by John Lenahan
When Nora heard that her granddaughter had been kidnapped she immediately went to Tuan and took him up on his offer of dragon’s blood to make her young again. She said she needed to be strong if she was going to fight to get her Ruby back. It was going to take me a while before I got used to equating the wise deliberate old lady, whom I had originally met, with this jumpy, young and, I’m a bit embarrassed to say, fanciable woman before me.
‘The Reedlands is not a place to enter blindly,’ Dahy said.
‘I can vouch for that,’ I said. ‘I almost died the two times I went there and you know what they say: the third time’s the charm.’
‘And I believe,’ Dahy continued, ‘that our assault on Mount Cas was easy because it was part of Lugh’s plan. If he were to oppose us he could defend his Yew House easily – with disastrous results for us.’
‘We can’t just sit here!’ Nora banged the table then closed her eyes to compose herself. ‘I apologise, with this body comes the hormones of the young.’
‘No apologies are necessary,’ Dad said. ‘Deirdre, how long will it take to set up a Shadowcasting?’
‘Two days,’ she said, reaching across and taking Nora’s hand. ‘That is the very soonest I could be ready.’
‘Then I’m going to the Yewlands,’ Brendan said.
‘What?’ was pretty much the reply from everyone there.
‘If we are going to war, I want a bow. A yew bow. Spideog said I could have his if the yews allowed it. I’m going to ask the yews for his bow.’
‘Brendan, love,’ Nieve said, ‘it takes decades of study to prepare for a judgement by a yew.’
Brendan stood. ‘I have studied with the greatest archer in The Land. He has deemed me worthy and my quest is to save my daughter. I dare them to find me unworthy.’
I expected someone to object but that statement shut everyone up.
‘I’ll take you,’ I said.
‘Conor,’ Mom said, ‘you cannot enter Ioho. The yews will kill you.’
‘Oh, don’t worry, Mom. I ain’t going in there again. I’ll just take him to the edge and wait. I know the way.’
‘I will accompany them,’ Araf said, and as usual everybody jumped a bit.
‘Great,’ I said, ‘I’ll have somebody to talk to while I wait.’
‘I’m going too,’ Nora said. Before anybody could say that that was a bad idea she explained: ‘This new body has too much energy for me to be sitting at home and waiting. I’ll travel with my son.’
Later that night I stuck my nose into Dad’s study. He was busy doing kingy stuff: allotting the stipends to all of the different kingdoms. He looked up and said, ‘Do you want me to give more gold to the Vinelands and maybe Essa will start talking to you again?’
‘I don’t think you have that kind of money, Dad.’
‘You looking for advice on your love life?’
‘You got any?’
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Go ask your mother.’
He dropped his pen and got serious. ‘Do you think Brendan’s mother will be OK with you outside of the castle walls?’
‘Well, back in the Real World when, like, a thousand cops invaded her home, she hardly even batted an eyelid. She’s coping with all of the turmoil around here pretty well and Brendan says she’s a good rider. So I think she’ll be fine. And anyway, if she is anything like her son – she’ll come whether I let her or not.’
‘All right then. I’ve had scouts patrolling for quite a while now and it’s been library-quiet out that way but still – be careful, OK?’
‘Hey Dad, it’s me. What kind of trouble can I get into?’
The look from Dad said it all.
‘Dad? I want to tell you something but I don’t know how to, other than to just say it.’
‘Shoot.’
‘Before Macha left she told me that Lugh was Cialtie’s father.’
Dad leaned forward and did that thing he always did when he was deep in thought. He reached up with his left hand and attempted to take off his reading glasses, except he didn’t have glasses on. Since his dragon blood rebirth he didn’t need them any more. He smiled self-consciously then covered his mouth with his hand. That’s the other thing he does when he’s deliberating or stressed. It’s like he’s stopping himself from saying anything stupid before he has thoroughly thought things out. Finally he leaned back and said, ‘Good.’
