Rebirth

by D. C. Alexander

  “Yes, thank you very much, you are a lot of help.”

  Mags said “What do you need help with?” I had been wondering, but I wouldn’t have just asked.

  “Ah, well, that is a story. My old man is a mechanic. He dropped an engine on his hand and crushed his fingers. Its slow to heal, and won’t ever be the same as before. He’s not been able to work for six months.”

  An old guy at the next table chimed in “He could work if he wasn’t blind drunk. He needs to get off his ass and find somethin’ he can do.”

  “Wasn’t nobody askin’ fer yer mouth, Leeam.” Seems the waitress knew these people pretty well.

  “Might I know your name? We’re just passing through, but I like meeting people.” I couldn’t stop myself getting interested, and I might be able to help; we wouldn’t be here long after all.

  “I am Ina, and you are?” she waited expectantly.

  “We are Rosalee and Mags.”

  “Pleased to meet ya.”

  “I wonder, we don’t have a car, could we hire you to carry us around? Would you be willing to take American money till we can get it changed?” I tried to keep it quiet. I didn’t want a lot of questions from the other people.

  “That’s a wonder, how’d you get here without a car? Surely you didn’t walk all this way…” she stopped herself, aware of the interest we were provoking. “I get off in just a minute, let’s get together after and talk about it.”

  “That works for me. We’ll meet you out front.” Mags and I waited on her outside. A few minutes later Ina came out and led us to her car.

  “I can take you to Tara, no need to charge you, but I need to run by the house first.”

  “That’s fine we’re not in a hurry. And we don’t mind payin’ at least for gas.”

  She wouldn’t hear of it, so we were off to her house.

  The house was small but neatly kept, a little stone fence around the yard, a tree in the yard; no toys, either neat or no kids.

  “Come on then, I want to change my shoes, my feet are killin’ me.” She gestured toward the door where a man was standing now, looking curiously at us.

  “Hullo love, is it alright? Anything wrong?” He came outside “Who’s this then? You picking up colleens at the pub?”

  Ina laughed “No, they’re Americans touring the countryside, need a ride out to Tara.” She turned to Mags “This is Mags, that is Rosalee, and this here is Doug, the love of my life.” She walked over to the man and gave him a hug “I’m goin’ to change my shoes and take them on. You want to go? Get you out of the house for a bit.” She released him and pushed on inside “I’ll be just a sec.”

  His hair was wild, sticking up in random directions and a little long. His right hand was wrapped in a bunch of stuff, with an ace bandage on top of it all, it was bumpy and loose in spots, with the end halfway tucked in at the wrist. I recognized a self installed bandage on the hand. I’d done that very thing before. His brown pullover shirt was a couple sizes too large for him and it was wrinkled. It looked like he had slept in it. He had on some loose pajama bottoms and no shoes. He stood a little taller than me as he stepped aside and gestured, “Come on inside, would you like something to drink? A bite to eat? I’m sure we got some cobble, let me see what we have.” He proceeded through a doorway to what I assume was the kitchen, I tried to tell him we had just finished eating. Ina came out with some tennis shoes in her hand, “I’m sorry, I should have offered.”

  “We ain’t really hungry. I wonder if I could look at your hand though, Doug. I know it’s hard to bandage by yourself, I’ve had to do that before.”

  He looked at it and laughed, “Yeah, it’s a little messy. Don’t much matter, more keepin’ it out of sight than worry about infection and such. It’s a little tender, though.”

  Ina said “I’ll get that, no need to trouble yourself, but thank you for the offer.” She moved to sit at the small table with Doug, who laid his hand on the table.

  “Umm, If I could look at it, I have some experience with wounds and healin’, I might be able to do something.” Damn this was awkward. It occurred to me that all I really needed was to touch him. Or maybe not even touch him; ever now and then I could see inside someone without a touch. Usually when I was standing barefoot on the ground though. That was pretty obvious in hindsight.

