CHAPTER SIX
There was a soft wind, blowing gently about her. Destry was half-conscious, feeling the breeze about her. Something cold was tickling her face but she wasn’t lucid enough to brush it away. She was in a dreamy daze, somewhere between light and dark, and the only sound that met her ears was that of birds singing overhead.
Consciousness came and went. She drifted into darkness again, a sweet and blissful place, until warm hands were on her and she gradually became aware that someone had lifted her up. She felt a gentle touch on her cheeks, stroking her.
“Destry?” she could hear the distinctly male voice. “Can you hear me, sweetheart? Open your eyes. Open them and look at me.”
Destry was trying; in fact, she was trying very hard but she just couldn’t seem to open her eyes. When she was able to marginally peep them open, the light was so bright that she closed her eyes again. The darkness swarmed around her and she drifted off.
Conor could see that she had passed out again. He was fairly woozy himself but he fought it; looking around, they were in heavy foliage, remarkably dry, as the weak sunlight beat down through the tree canopy overhead. Had he not been feeling so ill or confused it would have been a lovely sight. But all he could manage to feel at the moment was disorientation, confusion and nausea.
His last memory had been of kissing Destry in the dank, cold tunnel of Dowth mound. It had been hot and delicious, everything he could have imagined it would be. Then he had awoken in the overgrown grass, staring straight up at the sky, wondering what in the hell had happened. He felt as if he’d been on the losing end of a fight as he struggled to clear his head, sitting up slowly as the world rocked. He truly had no idea what had happened. Over to his left, he could see Destry crumpled on her side like a rag doll.
Heart in his throat, he forgot about his spinning head as he struggled to Destry’s side. Carefully, he rolled her on to her back, very carefully inspecting her pale face to see if he could see any visible damage. At this point, not knowing what had happened, he ran his hands down her arms and legs, feeling for broken bones, but she was intact. Then he carefully scooped her into his arms and tried to rouse her.
Destry was struggling to come around but she was still fairly out of it. Conor wasn’t feeling much better but at least he was upright. He held her against his broad chest, watching her sigh and twitch, before taking a look back up at the mound. He expected to see it exploded outward at the very least, because something had obviously thrown them clear of the mound; they were at least twelve or more feet away from it.
It took him a moment to realize that the mound of Dowth was very much intact and extremely overgrown. In fact, he could barely see the tunnel they had been huddled in for all of the growth around it. His blue eyed gaze drifted over the lines of the mound, something he knew very well, but it just didn’t look the same as it had a few minutes earlier. Puzzlement began to sprout.
“What the…?” he muttered.
His brow furrowed in confusion and he began to look around; nothing was as he remembered it; no fences, no farm houses, no neatly tended fields. It was all wild meadow as far as he could see. It was all very weird but he shoved his bewilderment aside. He had no idea what had happened to them other than some kind of natural explosion and decided the best course of action would be to return to his car and get Destry to a hospital. Then maybe he needed to get his head checked, too, because things didn’t look the same as they did just a few minutes earlier. Maybe the explosion had given him a concussion or something. He certainly felt like it.
He gently scooped Destry into his arms, cradling her carefully as he made his way around the east side of the mound. Here, too, it looked extremely overgrown and the entrance tunnels on this side were nearly completely blocked off with fallen stone and bramble. Greatly perplexed, he rounded the side of the mound with the expectation of finding the carpark dead ahead. He came to an abrupt halt when he realized there was nothing there but open, green field. Everything was gone.
Conor stared at the area where his car should have been, starting to wonder if he hadn’t lost his mind. Nothing was as it should be or where he left it and he was struggling against an increasingly strong sense of dread. As he stood there with Destry cradled in his arms, trying to figure out what he should do next, the bramble off to his left suddenly rattled.
Startled, he whirled around in time to see a very small, willowy woman push through the trees with three small children at her side. His brow furrowed as he realized the woman was wearing a nightgown. Or, at least, he thought it was a nightgown; it was as white as she was, the color blending into her skin, all wispy and flowing. She also had a walking stick in her hand, a stick that was twice her height.
