The Forest of Aisling: Dream of the Shapeshifter (The Willow Series Book 1) (27 page)

Thunder rumbled, followed by two more lightning
strikes.  Aaron grabbed my hand and ordered us all to get into the
car.  We ran, pausing only long enough to look back and see the laughing
face.  Thunder boomed again and this time I heard the words “Guardians
beware,” followed by horrific laughing.

We pulled up to the driveway at Quinn’s
house.  His bedroom was in the front of the house and there, peeking out
of the curtain, was Kelleigh.  Her face became animated when she saw
us.  She disappeared for a second then returned to the window and crawled
out.  She ran up to the car carrying a blanket.

I opened the back door and scooted over so she
could join us.  Once she got in the car she looked past me to Quinn and
handed him the blanket.

“Here, I thought you’d need this,” she said
excitedly.

“Why?” he asked.

Kelleigh looked her brother over, then reached and
touched the top of his head.  “Did you do it?  You didn’t do it, did
you?  You chickened out.  Bloody, Quinn! I knew I should have
gone.  You’re too immature for something like this!” She was screeching
now, so much that I was sure their parents must have heard her.

“Kelleigh, shhhhh,” I commanded, putting my hand
over her mouth.  “He did it, he was amazing!”

She then leaned back and studied Quinn
intently.  He sat there, easing his hands back behind his neck and resting
his head on them.  “I was amazing, yes, I was,” he shot back at her, pride
oozing from every inch of him.

“But, you’re dry,” Kelleigh observed.

“I know!  I dried up right away after I got
out of the lake.”

The two went back and forth for minutes, with
Quinn explaining in detail his transformation while, up in the front seat,
Aaron and Bram were having their own exchange.  I leaned forward to see
what they were talking about. 

Aaron felt as though the appearance of the image
on the lake probably drained the Fomorians for the time being and that it
should be safe for us all to return home and try and get some rest.  The
weather had definitely eased up after that, and, while we sat there, the
electricity began flickering on in Quinn’s house and the houses nearby.

I rested my chin on the back of Bram’s seat. 
He reached his hand back and tenderly stroked my cheek.  It felt
comforting.  I held onto his arm, closed my eyes, and lost myself in the
conversations in the front and back seats. I even fell asleep for a few minutes
when I heard the door open.

Quinn and Kelleigh were getting out of the
car.  Kelleigh went up to the bedroom window and waved wildly before
climbing inside.  Quinn reached his head back into the car, “See you in
the morning, Willow, just send me a mind message if you want to chat.” He
sniffled and grinned, then signed good-bye to Bram and went into the house.

Bram opened his door and joined me in the back
seat.  He sat close and wrapped his arm around me.  I laid my head on
his shoulder and felt happy for the quiet warmth of the car.

We pulled up to the hospital and sure enough,
Dad’s car was still in the parking lot.  I prepared myself as well as I
could for what Dad might have to say.  Aaron looked back and tiredly said
goodnight.  The plan was to meet bright and early, find more answers, and
come up with some kind of strategy for dealing with the Fomorians. 
Hopefully the night would be calm and allow us all some much-needed rest.

Bram walked me to the hospital entrance and we
stood inside the foyer before going into the reception area.  He held my
hands and looked deeply into my eyes.

“Hello,” I said to him in mindspeak.

“Can you hear me?” he asked.

I nodded.  It was surreal to be able to speak
to each other this way.

“I’ll come get you tomorrow morning at
eight.  Get in touch if there’s anything, ok?” He furrowed his brow, those
brown eyes looking more intense than ever, reaching into my soul.

He started to lean in for what I thought was going
to be our first kiss, but then the sliding door opened to a security guard who
nodded, then squeezed past us.

I buried my head into his chest and laughed. 
“Probably not the most romantic spot for our first kiss, eh?” his voice echoed
in my head.  I nodded and kissed him on the cheek.

I watched as he made his way back to the car and
continued watching while he and Aaron drove away.  My heart was full and
content.  To have found someone like Bram in all of this craziness was
such a blessing.   I wrapped my arms around myself and headed into
the hospital in search of Dad.

