Prince of Hazel and Oak s-2

by John Lenahan

  Warily, Brendan sat next to me, as if for protection, and pointed to Nieve. ‘That’s the witch that trashed my police station!’

  ‘What did he say?’ Nieve asked.

  ‘Oh, he said good morning, it’s nice to see you again,’ I lied.

  Nieve gave me a sceptical look.

  ‘This is my dream and I don’t want her in it!’ he shouted, pointing his finger inches from her face.

  ‘Careful, Brendan,’ I warned.

  ‘What is he saying?’ Nieve asked again, but then said, ‘Oh, this is ridiculous. Tell him to place his head on the table.’

  It took a lot of convincing, but I finally got Brendan to place the side of his face flat down on the table. Nieve took a small piece of gold out of her satchel and rubbed it between her hands while incanting.

  Brendan looked up with a wild panicky expression in his uppermost eye. ‘Is this going to hurt?’

  ‘He wants to know if this is going to hurt,’ I translated.

  ‘Yes, I suspect it will,’ Nieve said calmly.

  ‘No,’ I told Brendan, ‘you’ll be fine.’

  Nieve opened her palms and dripped the molten gold into Brendan’s ear. He shot up, grabbed his ear, overturning the bench he was sitting on, and danced around the room howling in pain. I was glad no one other than me spoke English. The curse words coming out of his mouth would have made a prison inmate blush. He picked up a silver tray, sending half a dozen wine glasses crashing to the floor, and tried to use it as a mirror to view his ear. At his insistence I inspected the lughole and assured him that it looked OK – which it did – and finally got him sitting down again.

  ‘What the hell did she do to me?’

  ‘Now stick out your tongue,’ Nieve demanded.

  ‘No way, lady! I’m not letting you near me ever again.’

  I looked at Nieve and she smiled at me. ‘Brendan,’ I said in Gaelic, ‘can you understand me?’

  ‘Of course I can understand you. You keep that crazy woman away from me.’

  ‘Brendan, I’m talking to you in ancient Gaelic. Are you sure you can understand me?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘It seems that Nieve has given you a two-second lesson in the common tongue. You just learned a new language.’

  ‘That’s impossible.’

  ‘Impossible things happen here every day.’

  ‘Now, Brendan,’ Nieve said, ‘stick out your tongue and I will complete the process, then we will no longer need to speak through Conor. Personally I don’t trust him as a reliable interpreter.’

  Brendan clenched his mouth shut and shook his head no, like a baby that won’t eat his dinner. It took even more of an effort to convince him the second time. I tried everything, including agreeing with him that it didn’t matter ’cause it was all really a dream. It wasn’t until I threatened to never feed him again that he gave in.

  ‘Come on,’ I said, ‘stop being such a baby.’

  ‘It hurt, damn it. You do it.’

  I rolled my eyes at him but to be honest it wasn’t something I wanted to experience.

  ‘Ask her if it will hurt as much as the last time – ask her exactly that.’

  I translated and Nieve said, ‘No.’

  Brendan watched with crossed eyes as the molten gold hit his tongue. He not only flipped over the chair but the table as well. He hopped around the dining hall screaming bloody murder and this time everyone in the room heard exactly what he was saying. Most of them left in order to get some distance between them and the madman.

  ‘God almighty!’ Brendan screamed from behind his hand in perfect Gaelic. ‘You said it wouldn’t hurt as much!’

  ‘No,’ Nieve replied in her usual calm manner. ‘You asked if it would hurt as much as the last time and I said, no. I knew it would hurt more.’

  Nieve gave me a rueful smile; I was starting to realise she had a wickedly subversive sense of humour.

  ‘Now that I can converse with you,’ Nieve said, ‘I realise I do not want to. If you will excuse me.’

  Nieve left. I asked a servant to bring Brendan a glass of Gerard’s finest wine. It was a bit early but I figured he would appreciate it. He did. After one sip he downed the glass in one.

  ‘Are you OK?’ I asked.

  ‘To be honest, Conor, I’m not sure. This dream is way to real for my liking.’

  ‘I keep telling you – it’s not a dream.’

