Swirling like translucent images in my mind: memories, all trying to get to the surface. It was like catching a motion of something moving in your peripheral vision, you turn and there’s nothing there. Was this the beginning of my lost memories returning? Part of me wanted to remember, but another part didn’t. At the moment I was siding with the part that didn’t want to.

Fiacuil marched on through the trees, swinging his sword back anf forth making a great path to walk on. I tried to tell him that it was all right to walk around some of the bigger vegetation, but he just laughed at that. He said, since I had denied him the opportunity to chop poets, that he still had to exercise. I was glad Madame Helga didn’t have to fight him. I hate to admit it but I was becoming partial to her surly nature and the lavender…”What’s it with the lavender already?”

I didn’t mean to say it out loud, but I noticed her neck stiffen and her cheek muscles twitch.

Fiacuil laughed again. He playfully chopped another tree out of the way. “Pheromones, shape shifters give them off to warn people to stay away, or come close…”

Helga remained silent.

“You would think it would be one or the other?”

“You would think so, but no. My wife was the same way. You never knew when she was going to kiss you or stick a knife between your ribs,” he reminisced. “How I miss that woman.”

Helga suddenly burst past us nearly nocking me off my feet and past Fiacuil, who prudently let her go. Her fury followed her like fumes.

“She’s as safe as me in these woods. If anything comes near her they’ll scent her and turn tail and…if they know what’s good for them.”

“I wish I had as much common sense.”

Fiacuil chortled.

“What happened to your wife?”

The big man shrugged his massive shoulders. “When your dad died it was the heart went out of us. Some transferred their allegiance, some died, some, like me, fought on, and now, I fight the world.”

“Why do you hate poets?”

He gave me a peculiar look. “They sing to the High King of the exploits of the new leader of the Fianna nah-Eirinn, your dad’s killer.”

I was about to say ‘my dad died in Afghanistan,’ but I decided to give up on that. “Who killed my dad?”

“Goll Mor mac Morna and his brothers, and they would have done you too, had my wife and I not thrown them off.” Suddenly he looked worried. “Those bloody poets. I bet they heard me call you Fionn. It’s only a matter of time before the Morna boys catch your scent.”

The details of my dad’s death in Afghanistan had been sealed. He had been part of the Special Forces. Because what they did was secret, not too much of the circumstances of their deaths were known. The report they had given mom was that it was an IED, but now, I was having my suspicions.

Just then, a keening sound, starting low and then pitching high, leapt into an ear drum bursting octave. There was no protection from the sound, not even my hands pressed to the sides of my head could muffled the sound. Something hit me in the head.

Fiacuil was throwing acorns at me. He tossed another, this time hitting me in the forehead. He motioned for me to put them in my ears. In desperation I stuffed them in, and almost if by magic the mind agonizing sound blinked out. Nothing, not a bit of sound could I hear.

Following Fiacuil, we ran off in the direction that Helga had taken. The trees quickly gave way, opening up to a grassy fen of grass and brackish water. Beneath a twisted, dead tree we saw what was making the sound.

It was a great bird like creature with massive, bat wings. Once, on a school field trip we had gone to the Museum of Art and Civilization. There had been a mad artist who had gotten the idea that it would be neat to plasticize corpses. He had replaced the bodily fluids with plastics, eventually preserving the cadaver. Seeing the skin and the fat peeled away from the body had fascinated and repelled me, especially the couple making out. The reason I’m mentioning this is because that was exactly what Cadaver-bat-woman looked like, except that instead of feet, it had claws.

And wrapped up in its stringy pink muscle exposed legs was an unconscious Helga. Fiacuil was running at the thing waving his big sword in the air, which was futile, because Cadaver-woman just opened up her massive wings and flapped away. We stood on the merge of the forest and fen and watched it slowly fly away.

I took a step into the Fen and Fiacuil grabbed my shoulder and pulled me back. Following his example I popped my own acorns out of my ears.

“We’ve got to follow, before we lose sight of it,” I explained.

“Don’t have to. I know where it’s going.”

“Where is it taking Helga?”

“Bloody poets. I’m telling you I should have chopped them. Well, the meddling girl got hers for stopping me.”

“Where?”

“You really like her, don’t you? I suppose that’s a good thing.”

“Who is it?”

“The King of Kerry, he’s your step-dad. He got all twisted when he lost Muirne. Went off his rocker, started looking for dead bodies and ‘doing’ things to them, to make them live again. I’ve been fighting him ever since.”

“Well we’ve got to rescue her, before he kills her and turns her into one of his things.” Then it occurred to me what Fiacuil had just said. “Muirne…are you talking about my mom?”

Fiacuil shuffled his feet apologetically. “Don’t be too hard on her. When your dad died, she needed a protector. I was on the run. She figured the King of Kerry was a good place to hide you. Of course she didn’t tell him who your father was. It worked for a while, but when he found out…”

Something weighed on the corner of my mind, like a memory trying to break through. “How did he find out?”