‘Good?’
‘Conor, it is an awful thing to hate one’s brother. Now I only have to hate half of him.’
We left at, you guessed it, dawn. Even when my parents weren’t going on the trip, I had to get up before the sun. I didn’t try to talk Brendan into leaving later. He was not in the kind of mood where you could joke. Not that I blamed him. The way my luck with women is going these days I will probably never have kids, but I imagine having your child kidnapped is enough to literally drive you crazy. I was impressed with how well Brendan was holding up. He was acting with a swift and deliberate purpose that was hard to keep up with but on the whole he was pretty together. Saying that, he reminded me of the cartoon character that after falling off a cliff only needs one pebble to hit him in the head before he crumbles into tiny pieces. I didn’t want to be that pebble.
Nora I could no longer read. She seemed to be all over the place. She was a good rider. The stable master hearing that she was new to The Land gave her a gentle mare that she instantly returned like he was a used-car dealer who had tried to sell her a lemon. He shrugged and gave her a frisky stallion named Blackberry. Nora handled him but it took some time. Periodically Blackberry would try it on with his novice rider and bolt or try to rear onto his hind legs, but Nora was up to the challenge and finally got him to calm down. When I felt it was safe enough I rode next to her.
‘You’ve got your hands full with that one,’ I said, pointing to her horse.
‘I’ve raised a son,’ she said with a nod towards Brendan. ‘You just have to set some boundaries and then they’re OK.’
‘Yes, but baby Brendan couldn’t throw you and break your neck.’
‘You would be surprised as to what kind of trouble baby Brendan could get into,’ Nora replied looking over to her son, who smiled with the forced smile of a man who just couldn’t come up with a real one. We slowed a bit to leave him with his thoughts.
‘I wish there was more I could do to assure him … and you … that Ruby will be all right.’
‘You can’t assure that, Conor,’ Nora said, ‘that’s the problem.’
‘No, I guess I can’t. But she just has to be.’
‘Amen to that.’
Blackberry snorted then threw his head back while almost sidestepping into me. Nora tightened the reins and pulled him back into line like an old pro.
‘How are you doing?’ I asked.
‘Ol’ Blackberry and I will be OK,’ she said patting his neck, ‘we just need to get to know each other.’
‘No I mean how are you doing?’
She laughed a sad laugh. ‘Well my body is raging with hormones and wild energy – it’s like I went through puberty in a day. And then there is the anger – they took my little Ruby. I want to kill them with a baseball bat – you know?’
I nodded yes – ’cause I did too.
‘And then there’s this place. Just because I believed in Tir na Nog all of my life doesn’t mean I always believed it. When you have faith in things that everyone else thinks are crazy, you often have doubts. But here I am. And it’s more than just seeing Tir na Nog or smelling it or touching it … I feel it … inside. I feel …’
I waited for her to find the word. When she failed I offered it to her. ‘Immortal?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
We rode in silence for a while. This route was almost identical to the first trip I had ever taken in The Land, except that this time there was no one firing arrows at the back of my head. This was the same place where I first felt what Nora was feeling now. This was where I first learned that beech trees were gossipy an
d where I caught my first sight of the white plumes of the mountain ash. Riding, with my mother behind me, this was where the vitalising energy of The Land transformed me. It was here where I, too, learned how it felt to live for ever.
We followed the path. It was mid-morning when we came to water.
‘River Lugar,’ Araf said as he dismounted and then washed his face in the water in a way that seemed more like an ablution.
‘Lugar?’ Nora said. ‘That sounds too much like Lugh for my liking.’
‘I was taught that the river was named after him,’ Araf said.
‘If only the man were as easy to find as the river,’ Brendan said.
We followed the river path until we came to the Duir boathouse. Inside were half a dozen small riverboats. Dad said we could take the royal barge with its gold-plated rudder that would propel us if we incanted to it in Ogham. Back at the castle I made Araf learn the mumbo jumbo. Having Dad teach me words in an ancient language was too much like my schooldays.
