Truthseeker

by C. E. Murphy

  Kelly banged back in several minutes later, took a look at the sopapillas Lara had reheated, and got a plateful for herself. She doused them liberally with chocolate ice cream and honey and stuffed most of one into her mouth before saying, “He’s gone home. He thinks you belong in a mental hospital.”

  An out-of-place bloom of cheer rushed through Lara. “I suppose at least that tells us exactly how people would react if I told the truth. That’s something.”

  “No, I mean it, Lara, he actually literally thinks you need mental help. He’s sure something so traumatic has happened to you tha—”

  “I believe you, Kelly.” The good humor remained intact, a sense of the absurd so profound it couldn’t be shaken. “As long as he’s not calling the paramedics it’s fine. And if he does, I’ll be obliging and check myself in to whatever mental hospital they want me to.”

  Kelly choked on a bite of pastry. “Why would you do that?”

  “Because if you voluntarily enter a mental health institute you can voluntarily exit, and they can’t stop you,” Lara said cheerfully. “Kelly, he was always going to think I was crazy, and we both knew it. I’ll find a hotel or stay with my mom if he’s worried I might be dangerous to you.”

  “I don’t think that occurred to him.” Kelly slumped against the counter. “I don’t know, Lar. I thought he might just …”

  “Accept it?” Lara shook her head, oddly relaxed. She’d spent a lifetime trying to avoid situations like this one, but in finally facing it, it was less distressing than she’d imagined. Maybe it was the confidence that had burgeoned while she was in the Barrow-lands, or it might simply have been a sign of maturity, both in herself and her gift. “You said yourself if you didn’t know me you wouldn’t believe it. I’m not even sure you do believe me, exactly. You just don’t quite disbelieve me.”

  Kelly looked guilty. “Your mom believes you.”

  “My mom had to deal with me being hysterical over the Tooth Fairy, Kel. From where she stands, if I come home believing a story about fairyland, it’s not possible I’m lying. We’re just going to have to get Dafydd out of jail so he can show Dickon the truth.”

  “Do you think that’ll help?”

  Lara caught her breath, searching for a true answer, and finally shook her head. “I really don’t know. Dickon’s worried, right? Not angry? So maybe if we can prove I’m not lying it’ll assuage his worry. Is he worried about you, Kelly? I mean, you believe me. Enough to be participating in what he must see as a farce, anyway.”

  “He thinks I shouldn’t be encouraging your delusions. Me! Do I seem like an encouraging-delusions sort of person?” Kelly eyed Lara. “Don’t answer that.”

  “You seem very straightforward, Kel. That’s part of why I’m able to be friends with you. What did you tell him?”

  “That I didn’t think you were deluded, obviously. I don’t know, maybe I should have lied. Maybe I should’ve said I thought it was better to let you stay in your bizarre little comfort zone for a while. That maybe when you got used to being home you’d be able to shake it off and deal with what really happened. And I can’t believe I’m telling a truthseeker I think I should have lied.”

  “Believe it, because you are. What’s more unlikely is I think you’re probably right.” Lara turned a hand up as Kelly blinked at her incredulously. “I don’t want him to be upset with you, Kelly. Maybe you should call him tomorrow and say you think he’s probably right, you’re just so used to me telling the truth you couldn’t wrap your mind around me lying.”

  “And when David turns out to be an elf and you were in fairyland?”

  “Then you can refrain from saying ‘I told you so.’”

  “Lara Jansen, I do believe you’ve lost your mind.”

  “See?” Lara, grinning, turned her attention back to the cooling sopapillas. “You and Dickon are on the same page.”

  Twenty-Three

  “When in doubt, go to an expert.” The platitude, murmured under her breath, had a ring of truth to it. At Kelly’s suggestion Lara had begun an Internet search for mythological weapons. Within minutes she’d found herself lost in a maze of fictional weapons from online role-playing games. Living, breathing humans, she’d decided, were likely to be much more helpful, and she’d borrowed Kelly’s car again to make the journey up to Cambridge.