  ‘All right then, as much as I don’t relish meeting another member of your family, how about that introduction to your father you promised me.’

  ‘I don’t think I ever promised you that.’

  ‘As good as – well?’

  ‘OK,’ I said, ‘come with me.’

  Chapter Five

  Fand

  The closer we got to Dad’s room the more worried Frick and Frack looked. They obviously thought Brendan was a nutcase and that letting him loose in the west wing was a bad idea. They were shocked when I told them that Brendan could enter Dad’s room without them.

  The first thing we noticed was that the curtains in The Lord’s Chamber were closed but the room was bright with the light of about thirty candles.

  ‘You must have a hell of a candle bill,’ Brendan quipped.

  ‘These are Leprechaun candles. They last for years.’

  ‘Of course they do, silly me.’

  As we entered the room we saw a woman sitting cross-legged on a stool at the foot of the bed. Her head was covered with an intricate gold-flecked veil that played weird tricks with the candlelight. Her arms were outstretched at her sides and she was chanting in Ogham. I couldn’t see her face but I knew from the voice who it was. She stopped chanting when we entered the room.

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you.’

  ‘I am a difficult woman to disturb, Prince Conor,’ Fand said without moving, ‘it is I who will be disturbing you. Shall I leave?’

  ‘No, please go on; Dad can use all the help he can get.’

  Fand continued her chanting in a voice so low we could hardly hear. I motioned for Brendan to come closer to the bed and I pulled the sheet back from Dad’s chest revealing his right arm and his attached runehand.

  ‘What did you do to him?’ Brendan said in an accusing tone.

  ‘Oh give it up, Brendan, I didn’t do anything to him,’ I said, trying to whisper. I explained about Dad’s hand being reattached during the Choosing ceremony in the Chamber of Runes and how Mom and Fand sealed him in this amber shell to stop his hand from killing him.

  ‘So he’s in some kind of magical suspended animation?’

  ‘That’s about right,’ I said as quietly as I could, hoping Brendan would follow suit. p height="0%" width="5%"›He didn’t; he started to chuckle and then laugh out loud. ‘Oh boy!’ he said with no intention of being remotely quiet. ‘I’m going to quit the police force when I wake up. I think I’m going to write science fiction movies.’

  ‘Brendan, could you keep your voice down.’

  ‘Why? I’m proud of myself. Who’d have thought I had such a vivid imagination? Or maybe I should write detective novels. I’ll call my first one, The Strange Case of the Father Who Was Turned into a Paperweight.’ He rapped his knuckles on Dad’s solid forehead.

  I grabbed his wrist and said, ‘Don’t do that.’

  ‘Don’t do what – this?’ He thumped on Dad’s forehead again like he was knocking on a door.

  That’s when I hit him. It was more of a forceful push than a punch but I knew it hurt. Brendan staggered back and held his chest.

  ‘You want a piece of me, O’Neil?’ he shouted. ‘All right then, let’s do it. Can you fight without a stick? Come on, man-to-man.’

  I know I shouldn’t have done it, there in my father’s sick room, but I raised my dukes and squared up to him. I was sick and tired of his I can do anything in a dream attitude.

  We were about a nanosecond away from going for each other’s throats when Fand broke the atmosphere of blood lust. ‘I stated be
fore that I was a difficult woman to disturb,’ she said in a voice that reminded us that she was a queen, ‘but you two have succeeded.’

  Brendan and I both turned and pretty much stood at attention as she lifted the veil from her head. Brendan let loose a gasp, and said, ‘Oh my God.’

  Fand stood and walked towards him. ‘You are the traveller from the Real World?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he replied respectfully.

  ‘You look as though you have seen a ghost.’

  ‘Not a ghost, ma’am; for a moment I thought you were my mother.’

  ‘Your mother?’

  ‘Yes, you look remarkably like her, here I’ll show you.’ Brendan reached for his back pocket then remembered he was wearing new clothes and rummaged around in the pouch of his tunic until he produced an old leather wallet. ‘I have a picture of her with my daughter.’ Brendan pulled bits of paper out of his wallet looking increasingly confused. He went through everything a second time and then held a blank piece of paper in his hands repeatedly looking at its front and back. ‘I don’t understand it.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, this is the photograph. Look, I wrote the date on the back, but the picture is – gone.’

