Cash Cassidy Adventures: The Complete 5-Book Series (Plus Bonus Novels)

by K. T. Tomb

Of deeds done with dwarves, despairing to the Gods

  Who knew not how or why, the woman was so wild

  Nor did Freya know, now or ever knew her soul

  Whether it were tame or wild, Wife knew how to find

  The true name of her nature, need for medicine

  To seek her own soul, her spirit to find

  The Falcon Cloak she found, feathers of white

  Hung from the High One's Gallows, hers to find

  And hers to keep to herself, the horse of Elves

  And Freya herself found, flying on magic wings

  Where ever she wished, through worlds all nine

  Never through the known, needled world of men

  Or Fields of Gods or Foes, free from flesh she soared

  Of bonds and boundaries freed, Birka stood her course

  'Till she eventually turned back, to her trembling body

  Dropping her feathered dreams, down from the heavens

  Donning her cloak of down, the dame learned at will

  From the Vanir's fields she went, flying to the walled land

  She shared then her secret, with the shaman of the Gods

  Who kept her confidence, yet couldn’t keep the secret

  No secret should one know, not if others should not

  And Loki changed to learn, the lesson of the Falcon Guise

  So it happened that Hörn, happened upon her Guise

  Of flying Falcon feathers, found in the world beside

  And Terrible One could travel, with time stood still

  He learned from the life goddess, who learned from life itself

  “What are you singing?” Tim asked, sounding worried.

  Cash didn’t respond. She didn’t see him. She barely recognized her husband was there. There was just her own body, the body being born and the golden woman in the Falcon Cloak who was by her side.

  From the cat, a foal was born. The Golden Woman picked it up and examined it. “He will become a fine stallion,” she whispered to the cat. “Worthy of the Lord of Poets.” She bowed down to the cat and kissed her brow. “Take your child and rest now. Rest.”

  The Golden Woman disappeared and in her place stood the nurse, holding a baby in her arms. The baby looked red and slimy and disgusting, but Cash loved him the moment she saw him. The nurse wrapped the baby in a blanket and then brought him to Cash. She laid it down on her left breast and shoulder, the side where Tim was standing. “Congratulations, you have a lovely baby boy,” the nurse said.

  Cash looked up at Tim, who had tears in his eyes. She reached over with her right hand to touch the skin of his forearm. Then she laid her hand on the baby's back. She stroked the boy. She brushed through his wet hair. It was clearly light and fair, just like hers, even if it was still matted with blood.

  “What are you going to call him?” the nurse asked. Cash noticed her South Wales intonation, the sing song way of speaking. The doctor didn’t sound like that, but the nurse did. It somehow felt nice.

  Tim looked at her. “We didn't even discuss a name, did we?”

  Cash shook her head.

  “But I'm guessing you've got a name?”

  Cash nodded. She tried to speak as clearly as she could, but her throat was dry and her voice was cracked. “I'm thinking Pádraig Torcuil Cassidy-Mathews.” She looked up at Tim and pouted her lips, blinking. “Can you give me a kiss, you silly man? And then kiss your son?”

  Makeda and Jack had been waiting in the hallway. Tim had apparently been going in and out to tell them what was happening, but now they could enter the room and check on their friend themselves.

  Jack looked as worried and drained as Tim did, but Makeda looked happy. She looked to Cash, glowing. She was a picture of happiness. It must have been good for her to see her friend was okay, and to see the beautiful boy she held in her arms. But there was something else.

  Cash smiled when her tired eyes noticed the small swelling of her stomach.

  Makeda sat down next to Cash and pushed the blanket aside a tiny bit, so she could see the baby clearly.

  “What's his name?” Makeda asked, as the baby reached out lazily and grabbed at her finger.

  “Pádraig Torcuil Cassidy-Mathews,” Tim answered. He smiled. It was a mouthful, but the name did have a certain flow to it.

  Jack looked up dramatically and shook his head. “For fucksake. As if one Pat Cassidy was not enough already!”

