Dagda slapped his big belly with delight and shouted, “Last one in is a dirty leprechaun.” With that he ran up the steps and jumped into the boiling cauldron. H pulled me back just in time as the tidal wave spouted up over the rim and came down on The Morrigan, drenching all three of them.
They gave a tight, painful smile and glared at me. “Oh, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought about eating him. But he has his purpose, just as you do, now.”
Walking stately, The Morrigan proceeded up the steps, placed their toes into the water, to test the temperature, and then like a water snake slid down into it and out of sight.
Semias, working like a devil, had the black metal hatch open in the side of the cauldron, and was feeding shovels of coal into the raging fire. He was taking great delight in the work and a mephistophelian glow was emanating from his mean little face. He happily snarled up at us.
A great mist was boiling out from the top of the cauldron and spilling down onto the floor. In moments everything would be so obscured we wouldn’t be able to see.
“What’s his problem?” I asked H.
She shrugged. “You’d be nasty to, if you were a slave.”
“A slave?”
“He’s not really a midget. He’s a Formorian, a harmful, destructive power from nature.”
“Oh, nature,” I said trying to understand, “like the wind, or rain...”
She was staring at me again like I was insane. “No, nothing like that, more like chaos, tornadoes, earthquakes.”
“Oh, that side of nature. Don’t tell me, he gave The Morrigan his trowthe?”
“No, dad kicked his but in a duel, and since you can’t really kill a Formorian, this was the cost of his defeat.” She nodded. The mist was now up to our chins. “You’re next.”
“Is it true, what you’re mom said about your visa?”
She nodded gloomily.
“How long before you get another one?”
Her mouth went tight. “That depends on mom.”
“Forgive me, but your mom doesn’t seem all that dependable.”
“Oh, she is. You can depend on her collecting on a promise. You see, The Morrigan has a way of getting everything she wants.” She glared at me meaningfully, “and I mean everything.”
“That must include you,” I said trying to cheer her up.
“No, no, you don’t understand. I’m just another tool in her little box. She lets me do what I want to do, until she needs me, then...”
What could she force H to do? Then I remembered her shape shifting ability and the big, black cat. I also remembered her taking on the enormous troll at the Kerry Centre.
“What does she want to use you for?”
“I don’t know, but it will probably involve killing something or someone, it usually does.” She gave a sad exasperated sigh. “You don’t know how refreshing it has been studying in your world.”
Feeling her anxiousness, I reached out and put a hand on her arm. She flinched but didn’t totally draw away. “Listen, we’ll find a way, together. I have no plan on being controlled by your mom.”
She looked at me with those enormous eyes. “I almost believe you, but right now...” she tugged on my arm and took a step and I followed.
We stood on the lip of eternity and stared down at the swirling mist beneath our feet. One step and we would slide down into the cauldron. Off in the mist I heard the good humoured roar of Dagda and the throaty chorus of a mischievous Morrigan.
“Sounds like they’re having a great time.”
“My dad could have a good time going to the washroom.”
“That’s my kind of guy.”
She almost smiled. “The Morrigan almost never loses but when she does...let’s just put it this way, you don’t want to be around.”
“Well, maybe when I get to be King, I can change things.” It was a joke, but she didn’t seem to think so.
“Don’t even jest about things like that. If you become King then you can be sure she’ll have you so trussed up that you can’t move without her knowing.”
I stared out into the mist. “So, we go down into this and I get whisked back to the Library?”
H took my hand and we walked down into the mist together and into the water.
“Umm, remember the last time I tried to swim?”
She gave a strained laugh. “It’s all right; Semias keeps the salt content in the cauldron so high that you would have to hold onto a rock to sink.”
“So, a little dip, a few strokes and back to the Library?” I repeated trying to calm my fears.
It was the perfect temperature. I would have to thank Semias the next time I saw him, which, I was hoping would be a very, very long time. Although she was right by my side, H’s voice seemed to come from a long ways away, as though from across some great divide. I could no longer feel her hand. “It’s never that simple in Faerie.”
“H,” I shouted starting to tread water looking about in the mist. It would be a simple thing, to swim to the side and get out. I mean, how big could the cauldron be? I flailed about and took a great gasp of air in case I sank, which I didn’t. H had been right, the salt content was so dense that I could, without any fear, float comfortably on my back.
I looked over and out of the mist, and Dagda floated by, his prominent belly, rising out of the water like some great Polynesian island. His arms were sculling away.
“That’s my boy,” shouted Dagda, “Just go with it.” I wondered if this was his intimate voice. “Water is invigorating today, isn’t it?”
“Where’s H? She came into the water with me, but I can’t find her.”
“Oh, don’t worry about her, darling,” said The Morrigan, her voice coming at me from the mist from three different directions. “You need to start worrying about yourself.”
If there was one thing that my mom had taught me, that I actually retained, was a dislike for people who tried to stir the pot, or in this case, the cauldron.
I took a mouthful of salt water and blew a fountain up into the air. “If I worried about myself, would that help?”
“Not in the least,” barked Dagda. “I can see why H likes you, and if it’s any consolation, I also like you which saves me from the messy business of having to kill you.”
