became downright frightening. The more I watched, the more it felt like I was watching it all unfold in real time.

  Mere seconds after Dughall ran through the portal, the portal exploded, ripping apart the magnificent giant magnet that had created it. The whole collider was in danger of a cascade of explosions as those particles that were accelerating through it and colliding with each other were backed up in a large packet, much larger than was ever anticipated by the designers of the machine.

  The portal that Dughall had created rapidly dissipated itself and became a nonfactor. The only thing to contend with there was the fire that raged due to the explosion. But up the stream from super magnet number two it was a different story.

  As an observer of a story that had already unfolded, I watched in horror as the particle beams, now with many times more particles than expected, collided in collector number one. Conspiracy theorists had warned of the possibility of black holes being formed by the LHC, but the scientists had quickly dismissed any concerns. Scientists had said that because the collider smashed extremely small bits of particles, any black holes that formed would be extremely small and would burn themselves out before they became larger than a subatomic particle.

  No worries.

  Apparently not one of the scientists had anticipated the possibility that some idiot like Dughall would not only be able to successfully infiltrate their security, but use their machine to create an anomaly and the conditions ripe for the formation of a black hole worth worrying about. Time to worry.

  I watched in horror as the hole became larger and larger, sucking in the matter of the machine that had created it. Up top, I saw my dad working feverishly with the other scientists to come up with a solution to stop it while Fanny and Jake sat in the corner of the main control room looking on worriedly.

  “Come on guys, it’s now or never. There has to be a way,” he said. “This thing is getting away from us.”

  “We know Liam, but there just isn’t enough energy left in this thing to pulse it again,” offered one of the scientists.

  “What else can we use, dammit?”

  They were all silent for a moment. Even through the vacuum of space and time I swear I could hear their brain cells vibrating with thought.

  “What about anti-matter?” offered a tentative voice.

  “What? Who said that?” said Liam.

  “Me Sir.” It was none other than Mr. Ted Schaeffer.

  “Anti-matter. Okay, thoughts. Could it work?”

  “Well, theoretically it could work,” said a scientist. “But the problem is, if we put together all the anti-matter ever produced on the whole planet and were able somehow to get it down there – which we couldn’t do without dying because the temperatures down there are still -200° – well, it wouldn’t be enough to do diddly.”

  That was the last anyone heard from Mr. Ted Schaeffer. He melded back into his computer station.

  I watched in horror as my dad along with the other scientists worked feverishly for a solution. As they worked, the building began to shake. The electricity went out. There were sirens and bells and ascending alarms.

  I could do nothing but stare and cry as I watched the entirety of CERN collapse into a black hole the size of a large town. The black void grew exponentially by the minute. My dad was lost. Fanny and Jake were lost.

  No kid should see both of their parents die.

  My tears flowed in a torrent down my face. Lost. All is lost to me. I’m too late.

  “Why the tears, child?”

  “I’ve lost them all,” I hiccupped.

  “Oh goodness dear one. Lost? You’v
e lost nothing. Do you not remember anything that I have shown you? Anything that you have learned here?”

  “You mean, I can stop this from happening?”

  “Of course you can. Why else would I show this to you?”

  “But hasn’t it already happened? I mean, how can I change the future?”

  “By changing the past, is that not obvious?

  “Goddess, I’m so tired and confused. I don’t know anymore what to do.”

  “You simply step into the stream dear, like you did before. Only this time, you will step into the stream at the place where you can stop these events from unfolding as you have seen.”

  “But how? Even if somehow I’m able to choose the right moment to step into the stream, how do I stop a runaway black hole?”

  “You know the answers to these questions young one. Allow the stream to move through you. Become one with the web of all things. You are, after all, Akasha. Become one with Akasha.

  "But before you go, remember well these words I now give you. The torc on your arm and the knowledge you have gained here are not to be used for folly. A Priestess of the Order of Brighid uses her skills and powers for the best interests of all sentient beings, not her own self-purpose. Do you understand?"

