December 21, 2014. 8:19am

Caerwent, UK

Ériu

The hill turned bright. My eyes burned with the light of the sun. In that moment, I lost all sense of time. I heard a deep voice, broken up as if it were calling from far away, before eventually becoming more clear.

It was unmistakably masculine, and somehow also soft and nurturing. It was impossible to not feel completely overwhelmed and connected to it:

“I can see you, Bren, as can all that search for you.”

I didn’t know what to say. The words flowed into me and through me. I knew in my bones the words represented truth, even though I couldn’t process their meaning:

“Boons and domains cannot be granted while you reside in Ériu.”

Each word slammed into my mind, nearly knocking me over. The light started to dim and I forced my eyes closed against the overwhelming sensations. Eventually, I heard a different, familiar male voice, saying my name.

“Bren! Are you okay?” Tathan was by my side, shaking me while he held me up. My knees felt weak and unsteady. I continued to hold onto the druid stone to better balance myself.

“I don’t know. What just happened?”

My eyes began to refocus on the hill. It looked different. The dawn light was upon us, yet there were still shadows among the trees and stones of the hill. Between the shadows leaped familiar colors. They appeared as wisps of air and light, flitting from object to object. These colors were the remnants of the voice and light that had nearly consumed me moments before.

“Can you see that?” I asked Tathan, feeling a bit alarmed.

He smiled at me and scanned the hillside where I was watching the color bound away. “Aye. Those are the colors of the Otherworld. But don’t worry… only you and I can see them.”

“That’s actually why I’m concerned.”

“What I mean is, anyone who has been to Annwn—the Otherworld—can see the wisps of the weave.”

“Still concerned!” Nothing he was saying seemed to make any sense to me. My heart beat faster and I could feel a cold sweat begin to dot my forehead. I pulled away from Tathan and began backing up the hill.

Tathan put his hands up reassuringly. “I brought you up here, this morning, to help you remember your past.”

I continued backing away from him as he talked. Around him, the structures and vegetation on the hill began to change. As the colors passed over certain objects, they appeared to grow and move. Tathan himself looked different. His clothes were changing. They flashed between his modern hiking gear and a more rustic woolen robe.

I rubbed my eyes. “I think someone drugged me last night.”

“No one drugged you.” Tathan took a cautious step toward me. “The veil between this world and the other is thin for the moment. You are seeing all of this through a lens that has no temporal rules. The weave sometimes interacts with the mortal world in very strange ways. Tell me what you see.”

This man had been my caretaker for four years. He was the closest thing to a father I had in the world, but at that moment he looked completely foreign to me. So I did the only thing that I could think to do. I ran.

Up the hill I went, sprinting past the other druid stones. The path continued going up and up toward the crest of the hill. I didn’t know if Tathan was following. I couldn’t hear anything except the pounding of my heart and the growing sound of a whistling wind.

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Before long, I found myself gasping in huge lungfuls of air. My sprint had turned into a slow, exhausted shamble. As I slowed, I began hearing voices on the wind.

“Who’s there?” I asked, turning and looking in all directions. In my haste, I stumbled backward into a low depression. Rocks dug into my back and I could feel the frozen dew from the grass melting onto any exposed skin that touched the ground.

I was lying at the bottom of what could only be described as a pit made from rough-hewn boulders. I struggled to my feet and looked at the long grass growing between the rocks. This must be the Iron Age hill fort that Tathan had mentioned. It was clearly a man-made depression.

As that thought passed through my mind, the colorful light found me again and began changing the stones around me. I saw them grow and lock in place with the other stones. I saw the grass recede back down through the cracks in the rocks. I saw the rocks extend up into a roof. I bolted back up the rocks before I could be closed in. And I began running again up the hill.

“Hey, Shorty.” The high-pitched, female voice had a strange accent. I stopped. I knew that voice from somewhere.

“I hear you,” I said to the air.

The voice said something back to me, but the words were carried away in the wind. I looked around and saw that I had reached the top of the hill. It was flat and had been deforested over time. A fierce, frozen wind blew from the west, and as nothing was hindering its path, it blew the warmth from my body.