He lay there, fast asleep on the reclining chair
the nurse had showed me, covered up to his chin with a pale green blanket, my
note lying on his lap.  I looked over at Grandpa, who was also
asleep.  He looked even more peaceful than before.  His coloring
looked much better; gone was that sickly-looking paleness he had had
earlier.  I touched his hand and found it to be warm.  His cheeks had
a bit of a reddish tint.  I once again checked the thermostat…a
comfortable seventy-two degrees.  I wasn’t sure if it was the generator
that was now powering the hospital or if the power had come on, but either way,
things seemed a whole lot more under control here as well.

I was shocked to see that it was 1:00 a.m. 
The past few hours had flown by.  I felt relieved seeing Dad
sleeping.  I hoped that meant he was ok with my being gone, or else he
would have been out searching for me.  I stood at the window and looked
outside, flashing on what had happened at the lake.  Quinn had done it; he
shifted.  All of our pieces were now in place and yet I still hadn’t a
clue as to what that meant.  What were we going to do now?

“Willow?” Dad whispered softly, lowering the
blanket and rising from his chair.  He joined me at the window.

“Hi, Dad,” I whispered back.

He took me by the arm and motioned to the
hallway.  We walked out; then he led me down to an empty waiting
room.  He closed the door, glaring at me.  I sat down on the sofa and
prepared myself for the worst.

“Where have you been?  I really didn’t need
this tonight!” He complained, smoothing back his tousled gray hair.

“I’m sorry, Dad, I really am, but–”

“But what?  You had to rush out on a night
like this to see your boyfriend, knowing full well what I was trying to do
here.  I certainly didn’t need to have to worry about you on top of
everything else.”  He paced angrily. 

“I know, but something very urgent came up and –”
He cut me off mid-sentence.

“Very urgent? VERY URGENT?  Something more
urgent than keeping an eye on your grandfather while I try and help keep this
place powered up?  Something more urgent than that?” His voice boomed,
bouncing off the walls of the little room. I began chewing my fingernails, that
nasty habit that always made an appearance when things got tough

As a rule my dad didn’t get angry.  I could
count on one hand how many times I ever saw him lose it.  He was the
master of self-control.  He would walk away before he’d ever lose his
temper.  Now I had a good idea where that came from.  He didn’t want
to be like his dad.

He continued pacing and reprimanding; his voice
would grow loud until he controlled himself.  Then he’d stop, take a deep
breath, and unleash on me some more.  I sat there, staring at the floor,
feeling sick to my stomach.  I hated seeing him like this but, at the same
time, I hated that he was this angry.  He had no idea what
I
was
going through and he already had his mind made up that there was no possible
explanation for why I had to leave.

I sat there and took it, waiting for him to run
out of air and just let it all come to a rest.  But he didn’t, and the
more he didn’t, the angrier I became.  He threw the “I expect more from
you,” line at me again and it was then that I couldn’t control myself any
longer.

I stood up and went over to the door, clicked the
lock on the knob, and then turned and faced him.  Finally, he was quiet,
trying to figure out just what I was up to.  He stared at me, mouth
half-opened. “Why’d you do that?” he asked with a confused look replacing the
angry one.

I crouched onto the floor, one knee down, and
placed my hands directly in front.  I lowered my head and closed my eyes,
visualizing my alternate self.  The forest danced across my field of
vision and I felt an indescribable peacefulness at the sight of it.  I
began losing myself in its essence.  The smell, the sounds, the taste of
the forest, all flooded my senses.  I slowly raised my head, and judging
by my father’s expression, I wasn’t quite the Willow he was used to anymore.

 “I still don’t understand this, not one bit
of it,” Dad groaned from under the sheets of his disheveled bed.  He sat
up and pulled on his t-shirt before swinging his legs out from under the
covers.  He sat there on the edge of the bed, watching me go back and
forth from the bathroom to the table, getting myself ready.

