by Jodi McIsaac
“Where would you like to bury him?”
“In the garden, I think. I believe he’d like to stay close to home,” Maggie replied, shuffling out of the room to lead the way.
Cedar followed Maggie out the back door, watching as the older woman sank down onto a bench.
“He used to sit out here at night, smoking his pipe, listening to my stories,” she said. “He never tired of them, always wanted more. This will be a good place for him to rest, beside this bench. I’ll tell him a few more to ease his journey.”
Cedar went into the shed to find a shovel. When she emerged, an old, rusted spade in her hands, Maggie was looking at her with a peculiar expression on her face.
“You’re different from the rest of them, you know,” she said. “Different from what the stories say, at least. Different from how Martin used to speak of them.”
“How so?” Cedar asked. She plunged the spade into the ground, her newfound strength making it go deeper than she’d expected. She tugged on it to pull it out, and started again, more gently this time.
“Well, for one thing, you’re here,” Maggie said. “I think I can safely say that you are the first of the old ones to attend the funeral of an Irish leprechaun.”
“I should have been here sooner,” Cedar said again as she continued to dig.
“There’s nothing you could have done,” Maggie said. “If your man Felix couldn’t help the young lad, then there was nothing to be done for Martin, either. You mustn’t blame yourself.”
Cedar felt ashamed of the tears that were filling her eyes. Despite Maggie’s words, she knew she had delayed too long. She’d felt sympathy for the Unseen while she was listening to Irial’s story, but now the problem was much more personal. “I’ll do whatever I can to find out what’s causing this,” she said fervently. “I promise you that.”
“And I’ll do whatever I can to help,” came a voice from the side of the house. Cedar looked up, her vision blurred by tears, and saw Finn walking toward her.
She almost dropped the spade. “What…what are you doing here?”
Finn crossed the yard in a few long strides and pulled Maggie into a long hug. They exchanged several words that Cedar couldn’t make out, and then Maggie patted his cheek and headed back into the house.
Finn took the spade from Cedar. “Eden’s with Riona,” he said, forestalling her question.
She opened her mouth to speak, but he held up a hand. “Just hear me out. Then I’ll leave if you want me to. You’re not the only one troubled by the past. It still haunts me…those long days when I thought you were dead after you threw yourself at Lorcan. I can’t describe how horrible it was. Sometimes all I can think about is keeping you safe. But I realize that you wouldn’t be you if you cloistered yourself somewhere away while others were suffering. I wouldn’t ever want to change that. And I’m sorry about what I said. I didn’t mean it; I know you just want things to be normal, and that’s what I want too. But I guess it’s not quite time for ‘normal’ yet, is it?”
Cedar gave him a watery smile. Her T-shirt was sticking to her back, and she was pretty sure she had clumps of dirt in her hair from running her fingers through it. She was exhausted with grief—for Jane and Felix, for Irial and the Unseen, and now for Logheryman and Maggie. But the fact that Finn had followed her, that he didn’t think she was crazy for doing this…it gave her a new hope. Together they had rescued Eden, and together they had found the Lia Fáil. Together they would find out what was killing the Unseen—and stop it.
“You know,” Cedar said, “I have no idea what ‘normal’ even looks like for us. It’s not like we can go back to the way it was, before all of this happened. Maybe this is normal for us now.”
“Since you seem to have a penchant for saving the world, I suppose you might be right,” he said. “But I stand by what I said about you burning yourself out. I don’t know if even your heart is big enough to hold the whole world.”
“I’m just—”
“I know,” he said, kissing her forehead. “You’re just doing the right thing.”
He jumped into the hole Cedar had made and started deepening it. While he worked, Cedar went back into the house, where she found Maggie sitting on the edge of Logheryman’s bed. She had uncovered his body and was holding one of his frail hands in her own, their fingers entwined. She stood up when she saw Cedar.
“Is it time?” she asked.
“Whenever you’re ready,” Cedar said.
“Oh, I’ll never be ready,” Maggie replied. “So we’d best just do it.”