Just because we were being propelled by magic didn’t mean that we were breaking any speedboat records. The ride was less like a high-speed chase from a spy movie and more like that old science experiment where you put a sliver of soap on the back of a bit of balsa wood. But as the old saying goes, beggars who don’t want to row can’t be choosers – or something like that.
There was plenty of light left in the day but we had been warned by everyone that if you have to disturb a yew, then it should be done in the morning. I wanted to know why. ‘Do they get grumpy in the afternoons?’ – No one was sure but as a matter of statistics more people survived a yew judging in the morning than in the afternoon. If I were a yew it would probably be the other way around. Gerard had told me that there was one of his luxury camping huts just before the last bend in the river before the Yewlands. I pointed it out to Araf and he beached the barge. After wrapping the rope from the boat around the base of a holly bush we all filed past and touched the tree to say thanks. Nora watched us and then did the same. A small squeal came out of her that at first I thought was a cry of pain but then I saw her face – she was elated.
‘You OK?’ I asked.
‘That tree just said, “You’re welcome.”’
‘Not all of them are so nice,’ I warned. ‘Trust me on that.’
Dinner was a stew prepared by the chef from Castle Duir that we only had to heat in the fireplace of Gerard’s hut. It was the closest thing The Land has to compare with a TV dinner. Actually if any of the Real World’s TV dinners were this good there wouldn’t be any restaurants. Nora ate like she had never seen food before. I worried that she might just eat her spoon.
She caught us all staring and apologised. ‘I haven’t had an appetite like this in fifty years.’ And then continued eating like there was no tomorrow.
Brendan was outside and the only one of us not chowing down.
‘You nervous, Detective?’ I asked.
‘I’d be lying if I said no.’
‘Are you ready for this?’
‘I’d better be.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I mean, have you prepared?’
‘Spideog, and others, told me that a judgement for an archer is different than for a sorceress. Sorceresses must prepare for their specialty but an archer need only be a good archer and Clathandian.’
‘Clathandian? What does that mean?’
‘There is no good English word for it. Even Nieve’s gold ear thingy doesn’t come up with a translation. The best I could get would be pure of spirit.’
‘And is your spirit pure?’
‘I once asked Spideog how I could tell if I was in the state of Clathandian and he said, “That is for the yew to decide.”’
‘That’s a drag. It would be nice if you could have, like, a breathalyser test before you risked your neck in there.’
Brendan laughed, the first laugh I had heard from him since Ruby was taken. ‘There’s a project for your mother – a Clathandian breathalyser. She’d make a fortune.’
But Brendan’s good humour didn’t last long and his attention drifted away to his daughter and his task ahead. Before I left him alone I said, ‘Try and eat something, my friend. I think you might need your strength tomorrow.’
Back inside, Nora, who had eaten probably half of the stew, was asking Araf if she could finish off his leftovers.
‘Your nice new body is going to get a bit big around the middle if you keep that up,’ I said.
‘You know, Conor, I have been given a new life and I think this time around, I’m not going to care.’ She smiled the same smile I saw on an older version of the same woman when she saw her son return to her; but then a shadow crossed the face. The smile vanished, replaced by a look of guilt – guilt for even allowing a smile. ‘First we find Ruby,’ she said.
‘You mentioned before that you had believed in Tir na Nog. How did you even know about it? How did you know you were Hawathiee?’
‘Hawathiee? What does that mean?’
Oh sorry, Hawathiee means … of The Land. It’s like in the Real World when we say human.’
‘Oh, my father told me that his father and his father’s father, going back to before there were calendars or even letters to write on them, told him that we came from a race that was banished from paradise for going against the laws of nature. He, and my mother too, believed that my ancestors arrived in the Real World in a barbarous age when Ireland was a vast forest. The newly banished arrivals were humbled by their experience and chose not to subjugate the barbarians of that island. Instead they chose to teach them.’
