40. DUGHALL WAKES
Dughall awoke to an impenetrable darkness. He knew he was alive by the sound of his lungs coughing and wheezing as they sucked in the first air they had breathed in over a thousand years. As he lay in the dark rasping in breath, the reality of his new situation dawned on him.
It worked. He was in his own body, alive again after so many years. But how to get out of this icy tomb?
Dughall lay quietly for a few moments and tried to use as little air as possible. He heard a sound. It was muffled and sounded faint at first but grew louder. Someone is pounding on my granite coffin.
After several minutes, Dughall heard the lid of his stony coffin opening. Fresh, cold air wafted over him. As his eyes adjusted to his surroundings, he could make out the faint shadow of a tiny being. Macha.
Macha and Cian had built an underground tomb in the frozen wasteland. She had been true to her word and had put herself into a deep pixie sleep in the gruesome tomb. Besides the coffin, they buried items that Dughall would need when he arose. Warm furs to protect him when he exited the tomb; a torch and flint to light his way; cured meats and water sealed in airtight jars, and Macha herself whose magick was always of assistance to him.
“You are with the living once again,” Macha croaked as Dughall stretched his arms. For her part, Macha looked exactly like she had a thousand years before except that her skin and hair were a dull, lifeless grey. Even her wings, once a beautiful iridescent rainbow of color, had become grey and without any hint of their former luster.
“Yes, Macha, I live,” replied Dughall in a raspy voice.
“You will need to drink and eat to regain your strength. Your body is much withered from lack of sustenance.”
Dughall looked down at his hands and arms and could see that Macha was right. He still had flesh, but it was wrinkled like a raisin and clung to his bones. His skin was brown and weathered like a mummy, yet he was not a mummy. He was very much alive. But he looked like no more than a skeleton with flesh covering it.
Fear gripped Dughall, a feeling that was most foreign to him. This was not what he had expected. He could not go out amongst the humans in that condition. He looked like a monster and would be tracked down and killed. How could he achieve his deepest desire looking like a mummy?
As if reading Dughall’s mind, Macha said, “Do not worry. Your flesh will plump out again in time. With food and drink and the special cream that Cian left for you, you will look normal in a few weeks’ time.”
“A few weeks? We do not have that kind of time. I need to get out of here now!”
“You must stay in the chamber. You cannot complete your task in your present condition. Look at you,” she said. In Dughall’s mind he quietly conceded that irksome Macha was right. He could not even rise to leave his grisly stone casket.
“Eat the stored food and drink,” Macha offered. “I will go in search of more food for you.”
With that, she flew to the ceiling of their chamber and removed a large stone that had been left unsealed for their escape. Then Macha grabbed a small spade and dug furiously as she flapped and flapped her wings. It wasn’t long until Macha had a small hole, large enough for her to squeeze through and poke out the top.
Macha flew down to Dughall and handed him a jar of cured meat and a sealed jar of water. “Eat this and stay here, Dughall,” Macha said before she flew away.
Dughall had no intention of staying put, but he hadn’t the strength to raise his body out of the coffin. Cursed Cian. The old wizard had completed the spell but had neglected to care properly for Dughall’s body. Dughall had not bargained for being a cripple upon his return. He tried to scream out a curse in his rage, but it came out as a mere raspy strangled yell.
In utter frustration and with nothing else to do, Dughall opened the jar and grabbed a handful of salty cured ox. It tasted like leather that had been covered in salt. Awful. Dughall chewed and chewed, swallowing it down with the stale water from the other jar.
When Dughall’s jaw tired from chewing on the leathery meat, he lay back and envisioned his next steps. While in the Umbra Nihili, Dughall was still connected to the aether and the web of all existence. Even though he could interact with it in no way, he was able to know all that took place in all of creation.
Dughall knew well why his soul chose to come back together at this time and place. Modern humans were building a most magnificent machine. “They think they are so clever,” thought Dughall. “They haven’t even dreamed of what that machine of theirs can do. So lacking in imagination, these modern humans.”
Dughall lay in his cold, hard home of the past thousand years, smiling a gruesome smile to himself. Soon, all that I have worked for will be mine. Soon, my most beloved, we will be reunited.
41. THE FACE IN THE BUCKET
It was a whole night and day before Macha returned. In that time, Dughall had forced himself to eat all of the briny meat and putrid water. Macha had been correct. His skin was plumping up. He looked slightly less gruesome than he did but still not acceptable to walk among humans again.
“Macha, my favorite gnat. What have you brought me to feast on?”
Macha flew down through the small opening to Dughall, all the while levitating several dead rabbits tied together by their legs. Dughall thought he saw one of them still twitching.
“The Devil take you pixie woman, I am not eating half-dead hare.”
“Raw meat has more energy in it,” Macha replied. “It will help you regain your strength faster. Blood is good for one like you.”
“I have already tested my ancient gut as much as I care to by swallowing that retched ox. You will cook those for me.”
“If you wish, but it will prolong your stay in this crypt, my intolerant one,” Macha quipped.
