Evanescence 21

Chapter 21

“Maeve…Maeve wake up you lazy pillock, they’re a coming.”

My brain hurts, my feet hurt. Too much dancing at the river. My feet are tough but too many hours of dancing under the stars celebrating. T’was the moonsliver night and the stars where all right and according to custom we lit a prye on running water and we made ready a feast to re-welcome the other folk to the world.

There’s a shallow spot where we raise up the bonfire out of the water on big yew logs and made a fire of pine and rowan oak and tindered the whole lot with holly and mistletoe and we set our tables all about the small island that was our dancing place.

There’s fae blood in my clan going back who knows fer certain but it’s there and it’s where my powers get their extra spark from.

Moonsliver Night is when our otherfolk kin come to visit. An we dance an sing and cast mana to the wind and at the touch of the mid of the night a doorway opens.

An they come.

An I had very much danced too much barefoot on the rocks, and drank way too much mead and wine and Faun made treats and Dryad powders and whisky wit honey an lambs blood.

I’m very much drained, and sore too but the hangovers the worst. I’d g’for hair o’the dog but I dun feel like swapping tongue with one of the Were.

Aye…Were saliva and a wee touch of mead will cure ye right up fast with the right charm.

An I know the charm and such it’s just.

Last Were round these parts was an arsehole. I should know, he was my man fer awhile.

I haul myself off my straw bedding and squint at Gwen. “Who’s a coming, an don they know better?”

“Nay, I’d don’t think these ones will be caring about local custom.”

“Oh why’s that now.” I twist and turn trying to get the kinks out.

“They be Romans.”

“Bloody hell!”

I get up and run outside hurting or not and move through the copse of trees at where the hilltop begins to drop and sure enough they’re coming. Big eagle up on that staff like a talisman and men in armor with weapons and a fortune in forged steel on the march.

They’re heading for the village below us and My mind flares full of light and power.

I see the death, these things with them that shoot spears and hurl stone, lighter spears raining down on them and archers shooting bladders of something like pitch but water jus makes it burn more and spread.

I see my people in chains.

“Gwen, get the horses and get our folk moving. Tell Riley to take our fastest horse and to ride. Tell him at follow the light in this…” I toss her a spelled crystal. “It’ll take him to Avalon, the council must be forewarned.”

I pull a knife from my herb table and cut my skirts off halfway to my knee and as indecent as it is I can move. I move purposefully and get my best hunting knives, and my best yew wood bow and arrows and head to the tree line again.

I close my eyes but hold the image there an I start to sing letting my mana carry the news to those in the village, don’t fight, run, flee.

Some’ll listen, some’ll not. Those I’ll have t’fight for.

My words echo into nothing and they stopped the Roman’s fer a moment wondering most likely what’s made that sound.

I take a breath and twist some essence into it and whistle well above the human ranges at hear unless you’re majik be music like mine. It carries out over the valley and I pull one of my hunting knives and cut a slice on me forearm…t’isn’t deep but it’s meant fer the Romans or rather their horses.

They start and jump at the feeling of someone laying steel to them. Best ting about horses is they scare easy less they battle bred.

………………………………... There are times lately that I wish I was a man. Aye big hairy lugs they might be but a good Celtic warrior can run forever and still fight strong, fight smart. I’m not saying women folk aren’t smart we are in our own ways but the warrior lads, the real fighters are used to this.

I wouldn’t look to them to mend or make candles from tallow or do a full wash but.

Five days of running is taking their toll on me. I didn’t know ye got to know how te run. How te breathe and where you know how to put yer feet and me being the sole druidess fer many leagues here I’ve been running from here to there and trying to save lives and souls. I’d give a dozen gold coins to keep my breasts from aching bound or not. They still bounce and move when their my size.

Aye right now being a lad might jus be the thing.

………………………………...................................................................Aye…souls.

This morning we got to over of the forest villages too late.

This church they have of this One God out of this Rome be a bastard he is. I’ve seen the things these bastards in the brown robes, the so called monks have been doing to make people repent.

Jealous bastard, he admits to the other forces being out there by commanding his people to worship not other save him.

Iron brands in the shape of marks I’ve never seen but are laced with power, being used to burn the fey blood right out of ye heart and soul. The hurt so bad and the despair so think on these poor souls it’s damned near sickening.

But it’s the legionnaire in the black enameled armor that has me afraid. He’s been mortally wounded three or for times and he’s still survived and come back strong. He’s a butcher too…me, women, children…even the littlest babe he does horrible things to.

I put two arrows in him less than half a glass ago and he’s still a chasing me.

The… this…thing he is isn’t human, I see the red purple light burning in his eyes

Demon.

I’ve only heard tales but…

And that sword of his that roman blade has those same marks as the torture tools.

“Come little druid, it won’t hurt, not after the first thousand years…I can smell you girl…your sweat, your majik, you pussy…Oh Rapture’s going to be so sweet to you lover…I promise…I swear it sweetling.”

“Not on you’re best day Hellspawn.”