  Chapter Ten

  Paddy cooed. He babbled a bit and grabbed at the feather Cash dangled before his eyes. It was a white feather she had found on the dune just outside the house.

  She sat on that dune in the sunshine, her child on her knee, looking over the Severn Sea. She was content. She didn’t want to run. She was home and she was mistress of her own fate.

  She had not felt like that in the weeks after the birth. The elation she had felt at Paddy's birth had gone. She had felt something so extraordinary that day.

  The Vikings, the old Celts and Gaels, even the Anglo-Saxons believed a man only truly became a man when he first killed. They likewise believed a woman was only truly a woman after she had given a new life to the world. And then Cash felt like she had finally become a true woman.

  But somehow that elation and sense of absolute self-worth had given way to self-loathing, fear and insecurity. She felt weak after the ordeal and for several days she could barely get up without Tim's help. Her house was full, with Makeda and Jack staying to help as well, but she couldn’t be the hostess she had to be in her own home. She was relying on someone else and in those days. Her existence was as a nurse to her boy.

  She didn’t hate him, she could never hate him. Nor did she hate Tim for putting her in that position, as she had been tempted to do during the early stages of her pregnancy. She only blamed herself. She blamed herself for being weak and for being undeserving of the great gift of that child she held several times a day.

  She left Paddy in his cot, unless he needed to be fed. Tim took care of the diapers, and even Jack pitched in, egged on by Makeda who said he should practice. And Cash felt herself slip into depression. She knew she was getting depressed too. She had been determined never to be like that again when she had struggled those years ago. But she couldn’t stop herself. Cash began having panic attacks and after a week she refused to eat. She kept nursing though, and she felt herself getting weaker by the day. She knew her baby was now not being fed from the food she took, but with her own body. And yet, she couldn’t get herself to eat.

  The Golden Woman sat in the clearing alone. The noise of the boar was somewhere to be heard, but the cat had gone. The falcon was gone. She was alone. She just sat there. And nothing happened. Nothing at all. It was as though she were frozen. The fire of her life had been extinguished. The cloak she wore taken with it to the recesses of the world.

  She had burned so bright, and now shone so dimly. Only a feeble ember glowed within her and slowly she began to go gray and withered away.

  The Fire had burned so brightly and helped her bring life into the world. Another spirit to join her own. But Fire is treacherous. It gives and restores life, yet it can easily take it too. Fire plays tricks. It plays tricks with every being, it plays with the world. And the Trickster had taken her Cloak. He had taken her Feathers and taken her Flight. And now he was gone, and she was alone. And the Golden Woman didn’t know what to do. She felt powerless and she felt abandoned. She felt as though all those moments of weakness and hurt were coming after her again. And as she felt that, they did.

  The forest was empty and still. Even the sound of the boar was gone now. The Trickster had won.

  But then the Golden Woman flew. She soared and saw herself and looked on herself. And she looked over the trees and saw a glimpse of white feathers in the distance, racing toward the Outer World. And she saw her body laughing. She sank down again and cackled madly along. There was a whooping joy now. A joy at being and a joy at knowing she controlled her actions. There was an end determined for her, and this
was not it. The skein of her life had been woven long ago, and whatever she did now was irrelevant to that final end. She whooped and jumped to her feet. There was no despair or fear. There was just a choice between courage and cowardice. There was the choice between living or existing. Between running or kneeling. And she knew what choice was the right one.

  A Hooded Man stood by her and blinked a one-eyed blink at her. He kissed her hand and suddenly she was young again. She was fit and fertile and Golden. The Hooded Man stroked the nose of his horse and then mounted. He offered her his hand and she accepted. She mounted the horse behind him and it galloped off into the sky.

  “Now you know why, you can pick the first,” the Hooded Man said. “Take them to your hall and talk. I talk to the hanged, you talk to the brave and the bold. I seek the wisdom of death, you seek the wisdom of life. And together we will find the answers. Together we will make you fly again.”