As the trees parted and the woman drew closer, he could see that she was a younger woman, her white hair long and straight, and the children with her weren’t as much children as they were midgets or dwarfs. He truly had no idea; they were odd little people with big hands and big heads, and they were dressed in raggedy pajamas as they suddenly rushed at him, squealing. Startled, and at a disadvantage with an unconscious woman in his arms, Conor backed off. The woman in the nightgown lifted a hand to him in greeting.
“Mo Thiarna,” she said. “Dia bheannaithe linn ar an lá seo de laethanta le do thuairisceán. Táimid ag guí ar an lá seo.”
Conor stared at her. It was an extremely archaic form of Irish Gaelic, something very odd and out of place in this modern world. Although he understood her completely, her words had no meaning to him. My lord, God has blessed us on this day of days with your return. We have prayed for this day.
“Dia,” he replied. “Duit go bhfuil an bhean bhí gortaithe. An féidir leat glaoch ar chabhair leighis?”
This woman is injured; can you call for medical assistance? He tried not to sound too panicked or too bewildered as he asked. Getting help for Destry was all he could think about at the moment; everything else, all of the weirdness and disorientation, would have to wait. But the woman smiled faintly at him.
“You do not remember me, do you?” she said in her heavy Gaelic. “’Tis of no concern, my lord. You will remember in time.”
Conor regarded her, shaking his head after a moment and replying in her dialect. “I’m sorry, I don’t know who you are. Do you have a mobile phone with you?”
There was no word for ‘phone’ in Gaelic, so he had to go with the best translation he could. The woman cocked her head, looking rather amused. “I am Padraigan the White,” she said. “Your memory will return. But you must come with me now, quickly. They must not find you here.”
Conor had no idea what she was talking about. He thought the woman was a little crazy so he started to walk away, thinking it would be best to put distance between them, but she trailed after him.
“Please, my lord,” she said with growing insistence. “You must not go that way. You must come with me. You must…!”
He suddenly came to a halt, whirling on her. “Look,” he cut her off, the distinct look of agitation on his face. “This lady is injured. She needs a doctor. Can you at least call for a taxi so I can get her to a hospital?”
The little people collected at Conor’s feet and began to tug at him, inspecting his jeans. He actually kicked one of them away when the man got too close to his crotch. Padraigan put her stick out and tapped one of the little folk on the shoulder, causing all of them to look at her.
“Quickly,” she commanded softly. “Get the horses. We must return them swiftly or all will be lost.”
“What are you talking about?” Conor asked, growing more distressed. “Can you even understand what I’m saying? I need to get this woman to a hospital.”
For the first time, Padraigan’s gaze moved to Destry, lying still and pale in Conor’s enormous arms. Her gaze softened as she studied the lovely face and a hand came up as if to touch her, but just as quickly pulled away. There was reverenced in her expression, in her tone, as she spoke.
“Fanacht, morrigan,” she whispered. “Gnáthlá agus oiche og ceanna; tar ar cúl do sinne.”
Conor’s eyes narrowed dangerously and he took a step back as if to protect Destry from this strange and mysterious woman. He was becoming seriously upset by all of this, the strange people, the odd land, and the fact that he didn’t feel well at all. Something terrible had happened but it was like living a nightmare; he couldn’t seem to get any help. No one understood what he needed. Short of walking to Drogheda, which was just a few miles to the east, he wasn’t sure what more he could say or do to stress his urgency. Now, with this bizarre woman repeating the very words that Destry had sworn she had heard in her dreams, he was at his limit of patience.
“Where in the hell did you hear that?” he hissed.
Padraigan looked at him, not at all offended by his tone. The High King had always been extremely protective of his wife, a woman he was deeply and hopelessly in love with. Their love story was legendary, so much so that vying factions in the kingdom had gone to great lengths to preserve it. Now, they were back and the situation threatened to explode all over again. And it would if she could not get the man to safety.