  I took the photo from him and it was indeed blank, not even the ghost of an image remained. ‘I think I know what happened,’ I said. ‘Real World technology often doesn’t work here. Electric watches and guns don’t work, so I imagine photography doesn’t either.’t work, soiv height="0%"›

  ‘You mean I’m stuck in this dream without a picture of my own daughter?’

  ‘Dream?’ Fand said.

  ‘Brendan here thinks this is all a long dream and that any second he is going to wake up in his bed.’

  ‘I see. Well, maybe you are right, Brendan. Who can tell what is real and what is illusion? This may be a realm inside a dream but that is not what you think, is it? You think you are still back in the Real World and soon you shall awake – is that not so?’

  Brendan nodded but I could see his resolve weakening.

  ‘I am sorry, Brendan, as seductive as that thought must seem – it is not so. It is true you are in a different world but there is only one reality. What was your vocation in the Real World?’

  ‘I was… I am… a detective.’

  Fand looked confused. Brendan tried a couple of times to describe his job using words like ‘perpetrator’ and ‘arrest’. Finally he changed his wording to ‘I find evildoers and punish them.’

  Fand nodded. ‘You seek the truth?’

  Brendan thought for a bit and then smiled. ‘I suppose I do.’

  ‘Like a Druid.’

  ‘Now you not only look like my mother but you sound like her.’

  ‘Oh, how so?’

  ‘That’s just the kind of voodoo crap my mother used to spout.’

  ‘Conor has taught me the meaning of “crap” but what is voodoo?’

  ‘OK, not voodoo, but she was always brewing herbs into potions to ward off colds or a rash or evil spirits, and when she wasn’t doing that she was dancing naked around a fire or hugging a tree.’

  ‘It sounds as if I would like her,’ Fand said.

  ‘Maybe you would. I don’t get along with her very well.’

  Fand answered that statement with a knowing smile – she had experience with a difficult mother; her mother had been responsible for the near extinction of her entire race.

  ‘Let me see the… What did you call it – photo?’

  Brendan handed her the blank piece of paper that once held the image of his daughter and mother. Fand took a glop of tree sap out of a silk bag that was hanging around her waist and walked over to the dresser at the far side of the room. She closed her hand over the sap, placed her fist into the bowl of Shadowfire and chanted under her breath. She then removed her hand and dripped sap onto the front of the paper, where the photo had been. Immediately the sap hardened into a thin film, not unlike the emulsion on a glossy photo. Then Fand dropped it into the Shadowfire.

  ‘Hey,’ Brendan shouted as he reached to retrieve his photo.

  Fand grabbed his wrist and said, ‘Wait.’

  It was obvious from Brandon’s face that her strengthhad surprised him.

  When nothing happened, Fand asked, ‘Has your daughter or mother ever touched this – photo?’

  Brendan thought for a moment and replied, ‘I don’t think so.’

  Fand retrieved the blank photo and held it in her palm above the Shadowfire. ‘May I touch you?’ she asked.

  Brendan looked to me for advice. I shrugged; I had no idea what was going on.

  ‘I guess,’ he said.

  Fand laid her palm across the side of Brandon’s face and the Shadowfire jumped to life. An image appeared in the flame. It sent a chill down my spine. The last time I saw anything like this was when my mother performed a Shadowcasting for Fergal – not the most pleasant of memories. This image was of a woman in her late sixties. She was handsome with a strong face and long grey hair tied back in a braided ponytail. She cradled a weeping child of around six in her arms. Brendan pulled away from Fand’s hand and the image vanished.

  ‘That’s not the photo. The photo is of my mother and daughter when my daughter was an infant.’

  ‘Interesting,’ Fand said, smiling. ‘Strange things can happen during Samhain. I think, Brandon, what we have just seen is your mother and daughter as they are in the Real World now.’