  “Yes Goddess. It’s like what Hindergog told me about the dagger that he gave me.” I pulled the dagger from its sheath and held it in front of me.

  “Yes, the same as the dagger. And know this too young one, that if you ever use the torc or your powers for your own selfish purpose, there will be consequences for you dear Emily.”

  I nodded my understanding. “Good, now it is time for you to fulfill your purpose.”

  As if she had reached into my brain itself, I saw flash before my mind’s eye a vision from my memory of the time I was with Madame Wong and first saw the Web of All Things. It was like I was in that time and place again. The Netherworld and the human world, all that I had known or would know, melted away.

  Once again I was in the loving bosom of the Web. I was enveloped in the vibrating harmonies of countless strings of the Great Web, all with their own distinct note yet all in harmony with the others.

  It was no memory. It was happening again.

  I felt myself inexorably drawn a certain way. I don’t know even now what guided me or why I went the direction I did in the infinite web.

  But direction and guidance drew me to one particular shining orb. One particular note. One particular voice in an endless sea of voices.

  It was like touching without touch. Melding together of two entities. In that moment, at that time, I knew once and for all where my mother was.

  She wasn’t in the kitchen making pancakes. She wasn’t in her studio painting. She wasn’t in the garden planting geraniums. She wasn’t even in a coffin underground.

  She was there, in the web. She had been there all along.

  I can’t describe in words the feeling that I felt in that moment. Joy. Jubilation. Neither one comes close. To know, really know, without any doubt of mind, body or soul. To have, in that moment, not one doubt or fear about anything. To know that I am eternal and that she is eternal and that we are connected always and forever. I wanted nothing more than to stay there feeling that way.

  Suddenly the utter bliss of knowingness was interrupted by what felt like a terrible ripping. I heard a large whooshing sound and my innards felt like they would be ripped apart.

  Just when I thought I couldn’t take the pain anymore, I fell with a thud onto the floor of command central at CERN. It was as if the cosmos upchucked me right where and when I was supposed to be.

  “Emily!” said a familiar voice.

  “Dad?”

  My eyes were still adjusting to the harsh light of the fluorescent modern world. I had become accustomed to the misty fog of the Netherworld. But my skin still had all its senses about it, and I could feel all about me the warm embrace of my dad’s big arms. They were real. Solid and real. This was no hologram or ghost image of the past.

  “Dad,” I said. A river of tears flowed.

  “Em,” he said. I felt drops from his eyes rain down on top of my head. After a few minutes, he took me by the shoulders looked me in the eyes and said, “Don’t ever leave me again!”

  “I won’t, Dad. At least not until I go to college.”

  He wasn’t a zombie anymore. I had my dad back, at least for now.

  I hadn’t realized that Jake and Fanny were there too until I felt a tight squeeze around my middle.

  “Fanny!”

  “It is so good to see you, Em. Oh my gosh, look at your arms girl.” Fanny felt my arm muscles. “What were you doing in that place, working out?”

  “Something like that,” I chuckled.

  Jake stood behind Fanny, smiling wide, but there was a tear in his eye. I looked at him, and he looked at me and somehow it felt good but awkward. I’d never felt that way around Jake before. I wondered if he felt it too.

  “I’m so glad you’re back.” He came toward me and Fanny stepped aside and so Jake could hug me. The hug felt awkward too.

  “Glad you guys made it back from the Netherworld okay too,” I said. Jake and I ended our strange embrace. They looked at me like I’d sprouted a second head.

  “What are you talking about? We never went there,” said Fanny.

  “So when I was rescuing you guys from the Ninjas, you weren’t really there.” I said it more to myself than anyone else. Their look of puzzlement answered my question. I didn’t have time to tell them all about it just then so I said, “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you about it later.”

  If Jake wasn’t really there, then he didn’t know about the electrical feeling that happened when we’d touched hands. If he doesn’t remember us touching hands, then why is he acting all weird?

