December 29, 2014. 12:05am
Shrewsbury, Vermont, USA
Ériu
When I opened my eyes again, I found myself standing in the middle of the woods, up to my shins in snow. I could still taste the rowan berries in my mouth. The tartness of the berries melded perfectly with the sweetness of the honey. Unfortunately, it was my other senses that were starting to take priority. I was COLD.
I still wore my Otherworldly gear, which consisted of leather boots that were thankfully wool-lined, my léine, my trews, and a cloak. I could feel right away that my clothes were ill-equipped to deal with the sudden temperature change. I had been transferred from a roughly 70-degree room to what appeared to be a below-freezing mountain path. Where was I? This outcome was something I hadn’t even considered.
I squinted, and thought I could see a trail of sorts running in front of and behind me. Which way to go, I wondered. I couldn’t see or hear anything that led me to believe civilization was around the corner. The path looked mostly flat, so I picked randomly, choosing the direction straight ahead.
The snow was mostly packed except for a thin layer of what looked like recent snowfall. There was no way to tell how much packed snow there was unless I stepped off the trail, and I was NOT about to do that. I knew that places in the mountains could have a base of snow ranging up to 10-20 feet.
I walked for ten or fifteen minutes and was starting to consider turning around to try the other direction when I heard laughter ahead. Between the trees, I thought I could see the flickering of a fire. My pace quickened, though I tried my best to temper my excitement so that I didn’t wander off of the trail.
I followed the trail around a cluster of trees to find a small wooden structure in a clearing. In hiking terms, I was pretty sure structures like this were called “shelters.” This particular shelter was on the small side and had five figures sitting under the overhang of the roof. They appeared to be warming themselves by a small fire, while they passed a bottle around.
I approached the group slowly and gave them the universal sign that I wasn’t a complete weirdo…I waved. Two women gave a cautious wave back. The other three members of the group, another woman and two men, did not. The woman got up and went into the shelter. That was not the result I was hoping for.
One of the men stood and approached me. He had the fire to his back so I couldn’t see his face clearly, but the rest of him gave me pause. His hand was resting on the handle of an axe, though it looked like a wood chopping axe, not a battle axe like I had seen in the treasure vault in Gorias.
“Can I help you?” he asked, looking at me in a less than helpful way.
“C-c-could I s-sit down b-by the fire?” I asked, through chattering teeth. I must have looked like a walking snowman. My normally grey cloak was already covered in a layer of snow. I tried to shake it off, revealing my garb underneath. The man’s eyes went wide, and he took a hasty step back and narrowly missed stepping into the fire.
The group behind him scattered as he gracefully danced around the fire and into the spots where they had been sitting. Now the remainder of the group was also standing. All four of them looked at me with suddenly terrified eyes. One of the women began to cry, before turning to run into the shelter the first woman had gone into. Now that I was a little closer, I could see the other woman sitting at the far end of the structure with several other, smaller figures. Children.
I put up my hands to show I had no weapons. “I d-don’t mean any h-h-harm,” I tried to say.
“How did you find us?” The man with the axe demanded. He looked like he was doing his best to regain his composure.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
I didn’t answer. I just shuffled forward into the warmth of the fire. I knelt down on the dry part of the ground under the awning, and the people there took several steps away from me. One of the men went into the back with the two women and the children. Axe-man and the remaining woman stayed within chopping distance of me while I tried to regain the feeling in my frozen fingers. The woman slowly walked over to a pile of logs and transferred a big wedge of firewood onto the fire.
“W-w-where am I?” I asked after several moments. The woman went rustling through a backpack and pulled out a winter coat.
“Clement Shelter in the Green Mountains…in Vermont.” She attempted to drape the winter coat over me. I nodded to her and wrapped it around me, not bothering to take off the other layers. I was still so cold.
The man came to stand next to the woman. “I’m Roy. This is Keeley. And if you didn’t come looking for us, what are you doing here?”