  Tim had called their GP about Cash's depression, but by the time the man had shown up, Cash was in the kitchen. She had made a pot of tea and was munching on a piece of toast with Paddy on her arm. She felt weak, but things had clicked into place for her even though she still didn’t understand what those things were. She scolded Tim for having the doctor make the journey up there and she skirted every attempt the doctor made to find out what was ailing her. She was weak from lack of food or exercise, but her mind was stronger than ever. In the end, she succumbed to Tim’s pleads and allowed the man to examine her. He arrived at the same conclusion and advised Cash to do whatever felt right to do but be sure to eat a lot of green leafy vegetables and meat and poultry. Surprisingly, he advised she drink tea made with some natural herbs, particularly rosemary, jasmine and chrysanthemum.

  Toward the end of spring, Tim was back in Newport. The end of semester exams were coming up and he would be so busy he couldn’t spend the time traveling up and down between Barry and Newport. But with the weather bright and sunny, the world in bloom, Barry Island open for business, Cash didn’t mind being on her own. She knew she could take care of Paddy and herself. And so, the day after Tim went back to his Newport flat, Cash found herself on the top of the dune, looking out over the Severn Sea.

  She mused on the name, wondering why the English ever insisted on calling it the Bristol Channel, as this had been the Severn Sea for centuries before Bristol was even founded. She looked at Paddy and found him looking at her questioningly. “You're wondering about it too, aren't you?” she asked seriously. Paddy just blinked. Cash tickled him and he began to laugh.

  Paddy was a happy child. He rarely cried unless he needed something, but his face was always serious. That part of him reminded Cash of his father. But Jack had been right when he said there was another Pat Cassidy in the world. He had her hair and her eyes. Eyes quick to glint with laughter, yet full of determination.

  Right now there was that determination in his eyes as well. He was on his stomach on the blanket Cash had laid out and he was trying to sit up. He had managed it yesterday for the first time. It had filled Cash with pride. He was only three months old and he had managed it. Right now, having done it once, he tried to do it again. Cash was sure he would be as inquisitive and as wild as she was in a few months. In that time he would be crawling and possibly even be climbing and reaching up to stuff. She would have to begin securing their home for that.

  Cash blinked. It was the first time that she had thought of that house as anything but her home. But it was their home. Paddy would be raised there. He would be attending the local school, he would probably end up playing for the local rugby club, too. She grumbled again. He would end up wearing the red of the Dragons, not the gold and green of the Wallabies. She loved Wales, but that was a thought she had trouble stomaching. She poked the boy with a finger, disturbing his concentration. Paddy shot upright and looked at his mother, before looking around in surprise at what he just managed. “You're allowed to play rugby for Wales, but don't you dare play for your daddy's side. And if you decide to play cricket, you will play for Australia, do you hear? Not for England.”

  Paddy nodded carefully, even though he didn’t know what rugby was, or cricket, or even had an understanding of what Wales, England or Australia was.

  Cash laughed at him. “Wales is allowed, but not England, remember that.”

  Seeing his mother laugh, Paddy laughed too. He held his arms up and, recognizing what he wanted, Cash picked him up and hugged him. He laid his little arms around her neck and sighed. Cash sighed happily too.

  Cash was still nursing Paddy when summer brought Tim back to Barry. But she was beginning to wean him off the breast now. She had decided she wanted to stop breastfeeding after half a year, and by the end of Tim's summer break, that time would be up.

  Come the end of the summer, the baby was crawling and even trying to stand up. The time had been a bliss. They had enjoyed each other and the free time.

  Paddy was curious about everything and both Tim and Cash were eager to let him experience as much as he could, as long as he could physically keep up. He slept well in the afternoons and Cash was proud of him every time he woke up in the afternoon and looked around to see what was going on. He babbled at his mother and father all the time now. It was like he was telling Cash stories. She noticed he was repeating noises at regular intervals. She reckoned he might even be telling his stories in verse.