“I called to her and she heard me,” she replied simply. “That is why you are here, my lord. She brought you here. You must come with me.”
Conor’s fury was being overwhelmed by confusion and, if he were to admit it, some fear. “What are you talking about?” he demanded. “Who in the hell are you? And no more of this bullshit you’ve been feeding me. Who in the hell are you really?”
Sounds of horses could be heard and they both turned to see the little people returning with four horses. But these weren’t any horses; they were shaggy and fat, oddly shaped. Padraigan motioned towards the beasts.
“Come, my lord,” her calm tone now had a sense of urgency to it. “We must hurry.”
Conor stood his ground. “Hurry where?” he demanded. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me who you are.”
Padraigan remained calm. “I told you, my lord,” she said. “I am Padraigan the White. I am your litrithe. You do not remember now but you will in time. You must trust me and come with me; otherwise, your life is in great danger.”
Conor just stared at the woman, the sense of dread that had been gnawing at him now sprouting wings and taking flight. “My sorceress?” he repeated, translating her word. “What is…?”
“There is no time, my lord. You must come now. I will explain everything when we are safe.”
Conor pulled Destry tighter, glancing around to the overgrown mound, the heavy foliage, the fields that were wild and untamed. Overhead, clouds skipped across the unnaturally blue sky. It all looked fairly normal to him but something was different, something he couldn’t put his finger on. His defiance began to slip in favor of genuine fear.
“What in the hell is going on?” he finally pleaded, a mere whisper compared to his usual tone.
Padraigan sensed his despair; she had known this would be his reaction and struggled to get the man moving without sitting down and telling him the entire story of his existence. She would do it later, when they were safe. But at this moment, they needed to leave. The urgency was growing.
“Please,” Padraigan begged. “I will tell you everything once we reach safety. Will you please trust me?”
Conor wasn’t sure he had a choice but he really didn’t want to go with her. He wanted to find his car, but his car wasn’t there and neither was the carpark, or Aisling, or the small farm that sat just to the east of the mound. Nothing was as he remembered it. It began to occur to him that the blast that had thrown him and Destry clear of the mound had done something. He wasn’t sure yet, but something had happened.
One way or the other, he had to find help for Destry. With no car and no phone on him, since he had left it in his car, he thought that perhaps he should go with the woman. There was the larger lure of taking Destry someplace safe; once at the woman’s house, maybe she had a land line phone he could use. And he reckoned that if he didn’t feel comfortable, he could just leave. Drogheda was about a five mile walk to the east. He’d carry Destry all the way to Dublin to find help for her if he had to.
Without another word, he began to walk towards the horses. Padraigan softly commanded her three little friends to produce the fastest horse for Conor, but he looked rather blankly as a shaggy cream-colored horse was produced. There was no saddle, at least not one he had ever seen; it was a series of heavy blankets held together with a frame of wood for the seat of the saddle.
“Oh, God,” he grunted to himself. “A horse? I haven’t ridden a horse in years.”
“Mount your steed, my lord.”
He just shook his head, looking at Destry, wondering how he was going to mount the horse and hold her at the same time. After a moment, he sighed heavily. “How in the hell am I going to do this?”
In his arms, Destry suddenly stirred. She threw up a hand, which ended up thumping him on the cheek. He gazed down at her, seeing that her eyes were marginally open. The hand that had smacked him in the cheek went to her head as if to block out a throbbing headache and her eyes closed again.
“Destry?” he said softly. “Can you hear me?”
This time, she responded. “Yes,” she whispered, the bright blue eyes slowly opening again. “What’s going on?”
He sighed heavily. “I’m not sure yet,” he said honestly. “How do you feel?”
She was quiet a moment; so far, she hadn’t tried to move anything but her hand and she remained tucked against his chest, her open eyes staring into his shirt. He could feel her great, heavy sigh.
“Like I’ve been thrown off a building,” she stirred again, this time lifting her head and squinting in the light. “What happened?”
