CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
It took Nuala a moment to realize her eyes were open. A dark mist swirled around her, thick and pungent with an unfamiliar smell. She peered ahead, trying to focus on her memories of Tír na nÓg. She pictured the fields of flowers that reached out to caress those who walked past, waterfalls of crystal nectar, trees that sang and danced and hung heavy with fruit, one bite of which would fill a person with energy for days. She strained her eyes and thought she could see vague outlines and forms in front of her. She moved a hand through the air and found that the dark mist clung to her skin. It was sticky, like cobwebs. She let go of Eden’s hand to wipe it away, and Eden took a step forward.
“Wait,” said Nuala. “Something isn’t right. I don’t know why it’s not clear.”
“I do.”
The voice came from Eden, who turned around to face her. But it wasn’t a small, frightened child who approached her now, moving through the fog as if it were the crystal air of a spring morning. She was taller, and her hair fell down her back in thick waves. She was wearing a dress of black gossamer lace that looked as if it had been woven from the same material as the mist that surrounded them. The gown clung to curves that did not belong to a six-year-old body. When Eden stopped in front of her, Nuala realized they were the same height now, staring eye to eye. The eyes that bored into hers were not wide with innocent wonder, but deep and old and fierce. Nuala looked away, and noticed for the first time that she herself was dressed in mottled gray rags.
“It is not clear because there are things you do not wish me to see,” Eden said in a low, throaty voice. “But it does not matter. We are in my dream now.”
“No,” whispered Nuala, closing her eyes and trying to wrest control of the dream, focusing all her powers of concentration on one singular image, the glade where she had spent countless hours, no, years, listening to the water nymphs singing and bathing in the nearby stream. After several long moments she opened her eyes, fully expecting to see the sunlight dancing off the golden leaves, but instead she was looking into a pair of golden eyes that were now rimmed with mirth.
“While we’re here,” Eden said, “we might as well have a look around.” She took Nuala by the hand and started pulling her along, fragments of the gossamer gown drifting off her body as she moved, only to be replaced by new wisps of the surrounding mist.
Nuala moved behind her, partly because she didn’t want the girl-woman to get away, and partly because she had no choice—Eden’s grasp was as strong as if someone had poured molten lead on their hands, sealing them together. As they moved through the darkness, Nuala heard a sound that made her skin crawl. She listened more closely. It was the sound of a small child crying. It echoed as if the child were alone in an empty, cavernous room. Nuala strained her eyes but could see nothing. They kept moving, and the child’s crying faded, only to be replaced by a new sound. This, too, was of a child, who was calling out, “Mummy? Mummy!” The voice had the same echoing timbre as the one before it. She could hear footsteps, soft at first, then loud and fast, the sound of bare feet pounding against wood. The cries rose in pitch and volume until the child was screaming hysterically, “MUMMY! WHERE ARE YOU?”
Then it was quiet.
“Who—” Nuala began, but Eden turned and silenced her with glance.
“Listen,” she said. Then the chanting began. It sounded like many voices; a dozen or a thousand, Nuala could not tell. They chanted in unison in the same dull, deadened tone. She could not see them, but she could sense that the chanters were rocking back and forth, back and forth, keeping rhythm with the words as they swayed through the air. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you…”
“Eden, stop,” Nuala said, her voice swallowed up by the growing number of voices around her. “Stop!” she shouted. “Tell me what this is!”
Eden broke her viselike grip on Nuala’s hand and spun to face her. They were only an inch apart, and Nuala gasped when Eden bared her teeth, pointed like a row of tiny daggers, and made a growling sound deep in the back of her throat.
“This is me,” she hissed, raising her arms into the air in a sudden, swooping curve and thrusting her palms outward. As if a sudden wind had swept in, the mist blew away, rolling back like the morning fog off the ocean. Nuala looked around and gasped. They were standing in Tír na nÓg, just as she remembered it. Immediately, her body relaxed, and she could feel herself filling with the power freely given by the earth beneath her feet. The peal of a water nymph’s laughter erased all memory of the ghostly children. A light breeze lifted her hair off her shoulders and caressed her body as if to welcome her home. Even so, she could tell this was Eden’s dream, and not her own.