  The foal ran through the forest. It galloped as fast as its thin legs could carry it. Its hooves flew and slowly he left the ground. But then its hooves hit the mossy ground again and thundered along. The sound of its hooves resounded through the trees.

  The cat sat on the head of the boar and was quietly watching him. It licked its paw and cleaned itself, while the boar just kept its eyes on the foal. The cat was watching, but it was doing other things too. It was looking outward and it was looking upward. It was thinking about the falcon that it knew so well. The falcon that it had been. But it was nowhere to be seen. And the cat wanted to be up there. It climbed the trees and looked out, but it couldn’t do what the falcon had done.

  And it missed more than the falcon. It missed the Golden Woman who had been there.

  The cat pondered it while the boar stood still and was happy watching the foal. But the cat was growing restless. There was something close by. It could feel it. It looked for it. And suddenly it was there.

  In the shadows a wolf stood. Its eyes were focused on the foal. The cat hissed, seeing danger. But it immediately realized there was no danger. The wolf was familiar. And it was not dangerous. It was looking out for the foal. It was looking it out and showing it would look over it. And it was challenging the cat. And the cat took up the challenge. It hopped down from the boar's head and slowly patted toward the wolf. And the wolf turned and began to walk away.

  The cat followed and the wolf began to run. The cat began to run too, and it kept pace with the wolf. It ran with the wolf and it kept running. And it knew that it would always keep running. It would always keep pace with the wolf. It felt like it had always done that, and it suddenly knew it had always done that. It would always keep running with the wolf and there was no way it would ever stop.

  Yet it felt guilty now. Still running, it looked around to where it had left the foal behind with the boar. But it had not left it behind. The boar was looking at the cat in the distance, but the foal was keeping pace in the footsteps of the cat and the wolf. So the cat looked ahead and just kept running.

  Chapter Eleven

  Cash didn’t have the heart to tell Tim about her growing restlessness when he went back to Newport at the end of the summer. She felt like running again, though she had no idea where to or what to. There was still a mystery to be solved for her though, and the song she had heard those months back kept playing in her head. She knew she would take Paddy with her whatever she ended up doing, but she didn’t know what that was going to be yet.

  A week after the beginning of the school semester, Cash took the car to Dublin. Makeda showed her around
her new home there. They had moved to a Georgian house on Leinster Road, just a kilometer or so away from their previous place. It was a gorgeous one and Cash knew it would be a great place to raise children. It was big and the rooms were large and high. There were corners and nooks and crannies, places for adults and children to hide and to play. It was a great house, and walking down the road to the Rathmines shopping center, Makeda showed her the school which was about a ten minute walk away.

  Cash noticed Makeda was experiencing everything almost opposite to how she had experienced her pregnancy. She had been almost as adventurous as Cash when they had met, but Makeda had become so calm and matronly. Cash wanted to blame Jack for that change, but she knew there was something else too. She couldn’t explain it, but somehow Paddy had stopped her changing into the matronly mother, whereas Makeda's boy, as the scans had showed, was obviously far less restive. He would be the exact opposite of Paddy, Cash knew. He would be darker in appearance as well, though not less beautiful.

  Cash remarked upon how many children she had seen as she rocked the pram standing by the table in the Rody Boland's pub. They had gone there from the center of Rathmines, walking up the road for a ‘cuppa tay.’

  And as she made the comment she heard a voice behind her that said their parents were probably all as proud of them as Cash was of her boy.

  Cash turned in her seat as she recognized the Scots accent. “Inga?”

  Inga smiled at her. “Aye. How are you doing? And how's wee Pat?”

  “Both doing fine, thanks. How about you?” Cash blinked. “Jack told you his name?”

  Inga nodded. “Yup, and well enough. Just missing home.”

  “Enniscorthy?” Cash asked. “Wexford is not that far from here.”

  Inga grinned. She had set herself up for a remark like that. “Just visiting here. But I miss the Shetlands.”

  “Why don't you go back for a bit?” Cash asked.