“Well, join the club, Dad,” I answered as I
brushed the tangles from my hair.  “Two weeks ago, I was in high school
just trying to get through the day.  And now, well, you know what I
know.”  I stopped moving for a minute in order to make eye contact. 
He was staring at the floor.  When he looked up, I noticed that his eyes
were bloodshot and puffy.

“Did you sleep at all?” I wondered worriedly.

“Eh, some, I guess,” he mumbled, rubbing the back
of his neck.  “So now you’re going with Bram and his dad?”

“Yeah, we’ll pick up Quinn.  We have to come
up with a plan.  Aaron knows more about this than anyone.  Well,
almost anyone.” I stopped and checked the time; Bram would be arriving any
minute.  “Dad, Grandpa knows everything, like I told you.  He may
know even more than we realize but I hesitate talking to him about it all until
he’s feeling better.”

“Did he say if Eagan knows?”  Dad asked.

“I didn’t get a chance to ask him.  But I
have a feeling that he doesn’t.  Please don’t mention it to him ok? 
Not yet anyway, until we can be sure about who can know.”

I did a quick check in the mirror.  Even
though I only had a few hours’ sleep, it definitely helped.  The circles
under my eyes were less pronounced and some of my natural coloring was coming
back.  I saw Dad watching me through the mirror.  I spun around and
sat beside him on the bed.

“It’ll be ok, Dad, I just feel it.  Now that
Quinn is on board with this, the Triquetra is complete and that’s a huge part
of the battle.”  I searched his eyes for understanding.

“I know Wil; it’s just that… I’m supposed to
protect you, not the other way around.  There must be something I can
do.  Aaron is helping; what can I do?” he asked, as he took hold of my
hands.

“If there was anything, I’d ask you, Dad. 
Aaron is there because he knows the history.  He can’t do anything to help
us in any other way.  It’s up to us now, just like it was up to Grandma
and all the other guardians who came before her.”

His eyes looked so sorrowful that I wished there
was something more I could say or do to make this easier, but there
wasn’t.  I knew there was one other person who needed to know, who might
be able to help Dad accept the inevitable.  I handed him my phone. 
“Call her, Dad.” If anyone could help him now, it was Mom.

Just then there was a knock at the door.  I
kissed Dad on the cheek and told him I’d see him soon.  He grabbed my hand
as I passed in front of him.  “Please, please, be careful,” he said, not
wanting to let go of my hand.

“I will,” I promised as our fingers pulled apart.

I stood alone in the front yard of Bram’s
house.  He and Aaron and Quinn were inside, talking strategy.  I
needed some fresh air.  The sky was that beautiful shade of blue that only
appears in the fall, and the air had a chill to it that made me think of the
upcoming winter.

I love the fall and winter.  The cooler
temperatures and shorter days just make me happy for some reason. 
Standing outside in the crisp air gave me hope for some kind of normalcy to
return to my life. 
I’ve gotta get through this,
I reminded myself. 
If Grandma could do it, so can I.

I closed my eyes and let the sun warm my face
against the chill of the air.  It felt like heaven.  I flashed back
to a time when I was about seven and Mom had taken me to the reservation to
visit her cousin, Winona.  While the two of them visited, I played outside
with Winona’s son, Luka.  He was nine and a small, sickly kind of
kid.  I’m not sure what was wrong with him but I remember Mom saying to be
kind to him because he had already suffered too much in his young life.

It was the same time of year, fall.  We sat
outside of their little adobe house and played in a sand box in their front
yard.  It had more sticks in it than sand because Luka liked to build
things out of the sticks.  While we sat there, not saying anything to each
other, Luka began singing a song.  It was in Lakota.  I couldn’t pick
out all the words but I knew it was about a wolf.  I closed my eyes as he
sang and pointed my face to the sun to warm it, just like now.

After he finished singing I asked him to tell me
the whole story of the wolf, that I didn’t understand some of it.  He said
it was the Cherokee story of the good wolf and the bad wolf. 

One day a man took his grandson out
fishing.  Before they got to the lake they found what was left of a
rabbit.  The grandfather told the boy that the rabbit had been killed by a
wolf.  The boy was saddened and said he hated wolves. While they fished
the grandfather explained to his grandson that every person has two wolves
living inside of them…a good wolf and a bad wolf.  

