C.E. Murphy - Truthseeker

“Do you think that’ll help?”

Lara caught her breath, searching for a true answer, and finally shook her head. “I really don’t know. Dickon’s worried, right? Not angry? So maybe if we can prove I’m not lying it’ll assuage his worry. Is he worried about you , Kelly? I mean, you believe me. Enough to be participating in what he must see as a farce, anyway.”

“He thinks I shouldn’t be encouraging your delusions. Me! Do I seem like an encouraging-delusions sort of person?” Kelly eyed Lara. “Don’t answer that.”

“You seem very straightforward, Kel. That’s part of why I’m able to be friends with you. What did you tell him?”

“That I didn’t think you were deluded, obviously. I don’t know, maybe I should have lied. Maybe I should’ve said I thought it was better to let you stay in your bizarre little comfort zone for a while. That maybe when you got used to being home you’d be able to shake it off and deal with what really happened. And I can’t believe I’m telling a truthseeker I think I should have lied.”

“Believe it, because you are. What’s more unlikely is I think you’re probably right.” Lara turned a hand up as Kelly blinked at her incredulously. “I don’t want him to be upset with you, Kelly. Maybe you should call him tomorrow and say you think he’s probably right, you’re just so used to me telling the truth you couldn’t wrap your mind around me lying.”

“And when David turns out to be an elf and you were in fairyland?”

“Then you can refrain from saying ‘I told you so.’”

“Lara Jansen, I do believe you’ve lost your mind.”

“See?” Lara, grinning, turned her attention back to the cooling sopapillas. “You and Dickon are on the same page.”

“When in doubt, go to an expert.” The platitude, murmured under her breath, had a ring of truth to it. At Kelly’s suggestion Lara had begun an Internet search for mythological weapons. Within minutes she’d found herself lost in a maze of fictional weapons from online role-playing games. Living, breathing humans, she’d decided, were likely to be much more helpful, and she’d borrowed Kelly’s car again to make the journey up to Cambridge.

The building that housed Harvard’s Celtic Studies Department was a beautiful old pillared home. Lara peered at it through the Nissan’s windshield, wondering if she would be able to hold a discussion about legendary weapons without compromising her truth sense, then shrugged. She would certainly never find out sitting in the parking lot. A sense of propriety made her knock on the building’s front door, though she let herself in immediately.

A young woman with her hair in a ponytail blinked up from where she sat reading on a comfortable-looking couch. “Hello?”

“Hi. My name’s Lara Jansen. I’m here to see …” Lara hesitated, unwilling to even attempt the jumble of letters that made up the director’s name. She glanced at the office listings instead, where “Pádraig hÉamhthaigh” was emblazoned in the leading slot.

A sympathetic grin flashed over the girl’s face. “It’s pronounced ‘Heafy,’ if you can believe it. Pawrick Heafy, pretty much. He’s from Ireland himself, from one of the areas called the Gaeltacht, where people still speak the old language as a matter of course. I think he keeps the Irish spelling just to make people panic when they see his name written down.” She got to her feet as she spoke and led Lara to the converted house’s upstairs, where she knocked solidly on a closed door. “Professor Heafy, Lara Jansen’s here to see you.”

The door swung open a few seconds later to reveal a slender older man with a beaky nose and thick white hair. “So she is. Have you finished that translation yet, Alison?”

The girl waved the book she’d been reading. “Still working on it. It’ll be done by week’s end.”

“Which week’s end?” the professor asked drily, and Alison grinned as she scurried back downstairs. “Well, come in, Miss Jansen. You’re the young woman who went missing in Boston, are you not?”

Lara tried not to wince at the recognition as she followed Heafy into his office. “I am.”

“And you returned with an abiding interest in Celtic folklore. I suppose you won’t be telling me how that came about.” He gestured to a well-worn leather chair, its arms and seat alternately shining and dull with use, and sat down on the other side of his desk. Lara spent a few seconds studying a wall of haphazardly arranged books, then shook herself and offered the professor a brief smile.

“I was exposed to some while I was gone. I have a lot of questions, Professor, and I think some of them are probably a little strange.” Music chimed disapprovingly, and she made a face. “Maybe very strange. Do you know anything about a place called Annwn?”

Heafy’s eyebrows elevated. “The Welsh land of eternal youth, sometimes called the Deep or Drowned Lands. The underworld, or fairyland, if you like. There are an infinite number of interpretations.”

Notes jangled again and Lara ducked her head, trying to dismiss the exaggeration of infinite interpretations. “How did they drown?”

“Ah, sure and you’d ask me that.” Heafy got up and pulled a book off the shelves, though he didn’t appear to read anything from it as he flipped through its pages. “One legend says a priestess of a fairy well let it overflow. Another says the man sent to guard the dikes was a drunkard and in his spirits left the sluices open. Here, this is a grand version of the story.”

Lara jolted to her feet as he offered her the book, and glanced through its pages. “Um. I’m sorry. I don’t read French.”

“Oh.” Heafy took the book back, examined it curiously, then returned it to the shelves. “I didn’t notice it was in French. That version tells how the drunkard seduced the priestess and that was why she let the well overflow. In all likelihood, of course, it was only the end of a miniature ice age, and the sea level simply rose.”

Lara sat back down with a sigh. “So there are no stories of magical weapons that broke the land?”

“That’s more an Arthurian kind of tale.” Heafy returned to his own seat, looking thoughtful. “The Arthurian legends come out of Wales, mind, so I can see tangling the two. A sword, I suppose, would be what you’re after?”

“Not Excalibur.” Lara smiled faintly. “No, I was told about a weapon that might have been lost. Something with the power to drown the land and subjugate a people, maybe.”

“Excalibur would have been lost and found and lost again, to be sure, but its mythology is more to unite a land and free a people, wouldn’t you say? No, tell me more, me love, if you know it. Perhaps you’ll shake something loose in this old mind of mine.”

“I don’t know very much else about this version. There are two rival kings, Emyr and Hafgan—”

“Now Hafgan was a king of Annwn, that I know,” Heafy interrupted. “Emyr’s not a name I’m familiar with.”

Breath knocked out of Lara’s chest like she’d been hit. “That’s interesting,” she murmured, the phrase so inadequate as to send dissonant chimes over her skin. “They fought, and the lands were drowned, and this legend says the power behind the drowning was a weapon. Legend says the weapon was cast out of Annwn after that, because it might have the power to heal the land, too, and the victorious king, Emyr, didn’t want that.”

Heafy’s eyes were bright. “It’s not a tale I know, but it has the hallmarks of proper mythology. Who did you have it from?”

Lara exhaled again, as sharply as before. She had managed to skirt lies succesfully so far, but the direct question was hard to avoid. Harder, when Ioan, who had told her the story, was unlikely to be a name to trigger mythological memories. Finally, jaw set against the jarring dissonance of a flat-out lie, she said, “A man called Oisín.”