Rundimahair: A new hero for a new adventure

by Larry Forkner

  “In jail, he’s in the county jail!” the tracker managed to squeak, while gulping air into her lungs.

  Grainne suddenly lashed out and struck the tracker hard in the temple. She collapsed in a heap. She was still breathing, but she’d wake up with a terrible headache.

  “I’ll handle this one myself,” she said softly to the unconscious woman. “You stay here and rest.”

  Grainne noticed that the others currently working in the command center were keeping their heads down and focusing on the computer screen in front of them. She could sense their fear and unease, which was all right with her. It was good for her worker bees to stay motivated to do their best.

  She made a showy display of standing up and extending her arms to the ceiling. Dark gray mist began to circle into the air around her until she was completely enveloped.

  The clouds began to circle around her, slowly at first, then quickly gathering speed. Seconds later, the swirling mist slowed and finally dissipated completely. Grainne was no longer in her office.

  While she streaked through time and space, she knew her sudden departure had been unnecessarily dramatic. She could have easily just disappeared in the blink of an eye, but she enjoyed being a little showy at times. Besides, it helped remind her subjects who was in charge.

  Less than two minutes after she left her office, Grainne suddenly appeared in front of an occupied cell in a somewhat rundown jail in rural Idaho. The two officers on duty were momentarily stunned to see a beautiful woman appear inside their jail. Finally they leapt to their feet and reached for their pistols.

  Grainne turned to them and said in a soft, pleasing voice, “Relax boys. Everything is going to be fine. In fact, you haven’t felt this calm and peaceful in your entire lives. Why don’t you both sit down in your comfortable chairs and lay your weary heads on the desk?”

  She watched as a confused expression crossed the faces of the two deputies. Slowly, they began to relax and take their hands away from their pistols. They still had a slightly confused look on their faces, but it finally evolved into weary smiles.

  They began to yawn as they sat in their chairs and rested their heads on their desks. Within a few seconds they were both in a deep, contented sleep.

  Grainne smiled as she turned to the old man sitting on the small bed in his cell. “Sorry to arrive unannounced,” she said calmly. “I didn’t have your cell phone number to call ahead.”

  “Not to worry,” the old timer said as he leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “It’s not like I don’t know who you are.”

  “And who am I?” she asked.

  “Anyone who ever lived in Rundimahair, knows very well who you are. You’re the one and only Grainne,” he said, smiling.

  She nodded slightly and asked, “You know my name, so it’s only fair that I know yours.”

  “I’ve gone by many names in my long life. Since I left Rundimahair, I’ve mostly gone by the name of Milton–Milt for short.”

  Grainne felt a thrill of expectation since the old man had twice mentioned he’d lived in Rundimahair. She forced herself to remain calm, as she said, “I’ve been looking for you for a long, long time.”

  “Well, maybe not me exactly,” Milt said. “But I reckon you’ve been hot on the trail of my people for hundreds of years.”

  She was slightly puzzled by his calm demeanor and decided it might be because he was a rebel to his own people. Maybe he didn’t care what happened to them anymore.

  “I’m hoping you can help me with a project I’m working on,” she said.

  “I figured that’s what you had in mind,” he said as his smile slowly disappeared. “I reckon you know that me and my family and friends are deserters from our own kind. You probably figure we might be willing to switch sides.”

  “That would be the easy way, Milt. If you fight me, I’ll still get what I need. The thing is, the way I extract the information would be needlessly painful for you and your loved ones,” she said coldly.

  Milt sighed deeply and looked into Grainne’s cold gray eyes as he slowly nodded his head. “I kind of figured that would be the case,” he said, suddenly looking very tired. “The thing is, there ain’t no one else for you to threaten since I’m the last, lonely survivor of our little group of runaways. One way or the other, we’ve all met with an untimely end, except for me.”

  “Sorry to hear that, Milt. I was hoping to bring you all back home with me,” she said.

