“But it was only this afternoon I had the bike accident!” I shrieked. Okay, I confess. I was freaking out. Who wouldn’t? Beamish turning into mead, days randomly inserted in the calendar, unplanned outfit changes, hair going from short to long like one of those Rapunzel Barbies Tammy loved to play with, the kind where you spin the little plastic arm around and the hair gets longer and longer—
“Morganne!” Fergus said, sharply, interrupting my freak out. “This Barbie you speak of sounds like a terrible sorceress indeed! But you are safe now, in King Conor’s realm. No harm will come to you, I swear it.”
Fergus is real, I thought. He’s a long-ago warrior-dude and somehow I have slipped into his world, myself and yet not-quite myself. Myself, with a different ’do and a bit more sporty and able to hold my liquor better.
“I swear it, on my sword and my honor,” he said again, firmly taking me by the shoulders. I looked up at his handsome, young-yet-weathered face, his striking blue eyes. Possibly the most trustworthy sight I’d ever seen.
“I’d better tell you who I really am,” I said.
by the time We’d found a Quiet place to sit, near the royal barn, I had explained to Fergus who I was. Or who I thought I was. Or who I used to be. Or who I would be, someday. It was all pretty confusing to me, but he didn’t seem terribly surprised.
“It’s just as it was foretold in the Druid’s prophecies,” he said. “That ye’d come and go, and your time with us would be as fleeting in your mind as the petals of a cut rose. That we would hold your memories for ye, as a mother remembers her infant’s face at the breast forevermore, though the child grows and forgets. That ye’d walk among us brief as the sunrise, but the shadow of your presence would remain—”
“I get it,” I said. It was rude to interrupt, but these prophecies got annoying fast. “So where am I? Is this the past? Is it a myth?” I looked around at the starlit meadows, the low wooden fences, the stone walls and grazing animals. Beautiful long-ago Ireland, a page from Mother Goose—who could tell them apart? “At first I thought it was a dream—”
Fergus sighed. “Perhaps it is a dream, but of your brain’s making or mine or some other creature’s altogether we can never be sure. Where did you say you’d come from, Morganne?”
“Right before this I was in Durty Nellie’s.” I was chewing my nails, but then I stopped because it didn’t seem like something the long-haired Morganne version of me would do. “We were watching rugby on television and I’d had too much to drink.”
“The last part I understand,” he said, nodding. “Too much mead can weaken the arm of the finest swordsman.”
“I guess,” I said. “Before that I was in Connecticut. It’s—very far from here. Across the ocean.”
Fergus looked at me like I’d just started to smell bad. “You’ve come from England, then?” His hand went to the hilt of his sword.
“No, I mean across the ocean,” I said quickly. “It’s in the other direction.”
His sword hand relaxed. “You mean the Great Water! But that’s the end of the world!”
I shook my head. “Actually there’s a continent on the other side. Nobody here knows about it yet except for some Vikings, I think. Or wait—maybe the Viking thing hasn’t happened yet. Sorry, I’m just not a hundred percent sure when we are, right now.” This was the first time in my whole life I’d needed any knowledge of geography or history outside of a test. Clearly my grasp of both subjects was pathetic.
“Interesting,” Fergus said, with growing intensity. “So there’s land on the other side of the Great Water. Is it fertile land? How many days is it, do you think, by boat?”
Me and my big mouth. Raph, in case I haven’t mentioned it before, was a major Star Trek fan. It was part of his geeky genius-boy persona; and when the show came out on DVD, he’d made me watch all three seasons. It was incredibly goofy, but after a few episodes you start to get into it.
Anyway, at that moment I could clearly imagine Fergus building a huge raft with some crazy peat-powered engine and discovering North America a thousand years too soon. That would be bad. Whenever the Star Trek dudes messed up some other planet’s history, it was always really bad news.
“Not days, Fergus. Months. But forget it, please, okay?” I said nervously. “Because I think I just violated the Prime Directive or something. Don’t ask me what that is—just, trust me. You have to forget what I said. Promise?”
