Page 36 of Heart of the Wren (Haunted Hearts: Season of the Witch #2)

DARA

UP IN the top field, all of the Wrenboys had gathered in a ring around the holly tree.

Each played their instrument, banging out the tune which sought to befuddle the mind.

I covered my ears then cast a small charm to protect myself and Carol from their enchantment.

The clouds, so heavy with snow all day, had gone, leaving the sky clear and washed with stars.

In front of the holly tree, Lorcan regained consciousness and fought to free himself from the grip of the walking haystack. He rolled over, onto his knees, but the haystack gripped his shoulder, causing him to cry out .

I carefully approached the ring of Wrenboys. Their drums and whistles grew louder and louder, the intensity of their playing matching the thumping of my heartbeat until I threw my arms in the air and cried: “Enough!”

The silence crashed around us. Lorcan, on his knees, me with my arms raised, and Carol clutching the poker, all held our breath.

Mairead stepped forward from the circle and walked right up to Lorcan. Holding out her hand to him, Lorcan flinched.

“Come with me.” Her voice was clear as a struck crystal goblet. “I can save you from the Wrenboys. Come home with me.”

“No,” I said as loud as I dared. “No.”

Lorcan wept into his hands. “Mairead.” He reached out to her. “Why did you stay away all this time?” He glanced around at the Wrenboys.

I moved slowly towards him. “Lorcan, no. That’s not your sister, remember?”

“But what if it is? You’ve been wrong about so much. What if it is my Mairead, come back to me?” Tears streamed down Lorcan’s face, beading on his beard. “She wants me to go with her. She’s going to take me away from here.” He nodded to the farm below. “Away from this place. For good.”

The closer I got, the harder I found it to move. My feet were like lead. “You have to get away from her, Lorcan.”

“There’s nothing left for me here. I don’t want to be here anymore.” He took her outstretched hand.

“It’s not her!” I said. “Mairead died, Lorcan. She died. ”

“And I’m to blame,” Lorcan said.

I flinched. “How are you to blame?”

“I killed her! I was only nine… We were outside, playing… I’d been left to look after her, as always.

It was autumn. There were orange leaves everywhere and she was throwing them in the air.

She was giggling. She was always giggling at something or other.

One of the leaves would catch the wind and she’d waddle after it.

I was waving a stick around, pretending I was the Lone Ranger.

I didn’t notice how far she’d gotten away from me. ”

I covered my mouth with my hands.

“I should have been watching her but I was too busy playing and she drowned! She drowned because of me!”

“You were a child, Lorcan. A child. What happened was an accident. A terrible, awful, horrible accident but still an accident. You have to forgive yourself.”

He shook his head violently. “I don’t deserve it.”

“You do,” I said. “Of course you do. For your kindness, if nothing else.

I've seen it in action. You towed my van into your farm and gave me a job because I needed it.

You gave straw to the school because they needed it.

You gave Carol shelter because she needed it.

And you did it all without hesitation. Because you don't know how to be any other way. You have a good heart, Lorcan. A kind heart.”

Lorcan’s brow furrowed.

“I didn’t come here — right when all this was starting — just by chance,” I said.

“There are no coincidences, remember? I could have been driving anywhere, down any lane in Ireland, but I just so happened to be driving down the one you live on. I was meant to be here so I could stop you from making a mistake. We need you here, Lorcan Fitzgerald. I need you here.”

“Mairead needs me as well.”

“That's not her!” Carol found her voice and shouted. “It’s a trick; she’s trying to trick you! Look at her, Lorcan. Look!”

He turned to face not a girl but a woman. Statuesque, baleful, cold, with three small birds on her arm. A robin, a sparrow, and a goldfinch. Her nose thin, her lips full, and her hair long and fair, rippling like the sea in a storm. The goddess Clíona gazed down on him.

Lorcan let go of her hand. “You're not her. You’re not my sister. I want you to be, but it’s a lie.” He sank back on his heels. “I’m sorry I disturbed your brooch but I put it back. I didn’t mean any harm. It was a mistake. It was an accident. It was all… It was all an accident.”