“How do you know?” she snapped. Eden’s gossamer gown was now white, and she was idly weaving a chain of flowers the color of sunrise into her hair. “How do you know what this place is like? Have you known all this time?” She stepped in front of Eden, fury pumping through her veins. If this was the girl’s dream, and she knew Tír na nÓg so intimately, then she had been lying to her all along. Nuala felt suddenly and unexpectedly betrayed.
Eden looked up, as if she were surprised to see Nuala standing there. Then she looked around. “This place? Mmm, it is lovely, isn’t it? But it’s not what you are looking for.”
“This is exactly what I’m looking for, you lying wench,” Nuala snarled. “I know exactly where we are, and you must too, or else you wouldn’t have been able to re-create this place. Tell me how!”
Eden appeared unfazed by Nuala’s growing rancor and gazed around curiously.
“I don’t believe I’ve been here before,” she said. Her voice, which had been low and husky, was now light and airy. She reached up to a blooming tree and pulled down a bough heavily laden with purple blossoms, burying her nose in them and then laughing with delight.
Nuala stared at her.
“Oh, yes, I have seen this place before,” Eden said, as if just remembering. “It came from you, from your memories.”
Nuala’s eyebrows shot up, and then relaxed. “Then the dream-sharing did work,” she said. “Now we just need to wake up.”
“Mmm, I don’t think so,” Eden said in singsong voice.
“What do you mean?” Nuala snapped.
“This is how you remember Tír na nÓg, not how it is.”
“What are you talking about? This is exactly how Tír na nÓg is! This is my home!”
Eden released the tree bough and watched it bounce gently back into place. She moved slowly toward Nuala, shaking her head sadly.
“No,” she said. “If this is how Tír na nÓg truly is, then dear Brighid’s painting would have been enough for me to open the sidh.” She spun around, waving her arms through the air. “This is Tír na nÓg as it was, and as it should be.” Then she stopped and looked at the ground. “But now…well, I do not know what it looks like now, but it does not look like this anymore. The land has been poisoned. Some fear it is beyond repair. And you…you wish to help him who would utterly destroy it.” Eden’s shoulders slumped.
“I don’t,” Nuala protested. “I mean no harm to the land. I just want to go back to my home, where I belong.”
Eden raised her chin and looked her captor in the eyes. “Don’t deceive yourself, or insult me with your lies. You don’t want to go home. You want to rule home. You hate Ériu because you have no power there, no influence, no admirers. That is what you crave, and you think if you return to Tír na nÓg, the status that was once yours will be returned to you tenfold. Only there may not be any Tír na nÓg left by the time he and you are done with it.”
Eden glided toward Nuala until they were standing face to face. She took a long finger and pressed it into the center of Nuala’s chest.
“I have seen your heart, Fionnghuala. You see yourself on the throne of Tír na nÓg and of Ériu, putting those you think are beneath you in their rightful place. Your desires run deep, and dark.” Then Eden’s somber expression shifted, and she smiled brightly at Nuala, who blinked in surprise. “Shall we continue?” Eden asked.
“Continue where? We need to wake up. We need to find your father, remember?” Nuala ran to catch up to Eden, who was suddenly several paces ahead of her.
Eden threw her head back and let out a peal of laughter. “Yes, yes, my father! Waiting for me in Tír na nÓg!” Then she stopped without warning, and Nuala narrowly avoided running into her.
“Here are my friends,” Eden said, waving her arm forward. “They wish to meet you.”
Two rows of imposing figures stood in front of them, forming a corridor through which they were clearly expected to pass. The figures were dressed in fine robes that wrapped around them like closed butterfly wings. Circlets of gold and silver sat on their heads, and their skin shone like sunlight reflecting off a rippling stream. Eden’s face broke into a grin, and she began to jog toward them.
“Wait!” Nuala called, and Eden turned around. “Who—” Nuala began, and then she looked closer at the figures and grew pale. “Are those…the Elders?”
“Yes!” Eden smiled. “And some of the others who have gone on.”
“How do you know them?” Nuala asked. “How do you even know of them?”