‘Druids,’ I said.
‘That is what my parents called themselves and their most important rule for me was to keep the faith. Their grandparents had come over to America during the Irish Famine. Keeping the faith was hard in the new world but just as I was about to lose mine to the modern world, I found a man whose parents had handed down to him the same family lore. We were made for each other. I had a friend who once said that rooms were brighter when we were in one together. He was my soulmate.’
‘Brendan’s father?’
‘Yes,’ she said with a sigh, ‘I lost him to war. He didn’t want to leave me but back then they made young men go to war. I was left alone to raise a son on my own. We did well until Brendan became a teen. Then he started to think that what I believed was crazy. I didn’t have his father to help me and I feared that I was going to be the first in all of that time to break the chain. To have a son who lost the faith.’ She looked out the doorway to her son pacing in the twilight. ‘But here I am. If not for you and all of the chaos you have inflicted on my son and my family – my heritage would have been lost.’ She reached across and placed her hand on my cheek.
‘You’re welcome,’ I said.
She gave me another one of those forced little laughs. The only kind of laugh I was going to get until Ruby was found.
I heard Araf douse the fire. I shouted out the door. ‘Hey copper, you sleepin’ tonight?’
‘Yeah, I’ll be in in a little while,’ Brendan called back.
I curled up in one of Gerard’s bunks – oh so much better than sleeping on hard ground – and was asleep before I heard him come in.
I awoke feeling great. I made another mental note in the imaginary book Things to Do When Life Calms Down Around Here. I promised myself that I would get a map from Essa’s dad and take a trip where I only slept in Gerard huts every night. Then I wondered if things ever did calm down around here. I washed in the River Lugar and shared a breakfast with Araf. The other two were too nervous to eat. Brendan sat waiting in the boat, his legs jittering, while Araf and I closed up the hut.
The river bent ahead and if I remembered rightly, as soon as we took it, we would be in view of the two guardian yews that stood on top of the boulders on either side of the river.
The yews were as scary and magnificent as I remembered. A cold sweat dripped down my back as I recalled the first time I had been here, as part of a desperate escap
e from my uncle’s dungeon. Then we travelled silently through the Yewlands hoping the deadly trees would take no notice. And they didn’t. I had no desire or intention of repeating that gambit and I worried for my friend who would soon be entering that forest and asking one of those trees to judge his worth – knowing that the price of failure was death.
I saw a small sandy bank on the left and told Araf to steer to it. He was just about to turn the rudder when I saw him bring his hand up fast to his neck like he was swatting a mosquito. He then stared at me wide eyed and fell over the side of the boat.
I was so shocked I didn’t do anything for a second, but when I saw him bobbing face down in the water I started to take off the Lawnmower – the Sword of Duir – and dive in after him. As I was fiddling with the buckle, a sharp pain in my neck made me turn. That’s when every muscle in my body turned to jelly. I crumpled into the bottom of the barge, but before the world went black I had a chance to see in what direction the boat was heading. It was sailing straight and true into – the Yewlands.
Chapter Eleven
Judgement
The stinging in my neck was the first thing I noticed when I awoke. I reached to the source of the pain and removed a gold dart that I only had a couple of seconds to inspect before it dissolved into smoke and ash between my fingers. I was alone in the barge. I knew where I was. The green light filtering through the canopy confirmed I was deep in the Yewlands. I popped my nose up over the side of the barge like a soldier sticking his head out from a foxhole. My travelling companions were nowhere to be seen. Where were they? What had happened? What should I do? I definitely should get out of the Yewlands but what about Brendan and Nora? And Araf? If he fell face down in the water with the same thing that got me in the neck then … he must have drowned. What the hell happened?
Think, Conor. I had to assume that the barge wasn’t too far into the Yewlands so if I could get it turned around without disturbing the yews, then I could get back and find Araf, or at least his body. If Brendan and Nora survived then that’s the only place I could think that they would know to go.