There is an awful battle going on between the
two wolves.  The good wolf is kind and giving, patient and understanding,
full of peace and love.  It’s fearless and brave and unafraid of battling
evil.  The bad wolf is cruel and selfish, seeking only to meet its own
needs.  It is full of anger, envy and greed.  It destroys anything in
its path.

 The grandson became anxious and asked,
“Grandfather, which wolf will win?”

The grandfather replied quietly, “The one you
feed.”

After Luka told me the story he closed his
eyes.  He looked so content, sitting there with the sun bathing his face
in its shining light and warmth.  He began coughing and Winona came out
and carried him inside, putting him to bed.  I stayed in the sand box
looking at the intricate patterns he had laid out with his sticks.  As I
studied the sticks I could hear Winona softly crying to Mom.  A few months
later I remember Mom telling me Luka had died.  Mom and Dad went to the
funeral but I didn’t.  I often think of him on crisp fall days.

I stood there, facing not the internal battle of
the good wolf and bad wolf but this external, surreal one.  I prayed that
I’d be like the good wolf and battle evil without fear.  But then, as I
remembered Grandma lying in the morgue, I became frightened of my own
mortality. I felt an overwhelming need to connect to Mom, but I had left my
phone with Dad.  I closed my eyes and pictured her smiling face, the sound
of her voice.  I held tight onto the image I had of her sitting in the kitchen
with our dog Chance laying happily at her feet.  I imagined her long black
hair, braided, with loose strands flowing freely about her shoulders, and her
pushing them back while she sketched in her art book. 

I focused my whole being on her and called to her
softly in my mindspeak,
Mom, please hear me, Mom
.  The sounds of
birds and wind that had existed outside my head now stopped and became
silent.  A staticy sound grew in volume in my head until it was replaced
by the sound of my mom’s remote voice.  Even though it sounded a million
miles away I could hear the worry.  “Willow! Willow, honey! Speak to me!

“Mom! You can hear me?” I exclaimed, excited
beyond words.

“Yes, baby, are you ok?” Her voice sounded
fragmented and distant.

“Mom, I’m ok, I just needed to hear your voice.”
My own voice was cracking now, not from the noise in my head, but from the
emotion in my heart.

“Willow, Dad told me everything. I’m talking to
him now.  How are you doing this?”

“I don’t know really.  I just needed to hear
you.” My eyes began to overflow as tears fell down my cheeks.

“Baby, it’s ok.  You’re ok. You can do
this.  You’re a strong woman.  You’ve been given this gift because of
your strength.  Soon you’ll be home and it will all be behind you…” her
voice trailed off.  It seemed as though my mindspeak only lasted a short
period of time, but I was grateful for what I just shared with my mom.

“Ok Mom, I can’t hold it any longer. I love you…”
I yelled internally, hoping the message got through.

Amidst the static I could hear her distant “I love
you too…” fading away with the outside sounds once again taking over.

Quinn, Bram, and Aaron were now sitting on the
couch in Aaron’s living room surrounded by sandwiches with bottles of water,
soda, and tea sitting in a cooler under the coffee table. I grabbed a tea and
sat down beside Bram.  He rubbed my back and then continued on with his
conversation with Aaron.  They had pinpointed an area that they were
convinced was the hiding spot of Balor’s Eye. 

From what he was able to translate from the
ancient scrolls he’d inherited with taking on the role of
Keeper of the
Knowledge
, Aaron determined the area to be a sidhe deep inside Killarney
Park.   He explained to me that a sidhe was an earth mound that is
supposed to be a doorway to the otherworld, and that there were many sidhes
scattered throughout Ireland.  This particular one, called the
Ѐadrom Sidhe was the one the Tuatha De Danann used after they were exiled
into the otherworld, a fact unknown until now. Thanks to Aaron’s skill in ancient
language translation, more of those ancient mysteries were being
discovered.   Lugh had never told anyone where the Eye of Balor was,
but since the Tuatha were all banished below the sidhe, it only made sense that
Lugh would take it there with him.

