We wandered around in the light of a full moon. The trees and vines were thick here, and it was a bit hard to pick our way through the wood. We couldn’t see the hawk anymore and I wasn’t sure we were going the right way. But we heard the hawk cry out and turned to go in the direction of its voice.
A few minutes later we came to a small clearing. And there, perched atop a rock, was the hawk. She was beautiful in the full moon, her brown feathers flecked with white and her chest nearly all white. Even though it was entirely dark, the full moon lit up her eyes. They shone like two rounds of onyx.
For some reason I can’t explain, the urge to speak to the hawk overwhelmed me.
“Are you the hawk that Hindergog said to follow?” I asked it.
The bird didn’t move but let out a short squawk.
“And is this the Sacred Well?”
Again, a short squawk.
“Amazing,” said Jake. “Hey wait Emily, take out the torc.”
I did as he asked and handed it to him.
“Look, the bird on the torc. It’s the same kind of bird. It’s a hawk.”
Fanny took the torc and inspected the bird finial then looked at the hawk. She nodded, “Yep, it’s a hawk alright.”
Jake took out the flashlight and shone it around the ground. He shuffled his feet around the thick grass under our feet.
“There’s a ring of stones here. This is it. This is the real well.”
The hawk squawked again, only a bit louder. It was as if she was saying “That’s what I said, stupid!”
The second well was smaller and less noticeable than the first. If I thought the first well was an unlikely candidate for a portal, the second was just plain pitiful. There wasn’t even any water, just a small, broken ring of stones.
We stood in complete silence as we looked down at the pathetic, broken ring of rocks. But the chills going up and down my spine contradicted my conclusion that it was just a dip I the ground surrounded by ordinary rock.
All I could say is, “This is it.” Fanny and Jake spoke not a word but nodded in agreement.
“Emily, put the torc on now,” said Fanny.
“Yeah,” chimed in Jake.
I knew they were right, that I should put the torc on. The racing heart and chills in my body showed me that we were in the right place. But I didn’t want to put the hunk of metal on. At the well the hawk led us to, I began to feel as if the torc really would cause something to happen and I was scared. I didn’t want to go into the little hole. What if I can’t breathe? What if I get ripped apart? What if I can’t come back?
“Come on Em,” Fanny said. “What are you waiting for?”
“Well,” I stammered, “what if someone sees?”
“There isn’t anyone around here. They’re all over at the bonfire. They can’t see us,” said Jake. Fanny nodded.
Fanny held the torc out to me. I reached for the arm bracelet, half expecting it to crawl itself up onto my arm or for the small hole in the ground to open up and swallow me whole.
But as I grabbed the torc, nothing happened. It didn’t feel strange or magickal at all. It didn’t vibrate in my hand or cause a static discharge. The well was still just a small hole in the ground surrounded by ordinary stones. The torc was still just an old arm bracelet made of twisted metal.
“What now?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” said Jake. “Hindergog said you’d know what to do.”
“Yeah, well I don’t! How am I supposed to know what to do with this thing?” I yelled. The hawk cried out.
“And I can’t understand what the heck you’re saying,” I grumped.
We stood there and said nothing. None of us knew what to do next. After a long, awkward silence Jake said, “Look in the box Em. Maybe there are instructions in there or a spell or something.”
Jake shone the flashlight while I searched the box. But I found nothing. There was no inscription or ancient writing. No pictures. Just an empty box.
Jake inspected the torc itself. He found nothing helpful there either. It was just a bunch of twisted coils of gold.
“Oh, this is useless,” I said. “I don’t know what to do.”
Then Fanny chimed in, “Put it on.”
“What?” I said.
“You know. Put it on. Around your arm like Hindergog said that Saorla wore it.”
“Well I’ve been holding it and nothing happened. I don’t see how putting it on is going to make a difference,” I said.
“I don’t know,” Fanny replied. “But try it anyway. It can’t hurt.”
The hawk let out another excited squawk.