He pushed a curling tendril of my hair behind my right ear and let his fingertips linger on my face. “If you command it, I’ve already forgotten,” he said. “And so have you, it seems. You don’t remember ever being here, do ye, before Samhain and I found you by the road? You don’t remember us at all?” He looked at me searchingly, in a way that made me wonder just how much I wasn’t remembering.
“Sorry,” I said, gently. “I wish I did.”
“Aye. It’s as it was foretold.” Fergus shook his head. “We’re all victims of enchantments, in one way or the other.” He looked down, embarrassed. “This month I’ve fallen in love with a toad. Can ye believe it?”
I couldn’t help laughing. “It’s okay, Fergus. In my world, there’s a saying: You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince. Or princess. Whatever.”
Fergus got a dreamy look in his eye. “If I could catch her I’d kiss her, for sure! The web-toed vixen lives on a lily pad in the center of the swamp, just out of reach. You should see her, Morganne! The color of earth she is, with two soulful eyes sticking up wartlike on the sides of her head, gazing at ye like they’re telling ye all the secrets of the world. . . .”
The poor guy. But love is blind, as my mother used to say much too often after I started dating Raph. “She sounds lovely,” I said. “How did you two meet?”
Fergus sighed. “On the night of the new moon, I secluded myself amongst the creatures of the swamp until the love spell took hold of me again.”
“Why the swamp?” I asked.
He gazed up at the moon that now ruled his heart. “Better I spend a fortnight pining over a salamander than break the heart of another innocent lass with my mindless, enchanted wooing.”
“That’s very considerate of you,” I said, impressed. I couldn’t imagine Raph being that concerned about a girl’s feelings.
Fergus took my hand and held it firmly. “The spells must be broken, Morganne. And soon. Everyone believes that’s why you’ve come back. It’s been foretold—”
“—that I’m the one to fix everything! I know, I know. I’d help if I could, Fergus,” I said. “But I don’t know what to do. Honest.”
“Fergus! Morganne!” Erin came running out of the darkness, shouting for us. “Where are you? Fergus!”
Fergus was up in a flash, his weapon half-drawn and a fearsome warrior-dude look on his face. If there were limbs to be lopped, this was your man.
“I’m here!” he barked. “What is it? Has the king’s strong-hold been attacked?”
Erin was panting. She shook her head.
“No.” She gasped. She pointed at me. “Her! They want—Morganne—”
“Who wants her?” I could swear Fergus got taller all of a sudden. “They shall soon know the feel of my blade, whoever they may be!”
And here they came, straight out of an angry mob casting call, carrying torches and everything. It was the same supportive crowd who’d just been singing my praises inside the castle. I’d read US Weekly enough to know the public was fickle, but this was ridiculous.
“With all due respect!” shouted a white-haired man who seemed to be leading the charge. “’Tis the wedding night of Morganne, and we’d be grateful if ye’d come with us immediately.”
The woman with the bellyache was right next to him, carrying a torch and rubbing her side. “The sooner the better,” she moaned. The crowd roared in agreement.
Fergus had started to froth at the mouth and he looked like he might start lopping any second now, so I stepped in front of him, my restraining hand on his sword a
rm.
“Everybody relax!” I said. “When it’s my wedding I promise you’ll all be invited. But today’s not it, okay? So chill.”
“You must marry the king, Morganne! It’s our only hope,” said the man. The crowd murmured in support. “Ye’ve heard the prophecy!” the man continued, his dark eyebrows wiggling with emotion. “We’ve all seen you now, and we all agree. The maiden of fire and gold—it’s you. It has to be.”
I put my hands on my hips, Wonder-Woman style. “Is that what this is about?” I knew there was a reason I’d always hated strawberry-blond hair. “Listen, in my real life I don’t even have hair at the moment. So this chick in the prophecy? It’s not me, guys.” I looked out over the mob, but no one seemed persuaded. “Not to mention I’m still kind of on the rebound from my last boyfriend,” I added. “Your king deserves better.”
