December 29, 2014. 4:03am

Shrewsbury, Vermont, USA

Ériu

I dreamt of my friends. I saw each of their faces: Morias, Fíadan, Tadg, Fern, Ruadan, and Monty. None of them said anything. Instead, they just looked at me with disappointment, and I was unable to explain myself to them. I tried for hours to wake myself from the nightmare, but I was only able to open my eyes when a noise in the woods jolted me fully awake.

The rest of the camp remained asleep. It was still deep into night or maybe very early into the morning. The fire had died down to embers, so the cold and dark would keep most people inside the warmth of their sleeping bags. For me, only the cold air was a problem. My eyes made short work of scanning the shadows for a mouse or deer or whatever comes out at night in the Green Mountains.

There were no animals near the camp that I could see. There was, however, a shape walking away from the camp. It wasn’t so much dark, as it was far away and seemed to be obscured by branches. It was small, maybe three or four feet tall. My mind began thinking back to the beings I had met recently in Annwn. This shape didn’t look anything like them. This looked like a person, a little person.

My eyes darted to the sleeping bag next to me. I pulled back the covers and saw that Jamie was gone. I looked around the shelter and saw each of the other children sleeping. All the adults were also accounted for.

I tried to calm myself, realizing I was now back on Earth and not in the Otherworld. In this world, there weren’t supernatural creatures trying to kill me every day. Still, I couldn’t shake the fact that Jamie had just gotten up in the middle of the night and wandered off in the cold.

But then again, if Jamie was just going to the bathroom, I didn’t want to cause a panic. I shrugged into the coat Keeley had given me, and slipped my boots on. Quietly, I tiptoed out of camp in the direction I had seen the boy walking.

I realized after walking for a few minutes that I had left my dagger and meshmail armor back by my sleeping bag. But I didn’t think it would really be a problem as this was a babysitting trip, not a battle. I walked for a few more minutes, looking for Jamie’s footsteps in the snow. I was getting a bit nervous. It seemed like a long way for Jamie to go just to use the bathroom.

That’s when I heard the heavy breathing. It wasn’t loud, but it was deep, like that of a lifelong smoker. Still, I didn’t see or hear Jamie. I continued forward and stumbled across the trail I had used when I frantically entered the campsite earlier that morning.

I looked back toward the camp and realized I could no longer see the shelter or the people. I looked to my right, and that is when I saw him. Sprinting toward me, with a crying Jamie under his arm, was the ugliest old man I had ever seen. He looked like a cross between Warwick Davis from the Leprechaun movies and Edward Scissorhands. His hands were enormous, with huge claws at the end of each finger. He wore a tattered brown tunic that looked more like a comforter someone had turned into a long-sleeved hospital gown. His eyes and teeth looked too small for his large head.

In short, the creature was freaky, and seeing it charge at me in the middle of a dark forest was more than a little disconcerting. I heard a deep, raspy voice growl “The child is mine!” just before the old, scary dude plowed into me. I heard the ripping of fabric and felt claws rake my back. I found myself laying facedown in the snow, warm blood trickling into my clothing. I looked up and saw Jamie looking back at me as the creature passed by. The púca was still crying, but his face looked…off. I watched as his features began to twist and turn, as they moved further away.

I had no idea what was happening. This thing was obviously not from Earth. But what kind of creature could come and go so easily from the Otherworld? My guess was that there were probably many, but my thoughts harkened back to the conversation I had with Nemain about two nights earlier. We had been discussing the mysterious figure building a rath in the hills around Findrias. What had she called it…a Badunk? No, that wasn’t right…the Bodach.

I suddenly knew how the boogeyman had gotten so close to us. We were in the mountains. There were numerous stones on every mountain in the world, stones enough to make circles, raths, and other structures with crossover points to Annwn.

Stolen novel; please report.

Almost as if reading my mind, the creature veered off the trail. I could see the still-changing shape of Jamie shifting in the Bodach’s massive hands. The monster was having trouble holding onto the boy as his body shifted.

I picked myself up from the snow, the gouges in my back burning, and began yelling to wake the púca back at camp. My feet took me after the child before my mind had decided to go.

The Bodach ran and I followed. My adrenaline sent me sprinting through the barren trees and brambles. I could feel hot blood running down my back and cold, wet snow falling into my boots with every step. But none of that mattered in the moment.

I heard shouting behind me. The camp was awake and it sounded like at least a few of the púca had joined the chase. I spotted a clearing just ahead. The Bodach was almost to a hillside, likely where he would jump back to the Otherworld. Would I make it in time?