“Apparently she agrees with you Fanny,” I said.
I took my jacket off. The torc was pretty large and it slid easily onto my upper arm. As I eased onto my upper right arm, something truly strange happened.
The torc tightened itself. On its own, the metal became slightly liquefied and molded itself to my arm until it fit me perfectly. Fanny and Jake stared in amazement, their eyes wide and their mouths open.
“Holy crap, did you see that?” Jake asked.
I couldn’t answer because at that moment, my head began swirling. In a matter of seconds, I was no longer with Jake and Fanny. The ground around me moved and morphed. I stood in front of the same well, only I wore a long purple robe and white tunic instead of jeans and a sweatshirt. I didn’t know if it was a vision or real, but I had become Saorla. I don’t know how I knew I was Saorla, but I did know it. I’m Saorla.
My mouth opened and I heard myself speak. The voice sounded strange, as if it came from a far away place down on long tunnel. I spoke these words:
Ring of stones,
Circle of Moon.
Goddess of Fire,
And of the Light.
Lift the veil of illusion,
Open the door to truth,
For the good of all mankind.
As soon as the last word was spoken, the ground trembled beneath me. I didn’t know if the ground trembled only in my vision or in the real world with Fanny and Jake. But as the earth shook, I heard thunder boom and the little indentation surrounded by stones grew. It widened and deepened until it was a proper hole, not just a depression in the ground. A strange silvery mist coming billowed out of growing hole. It was like fog only thicker. The silvery mist looked like a liquid blanket made of silver.
I heard Jake’s voice. “You did it Em! That’s the portal.”
Jake’s voice pulled me out of my vision. I blinked my eyes. I was back in our world. I saw Fanny and Jake, both looking at the wide hole in the ground with mist pouring out. They see it too. I’m not just seeing things. It’s really happening.
“Are you going to go in?” Fanny whispered.
“I guess,” I whispered back.
I took a few steps forward but stopped when Jake said, “Wait Em. Don’t go yet.”
“Why?”
“Well … I don’t know how long you’ll be there,” he said. “Or when you’ll come back.”
“Or if I’ll come back.” I felt tears come to my eyes. Jake looked like he might cry too.
“You’ll come back, Em,” Fanny said. “I know you will.”
“I hope so. I’ll miss you guys.”
“We’ll wait for you,” said Jake. “As long as it takes, we’ll wait for you.”
“Look, it may be like I’m in and out in a second, or it may be years. Time may be weird there. Anyway, if I’m not back in a few hours, go to town and get a room. Take care of yourselves. Promise me that, okay. That you’ll take care of yourselves.”
“We promise,” they both said.
“Okay, then wish me luck.” We gave each other a group hug and said goodbye.
“Good luck, Em,” they both said.
I began again to walk slowly to the large hole in the ground. I felt as if I was on a conveyor belt. Somehow I moved, but I don’t remember telling my legs to go forward. I was drawn to the silvery mist billowing out of the small cave that the incantatio
n had created. Step by step, I drew closer. I heard the hawk call out. Every hair on my body stood on end. My heart beat so fast, it felt like it would explode in my chest.
The breeze picked up and clouds swirled in the sky, blocking out the moon’s light. The wind blew my hair about my head, and the chilly air increased the already copious goose bumps on my body.
As I crossed the threshold between our world and the new world, I heard the same low hum that I’d heard when Hindergog appeared to me. Was that just three days ago? It seemed like a million years since I’d first seen the little, furry guy.
The humming grew louder and sounded more like buzzing. What is that sound? It seemed familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. Then it came to me. It was the sound that I’d heard coming from power lines. It’s the sound of electricity. Am I going to be electrocuted?
Though it felt as if I walked in slow motion, the entire journey from our world to an alien one took but less than a minute. As I contemplated the possibility that I’d be electrocuted by as I stepped across the threshold to another world, I began to have a thought.