I run but he just doesn’t tire.

Then I feel the surge behind me of majik and I move right narrowly getting missed by a blast of hell flames. The tree beside me don’t just burn but explodes, I get thrown but back up on my feet seconds later. He fires more and more as I dodge through the trees. Some are sheer misses, some are near hits.

I’ve one chance.

I head for it.

………………………………...... I’m panting and gasping a chant as he comes out of the trees. He looks happy, gleeful even.

“No place to go sweetling, no place to go.”

I look it in the eye and see it for what it really is.

A burned skeleton without real flesh instead of muscle and sinews the bones are held together by burned but pulsating black worms. Desiccated rotting feathered wings sprout from it’s back and it licks it’s lips with three tongues.

“That’s where you’re wrong…”

I turn around and run and hurl myself off the cliff. I’m hundreds of feet up and I turn around in mid-fall not to look…chant the last of my spell and let it send me to sleep…I never feel my death.

………………………………............... That thought disturbs me enough to wake me up. I’m shaking, and for several minutes I’m not sure who I am or where I am until the oddness of the computer and the spelled fire pulls me back into being myself?

Ha…

You’ve got to be alone to be yourself right?

Memories are swirling around in my head Maeve with the others…things bubbling up from all of them. Mostly Maeve though right now. Celtic a real druidess and a healer as well as a singer…I feel the power, her soul flaring inside of mine filling me with her essence and her mana…It’s more than heady, it’s almost giving me the bed spins.

I can feel myself soaking it up, Maeve becoming me…us…At least…at least I died my own way this time. There’s an odd peace to that really. We feel Shaun’s arms around us, and it feels nice, there’s this odd bit of recollection about her musing about wishing she was male during the start of the Roman invasion and the fact I’ve still got my boy parts.

I can sort of appreciate the irony of it too.

She’s surprised though at how womanly we feel. She’s starting to bounce off the other bits of us and there’s a cascade in my head of things. I breathe then roll over and try to either shut it all out or just leave it to them…

“Oi…screw this…” I chant Maeve’s sleep spell and knock myself out only this time I roll forwards and snuggle into Shaun’s chest.

………………………………................. I actually feel better when I do wake up. I’m alone but the sun’s not coming through the basement windows anymore. I sit up a bit and just breathe, reveling in the not drug through the briars feel I’ve had since Shea and facing off with the cult and the demon.

Oh some real sleep can do wonders.

I get up and use Shaun’s bathroom and get showered and everything either he’s pretty tidy in the bathroom for a guy or his mom cleans for him.

Hmm, Mom.

I remember this lesson from Maeve’s teacher saying. “Ye needs light to see light carries the images your eye have to ye mind, now scrying ye needs a reflection a medium of sight and light and ye add yer power to it’s and you will the light to be the thing ye want te see.”

Okay, energy and light it’s interchangeable in theory I think that’s what the physics guys say. The majik must do the rest of the stuff.

I channel mana into the reflection thinking of Mom and see her at a Ihop? With Alecia and…they’re feeding each other and kissing. I’m not the only one watching either. They’re creating quite a stir. One openly gay anything isn’t common and Mom so has the cougar thing going on Alecia still only looks like a teenager or maybe a young college girl.

I’m not freaked, hell It explains a lot of stuff with her and dad and why they broke up.

Dad…

The last time I saw him things didn’t go so well.

I really…

I reach out and try to picture him, channel some more into it.

The image changes and wow, he looks like crap. He doesn’t look like he’s shaved of had a haircut since everything happened and he’s in a old t-shirt and a open flannel shirt and he’ in a garage somewhere sitting in one of those nylon fishing folding chairs and he’s cleaning what looks like motorcyle parts.

I get my thing about bikes and guitars from him.

I miss him.

We weren’t like buddy, buddy all the time close but we were close. Until I went all slacker and stuff then came out as me.

I miss my Daddy. What I wouldn’t give to be able to call him that.

I stare at the image before letting it go.

I come out of the bathroom and Shaun’s there with a coffee. I go over and hug him tight and bury my face into his chest.

“Hey…What’s wrong?”

“I remembered how to scry.”

“And….?”

“I saw my Dad.”

“Oh….sorry honey.” He hugs me so much tighter and it’s so good, just what I really needed right now and I’m crying a little then he tilts my head up and he kisses me.

Passionately kisses me and touches me and it’s that thing that’s one of the best things about being in a relationship. I’d have spiraled myself into this funk over me being me and who I used to be and Dad for sure.

But Shaun knows me more than I know myself sometimes and he’s kissing me so deeply and softly and….like I said sometimes the best thing about having someone is they can stop you from going to those bad places, those dark traps and pits in us and put the brakes on.

We kiss walk back to the bed and I let him lay me down and take what little I have on off.
Goddess I need this.
It just feels like forever since we had this kind of time together.

Shaun, My sweet Shaun, my hero, my guy, and my protector…my heart starts to make love to me.

Hurt tears start turning to in love ones.