  That was a puzzle for another day.

  61. EMILY MEETS A BLACK HOLE

  “Look kiddo, we all want to catch up with each other and Emily I’m dying to hear about all you’ve seen and been through, but we’ve got a bit of a situation going on here.”

  “I know all about it, Dad. That’s why I came.”

  “I don’t want you anywhere near here. This thing is growing more unstable by the minute. Sensors and cameras, the ones left anyway, show that it’s growing untold powers of ten by the second. We don’t have much time, and I want you out of here before this thing, well … ”

  “Dad, I know exactly what’s going on and what will happen. That’s why I’m here now. I can fix this.”

  “I know that you’ve been to another dimension – man, I still can’t get my head around that. But this is a job for scientists, not mystics.”

  “It’s a job for a Priestess of the Order of Brighid.” I unsheathed and pulled out the bejeweled dagger that Hindergog had given me.

  “What’s that?”

  “A gift.”

  “It’s beautiful kiddo, but I don’t think that little dagger’s going to stop a runaway anomaly.”

  “This isn’t just a dagger. I don’t have time to explain now. But this dagger can be anything I want it to be. It can become whatever I ask it to become.”

  “I’m not even going to argue with you right now about how that’s impossible wishful thinking.”

  “Okay, so don’t argue. Just tell me this. That guy over there. Ted Schaeffer. He had an idea about anti-matter.”

  My dad looked over and found Ted Schaeffer with his head buried in his computer monitor, his fingers once again feverishly entering code like his life depended on it. For a second time, it did.

  “Yes, he offered that.”

  “Well, would it work? I mean if you had enough of the stuff and if someone could get down there and plant the anti-matter in the right way, would it shut the anomaly down?”

  “Well, theoretically it could work.”

  “I don’t want could, Dad. I gotta know for sure. Will it work?”

  He looked me deep in the eyes as his human computer ran calculations. After about a
minute he said, “Yes. If we had enough anti-matter, and it was delivered in the right way, it would destroy the anomaly.”

  “Okay then. All I need to know is how much and how to deliver it, and we’re good to go.”

  “Wait, you’re not thinking of going down there, are you?”

  “Of course. You’re not thinking I’m just going to stand here with my thumb up my butt and watch as the whole world gets sucked into a black hole, do you?”

  “I’m going to ignore your smart tone due to the black hole underneath our feet threatening our planet, but are you crazy? I can’t let you go down there. It’s instant death.”

  “I know that you find all this hard to believe. Right now you may think that you’re in bed having a terrible dream and that you’ll wake up tomorrow, and your neat world full of numbers and equations will be the same as it was before any of this started. But you have to trust me on this one. I have the ability to do this. I’ll be fine, Dad.”

  The look on his face told me that he didn’t want to believe me. He wanted to order me to stay. But the look of defeat in his eyes showed that he wouldn’t stand in my way.

  “Okay then, all I need now from you and your number cruncher geek squad there is a number. Tell me how much anti-matter I need and how to deliver it. And let’s get that pronto.”

  My dad mustered one more look of ‘please don’t do this’ only to be met with my look of ‘yeah, right’! Then he was off to huddle with the other Coca Cola-swilling Wile-Coyote-Genius types while they put their brains together to find the answer.

  While they ran equations, I watched the video from the remote camera playing the Dughall entering the portal scene over and over again. Out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw something. It looked like someone flying. I rubbed my eyes and looked behind me, but all I saw then were nerds running around like blind rats trying to find a way to stop what Dughall had created.

  Within minutes, Dad and the Geek Club gathered around me and delivered the information.

  “How are you going to do it?” asked the head scientist dude. He no longer looking strong and in charge but defeated and tired.

  “If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me. Okay, stand back boys,” I said. I tried my best to tune them out and create a sphere of positive energy around me. I closed my eyes and got myself into a deep, standing meditation. The training with Madame Wong was fresh in my mind and helped me get into the state of being that I needed to be in. The alarms, the buzz of the people, the smell of their bodies (long overdue for a bath), the hum of the human world. I left all of it behind.

