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I take refuge on a cluster of stones. After twisting my riotously uncooperative hair into an approximation of a bun, I lean back and count stars until the whirlwind left behind by Sionnach Loho downgrades to an intermittent breeze.
He won’t leave me. He’s promised as much, thank goodness. I need him to stay away long enough for me to decide if I can handle an eternity-bending responsibility. How many attempts has he made to break this chain of agony?
I trail fingertips across my forehead. Of course, I want to help him and the souls. Imagining these poor people crashing into sludge over and over is enough to make me want to lie in the wet grass and never get up again. The enormity of such a task should make my heart heavy, but a sense of wonder begins to crack my shell.
I’ve moved through the Veil.
It’s real. Afterlives are real. Ghosts are real. Finnbheara, a Fae king, is real. Whatever Sion claims to be, a Veil guide, is real. How can I continue to doubt the validity of these strange things after what he’s shown me tonight? I don’t feel crazy. The Veil Sprites dance within me, flashing quick reassurance my thinking is correct. Of course, it is. In my studies, I’ve immersed myself in Celtic spirituality. The strands of belief: nature and community, equality of men and women, and imagination as the key to understanding both mankind and deity, meshed so well with my grandmother’s philosophies I never had cause to doubt them.
“You told me to remember ancestors and the past. I will, Máthair. I’ll remember you for the rest of my life and—” I glance at the tower window still as black as ink. “Whatever comes after.” I twist my grandmother’s ring on my finger. Heaven. Tír na nÓg. Nirvana. Even Valhalla where Thor will battle Loki as long as there is consciousness to imagine such epic struggles.
A steady wind meanders through the forest, raising whispers between the trees. “I promise to work in harmony with the natural world, Grandmother.” Just as her greenhouse spoke to her in the unvoiced song of living things.
A shiver runs through me as the third strand of my promise comes to mind. “I’ll keep an open mind to the connection between the spirit realm and reality.” Tonight, I’ve seen damn convincing evidence of that bond.
A flicker from above catches my eye. After some respite, the light in the tower window returns. The silhouette of the first woman in the soulfall stands poised on the edge of oblivion. Her cry shakes the night, and again she plunges onto the waiting teeth of river rocks.
I try to watch and understand my place in the redemption of these souls, but I hide my face long before the end. Their song of sorrow permeates my own soul. Guilty relief fills me when the night is still again. How does Sion stand to be in a room enmeshed in helplessness as each of his charges chases their spiritual tails time and time again?
“Did you watch it all?” I startle when Sionnach appears next to me. He’s sure got stealth, whether man or fox.
I shake my head. “I couldn’t. It’s too much to handle.”
His shoulders droop. “That’ll do for now, but I’ll need you to be seeing it through to the last soon enough.” Sion gazes up at the tower. “As I said, next is Alaina Kennedy. “Her boy, Matthew, went missing, and she refuses to move on until she knows if he’s dead or alive. We need to grant her the mercy of knowing.”
I pop off the rock. “That’s an easy one.” I root in my pocket for my phone. “I’m sure we can find him online.” While waiting for my screen to power up, I get down to business. “Where does Matthew Kennedy live?”
The beginning of a smirk on Sion’s face annoys me. Where’s the humor in a mother searching for her missing kid?
“Leap Castle in Roscrea.”
I shake my phone. It refuses to wake even though I charged the battery on the bus from Charleville. At least my hours of pouring over the map of our itinerary with Colleen pay off. “Hey, that’s not far from here.” It hits me that I’m not exactly sure where here is. “From the campsite in Rowan Bend.” I tap the cell screen, hoping it’ll coax a faster wake-up, and then knock a fist against my forehead. As if there’d be cell reception in the Veil. “How long ago did he go missing?”
“Sometime in the early 1500s.”
My arm drops the useless phone to my side. Even if it did revive, I can’t Google a five-hundred-year-old missing person. “You’re not serious.”
“Swear on my ma’s life.”
Goosebumps pebble my skin as yet another truth slams into me. “By Veil travel—you mean time travel?
“I do.”
I rub my arms. “Can’t we deal with ghosts in the present like Little Harriett?”
Sion inhales very slowly and times his exhale to match. “Every soul’s story sends us down a different path.”
These soul paths are more akin to Alice’s rabbit hole.
“Matthew worked as a serving lad at Leap Castle for the O’Carrolls. He’d boarded there since he was thirteen but managed a visit to his ma and da every few months.” Sion fiddles with his curls. “There was a poor winter when traveling would have been too much for the lad, but come the spring and then summer, Matthew did not show at home.”
Okay, I can do this. Listen to Sion tell the soul’s story and ask what he’s already done to find the artifacts. Hopefully, I’ll help point him in the right direction. My analytical PhD brain clicks on. “Did his parents go looking for him? Or try to write?”
“Aye, but no help for it from the O’Carrolls.” Sion snorts. “They’re not what you’d call a hospitable clan.” He rubs his lips together. “I’ve found those that’ve heard of the lad at Leap Castle, but never laid eyes on Matthew himself. Not a soul knows aught of what became of him.”
This story of an absent loved one is too close to home and my sudden loss of Máthair. No wrinkled cheek for me to kiss. Just a packet from a lawyer and a ring with a vague message to find her.
Sion drops to one knee. “Eala, I’m begging you. Come with me to see and hear what I can’t.”
