Shadowmagic - Sons of Macha (22 page)

Ruby nodded her head. ‘Yes.'

‘Conor is the finest young man I have ever met.'

‘Really?' I said.

‘Shush, I was speaking to Ruby. Goodbye you two. Take care of each other. I'm afraid there are going to be dark times ahead. Just remember that I have been in this glen for oh so very a long time and the one thing I know is – after winter there has always been spring.'

I had never walked back to the castle from Glen Duir but I knew it was going to take more than a day. ‘You up for a long hike?'

Ruby took my hand and said, ‘Sure.'

Mother Oak had given her a stick that she had trimmed and she set off sweeping it before her.

‘Don't you feel bad after that
rothlú
spell that brought us here?'

‘My tummy was a little funny when I first got here but I'm OK now.'

‘Well, I feel like crap.'

‘You said a dirty word.'

‘Sorry.'

‘I won't tell.'

‘Thanks.'

We trudged along for the rest of the day. Ruby hummed some song, most of the time while I grunted along. The sun got lower and Ruby started to get tired. There was no point in stopping. We had no food and no way to make a fire so I gave her a piggyback. She quickly fell asleep. It's amazing how rapidly the young girl on my back began to feel like a proverbial eight-hundred-pound gorilla. As the sun was setting I had to quit.

‘I'm cold.'

I gave her my Brownie cloak. ‘I'm afraid I don't have a fire coin, Ruby.'

‘That's OK,' she said. ‘Go ask a tree for two sticks.'

‘Why?'

‘To rub together.'

‘Oh,' I laughed. ‘I'm afraid rubbing sticks together will only get us splinters. I have to rest, Ruby. Just for an hour.'

I lay down and she snuggled up on my chest.

‘Will that Lugh man find us here?'

I don't even remember if I stayed awake long enough to answer. The next thing I do remember, Ruby was prying open one of my eyelids and frantically whispering, ‘Wake up. Someone's coming.'

The two of us ran out of the clearing and hid behind some oaks, making sure not to touch them. It was a small party of riders. In front, one of the riders hung over his saddle with his head down. In his hand he was dangling a vial that glowed with a yellow light. He was a scout and was obviously following our trail. I thought about climbing the tree in front of us but I was too afraid of getting comatised like the last time I talked to a strange oak. Running was no good either. The forest wasn't thick enough to slow down a rider. I had nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. I drew the Lawnmower and waited. I still could only make out their silhouettes. The scout spotted where we had bedded down, and then looked directly to the tree we were hiding behind.

I stepped out and said, ‘Who goes there?'

The scout dismounted and pushed back his hood. Hair cascaded over the scout's shoulders like a cheesy shampoo commercial. It was only when she placed the light next to her face that everything instantly became all right again in The Land.

‘Conor,' she yipped. She ran and crashed into me, giving me a bone-crunching hug.

‘Hi, Essa. Miss me?'

A fire was built and food was brought. Essa sent a message back to Castle Duir that we had been found and Tuan was flying in to pick us up air-ambulance style.

Ruby started jabbering on about her abduction like it was some sort of fun adventure. I'm sure that if I had experienced a similar trauma at her age I would have become a curled-up snivelling wreck, but Ruby was obviously made of sterner stuff.

As she was recounting her story I remembered something. A Banshee had said she had killed two guards.

‘Ruby, how did you escape? Weren't you being guarded?'

Ruby crinkled up her nose at the thought of it. ‘The guards were mean. One of them saw me rubbing my worry stone and he told me to give it to him. I said no because Grandma had given it to me, so he grabbed it. Then I was alone. I just crawled along the wall until I found that way out.'

‘Ruby, what's a worry stone?'

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a smooth pebble-sized piece of green marble with a dent in it. She held it in her hand and rubbed her thumb on the indentation. ‘I found it on the floor as I was crawling out.'

‘Can I see it?' Essa asked. ‘I promise to give it back.'

As Ruby handed it over, a thought formed in my mind. I reached out to stop Essa from touching the stone but I was too slow.

When Essa touched the pebble, she didn't scream. It was more like she had all of the wind knocked out of her. She dropped her head down and then after catching her breath, she looked at the back of her hands. They were spidery, wrinkled and covered with spots. When she looked up, the firelight showed the eighty-year-old woman who I had first seen at the police station in the Real World.

‘Oh, not again!' Essa said in her old woman voice.

‘What's happening?' Ruby asked.

‘Your worry stone, Ruby, it's from Ireland; when Essa touched it she became the age she would be in the Real World.'

