by Terry Madden
After fifteen minutes, Connor decided to send Bronwyn a text. Even if she didn’t pick up the voicemail, she might not be able to avoid seeing his text.
He thumbed the keypad. dish moved his hand. please talk to me i’m right outside hotel. He hit “send,” closed his phone, and tossed it on the dash.
It felt like someone had opened his veins and bled him out. Fog tumbled over the parking lot and through his open window, cooling this insane fever. Iris was cocooned in his sweatshirt, music stuffed into her ears, and he couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer. Even the thought of Iris acting as lookout couldn’t keep them open.
“Don’t go to sleep, Iris. Please.”
He was gone before he heard her reply.
He sank into a dream worthy of Dr. Adelman’s dream journal.
Ned gave him an aquarium, the typical pet store type, rectangular with plastic plants and hot pink gravel. But the cool thing about this aquarium was it had no glass, none at all. The water stayed in that shape.
Connor watched the fish, and they watched him back.
A few mottled goldfish and a big black one with pop eyes twitched kite-like tails, sailing the water in meaningless circles. The black goldfish moved closer, hesitated at the division between water and air, and then swam right out of the aquarium to hover before Connor’s face. Sure the fish would die in the air, he pushed it back with his index finger, which penetrated the water as easily as the fish. Surface tension left a deep dimple where his finger went in and it tingled, like when he fell into the hot tub, like when his arm touched Dish’s arm.
The little fat fish eyed Connor just at the edge of water and air.
He woke up sweating, his left arm asleep and tingling.
Color was just coming into the sky. He looked over at Iris. She was asleep, using her bag as a pillow.
“Shit!”
He fumbled for his phone. No message from Bronwyn.
He wiped the windshield again and looked across the circular drive and through the double glass doors. He could just make out the foyer lit by a big ugly chandelier, and there was someone walking across it. Very slowly.
He stumbled out of the car and jogged across the drive to the door.
Wearing pink sweats and slippers, Aunt Merryn pushed her walker toward the entrance at what Connor knew to be her maximum speed. When she got close the door opened, and Connor charged in.
“Where’s Bronwyn?”
“In the loo. Have you a motorcar, lad?”
Connor folded the walker and put it in the backseat beside Iris.
“You’re kidnapping an old lady?” she whispered.
“Not kidnapping.”
He helped Merryn into the passenger seat and took off. On the way out of the parking lot, he saw Bronwyn in his rearview mirror, coming through the glass doors of the hotel lobby.
He just drove. Clutch, shift, gas, go.
“He took my hand.” He was talking faster than his mouth would move. “Bronwyn can’t pull the plug on him. Not yet. It’s like…” He wasn’t sure how to explain it. “Like he has something to finish on the other side.”
“Oh,” Merryn said, “Sure it is. Don’t we all. Look, a Tastyburger. They make splendid chips. Shall we have some chips?”
Connor pulled into the parking lot. Good thing Tastyburger was open all night. It wasn’t until they were almost inside that Merryn noticed Iris.
“I’m sorry,” Connor said. “This is Iris McCreary, unwanted appendage.”
Iris grinned and talked loud like Merryn was deaf. “I’m Connor’s girlfriend.”
Shit.
The fries, or chips, were super greasy and salty and Connor realized he was starving. In between bites, he explained to Merryn why she couldn’t let Bronwyn pull the plug, at least not yet.
“She won’t listen to me,” he said, “but maybe she’ll listen to you. Remember the book I showed you?” He wiped his hands on his pants and pulled the book out of his sweatshirt pocket and handed it to Merryn.
She reached for it with reverence, her bright blue eyes igniting.
“Oh yes,” she sighed, and made a crooning sound. With shaky, gnarled fingers she traced the figure of the man on the cover.
“It’s Clyde. Hugh found this book?” When she looked up at Connor, her eyes were filled with tears.
