“Meet Lugh. He is the Dryad currently tasked with guarding the Tree of Life.” Nesbitt gestured to each of us. “This is our Bard, Emilie. Tyler, the Ovate. The Druidess Joni. And Elijah, son of Grainne.”
“Um. Hi, nice to meet you… Lugh,” I said, extending a hand.
He grasped my hand firmly, his rough skin almost painful to touch. “It is almost an honor,” the Dryad said with a high-pitched, gravelly voice.
“Hello Lugh,” Joni added, who likewise exchanged a handshake with the tree-like creature.
“It is nice to see you again, Druidess,” Lugh said.
“Wait,” I interjected. “Do you know each other?”
“It’s a long story,” Joni said. “But we’ve met before.”
The Dryad nodded at Joni and extended his hand to Emilie and Tyler. They followed the protocol of courtesy and gave the Dryad hesitant handshakes.
“In order to understand the nature of your abilities, Mr. Wadsworth, it is important that you recognize the source. Lugh guards the Tree of Life and the wellsprings of Annwn. As such, he is privy to every evocation of Annwn, every spell you might cast.”
“Indeed,” the Dryad replied. “I trust you passed your exam with flying colors.”
I replied with a half-hearted laugh. “Yeah, I did.”
“Cheater,” Tyler mumbled under his breath.
The Dryad roared a laugh, finding Tyler’s chastisement disproportionately more humorous that it truly was.
“We will not fault you for your lack of academic integrity,” Nesbitt interjected. “After all, you knew not what you were doing.”
“So, pardon me for asking,” I said as I turned to the Dryad. “You knew my mother, then?”
“I know your mother, son of Grainne. The spirit of the nymph, like that of man, only rests, but never truly dies.”
“Then I beg your pardon a second time,” I said. “But if she was… I mean, is… a Dryad like you, why is it that you look nothing alike?”
“The Dryad, or nymph, are not a species of their own,” Lugh explained. “The Dryad order consists of some born naturally in Annwn, such as Grainne. Yet others, born of this world, serve the Dryadic order as well. I was the last of my people, a people of the sea, before assuming my role. What you see, my appearance, is the natural form of a Fomorian.”
“The reason I know Lugh,” Joni added, “is because we are related. My mother’s side descended from Lugh.”
“So,” I added, “I guess I’m not the only one who’s only part-human?”
Joni smiled. “Like I said, hon… we have a connection.”
“I hate to interrupt our formal introductions,” Nesbitt said, “but our time is limited. Our training must commence.”
Lugh nodded. “Your spirit, son of Grainne, is pure. But it is damaged. I sense your pain, your loss.”
“Yeah…”
“He’s lost a lot of people,” Emilie said. “But he’s the best guy I’ve ever known.”
Joni took my hand, intertwining her fingers into mine as if to reassert her claim on me in light of Emilie’s affectionate admission. “The sweetest guy, too,” she added, so not to be outdone in the flattery department.
“Still,” Lugh continued, “your pain, your loss… it has made you who you are. But your fear of further loss, your desire to avenge your family—do not let it tempt you toward the way of the Wayward Tree.”
“It won’t,” I said.
Lugh nodded. “And the Druidess, daughter of my own… I sense pain within you too, Joni. A desperation… a need to guard, to protect. Something I did not sense in you before.”
“Yes… I mean, I’ve been through a lot, too.”
“It is not a flaw, Druidess. It is noble. The Tree of Life’s connection to you runs not so deep as with the son of Grainne. But as you know, your gifts, too, flow from Annwn. Your connection to me, your Fomorian blood, grants you access to Annwn’s life-giving mystic springs.”
Joni smiled. “If only I knew how to draw upon that power the way Elijah connects to the Tree of Life.”
“In time, my daughter, your connection to me will help you bridge the divide,” Lugh said. “Still, it does not mean that your Fomorian nature is dormant. It grows within you, still maturing. For now, however, more pressing matters are at hand. We should begin.”
