Page 25 of Heart of the Wren
She ran her hands through her hair. “Either. Both. I… If I stay here I don’t think I’ll be able to do anything.”
“I don't want you do anything you'll regret.”
“I know,” she said. “But I can't shake the feeling that if I don't leave now, I never will.”
I put my hands in my pockets. “Dara would probably tell you to trust your instincts.”
She smiled at me. “He's strange. But I like him. I've got a good feeling about him. I think you two should…”
“Should what?”
“You should be happy. You know. Together.”
I cleared my throat.
“It’s okay. I know you and him are bent. I don’t mind.”
“Hmm, well, don’t tell your father.” My ears burned again. I put my arm around her shoulder. “Come on, let’s get back inside. This snow isn’t stopping.”
Chapter 15
DARA
I ROCKED back and forth as my spirit walked through rolling green fields, over hills, and under a bronze sky. I passed familiar landmarks in the hazy, astral landscape — a lighthouse in the middle of a field of wheat, an altar with dagger, cup, wand, and coin — and crossed over a crystal-clear stream. I paused for a moment beneath a tree whose branches reached beyond the sky. Soon I came to a place new to me: a dolmen. Three large flat rocks with a fourth balanced on top. The ancient Celts used these structures as tombs. The darkness within the dolmen gave me pause. Witches could use spaces likethis to travel deeper into the astral plane. A hole in a tree trunk, a cave in a cliff face, a gap between paving stones, anything of a similar nature was a threshold, a gateway to deeper meaning and understanding. But the dolmen filled me with dread.
A small brown bird no bigger than a tennis ball twittered as it landed on the topmost stone. With a cream stripe behind each eye, it turned its head from side to side and watched me.
I steadied myself and redoubled my spiritual defences. “I seek assistance,” I said to the wren. “I seek guidance.”
From behind the dolmen stepped a young boy in tattered clothing which hung in ragged strips from his body. On his head he wore a featureless conical mask of straw which obscured his face.
The wren sang loudly. A warning.
The mask doubled the boy’s height and he carried in one hand a pole with a branch of holly tied to the top, the points of its leaves sharp as needles, the berries red as blood. “The wren, the wren, the king of all birds…” The boy’s voice was raspy, his tone uneven. “St Stephen's Day was caught in the furze…”
I tried to step away but my feet sank into the ground, ground which started moving forward, like a mudslide.
The boy continued his rhyme. “We got him there as you can see…”
The dolmen grew larger as the flowing earth drew me inexorably closer and closer to it. As I passed the boy in the straw mask, he lashed out with his pole, knocking the bird to the ground beside me. It sank into the mud.
“And pasted him up on a holly tree.”
The mud dragged me ever forward until the dolmen swallowed me whole. I fell through the darkness within and landed with a thud on a bed of straw. I rose to my feet, readying myself, and was immediately swept away in a current of jet black water. I gurgled and struggled, trying to swim upwards. I breached the surface and climbed onto a solid surface, hard and cold. I heaved myself fully from the roaring waters and only then did I realise where I was standing. Beneath my bare feet was a huge engraving of three birds, golden and shining. A pin as long as a telephone pole lay ahead of me. Either I was tiny or the ancient brooch was enormous but, whatever the case, it was now an island in the raging dark waters.
My spine lit up with electric pulses that caused spasms throughout my body until finally, in one last jittering spurt, I gasped and opened my eyes. I was back in Lorcan’s bedroom, sitting in the circle of chalk on his floor. One by one, four of the five candles marking the perimeter of my circle went out, leaving only the one placed in front of me, the north candle, the candle for earth. This I stared at until, in an instant, it too was snuffed out. The wisps of smoke rose into the air, curling and twisting, and in the miasma I discerned a single symbol — a number seven.
Downstairs, the phone was ringing. I wasn’t sure how long it had been going. Evidently, no one else was home so I quickly dressed and hurried down to the hall. I lifted the receiver and said hello.
Nothing but static, at first, then a raspy, distant, whispering voice.
“Hello?” I said again, straining to make sense of the voice.
The line went dead.
???
My feet were like ice. I hadn’t realised it until Lorcan spoke and brought me to my senses. He and Carol had come in from the snow and I was still standing in the hall.