  Through the power of only my breath and the strength of the focus of my mind, I created the resonant frequency with Akasha that Dughall used the LHC to create. Only my resonance didn’t create a path of destruction in its wake.

  I created a phase shift through space-time the old school way, the way it had been done for millennia and before the creation of particle accelerators. In the control room, they saw my body solid and real. Then, right before their eyes, I started to fade in and out then poof! I was gone. That’s what they experienced.

  For me, it was all silence and the beautiful background hum of the universal resonant frequency of Akasha. I was able to tune my receiver to that station and let it take me wherever and whenever I wanted to be.

  I felt an intensely cold draft about me and opened my eyes. There it was. The black hole.

  Immediately I envisioned a force field around me. I created a protective cushion of space between myself and the frigid air of the collider.

  You may think that you’ve seen darkness before. The inky blackness of a moonless night sky. Let me tell you, you know nothing of darkness until you’ve seen a black hole.

  It was strangely beautiful. A part of me wanted to linger and watch it. At the very center it was complete and utter dark. No flicker or spark of light in any way. A black so complete that you could almost feel a cold breath coming from it.

  All around the center, there was a swirling vortex of matter being sucked in. There colors whirled as object after object was pulled apart by the intense gravity of the center, leaving only remnants we perceive as color. The swirling vortex was hypnotic, and for a moment, I felt like I wanted to join it.

  But I swear I heard a voice from somewhere outside of me whisper, “The anti-matter.” That whisper jerked me back to reality.

  The swirling vortex grew by leaps and bounds each second. I didn’t have much time before it swallowed me too.

  I unsheathed my dagger and commanded it to become the exact quantity of anti-matter the good gentlemen scientists had instructed. Before my eyes, the knife transformed from a beautiful jeweled dagger to a large round container pulsing with electromagnetic energy. It became a Penning trap full of anti-matter.

  Doing exactly as Dad had told me, I commanded the trap of anti-matter to enter the black hole. I hoisted it with all my strength down the corridor. I don’t have much of an arm, but I guess having the forces of nature on your side helps. The canister flew a straight and true trajectory, end over end, with impressive velocity right into the heart of the black hole.

  I watched the black hold suck in the Penning trap. What used to be my gift from Hindergog was lost in the bottomless blackness. Nothing happened. I watched and waited. I don’t think I breathed at all. Seconds ticked by as the blackness grew larger and larger and threatened to take me with it.

  It didn’t work!

  I knew that I had to get out of there before I was pulled apart, molecule-by-molecule, by the intense gravity of the anomaly of darkness. But I stood motionless and racked my brain, trying to think of something else I could try. I searched the recesses of my brain for some kernel of wisdom that Madame Wong or the Goddess had given me that I could use to save my world.

  As I stood thinking, there was a huge explosion. It was like all the TNT from every Fourth of July fireworks display there ever was went off at the same time.

  Safely inside my protective bubble of positive energy, I saw fire whiz by me followed by flying metal and other shrapnel. And at the very heart of it, what was once a core of utter blackness there was a tremendous sphere of glowing light.

  At first it was the size of a football field, but it quickly began to dwindle. Soon it was no smaller than a car. It was a small star, birthed before my eyes. What less than a few minutes before had been a swirling vortex of obsidian had become a ball of intense light, no larger than a softball. Perfect light from perfect dark.

  Second by second it grew smaller and smaller until finally, in a blink, it disappeared. My small star was gone forever. Where there had once been a black hole, and then an infant star, there was only rubble, debris and the remnants of the most expensive machine ever built by man.

  But there was also a faint glimmer amongst the rubble. Something shiny was in that pile of debris. I hovered myself in my protective bubble closer to see what it was.