Cedar picked up Logheryman’s body and cradled it in her arms. He weighed about the same as Eden, and she felt a sharp pang in her chest. She carried him back through the house and into the garden, where Finn was just finishing the grave. She stood at the edge and waited for Maggie, who came out of the house a few moments later, her arms heaped with heavy fabric. “I was making this quilt for him,” she explained. “It’s not quite finished…but I’ll not be needing it for anything else.” She nodded at Cedar, who passed the body down to Finn. After gently setting Logheryman on the ground and covering him with Maggie’s quilt, he grasped Cedar’s hand and climbed out of the hole.
“Good-bye, oldest of friends,” Maggie said as Finn started to fill in the grave. “I never thought I, of all people, would outlive you. But the day I met you in my wee garden was the luckiest day of my life. There won’t ever be another like you or a stranger or happier couple than the two of us.”
CHAPTER 7
The last time Eden had been in the dungeons, it had been as Lorcan’s prisoner. But she knew the woman who was being held there could help increase her power, help bring her closer to her older self. Eden double-checked to make sure she was alone. Her dad had told her that her mum was working, and that he was going to help her. He had left her with Riona, but Eden had told her grandmother she was going to her room to read for a while. It was the perfect chance for her to find the druid. After making sure the coast was clear, Eden opened a sidh to the cell she and Nuala had shared, repressing a shudder of fear. Then she tiptoed through it.
The cell was different from how she remembered it. It was warmer and had only one bed and a large wardrobe set against the wall. The room she had been held in was windowless, and yet there was a large window behind the bed, through which she could see fruit trees. She realized it must be an illusion, for the dungeons were far underground. A thin woman with long blonde hair jumped to her feet at the sight of Eden.
“Who are you?” the woman exclaimed, clutching her hand to her chest.
“Are you Helen?” Eden asked.
“No,” the woman answered. “Who is Helen?”
Eden’s face fell. “I’m looking for a druid named Helen. I thought she would be here, in the dungeons.”
“Is that what this is?” the woman asked, looking around her. “Where are we?”
Eden frowned. “You’re in Tír na nÓg, of course. Don’t you know that?”
The woman merely gaped at her. Then she asked, “How did you get in here? Is that a sidh? Where does it lead?”
Eden closed the sidh and glared back at the druid. “You’re in here because you tried to hurt my mum!” she said, backing toward the door. “You’re not supposed to leave.”
“Maybe I can help you,” the woman said, slowly advancing on her. “I didn’t know what I was doing; I was under a spell. I’m innocent! I swear it.”
“Don’t come any closer!” Eden yelled, her back pressed against the door. She wanted to open a sidh, but what if she couldn’t close it in time and the woman followed her through? If she let one of the druids escape, she would be in big trouble. She pulled on the large iron door handle, but it wouldn’t budge.
“You must be Eden,” the druid said in what was obviously meant to be a soothing voice. “I’m not going to hurt you. I just need to go home to my family. You know what it’s like to miss your family, right?”
It was the wrong thing to say. “You hurt
my family,” Eden said, her eyes burning. She pressed her hands to the door, and then stepped through to the other side. She saw the druid run toward it, but then heard the thump as the sidh was replaced with solid wood. She leaned against the door, breathing heavily. This might be harder than she’d thought. She crept down the short hallway that led away from the cell, peeking around the corner into a cavernous chamber. She had only seen it twice—when being led into the cell, and when being led out of it, to her death. At least, it would have been her death if her mother hadn’t saved her.
It’s like the inside of a castle, Eden thought, before realizing that technically she was inside a castle—or at least under it. Four guards were standing at either end of the chamber, and she whipped her head back around the corner. How was she going to find Helen?