‘Damn it, damn it, damn it.'

‘She said a naughty word.'

‘Yes, Ruby, I think she did.'

I was expecting Ruby to love the ride home on dragon-back but I could tell it scared her. She held on white-knuckled and shook almost the whole way. Of course, that didn't stop her, when she got back, from bragging about how fun it was.

The return of the prodigal son was nothing compared to Ruby's return. I don't think I had ever seen anybody so happy to see anybody as the residents of Castle Duir were with the rearrival of Ruby. Most of the people there had never seen her, but the gloom that had been hanging over the place since her kidnap broke with an exuberance that was almost like a festival. While Ruby got all the attention I just stood by and said, ‘Don't worry about me. I'm fine.'

Brendan unaged, like, ten years instantly when he saw her. I came close to trying to separate them, he was hugging his daughter so hard, but Ruby didn't seem to mind. Nora, who had been mad at me ever since I left her granddaughter alone in the Forest of Duir, kissed my cheek and said, ‘I have no words to tell you how grateful I am.'

‘Aw shucks, ma'am,' I said. ‘It was nothin'.'

Graysea was very glad to see me. I got smothered with kisses and then she insisted on finning-up and giving me a thorough mermaid medical work-up. I told her I was fine, just tired, and asked her to have a look at Ruby's hand. She healed the cut in seconds.

‘I like her better than Essa,' Ruby said after her treatment.

‘You have seen Essa already?' Graysea asked curtly.

‘Well, yeah,' I said, ‘she was the one who found us in the forest. I wouldn't worry about her, she's … well, she's not looking her best.'

Essa was still on her way back to Castle Duir. Tuan had offered her some dragon blood in the forest but I told her I had a plan and it might be a good idea if she stayed like that. She agreed, but wouldn't take a dragon lift back to Duir. I think her exact words were, ‘I'll hit the next person who treats me like an old woman.'

Essa was summed up best by Ruby who said, ‘She's scary.'

After a night's sleep that I had to insist upon, I sat down with Mom, Dad, Nieve, Fand and Dahy. I felt like I was reporting to the Spanish Inquisition. I told them the whole story of what had happened on my way to the Yewlands. When I got to Hermy, Dad interrupted.

‘What did you say his name was?'

‘Sorry, I made up Hermy. Let me think. Oh yeah, just as I was
rothlú
-ing away he said his name was Eth.'

Dad was on his feet. ‘Eth? What else did he say?'

‘He said he was Ona's son.'

Dad covered his mouth with his left hand. I can tell when he's emotional because he never uses his right hand – the one that was missing for so long. As I watched him and waited for him to speak, it came to me where I had heard that name before. Eth was Dad's best friend. He was the one who was with Dad on the day of the boat race. When Dad woke up in the infirmary he had blamed Eth for the loss of his hand and Eth left – never to be seen again.

‘I have to go to Thunder Bay at once.'

‘Hold on, Dad,' I said. ‘There is other stuff I have to tell you and I think there is somewhere I have to go first.'

Mom gave Dad one of those one-second looks that conveyed an entire paragraph of information. It instantly said, ‘I know you're upset, but calm down, we have to think about this.' It also said, ‘I love you.' It's amazing what women can do with just a look and a tiny finger movement.

I continued recanting my adventure. When I got to Cialtie and his witch's Shadowcasting, it was my mother's turn to get upset. When I told her about how Ruby's blood was used to darken the shadow of her rune she reached to her neck and pulled her rune from under her top. It was dark red, almost black.

‘It suddenly went dark two days ago,' Mom said.

‘Yeah, that would be about right.'

And then I upset everybody by telling them that Maeve was back. Of all people, it was Fand who was still calm enough to make light of my story. She said, ‘Conor, you are many things but you are never dull.'

‘And I'm not even done yet. The reason Ruby was able to escape from the Ivy Lodge was because she killed her two guards.'

I'm not sure who said ‘What?' but I'm pretty sure it was everybody.

I reached into my pocket and took out Ruby's marble worry stone. Mom went to reach for it but I stopped her. ‘Don't touch it, Mom, that little thing will kill you.'

‘What is it?'

‘It's a stone from a place on the west coast of Ireland called Connemara. They call it Connemara marble. Nora said she bought it on a trip over there. She says that she was aware of major ley-lines while she was in Connemara. Ages ago, Spideog showed me a stone axe that he had brought back from the Real World but it was only a wooden handle. He said the stone vanished in the portal during his journey back to The Land.'