“He ordered it at a special bookstore. We were going to pick it up when… anyway, he had just said he had to show me something. And look. I tried to show you the other day.” Connor reached over to the book and flipped to page 73.
Merryn stared at the picture of the water horse carving.
“It’s the design on his arm,” Connor said.
Merryn’s breathing quickened, and her eyes darted about like someone might be listening.
“I took this picture,” she blurted.
“You?”
“I was fourteen. Oh my, but Clyde was a comely man. I was smitten with him, of course.”
“Of course,” Connor echoed, lost already. “So, you knew this guy? You helped him take these pictures?”
She flipped to another page and pointed to a young girl with braids posing beside another strange rock. “Me.”
Iris moved from the other side of the table and slid onto the molded plastic bench beside Merryn.
“That is so awesome,” Iris said.
“Tell me about this stone,” Connor said, flipping back to page 73, “the one with the water horse on it.”
Merryn talked without taking her eyes from the picture. “Clyde Pritchard came to my little village to document ancient monuments, inquiring after standing stones or wells that might be less well known or even forgotten, for he was writing a book, he said. Well, you know what kind of excitement that stirred up in my little corner of Brecknockshire.”
Connor nodded, pretending he did.
Merryn’s eyes twinkled with the memory.
“He was so dashing. The ladies lined up to tell him of stones here, there and everywhere.”
“And you knew of some?”
“Not only did I know them, I spent my days in the highland vales with my sheep. I could take him right to them.”
“So, you were like his guide,” Iris said.
“I suppose I was. I’m surprised my mother let me go. I think she was as taken with Clyde as everyone else. He told us tales of druids and spirits that lived in trees, stones, water.”
“It was you who took him to this rock, the one with the water horse?” Connor asked, trying to get the train back on track.
She nodded wistfully. “I knew the woman who lived in the cottage. We traded lambs often. Lyla was her name. She was a bit queer, but very beautiful. She lived alone, sheared her own sheep and took the wool to market all herself. She took no husband, though she had plenty come a-courtin’. Until Clyde came to her door.”
“Lyla,” Connor repeated. He flipped to the page with her picture and pointed at it. “Lyla Bendbow.”
“This sounds like a Disney movie.” Iris dipped her fries in a gob of ketchup.
But all Connor could think about was Dish and Lyla, or somebody who seemed to be Lyla, there in that cave.
Merryn’s eyes roved from Iris to Connor. She pursed her lips. “I have told few people of this day.”
“But you told Dish. I mean Hugh.”
“Oh, yes. Bronwyn believes that’s why Hugh got the tattoo. She says I filled his head with nonsense when he was a boy.”
“Dish knew about this picture?”
“Clyde gave me a photo of Lyla and himself with the well stone. I kept it on my dressing table. When Hugh was about your age, I found him standing in the middle of my room, the photo in his hands. When he looked at me, there were tears in his eyes. He said nothing, merely placed it back on the table, and walked out. Not long after, I had an electrical fire in my cottage. My bedroom burned and so did the photo. But Hugh remembers it. Most certainly.”
“Why would Dish be crying over an old picture?”
“I didn’t a
sk, lad.” She gave his arm a gentle pat. “There are things we’ll never understand about ourselves, and speaking of them invites a longing back into our hearts.”
“This stone obviously means something to him,” Connor said.
“Or maybe it’s the girl, not the rock.” Iris glared at him with mascara-smudged eyes.
“The girl didn’t appear on his arm. The water horse did. What does it mean?” Connor pulled a photocopy of the stone from his pocket, one he’d enlarged, and spread it out on the table. “You can see it better here.”
After a pensive silence, Merryn said in a low voice, “Lyla said the stone was far older than her family cottage; it was moved, ages before. She said the water horse marked a well.” She ate a french fry and met Connor’s eyes. As she chewed, she was clearly weighing whether she should go on. “The third well of the sea.”
“There are so many wells, I can’t keep track,” Connor said.
“Lyla said, ‘Three wells feed the sea, the moon’s flood tide, rain that falls from the stars, and flinty veins that bleed the mountain snows.’”