  ‘I have to get back.’ The colour dropped out of Brendan’s face like a water cooler emptying. The realisation of his predicament hit him – this was real. ‘I have to get home – now!’ He walked to the door and then realised he didn’t know where to go. ‘How do I get back?’ His voice was panicky.

  ‘You must speak to Deirdre,’ Fand said. ‘I know not how you came.’

  Chapter Six

  Mom

  Getting Brendan an audience with my mother wasn’t easy. Once Dad had stabilised, Fand had ordered Mom to rest. She agreed and slept but as soon as she woke up she threw herself into the task of queening Castle Duir. It took me a couple of days to get the cop in to see her.

  Mom stared hard at the detective when he walked into the room. ‘I remember you,’ she said with narrowing eyes. ‘You are the man that imprisoned my son. You pointed a weapon at me. Conor, what is he doing here?’

  ‘I need to get back,’ Brendan said.

  Mom shot him a spectacularly dirty look and said, ‘You will speak when spoken to.’

  Wow, even I took an involuntary step back. I had forgotten how menacing Mom can be when she is in her bear cub guarding mode. She turned her back on Brendan and took a step towards me. ‘Now, Conor, what is he doing here?’

  Brendan said, ‘You don’t understand,’ and then did that really foolish thing. He grabbed her wrist.

  I guess I should have warned Brendan about touching a woman in The Land when she doesn’t want or expect it. I had learned that lesson the hard way with Essa but it didn’t even come close to how hard Brandon’s lesson was with my mother. In a matter of nanoseconds she turned her wrist, broke the detective’s grasp, grabbed his arm, placed her foot in his stomach, and then vaulted him clear over her head. Brendan sailed a good seven feet in the air before luckily hitting the back of a sofa. If the manoeuvre had been in any other direction he would have hit a wall. I ran over and righted the couch and then helped the dazed Brendan into it.

  ‘Sit here and don’t say a word,’ I said.

  Brendan’s reply was a predictable, ‘Owww.’

  I approached my mother slowly. She was still in an attack stance and was breathing heavily.

  ‘Someone should teach him not to do that.’

  ‘I think you just did, Mom – and very impressively too, I might add. Let’s all take a deep breath and calm down a little.’

  Mom unclenched her fists. I took a seat and motioned for her to do the same. As she sat, she kept an eye on Brendan.

  ‘Relax, Mom, I’m sure h
e won’t try anything again. Will you, Brendan?’

  ‘Owww,’ Brendan repeated.

  Mom finally turned to me. I smiled at her but she wasn’t quite ready to return it. ‘You still haven’t told me what he is doing here.’

  It’s not like she had given me much of a chance but I decided to keep that comment to myself – enough feathers had been ruffled already. ‘Brendan followed us through that portal you made.’

  ‘That’s impossible.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘The portal was designed for the three of us and our horses – part of that spell was Truemagic, it should have killed someone from the Real World.’

  ‘Well, I hate to disagree with you on a point of magic but there he is.’

  ‘Strange things happen during Samhain,’ Mom mumbled under her breath as she approached Brendan. ‘Why did you incarcerate my son?’

  Brendan didn’t answer but the question succeeded in stopping him from saying, ‘Oww, oww, oww,’ over and over again.

  ‘Mom, he was just doing his job.’

  Mom gave me a sharp look and said, ‘I am speaking to him.’

  ‘He’s right, ma’am,’ Brendan said with a mixture of respect and fear. ‘I was just doing my job.’

  ‘And what job is that?’

  ‘I’m a policeman,’ he said but when he realised she didn’t understand he sighed, ‘I catch and punish evildoers.’

  ‘And what evil could this sweet boy have done?’

  ‘I thought he had killed his father.’

  ‘And why would you have thought that?’

  ‘Well, the house was trashed, his father was missing and he was spending his money.’

  ‘Money?’ Mom asked, turning to me.

  ‘Like gold,’ I said.

  ‘I thought people in the Real World didn’t use magic. What would they want with gold?’

  I hadn’t thought of that before but now wasn’t the time to explain micro-economics to my mother. So I said, ‘We just kinda like it ’cause it’s shiny.’

  ‘Did my son not explain to you about his father?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am, he did but I didn’t believe him.’