Heir of Earth (Forgotten Gods) (18 page)

The caption below the photo read.

Phin’s own handwriting scrawled across the margin beside the photo. And below it, heavily underlined excerpts from the report:

Disappeared without a trace one evening while herding livestock home from the fields. Reappeared five years later, barely aged a day with no recollection of where he had been. Family noted a distinct change in the once jovial boy, who appeared almost catatonic after his return.

I slumped down in the chair, a wrinkle forming between my eyes as I stared out over Rose’s rain covered garden, contemplating Phin’s handwritten note.

I shook my head and dug into the box again, carefully placing the little boy’s photo on the metal table.

My fishing produced a single, glossed page, pulled from an academic journal according to the footnoted citation. Double columns ran down the page, teaming with typed words, such a jumble of font with hardly any free space my mind dulled at the idea of reading it all. Lucky for me, Phin had already read it ages ago.

His proclamation once again blotted out a large portion of the page’s margin. Spread halfway down the page, an entire paragraph was underlined, though somewhat faded with time.

Not much is known as to why these strange creatures prefer to prey on souls full of innocence and youth. Speculations run rampant—purifying their own debauched souls, relishing the destruction of what good there is remaining in our world, or maybe the innocence of youth makes one naive enough to fall under their spell.

This last one sent a chill straight up my spine. Not for my own safety, sitting there alone on the porch, but thinking about sweet Christine, and how she was everything innocent in the world. I placed my elbows on the table, resting my forehead as I remembered that night, a cold rush of fear or regret or maybe guilt seeping into my bones.

A car splashed along the pot-holed road out front, beeping its horn in a friendly way and waving when the driver saw me sitting on the porch. I didn’t have the first clue who it was, but that was just the Irish way. I waved back, glad to have something to distract me from the guilty memories of that night.

My hand disappeared into the box again, retrieving a few papers, jagged on one side, obviously torn from a book, and stapled together.

I knew that name. Searching though my long forgotten English class assignments I remembered he had written the
Sherlock Holmes
series, in addition to being a very well-respected scholar of his day. Again, Phin’s highlighted passages led me through the essay.

Their bodies shine with the effect of rippling water in the sun...a very beautiful fairy figure, somewhat resembling a figure of Mercury, without winged sandals...He has Greek features and resembles a Greek statue--like a figure out of a Greek tragedy...He has a very beautiful face, and is concentrating his gaze on me...Their arrival causes a bright radiance to shine in the field, visible to us sixty yards away. She is very autocratic and definite in her orders, holding unquestioned command...She has a very beautiful face with an expression as if inviting Frances into Fairyland.

Each description jumped off the page at me, spoken in an imagined little girl’s voice as she recounted her frequent meetings with the fair folk to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He went on to proclaim their existence in the essay based on these interviews and photographic evidence the cousins from Cottingley, England produced. Sir Arthur had long suspected there were other forces at work in our world and thought we were foolish and blind to think we were the only ones. The little girls from Cottingley gave him all the proof he needed to risk his career making such a proclamation. Phin’s proclamation scribbled across the final page:

Last, but certainly not least, I pulled out a letter, hand written in pencil on lined notebook paper.

I stared blankly at the single notebook page quivering in my hands. The chill of guilt that had washed over my body earlier became a full on tidal wave of arctic waters, turning my blood to frozen ice, my breath to a cloud of snowflakes, my heartbeat almost snuffed out by the truth I held in my hand.

Could they be real?

Abigail certainly didn’t seem like a lunatic. She seemed eloquent, and well versed, smart enough to hide what she knew from a world that would never believe, but too convinced to forget. And what was more, Phin had obviously sought out her answer, learned of her experiences and hoped to glean some answer from her words. His conclusion lay at the bottom of the page, just under her signature.

I lost track of time sitting there. Tangled in the web of thoughts Phin’s box had spun in my mind. I’d dismissed it all as silly superstitions, the wild ramblings of Clonlea, intended more to bolster the tourist trade than to protect them from harm. But sitting alone on that porch, staring past Rose’s garden to the mysterious mist-cloaked fields—still glowing green despite the heavy gray blanket—I began to wonder if something more could be hiding there. Watching me, watching others like me. Waiting for us to get too close to the danger we would never see coming.

When the phone rang loudly, I startled, gasping and trembling as if a ghost had just brushed icy fingers over my soul. With trembling hands I placed the letter back in the box, pulling a blanket around my shoulders to combat the constant chill settling into my bones as I raced to answer the call.

Of course the caller had hung up by the time I got there.

Rose and Phin’s ancient computer sat on a desk beside the phone. I quickly pulled up the Internet and typed three words into the search bar: “Are Fairies Real?” I was amazed by the number of webpage addresses that populated the screen before me.

I clicked on the first one and read an article that interviewed an American man claiming to have witnessed fairies dancing in the night while he and friends were camping. The next webpage was dedicated to religions that still worshipped the fallen demigods.

But the most interesting of all were the accounts from the middle ages, when some fairies still openly roamed the world of humans, ruling over remote villages—protecting them with their magic and imitating the life of normal human beings. They were the stars of the original fairytales that struck fear and admiration in the hearts of humans long before Hans Christian Anderson sanitized them for children’s ears. I was shocked to read the original tales of my childhood heroines. Disney certainly knew how to turn nightmares into dreams.

A car’s engine rumbled in the distance and I quickly turned the computer off. Phin would be home soon, and I didn’t want him to think I was being nosey. He had hidden all this away for a reason. A reason that called to me in my visions and now had me overflowing with questions. Yet I didn’t know how I could bring up the painful past he had locked away to try and find answers.