I didn’t know what he meant. Why would I have come looking for them? “Listen, if you’re in some kind of trouble…that’s your business. I’m not looking to tell anyone where you are.”
They exchanged confused looks. The woman reached out and put an hand on my shoulder. “We know where you came from, love. Roy just wants to know if you have come here to hurt us or if you are going to try to bring us back home.”
She couldn’t mean Annwn, could she? What were the chances that I would come through into Ériu…errr…Earth right next to a group of Otherworlders?
“I’m not here to hurt you. I held their gazes a long moment, hoping they could see the sincerity in my eyes. “And I obviously wasn’t planning to appear here in the mountains.” I motioned to my clothes.
“What is your name?” Keeley asked.
“Bren,” I replied, thinking that Búachaill was an epithet that I no longer deserved.
“How did you end up on the Long Trail in the middle of the winter?” Roy asked me, finally relaxed enough to sit down with Keeley by the fire. The others still had not come out of the back of the shelter.
“Oh, you know…gods…” I said, not knowing exactly what I should say or shouldn’t say.
Keeley let out a hearty laugh, whereas Roy just looked uncomfortable. He looked back and forth between us, not knowing whether to smile or not.
“It’s okay, Roy,” I said. “I’m not… affiliated with Falias or the Tuatha any longer.”
“That sounds like quite the tale."
Still smiling, Keeley said, “And by the looks of things, whoever sent you here was not happy with you…Midwinter in the Green Mountains with no cold weather gear.”
I shrugged. “This sort of thing seems to happen to me no matter which direction I’m traveling.”
Roy turned to the others and motioned them forward. One of the children was pointing at me. A woman took his hand and brought him with her to the fire.
“This is Colin, Becca, Leslie, and this little guy is Jamie,” Roy said, pointing to the child. They waved at me nervously. “Everyone, this is Bren.”
Jamie squirmed enough that Becca finally let go of his hand. He tentatively came toward me and put both hands on my face. Seeing him close up, I would have guessed he was about nine years old. “I smell Rowan berries,” he announced. “Do you have any more?”
I shook my head. “Sorry, buddy. But if I had any more, I would definitely share them with you.”
“That’s okay,” Jamie said, then paused. He looked back at the adults as if to ask them a question and thought better of it. Instead he turned back to me. “Will you let us go home now?”
“What?” I said, taken aback. Who did this child think I was?
“Poppa Roy said that the big people are being bad and the king thinks we are friends with them. Momma Becca and Momma Leslie says that it is not safe back home. Are you here to tell us it’s safe to go back now?”
It finally clicked. These people weren’t human. They probably weren’t even changelings, but shapeshifters. Whatever they were, they were clearly Fae the Tuatha had marked as enemies of the state in the Slaugh Doctrine. I activated my Rings on the boy.
Name: Jamorin
Race: Púca
Current Power Rank - Level 1
Current Progression Status:
Physical Progression +0
Mental Progression +0
Spiritual Progression +1
“If it were up to me,” I said to the boy, “I would definitely let you go home.” I reached out and rustled the kid’s tawny hair. That was my go-to move when kids his age were around.
He seemed to understand that I wasn’t in a position to help or hinder their plight and plopped down next to me by the fire. We sat like that for several minutes and then the boy laid down and rested his head on my leg. I wasn’t sure what to do at first, but the adults started to gather around the fire, several burying themselves into heavy-duty sleeping bags. Kelley set a spare sleeping bag next to me.
I watched the group say goodnight to one another, before helping Becca tuck the sleeping “Jamie” into his own sleeping bag. He wanted his bag moved out of the back of the shelter and next to me near the fire. I watched the little púca breath heavily as he fell back asleep.
How must it feel at his age to not know if you will ever see your home again? For the first time since leaving Annwn, I wondered if I had made the wrong decision. There was a war being waged, and I was now on the sidelines.