Nesbitt walked purposefully around the pool to the backside of the cavern. He reached into the wall and retrieved a staff. Its crooked neck and distinct carvings were familiar. “Diarmid’s staff. Your father’s staff,” Nesbitt said as he handed it to me.
“Wow… I don’t know what to say…”
“Of all the inheritance you’ve been given, this is the most valuable.”
“More valuable than the millions of dollars?” Tyler quipped.
“Far more,” Nesbitt said through a grin.
I allowed my fingers to trace the strange carvings decorating my father’s staff… my staff. “What do these symbols mean?”
“The sigils on the staff,” Nesbitt explained, “form to focus each of the spells that your father learned. Every spell must have a focus—a word or a symbol vested with your intention and will. Your father vested these sigils with his will. Now, you inherit them all.”
“Through your focus,” Lugh added, “the power that emanates from the Tree of Life aligns with your will. When you called forth the tree which spared you from a near accident, it was the intensity of your focus that spoke through the Tree of Life to an acorn beneath the highway’s surface.”
“So, how do I learn what these symbols mean? They’re strange… I can’t make sense of them.”
“They are written, carved by your father’s will, into the staff,” Lugh said. “As surely as you could discern the will of your teacher when she wrote your exam, even more should you be able to discern these sigils.”
“These symbols were your father’s,” Nesbitt added. “You may adopt them, if you wish. It will serve you well, for they are well-established, and the Tree of Life will respond to them readily. Over time, as you develop new spells you may create your own symbols, or words, to focus your will. That is an advanced lesson. Today we will simply rely on these. Give it a try, son of Grainne. Choose one and focus on it.”
“Alright…” I looked at a sigil depicting two squiggled lines resembling a river. I traced it with my finger. I felt a sudden jolt as the Dryad extended his arm my way. I nearly lost my balance. “Dude, what the hell…”
“No, son of Grainne! Do not molest the staff. It will not respond to a caress. You must focus with your mind.”
“I have no clue how…”
Another jolt of energy struck me, and I flew backward, landing on my back in something sticky… probably bat guano.
“Hey!” Emilie said. “This is not necessary.”
“Silence, Bard.” The Dryad cast another white light at me, which forcefully returned me to my feet. “Try again, son of Grainne.”
Annoyed, I gripped the staff tightly and envisioned the sigil in my mind. Out of nowhere, the word appeared in my mind, and I shouted it instinctively. “Mereflod!”
A bright-green light filled my eyes and targeted the desired sigil on my staff. From there, the staff shot a directed beam of green energy into the bubbling pool, which spun upward into the air, then dispersed in every direction. The splash overwhelmed the Dryad, who was immediately struck by a blast of water.
“Mereflod!” he shouted in return. The water redirected and struck each of us, Nesbitt excluded. The four of us stood there soaking wet, drenched in ice-cold water.
The Dryad looked at us with a grin. “I suppose we should all be glad you did not choose Fyr!”
“This sucks,” Tyler declared through a shiver.
I looked at Joni and Emilie, their hair drenched… their shirts now stuck to their bodies… I did a double take, then turned away. Hard not to stare.
Joni caught my glimpse. “Like what you see, water boy?”
“Heh… Um… I…”
&n
bsp; “Let’s try it again,” Lugh said. “This time, choose a different one. Heretofore you have only called upon the Tree of Life in moments of desperation… panicked over an exam, a near highway accident, a letter opener flying at your skull, agitated by my provocations. You must learn to call upon the Tree of Life while calm of mind. Fear and anger… these emotions will not reciprocate a response from the Tree of Life. Choose another sigil. This time I will not intervene. That will be your task, Druidess.”
“Me?” Joni said. “What do I do?”
“You have an affinity to absorb energies… to re-channel them as I did a moment ago. You, too, must use a focus. Repeat the focus that the Druid speaks when he casts his spell, and tell it in your mind what you wish for it to accomplish.”
“Sounds good. You ready, hun?” Joni asked.
“Yeah… Let me find one that looks… unimposing.” I looked at the sigils on the staff. There were dozens of them, and none of them made much sense. “How do I know what they do?”
