“Ceridwen!” Diarmid shouted. “No!”
As the elder woman collapsed, a spear stuck in her chest, Diarmid rushed to her side. “Fionn! What did you do?”
“Do not raise your staff again. If you do, the rest of your party will fall likewise.” Fionn reached into his bag again, this time retrieving a flaming cinder. He held it above his head. “This cinder will consume your village. This is your last warning. Surrender the girl to me!”
“Never, Fionn! I won’t let you…”
My mother pressed a hand to my father’s chest and looked him in the eyes. “It will be okay,” she said in a soft, calm voice. She knelt, also, beside the ailing Ceridwen and pulled the spear from her chest. She placed a hand upon the wound, and a green light, brighter than the light Diarmid had channeled before, enveloped the older woman’s wound. “She will survive, but this cannot continue. I will go with him. Do not be afraid.”
“Grainne. No, please don’t…”
My mother walked toward the aged warrior, who quickly seized her and tossed her over his shoulder.
“You are a fine warrior, Diarmid. But even with all your Druidry, you cannot stop me. You will not get in my way.” Fionn reached again into his strange bag. He retrieved what appeared to be a blue sphere. Hurling it toward the village, it shattered into millions of drops of water, dousing the fires. “I am a man of my word. I have doused the flames, for now. If you pursue me, old friend, I will finish what I started.” Fionn turned to his soldiers gathered around him. “Come, let us leave this place. We have what we came for.”
15. Grainne's Escape
“HELLO, SON.” MY father’s voice echoed around us as the figures around us all stood frozen in place.
“Dad… what is this? They took Mom from you?”
“They did. I must say, I am pleased to see my old friend Merlin here with you. How goes it, old man?”
“Not so bad,” Nesbitt responded. “It is good to hear your voice.”
“So, Dad. What did you do? How did you get Mom back?”
“I suppose there is no need to show you all the memories. It was a long and painful ordeal. After Fionn took off with your mother, I was outraged. I was heartbroken. For my whole life since I was a young boy, my one dream, my only focus was to awaken the Maia. No sooner did I succeed than the Dryad I awakened was stolen from me.”
“So did you go after him?”
“Fionn Mac Cumhail was a brutal warlord, the leader of the Fianna, a band of warriors who once prized strength of limb, purity of heart, and actions which met our words. I joined him as his second in a war against the Fomorians. I knew him well. And he knew me, too. And then he somehow came upon the Oxter bag—it was not at all impressive, made of stork skin. Yet somehow it was enchanted. He could pull anything from it… anything at all that he desired.”
“Where did he find something like that?”
“Fionn was always jealous of my abilities. While we were allied, he prized my company. Then, once we had defeated our enemies together, he felt I threatened his leadership of the Fianna. So, he took a journey… where to, I do not know. He came back changed. This Oxter bag, it changed him. It became about power and control. Yet even as he claimed the bag, his wife disappeared. All presumed her dead. It was rumored he had traded her to a Dark Druid in exchange for the bag. Still, it left him a shell of his former self. He became a brute.”
“So, how did you get Mom back?”
My first instinct was to awaken every Ent of the forest and charge after him.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“Ceridwen. As she recovered from her wounds, she implored me not to fight Fionn’s savagery with more violence. It would corrupt my gifts. It would pollute the Spirit of Annwn within me.”
“So, you found another way?”
“Fionn feared the Druidry I possessed. What he did not know, though, was the full measure of my abilities. There is one skill I learned from Michael. It’s a skill I had only done once or twice before, as a young boy. I could change my appearance, shift to assume the form of an animal or even another person.”
“So you and me… we can shapeshift?”
“We can, son. But I must tell you, it is a very dangerous thing to do. I’m sure Merlin can explain it better than I could.”