  Ina and Doug stopped what they were doing and looked at me, Ina said “Are ye a doctor then?”

  “No, not at all, I guess you could call me a faith healer?”

  Mags said “She is healer, from nature” she stopped, frustrated, searching for words “drewy” and some other stuff.

  Doug looked shocked and replied with a string of stuff, Mags came back at him with some more, at full speed.

  Ina turned to me and said some of it to me.

  I said “I don’t have any idea what y’all talkin’ about, I don’t speak that.”

  “I do not speak it well, we are trying to learn Gaelic; it is almost lost. Doug is better than I.”

  Doug turned to me “Mags said you are druids and you can heal my hand.”

  “Yes, that is true, about the hand, I don’t know about no druids. That might be who Mags is lookin’ for, she needs trainin’.”

  I did not intend to get into explanations about a lot of stuff I didn’t know. From their point of view, we had to look like a couple of idiots, I know I wouldn’t have believed it if it hadn’t happened to me.

  He put his hand on the table in front of me and said “If you can fix this, I will pay you whatever I can. I will do whatever you want.”

  Ina said “If you just jokin’ us, it is not appreciated, I’ll spat you in the lip.” She got closer and from her expression, she was pissed. More like what I expected.

  I took his arm by the wrist and looked inside, it was a mess. There was bone missing in several places, removed because it had shattered and disconnected. A couple places had some metal, with screws, connecting pieces. There were a lot of scars and some tendons were loose and seemed to be too short. They weren’t connected to anything. If it was fresh it wouldn’t have been as bad, I needed to stretch the tendons back where they belonged and get them stuck on, hook up muscles and replace bone.

  “Y’all come outside, I need a better connection than what I got here.” I pulled Doug to his feet and led him outside, Ina sputtered a little, but she followed.

  We got outside and I kicked off my shoes and stuck my feet in the ground, I got some good contact. Such pretty grass everywhere, that’s one thing they had going really well, everywhere I looked.

  The presence was strong and immediate, I asked if I should just call it Ireland, it corrected me “Eire”, like air. I got that it hadn’t had anyone use power for a while, we chatted, it was cozy. All that took maybe a tenth of a second.

  I was holding Doug’s arm by the wrist, I pulled him down on the ground; guess I should have moved slower, he acted like I body slammed him and grunted when he hit the ground.

  I supplied the energy to fill in the missing parts and connect them, it knew where everything belonged, I just had to drive it by supplying the energy and putting it in the right order. Eire watched what I did, I suspect it was ready to fire me up if I screwed up, but it didn’t joggle me in what I was doing.

  When I finished, everything was there and working, and filled in best as I could, but it was going to need some more filling in. Exercise and food should fix that pretty quick.

  I sat back, reached over with my other hand and pulled at the rough bandage. Ina made a move to grab me, but when Doug pulled away, the bandage came off.

  The hand was pale, the brown hair on it stood out starkly against the corpse-white skin. It was scrawny and starved looking. There were no scars, we had fixed all that.

  Ina had her hand on my head. I think she intended to ‘spat’ me. She dropped to her knees and held her hands out to Doug, like asking for his hand, and he reached it over to her. He was feeling it with his other hand while staring at it; he flexed his fin
gers, slow at first, then quicker, then grabbed his good hand with the bad hand to test his grip.

  “It don’t hurt. It don’t hurt at all. And it works. He and Ina were both crying, they held each other. Ina turned him loose and looked at me,

  “Rosalee, I don’t know what to say. What can I do to repay you?”

  I wasn’t comfortable with all this at all. “Y’all don’t owe me anything, but if you could help us find the people Mags is looking for, that would be great.”

  Doug said “We’ll do that, but we need to do more. I can go back to work. Ina’s been working herself to death to support us. We’re on the edge of losing everything. This’ll save us, we have to do something for you.”

  Mags said something in, I guess, Gaelic to them, speaking slowly and earnestly. When she finished, Ina turned back to me and said,

  “It doesn’t feel like enough.”