Eden? she thought. Um…older me? She waited, but there was no answer. But then…she couldn’t explain it, but she had this feeling that she was supposed to go down the hall. Not to the next door, but the one after that. The problem was that she wouldn’t be able to get there without the guards seeing her, and they’d haul her butt back to her parents before she had time to say “trouble.” Then an image flashed into her mind so vividly that she almost gasped out loud. It was the inside of a cell. It looked the same as the one she had just visited, except there was no window, and a woman with short gray hair was sitting at a desk in the center of the room. Eden had never seen her before, but she didn’t waste any time; the guards could walk by her hiding place at any minute. She squeezed her eyes shut and focused on the image in her mind, and then put a hand to the wall until she felt the solid rock give way to shimmering air. She was about to step through the sidh when she heard a guard’s voice call out, “Stop! Who goes there?”
Eden swallowed a gasp and leapt through the sidh, closing it at once. She wasn’t sure how much the guard had seen, but there were only two people in this kingdom who could create the sidhe, and her mother had no reason to sneak around. Her heart was beating so wildly that it took her a moment to realize where she was.
The woman inside the cell—the same woman who had been sitting at the small wooden desk from Eden’s vision—jumped up and gaped at her. “Who are you, child? How did you do that?”
“I’m Eden,” she gasped, her breath still ragged from fright. “Are you…Helen?”
The woman sank back down into the chair at the desk. She was old, like a grandma, with short gray hair. Dressed in human clothes, she looked like she was ready to go to work. Eden watched her warily, waiting, ready to make another sidh back home if this was not the right druid after all. She could hear shouts out in the hallway; the guards must be looking for the intruder.
“Yes,” the woman said at last. “I’m Helen. Why are you looking for me?”
Eden unclenched her fists, and her face broke into a smile. “Someone told me you could help me become more powerful.”
“Who told you that, child?”
The smile slid off Eden’s face. “Um…it’s kind of weird…”
Helen indicated the bed in the corner. “Why don’t you sit down?” Her voice had become gentler. “You gave me quite a fright, but I’m very pleased to meet you. And believe me, I’ve seen plenty of ‘weird’ things in my life. You don’t have to worry.”
Eden took a seat on the edge of the bed. Now that she was here, she wasn’t sure how to explain it. She glanced nervously at the door, wondering if the guards would burst through. “Um…well, I’ve only been a Tuatha Dé Danann for a little bit. I mean, I haven’t known about it for very long. We’re new here, my mum and I.”
“Who is your mother?”
“Well…she’s the queen. Her name is Cedar.”
Helen’s eyebrows shot up, but her voice was steady when she said, “I see. And did she tell you to come see me?”
Eden felt her cheeks growing warm. “No,” she muttered, looking at her knees. “She doesn’t know I’m here. It was someone…inside me.” She glanced up at Helen to see her reaction, but the older woman was still watching her calmly, so she continued, her words tumbling out in a sudden rush. “She’s real! She’s like an older version of me. And I guess she helped me fight off Nuala a couple of times, though I don’t really remember that because I was asleep. Once it was just me and Nuala, and the other time it was me and Nuala and my mum. She attacked my mum, but then I was able to save her by turning into older Eden.” She lifted her chin with pride. Helen looked suitably impressed.
“But you don’t remember this?” the druid asked.
“No,” Eden admitted. “My mum just told me about it, and I guess Nuala said something about the first time it happened, when it was just her and me. But I can feel her sometimes, the older me,” she added eagerly, as though to prove she was telling the truth. “It’s like an imaginary friend, but she’s inside of me. And last night she actually talked to me. She told me to come and find you.”
“Did she, now? What else did she tell you?”
Eden was relieved that Helen didn’t seem to think she was crazy or a liar. “It was really cool! She told me that you could teach me how to control my power, so I can become older Eden sooner.”
“Fascinating,” Helen said in a whisper. She stood up and started to walk slowly around the room, her forehead creased. Then she stopped and looked back at Eden. “Tell me, Eden, what is it like, living in Tír na nÓg and being one of the Tuatha Dé Danann? Are you happy here?”
“Oh yeah!” Eden exclaimed. “It’s awesome. It’s just…” Her voice faltered slightly.
“Just what, dear?” Helen encouraged.