His gaze was soft on her. “I don’t know,” he said quietly. “One minute I was in the tunnel with you and in the next minute, we were both lying on the grass.”
She gazed up at him, her bright blue against his sky blue. “Are you okay?”
He smiled faintly. “I’m fine,” he said gently. “I’m more worried about you.”
She reached up and wound her arms around his neck, pulling herself up so that she was sitting up somewhat. But as she struggled to settle herself, she caught movement out of the corner of her eye. Padraigan came into view, an unfamiliar and somewhat odd sight, and Destry startled with fright.
“Oh, God,” she gasped, suddenly pressed up against Conor as close as she could without actually crawling inside the man. “Who’s that?”
Conor looked at the small, thin woman with the dirty pale nightgown on. “She says her name is Padraigan,” he said quietly. “She says… well, she says a hell of a lot of weird things, but she mostly says we need to get out of here because we’re in danger.”
Destry’s head came up, the bright blue eyes wide with fear and disorientation. “What danger?”
He shook his head, his gaze on the strange woman and her three companions. “I don’t know,” he murmured. “They won’t say but they want us to come with them.”
Destry looked over her shoulder at the very small woman with the extremely pale face before turning back to Conor, throwing her arms around his neck and burying her face against his shoulder.
“I just want to go back to the hotel,” she muttered. “I need to lie down. Please take me back.”
He sighed faintly. “I would, except the car is gone.”
Her head came up, her face within inches of his as she fixed him in the eye. “Where did it go?” she suddenly scowled. “Did Aisling take it? Where in the hell did she go? Oh, my God, my head is killing me.”
Her head flopped back down on his shoulder and Conor laid his cheek against the top of her head, rocking her gently. In spite of the bizarre and concerning circumstances, he had her just where he wanted her. He could have stayed like this forever. But Padraigan approached the pair timidly, rattling him out of his fantasy world.
“Please, my lord,” she said. “We must leave immediately.”
Destry’s head came up again, her eyes wide as she looked at him. “What did she say?” she hissed. “What kind of language is that?”
Conor pursed his lips reluctantly; he didn’t particularly want to tell her, fearful that it might set her off. But he had no choice.
“Gaelic Irish,” he said quietly.
Her face screwed up, confused. “Doesn’t she speak English?”
Conor looked at the tiny wisp of a woman “Do you understand English?
Padraigan stared at him, having no idea what he had said. After a moment of confusion, she pointed to the horses again.
“Please, my lord,” she begged. “Please ride with me to safety. Time grows short and your children await.”
Conor’s eyebrows lifted. “Children?” he repeated. “What children?”
Padraigan’s gaze moved between Conor and Destry as a faint smile graced her lips. “Your sons,” she said. “Perhaps they will help you remember.”
Destry was looking at Conor as the woman spoke her bizarre language. It was clear that he was communicating with her but Destry couldn’t understand a word. She felt like she was on another planet. Her head was killing her and her body ached terribly, and she was feeling woozy and weary. With a big surge of strength, she suddenly pushed herself out of Conor’s enormous arms and almost fell to the ground.
Conor steadied her as she gained her feet and her balance but she shrugged him off. Looking around, she spied the mound several yards away and her eyebrows lifted; it was lumpy and overgrown with foliage. It didn’t look anything like the well-manicured mound she had arrived at a few hours earlier. It didn’t even look like the same relic, in any way. An odd sense of foreboding swept her.
“What happened to the mound?” she asked, pointing.
He turned to look at it. “I have no idea,” he said quietly. “It doesn’t look like it did just a few minutes ago.”
Destry’s hand went to her head, a gesture of utter bafflement, as she started to walk in the direction of the mound. “It’s all covered with bushes and grass,” she said, overwhelmed with confusion and curiosity. She turned to Conor. “You said we were thrown out of the tunnel?”
He was walking after her. “Yes,” he replied. “When I woke up, we were about three or four meters from the tunnel entrance.”