“H has brought boyfriends home before?”
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Dagda’s brow crinkled with thought. “No, but still, on principle, if she had, I would have had to have killed them.”
“But not me?”
“No,” he said, his voice sounding more like a fog horn, “you are a keeper.” He sculled back and forth. “Isn’t that right, dear, a keeper.”
“Absolutely,” said The Morrigan her voice echoing from three directions, “a keeper.”
“Where’s H?” I demand.
“Oh, she’s around here somewhere,” says Dagda lazily.
“So, how do I get back to the Library?” I ask.
Dagda rolls over and places a huge rock into my hands. “Just hold onto this.”
Finally I was getting comfortable with being in water and not drowning, and the next moment I’m hurtling down into the depths attached to a rock. There had been no way to take in air, so I breathed in the salt water, and surprisingly, I didn’t drown.
The rock pulled me deeper and deeper into the bottomless cauldron. When I finally hit bottom, the rock released me and shot back up toward the surface, leaving me their. It was a strange place, the cauldron. My surroundings entirely black I shouldn’t have been able to even see myself, but I could. I could see my arm, my legs.
Kneeling on the floor I looked down. It must have been transparent because I could see beyond the floor. In the distance there were these loops and hoops of lines dancing about. Some would, at times suddenly detatch themselves to whatever they were holding on to and float off like smoke rings.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?”
I spun about. In front of me, floating in the darkness was a white girl. Not only was her skin white, but also her hair, her diaphanous dress and her eyes. The eyes made me uncomfortable because I couldn’t really tell if she was looking at me. It is strange, that we place so much emphasis on the direction someone’s pupils and iris are oriented. Without them to refer to I was rather lost.
“You talking to me?”
She smiled. “I don’t see anyone else.”
I realized how stupid my question was. Of course there was nobody else around, just me and the floating white girl. “Didn’t Bono come this way?”
The white girl twisted up her face. “Oh, him, I sent him off that way...screeching one of his terrible songs.”
She waved a star-less wand in a particular direction.
“So, who are you?” I asked.
She looked rather surprised. “Who am I?” she repeated. “I am who I am. You are a strange fellow. Nobody has ever bothered to ask my name before.”
“You must have a name. Everybody has a name, sometimes two, sometimes several.”
Her brow crinkled in thought. “I don’t think I have a name.”
My nerves were kicking in. “Would you like one. I could call you The Lady in White.”
She shook her head. “I don’t like that song either.”
“A song?”
She nodded her head. “Everything is a song.” She floated down close to me and stuck the wand she was holding down through the floor. It became amazingly long, long enough that it was able to snag one of the string loops of light and pull it up through the floor. With a flourish, she waved the wand around her head and cast the loop off. It shot through the air, expanded, formed a tunnel and then after a few moments vanished. Just before it did so, I was able to see inside the tunnel’s mouth. What I saw was a picture of another place. The tunnel also made music.
“Wow,” I said in amazement.
“I like that,” she said animatedly. “I like Wow, will you call me that?”
“Ah, sure, it’s just an upside down version of Mom, so, why not. So, Wow, how do I get back to the Library?”
Wow, pleased with her name, spun about creating multiple images of herself against the darkness. She stopped in front of me and the images rejoined. “Are you sure you want to go there first?”
There was something about how she asked the question that made me hesitate. “Why wouldn’t I want to go there – first? Is there some other place I should go – first?”
“Oh, absolutely; you don’t know how your dad died...not really.”
“You know about that?”
“I know about everything, I am, Wow.”
“You can say that again. I could always just wait for my birthday...”
“That won’t help. You don’t know this part.”
I was starting to lose my patience with Wow. “He was in Afghanistan and died, what’s there to know about? I can even give you the Faerie version. Goll killed him. Either way, he died.”
She was shaking her head. “Your father was the Captain of the Fianna, he gave his life for his men.”
I stopped and my anger abated. That, at least made some sense. This was the first time that anyone had given me an inner snap shot of who my dad actually was, who I believed he was.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because, I like you, and if you want to know how to defeat Cliodhna, you have to understand your father’s sacrifice.”
“And you can show me this?”
“No, you can show yourself. Just step into the tunnel.”
With this, she again thrust her wand into the world beneath our feet. She fished around a bit, probing with the tip like a blind man with a walking stick. Touching a number of looping strings, she finally gave a grunt of satisfaction, and drew the looping string up through the transparent floor. Waving the wand above her head, she gave a flick and the snake like tunnel came free. I looked into the circular entrance and saw the beige world of an arid desert where dust seemed to be the predominant element. I looked at Wow.
“Trust me,” she sighed. “Just step through.”
“What will I see?”
“Just step through. Do not worry, while you are there nothing can touch or harm you. You will be an invisible witness to the past, to the real past.”
“What do you want?”
“Want?”
“Nothing in Faerie is free,” I said.
She gave me an exasperated look. “We’re not in Faerie. Step in, or I will send you back to the Library and Cliodhna can suck out the brains of your mother through her nasal cavity with a straw.”
I stepped into the worm hole.