Connor digested this bit of nothing. “What sea? What does a riddle have to do with Dish and his water horse tattoo?”
“Ha, well,” Merryn said, dipping another fry in the ketchup. “According to Hugh and his folktale research, the third well of the sea was opened for one purpose only.”
“What purpose?”
“There were once a people known as the ‘Old Blood,’” Merryn said. As she spoke, her face took on a faraway look as if she were recalling a scene in her mind’s eye. “Caretakers of a land called the Five Quarters. They were pitched into a terrible battle against an invading tribe, the Ildana, who’d come to take their land. The king of the Old Blood, a young man with a heart too tender to watch his people slaughtered, sued for peace.”
Her story stopped and she examined Connor as if to measure his response.
“And what happened?” he asked, impatient.
Merryn glanced at Iris, as if she was about to share a secret and Iris shouldn’t hear it. “My tea’s a bit cold, love, would you mind?”
Iris’ mouth was hanging open, but with a venomous stare at Connor, she took the paper cup from Merryn’s quaking hand and slithered toward the counter to freshen Merryn’s tea, looking over her shoulder as if she could lip-read.
“The king of the Old Blood bargained for peace,” Merryn explained. “He asked the invader to share the land with him, but in his youthful naiveté, he agreed to take the land beneath the land.”
“Land beneath what land?” Connor couldn’t lean any closer to Merryn. He wanted to snatch the words as they fell from her lips.
“In ancient times, they believed that when the sun set, it travelled to a land beneath the land, to another world that can only be reached either through the wells or through the old fairy mounds. The king of the Old Blood agreed to take that land as his own, to leave the Five Quarters to the invaders and be exiled to a country on the other side of night.”
Her lower lip quivered, and Connor worried that Merryn would start crying over these Old Blood guys.
“Where is this country they’ve been exiled to?”
Iris set a steaming cup of tea in front of Merryn.
“Why, here.”
“Here, as in the United States?”
“Here, as in this reality,” Merryn said.
“So the Old Blood came here from another dimension?”
“The Celts believe that when we die, we are reborn on the other side of night.” Merryn held her palms together like she was praying. She indicated the back of one hand, then the other. “Wells link the two realms.” She splayed her fingers and opened the way between. “We are born, live, and die in one world and return once again to the other side, there learning lessons that can’t be learned here. And then back we go again. But the souls of the Old Blood are reborn in endless night. For what the young king didn’t know when he sealed the peace was that when he led his people through the third well, it would be slammed shut. They were cast forever into exile.”
“So, they’re all here.” Connor pointed to the orange tabletop. “But what does that have to do with this rock and the mark on Dish’s wrist?”
Merryn squinted and brought the photocopy close to her face. “I’m not sure, really.”
It was something in the timbre of her voice that told Connor she was lying. The look she gave him confirmed it. There was more to this story than Merryn was willing to tell. But why? What could she be hiding?
Connor pushed on with his questions anyway. “You found the stone and Clyde Pritchard translated the runes?”
“The runes weren’t there before.”
“Before what?” He strained to see the stick-like symbols Merryn pointed at, circling the water horse.
“I was readying the camera,” Merryn said, “a cumbersome contraption in those days, and Clyde was setting up a flash, battery powered, of course, for there was no electricity at Lyla’s cottage. We were ready to shoot the picture when Lyla stepped in front of the stone and ran her fingers round the water horse like this.”
Merryn’s two quaking fingers slowly traced the symbols on the photo.
“As her fingers passed over the stone, the runes appeared. And I opened the shutter on the camera.” She made a popping sound like a flash, startling both Connor and Iris.
Connor closed his gaping mouth. Iris was frozen with a fry dripping ketchup.
“They just appeared?” Connor said. “Like the tattoo on Dish’s arm?”
“Precisely. And within moments, they were gone just as surely. Clyde asked Lyla to try again, and she did, over and over until it was dark, but the runes never showed again.”