  I used my telekinesis to free the glinting object from the wreckage and I hovered it to me. I held out my hand and the jeweled dagger that Hindergog had given me flew into my outstretched palm. It was tarnished and covered in black soot, but it was intact. You’d never know it had been a container full of anti-matter that just collided with a black hole. I sheathed the dagger and thanked it for a job well done.

  Left in the wake of the explosion was a total disaster. The LHC, the work of so many people and so many billions of Euros was gone. Totally gone.

  There was a gigantic hole a mile underground full of rubble and ruin, but up top you would never know. Anyone who wasn’t there to see it would never believe it. In fact, the vast majority of people would probably never know any of it had happened.

  CERN would make up a plausible story about overheating or some other mechanical failure explanation for the complete and total destruction of the most expensive and grand machine ever built by humans. But Jake, Fanny, my Dad and I know the truth.

  62. CLICK YOUR HEELS THREE TIMES

  “You won�
�t find faith or hope down a telescope,

  You won’t find heart and soul in the stars,

  You can break everything down to chemicals,

  But you can’t explain a love like ours.

  It’s the way we feel, yeah, this is real.”

   

  From “Science & Faith,” The Script (Daniel O’Donoghue and Mark Sheehan) ©2010

   

  The sun shone through a few puffy clouds as I walked up the sidewalk to a house I had known my whole life. No, that’s not quite true. I had lived in the place my whole life, but it wasn’t always the same house.

  Once it was filled with colorful paintings of flowers and my mom’s voice singing and humming. For a while it was a building overflowing with a dull, grey dread.

  It is once again a house filled with color and life. But it’s not the same house as when my mom was alive. That house is gone, but I now know how to find it if I want. Thing is, these days I don’t want to go looking for it anymore.

  It would be great to report that after we got back from Europe they stopped calling me ‘Freak Girl’ and that I became popular and adored. That didn’t happen. But I stopped caring about what Greta and her cronies thought. I’d lived through tutelage with Madame Wong and faced down a black hole. Somehow Greta’s nasty comments didn’t seem to matter after that.

  Greta’s still here but Muriel is gone. By the time we got back she had packed up her stuff and left. I guess it was okay to be the bully, but when push came to shove, she wasn’t willing to hang around if it meant she’d have someone shoving back.

  As I walked across the porch today, I didn’t care that the boards squeaked. There wasn’t any dread or fear at all as I put my hand on the doorknob and turned it.

  I walked down the familiar hallway and toward the smell of pancakes, coffee and bacon. I could hear their voices bantering.

  “More chocolate chip pancakes?” my dad asked as he flipped another batch.

  “I’ll take more,” said Fanny.

  “Figures piggy. You’re going to be fat as a house,” teased Jake.

  “Shut it nub before I take you down.”

  “Come on guys, give it a rest will you? Can’t we enjoy a pleasant Sunday morning together without your bickering?” asked Dad.

  “We are enjoying,” said Jake.

  “Yeah, this is us enjoying,” added Fanny. She shoved about three normal forkfuls into her mouth at once.

  Dad smiled wide as he worked the pancakes on the griddle. His smile widened as he looked up and saw me standing in the doorway.

  “Oh hey, Emily’s back with the juice. Thanks, Em,” he said with a wink.

  “No prob Dad.” I handed him the juice. I threw a copy of the Weekly World News down on the counter of the breakfast bar in front of Jake and Fanny.

  “What’s this?” asked Jake.

  “I thought you’d all get a kick out of the cover story. Check out the photo on the front. Look like anyone we know?”

  Jake and Fanny both stared at the front page, and I soon saw their eyes about to bug out of their heads as they recognized the woman on the cover.

  “Holy chiz!” said Fanny.

  “I can’t believe it,” said Jake.

  “What?” My dad reached for the paper.

  His turn for eyes buggin’. There on the front cover of the Weekly World News was a wild-eyed photo of our beloved Aunt Muriel. The headline above the picture read, ‘Woman Attacked by Niece Possessed by an Alien’.

