The Dark Divide (46 page)
Authors: Jennifer Fallon
Brydie turned her attention back to the ceremony, guessing her chance to catch Jamaspa’s eye was fading fast. The
djinni
was unlikely to stay for the celebrations afterward. The feast. The free-flowing mead and the ensuing uninhibited revels that accompanied every solstice and equinox and resulted in most of the children born out of wedlock in Temair and
Sí an Bhrú
and probably every village in a ten-mile radius of the celebration.
‘I invoke thee,
Leucetios
god of thunder and storm,’ Colmán was saying, as Brydie turned her attention back to the Druids.
‘I invoke thee. The Bellona,
Bel
and
Caireen
, mother goddess. Defender of the young.’
‘I invoke thee
Caer Ibormeith
, goddess of sleep and dreams.’
‘I invoke thee
Sionnan
, goddess of the well spirits,’ the Merlin said, as Brydie started to wonder if this was ever going to end.
‘I invoke thee
Scathach
, guard of the Underworld.’
‘I invoke thee
Cebhfhionn
,’ Colmán said, his voice starting to crack a little. ‘She who guards the Well of Knowledge to bring inspiration to these boys.’
‘I invoke thee
Finncaev
, that they may know of love and beauty.’
‘I invoke thee
Somhlth
, god of pure masculinity, divine energy, that ye bring these boys safely to manhood.’
‘I invoke thee
Uathach
, to teach these boys to be great warriors.’
‘We invoke thee
Cliodna
, goddess of the waves, who with every ninth wave that breaks on the shore, brings us closer to her bosom.’
At last the Druids were done. As the last rays of the setting sun faded, Orlagh stepped forward to take each of the twins by the hand — Broc by the left and Cairbre by the right — to brand them magically with the symbol that would act as a conduit between the
Tuatha
and the Druids.
‘I invoke thee goddess
Danú
,’ she called, her voice sounding like the sweetest music imaginable, even to Brydie, trapped inside the jewel.
‘And I invoke you,
Niamh
, goddess who helps heroes at death, to take the souls of RónánDarragh and lead them to the Underworld where they may find eternal peace.’
And with that final word, the young boys standing before Orlagh cried out in pain as the triskalion made them its own and it was done.
The transfer was complete.
Sorcha was dying. She knew it in her bones. Especially in her bones. She ached like an old woman.
In this reality, she was an old woman.
Her youth, which had been artificially preserved by her time in
Tír Na nÓg
, was a distant memory in this realm. It had only taken a couple of weeks for the magical effects of her time in the Faerie kingdom to shake themselves off like leaves falling from a tree with the approach of winter, leaving her bent, old and decrepit, barely able to care for herself, let alone perform her duties as guardian to the Undivided, a task at which she felt she had failed miserably.
Sorcha knew she would never see her home again. The implications were alarming. It wasn’t that she had loved ones she would never see again. Any family Sorcha had in her own realm was long gone. Nor did she have any friend or acquaintance she would like to see again before she died. As
Lughnasadh
approached, and with Darragh still a captive and unlikely to be released soon, according to Jack, Sorcha fretted about dying because there was nobody left to perform the rituals required to see her into the Otherworld, and that bothered her more than she could say.
Sorcha was left with no choice, she realised, but to take it upon herself to get things ready, confident she would know when it was time.
Her first task was to find some woad. She needed to paint her body with the right symbols, so the gods would recognise her when she stepped into their realm. She had thought it might be hard to find here, but it turned out Jack had some growing in a neglected corner of his garden. The old man was fond of his glasshouse, but he had reached an age, he claimed, where kneeling down to pull up weeds in dubious weather was no longer satisfying enough to justify the pain of kneeling. Carmel had one of her nephews lined up to come in and do the grounds, she claimed, when Jack remarked that he should hire a gardener, but there had been no sign of him yet. That meant — fortunately — the small patch of woad growing in Jack’s garden remained undisturbed, and Sorcha had something to work with.
