John Lenahan - Prince of Hazel and Oak

‘What the hell did she do to me?’

‘Now stick out your tongue,’ Nieve demanded.

‘No way, lady! I’m not letting you near me ever again.’

I looked at Nieve and she smiled at me. ‘Brendan,’ I said in Gaelic, ‘can you understand me?’

‘Of course I can understand you. You keep that crazy woman away from me.’

‘Brendan, I’m talking to you in ancient Gaelic. Are you sure you can understand me?’

‘Huh?’

‘It seems that Nieve has given you a two-second lesson in the common tongue. You just learned a new language.’

‘That’s impossible.’

‘Impossible things happen here every day.’

‘Now, Brendan,’ Nieve said, ‘stick out your tongue and I will complete the process, then we will no longer need to speak through Conor. Personally I don’t trust him as a reliable interpreter.’

Brendan clenched his mouth shut and shook his head no, like a baby that won’t eat his dinner. It took even more of an effort to convince him the second time. I tried everything, including agreeing with him that it didn’t matter ’cause it was all really a dream. It wasn’t until I threatened to never feed him again that he gave in.

‘Come on,’ I said, ‘stop being such a baby.’

‘It hurt, damn it. You do it.’

I rolled my eyes at him but to be honest it wasn’t something I wanted to experience.

‘Ask her if it will hurt as much as the last time – ask her exactly that.’

I translated and Nieve said, ‘No.’

Brendan watched with crossed eyes as the molten gold hit his tongue. He not only flipped over the chair but the table as well. He hopped around the dining hall screaming bloody murder and this time everyone in the room heard exactly what he was saying. Most of them left in order to get some distance between them and the madman.

‘God almighty!’ Brendan screamed from behind his hand in perfect Gaelic. ‘You said it wouldn’t hurt as much!’

‘No,’ Nieve replied in her usual calm manner. ‘You asked if it would hurt as much as the last time and I said, no. I knew it would hurt more.’

Nieve gave me a rueful smile; I was starting to realise she had a wickedly subversive sense of humour.

‘Now that I can converse with you,’ Nieve said, ‘I realise I do not want to. If you will excuse me.’

Nieve left. I asked a servant to bring Brendan a glass of Gerard’s finest wine. It was a bit early but I figured he would appreciate it. He did. After one sip he downed the glass in one.

‘Are you OK?’ I asked.

‘To be honest, Conor, I’m not sure. This dream is way to real for my liking.’

‘I keep telling you – it’s not a dream.’

‘All right then, as much as I don’t relish meeting another member of your family, how about that introduction to your father you promised me.’

‘I don’t think I ever promised you that.’

‘As good as – well?’

‘OK,’ I said, ‘come with me.’

The closer we got to Dad’s room the more worried Frick and Frack looked. They obviously thought Brendan was a nutcase and that letting him loose in the west wing was a bad idea. They were shocked when I told them that Brendan could enter Dad’s room without them.

The first thing we noticed was that the curtains in The Lord’s Chamber were closed but the room was bright with the light of about thirty candles.

‘You must have a hell of a candle bill,’ Brendan quipped.

‘These are Leprechaun candles. They last for years.’

‘Of course they do, silly me.’

As we entered the room we saw a woman sitting cross-legged on a stool at the foot of the bed. Her head was covered with an intricate gold-flecked veil that played weird tricks with the candlelight. Her arms were outstretched at her sides and she was chanting in Ogham. I couldn’t see her face but I knew from the voice who it was. She stopped chanting when we entered the room.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you.’

‘I am a difficult woman to disturb, Prince Conor,’ Fand said without moving, ‘it is I who will be disturbing you. Shall I leave?’

‘No, please go on; Dad can use all the help he can get.’

Fand continued her chanting in a voice so low we could hardly hear. I motioned for Brendan to come closer to the bed and I pulled the sheet back from Dad’s chest revealing his right arm and his attached runehand.

‘What did you do to him?’ Brendan said in an accusing tone.

‘Oh give it up, Brendan, I didn’t do anything to him,’ I said, trying to whisper. I explained about Dad’s hand being reattached during the Choosing ceremony in the Chamber of Runes and how Mom and Fand sealed him in this amber shell to stop his hand from killing him.

‘So he’s in some kind of magical suspended animation?’

‘That’s about right,’ I said as quietly as I could, hoping Brendan would follow suit. p height="0%" width="5%"›He didn’t; he started to chuckle and then laugh out loud. ‘Oh boy!’ he said with no intention of being remotely quiet. ‘I’m going to quit the police force when I wake up. I think I’m going to write science fiction movies.’

‘Brendan, could you keep your voice down.’

‘Why? I’m proud of myself. Who’d have thought I had such a vivid imagination? Or maybe I should write detective novels. I’ll call my first one, The Strange Case of the Father Who Was Turned into a Paperweight.’ He rapped his knuckles on Dad’s solid forehead.

I grabbed his wrist and said, ‘Don’t do that.’

‘Don’t do what – this?’ He thumped on Dad’s forehead again like he was knocking on a door.

That’s when I hit him. It was more of a forceful push than a punch but I knew it hurt. Brendan staggered back and held his chest.

‘You want a piece of me, O’Neil?’ he shouted. ‘All right then, let’s do it. Can you fight without a stick? Come on, man-to-man.’

I know I shouldn’t have done it, there in my father’s sick room, but I raised my dukes and squared up to him. I was sick and tired of his I can do anything in a dream attitude.

We were about a nanosecond away from going for each other’s throats when Fand broke the atmosphere of blood lust. ‘I stated before that I was a difficult woman to disturb,’ she said in a voice that reminded us that she was a queen, ‘but you two have succeeded.’

Brendan and I both turned and pretty much stood at attention as she lifted the veil from her head. Brendan let loose a gasp, and said, ‘Oh my God.’

Fand stood and walked towards him. ‘You are the traveller from the Real World?’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ he replied respectfully.

‘You look as though you have seen a ghost.’

‘Not a ghost, ma’am; for a moment I thought you were my mother.’

‘Your mother?’

‘Yes, you look remarkably like her, here I’ll show you.’ Brendan reached for his back pocket then remembered he was wearing new clothes and rummaged around in the pouch of his tunic until he produced an old leather wallet. ‘I have a picture of her with my daughter.’ Brendan pulled bits of paper out of his wallet looking increasingly confused. He went through everything a second time and then held a blank piece of paper in his hands repeatedly looking at its front and back. ‘I don’t understand it.’

‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.

‘Well, this is the photograph. Look, I wrote the date on the back, but the picture is – gone.’

I took the photo from him and it was indeed blank, not even the ghost of an image remained. ‘I think I know what happened,’ I said. ‘Real World technology often doesn’t work here. Electric watches and guns don’t work, so I imagine photography doesn’t either.’t work, soiv height="0%"›