  “I don’t speak that, what did Mags say?”

  “She said all you wanted was help finding teachers, and maybe a place to stay for the night. She said it was the way. That you travel and fix problems. And all you will accept is room and board when needed.”

  “Yeah, I agree, that would be great.”

  “Then that’s what we’ll do.”

  “Ok. Doug – you gotta exercise that hand, the wrist and the arm. You gotta rebuild the muscles and get it all flexible and shit again. It’s all good as new, but I didn’t fill it all in, just what I could.”

  “I can do that, thank you.”

  I got up, “Well, that was good. We need to feed Doug, and I think we might find Mags’ people at Tara. It’s getting late though, if y’all want to wait till tomorrow that would work.”

  Ina said “I’ll make some calls, I’ll find who you’re looking for and find out where we can meet with them.”

  We walked to the seats in the yard surrounding a table, Ina started making her calls while Doug and Mags headed to the kitchen to get some ‘coddle’ going.

  It seemed like I had been gone from home forever, but when I thought about it, it could only have been a half day or so. It was getting dark already, and it was morning about 5 hours ago. Maybe the days were shorter here. Or a different time zone, that had to be it, we were partway around the world. After we ate, I figured I wouldn’t be able to sleep till it was sleep time at home, but I was drifting off soon as I lay down.

  Eleven

  T hese folks were early risers, I heard them trying to be quiet, but the house wasn’t big enough for that. They only had the one bathroom, so I waited till I was pretty sure they were done with it before I got up to make a run on it.

  Ina spotted me soon as I left the guest room, “Morning, Rose, you get finished in there come on for some breakfast, its almost ready now.”

  “Alright, be right there.” They’d laid out new toothbrushes still in the packaging. I was pretty impressed, I didn’t have spares for such things at home. That was pretty damn prepared and worked out really nice.

  Mags was standing at the door waiting for me when I came out. She grinned and pushed past me as I headed for the kitchen and breakfast. Now I knew what it would have been like to have had a sister.

  Breakfast was fried potatoes, something like Canadian bacon, eggs, toast, and it just kept on, there was a lot. Turned out Ina had found a practicing druid who would be willing to meet with us in a small town nearby. Doug intended to go to work, which made it awkward since we only had one car. Ina prevailed on him to just call, make sure he had a job, and work with his hand a bit before going back in to work.

  The druid was thirty minutes or so away, we loaded up and headed out. We were catching him where he was preparing for some kind of ritual, from what Ina said he put on sort of tourist shows with different rituals all year.

  We found the place, a tree in a field near the road; the druid, I assume, was dressed in a brown robe, standing under the tree looking up in it. The tree looked strange and as I got closer I saw it had rags draped all over it, tied on in spots, just tossed at it in others. It looked like a storm had blown a store full of old clothing onto it.

  I figured it was vandals. The old man was probably pissed they had messed up his ceremony, we’d have to help clean up I guess. If he could help at all it would be worth it.

  He came up, smiling and happy “I would guess you are the people who wanted to meet a druid? If so, here I am, Edward Kemball by name, what can I do for you on this fine and beautiful morning?”

  He didn’t speak with the same rolling manner Ina and Doug did, he actually sounded just like the English I’d seen on TV.

  I pushed Mags forward, ‘This is the lady who needs some information, I would like some too if you can spare it.”

  Mags stepped on forward and spoke in Gaelic, to which Edward held up his hand and said, “Wait a minute, I am trying to learn, but I do not speak Gaelic yet. You’ll have to speak English.”

  I interrupted, “Ok, Mags English isn’t that good. Are you a druid?”

  Edward fielded the question easily, “I am. And I am getting ready to do a little ceremony here this morning, so we need to get on with whatever it is you need, or you’ll have to wait till I get finished.”

  “Fair enough. Mags and I have druid powers, but no training. Hers was interrupted some years ago, probably a few centuries. I just found out I have some stuff recently. Can you explain what’s going on, how we can best use what we got? And tell us what else we need to know? We’ll help you clean up this mess, it’ll go quicker with us helping.”

