John Lenahan - Prince of Hazel and Oak

‘You mean I’m stuck in this dream without a picture of my own daughter?’

‘Dream?’ Fand said.

‘Brendan here thinks this is all a long dream and that any second he is going to wake up in his bed.’

‘I see. Well, maybe you are right, Brendan. Who can tell what is real and what is illusion? This may be a realm inside a dream but that is not what you think, is it? You think you are still back in the Real World and soon you shall awake – is that not so?’

Brendan nodded but I could see his resolve weakening.

‘I am sorry, Brendan, as seductive as that thought must seem – it is not so. It is true you are in a different world but there is only one reality. What was your vocation in the Real World?’

‘I was… I am… a detective.’

Fand looked confused. Brendan tried a couple of times to describe his job using words like ‘perpetrator’ and ‘arrest’. Finally he changed his wording to ‘I find evildoers and punish them.’

Fand nodded. ‘You seek the truth?’

Brendan thought for a bit and then smiled. ‘I suppose I do.’

‘Like a Druid.’

‘Now you not only look like my mother but you sound like her.’

‘Oh, how so?’

‘That’s just the kind of voodoo crap my mother used to spout.’

‘Conor has taught me the meaning of “crap” but what is voodoo?’

‘OK, not voodoo, but she was always brewing herbs into potions to ward off colds or a rash or evil spirits, and when she wasn’t doing that she was dancing naked around a fire or hugging a tree.’

‘It sounds as if I would like her,’ Fand said.

‘Maybe you would. I don’t get along with her very well.’

Fand answered that statement with a knowing smile – she had experience with a difficult mother; her mother had been responsible for the near extinction of her entire race.

‘Let me see the… What did you call it – photo?’

Brendan handed her the blank piece of paper that once held the image of his daughter and mother. Fand took a glop of tree sap out of a silk bag that was hanging around her waist and walked over to the dresser at the far side of the room. She closed her hand over the sap, placed her fist into the bowl of Shadowfire and chanted under her breath. She then removed her hand and dripped sap onto the front of the paper, where the photo had been. Immediately the sap hardened into a thin film, not unlike the emulsion on a glossy photo. Then Fand dropped it into the Shadowfire.

‘Hey,’ Brendan shouted as he reached to retrieve his photo.

Fand grabbed his wrist and said, ‘Wait.’

It was obvious from Brandon’s face that her strengthhad surprised him.

When nothing happened, Fand asked, ‘Has your daughter or mother ever touched this – photo?’

Brendan thought for a moment and replied, ‘I don’t think so.’

Fand retrieved the blank photo and held it in her palm above the Shadowfire. ‘May I touch you?’ she asked.

Brendan looked to me for advice. I shrugged; I had no idea what was going on.

‘I guess,’ he said.

Fand laid her palm across the side of Brandon’s face and the Shadowfire jumped to life. An image appeared in the flame. It sent a chill down my spine. The last time I saw anything like this was when my mother performed a Shadowcasting for Fergal – not the most pleasant of memories. This image was of a woman in her late sixties. She was handsome with a strong face and long grey hair tied back in a braided ponytail. She cradled a weeping child of around six in her arms. Brendan pulled away from Fand’s hand and the image vanished.

‘That’s not the photo. The photo is of my mother and daughter when my daughter was an infant.’

‘Interesting,’ Fand said, smiling. ‘Strange things can happen during Samhain. I think, Brandon, what we have just seen is your mother and daughter as they are in the Real World now.’

‘I have to get back.’ The colour dropped out of Brendan’s face like a water cooler emptying. The realisation of his predicament hit him – this was real. ‘I have to get home – now!’ He walked to the door and then realised he didn’t know where to go. ‘How do I get back?’ His voice was panicky.

‘You must speak to Deirdre,’ Fand said. ‘I know not how you came.’

Getting Brendan an audience with my mother wasn’t easy. Once Dad had stabilised, Fand had ordered Mom to rest. She agreed and slept but as soon as she woke up she threw herself into the task of queening Castle Duir. It took me a couple of days to get the cop in to see her.

Mom stared hard at the detective when he walked into the room. ‘I remember you,’ she said with narrowing eyes. ‘You are the man that imprisoned my son. You pointed a weapon at me. Conor, what is he doing here?’

‘I need to get back,’ Brendan said.

Mom shot him a spectacularly dirty look and said, ‘You will speak when spoken to.’

Wow, even I took an involuntary step back. I had forgotten how menacing Mom can be when she is in her bear cub guarding mode. She turned her back on Brendan and took a step towards me. ‘Now, Conor, what is he doing here?’

Brendan said, ‘You don’t understand,’ and then did that really foolish thing. He grabbed her wrist.

I guess I should have warned Brendan about touching a woman in The Land when she doesn’t want or expect it. I had learned that lesson the hard way with Essa but it didn’t even come close to how hard Brandon’s lesson was with my mother. In a matter of nanoseconds she turned her wrist, broke the detective’s grasp, grabbed his arm, placed her foot in his stomach, and then vaulted him clear over her head. Brendan sailed a good seven feet in the air before luckily hitting the back of a sofa. If the manoeuvre had been in any other direction he would have hit a wall. I ran over and righted the couch and then helped the dazed Brendan into it.

‘Sit here and don’t say a word,’ I said.

Brendan’s reply was a predictable, ‘Owww.’

I approached my mother slowly. She was still in an attack stance and was breathing heavily.

‘Someone should teach him not to do that.’

‘I think you just did, Mom – and very impressively too, I might add. Let’s all take a deep breath and calm down a little.’

Mom unclenched her fists. I took a seat and motioned for her to do the same. As she sat, she kept an eye on Brendan.

‘Relax, Mom, I’m sure he won’t try anything again. Will you, Brendan?’

‘Owww,’ Brendan repeated.

Mom finally turned to me. I smiled at her but she wasn’t quite ready to return it. ‘You still haven’t told me what he is doing here.’

It’s not like she had given me much of a chance but I decided to keep that comment to myself – enough feathers had been ruffled already. ‘Brendan followed us through that portal you made.’

‘That’s impossible.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘The portal was designed for the three of us and our horses – part of that spell was Truemagic, it should have killed someone from the Real World.’

‘Well, I hate to disagree with you on a point of magic but there he is.’

‘Strange things happen during Samhain,’ Mom mumbled under her breath as she approached Brendan. ‘Why did you incarcerate my son?’

Brendan didn’t answer but the question succeeded in stopping him from saying, ‘Oww, oww, oww,’ over and over again.

‘Mom, he was just doing his job.’

Mom gave me a sharp look and said, ‘I am speaking to him.’

‘He’s right, ma’am,’ Brendan said with a mixture of respect and fear. ‘I was just doing my job.’

‘And what job is that?’

‘I’m a policeman,’ he said but when he realised she didn’t understand he sighed, ‘I catch and punish evildoers.’