“Prove it! Prove you’re not the maiden of the prophecy!” yelled someone from the crowd. “Or we shall take you to the king by force!”
They looked like they meant it too. I glanced behind me at Fergus, who would clearly go down fighting if I let him, but he was outnumbered by, oh, two hundred to one. Better to keep negotiating. “That’s not very romantic,” I said, stalling for time. “Doesn’t the king have anything to say about this?”
The man sighed. “The king is accursed! He cannot leave the feast till sunrise, and he’ll be eating and drinking the whole night long. We fear he will eat till he bursts.”
“Well, you should have thought of that before you threw a party,” I quipped.
Clearly it was the wrong thing to say. “The king could die! Take her now! Quickly! Let the Druid priests wed them at once!” Before you could sing, “Here Comes the Bride,” four guys had grabbed hold of me and eight more—with extreme difficulty—had pinned Fergus to the ground. Erin started screaming and pointing again but nobody paid any attention.
As they carried me through the streets back to the feasting hall, where my royal husband-to-be was helplessly gorging himself in preparation for our union, all I could think of was how my parents had been worried I’d come home from Ireland with a tattoo or a pierced tongue or something. Imagine the looks on their faces when they found out I’d gotten married. To a king with an eating disorder, no less.
Tammy would be furious. It was her lifelong dream to be a flower girl at somebody’s wedding, and she didn’t care whose. Unfortunately we had no relatives of marrying age at the moment. All the cousins were either much older and already married or younger than me.
How silly to be thinking of my family now. My parents weren’t even born yet and neither was Tammy. And here I was, being passed over the top of the mob like I was crowd surfing in a mosh pit. I was never the type of girl to dream about storybook weddings, but honestly. A veil? Flowers? How about meeting the groom beforehand? Anything would have been better than this.
I heard a sound like the roaring of a bull, and it seemed to be getting closer. Fergus to the rescue, perhaps? I hoped that’s what it was. It was a thundering, rushing, screaming sound, and it kept getting louder.
Erin pointed and screamed, until finally her piercing little-girl’s voice cut through the din.
“It’s Cúchulainn!” Erin cried. “He’s come back!”
twelve
red carpet at the grammys does not begin to approximate the star-struck madness, the fan-boy hysteria, the photo-op-ready theatrics (even though cameras were a long way from being invented) that surrounded Cúchulainn’s arrival at the dun.
First, the limo, I mean chariot, which was being pulled by two enormous and heavily muscled horses. One black, one white. Both of them were breathing fire. I’m not kidding.
Next, the swans. A dozen of them, tethered to the chariot and flying and squawking overhead in great klieg-light-style circles. The noise was tremendous, as were the droppings.
Second to last, the heads. The severed human heads. There were seven of them, tied to the sides of the chariot and bouncing along like so many fuzzy dice dangling from the rearview mirror of my dad’s Subaru.
And last but not least, the man himself. Cúchulainn. Not entirely what you’d expect from the rock-star buildup, frankly. Medium-sized, dark-haired, and kind of a skinny guy. More chess-team champion than football-hero material.
But that’s before you factor in all the Industrial Light and Magic. This guy was oozing special effects. A funnel of smoke was rising from the top of his head like a tornado. Flashes of light seemed to shoot out from his forehead every time he turned his head. His eyes were glowing fiery red; overall I’d say he seemed pretty worked up.
“You!” he bellowed. “With the hair!”
The crowd fell silent. They put me down and stood there shuffling their feet, like they got caught stealing a cookie.
“Good timing,” I said, smoothing my rumpled dress. “You must be Cúchulainn, right? I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“Morganne. The news of your return fills the people with—excitement.” He looked at the mob sternly, and they hung their heads.
“Yup, Morganne, that’s me,” I said, though I still wasn’t entirely sure that it was.
“Then I ask you, Morganne, to tell us true.” His voice rose, loud enough to carry over the assembled crowd. “Are you willing to wed the king?”