“Trial and error,” the Dryad said.
“That’s not helpful. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
“I will not permit you to do that,” Nesbitt said. “If need be, I can intervene.”
“Okay…” I said as I reluctantly perused the symbols on the staff. One resembled a dragon, which I decided it was best not to test in the moment. Another looked like a giant oak tree—probably not the best idea inside a cave. I settled on the most innocuous-looking one I could find. It was a simple symbol: a spiral.
“Alright… here goes nothing… You ready, Joni?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be, hon.”
I gripped my staff and focused on the spiral sigil. Once again, the word appeared in my mind. “Gwynt!”
The same green light channeled from my eyes to my staff. This time, a huge gust of wind proceeded from my staff and began swirling around the room, extinguishing the torches on the room’s perimeter. I clung to my staff to stay upright while Emilie and Tyler each grabbed onto one of the cave’s natural columns.
“Gwynt!” Joni shouted. A green glow consumed her form and centered around her chest, and the wind died down as it settled into her. She turned toward the cave’s exit and a huge gust shot out of her and through the cave’s exit, extinguishing the torches that had lit our way in.
For a moment we stood in darkness.
“Fyr!” Nesbitt shouted, and the torches re-lit in an instant.
Lugh extended both arms, or limbs—whatever they were—into the air. “Bravo! Well done, Druidess!”
Joni and I exchanged high-fives. “That’s what I call great teamwork,” I exclaimed.
“As for you, son of Grainne. Your connection to the Tree of Life is strong. The power you evoke is impressive, but it is unrestrained, unfocused, imprecise. It is as though your goal were to blow out a single candle, and instead you blew the whole house down.”
“He huffed and he puffed…” Tyler added.
I was too perturbed by Lugh’s criticism to entertain Tyler’s Three Little Pigs reference. “I’m just learning all this… I don’t know how…”
“No excuses, son of Grainne.”
“Excuse me, Lugh,” Emilie added, “I think he’s doing quite well.”
“You would, Bard. You humans are only impressed by the big and powerful.”
“Yeah,” Tyler told Emilie. “Size isn’t everything. It’s not about the size of the ship, it’s the motion of the ocean that counts.”
I rolled my eyes, even as Lugh clapped his leafy hands. “Beautiful, Ovate! I should think you were the Bard with such poetry upon your lips.”
I snickered. Lugh clearly had no clue that Tyler’s mind was firmly confined to the gutter.
“Do you think this is a laughing matter, son of Grainne?”
“No… it’s just…what Tyler said… he was talking about dick size…”
“How could you take such a poetic metaphor and reduce it to something so carnal? You have much to learn, Druid.”
I sighed. I knew what Tyler was doing. He could see I was getting… perturbed. He was trying to cut the ice that was forming between the Dryad and me. Still, it wasn’t working.
“But thank the trees he has you, Joni Campbell. The son of Grainne is still like a baby. He has no teeth, but stuffs his mouth so full he will choke.”
“Well, I think Elijah is quite mature,” Joni said.
I smiled in gratitude.
“You do not realize what is at stake. He wields the life force, the Spirit of the Tree of Life. Without restraint, son of Grainne, you risk channeling your own life force into your spell.”
“My own life force? You mean, if I wield too much…”
“You will die, Druid.”
We remained silent for several moments, letting this information sink in.
“So, teach me to control it.”
“My purpose is not to teach you. I am not a Druid, I am a steward of the Tree of Life, indeed, of all the trees and springs of Annwn. Myrrdn can teach you, since he is the one who set this whole chain of events into motion at the start. I serve only to calibrate your will to wisdom, to guard the tree from any Druid who would exploit it. Power is in restraint, Druid. You lack restraint. You are too immature.”
“Now wait,” Emilie said. “You have no idea what you’re talking about. What Elijah went through, he grew up a lot faster than most people. He’s not a little baby, he’s no child. He’s a man, and he takes this seriously.”
“I hope you are right, Bard.”