  He nodded and said, “We thought we knew everything back in the day. We ran off from our friends and family just so we could be free to live any old way we wanted to.”

  “We have that in common, Milt. I broke away from my people way before you ever thought about it. I won’t say it wasn’t painful, in many ways, but it was totally worth it in the end.”

  He nodded and said, “I wish I could say the same thing, Grainne. For the most part, my life has been full of sorrow and regret since I walked away from Rundimahair. Eamon and Ashling warned us that the consequences of leaving would be grim and permanent. The thing is that we just didn’t want to listen. There were times when I hated Eamon but darned if he wasn’t right about consequences. He didn’t do anything to try to punish us when we left, we ended up punishing each other.”

  “It doesn’t have to be that way for you, Milt. Come join with us and let me show you just how great life can be again,” she said softly.

  He stared into her demanding gray eyes for a long time before he said, “And all I have to do to join your eternal, joy-filled life is to betray everyone in Rundimahair. Believe it or not, I still got family there.”

  “The same family that cast you away for daring to disagree with the almighty Eamon?” she asked.

  “That’s how I thought of it at the time, but the truth is that me and my rebellious friends just wanted to do everything our way and we didn’t much care if that hurt anyone else. They didn’t cast me away. It was me who did the casting,” Milt said.

  “You can have a new family now, Milt. A family that understands not everyone has to be forced to think the same way.”

  “Where were you forty years ago when I might have believed you?” he said sadly. “The truth is, I don’t much feel like a rebel anymore. I’d give anything to go back home and live out my days in peace there.”

  “But you can’t go home, Milt. You’ve got one choice and that is to come with me,” she said, her impatience beginning to show.

  “Thought you might say something along those lines eventually, Grainne. I appreciate the offer, but the truth is I left myself one other choice.”

  Grainne abandoned any pretense of kindness or patience and said, “I don’t have all day to debate philosophy. You’re coming with me now, one way or another.”

  “There’s the old witch I remember from the old days. You left because you wanted to be in charge of everything and everybody,” Milt said.

  “I still do, Milt! Now, are you coming the easy way or the hard way?”

  “I think I’ll choose my way, Grainne. I wish I could say it was nice seeing you again,” Milt said, smiling, as red smoke began puffing from his eyes, ears and mouth.

  It took her a moment to accept what she was witnessing before she screamed, “No you don’t, Milt!”

  She quickly engulfed him in what appeared to be a sheet of clear plastic. Whatever she was planning was going to be too little too late.

  Milt laid back onto the bunk and smiled through the pain. Grainne saw his eyes melt away first, and then his entire face began to disintegrate. It looked like he’d dunked his head in acid, but Grainne knew what she was witnessing. Milt had built in a self-destruct fail safe for the day he might be captured by Grainne or some of her warriors.

  He may not have made many good choices in his long life, but this one made up for a lot of the bad ones. Milt willingly suffered an agonizing death to be sure he’d never divulge the location of Rundimahair. He kept his final promise to never betray his estranged family.

&
nbsp; “You ignorant fool!” Grainne shouted at the top of her voice. “I could have given you everything you ever wanted.”

  As the rest of his human body disintegrated before her eyes, she let her anger loose. Hurricane-force winds, coupled with massive strikes of gray lightning, erupted in an outward spiral.

  The entire jail, along with the buildings on either side, were blasted into rubble. All electrical power was blacked out for a mile in any direction.

  Grainne stood in the epicenter of the destruction she’d unleashed, still seething at being denied her greatest desire. Milt had the location of Rundimahair in his ancient mind, but had chosen an excruciatingly painful death rather than share it with her.

  As she rose up out of the rubble, she wondered again how Eamon and Ashling were able to instill such incredible loyalty in their people. Even those who rebelled and left Rundimahair ultimately remained fiercely loyal to them.