  The building that housed Harvard’s Celtic Studies Department was a beautiful old pillared home. Lara peered at it through the Nissan’s windshield, wondering if she would be able to hold a discussion about legendary weapons without compromising her truth sense, then shrugged. She would certainly never find out sitting in the parking lot. A sense of propriety made her knock on the building’s front door, though she let herself in immediately.

  A young woman with her hair in a ponytail blinked up from where she sat reading on a comfortable-looking couch. “Hello?”

  “Hi. My name’s Lara Jansen. I’m here to see …” Lara hesitated, unwilling to even attempt the jumble of letters that made up the director’s name. She glanced at the office listings instead, where “Pádraig hÉamhthaigh” was emblazoned in the leading slot.

  A sympathetic grin flashed over the girl’s face. “It’s pronounced ‘Heafy,’ if you can believe it. Pawrick Heafy, pretty much. He’s from Ireland himself, from one of the areas called the Gaeltacht, where people still speak the old language as a matter of course. I think he keeps the Irish spelling just to make people panic when they see his name written down.” She got to her feet as she spoke and led Lara to the converted house’s upstairs, where she knocked solidly on a closed door. “Professor Heafy, Lara Jansen’s here to see you.”

  The door swung open a few seconds later to reveal a slender older man with a beaky nose and thick white hair. “So she is. Have you finished that translation yet, Alison?”

  The girl waved the book she’d been reading. “Still working on it. It’ll be done by week’s end.”

  “Which week’s end?” the professor asked drily, and Alison grinned as she scurried back downstairs. “Well, come in, Miss Jansen. You’re the young woman who went missing in Boston, are you not?”

  Lara tried not to wince at the recognition as she followed Heafy into his office. “I am.”

  “And you returned with an abiding interest in Celtic folklore. I suppose you won’t be telling me how that came about.” He gestured to a well-worn leather chair, its arms and seat alternately shining and dull with use, and sat down on the other side of his desk. Lara spent a few seconds studying a wall of haphazardly arranged books, then shook herself and offered the professor a brief smile.

  “I was exposed to some while I was gone. I have a lot of questions, Professor, and I think some of them are probably a little strange.” Music chimed disapprovingly, and she made a face. “Maybe very strange. Do you know anything about a place called Annwn?”

  Heafy’s eyebrows elevated. “The Welsh land of eternal youth, sometimes called the Deep or Drowned Lands. The underworld, or fairyland, if you like. There are an infinite number of interpretations.”

  Notes jangled again and Lara ducked her head, trying to dismiss the exaggeration of infinite interpretations. “How did they drown?”

  “Ah, sure and you’d ask me that.” Heafy got up and pulled a book off the shelves, though he didn’t appear to read anything from it as he flipped through its pages. “One legend says a priestess of a fairy well let it overflow. Another says the man sent to guard the dikes was a drunkard and in his spirits left the sluices open. Here, this is a grand version of the story.”

  Lara jolted to her feet as he offered her the book, and glanced through its pages. “Um. I’m sorry. I don’t read French.”

  “Oh.” Heafy took the book back, examined it curiously, then returned it to the shelves. “I didn’t notice it was in French. That version tells how the drunkard seduced the priestess and that was why she let the well overflow. In all likelihood, of course, it was only the end of a miniature ice age, and the sea level simply rose.”
<
br />   Lara sat back down with a sigh. “So there are no stories of magical weapons that broke the land?”

  “That’s more an Arthurian kind of tale.” Heafy returned to his own seat, looking thoughtful. “The Arthurian legends come out of Wales, mind, so I can see tangling the two. A sword, I suppose, would be what you’re after?”

  “Not Excalibur.” Lara smiled faintly. “No, I was told about a weapon that might have been lost. Something with the power to drown the land and subjugate a people, maybe.”

  “Excalibur would have been lost and found and lost again, to be sure, but its mythology is more to unite a land and free a people, wouldn’t you say? No, tell me more, me love, if you know it. Perhaps you’ll shake something loose in this old mind of mine.”