The Bodach suddenly stopped. He looked around on the ground, where I saw a small white animal scurrying away. Was that Jamie? I knew púca were shapeshifters, but I didn’t know exactly what they could shift into.

The creature let out an angry growl and turned to fix his gaze upon me. I felt a little tickle in my head as the Bodach’s voice invaded my mind. “What are you?”

I answered him aloud. “I wish I knew. But this isn’t about me. You can’t just take the kid!”

He laughed. It was the kind of laugh that made me think of the Exorcist movies. It was as if there were two laughs going on at the same time. “Because you say it is wrong?” asked the voice in my head.

“No, because it is objectively wrong.”

“Is it evil when the wind destroys a house?”

“What?”

He repeated his words. “Is it evil when the wind destroys a house? What is morality to a force of nature?”

I rolled my eyes at him, but I was also aware that eventually this thing would charge me. So, I started doing something that I wasn’t accustomed to doing—thinking ahead!

Ever since I had exploded my energy shield in front of Cloudfair, I realized that my own creativity was likely holding back my use of the Control Energy boon. My basic understanding of how this power worked was that I was pulling ambient energy out of the world (and sometimes myself) and repurposing it.

I could then send my controlled energy out into the world like Cyclops from X-Men. I could form shields with it, and I could even explode it. What else might I be able to do with it? I looked at the Bodach’s razor-like claws and had an idea. I placed my hands behind my back and concentrated on what I wanted, and kept talking.

“I don’t really know what you are. I don’t even know what I am. Until last week, I didn’t even believe in the boogeyman or fairies. This week, I can talk to snakes with my brain and my BFF is a fairy warrior. The world isn’t what I thought it was, but I know there’s still one objective truth. You don’t take children away from their families!”

I smiled as I wrapped up my good-guy monologue, then whipped my hands in front of me to show the Bodach my new, kick-ass Wolverine-style energy claws. “Mine are bigger than yours,” I taunted.

Two things happened in that moment, only one of which I was expecting. The first was that the Bodach charged. The second was that I began to hear whispers in my mind. The whispers increased in volume until they became the screams of hundreds of voices.

Side note: Screaming in your mind can be a bit distracting. So, by the time the Bodach had reached me, I wasn’t ready with my A-game. My first couple of swipes connected to nothing but air. His, on the other hand, tore into my right shoulder and under my left armpit. With every slash, the voices in my head grew louder.

I swiped wildly and on one occasion, it felt like I might have connected with the Bodach. But I was getting frantic. The volume of the screaming was reaching a level that was making it nearly impossible to focus on anything else. I fell to my knees and grasped at my head.

The Bodach approached, laughing. My blood dripped from his claws, as he readied them again to deliver a killing blow.

“You are one ugly mother…” I started to say as the Bodach raised his arm. His slash was interrupted when he screeched in pain, pulling his foot away from a small, white ferret with blood dripping from its jaws. It was Jamie, I thought.

The Bodach raised his foot to stomp on the ferret. My head was splitting, but my protective instinct took over and I pounced. I did my best Wolverine impression and drove both sets of energy claws into the old, creepy man. I landed on top of him, still connected to him through the claws. He looked up at me and was lifting his own claws to tear at my face when I dissipated my claws inside of him.

The torso of the boogeyman exploded in a wave of bloody viscera. My hands cracked open from where the energy claws had been tethered to my body. Blood splashed over the trees and shrubs in the forest and the once-white ferret was tie-dyed a dark red. I had been knocked back into a tree by my blast, and I slowly sank to my knees, the voices in my mind doing a decrescendo.

I could feel deep wounds on my back, my torso, and my shoulders. Looking at my hands, I could see the bones of my knuckles. I tried to flex them and realized I couldn’t make them open or close. I had badly injured my tendons or ligaments or whatever it was that normally made my hands work.

My mind reeled and I felt lightheaded, but I started laughing there on my knees in the snow. A bloody, but unharmed Jamie, back in his púca shape, approached me and threw his arms around my neck. The other púca crashed through some nearby foliage, entering the clearing with panicked looks. I must have been a sight, given Becca threw up in a nearby bush when she got a good look at me.

Roy and Keeley came forward and looked at the pool of blood melting the snow. Keeley picked up the head of the boogeyman, understanding registering in her eyes. Everyone stared at me, but I just kept laughing.