Merlin took his cue and began to explain. “When you shift into another being, you must somehow account for all of your own self within the shape you assume. And still, if you assume another’s form too closely you may inherit some of the species’ instincts. When taking the form of another person, aspects of that person’s personality can rub off on your own. That’s because we cannot shapeshift in part. When we take another’s form, we must take their form fully, inside and out. The brain, too. Your consciousness and memories remain, but the dispositions and character of the one whose form you assume will be felt. The only variation you might make, in order to ensure that you retain all of yourself within the shape you take, is with respect to size and proportions.”
“Mass can neither be created nor destroyed,” Tyler added, nodding as though he felt vindicated once again that his theory was not too far from the truth.
“Yes, young Ovate! Precisely.”
“So, Dad,” I continued, “you went after Fionn looking like someone else?”
“When he left with your mother, one of his soldiers was stranded behind. He was knocked out when the wind I had evoked against his army threw him back into a stone. After Fionn left, we quickly detained him. At first I tried to glean information from him. There wasn’t much information, though, that I required. I knew Fionn well. His plans were clear: he intended to make Grainne his wife. So instead, we took him captive. I basically called forth a wooden dome, a prison of sorts, from an apple tree. It sustained him from its fruit, even as it detained him. It was quite brilliant, if I should say so myself.”
“And you took this soldier’s form… and went to rejoin the Fianna?”
“I did.”
“And since I’m here today, I’m assuming you managed to rescue Mom?”
“Well, yes and no. It was not so simple. You see, if I had simply abducted her back, Fionn would have attacked our village again. So instead I retained the soldier’s form and assumed his position as the head of his personal guard. It was a blessed coincidence, I should say, that the soldier happened to hold such a lofty post. My hope was only to keep your mother safe, at least while I tried to come up with another plan.”
“Why didn’t you just kill him? That would have silenced his rage, for sure. And no one would know it was you.”
“This is not the Druid’s way. It would have corrupted me. It would have made me no different from Fionn. Still, being the lead member of his personal guard meant I was trusted to watch over Grainne as well. She knew who I was from the start. She sensed it. Whenever we had a moment alone, I’ll just say we made the most of it. I presume you’d like no further details than that…”
“Yeah, I get the idea, Dad. Thanks.”
My father laughed. “Your mother, though. She’s crafty. As a nymph, she had ways of pacifying him. Still, she could not rob him of his will. So, when your mother became pregnant with you and your sister…”
“He knew she had been with someone else. He must’ve been pissed,” I said.
“As thin as Grainne was, being with twins she began to show very quickly. She had no choice but to run. From here, son, I’ll let you see how the remainder of our story played out.”
With those words, the world around us faded to black until all five of us stood in pure darkness. Then a flash of light blinded us, and a swirl of colors began to take shape in the form of another scene. I saw a man whom I had never seen before, lounging on a hammock. He was young, younger than Diarmid was at the time. His hair was a dirty blond, and he was dressed in casual rags.
Suddenly, my mother burst into the room. “Diarmid!” she said with urgency in her voice. “He knows. He’s looking for me. He’s looking for you.”
“No. He saw my belly. He knows I’m with child.”
“And since I’m the one in his personal guard most trusted to guard you, he figures I must know something.”
“He thinks you are the father. And he’s right. He intends to kill us both!”
“How much time do we have?” my father asked as he began fastening leather armor to his chest.
“Not much. We have to go. We have to run, now.”
“Very well. Do not worry, Grainne. I will not let him harm us.” My father reached beneath his bed and retrieved his staff. As he grabbed it, a swirling green light surrounded his body. His shoulders began to broaden, and his hair turned darker. His features slowly evolved back into the image of Diarmid, my father, as I had seen him before. “I cannot assume that form any longer. It takes all the magic I can access to maintain it. We may need it if we hope to escape.”
Diarmid grabbed Grainne’s hand as they slowly opened the door to his chambers. He looked to the right, then to the left. Down a distant corridor, shadows cast by torchlight danced on the wall, and the sound of footsteps grew louder.
“This way, Grainne.” My father led Grainne the opposite way. “We must hurry.”