  While she streaked through space toward home, she realized that recruiting them to her side was a waste of time. The only way to win was to destroy them all–down to the last man, woman, and child. Only then would she find the peace she longed for and the absolute power she so desperately craved.

  * * *

  Training continued at a hurried but careful pace with the upcoming generation of gifted children and young adults. While the results were mostly gratifying, there were also disappointments, and there was much to do before they would be battle ready.

  Testing had revealed that many of their students had the potential for gifts and powers that everyone had been unaware of until now. More than once, Ashling berated herself noisily because she’d neglected doing more in-depth testing on their youth in the past.

  One evening she was bemoaning her failures when Eamon had heard enough. “Daughter of mine, hear me well. I won’t listen to another word from you on this subject. We all allowed ourselves to enjoy the years of peace and prosperity.”

  “But I knew better, Da,” she replied earnestly.

  “And I didn’t? Saints preserve us, Ashling, we all knew better. And it’s not like we didn’t take precautions against being discovered.”

  “It appears that wasn’t enough,” Ashling said.

  “It does appear so, my dear daughter. The point I’m trying to make is that we gave our all when we moved our beloved homeland to America. It was just a young, mostly undiscovered land, far from our own homeland. It took all we had to give to accomplish such a great task. We hoped it would be enough to keep us safe forever.”

  “Or at least three hundred years,” Ashling said, nodding.

  “Aye, that is true, my dear. With centuries of peace and plenty, I suppose we allowed ourselves to believe it would last forever. We should have been doing more and we both know it.”

  “That’s what I’ve been saying,” Ashling said.

  “And I couldn’t agree with you more if I tried. My point is that berating yourself day after day is not helping. In truth, it’s hurting us. Our full attention needs to be on training our young’uns up so they can join with us in defending our new homeland.”

  Ashling sighed heavily and slowly nodded. “You’re speaking truth, Da’. Sean’s already reminded me that it’s too late to change the past. My blubbering over lost opportunity is only slowing down our training.”

  “That’s my girl,” Eamon said, as he pulled her into a gentle embrace. “You and Sean keep working with our youth, and the rest of the council will keep working on the more experienced among us.”

  “You mean the old fogeys among us?” Ashling asked sweetly.

  Eamon let her go and stepped back, as he said, “I prefer the term, experienced, my dear.”

  She laughed and said, “Me too, Da. After all, I’m one of those “experienced” folk myself.”

  “You don’t look a day over one hundred and fifty,” he said, ducking nimbly when she threw a couch pillow at him.

  * * *

  “Your sweet, old grandma can move faster than that!” Sean shouted from where he stood on the ground.

  David, in his dragon form, evidently heard Sean’s snide remark. He quickly turned a graceful arch upward, before nose diving toward Sean at incredible speed. Just before he collided with Sean, David leveled off and singed the ground next to Sean with a decent-sized fireball.

  “Not bad,” Sean shouted, as David turned and shot back into the air with another burst of speed.

  “He’s really progressing fast,” someone said from behind Sean.

  He turned and wasn’t a bit surprised to see it was Susan talking. Sean smiled and said, “That he is, Susan.”

  “I bet no one else has learned to be a great dragon as fast as him,” she said, as her eyes followed his flight across the sky.

  “He’s a special young fellow, no doubt about that,” Sean said.

  Susan’s brow furrowed as she stepped up beside Sean and asked, “Then why are you always so hard on him?”

  “For the same reason Ashling is hard on me in my training,” Sean said, smiling. “She wants to push me to be my very best, and I want to push David to be even better.”

  Susan was quiet for a moment before nodding her head, as she said, “I get what you’re saying but isn’t there a gentler way to bring out the best in him?”

  “This isn’t teaching them to play soccer or basketball,” Ashling said, as she came to stand beside Sean.

  Susan look startled to see Ashling, and looked at the ground as she replied, “I understand that, but can’t we bring out our best in a more encouraging way,

  Ashling sighed as she stepped over to stand by Susan. She put her arm around her shoulder and said, “We do encourage David, along with the rest of you. Everyone responds to encouragement differently. With you, all I have to do is suggest you try something and I know you’re going to bust a gut doing all you can and then some.”