“Bren.” I turned to see Tathan behind me. He was doubled over from his heavy breathing. Clearly, he had been trying to keep up with my dash up the hill.

I took a step backward. “Tathan, I’m really freaking out here. You aren’t really my manservant, are you?” I paused for a moment to catch my own breath and to let the gravity of all that had transpired sink in. “What the hell is going on?”

“Would this be the wrong time to tell you that my name is not really Tathan?” Tathan chuckled uneasily at my shocked expression.

“No kidding?” I said, trying to hold back my utter sense of disorientation. “Of all the things that have gone on this morning, that is the least of my concerns.”

“My real name is Morias. But I have gone by many names over the years. Tathan is actually a name I used when those Roman walls, back in town, were just newly built. Back then, they called me Tathyw, but the Roman influence stuck.” He shrugged. “So, Tathan it became.”

“Thank you for that enlightening history lesson… But do you really expect me to believe you’re 2,000 years old?”

He smiled. “Oh, I’m much older than that.”

“What is happening right now? Are we both losing our minds?”

“No. We are not losing our minds, but I am only able to explain some of what you need to know.”

“Fine.” And though my world had suddenly been turned upside-down, something about that moment felt inherently correct. I looked at the man before me as if for the first time, and it felt real. His gaze told me that he too felt as if a barrier had been removed.

He sighed. “First, your parents weren’t killed.”

“Are my parents spies or something?” I couldn’t help but interrupt. We had been building this dynamic for four years.

“This is one of those moments…” he began.

“Where I need to work on listening?” I said, trying to finish his thought.

“Aye.” He paused. “I can only tell you so much. If your parents are still alive, they live in a place called Annwn, with your people.”

“What do you mean, my people?”

“Annwn is a realm of magic. Of gods and of the sídhe. Your people are the sídhe.”

“Wait, what?“

The look on his face told me he wasn’t sure how best to proceed. “Walk with me to the western edge of the hill. It’s only about a 5-minute walk.”

We set off across the top of Wolves Hill. There were parts where the only thing I could hear was the rushing of the wind, but there were also low spots where I was certain I could also hear a high-pitched voice calling my name.

We reached a great drop-off facing due west. In the distance, I could see the large town of Newport, where we had taken the train from London the day before. On the edge of the hill was another rough-hewn stone about the size of a water cooler.

Morias moved around in front of me and gestured at the stone. “This is ‘Lía Fáil,’ the Stone of Destiny. It has been in my care since the dawn of your time. There is another stone with the same name in Ireland. That one is a fake, as many have guessed over the years.”

I rolled my eyes. “The Stone of Destiny? Seriously, dude?”

“Bren, please don’t denigrate one of the most prized relics in either world.”

“Right, how silly of me. Please continue.”

“The Irish say that if the rightful king of Ireland puts his feet upon this stone, the stone will roar in joy.”

“Are you trying to say that I’m the rightful king of Ireland?” That would be so cool, I thought.

“No.”

“Then, you’re losing me.”

“I was entrusted with the task of preparing you for this day. Today the Stone of Destiny will return to Annwn, and you will be the one to take it.”

I looked down at the stone. The thing probably weighed as much as a small car. “You serious, Clark?” I laughed. He had to be joking. “I am the world’s strongest man!” I banged my chest and proudly set my foot on the stone.

Suddenly, there was a great crashing sound. It began like the sound of a car crash, then transformed into the roaring of a thousand lions, all in different octaves. I immediately jumped back, pulling my foot off the stone.

Morias smiled at me. “There is one other thing that you should know about the stone…” He trailed off. His attention moved back to the general area of the stone in question, and my eyes followed his.

A voice spoke from ground level, in that same high-pitched voice I had heard on the wind. “It shrinks!” announced the small, winged woman standing where the large stone been just a moment before. “Thanks for making it easy to find you, Shorty.” She reached down and picked up a rock about the size of my palm and tossed it to me. It bounced gracefully off my chest and fell back to the ground as my mouth hung open.

“Bren,” Morias said, “allow me to introduce you to Fíadan Ellyllon.”