We followed closely behind them, witnessing their flight from what seemed to be an underground chamber, lined with stone. His staff glowed and as he and my mother proceeded, and tree roots shot across the hall behind them, breaking through the cracks of the stone. We walked through them as though we were only ghosts, but the obstacle course he was creating would undoubtedly slow down their pursuers.
“Diarmid,” my mother said, “there is nowhere we can run where they will not find us. When he sees all of this, these roots, he’ll know it was you. You are the only one who could…”
“Then we must come up with another plan.”
“Take me back to my tree.”
“Your tree?”
“Where I was reborn from the Maia. I may be able to reach through the veil between our worlds there, where your dance brought our worlds so close together. The gatekeeper will sense my attempt at a breach and should appear. I can only pray by the trees that he will help us.”
My father nodded, concurring with the plan. As they made their way out of the building, a spear whizzed past my face and nearly struck my mother in the back before being intercepted by a sapling, which quickly grew up from the soil. A second spear, this time passing right through Tyler’s form, fell just short of their position.
“Bring her back, you fiendish Druid! She is mine,” Fionn shouted from horseback as he began pursuing them, gripping a sword in one hand and the horse’s reins in the other.
As my parents made their way to the forest’s edge, Diarmid’s staff shot a dozen or so beams of green energy into the trees all around him. Suddenly those trees came to life. The Ents stretched out their branches, one Ent to the next, twisting them into a giant barrier, closing access to the woods as my parents made their way safely into the heart of the forest.
“Stop! You cannot run from me forever, Diarmid. Anywhere you go, I will find you! You and your bastard children!” Fionn shouted as his pursuit was thwarted by the Ents.
We passed through the barrier without any problem, and did our best to keep up with my parents as they fled the scene. Thankfully, my father spared us the trip and after a quick fade to black, a new scene emerged as we found ourselves back at the forest’s edge, where the oak tree and stone dance circles stood.
Grainne climbed the tree to the branches which formerly cradled the Maia. Raising her arms, a cone formed much like the one the dance had produced. Only now, it was one nymph calling forth the luminescent wonder. Diarmid stood at a distance, his jaw partly dropped. Even he was impressed by her focused power. As she stood within the clutches of the very tree that had rebirthed her, it was as though her true nature was awakened. Everything about her looked more vibrant and alive. Suddenly, out of the cone a second, inverted cone—this one a swirl of red, green, and blue—met it. The two cones formed an hourglass shape, Grainne’s cone spinning clockwise and the other cone counter-clockwise. It was as though someone was attempting to unwind the cone, to prevent it from penetrating Annwn.
In spite of the other cone’s impressive power, Grainne’s determined force overtook it, forcing it to retreat. At that moment a loud boom resounded from the skies. The light from the cone became so bright we had to shield our eyes.
When the light faded and our eyes began to readjust to the dimly lit forest, a figure emerged at the base of the tree. At first, the figure was nothing but a shade. Then his image began to sharpen as our eyes fully recovered from the flash.
The man standing there was none other than Merlin—our Nesbitt—but noticeably younger. He had no beard, and his long hair was not gray but a forest green several shades darker than Grainne’s.
“The gatekeeper demands a reply! Who dares attempt a breach between our worlds?” I noticed a wide grin on our Nesbitt’s face, who seemed entertained by his own forceful entrance.
“Sir, I mean no harm…” Diarmid began.
The gatekeeper turned his gaze toward Grainne, who still stood in the cradle of the oak. “Grainne? Is it really you?”
“It is, Myrrdn. We need your help.”
“Trifling in earthly affairs is not my business. Speaking of… how did you get to be here? When were you reborn?”
“This Druid, Diarmid. He claims Michael appeared to him as a child, taught him how to evoke the great cone through the Druid’s dance. They somehow managed to arrest my Maia from the Tree of Life, and I awoke here instead.”
“Curious,” Myrrdn replied. “Why would Michael ever…”
“I don’t know, sir,” Diarmid interjected. “He only told me that I was special. That I needed to awaken the Maia.”