The goddess Clíona, eyes black as pitch, reached out and put a fingertip under Lorcan’s chin. “Come away with me, mortal. Be my groom. I can be anything you desire.” Her features shifted and Lorcan flinched as Pat Lynch stood before him. Without a word, Pat’s face blurred and became mine.

Every fibre of my being screamed at the unnatural doppelganger before me.

Then my double smiled and shifted, becoming Clíona once again. “I can save you from the Wrenboys.”

The Wrenboys shook their cudgels and hollered to the sky.

Lorcan rose to his feet. Behind Clíona, the hole in the trunk of the holly tree widened to become a gaping cave mouth. She backed towards it, still with her finger under Lorcan’s chin. He followed.

“No, no, please, no.” My fingers tapped as I cast every spell I could think of.

I clamped my hand on one tattoo after the next, channelling each one, casting them out, into the ether.

I whispered incantations, I shouted ageless names — names revealed to me in dreams and meditations, secret names no one else alive knew.

None of it made a blind bit of difference.

“I demand a dowry!” Carol flung the poker to the snow-covered grass. “For this man, as close to me as my own blood, I demand a dowry of…this hill!” She pointed to the ground. “This hill, named for you, and everything on it.”

The goddess Clíona stopped at the tree. She took her finger from Lorcan’s chin. “No mortal man is worth so much.”

I steadied myself, ready to protect Lorcan from the wrath of the Wrenboys with all my strength.

Clíona stood by the gaping hole in the tree trunk.

“I suppose he’s all yours, boys.” Her voice changed, becoming high-pitched and almost comical.

“After all, he…” Then she giggled. “I’m sorry, lads.

” She giggled and giggled even as her body contorted and grew older, and smaller.

“Look at his face!” She hunched over, crouched, and shrank, shrank, shrank, down, down, down, until all that remained was a plump, elderly man, no more than knee-high, dressed head to toe in scarlet.

“Hah! For feck’s sake.” I bent over to catch my breath. “It’s a feckin’ fairy.”

The walking haystack picked up the still-laughing fairy in scarlet and shook him. “What did you stop for?”

The fairy in scarlet held onto his cap. “Because she asked for the dowry! That’s how the story ends! A loved one demands a dowry for the kidnapped groom so Clíona gives him back.”

“But you didn’t have to give the game away yet.” As they talked, the haystack, too, began to shrink. “We didn’t even get the chance to string our poor wren up in the tree!”

The other Wrenboys also broke out into fits of uncontrollable laughter as one by one they shrank in stature and shed their mortal disguises to reveal themselves as fairies, all.

A collection of small, wrinkled men and women in old-fashioned caps and britches of red and green, doubled over as they cackled and hooted.

“We got you, boyos!” The fairy in scarlet, who had been both Mairead and the goddess Clíona, rolled around on the ground, holding his pot belly. “We got you good! Oh ho, the look on your face! Did you wet yourself? Just a little bit?”

Lorcan balled his fists and swung for the fairy. “Ye little bollocks! You’re after putting me through Hell these past few weeks!”

“That’s what you get for disturbing a fairy ring, Farmer Fitzgerald!” The fairies danced and jigged, pleased with their trickery.

“Did youse make my sheep sick?”

“We did. We did! And we would have done a lot worse to them but he put a stop to it.” He pointed to me.

“We had to work hard to stop your magic from interfering with our fun, witch. And your solstice working held us off until Wren Day but even you couldn’t keep us away today.

We had the power of the Wrenboy tradition on our side today. ”

Released from the burden of my leaden feet, I joined Lorcan and grinned. “Fair play to yis, fairy folk.” I winked at Lorcan. “You played a fine joke on us all. And a brave one, as well.”

The fairy in scarlet wiped a tear and giggled. “Now what do you mean, brave?”