“You beat him at Chess, seven times,” explained Fiacuil. “Don’t ask me how he knew, he just did. Gave you that overweight porcine look of his and said: ‘you are no normal lad, you are Fionn, the son my wife gave to Uail mac Baiscne, and you are no longer welcome here.’”

“What happened?”

“The King of Kerry is a powerful man, but he was afraid of Morna and his sons, and he was no Uail. Of course your mom took you and fled. That’s when the King started going a bit weird and getting into the cadavers.”

“What does he want Helga for?” I asked.

“He doesn’t want her.”

“Then why did he…” I went to ask but suddenly knew the answer.

“For bait laddie, he wants you, because he knows that through you he hopes to get Muirne back.”

“That’s not going to happen,” I said in a cold determined voice.

Fiacuil hefted his massive sword, held it up to the dying sun so that the edge caught a gleam, and grinned. “Thought you might say something like that. Me and the King of Kerry have a score to settle, and I’ve been waiting for someone like you to breach the walls.”

“I don’t know…”

“Of course you can. Things will get clearer during the assault, but right now I need to get you a weapon.”

I followed him out onto the fen. Left to myself I would have soon drowned. The tufted topography of water and grass seemed all the same, but not to Fiacuil. There were times when it seemed as though he was walking on water. So, I followed him. As we zigzagged through the fen Fiacuil kept up a stream of good natured chatting.    

I learned that my dad was a great fighter, that it had taken treachery and overwhelming odds to bring him down. I wanted to tell him that explosive devices planted on the road side often had that effect, but the big guy seemed to be on a run. Names kept coming up: names like Morna, Goll Mor, Garra Dov, Art Og…really strange names that, bizarrely enough, felt familiar. Then the name of Cona’n slipped out of his lips.

“Conan the barbarian?” I asked. “My dad actually fought Conan the barbarian?”

“Bested him too. Cona’n, by himself was no match for your Dad.”

“He’s huge, muscles everywhere…”

Fiacuil kept trudging forward. “Bald as an egg, gruff as a badger, thick like a bear, right here,” Fiacuil pointed at his head and then laughed. “After you get past his foul mouth, he is pretty predictable in a fight.”

“Foul mouth?”

“Coming or going, he’d insult you, call you the most foul names. Woman, babe, man or beast, it wouldn’t matter. He would rain foul language down on them like spit from the heavens… ah, we have arrived.”

The other thing I learned. Fiacuil was still fighting a guerrilla insurgency, outnumbered and out gunned, or so it seemed.

“I don’t see anything.” I was staring at what seemed to be an endless expanse of fen, nothing but water and grass.

 “It’s right there,” said Fiacuil jabbing the air with the tip of his sword which disappeared. “Glamour, courtesy of my good wife. Just walk into it and you’ll see.”

Taking a step forward my foot disappeared, followed by my leg and then my entire body. On the other side was a great cave. Not a dark gloomy cave, but a cave that seemed to be glowing and flickering with light. This didn’t seem to please Fiacuil.

“I told her once I told her twice; the House Leprechaun she sent me is useless. All he does is sit around watching television all day, eating chocolates and complaining about how he lost all his gold during the investment meltdown in 08. I am more than capable of cleaning up after myself.” I followed Fiacuil as he stomped into his man cave.

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On one side of the cave’s wall was a massive television. It was wafer thin, but with a deep, high definition colour intensity that stunned me. On it flickered jumping scenes of gorgeous girls and hunky guys running across a beach. There was somebody out in the water flailing about, drowning.  Strewn all over the nicely tiled floor were empty, dirty dishes, half eaten meals. There was a pile of dirty clothing that would make Everest look small. Apparently, his House Leprechaun wasn’t doing a very good job, except watching television. In front of us was a massive chair which hid the perpetrator.

Fiacuil stuck his sword into the pile of dirty clothes, grabbed the back of the chair and swiveled it around. Instead of a diminutive little man with a red beard, green clothes and a big shiny belt buckle, there was Bovmall, my aunt. She held a long black remote control and poked it at Fiacuil like a knife. She wasn’t looking very happy.

“Can you explain to me why you have a plethora of bouncing, jiggling, giggling women programmed into your security device?” From the look on my aunt’s face, she was definitely not amused. She pressed down on a button and the screen became segmented into a number of smaller rectangles, all giving a different view of the fen and the forest. I suddenly knew how Fiacuil had been able to find the poets so quickly.

“Ah, well,” muttered Fiacuil his face becoming dark with guilt, and then noticeably brightening. “The Leprechaun you gave me. It must have been the Leprechaun.”

“The Leprechaun,” she said slowly taking a step closer to her husband who backed away. She was still a good half head taller than the large man. The sharpness of her features seemed very keen, like the edge of a sword. “The same Leprechaun that had a CV as long as my arm?”

“You know, words can lie.”

“The same Leprechaun,” she said her voice rising, “that had served the very High King?”

“Well,” said Fiacuil. As he backed up he gave a pleading look at the pile of dirty furs, and mouldering burlap loin clothes. “He didn’t like to do laundry.”