  My dad threw the paper across the counter, laughed and went back to flipping pancakes. “Oops, these are a bit burnt.”

  “That’s okay, I’ll eat them anyway,” said Fanny as she held out her plate for more.

  “Dad, that’s all you’re going to say? ‘Oops, these are a bit burnt.’”

  “What should I say? My sister is crazy. I just wish I had been here – really here – to see it sooner. I’m so sorry,” he said as he hugged me.

  “I know, Dad. You don’t need to keep apologizing.” I hugged him back. “Okay, who needs more coffee?” I hovered the coffee pot over to where Jake and Fanny sat.

  “Come on, use your hands,” said Jake. “You know it freaks me out when you hover things.”

  “It only freaks you out because you can’t do it,” I quipped. I ordered the pot to give Jake more coffee.

  “I’ll take some more.” Fanny held out her cup for more.

  “Oh no, no more for you.” I set the pot back down. None of us wanted to see Fanny on mega-caffeine.

  A new typical Sunday with family. Click your heels three times.

  Tomorrow is Monday, and I’ll leave this house again. I’ll walk out the door and try to find a way to be me and yet fit in; be Emily but a part of everything else too. And at the end of the day I’ll come home.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

   

  In the beginning, there was just a seed of thought, a vision of a golden torc hovering over rolling green hills. This dream would never have become Emily’s House without the love and support of others.

  Thank you to Ellen Schneider for creating the Feng Shui Networking Group, and thank you to Ellen for your support in this endeavor. Thank you also to the lovely ladies of the Feng Shui group for your encouragement. None of you laughed when I said I wanted to write novels instead of practice law. I thank you for that.

  My deepest gratitude to Deborah. Your support of my dream is appreciated more than you can know.

  Thank you Colleen for slugging through an early version. You rock girl! A special thanks to Bridget Magee, one of my biggest cheerleaders. You believed in my project and me when I didn’t believe in myself.

  Thank you to Claudia McKinney at Phatpuppy Art for the fantastic cover art; to Cheryl Perez at You’re Published for cover design; to Jason G. Anderson for formatting for all digital platforms; and to Gary Smailes at BubbleCow for editing.

  Thank you to Jill Robinson for creating Emily’s Theme, original music for the book trailer. Your talent blows me away. Thank you. Thank you to Mark Corneliussen of for your enthusiasm and creativity in creating the book trailer for Emily’s House.

  Thank you to Sarah for sharing your mom with Emily for half of your life! You are my muse and constant source of inspiration. Thank you for listening to my stories and encouraging me to write them down.

  Last but not least, thank you to JRF. It has been said that, ‘with love, all things are possible’. You kicked me in the pants and said ‘write it already’. I did, and I couldn’t have done it without you. Thank you.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

   

  Natalie is the author of The Akasha Chronicles, a young adult paranormal fantasy trilogy. She was born and raised in Ohio and spent her formative years living on a working farm. Though she practiced law for almost twenty years, she is now retired from the practice of law and spends her days writing stories for young readers.

   

  Natalie finds creative energy and inspiration in the high desert environment surrounding her home in Arizona where she lives with her husband, young daughter, geriatric dog and two young cats. When Natalie isn’t writing, eating chocolate or playing with cats, she enjoys traveling, reading, meeting readers at book fairs, chatting on social media, and searching for the best iced coffee in town.

   

   

  You can connect with Natalie here:

   

  Twitter: https://www.Twitter.com/NatalieWright_

  Facebook: www.Facebook.com/NatalieWright.Author

  Blog: https://www.NatalieWrightsYA.blogspot.com

  Website: www.NatalieWright.net

  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/WritesKidsBooks

  Google +: https://plus.google.com/u/0/101662949356723296903/posts

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  Wattpad: https://www.wattpad.com/user/NatalieWright_

   

   


  Also by Natalie Wright

  Emily’s Trial: Book 2 of the Akasha Chronicles