Merryn handed the photocopy to Connor, saying, “This photo is the only record of them.”
“Was this Lyla some kind of magician or something?”
“That’s a story of its own, I suppose. Clyde fell madly in love with her. They married and moved to London. People in the vale say he died soon after in the war, but Lyla never returned to the vale. She auctioned her flocks and her land and vanished.”
“But what do these runes, or whatever they are, mean? Is it writing?”
“Certainly it’s writing. Clyde spent years trying to translate it, according to Hugh. He searched Clyde’s old notes and publications, but found it matched no known script.”
“So, no one can read it,” Connor said.
Merryn shrugged.
“Great. And the writing itself is gone, vanished?”
“Possibly the stone, too.”
Connor spread his arms and cried out to the stained ceiling tiles, “What does this mean?”
Tastyburger employees leaned over the counter and stared at him.
Connor was at a dead end, chasing after a lost well that might or might not have something to do with what he’d seen in the hot tub. There was nothing in Merryn’s fairy tale that could bring Dish back, or give him more time. The only thing Connor could say with any confidence was Dish thought he’d found this third well on the beach, and the tattoo on his arm seemed to link him to the woman Connor saw on the other side, a woman who might have once been Lyla Bendbow if all this world trading was true.
He looked up from the photocopy to see two cops come through the door, their eyes on Merryn in her pink sweats. It was hardly likely they could make a run for it. Connor stuffed the book and the photocopy into his pocket before the cops got to the table.
Merryn held up a fry. “Chip? They’re jolly good.”
Chapter 30
Nechtan watched the chamber door close behind Lyleth and Marchlew. He was on his feet, his arm around Kyndra, who wore a look of utter ruination. Her knuckles were white from gripping the arm of Marchlew’s empty high seat. At the council table, the chieftains shared words behind their hands, but every eye was on Nechtan. If Kyndra told them he was unmarked, Nechtan would be judged a wraith, or worse, a demon, and when Ava came to batter down the gates, she’d b
e met by his borrowed body hanging from the walls of Caer Cedewain. How did Lyl hope to save either of them?
Nechtan forced Kyndra’s weepy eyes to meet his. “Don’t do this. For the sake of the land—”
“The land! It was you who delivered me like a sow to market, Nechtan. ‘A marriage to strengthen the land,’ father called it. Remember?”
“Of course I remember.” He tried to take hold of her, but she struck out wildly, beating his chest until he caught her arms and held her close, whispering, “If letting Ava and the Bear tear down these walls and slaughter the lot of us would give us our souls back, you and me, I would do it. But you know better. Talan can die inside these walls as easily as outside. Let him fight, Kyndra.”
He searched her eyes for agreement, but found none. She shook off his embrace and turned to address the men at table.
“Kyndra, please.”
Their chatter ceased, and they looked to her, all but Pyrs.
“Your kind feeds on boys like my Talan,” she said to them. She clutched at her skirt, her wild eyes roving from one man to the next, saying, “Tomorrow, their blood will water the earth, and from it, more death will grow, and mothers will bring forth more babes to die for this land.” Her eyes were spears into Nechtan’s heart. “My brother died last summer—”
The squeal of a door announced Marchlew’s return. “Hold your tongue, woman,” he wheezed. “These matters are not yours to meddle with.”
He waddled into the room and settled into his seat. But where was Lyleth?
Marchlew stroked his wolfhound’s head, saying to Nechtan, “Tell us what part we’re to play in this ambush of yours… my lord.”
Nechtan understood Pyrs’ suspicious look, and while explaining his strategy, he could think of nothing else but what Lyl had traded Marchlew for this grasping bastard’s compliance.
“When we’ve engaged here,” Nechtan pointed out the abandoned watchtower at the west end of the vale, “we’ll know what we’ve got our hands on. Then, we send three, maybe four hundred back to guard the pass. What news have the scouts from the bay?”