Destry wasn’t feeling at all well but her sense of curiosity, and fear, were taking over. “Then there must have been an explosion,” she was trying to be logical about it. “Is it possible that the explosion threw us out and made it look like this? It looks like some of the tunnels are collapsed.”
He just shook his head. “I doubt it,” he said. “Whatever damage you see looks as if it has been that way for years. And none of the overgrowth has been disturbed, as it would have been by an explosion.”
She couldn’t wrap her mind around his assertion. “But there has to have been an explosion,” she insisted. “How else would we have been blown out of the tunnel?”
Conor was feeling just as much trepidation as she was but he was more in control of it. “I have no idea,” he replied. “But it happened.”
She looked at him, the bright blue eyes pleading and searching. “But how?” she demanded softly, then her eyes grew suspicious. “Were we gassed? Maybe someone gassed us and then dragged us outside to rob us.”
He almost laughed but couldn’t quite bring himself to do it; she was serious and so was he. It was a serious situation.
“We would have seen someone, or heard them,” he took a couple of steps and ended up very close to her, looking down into her lovely face. “Even though my attention was on you, I’m sure I would have heard someone sneaking up to gas us.”
“Did you check your pockets? Is your wallet still there?”
“I left my wallet in the car.”
She pursed her lips as if he had just made an awful mistake. “Now Aisling has it and is probably charging up all of your credit cards.”
He grinned. “If she does, I’ll take it out on you.”
“Oh, yeah? And how are you going to do that?”’
“Do you really want to know?”
“Yes. No. Well, maybe.”
Conor laughed softly. They had come to a halt about twenty feet from the mound, facing each other, when an object of some kind suddenly zinged past Conor’s head and he turned, startled, in time to see several creatures in the trees off to the north side of the mound. Creatures were the only way to describe them because they were green and brown, blending in with the foliage like woodland wraiths. They whooped and yelled and threw things, and started dropping out of the trees. When they began to run, Conor could see that they were human; naked human men painted in dirty shades of green and brown.
They clutched crude bows in their hands made of thin, stripped branches and some kind of animal sinew. Conor could hardly believe what he was seeing; it was like watching an ancient reenactment only this one had the distinct element of danger; people didn’t launch arrows because they wanted to be friendly. They launched them because they wanted to kill. One of the group launched a very crude arrow again and it weakly sailed off to the left.
As they drew closer, Conor knew the meant to attack them but he still couldn’t believe it. He just stood there and observed, like an anthropologist would. Beside him, Destry let out a shriek.
“Holy Crap!” she yelped.
Her cry seemed to startle him from clinically evaluating the situation. Although he was an expert in ancient warfare, he’d never really had cause, other than an occasional bar fight, to use his skills. As big as he was, at six and a half feet tall, he’d never really been called upon to use his hand to hand combat skills in a mortal situation and, truth be told, he was a little frightened. But he could see that all of that was about to change. He was about to put his money where his mouth was. Something in his gut told him that these men were not the reasoning type. They looked like wild animals and he responded in kind.
A fist the size of a ten pound ham came flying out at the first man, delivering a crushing blow that sent him to the ground. Conor grabbed the second man by the neck and tossed him off into the trees. Two others descended on him and he found himself in a vicious fight, tossing men to the ground only to have them jump up and try to strike him. One man had a crude bronze knife blade and he swiped it at Conor, catching him in the arm and drawing blood. Furious, Conor drove his fist into the man’s head.
Destry had darted away when Conor threw the first punch; she had nowhere to go and no place to hide, but she didn’t want to get clobbered in the fight. She’d never in her life heard of gangs hanging out in the countryside of Ireland, beating up tourists. But there were at least six of them, three of them who were already out cold thanks to Conor’s crushing blows. The man could deliver a punch like nothing she had ever seen this side of a movie screen. But as she watched him, she began to realize that he might need help. She’d never been in a fight in her life but that was about to change; she had to help him.
