Why I Let My Hair Grow Out (15 page)

I brushed the dirt away from the metal and was blinded for a second, as sun glinted off the pure gold and directly into my eyes. It was a gleaming gold circle, the size of a bracelet. Without thinking I stuck my hand through it.

“Do you like it? I'll give you a good price.”

“I don't have any money,” I heard myself say. My voice was slow and warped-sounding, as if I were underwater.

“Come, dear, you must have
some
money. I'll take half of what it's worth. You were meant to have it. Look how it matches your hair.”

My hair. Long and flowing, the color of fire and gold.

the long-ago marketplace Where i'd suddenly found myself was wall-to-wall people, pushing, pointing, haggling, buying. There were heaping baskets everywhere of fruit, vegetables, cheese, eggs, fish and stuff you'd never find at Lucky Lou's: animal skins, armor, weapons and, in front me, jewelry.

The jewelry seller was a sharp-featured woman, slender and dark, Italian-looking, really, and roughly middle-aged (though it was hard to tell with these Long-ago people, who spent most of their days outdoors with no access to sunscreen and teeth whiteners and plastic surgeons). The woman had bracelets up and down her arms, dozens of necklaces draped around her neck and rings on every finger.

“That's a lot of bling,” I heard myself say.

“I make it all myself,” she boasted, grabbing my hand and lifting my wrist up until the bracelet caught the sunlight. “See? Pure gold! Melted in the furnace that was my father's. Show me another woman skilled as I am in forging metal into such beauty as you see here!”

Fergus was here. I saw him bobbing up and down in the throngs of people, waving and calling to me. I wanted to go to him but I didn't seem to be able to move. I could only watch as he pushed his way through the crowd to where I was. People pushed back but he didn't draw his sword once. I knew this took real restraint on his part.

“Ah, never mind about the money!” said the woman, following my gaze. “Your husband will pay. How could he refuse when he sees how it flatters your beauty?”

“Morganne! Are you truly here? Or just a vision?”

Fergus's voice sounded oddly warped, like my own. I had the feeling I was only half-present in Long-ago, but the jewelry maker was still hanging on to my arm and that felt real enough.

No time even for hello. “Has Erin come back?” I demanded to know.

His face fell. “No.”

“How long has it been?”

“Almost two weeks,” he said, confused. “But you know that—you were there at the swamp—right before you disappeared again—”

“Of course I know it's not the
original
Spago! I meant the one in Beverly Hills. . . .”

Carrie's voice was buzzing in my ear like a fly, coming from somewhere not too far away. I felt myself slipping back. “Fergus, listen,” I said. “I can't stay long. But this woman—”

He waved dismissively. “She's just a conniving merchant; don't pay her any mind,” he said.

“No,
look
.” I grabbed his hand and made him touch the bracelet on my arm. “Fire and gold. That's how this was made. She forged it out of fire and gold. It's her.”

He stared at the leering, blinged-out jewelry maker. She grinned and there was a glint of gold on one of her teeth.

“Her?” he said, horrified. “
She's
the one who has to marry the king?”

“Equally comfortable in scepter or jeans,” I babbled. “But she has to be willing, so don't say anything to freak her out, okay?” My vision swirled, and I knew I wasn't making sense. “Sorry, I gotta go, Fergus” I said. “But don't worry. I'll be back. I'll find her. I'll find—”

“Morgan!”
screeched Carrie, who was clutching my arm hard enough to make little white fingerprints on my skin.

I held my wrist out so she could slide the earring off.

“I found it,” I said, dumbly.

“Oh my God!
Oh my God!
I
love
you! You
saved
my
ass
! If you ever come to LA I am
so
taking you to Spago for lunch, you fabulous, brilliant person you!”

But I hadn't found what I was looking for. Not yet.

fifteen

plucking carrie's earring Out Of the dirt, golden-needle-in-Irish-haystack style, only added to my growing legend among my tour mates. At dinner Sophie Billingsley asked me if I was magic. I just smiled and helped cut her steak. Her mother was not at the table; apparently Mrs. Billingsley was having some kind of digestive upset and was in her room, with her husband taking care of her.