Eden shrugged, causing the fine lace of her gown to ripple delicately. “I suppose a part of me has always known them. I only meet them here, however, in my dreams.” She looked wistful. “But someday I shall see them face to face. At least, that’s what they tell me.” Without looking to see if Nuala was following, Eden bounced forward to greet her friends.
Nuala slowly followed. She watched as Eden hugged and kissed the first figures in the columns. They were laughing and smiling, too, as if nothing delighted them more than she did. But as Nuala approached, the smiles slid from their faces and were replaced by hostile frowns. She held her breath and tried to make herself as small as possible as she passed between their ranks. Some of the faces she had known before they had returned to the Four Cities. Others had fallen in battle before she was born, and she had only heard tales of their grandeur. The Dagda. Nuadu of the Silver Hand. Manannan mac Lir. Aengus Og. Lugh. Ogma. Dian Cecht. Bodb Derg. The columns stretched out before her and she rushed to catch up to Eden, but she could not outstrip the wave of anger and judgment that emanated from those who had made the Tuatha Dé Danann a race worthy of legend.
Finally, Nuala could see that Eden had stopped just ahead in a small clearing. She walked up to the girl, trying to control her trembling. She glanced over her shoulder and was relieved to see that the glaring Tuatha Dé Danann had disappeared and two rows of stately birch trees now stood on either side of where she had walked.
When she turned back around, a small cry escaped her lips. Across the clearing ran a river, and on the far bank stooped a woman dressed in nothing but her long, raven black hair. Crows perched on her shoulders and head as she squatted down to wash something in the running water. The clear water turned red and murky as it flowed past.
“The Morrigan,” Nuala whispered. She had never met the Morrigan, and was glad for it, but she knew about her all the same. The Morrigan was the goddess of death. There was a time when every soldier in Ireland had lived in dread of stumbling upon a woman washing his clothes in the river, for it meant he would soon die in battle. Despite herself, Nuala moved closer, staring at the cloth in the woman’s hands. Then the woman stood up and rung out the cloth, and Nuala screamed, for the very rags she was wearing on her violently shaking body were turning the river red with blood.
Nuala flung her eyelids open like the door of an escape hatch. She saw nothing but blackness and reached out with the rest of her senses for something to hang on to. She tasted blood and heard a ghastly scream. She forcibly closed her mouth and the screaming came to a sudden stop. She tried to move and realized that one of her hands was tied to something, to another person. She jerked at it and heard a small moan from the body next to her. Then she heard a trembling voice from somewhere in the air above her.
“Nuala,” the voice whispered. “Are you awake?”
Nuala looked in the direction of the voice, but still she could see nothing.
“Who are you?” she asked. “I can’t see you.”
“Open your eyes,” the voice said.
Nuala started to say that her eyes were open, but then she realized that no, they were not. She did as the voice instructed and found herself looking into the lined face of Maeve McLeod.
“I’m awake,” she said. She sat up, turning her head sharply to look at the other body in the large chair. Eden lay there, looking exceptionally small and frail, her hair fanned out on the arm of the chair and her cheeks flushed. Nuala breathed heavily through her nose as the humiliation of the dream returned to her.
She felt bile rising in her throat. She remembered the blood running from her clothes, staining the Morrigan’s hands and dripping from her elbows. She remembered the glares of the Tuatha Dé Danann, the disgust in their faces as she passed between them. She could still hear the ghostly wails of the children echoing off the walls of her mind. It was just a dream, she told herself, Eden’s dream, and none of it was real.
Eden opened her eyes, and Nuala watched her closely, relieved to see no trace of the older dream-Eden. She did not have to be afraid of this strange child. She was still in control.
“Eden?” Maeve said, leaning past Nuala to help her granddaughter sit up. “How do you feel?”
Eden looked over at Nuala, then back at Maeve, and then her face crumpled and she began to cry, her face pressed up against Maeve’s chest. Maeve held her close and looked at Nuala in alarm.
“What happened?” she asked. “Did it work?”
“No, you useless hag, it didn’t work. It was nothing but nonsense. You should be glad I don’t kill you on the spot,” Nuala said.