“Very well. So now, Grainne, you wish to return to Annwn?”
“Not exactly, Myrrdn. You see, this man. He and I…” My mother gestured toward her swelling womb.
“Oh my!” Myrrdn exclaimed. “How does that happen?”
“Well, Myrrdn,” Grainne explained, “when a man loves a woman…”
“No, no… I know how. I mean, how is it possible between a human and a Dryad?”
“Perhaps we are not so different, after all,” Grainne said.
“Perhaps you are right. Well, this is quite the situation we have here. How can I help?”
“We are being pursued,” Grainne explained, “by a brute who thinks I should belong to him. He intends to kill Diarmid, and probably me too, for rejecting him. And my children…”
“Children?” Diarmid asked. “As in, more than one?”
“Yes, I feel the presence of two spirits, my love. We are having twins.”
My father’s eyes widened as he took in this news.
“Still, what would you have me do?” Myrrdn asked.
“This man, Fionn. He will pursue us anywhere we go. We need you to take us somewhere else…”
“I cannot allow you both to come to Annwn. It is forbidden for humans to dwell there.”
“You do not need to keep us there, Gatekeeper. Send us somewhere else, back to Earth. Another place. Another time. Diarmid will not ‘dwell’ there, not technically. We’ll only be passing through.”
“I suppose that might work… Still, I’m not sure it’s right… and there will be consequences for both our worlds.”
“Look at it this way, Myrrdn. The children in my womb are as much nymph as they are human. They belong to Annwn as much as to this earth. And the All Father would never support forcibly separating a father from his children, no matter what rules we might have to bend to do so.”
“You have a point, Grainne.” The younger Myrrdn paused a moment, giving it some thought. “Very well, I will move you to somewhere… somewhen else.”
“
But wait,” Diarmid said. “If we run, Fionn will destroy our village. He must be stopped.”
“Do not worry about that, young Druid. I do not typically trifle in human affairs, but since it was a nymph’s presence here that brought this about, the people there should not have to suffer. I can keep your village safe. Now, come. Let us go before they find you here.”
Diarmid and Grainne both approached the younger Myrrdn, who wrapped his arms around each of them. In a moment, a multi-colored cone like the one we saw before descended from the skies. As the cone swirled around them, they disappeared.
Since our view was inextricably tied to my father’s memories, we were swept up into the vortex as well.
We landed in a luscious grove. The green grasses and multi-colored flowers were more vibrant than any I had seen before. The closest I’d seen, before this, were those surrounding the Shire. The skies were a perfect blue. As we inhaled, we sensed the air was remarkably pure. This was only a memory, but the sensations we experienced were transferred from my father’s own recollection to our present experiences.
The expression on Diarmid’s face matched what my own must have been. It certainly resembled the looks on Tyler, Emilie, and Joni’s faces. This was Annwn. More beautiful than I ever could have imagined. Where we stood, a single tree towered above us. It must have ascended more than a hundred feet before the first branches extended outward.
“Come, my love,” Grainne said to Diarmid. “What you see is the Tree of Life. It is the tree I had heretofore always served before I was reawakened in your world.”
“Wow. It’s incredible, Grainne.”
“Unfortunately, we have no time to spare. I cannot open breaches to just any time and place of my choosing. If we wait too long, you may end up stuck with the dinosaurs, or even worse, after the apocalypse,” Myrrdn continued, apparently not considering the fact that neither dinosaurs nor the apocalypse were likely a part of my parents’ vocabulary. “Right now we have a window to a time many thousands of years from now. But it is a time when you will be able to survive. It is a mostly peaceful time, in a part of the world not yet discovered in yours. When I send you through this breach, it will leave an opening between our worlds. The opening will remain so long as any of those whom we send through remain living. That includes, I must tell you, your unborn twins. They must learn, too, to guard the breach. Any with an inkling of magical ability might be able to exploit the breach and draw upon Annwn’s energies for unsavory means. Do you understand?”
Gates of Eden: Starter Library Page 19