“Trust me, Lugh,” Joni added. “His power has nothing to do with immaturity. When a young boy or girl first saddles a horse, he has no control. He kicks the horse too hard, and the horse gallops so fast he nearly falls off. He pulls the reins too hard and the horse stops too abruptly. Elijah has access to a power that some of the most powerful sorcerers in the world could not wield effectively. And here he is on his first day of training. He just needs to practice.”
“Practice. That must be a human thing. Like the Fomorians, the nymphs are born wielding these things by nature. I suppose I expected the son of Grainne to take after his mother… more than… him.”
“Wait,” I added. “I hear it in your voice. You can’t say my dad’s name, can you? You only call me the ‘son of Grainne,’ but I am the son of Diarmid and Grainne. Why can’t you acknowledge my father?”
“You trifle in things that are none of your business, Druid.”
“Well, I’m their son, so it surely is my business. Tell me. I deserve to know. It’s my mother, isn’t it? You were in love with her.”
“Enough, Druid,” Lugh hissed.
“You loved her, and so you hated my dad. You dwell in the Tree of Life, supposedly the pinnacle of the universe’s virtue, and here you are consumed by the vice of envy. You hated my dad, so you hate me… Admit it!”
“Mr. Wadsworth…” Nesbitt attempted—unsuccessfully—to intervene.
“Admit it, Dryad!”
“It is not envy that consumes me, Druid! It was not your mother I loved. It was your father. It was he who rescued me after the war, and it was he who raised me. When she came, she took him, the only person in the world who knew my true nature, and left me to grow up amongst a people who, once they discovered my true self, were bound only to fear me. I do not speak your father’s name because he left me without so much as a goodbye. Saying his name brings back the pain, the loss of losing a father for the second time. And when you and your sister were born, I was cast aside, forgotten.”
“Enough!” Nesbitt shouted. “You know as well as I do, Lugh, that it was Michael, not I, who began all of this. The children of Diarmid and Grainne are not to blame. And I saw to it that you were taken care of. It was a pledge I made to Diarmid and it was a covenant I have kept. You know well that all these things that happened were a part of a grander plan. Unless you dare to question a seraph…”
“Gatekeeper… it was not the seraph who chose to grant Diarmid and Grainne refuge here.”<
br />
“Diarmid could not have stayed in Annwn.”
“He could have stayed in his time, with me. You could have brought Grainne and her children alone to Annwn, and they could have stayed there.”
“And divide a family? Surely, Dryad, you do not presume that the All Father would have blessed that decision. I did what I had to do.”
“We were a family, Gatekeeper, before Grainne showed up. Why should our family have been so easily cast aside that Diarmid might have another one in its place? This Druid half-breed is your responsibility, not mine. I agreed to help because, as much as I dislike the fact, my Druidess’s path is inseparably intertwined with his. I agreed only to meet him that he might know the source of his power, that he would honor the Tree of Life.”
“I do honor it,” I interjected. “I will honor the Tree…”
“You do not know what honor means,” Lugh hissed.
“I honor the Tree of Life for this reason. Because I honor my mother. I honor my father, and my sister. I honor their memory. Even if only in death.”
“Death… Mark my words, Druid: You will infect us all with death.”
With those words, Lugh returned to the pool… As he disappeared, the light emanating from the portal beneath faded to black.
17. A Departing Vision
“WHAT THE HELL, Nesbitt?” I said.
“Lugh is honorable, young Druid. Surely you can understand his sentiment. His earthly life was filled with much loss, losing not only his natural parents in war, but losing his adopted father when your parents were forced to flee. Consider, however, that in a way you and he are brothers. In time, perhaps, he will come around and recognize the same. For now, do not expect him to intervene for you again. You cannot count on that.”
“Again? What do you mean?”
“The oak tree on Interstate-64. He felt your raw power, your spirit. He channeled it on your behalf, returning your cry with a focused spirit that awoke the tree. What I am saying is this: do not count on him to do that again. I thought… I had hoped, perhaps in vain, that your meeting would go better than it did. I hoped he would continue to do the same, at least until you learn how to channel the Tree’s energies properly.”
Gates of Eden: Starter Library Page 21