“It’s just…well, there aren’t very many kids in Tír na nÓg, and the grown-ups think they have to keep an eye on me all the time.” She rolled her eyes. “There’s nothing dangerous here, but they still think I can’t take care of myself. I mean, what’s the point of being a princess if you can’t do anything?”
Helen made a sympathetic sound. “I understand. That must be really difficult.”
“Yeah,” Eden continued. “I mean, it’s not that I want to run the place, but I don’t want to have someone with me all the time. It’s totally impossible for me to get lost—I can come home whenever I want. It’s like they don’t trust me. They think I’m this little kid who doesn’t know anything, but I know lots of stuff.”
“I’m sure you do,” Helen said. “In time, they’ll see that you’re not a little kid anymore.”
“That’s what I want!” Eden exclaimed. “I want to help do things, and protect the kingdom, and make sure no one hurts my family again!”
A strange expression passed over Helen’s face, but then she said, “Those are all very good reasons, Eden.”
“So…you’ll teach me?”
“Yes, I’ll teach you. But I need you to promise me something first.”
“What?”
“Once I’ve taught you how to control and access your power, once I’ve shown you how to speak to the Eden inside you whenever you want and access her power…I want you to use your ability to send me home.”
Eden had been leaning forward, soaking in Helen’s words, but at this last part she sat up straight. “Home where?”
“To Dublin, Ireland. I’m a prisoner here, you see. Your mother is very angry with the druids because of something a friend of mine did. But I have done nothing wrong. Still, your mother insists on keeping me locked up here. Would you like it if you were being punished for someone else’s mistake?”
“No,” Eden said. “But if you’ve done nothing wrong, why won’t my mum just let you go home?”
“Sometimes people don’t think as clearly as you and I, especially if they are angry or hurt,” Helen said. “And, to be honest, the Tuatha Dé Danann usually do whatever they want, without thinking about others. But if you promise to let me go home, then I promise to help you.”
Eden frowned. If Helen hadn’t done anything wrong, why shouldn’t she be able to go home? There was a clatter outside Helen’s door, and Eden jumped. She had
to go before she got caught.
“Okay,” she said. “It’s a deal.”
Helen held out her hand, and they shook on it.
“I’ll have to do some thinking about your lessons,” Helen said. “Can you come back tomorrow?”
Eden nodded. “Yes. But I have to go now; I think the guards may have seen me.” She opened a sidh in the air, glancing up to make sure Helen had noticed.
“Very impressive,” Helen said with a small smile. “Oh, and Eden? I’m sure you already know this, but best not to say anything about this to anyone. We wouldn’t want them to keep you from coming to see me. It will be our little secret, okay?”
“Okay!” Eden said. “See you tomorrow!” She made a sidh to her bedroom and poked her head through it. She looked around, and—with a final wave at Helen—stepped through and closed it behind her.
“What do you plan to do?” Finn asked softly, once they were back home. They had stayed with Maggie for the rest of the day, listening to her stories about Logheryman and their wonderful, unexpected relationship. Then they’d walked her safely back to her own house before leaving.
Now she and Finn were sitting by the pond in their bedroom, their feet dangling in the cool water. Eden was out with Riona, picking berries. Cedar was glad, because it gave them a chance to discuss their plans without a hundred questions from their inquisitive daughter. She took a deep breath before answering Finn’s question. She still found it difficult to accept the truth of Logheryman’s death. Suddenly, the situation with the Unseen felt much more real—and much more urgent.
“I think we should go directly to the selkies,” she said. “Irial said that the pixies are gone, and the púka who helped him disappeared. We know for sure the selkies are sick—he never made it to the Merrow, so we don’t have any confirmation about them. I suppose we’ll have to warn them, anyway, although I’m certainly not looking forward to that encounter.” The last time they’d visited the Merrow, one of the Danann had killed their queen, and the Merrow had killed him in return. She didn’t know if they would even talk to her, but she supposed she’d have to try. The Merrow had only been defending themselves; they didn’t deserve to succumb to whatever illness was afflicting the Unseen.