  Susan looked up at Ashling and slowly nodded her head. “You’re saying that David doesn’t necessarily do it that way.”

  “As much time as you’ve spent with David, I’m quite sure you know that is true. He needs to be pushed and challenged, from time to time, if we’re going to make him the best dragon he can be.”

  “I know you’re right, Ashling,” Susan said softly. “It just seems a little mean-spirited sometimes.”

  “The rebels who are searching for us are as mean spirited as they come, Susan. It’s going to take the best each of us has to offer to defeat them. We’re in for the fight of our lives. How would Sean or I feel if we lost one of you in battle because we hadn’t done our very best to prepare you?”

  Tears began to well up in Susan’s lovely blue eyes. She stepped forward and embraced Ashling without speaking. When she finally gained control of her emotions, she said, “I understand, Ashling.”

  “Good, because I’m going to push you just as hard as I can too,” Ashling said.

  Susan smiled and looked at Sean, as she said, “You yell at David all you want. I want him to be the best dragon that ever lived.”

  Once Susan had returned to the group of trainees, Sean said, “It’s not fair that we have to be training these young kids to fight for their lives. They should be out having fun and enjoying life at their age.”

  “I agree, Sean,” Ashling said. “If it wasn’t for that psycho-woman, Grainne, we’d all be enjoying a more peaceful life back in Ireland.”

  Sean sighed heavily and said, “Yeah, reality is a bummer.”

  Ashling smiled as she stepped in close and put her arms around Sean. “Just the bad parts of reality are a bummer. Having the man I love at my side every day is actually a pretty great part of reality.”

  “That’s a fair point,” Sean agreed, as he put his arms around her and pulled her close. He kissed her long and tenderly.

  A fireball landed ten feet from Sean and Ashling, as David flashed by. “Get a room!” he shouted, as he arched back into the sky.

  The children laughed at David’s remark, while pointing at Sean and Ashling. Sean rel
uctantly stepped back out of their embrace and said, “Have you noticed it’s a bit of a challenge to find any privacy around here?”

  “What did you expect when you signed on to teach a bunch of young’uns?” Ashling said with a patient smile.

  Sean nodded and said, “I guess they’re not so bad. I’d just like to find a moment or two of privacy to be with my girl.”

  “So that’s how it is, is it? I’m your girl now?” Ashling asked innocently.

  “For now and always,” Sean replied.

  His reply touched her heart deeply. Ignoring the children a moment longer, she leaned in and kissed him again. “I’ll see what I can do to find a moment or two of privacy after dinner tonight,” she said.

  “Now there’s a promise than can put the fire in a man’s blood, so it will,” Sean said, imitating her Irish accent, as he smiled brightly.

  “So it should, Sean,” Ashling replied with a teasing smile.

  * * *

  In the early hours before sunrise, Sean’s sleep was troubled by dark dreams. In truth, this felt more like a vision than a dream as he stood on beautiful, green, rolling hills overlooking ancient ruins.

  He recognized the old castle ruins immediately. Hidden inside the crumbling walls was Grainne’s sanctuary. Sean was unsure what sort of dark magic kept her people hidden from the eyes of the world. He assumed it was the dark magic version of what had kept Rundimahair hidden from Grainne for hundreds of years.

  Just as he was about to walk down the hill, Sean felt his dragon begin to stir inside. Unbidden, he quickly burst into his dragon-self and arched up into the night sky. Other than the first time, he’d never turned into his dragon without any conscious effort on his part.

  He flew over the old castle ruins, which he could see clearly, even though it was still dark. Not only could he see in the dark, but Sean could also see Grainne’s hidden castle and grounds, which she’d created inside the ruins. He wondered if all dragons could see the normally invisible structures, or if it was it just him?