Aaron explained in greater detail what Bram had
told me about the Tuatha. He could make out from the paintings he’d researched,
more than the actual writings, that the Tuatha lived in the otherworld for
hundreds of years, then transported themselves to mystical lands which they had
been creating while submerged in the sidhes.  He showed me the fading
pictographs which told the story of exile and then eventual resurgence in a
land created only for themselves.

“So then, we’re completely on our own against the Fomorians?”
I wondered aloud.  “I thought you’d mentioned that Lugh would return to
aid the guardians if they were in trouble.”

“Aye, that I did,” Aaron said, looking through a
stack of aged papers that sat on a chair alongside the coffee table.  He
reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of latex gloves, snapping them
over his fingers.  He gently took hold of an old brown leather binder that
had images and symbols embedded in its cover.  He carefully opened it and
lifted a beige cloth that had been encased in some kind of plastic.  He
slipped off the clamps that held the plastic together and, with the touch of a
surgeon, delicately removed the cloth.  He laid it gently on the table and
carefully unfolded it, exposing a combination of ancient writings and
hieroglyphic-type drawings.  

“This appears to be the most ancient of all the
documents I have.  I believe it to be over one thousand years old,” Aaron
guessed, speaking softly now as if he was afraid the mere sound of his voice
would disintegrate the aged cloth.

“See here,” he pointed to a figure carrying an
object. “I believe this represents Lugh, and the object he carries is Balor’s
Eye.  Below it, here…” he lowered his pencil to the script in ancient
Celtic directly under the drawing, “if I’ve translated it correctly, says,
No
creature shall rise against the forces of three, should enemies join the four
corners, take heed.  The lights of the sky must not reunite or the evil
seed of Buarainech takes flight.” 
Aaron stopped, staring intently at
the script before continuing, “
Woe be the day of this hideous rebirth
…and
then something here.” He drew an imaginary circle around a passage, “
Lamfhota
be released by the power of Triquetra
.”

“Buarainech and Lamfhota?”  Quinn asked.
“What’s a Lamfhota and a Buarainech?”

“Not what…who,” Aaron uttered, still lost, trying
to translate the entire piece.  “Buarainech is another name for Balor and
Lamfhota is Lugh. There’s more but I just don’t have time to try and decipher
it all.  I believe it means that should there be a problem that prevents
you all from keeping Balor from rising, then Lugh may be summoned with the
power of the Triquetra.”

“And just how do we accomplish that?” Bram asked,
moving in closer for a better look at the cloth.

Aaron rubbed the back of his neck and began
pacing.  “I’m not sure.  But I’ve got to believe it has something to
do with the three of you joining together.  Remember when you hugged at
the lake?  A charge of electricity was definitely surging through you all. 
I haven’t found anything in all of this that tells me how to accomplish
summoning Lugh.  Hopefully it won’t come down to that.  We just have
to stop the Fomorians before they get to Balor’s Eye.”

“So this thing is a real eyeball… like thing?”
Quinn asked, wincing as he looked at the picture.

“Unknown, Quinn, what kind of form it will
take.  Nothing here tells me but, judging by the phenomenon we saw at the
lake, it quite possibly could be his Eye.  If the Fomorians get hold of
it, the Eye would give them the ultimate power, plus allow them to call upon
Balor himself.” Aaron stood above the piles of unreadable documents, frustrated
and visibly exhausted.  I’m sure he was up all night trying to translate
as much as he could.  He excused himself and stepped out of the room.

Quinn and I looked over at Bram.  “Your dad
ok, mate?” Quinn signed to Bram.

Bram shrugged.  “As ok as he can be. 
He’s taken all this on himself, you know?”  He motioned to the pile of
papers scattered about.  “He feels responsible for providing us with all
the answers.”

“Yeah,” I mumbled “and there aren’t any
easy
answers
to be found.” 

Quinn stood up straight up and began tapping away
on his phone.  A huge smile crossed his face as he chuckled, reading the
response to his text.  “I just had a brilliant idea, chum,” he signed to
Bram.