  He thought for a couple minutes, then he snickered, “Ok, first, the stuff on the tree is supposed ot be there. Next, what sort of ‘powers’ do you have?” I could hear the little quotes real good.

  Ina said “Well, Rose healed up my man Doug’s hand last night, after the hospitals all gave up on it.”

  “Right, healing, ok that’s pretty good. It might be faith healing though. What makes you think it is druidry?”

  I sorta picked up that this guy didn’t believe us. Guess he had seen a lot. So he needed convincing.

  “This sort of thing.” As I spoke I sank his smart ass to his armpits. I wondered if maybe Eire would balk at doing it since this was a druid, but it never slowed down, seemed delighted to have something to do.

  “What the fick!” Ed’s arms were loose and he was pressing at the ground, looked like he was scared he would keep sinking. I was impressed he said ‘fick’. That sounded odd, but maybe worth trying sometime.

  He said “Is this some sort of trick? Did you do that?”

  “Yeah. But I don’t know so much, and Mags needs as much help as I do, if not more. If you can help us you should be able to get yourself out of there.” By now I was pretty disappointed. He didn’t appear to know as much as we did. A teacher wouldn’t be this surprised by what we could do.

  “I’ve never seen anything like this! I’ll see if anybody I know can help you. I joined for the good they do, I…say, could you let me out? Something is crawling on my leg.”

  I lifted him out and kept the dirt from sticking to him. It sure sounded like a dead end, but the trip had been fun. Mags and I would just work out things the way we’d been doing. Just hope I didn’t hit another surprise like the vampire, that thing was about to kill us all till I dissolved it. My ignorance might get us killed one of these days.

  “Appreciate it, but I doubt you got anyone who can help. Just out of curiosity, what’s up with the rags on the tree?”

  “People do that so the fairies will take them. When the fairies take the rags, they take the problems the people have attached to the rags. It makes life easier for people and the fairies like the gifts.” He’d been thinking while he talked, “I need to make a call or two. This afternoon or tomorrow I might have someone who can help you out. I’m one of them, but I’m not at the top. They might have anything and I wouldn’t know it.”

  “That makes sense. Could you call Ina? If she’s willing, I’ll have her be my contact with you. Ina, would you mind?”r />
  “I do not mind at all.” She put her number in his phone.

  “Let’s go and let Edward do his thing, Edward, nice meeting you, hope it all works out.” I reached out and shook his hand.

  “Oh yes, I really hope it does, this has been quite exciting!”

  I turned loose of his hand and left. If I kept talking, he’d keep talking and we’d be there all day. Mags and Ina naturally came with me, we pulled on out for souvenir shopping. Hell, we were in Ireland!

  We got some stuff, kept running into problems with exchanging money. People would take dollars, but they had to check the exchange rate, and they used Euros. Stuff was a little expensive. I wound up owing Ina money, she’d pay for stuff on her card and we kept up with it so I could pay her back. I think she was gonna just give me the stuff, but I wouldn’t do that.

  Doug had lunch fixed when we rolled back in. I spent a little time working on his hand, filling it out. It was pretty much good as new and he was tickled with it. While we were eating, Ina got a call from Edward, he said someone was driving down to meet us and wanted to know where. Ina started to rattle off her address, I stopped her,

  “Ina, do you want some random person knowing where you live? It might be ok, just sayin’.”

  She held her hand over the phone, “It should be ok, Druids are good people.” And told him the address, Edward said they’d be there in a couple hours.

  That was pretty exciting, maybe whoever this was could shine some light on what was happening. We had a couple hours to kill and nothing really to do. Outside was pretty. Ina called her work and talked with them. Doug drove off in the car to wherever he worked. They didn’t expect he would have any problem getting his job back.

  A car pulled up into the drive and three people got out while we were out in the yard. Ina broke out some beer. She and Mags liked it. I didn’t think much of it.