It was necessary to wait until Carmel left the house, however, before Sorcha could start her preparations. Sorcha knew the housekeeper wouldn’t like the mess she was going to make, or approve of the plastic milk containers full of urine she had collected over the past few days. It was a pity it was already September, Sorcha mused, as she made her way out into the garden in a misty, chilly rain. The best time for harvesting was really July or August. She went to gather the patch of wild woad, hoping the sound she could hear in the distance was Carmel’s car pulling out of the driveway, but she wasn’t sure. Her hearing, along with all her other faculties, wasn’t what it used to be.
With a great deal of effort, and a few embarrassing groans, Sorcha knelt down on the damp grass and grabbed a bunch of leaves from the woad nearest the edge of the garden bed. Woad dye was best made from plants in their first year. Once they blossomed and died in their second year of life, they weren’t much good for anything but collecting seeds.
She cut the long dark leaves near to their base with secateurs borrowed from Jack’s glasshouse, chopping away at the leaves of the younger plants until she’d filled a plastic supermarket carry bag. The plastic felt odd against her fingers, its texture unfamiliar and unnatural, but there was nothing more suitable in the kitchen.
Once she’d collected the leaves, she returned the secateurs to the glasshouse and headed back to the house, her pace frustratingly slow. She wasn’t sure where Jack was. He tolerated her presence in his home — prompted, no doubt, by her galloping decrepitude — but was disinclined to engage with her, and acted as if he really wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do about his unexpected and unwelcome guest from another reality.
With Carmel gone, Sorcha had the kitchen to herself. After she lined up the utensils and ingredients she would need, including her two bottles filled with urine, she washed the leaves well under the tap, marvelling still at the internal plumbing bringing clean water to so many rooms in the house. Once she’d rinsed them, she washed the leaves again, this time dipping them in a bucket full of warm water. Then she shook them out, a handful at a time, and cut off the stalks with one of Jack’s awesomely sharp kitchen knives.
Sorcha tore up the leaves into smaller sections by hand when they were washed. Despite the keen edge on the blades of Jack’s knives, it was much easier than chopping them. She threw the shreds into the largest pot she could find in Jack’s cupboards. It was on the stove, two thirds full of water, slowly coming to the boil. Sorcha had left the pot out last night, under the eaves of the glasshouse, to collect rainwater. The sparkling water that gushed from Jack’s taps had a strange smell about it that made her suspicious of its ability to react with the woad and make a decent dye. Unfortunately, Sorcha hadn’t collected enough rainwater to fill the pot, so she’d had to top it up from the tap. Hopefully, she had enough pure water to make it viable.
Once the leaves had steeped in the almost boiling water for about ten minutes, she lifted the saucepan from the heat and lowered it into the sink, which she’d filled with icy water. This part was critical, Sorcha knew. The liquid must cool down quickly, or the woad would break down and the dye wouldn’t work at all. Thanks to another invention of this realm that Sorcha considered a marvel — ice cubes — she was able to keep stirring the saucepan and adding ice to the sink, to cool the liquid down in as short a time as possible.
Once she was satisfied the woad tea was cooling, she put the lid on the pot and went about gathering the other items she needed for her journey into the Otherworld.
In her own world, once she had passed on, Sorcha’s body would be left exposed to the elements, away from the village and curious strangers, for at least nine days. Then her family would return and take whatever remains were left, dry them out and then bury them, either in the ground or under water. In her realm, a body was supposed to decompose in a way that returned the person’s essence to replenish the earth. That wouldn’t happen here, of course. She had no family and she suspected the people of this over-governed realm would balk at a decomposing body laying about for any length of time.
The worst of it
, Sorcha thought, as she opened the kitchen drawer to retrieve the largest carving knife — a poor substitute for the sword she would rather be buried with —
is that at my funeral, there will be nobody to perform the remembrances. There will be no drinking, no recounting of past deeds, no feasting … nothing.
Just an anonymous old woman slipping away, without anybody in this realm aware of the great warrior she had been until recently, when duty and perhaps a cruel twist of fate had stranded her in this magic-less realm.