  “I don’t know very much else about this version. There are two rival kings, Emyr and Hafgan—”

  “Now Hafgan was a king of Annwn, that I know,” Heafy interrupted. “Emyr’s not a name I’m familiar with.”

  Breath knocked out of Lara’s chest like she’d been hit. “That’s interesting,” she murmured, the phrase so inadequate as to send dissonant chimes over her skin. “They fought, and the lands were drowned, and this legend says the power behind the drowning was a weapon. Legend says the weapon was cast out of Annwn after that, because it might have the power to heal the land, too, and the victorious king, Emyr, didn’t want that.”

  Heafy’s eyes were bright. “It’s not a tale I know, but it has the hallmarks of proper mythology. Who did you have it from?”

  Lara exhaled again, as sharply as before. She had managed to skirt lies succesfully so far, but the direct question was hard to avoid. Harder, when Ioan, who had told her the story, was unlikely to be a name to trigger mythological memories. Finally, jaw set against the jarring dissonance of a flat-out lie, she said, “A man called Oisín.”

  Heafy leapt to his feet again, eagerly sorting through books. “Oisín the poet. Plenty of lads today carry that name, but I give yours credit for telling a good tale. The first Oisín, though, now there’s a story I know well, and that reminds me of something. He was an Irish poet stolen away by the fairy queen Níamh—”

  “Her name was Rhiannon, I think, in this version.”

  “Ah, Rhiannon of the white horse, that’s all and well, too. Stolen away and when he returned thinking only three years had passed, three hundred had gone by in Ireland. He returned to Tir na nÓg, that’ll be the Irish name for Annwn, or close enough, to live out his days, but there’s a story I have here, me love, that tells of his second return to Ireland.”

  “He only—” Lara bit her tongue. Oisín had only told her of one time he’d returned home, which didn’t mean that had been the only time he’d gone. “When did he come back the second time?”

  “Upon Níamh’s death.” Heafy seized a book from the shelves, flipped it open, and plunked it triumphantly on the desk in front of her. “It’s a favorite story of mine, crossing two great legends of Irish mythology as it does. Do you know of Saint Brendan?”

  “The one who crossed the Atlantic in a leather boat?” The last word turned into a squeak and Lara leaned forward to study the book. This one, at least, was written in English, but Heafy spoke more quickly than she could read.

  “That’s right, searching for the Isle of the Blessed. There’s more than one tradition, me love, where that might mean Annwn or Tir na nÓg itself. Now why, I ask meself, would a Christian priest monk be searching for the fairylands? There are stories that say an angel sent him sailing as punishment for disbelieving the word of God, but a prophet and an angel might be thought the same.”

  “And Oisín was a prophet,” Lara murmured.

  Heafy beamed at her. “Just so. A prophet from the land of youth. Now doesn’t that sound a wee bit like an angel from Heaven to you? Sending a holy man on a holy quest? But here’s my thought: maybe it’s not to fairyland, but far from it that Oisín sent our man Brendan.”

  Lara flattened her fingers against the book, though she was watching the professor. “Away from Annwn with the weapon that nearly destroyed it.”

  “And Brendan,” Heafy said gleefully, “came to America.”

  Lara laughed out loud. “Would you happen to know where he hid the weapon?”

  “Ah.” Heafy sat down, as suddenly defeated as he’d been exultant. “I’ve never thought to sort that, no. You’d have to speak with one of my colleagues in the Native American Studies Department, perhaps. I can ring them up and make an appointment for you, if you like?”

  “That would be great. Thank you.”

  Heafy nodded and dug out a phone directory from within his desk, muttering and flipping pages until he found what he was after. He lifted a finger to admonish Lara to wait a moment as he dialed, then was clearly transferred twice before getting to the person he wanted. Lara’s search was explained in a few quick sentences, before his eyebrows rose and he offered the phone to Lara. “Professor Cassidy wants to speak with you.”

  Lara lifted her own eyebrows, but accepted the phone curiously. “This is Lara Jansen.”