When I crossed the threshold, dread settled over me. I was too late. Phin was standing by the table, holding the pictures from his distant life in his hands.

My heart dropped. I closed my eyes and sighed with regret.

Lingering in the doorway, knowing my guilt was as exposed as his; I didn’t know what to do. So, I stood there stilled by uncertain remorse.

When he looked up at me, pain and sadness registered behind his normally cheerful blue eyes, and I felt like a death row criminal.

“Phin, I’m…I’m so sorry…I…” I stammered with my words, not really sure that any apology would be enough to earn his forgiveness. He closed his eyes and shook his head. The pictures spilled from his hands and fluttered down to the wet porch at his feet. I moved immediately to rescue the delicate pages as he blew past me into the house.

I scrambled to gather everything up, placed it back in the box, and ran in behind him—continuing to stumble over my apologies as I went. He stood statue still at the kitchen counter looking through the gingham curtained window, his back to me as he was assaulted by the unexpected memories from a life he had locked away. He reached for the bottle of Irish whiskey that lived on the top shelf of Rose’s kitchen cabinet and poured a large glass. He quickly drank it down and poured another.

His back was still to me when he finally spoke. “I love our Rose. I love her more than I’ve ever loved anything in this world. But I didn’t know her then. She didn’t come into my life until I needed her most.” He drank down the second glass, slamming in onto the counter top before he turned to face me. His eyes stayed on the ground. “I had to lock that life away if I was ever going to live this one.” His shoulders slumped and his head still hung down before me.

His tone was almost apologetic, like he was afraid I was mad at him for cheating on Rose. It made me feel even worse.

“Phin, you don’t owe me an explanation. I never should have been digging around in your stuff. I’m so sorry.” I shook my head and put the box on the kitchen table between us. Securing the safety of his memories from prying eyes with the click of the lock. His head popped up immediately as if conditioned to the sound of the box’s latch like Pavlov’s dogs.

“No use in keeping secrets, now. Imagination often makes a story much worse than the truth,” he said as he grabbed his bottle and glass and made his way over to the table. He sat down and poured another glass before he pulled the leather box over to him. I sunk weakly into a chair across from him but didn’t say a word.

He took a deep breath before he turned the little key. The latch flipped open once again, and I wondered how long it had been since Phin had locked these secrets away. I watched as his rough hands delicately lifted the stack of papers from the box. After they were all laid neatly on the table before us and Phin had taken a bolstering pull from his glass, he began.

“We were children when we fell in love. We had stars in our eyes back then and were dumb enough to think the world was ours.” The edges of his eyes wrinkled like a paper bag as he looked into the box. “I had promised her we would marry as soon as I had made enough money from my riding to buy us a house. I was so successful at it that we were engaged at 18. She was a beauty, all right. More than a few local men tried to steal her away, but she only had eyes for me.” He picked up the engagement photo and it fluttered in his trembling grip.

One of his great hands moved to cover his mouth, and he rubbed back and forth against his scratchy day old beard before he continued.

“It was a few days before our wedding date. She had been visiting a friend in the next village over and was supposed to be back for dinner at dusk. She never showed up, and the town launched a nighttime search party. The land was different back then. There were still dangerous things in these parts, and a woman alone in the night was not safe. We searched for weeks but never found a trace of her.” The rain picked up again outside the window and hit hard against the roof above. I turned to look out the window and Phin poured himself another drink before he continued.

“Rumors began to circulate—mostly by the men who had wanted her for themselves—that she had gotten cold feet and run away so she wouldn’t have to marry me. I knew that wasn’t the truth. I knew my Emma Lee. She was fiery, and if she didn’t want to be with me, she would have had no problem telling me that herself. I knew someone had taken her. But when no human suspects turned up, I turned to other answers.”

“I was too proud to believe the truth. I was looking for any answer other than her not loving me. I just couldn’t believe it was true. So I followed my own leads. I became quite obsessed with it, as you can see.” Phin fingered through the pages of notes before him. I held my clasped hands tightly between my knees, not moving a muscle as he poured his painful past out like the whiskey in his glass.

“I met Rose right after my accident. She breathed life into my dying soul like she was my guardian angel. I knew if Rose and I were going to have a real life, I would have to lock this old one away. It was the only way. I told her my secrets, and we agreed to leave them in the past. I haven’t looked at this since.”

I watched as he continued to look over the pages, his fingertips tracing along the lines of words he scribbled to himself years ago. An odd smile played at his lips.

“Did you ever find out what happened to her?” I asked, afraid to hear the answer.

“Huh? Oh…” Phin said, snapping back to the realization that he wasn’t alone. “Yeah, she came back about ten years later. She offered no explanation for where she had been and expected us to pick up exactly where we had left off. But Rose and I had been married for years at that point. Emma Lee quickly left, and I never heard from her again.”

“Do you ever wonder what would have happened?” I asked sheepishly, wondering if I was prying too much.

“Never. That first life wasn’t meant to be mine—it just filled the years until I found Rose. This is where I belong. Even if I had to lose everything I had to get it—it’s where I’m supposed to be.” Phin reached across the table and patted my hand. The sparkle was back in his eyes when I looked up at him. I sighed with relief.

“So, do you believe...all that?” I asked, nodding my head toward the box between us, doubt crinkling my face like it always had before whenever locals started talking their crazy talk—although I was slightly less sure of my skepticism than before.

“Tis a foolish man who says he knows it all, Faye,” he said in an overtly thick Irish brogue and winked a dancing blue eye at me.