She snapped her fingers in front of Eden’s face, causing the girl to look up. “Eden! Do you remember the dream? Do you remember what you saw?” For a moment, she thought she saw a flicker of the older Eden in the six-year-old’s eyes, but then the girl shook her head, sniffling. “I don’t know. I feel weird.”
“What do you remember? Tell me!” Nuala snapped.
Eden cowered back into her grandmother’s arms, which was difficult given the fact that her wrist was still bound to Nuala’s. Maeve made soothing noises and stroked Eden’s hair. “You had best answer her, dear. It’s okay now; you’re awake. Tell us what you remember from your dream.”
“Flowers,” the girl whimpered. “There were flowers.”
Maeve looked up at Nuala. “You said the dream was nonsense, but she remembers something. Is it Tír na nÓg? Is it enough?”
Nuala stood up, dragging Eden with her toward the door. “Open it,” she said. “Think about the flowers you saw in the dream.” Eden opened the door, but they only saw the yard out front, and Maeve’s blue car. Nuala slammed the door closed. She was not surprised that it hadn’t worked. If what Eden had said in the dream was right, then even she herself did not know what Tír na nÓg looked like anymore. She sat back down in the armchair, frustration and fear and desperation building inside of her, wishing she could set something on fire or tear apart a boulder with her hands. She was running on borrowed time, but she would not give up. With Eden at her disposal, she could stay one step ahead of the rest of the Tuatha Dé Danann rebels. Soon they would wish they had just let her go, instead of pursuing her like a hound pursues a hare.
She whirled around and snapped, “What time is it, druid?”
“Six o’clock in the morning,” Maeve said, “on Tuesday. You were asleep a long time.”
“A long wasted time,” Nuala snarled, her fear fueling the vitriol in her voice. How much closer were Rohan and the others to finding her now? Had the druid alerted them? She knew she had stayed in one place for too long. They needed to leave, and now—but there was still the matter of the druid. She closed her eyes and opened her mind, reaching out to Maeve. She delved deep into the druid’s heart, and found what she had seen before. Maeve’s desires were simple, strong, and glaringly obvious. All she wanted was for Eden to be safe. Nuala almost smiled. This would be easy.
Maeve, however, anticipated her. “You don’t have to charm me,” she said, her voice urgent. “I want to help you. Please. I will be more effective if I’m acting of my own free will.”
“I doubt that,” Nuala said, her voice dripping with scorn, “but I’ll give you one more chance. Then we can try it my way.”
“Let me go to Cedar,” Maeve said. “She will tell me everything she knows. It may give us an idea.”
Nuala stepped close to her and bent down so she was staring Maeve in the eyes. “And how do I know you will not betray me?” she asked softly.
Maeve did not quail under Nuala’s glare. “Because I want to keep my granddaughter away from the Tuatha Dé Danann—all the Tuatha Dé Danann. If Rohan and his people find her, they will heed the prophecy and take her to battle against Lorcan. They will think nothing of her life, her safety. Frankly, I don’t care about your world, or your war. I only want my grandchild to be safe, and to stay that way. I will take her far from here, and hide her, using everything at my disposal. And I won’t fail this time,” she added bitterly.
Nuala considered this, and then nodded. “Then go. Now.”
Eden suddenly yanked hard on the ropes that bound her to Nuala and strained toward the door, knocking Nuala so off-balance that she almost fell. She gave Eden’s arm a firm tug, twisting it sharply enough for the girl to howl in pain.
“Do that again and I’ll rip your arm right off,” Nuala hissed. Eden kept screaming and started flailing at Nuala with her free arm.
“Do you want your grandmother to live, you useless child?” Nuala snarled. “Shut up and do as I say, or I’ll chop her into little bits, I swear it!” She stopped, breathing heavily, then spoke in a softer voice. “Do as I say and you can go home soon.” She opened the door and walked out into the sunlight, dragging Eden with her. She turned around to see Maeve still standing inside the workshop, a tortured expression on her face. “Go! Hurry!” Nuala yelled, and stood watching as Maeve fastened the building’s locks, cast several protection spells, and ran to her car. As Maeve drove away, Nuala dragged the hysterical child toward the empty house.