John Lenahan - Sons of Macha

William Collins

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

This edition first published by The Friday Project 2013

Copyright © John Lenahan 2013

John Lenahan asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

HarperCollins Publishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9780007456741

Ebook Edition © March 2013 ISBN: 9780007517770

Version: 2017-09-12

For Tim and Sarah (Mel) Lenahan.

The only ones I still show off for.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One: Special Agent Murano

Chapter Two: Ruby

Chapter Three: Macha

Chapter Four: The Oak

Chapter Five: Graysea and Essa

Chapter Six: The Yew House

Chapter Seven: Diddo

Chapter Eight: Lugh

Chapter Nine: Ona’s Book

Chapter Ten: Nora

Chapter Eleven: Judgement

Chapter Twelve: The Hermit of Thunder Bay

Chapter Thirteen: Captain Jesse

Chapter Fourteen: Ivy Lodge

Chapter Fifteen: Maeve

Chapter Sixteen: The Worry Stone

Chapter Seventeen: Connemara

Chapter Eighteen: Connemara Maeve

Chapter Nineteen: Mícheál

Chapter Twenty: Eth

Chapter Twenty-One: Master Eirnin

Chapter Twenty-Two: The Hive

Chapter Twenty-Three: The Choosing

Chapter Twenty-Four: War

Chapter Twenty-Five: Dumb Idea

Chapter Twenty-Six: King Bwika

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Prince Codna

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Fand

Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Grove

Chapter Thirty: The Shadowrune

Chapter Thirty-One: Nora

Chapter Thirty-Two: The Twins of Macha

Chapter Thirty-Three: Mother Oak

Chapter Thirty-Four: A Wave

Chapter Thirty-Five: Beginnings

Keep Reading

Acknowledgements

About the Author

By the Same Author

About the Publisher

He wasn’t a Scranton cop. I could tell that as soon as he walked in. The pressed suit and the newly cut hair made me suspicious but the Italian shoes were a dead giveaway.

‘Conor O’Neil?’ he said in a low voice that made me think he had been practising it in a mirror.

‘Hay-na,’ I replied using the local vernacular. His confused look confirmed that he was an out-of-towner. Not that I minded; the local police had been none too gentle with me. Understandable, considering they were certain that I killed my father, bombed their police station, hospitalised about two dozen of their fellow officers and kidnapped their favourite detective. So when a Scranton cop elbowed me in the ribs when no one was looking it was forgivable but not pleasant. This new guy was a relief. He looked like he played by the book – hell, he looked like he wrote the book.

‘My name is Special Agent Andrew Murano.’

‘You’re a Fed?’

He flashed his identification card emblazoned with a big ‘FBI’ across it.

‘Wow, what did I do to deserve the Eliot Ness treatment?’

‘Kidnapping is a federal crime.’

‘Well then you can go home, I didn’t kidnap anybody.’

‘That’s not what Detective Fallon tells us,’ the FBI man said, opening a folder on the table between us.

‘Well Detective Fallon can kiss my …’

‘You claim,’ Murano interrupted, ‘that you accidentally took Detective Fallon to a magical land where you rode dragons together.’

I winced. ‘Well, when you say it like that, it sounds a bit far fetched.’

‘No, not at all, Mr O’Neil. Do go on.’

I really didn’t want to. Telling a story as crazy as mine is kind of fun the first time around but after a while it loses its appeal. I’ve often heard that women hate it when men mentally undress them with their eyes – well, I had the opposite problem. Everyone I told my story to mentally dressed me in a straitjacket. But I recounted my tale once again, ’cause Brendan told me to tell the truth.

Brendan and I had arrived from Tir na Nog into the Real World not far from Brendan’s house. The portal connecting The Land to the Real World deposited us inside a small patch of trees exactly at the spot where Brendan’s mother said mystical ley-lines converged. Brendan had always considered that just another one of his mother’s hippy-trippy crazy ideas, but he was learning that many of her crazy ideas were turning out to be true. Detective Fallon and I were the only ones who made the trip. Essa was supposed to join us but she was still mad at me for the Graysea thing.

Brendan’s mother Nora was one of those older women who looked great even into her seventies. You could see by her face that she had all of her marbles (and then some) and her physique showed that she was still strong. Good thing too, ’cause the shock that Brendan and I gave her when we showed up to the front door on horseback would probably have killed a lesser senior citizen.

When his mother asked him where he had been, Brendan started by saying, ‘You’re not going to believe this.’ But only a couple of minutes into the story it was plain to see that she did. She had believed in Filis and Faeries and Brownies and Tir na Nog all of her life and tears came to her eyes as Brendan told her that the Queen of the Druids recognised him as one of their own.

Brendan’s daughter Ruby was at school. He wanted to go and get her but Nora convinced him that that was a bad idea. He was apparently a very famous missing person. There had even been a TV show recreating Mom and Nieve’s attack on the police station and Brendan’s picture had been on every TV, newspaper and Internet screen in the country. Showing up in a third-grade classroom, we decided, might cause a bit of a commotion.

We were sitting down to a nice cup of tea in the kitchen when Brendan saw something outside the window and said, ‘Oh my gods.’ He jumped up and took a big carving knife out of a wooden block on the counter and said ‘Take it!’

I did.

‘Now drop it.’

I didn’t have a clue what was going on. ‘What?’

‘I said drop it.’

He was so frantic I did what I was told.

Then he said, ‘Tell the truth – it’ll keep you out of a serious jail until I can figure things out.’