The thought made Sorcha pause. This world wasn’t entirely without magic, she knew. The
Leipreachán
, Plunkett O’Bannon,
had survived here quite well. The trouble with this realm was that any magic to speak of would be concentrated in the Enchanted Sphere. The more depleted the world, the higher the Enchanted Sphere, and more difficult to reach. On a world like this one would have to travel to the tallest mountain ranges. If one was lucky and had the talent and the resources to access them, perhaps tall buildings, like the one destroyed in New York, reached high enough to touch it. But down here on the ground, there was nothing useful.
Not that it mattered if there was. Sorcha lacked even the slightest hint of magical talent. This realm could have been dripping in magic, and she would not have felt a thing.
‘What the feck is that smell?’
Sorcha slammed the drawer shut and turned to face Jack who was looking at the mess Sorcha had made of his kitchen, shaking his head.
‘Smells like a cat pissed in here,’ he said. ‘A whole frigging herd of them.’
‘It’s not cat piss,’ Sorcha informed him. ‘It’s mine.’
Jack stared at her. ‘Okay. I’ll bite. Why?’
‘I needed ammonia to extract the dye from the woad.’
The old man walked across the kitchen, jerked open the cupboard under the sink, and reached inside. He pulled out a plastic bottle with a screw top lid and slammed it on the counter. ‘I suppose the bottle marked “ammonia” wasn’t good enough for the job.’
‘I cannot read your language, old man. I am doing this the only way I know how.’
‘Why?’
‘Because that is what I know.’
‘I don’t mean why are you making woad the old-fashioned way,’ he said impatiently. ‘I want to know why you’ve trashed my kitchen and turned it into a public toilet to do it.’
Sorcha turned to check the woad soaking in the pot, wondering if it had been there long enough yet. ‘I need to get ready.’
‘For what?’
‘For
Lughnasadh
.’
‘What’s going to happen on
Lughnasadh
?’
‘Darragh will die, and with him any chance I have of finding my way home before I die of old age.’ She turned to face him. ‘Look at me, Jack. A week ago I was a young woman. Now it’s all I can do to drag myself out of bed each morning and make it down the stairs. I am going to die, and I want my body to be treated according to the customs of my people.’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ he said, looking at her in alarm. ‘You’re not going to die.’
‘If it’s possible,’ she told him, ignoring his denial, ‘I’d like you to leave my body outside for nine days, but I realise that might be difficult in this realm, so I need you to place my body in a large hole in the earth and then cover it. It would be good of you to cover it with layers of corn husks and maybe some small branches.’
‘Why small branches and corn husks?’
‘Because over them, you’ll need to put a layer of rocks. Once you’ve done that, you must fill the rest of the hole in and build a bonfire on top, which you must keep alight until the funeral is done. That should take no more than three days, or so.’
‘You’re fecking serious,’ he responded, looking alarmed.
‘Of course I’m serious,’ she said. ‘So listen carefully. It’s important to keep the fire going. It will dry out my body so there is no smell and any risk of disease will be eliminated. After that, I’d like to be buried in the woods. Somewhere I’m not likely to be disturbed.’ She turned back to check the woad again. ‘I have a few things I’d like to have buried with me, too, which will make my journey into the Otherworld easier.’
Jack studied her for a moment, muttered something under his breath and left the room without answering her. Sorcha glanced up in time to see him leave and then turned back to her pot of woad. She had much to do if she were to die properly. She would have to trust that Jack, when the time came, would do as she asked and ensure her journey into the Otherworld was as safe and comfortable as possible.
Pete Doherty and his twin brother Logan had made a pact, when they were younger, to meet every Friday for a drink. They’d promised — somewhat optimistically — to never break this sacred pact sworn over a large jug of Guinness on their eighteenth birthday and promised each other that nothing would ever be allowed to interfere: not studying, not work, not girls. Nothing.
The pact had lasted less than a year. At first it was their different schedules and workload at university that got in the way. Then they both found part-time jobs — Logan working for a local paper covering community events like suburban cat shows and weddings on Saturdays, while Pete got a job pulling pints in a pub near the campus where they shared a student crib with three French girls their mother represented at her agency. They both had jobs that made it harder to get together these days. Even now, Pete always felt bad on a Friday when another slipped by and they didn’t get a chance to catch up.