She poked him in the massive chest with one of her long fingers. “Didn’t like to do the laundry, didn’t like to do the laundry…” Then she was in his arms, hugging and kissing the hairy Animal.

I cleared my throat, just to remind them I was still there. Bovmall  broke away from Fiacuil, my presence bursting their domestic bliss. It was as though I had just appeared. While the sharpness of her face remained, her big eyes seemed to melt when she saw me. Was I a puppy or something? She stooped, which was odd, because I was pretty tall, and rubbed her hand on my head.

“How’s the wee one. I thought we had lost you when Helga knocked you into the hole.”

“You saw that?”

“We did, but we got there too late,” she said looking a bit sheepishly. “Lia didn’t want to miss the last card.”

“Last card?” I really had no idea what she was talking about.

Bovmall looked at the pile of laundry. “Bingo,” she mumbled and then rushed on picking up the remote control. She pressed a couple of buttons and the many small screens merged to form one. “Now, let’s see what is causing such problems.”

“How did you know anything happened?” asked Fiacuil suspiciously. His eyes widened. “You didn’t put the Find my Husband app on my cell phone.” He reached into his loin cloth, which must have had a pocket and pulled out, much to my surprise, a cell phone. After pressing a few buttons he looked at Bovmall in feigned shock. “I am offended that you should doubt my loyalty.”

Bovmall tumbled, head over heels, off her moral high ground, so she did the next best thing, ran a diversion. The screen was playing things backwards until we saw the winged creature nabbing Helga and flapping away across the fen. We looked rather stupid standing there unable to do anything.

“Kerry, has her,” grumbled Fiacuil.

“And why aren’t you after him. He’s like to have her turned into one of his beefy jerky plasticized zombies by now,” snapped Bovmall.

Fiacuil shook his shaggy head. “He won’t do that.”

“And why wouldn’t he be doing that?”

“Because he want’s Murine back.”

Bovmall’s tight, angular face went slack and pale. “Of course, I had forgotten that. You have a plan?”

“I was thinking we’d just go up there, start calling him names and get our behinds blasted off...of course I have a plan, woman.”

Bovmall crossed her arms. “Well, husband of mine, let’s have it.”

I felt Fiacuil’s massive arm and weight as he draped it over my shoulders. “Young Fionn needs a spear.”

“He needs a spear. You’re going to be poking Kerry with a spear. Oh, what will you be doing while he is suiting Kerry up as meat on a stick? I suppose you’ll be swinging that massive big sword around, and yelling your favourite war chants. A good plan, except,” her voice rose perceptively, “he’s made of plastic, and unless you melt plastic he’ll last for a thousand years.”

She had a point. If Kerry had done to himself what he had done to his creations, he had extended his expiration date substantially.  She was right, plastic was very hard to get rid of. There was a massive island of plastic floating in the middle of the Pacific.

Fiacuil was now at the back of the cave, looking really animated. He motioned us over to what looked like a long stick draped in canvas. He flourished his hand over it like it was a great give away prize in a game show, and then snatched the canvas away. It looked like a normal spear except the blade was covered entirely in wax.

“What have you done? If I told you once, I told you a dozen times, never dabble in magic. Leave that to me.”

“Me?” protested Fiacuil, “it was that Leprechaun you sent me. Only thing he was good for.”

Curious. I knelt down to get a closer look at the head of the spear. Underneath the clear wax, I noticed that it was coated in some type of white substance, and suddenly I knew.

“That’s white phosphorous. It bursts into flame when it’s exposed to air. My dad hated white phosphorous grenades. He said they were a coward’s way.”

“It is, it is, but when you’re made of plastic...” explained Fiacuil.

“Well, then he’d melt.”

“You’ll need a diversion to get past his defenses,” pondered Bovmall. Apparently she must have thought his plan had some merit. But that will wait a moment.”

She turned on me, her eyes becoming all soft and big again, and that set me on guard.

“Mom?”

“We’ve placed her in the Vault, so, for the time being, she’s safe, but Cliodhna is back and she’s really, really angry.”

I was suddenly conflicted between wanting to free Helga and going back to fight Cliodhna.

“Don’t worry, we can handle her for now, besides, if you were to come back without your memories then you would be next to useless.”

My birthday was only a day away. In fact all I had to do was take the night, free Helga and then get back to the Library the next morning. Who needed sleep when someone was trying to kill your mom. “I’m eighteen tomorrow.”

Bovmall made a sour face. “If we get the timing right, yes.”

“What do you mean, get the timing right?”

“Well, it’s not an exact science, but when people visit Faerie, time tends to warp. What would seem like a day in Faerie could be a year in the place you came from. I’m sure it will be all right, Tia is one of the best druid time manipulators. I’m just saying this so that you’ll be ready.”

“Are you saying we might get back too late?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

I chewed on the inside of my mouth. “You can get us back?”

Bovmall nodded. “Yes, but so many trips in such a short period of time will put me into a coma. I’ll have to sleep for about a month, so, I’ll be totally useless.”

I reached out, grabbed the spear, making sure I didn’t let the wax covered head brush up against anything. “So, what type of diversion do you have in mind?”