  “Hi, Miss Jansen. I’m Ellen Cassidy, one of the department heads. Look, I don’t want to waste your time, so if you’re trying to find pre-Columbian contact in the Americas, you’re going to want to go to Canada. The Viking settlements and trade agreements there are the only halfway verifiable data we’ve got, and that doesn’t go nearly as far back as Brendan’s legendary voyage. I’m really sorry, but we’ve heard this all before and it’s just got no basis in reality. I wish people could accept that the Native American cultures were entirely capable of complex societies and interactions without European interference.”

  Uncertain notes trembled under Lara’s skin, finding issue with some aspect of Cassidy’s rant, but she nodded into the phone anyway. “I understand. Thank you for your time, Professor.” Lips pursed, she handed the phone back to Heafy, then smiled wryly. “I hit a sore spot there, I think. I didn’t mean to imply native cultures were in need of Western guidance.”

  “Perhaps you can find someone else more willing to talk mythological theory,” Heafy said with a smile. “I’m afraid it’s back to work for me, me love, unless there’s something else I can do for you?”

  “I don’t think so. Thank you very much, Professor. This was more helpful than I expected.” Lara took her leave, Cassidy’s words still buzzing in her ears. A phrase stood out: it’s just got no basis in reality. That was opinion, Lara realized. Informed opinion, no doubt, but as with any facts from a prewriting society, it was at best an inference, a leap of logic. It was no more certain to be possible Brendan hadn’t made it to America than it was to be sure he had.

  And her immature truthseeking talent, only a matter of days ago, would have taken Cassidy’s firmly believed opinion as gospel truth. Lara climbed into the Nissan and sat there awhile, staring sightlessly through the windshield. The magic was strengthening. Eventually she might be able to do as she’d always thought would be helpful: know the truth even when someone told her its exact opposite with their full confidence behind the telling. For now, though, the sour notes suggested there was still a path to be followed.

  Her heart suddenly quick with anticipation, she turned the Nissan on and headed back to Boston. The research she needed to do now could be done in a library, free of most slants of human prejudice.

  “Do you have any idea how many sacred Native American sites there are just in New England?” Lara dropped an inch-thick stack of photocopies on Kelly’s kitchen table and put her fists on her hips, as if explosive actions would cause Kelly to have the answers.

  She didn’t. Instead she eyed the papers, then Lara, then went to stir the macaroni and cheese cooking on the stove. “Not a clue. Are you going to drive around to all of them and see if any of them sing to you?”

  “I hope not.” Lara sat down and flipped through her stack of papers. “I narrowed it down to places on or near rivers, for right now. Brendan came back from his Atlantic journey, so I’m working on
the idea he never abandoned his boat anywhere.”

  “And that doesn’t make you itch?” Kelly waved the macaroni spoon as Lara frowned at her. “You usually look like somebody dumped itching powder on you when you hear lies. So I figure a badly wrong theory would make you twitchy.”

  “I’m counting on the idea that it would.” Lara held her breath, looking at the papers again. “This is over my head, Kelly. I’ve never tried using this power to discern before. What if I can’t?”

  “Then Annwn’s screwed,” Kelly said helpfully. “‘Spoken in a child’s word,’ Lar. Your superpowers are just starting to mature. Maybe you’ll be surprised what happens if you push them a little.”

  “It’s not a superpower.”

  “It totally is. It’s not quite as good as Wonder Woman’s golden lasso, but that’s only because a little bit of bondage can be fun. You’re totally a superhero, and you’re going to save the world.”

  “The horrifying thing is you believe every word you just said.”

  Kelly grinned as she poured mac and cheese onto plates. “Look, if I can’t be a superhero myself, at least I can be the plucky faithful sidekick. Do you want tartar sauce?”

  “With my macaroni and cheese?”

  “With the fishsticks I’m about to take out of the oven. Oh, crap, I forgot to make vegetables. I tell you, I should not be let loose in a kitchen. Thank God Dickon can cook.”

  Lara got up to root through the freezer and came out with a bag of corn. “You make tartar sauce, I’ll cook the corn. Vegetables will be accomplished. Did you talk to him?”