With that, she began her work. She used her small but extremely sharp knife to skin the hares and gut them, removing the entrails. With the wave of her hand, she produced a large copper pot and set it over a fire that she conjured with the clap of her hands. She made a horrific stew of the rabbits in the pot with melted snow from outside. The stewing rabbits produced an odor most foul. Dughall was certain that his ancient intestines would surely seize up and cause his demise in one bite of Macha’s putrid stew.
Macha practically forced the fetid stew down Dughall’s throat. For two more days, Dughall endured her force-feeding him the blood, guts and meat from the poor hapless hares that happened to have been in Macha’s path.
Dughall also endured Macha rubbing the rank cream that Cian had created for him all over his body. Her small hands were more like cold claws than human hands. It felt like nails scratching him all over on his delicate mummy skin.
But for all the torture that Dughall endured, the results were nothing short of miraculous. His hands looked more and more normal. The skin, less yellow and more white and luminous. He no longer looked like a skeleton but instead like an extremely thin older man. Dughall was finally ready to see what his face looked like.
“Macha, fetch me a bucket of water so that I may look upon myself.”
As Macha placed the bucket in front of him, Dughall braced himself for what he might see. He sucked in his breath and looked down into the smooth water of the bucket.
The man he saw staring back shared little resemblance with the face of the man that he once knew himself to be. The man in the bucket had long, shaggy hair, not well-groomed short hair in the Norman style. The reflection had sallow cheeks and all the bones in the skull were clearly visible under the thin, papery skin. It was not the firm but fleshy masculine face that he once knew. To Dughall, he looked like the lowliest old beggar.
But at least he looked human. He would need to set aside his vanity. Bide your time, Dughall, he thought to himself.
“I am ready.” He said it to himself as much as to Macha.
With that, he put on the fresh linen clothing and furs that had been put in his icy tomb so many years before. Covered from head to toe in fur, he looked the par
t of an old nomad from the north.
Macha levitated Dughall out through the opening in the ceiling and into the wide-open snow covered north. Dughall squinted and covered his eyes. So much light. Slowly his eyes adjusted to the light of life again.
Dughall wasted not a minute more. He knew he must make his way south. He trudged, Macha flittering beside him, for many days as he made his way to the ancient continent of his ancestors and of his former self. On to his destiny.
42. THE MACHINE
As Dughall made his way back to human civilization, he was amazed at how little the humans around him saw. Macha was with him for the entire journey. Color had returned to her skin and wings, though less vibrant than it had been before their long sleep. But the humans did not gasp in awe or hazard a second look their way. Not one human that Dughall encountered inquired about his pixie companion. How is it that they cannot see this diminutive yet strong presence beside me at all times?
The more time Dughall spent among modern humans, the more he knew the answer to this perplexing observation. The humans were so busy with those things they called ‘cell phones’, with the tiny pads of letters, and looking at their small glass windows with moving pictures and words printed on them, that they did not notice much of the world around them. The modern humans constantly moved and talked. Dughall noticed that they seemed to live in a world built upon rationality and thus dismissed evidence of the magickal and mystical events and things around them at all times. Dughall doubted they would notice a fire-breathing dragon scorching their arse until it was too late.
All the better for him. A distracted mind is a mind easily fooled. He only hoped the humans at CERN were as distracted and easily befuddled as the humans he had encountered along his journey south.
Within a few weeks, Dughall hoodwinked, swindled and downright stole food, clothing, money and all that he required not only to survive, but also to fund his way to the French/Swiss border. Dughall had a sharp mind wizened by the extraordinary amount of time he had been alive. He also lacked the conscience to deflect his attention with considerations of right versus wrong. Dughall easily worked his will on anyone he encountered.
It wasn’t long until he found himself in Merino, Switzerland, site of CERN and the Large Hadron Supercollider, the LHC for short. All is working according to plan.
Between his own formidable powers of persuasion and the help of Macha’s pixie magick, Dughall easily usurped the persona and credentials of the lead scientist on one of the collider experiments. Dughall was in charge of the most powerful machine humans had ever built.
Even Dughall had to admit that the humans had achieved something quite remarkable in the creation of the LHC. The sheer size alone was commendable. There was no hint above the ground of what was happening below.
Dughall delighted in the idea of the deceptive nature of the machine. Above, farmland and rolling hills. A mile below, a machine so powerful that it would force beams of particles to travel to within a fraction of the speed of light and smash into each other in violent collisions.
The human scientists said that they wanted to look into the ‘face of God’ to see the beginning of the universe. Billions upon billions of their dollars spent to build a twenty-seven kilometer tube of superconducting magnets, some five stories tall, all for a hope to see back in time.
Dughall laughed within himself at the thought. Humans, always so preoccupied with their past and their own existence. ‘Who are we?’ What a stupid question to ask, Dughall thought.