Over to her left, the strange woman was trying to get her attention, beckoning her to come, but Destry had no intention of going with the woman or of leaving Conor alone. Forgetting her splitting headache and nausea, she quickly looked around for anything she could use as a weapon. Rocks would do but she quickly spied a fairly thick branch on the ground, about four feet long and with leaves and smaller branches still growing out of it. Swiftly, she retrieved it and the next time one of those skinny naked guys came around, she whacked him over the head with it. He fell like a stone.
This left two men going after Conor; he had one of them in a headlock and the other one by the throat. Destry rushed up with her branch and cracked the guy in the headlock on the back of the head with it. Surprised, Conor looked up just in time to see Destry brain the last man in his grip; she took a swing at his head like a baseball player swinging a bat and knocked the guy out of the park. But he was tough and she had to whack him twice.
When he fell to the ground, unconscious, Conor suddenly let out a roar and beat at his chest, kicking at the men on the ground. It was a release of fear, the expending of testosterone, on the most basic primal level. Destry, sickened by the fight, dropped her branch and staggered back, tripping over a rock and ending up on her bum. There she sat as Conor bellowed his victory.
He was hyped up on adrenalin, the primordial surge of battle in his veins. He was a strong personality as it was, demonstrative, but his victory yell was truly something to behold. For a man who had never truly been in a battle situation, he had taken to it with frightening ease. Still riding the adrenalin high, he looked up from his six victims to see Destry sitting on the ground looking horribly pale. He forgot his testosterone seizures and rushed to her.
“Are you all right?” he reached down to pick her up off the grass. “Did you get hurt?”
She shook her head, weakly trying to pull away from him and struggling to hold back the tears. But the tears came and she broke down.
“I’m fine,” she sobbed softly. “I just want to get out of here.”
He put his big arms around her, pulling her against him. “I’m sorry; so sorry,” he murmured, giving her a gentle squeeze. Putting his enormous arm around her shoulders, he pulled her away from the pile of bodies. “Come on; we’ll get out of here right now.”
“Who were those guys?” she wept.
He hugged her again, gently. “I don’t know, sweetheart,” he said. “A group of ruffians; who knows?”
“They don’t have any clothes on.”
“A group of insane nudists, then. I don’t know who they are.”
Destry was torn between giggling at his humor and her tears, and the tears won out as he began to walk her in the direction of the car park; or, at least, where the car park had once been. He didn’t know what else to do. But Padraigan was still lingering now behind him with her three little helpers, leading the shaggy horses with them.
“Wait,” Padraigan called. “Please, my lord, not that way. We must go this way.”
He turned to look at the woman, exhaustion evident on his face now that the adrenalin rush was gone. “I’m not going to….”
Destry cut him off. “What does she want?”
He grunted as he turned to look at her. “She wants us to go with her. She insists.”
Destry waved him off. “Maybe we should,” she said, her gaze on what should be the carpark in the distance. “There’s no car out there and now that I look at it, no road. There’s no farmhouse or cars driving by or anything else that moves. There’s nothing at all. We just got attacked by crazy, dirty naked guys who tried to shoot arrows at us. What in the hell is going on here, anyway?”
His gaze was moving with hers, seeing the same sights, feeling the same dread. “I don’t know.”
Destry’s teary gaze looked up at him. “Maybe she knows.”
Conor didn’t say anything for a moment. But he came to a stop, his hands still on Destry as he turned for Padraigan. There was suspicion and anxiety in his tone, but considering the circumstances, he figured that he didn’t have much choice.
“We will go with you,” he told her in her language.
Padraigan smiled timidly, encouraging her little helpers to provide horses to Conor and Destry. Destry had ridden a great deal and mounted easily when Conor gave her a leg up. He, however, took a bit longer; throwing his big body over the back of the horse, he finally swung a leg over and sat up somewhat uncertainly. He didn’t look particularly comfortable. But as storm clouds began to gather again over head, he followed Padraigan and her little group off to the east, heading into a massive forest he had never even noticed before, and losing themselves in the dark and musty depths of the thickening trees.