I'd volunteered to mind Sophie and Derek at dinner. Why not? They both acted much more pleasant when their parents weren't around.

“Did you know,” Sophie confided, as I squeezed more ketchup onto her plate, “that I can see faeries?”

“Really,” I said. Tammy said stuff like this all the time. I guess I should have paid more attention. “Where do you see them?”

“Everywhere!” she said. “Well, in flower gardens, mostly. And where mushrooms grow. But soon I'll be too old,” she added, sadly. “Like Derek.”

“Too old for what?”

“To see them. That's what they tell me, anyway.”

“Well, I'm not too old to see them,” I said. “So you won't ever be either.”

She had to think about that for a minute. “That's fine, then,” she finally said, serenely. “Will you play with me later? After dinner?”

I looked across the table at Colin. He was listening kindly to Lucia, who'd gotten much more talkative today. “That would be great, Sophie. But I promised Colin I was doing something with him after dinner.”

“What?”

“I don't know,” I answered truthfully. “But I promised, and a promise is a promise.”

“It won't be as fun as the faeries,” she said, stuffing a last bite into her mouth. Then she ran outside to join Derek and Johannes. Johannes had offered to give the kids horsy rides on his back. I could hear him whinnying and neighing. Quite convincing, really.

 
 
as it turned Out, What i'd promised Colin Was to go skinny-dipping at the beach after dark. He parked the van in the near-empty lot, and I breathed in the familiar salt tang of the sea.

Growing up in Connecticut not far from the coast meant I'd had plenty of beach time in my life. Family beach trips with Mom and Dad and Tammy, gang-of-girlfriend beach trips with Sarah and our old crowd, nighttime make-out beach excursions with Raph and his entourage. Raph was a big one for the beach and for making out, but he never went anywhere without his posse. They'd leave empty beer bottles on the sand and have peeing contests in the water: Who could pee furthest, longest, highest. Classy, right?

I'd gone with them, of course, even though I always ended up sitting there shivering and embarrassed. When Raph's buddies had girlfriends, the girlfriends would come too, but Raph
always
had a girlfriend. Before me it was this girl named Stephanie. She was a junior like Raph so I didn't really know her, I just knew who she was.

“Too bossy.” That's what Raph had told me about Stephanie. “Too stubborn.”

By now—mid-July—the Connecticut beaches would be packed, the water would be warm. Colin and I were on this side of the Atlantic, Raph was on the other. Maybe it was because I had a lot on my mind, but at the moment I didn't really care who Raph was with. That surprised me, a little.

 
“people think Of surfing and they think Of hawaii,” Colin said, as we walked along the sand. He had a blanket and two towels tossed over one shoulder, and he was talking in his high-energy tour-guide voice. “But Ireland has some of the finest beaches you'll find anywhere. Just had the national wind-surfing championships right here in Elly Bay. Rained the whole fekkin' time of course. Which is why,” and he looked at me to make sure I was being sufficiently entertained by his monologue, “people think of Hawaii.”

The beach was beautiful, moonlit and nearly empty. And I would have been entertained, charmed, swooning with happiness even, if I wasn't brooding on how to get back to Long-ago and find Erin.

I wished I could tell Colin why I wasn't bubbling over with delight and flirtiness.
A cruel irony
is what Sarah would have called it: me, an adorable and interested guy (with an accent no less), on an after-hours beach date that should have been a perfect summer-romance moment. And I was distracted, faking my way through as best I could because my mind was a million miles away.

Scratch that. My mind was right here. Just a few thousand years off schedule.

Should
I tell Colin what was going on? He deserved to know why I was being so distant, and I was dying to confide in anyone who could help me figure out what kind of alternate universe I'd been head-whacked into. But Colin was a passionate nonbeliever in things magical and mystical. Would my time-warped tale spoil whatever attraction he was starting to feel for me and convince him to take me back to the hospital, the psych ward this time?