As Dughall’s eyes swept over the computer screen in front of him full of numbers and formulas, he couldn’t help but have a smirk come over him. They are so focused on questions of their past and their existential nature, they miss out on the opportunity that lay right under their noses. If only they knew what will soon happen, he thought. So wrapped up in their computers, charts, formulas and self-importance. They may not even believe it when they see it.
As Dughall waited for the computer to catch up its calculations to where he wanted it to be, his mind wandered. Wandered as it had done so often in the thousand-plus years he spent in the Umbra Nihili. Plenty of time then, and now, to remember his own history and the reason he risked his very soul to go to the Umbra Nihili. Time to contemplate his soul’s most fervent desire.
It won’t be long now, my dearest one. Dughall recalled in an instant the suffering he had endured that brought him to that place of the deepest of human longing, a longing large enough to cause a person to commit the most despicable acts in the name of love.
43. DUGHALL’S STORY
Dughall remembered his childhood as though he had lived it just yesterday. He could close his eyes and inhabit the body of his youth as easily as if he had slipped on a pair of slippers. It was a trip he had taken many times during his long stay in the Umbra Nihili. While there were many much more pleasant memories he could have dwelled on, Dughall chose to focus his attention on the day that everything changed for him. It was the day that the true Dughall was born.
He peered at the world out of deep brown eyes and watched as his mother gathered water from the town’s well. To say that he was close to her would be an understatement. He felt he was a part of her, and she a part of him. The slave’s life of abject misery can do that to two people who find themselves suffering through it together.
Dughall was born into nobility in a small town in the beautiful Mediterranean countryside. His people grew grapes and olives and made wine known to all as a most excellent elixir. He was born into what could have become a relatively blissful existence, but such was not his destiny.
One fateful day, a marauding band of soldiers came to his village, intent on taking what did not belong to them. Dughall’s father died protecting his family, cut down by a blade to his unarmored chest. Dughall’s mother wielded a small dagger and hid her boy behind her as two marauders approached her. Dughall never knew that his life was spared only because no soldier could bring himself to end the life of such a beautiful creature, Dughall’s own mother.
A quick death may have been preferable to the life that followed. Dughall and his mother were sold to a middling merchant and into a life of slavery. In those days, slavery was rampant. It was not confined to a particular color, creed or town. There were only the conquerors and the conquered. If you were not the conqueror, you were as likely to be sold into slavery as to be killed.
Many slaves toiled in fields or worked in a wealthy merchant’s home doing domestic chores. Still others endured a life far worse than any field hand or household slave. Such was the life of Dughall’s mother whose beauty was sold for the pleasure and use of the highest bidder.
There were many nights that Dughall’s mother lay there, enduring the basest form of indignity and defilement, wishing for death to come rescue her from her horrid existence. The only thing that prevented her from taking the dagger of her nightly ‘companion’ and doing herself in was the knowledge that her son – her only ray of light – laid in the next room.
Her son. He needed her, and that alone kept her alive from day to day.
For Dughall’s part, his heart slowly hardened, day after day, week after week, seeing the suffering endured by his beloved mother at the hands of her master and those he so callously sold her to. She tried to stifle her own tears around Dughall, but he knew that her heart was dying inside her.
The only pleasure of their day was in the quiet moments when no one else was around. Alone in their small quarters, she taught him. They both knew that it was strictly forbidden for her to teach her slave son how to read or write or to provide him any education. But Dughall’s mother used her waning energy to impart to Dughall all that she knew. She would not let her son, born of noble and educated parents, go through life an ignorant.
She also taught Dughall about survival and patience. Even though he had learned to speak in the way of nobles and kings – and surely knew as much about writing and mathematics and astrology as any of them – he spoke to his master and to a
ll others save his mother in the guttural language of peasants and slaves. He followed orders and endured the lash, given frequently not because he disobeyed but merely because it pleased his master to know that he could.
“Bide your time, my dear son. You will rise above this place, I know that you will. You will grab upon the opportunity when the time is right,” his mother said one day.
“How do you know, dear mother?” asked Dughall. “How do you know I will ever be anything but a slave?”
She took Dughall’s hands in hers and looked deeply into the dark brown eyes of the only one she loved. “When I look in your eyes my son, I do not see the soul of a slave. I see in you a fearsome fire, not one easily extinguished by the lash of a slave master.”
It made Dughall’s heart soar to hear such powerful and hopeful words from his dearest one. He believed in his mother with all his being and so when she stated with such conviction that she believed in him, he instantly believed in himself too.
From that day forward, his spirits were lifted a little higher for he believed wholeheartedly in his mother’s prophetic words. “Bide your time, Dughall,” he would say to himself when times got tough.
But as the years passed, it became more and more difficult to endure what was surely his largest torture. Each night he lay on his small cot beside the hearth while in the next room, he heard brutes use and abuse his mother. The anger welled and his heart blackened. He swore to himself vengeance most cruel on his master who he held responsible for his mother’s daily suffering. And as he grew closer to manhood, he felt the time was coming when he would have his vengeance and he and his mother would escape their brutal bonds.
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