What if I’m going to what people call the ‘other side’? What if there really are spirits of the dead and I’m going to the place where they live? And if there is such a place, maybe my mom is there. And if she is there, maybe I’ll be able to see her again!
Those thoughts displaced my fear about electrocution and what might come next. With thoughts of seeing my mother again whirling in my head, I picked up my feet and crossed the threshold between two worlds.
25. EMILY AND THE NETHERWORLD
As I entered the portal, I expected to be in a wormhole kind of thing like I’d seen in movies. I anticipated being sucked into a colorful vortex of swirling light. I imagined that I’d feel as if I was being pulled apart or maybe I’d disintegrate and then come back together (hopefully) when I got there.
But it wasn’t like that at all. The truth is, I was disappointed in the journey. I simply walked from one world to another. I knew that I’d left our world only because I was surrounded by the same silvery mist and fog that we’d seen come out of the hole. The fog and mist was so thick, I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. I had walked into a dimension of fog.
I didn’t know what to do so I walked. At least I think I walked. It’s hard to describe, but when you can’t see anything in any direction, when you’re totally surrounded by mist and fog, you can’t tell if you’re moving or not. I moved my legs, but I can’t say for sure that I went anywhere.
And there didn’t appear to be any ‘where’ to go. It felt like hours that I walked through the endless fog and mist. I was on the verge of some serious tears. What have I gotten myself into? I was stuck in a place of nothing, and I had no idea how to get out.
Through my tears I cursed Hindergog, the only one I could think of to blame for my misery. “Darn you Hindergog, you evil troll!”
No sooner had a yelled those words into the mist, I saw a dark shape materialize in front of me. My heart began to pick up speed as the shape came closer and grew larger. But when the shape was a few feet from me, I relaxed as I recognized the familiar outline of pointy ears.
“I am no troll, my young mistress.”
“Hindergog, oh thank God you’re here,” I said. I hugged him to me and found that he was as solid as any person in my world. “I’ve never been gladder to see anyone in my life.”
Hindergog almost looked happy. He looked exactly the same in person as he did in the holographic projection. He had the same sad, droopy eyes. Same tweed vest and rolled up sleeves of his linen shirt. Same dog muzzle but with a pig snout on the end and same odd pig-like ears. I can’t say that Hindergog was cute because he was a bit ugly. But just then, he was the best-looking thing I’d ever seen.
“Hindergog, you’ve come to rescue me from this place, haven’t you?” I asked.
“Rescue you? From what?”
“This horrible nothing land that I’m stuck in. I was supposed to go to the Netherworld, but I don’t know how to get there.”
“You are in the Netherworld,” Hindergog said. He began to walk.
I ran after him because I didn’t want to lose him in the fog.
“This doesn’t seem like a world at all. Where are these great teachers I’m supposed to ‘train’ with? I swear I’ve walked for hours and I haven’t seen anyone or anything.”
“This is a decidedly different kind of world than you are used to, young Emily. Your teachers are here, as are other entities, but not nearly so many beings as in your world. Here, you will not have the interference of the creations of so many others.”
“Yeah, I don’t think interference of others is anything I’ve got to worry about here.”
“My young mistress, so human. You still see only with your eyes.”
“Well, I am accustomed to seeing with my eyes, yes. What other organ should I use to see? My spleen?”
“I can see that you are getting frustrated … ”
“You think!”
“But please, dear mistress, try to calm yourself. There is more here than meets your human eye. We are on the way to meet your first teacher, but let’s stop here for a moment. I don’t think the elders will mind if I give you a short lesson myself.”
I was happy to stop walking for a minute and to know that we were, in fact, headed somewhere. I was being a snotty brat but I wasn’t in the mood to play nice. I felt like Hindergog had misled me into a strange and unpleasant place. It was as if I’d closed my eyes to sleep and woke up in a silvery cloud of fog. There was no color, no shapes. It wasn’t light but it wasn’t dark either. It was an insubstantial cloud of nothing.