Probably. But like a moth dive-bombing into a neon sign that read MOTHS DIE HERE, I couldn't seem to stop myself from finding out.

“Colin,” I said, as he smoothed the sand with his bare feet to make a spot for us. “There's been something I've been wanting to tell you, but I haven't, because I don't know how you're going to react.”

“Let me guess,” he said, as he shook out the blanket he'd swiped from the inn. I caught the far corners in midair. “You've got a boyfriend at home, and you both agreed what happens in Ireland stays in Ireland, but you thought I should know on the chance I was dumb enough to think you actually fancied me—that sort of thing?”

I was shocked. “Of course not!” I said. We both sank to our knees in the sand while holding on to the edges of the blanket, which floated down slowly, like a tired parachute. “That's gross. Is that what you thought I was going to say?”

He brushed the sand off his legs, sat on the blanket and shrugged. “Doing what I do, I meet girls from all over the world. Some of them consider it part of the holiday, bagging some local action before going home to the hubby. Bit of a souvenir, you know?” Colin looked out at the dark water, away from me. For once the cheerful tone of his voice seemed forced. “You learn the hard way not to get too attached.”

I was glad he couldn't see my face, because
rebound souvenir
is more or less exactly how I'd pegged Colin when I first met him. But that was two very long days ago, and what I'd felt then and what I was feeling now were as different as earth and water, fire and gold. I liked Colin, I knew I did. But there was an awful lot I hadn't told him.

“I don't have a boyfriend,” I answered, as we both sat there looking out at the water. “I really don't, Colin.”

Hearing myself say it was like casting a spell that made it, finally, true.
Aloha, Raph,
I thought, probably because Colin had mentioned Hawaii before. It was midafternoon in Connecticut, a lovely time for a swim.

For a long while all we could hear was the rhythmic whooshing of the sea and the high screech of the seagulls.
No, Colin, I don't have a boyfriend, but there is this hunky warrior-dude
I like, mostly because he looks a lot like you, but don't sweat it because by now he's been dead for thousands of years. . . .

“No boyfriend, eh? That's lucky for me, then,” Colin said, softly. “But then again, I tend to be a very lucky person.”

I was about to ask him how he could believe in luck when he didn't believe in magic or faeries, but then I thought I'd be better off trying to improve my own luck. So I kissed him instead.

 
 
but the earth must be turned Without tilling....

Soon we were so breathless and crazed from making out that we stopped, because if we didn't stop we wouldn't have, and this was much too sweet to let happen so fast.

I even temporarily forgot about my other self, my other world, the life-and-death responsibility that was waiting for me in a place I had no idea how to get back to. That's the kind of kisser Colin was. The kind that makes you forget everything else till your toes wiggle with electric shocks of pleasure and your civilized human brain shuts down completely, leaving only the primal lizard make-out brain in charge. We were lying next to each other on the blanket now, and I was touching him without even knowing that I was.

“Have a little mercy, there, darling,” he said, moving my hand to safer ground. “I'm a healthy young bloke and the management cannot be held responsible if you leave your possessions unattended.”

I cracked up. “What does that mean?”

“It means my luck seems to be holding up.” He snickered, Groucho Marx style. “Well up.”

“Luck?” I murmured, arching myself close enough to him that I could feel the heat of his body again. “I thought you didn't believe in that kind of stuff.”

“Just because I think Ireland should join the twenty-first century does not mean I'm a complete prig, Miss!” he said, propping his head up on his hand and grinning down at me. “I've been known to play the lottery. I read my horoscope like the next man.”

He brushed his lips across the top of my head. “Soft as a peach,” he whispered. “Just like you, Mor. You're a peach yourself, aren't you? One thing on the outside, something completely different, softer and sweeter, underneath.”

Erin.
I thought of Erin eating the peach. Where was she now?

My hands were safely stowed, but one of Colin's had crept under the bottom of my shirt, as he talked quiet music in my ear.