I didn’t want to offend anybody. This group was high-strung, and they were still carrying torches. “It’s a tough question,” I said, diplomatically. “He’s a great king and all. But truthfully—no.” Some people murmured unhappily at this. “I’m just not ready for that type of relationship,” I explained. The rumblings of the crowd got louder, angrier.
Cúchulainn raised his fists in the air and bellowed. “Then the maiden of fire and gold is not she!”
The crowd went nuts.
“Her,” I was thinking. Shouldn’t that be, “The maiden of fire and gold is not her”? But maybe grammar hadn’t been invented yet. Come to think if it, we probably weren’t really speaking English either. A person could get a headache trying to figure this out.
“Listen!” Cúchulainn silenced the crowd with a hand. “I have slain the seven troll-like brothers of the great witch of the hills! And a foul-smelling lot they were! And why did I slay them, you ask?”
Did this guy need a reason to lop off heads? I doubted it, but the rhetorical question sure helped him work the crowd.
“Why, Cúchulainn? Why?” The mob was hanging on his every word. Cúchulainn smiled a grim, heroic smile. The tornado coming out of his head whirled more violently.
“I slew them so that the witch would be forced to tell me the way to remove the enchantments that plague our king and our people!”
The crowd went nuts again, like there was a blinking applause sign somewhere reading, GO NUTS.
“Hear me!” roared Cúchulainn. “These are the witch’s words, exactly as she spoke them to me:
“ ‘What’s lost in the earth must be found,
“ ‘But the earth must be turned without tilling.
“ ‘Wed fire and gold to the king,
“ ‘But the lady herself must be willing.
“ ‘Let rivals come forth to do battle,
“ ‘But the war must be won without killing.’ ”
“Only when these three conditions are fulfilled will the curses be lifted from our people and the spells erased from our land, our trees, our stones and our livestock.” Cúchulainn’s eyes were glowing red again, which would be awesome if you were playing laser tag, it occurred to me. “The king will be made well and all will be as it was. And never again will the faery folk afflict us with their curses of mischief!”
“Woot!” I yelled, expecting the crowd to go nuts along with me. But they just stared.
“Woot,” I repeated, awkwardly. “It means, you know, ‘Yay!’ ” No response. My bodyguards gripped me even tighter.
“Aaaaaaaaaarggh!” I knew that bellow right away. Fergus had finally managed to escape, and now he had caught up with us. His clothes were
torn and there was blood on his chin. I have to say, the look suited him.
“You heard the witch’s prophecy,” shouted Fergus, fighting his way to the front of the mob. “The maiden is not willing. She is not the one foretold to wed the king. Now leave her be.”
Reluctantly my captors let me go, and the mob started to break up. Fergus was next to me in a flash.
“Are you all right?” he said.
“I’m fine,” I said. “But I don’t understand the witch’s prophecies at all.”
It wasn’t till he saw Fergus that the horror-movie glow in Cúchulainn’s eyes faded and the tornado above his head evaporated in a wisp of smoke.
“Fergus! My brother!” Cúchulainn cried, leaping out of his chariot. “Awesome to see you, dude!”
“Dude!” said Fergus, clapping Cúchulainn on the back.
“Welcome home.”
the “awesome, dude” thing bothered me, and here’s why.
It reminded me of how Raph talked with his friends.
So much so that, as Fergus and Cúchulainn sat together in front of the peat fire they’d built after the mob had scattered, trading tales of their adventures in the months since they’d seen each other last, I could close my eyes and imagine Colin and Raph hanging out together talking guy talk, even though the two of them had never met and, obviously, never would.
But Fergus did have this rough-hewn, red-headed resemblance to Colin. And Cúchulainn reminded me of Raph in other ways—like how he was so BMOC, always grabbing the spotlight, automatically taking charge and expecting everyone to do as he said. Physically, though, Cúchulainn looked more like a younger version of Stuart Woodward than Raph. Dark-haired and wiry, only medium tall but acting taller. Similar personalities, though.
Ewwww, I thought. At the rate he’s going Raph could grow up to be a self-centered, BlackBerry-wielding fool, just like Stuart. Double ewwww. That would not be very awesome, dude, at all.
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