A rumble from deep underground made us all wobble. “Maybe I didn’t mean brave,” I said. “Maybe I meant foolish.”

The ground started to rumble again like a thunderclap rolling right under our feet.

“She won’t like you impersonating her.” I gestured for Lorcan and Carol to get away from the tree.

The face of the fairy dropped and he bounded for the holly tree, only to find the hole in the trunk sealed up tight. His tiny hands searched desperately for an opening as the rumbling grew louder and louder. With a great cry, each fairy took the form of a different bird.

“You eejit!” said a crow.

“You’ve doomed us all!” said an owl.

One by one, the birds took wing, until only the fairy in scarlet remained, hopping and shouting after them.

“I didn’t think she’d find out!” His arm became a wing.

“She’s been asleep for ages!” His nose became a beak.

“Wait for me, lads!” Finally a fully formed wren, he took flight.

The flock of mismatched birds swarmed high above the field, swooping, diving, and nipping at each other, until they were over the hill, and out of sight.

With the final rumbling, Carol sank to the ground. “What… Wh y…?”

I laughed and gave her hand back up. “They’ve offended the real goddess Clíona by impersonating her. I doubt she’ll ever let them live in her hill again.”

“How did you know what to say?” Lorcan asked.

“I read it in the library book,” Carol said. “Dara told us the gods and goddess play out stories so I thought I should ask for a dowry, like Sean Fitzgerald’s fiancé in the story. I didn’t know it would work but I trusted my instinct.”

The hill rumbled again but this time it didn’t stop. We all staggered as the earth shifted and rose into a pile in front of us. The pile grew into a pillar. Dirt showered from all sides until the brooch — Clíona’s golden brooch — caught the moonlight.

“Not again.” Lorcan backed away from it.

“It’s okay.” Carol tilted her head. “Can’t you hear her talking? Clíona, I mean. The brooch is a gift for you. For all the trouble caused in her name.”

Lorcan looked to me for confirmation before taking the brooch and brushing the dirt from it. “Thank you,” he said to the air. “So the fairies sent the three birds?”

“Yep,” I said. “All part of the trick, meant to confuse us and make us think Clíona was responsible. They do like their little jokes, the fairies.”

“Fairies. I can’t believe it.” Carol picked up the poker. “This was all just a joke?”

“They were pretending to be Mairead, and Clíona, and the Wrenboys, but they genuinely would have taken Lorcan through the portal in the holly tree and over to the Otherworld.” I held his hand.

“You would have been gone. For good. Or they would have cracked your skull open and strung you up in the tree.”

“How is any of that a joke?” Carol asked.

“They’re not human. They have a very different sense of humour.

Lorcan’s missing shoes, the breakages, the phouka chasing him across the field: they did it all.

” I took her free hand and we formed a circle under the holly tree.

“The rumbling we felt — and the voice you heard, Carol — now that was all really Clíona. We did encounter a goddess here today. An actual, real, divine goddess who became aware of us and our actions. And in doing so, the three of us have made a new pattern. A new story. One that will repeat in some fashion, somewhere, somehow. Most probably through your descendants, Carol. If you have any, of course. You’re a seventh daughter.

You have the eye. ESP. The gift. Whatever you want to call it.

You’re connected to the world in a way neither Lorcan nor I are.

Imagine how powerful your seventh daughter would be. ”

“Don’t lose the run of yourself,” Carol said. “I’m only 17. I’m not having any kids anytime soon. I told Eddie we’re not doing anything until we’re married.”

“What about what I caught yis doing in my hay barn?” Lorcan asked.

“Ah, would ye stop,” Carol said. “It was only the tip. We’re not doing it properly until he walks me down the aisle and I stop being Ms Carol Dolan and become Mrs Carol Chorus.” She wiggled. “I haven’t said it out loud before. I quite like the sound of it.”

“Eddie’s last name is Chorus?” I hadn’t thought to ask before.

“What your last name, come to think of it?” Carol asked.

“He doesn’t have one,” Lorcan said. “He’s like Cher.”