“Mistress Emily, I ask that you close your eyes for a moment.”
It seemed silly, but seeing as how I had nothing else to do, I did as he said and closed my eyes.
“Good. Now, imagine in your mind a path before you to walk on. Make it any kind of path that you would like. Make sure it is solid and smooth so that you will not trip. Think only of your ideal walking path. Have you imagined it?”
I nodded.
“Good, now open your eyes.”
I did as Hindergog said and still found myself surrounded by fog. “Okay, that was fun. I’m still in a fog bank.”
“Look down.”
I looked down and there in front of me was a path - the path - that I’d imagined. Seeing the path that I’d imagined struck me so funny that I laughed out loud.
“What is so amusing to my mistress? Do tell me why you laugh so.”
“Oh Hindergog, this is amazing. I didn’t know what would happen, you know, so I imagined the first path that came to mind. It was a silly thought but I didn’t really know what was going to happen, so when you said ‘path’ the first thing I thought of was something from an old movie.” I could barely finish the sentence because I laughed so hard I had tears in my eyes.
Under my feet and ahead of me, as if I was on the set of the original movie, was the yellow brick road. I’d imagined Dorothy’s yellow brick road and I stood on it.
After I finally quit laughing quite so hard, I pressed Hindergog on what had happened. “So, I imagined this path and it just appeared?”
“Yes.”
“Just like that, I imagine it and it appears here?”
“Yes.”
“Do you see it too?”
“No, I have my own path. They may look different, but at this moment, they are going to the same place.”
“So right now, when you look around you, do you see the same foggy cloud everywhere that I see?”
“No, not at all.”
“You don’t? Teach me, Hindergog. Teach me how to replace this fog bank of nothing with something so I don’t get bat crap crazy in this place.”
“But I have taught you. Do you not see?”
“You mean, I just imagine it?”
“Yes, Mistress Emily, you just imagine what you would like to see. But heed my words of caution. Be exceedingly carefu
l of what you imagine here. In the Netherworld, there is no interference of ideas from others, no competition as it were for creation. And there is no buffer of time. Whatever you intend will manifest immediately. Beware of your fear. A fearful mind can create truly awful things.”
I closed my eyes and imagined a sunny day, with just a few bright, white puffy clouds. I imagined green grass and rolling hills and flowers and trees.
I opened my eyes and found that all I’d imagined had come true around me. Instead of standing in a world of dove-grey fog, I stood on Earth and it was a perfect day. Birds chirped and butterflies flitted amongst the flowers. I breathed a sigh of relief to be surrounded by familiar things.
But the brightly colored flowers reminded me of the reason I’d gotten my legs to walk me through the portal. The flowers were my mother’s paintings come to life. As if he could read my mind (and I found out later he could), Hindergog coughed lightly. “Not all wishes can come true,” he said. He continued walking. I didn’t have time to ask him what he meant because I had to run after him so I wouldn’t lose him.
I practically skipped down a yellow brick road behind a man that looked like a dog crossed with a pig. I half expected that Hindergog would take me to an Emerald City and that I’d be chased by a wicked witch. No, don’t imagine that! It may come true.
Follow the yellow brick road.
26. AND LIAM MAKES THREE AGAIN
Liam was restless on his flight to Dublin. His mind raced with thoughts of where Emily could be and why she’d gone to Ireland in the first place.
He arrived exhausted, but there was no time to waste. He searched from youth hostel to hostel and hoped his guess about where the three had flopped was correct. Liam got lucky. On his fifth try, he found two familiar faces in the dark common room of an old hostel. Jake was busy at his laptop, and Fanny appeared to be asleep on a couch.
“Fanny, Jake – thank God I found you!”
Jake didn’t stand but his mouth fell open almost to the floor. His eyes were red-rimmed and tired looking but he smiled brightly when he saw Liam. Jake kicked at Fanny’s leg hanging over the end of the couch. “Wake up, Fan.”
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