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Oh, for the love of reason—the twelfth century! There’s a slice of yore I’m not anxious to leap into. I take the rings from him and lay them on my palm. “Strongbow.”
There’s a low rumble in his chest. For a moment, I expect him to roar like the king of the forest. “The feller who brought the English shitestorm to Ireland.”
My finger stops tracing the shape of the chainmail, indignant that Sion feels the need to mansplain Strongbow to a Celtic studies adjunct professor. “I’m well aware of who Richard de Clare is.” I quickly get over my pissy moment. “Wait. If you’ve already got the artifact, why is Strongbow’s squire still in the soulfall?”
Sion threads his pinky through one of the rings and twirls them. “We’ve got the key alright, but it hasn’t completed the work to restore the virtue. The squire stole this chainmail from his master. The lad figured he’d make a pretty penny selling it, owing to Strongbow’s fame.”
“Is that what screwed up the squire’s virtue?”
“Led to it. Once the young fool had the chainmail, he deserted his lord to make his own fortune. Not so noble.” Sion lays the rings in the flat of his palm. “Didn’t go well. The lad was mightily overcome with shame for betraying a man who’d been nothing but good to him, and he went barking mad. Roamed the countryside, begging and searching for Strongbow to return the mail rings.” Sion grunts. “Pity and the waste of a life. I’m positive Sir Greatness never missed these wee pieces at all.”
“I don’t get it.” I rub my nose against my shoulder, trying to work out our next case. “He’s a thief. What virtue fixes that?”
“It’s not the thieving. He repented. Even confessed to a priest.” Sion picks at the curls over his ears. “He lost himself, his humanity.” His eyes widen expectantly. “If we return the chainmail to Strongbow, we’ll grant the squire’s soul a clean slate. His humanity can work its way back in.”
No doubt my partner is ready to dive into our next adventure, but I’m still not entirely sure my heart isn’t going to explode. I touch my forehead to the frigid leaning stone and use it as an ice pack for my throbbing head. “I may need more recovery time than the day before my next sucker punch from the Veil.” After our vacay into the sixteenth century, I’m not eager to set the time machine back any farther.
The memory of Little Harriett tugs at me. “Do we have to hand the chainmail to Strongbow in his time? What if he’s a ghost skipping around the Irish countryside?”
Sion leans next to me with his back against the stone. Both eyes wobble while he contemplates my question.
I wrack my brain for Strongbow details. Where might said ghost be floating through walls? The baggy sleeve of my leine snags on one of the slashes in the stone. Shit, we’re still in our period garb. “We’ve got to change and rejoin to the group. Colleen will freak if she realizes I’m gone.”
Sion squints at the sun rising through the forest portal. “Aye.”
“Let’s brainstorm on the bus to Dublin.”
He flashes me a smile that turns my knees to putty. Who am I? One kiss plus post soul-saving cuddles and I’m into him?
“Aye, we will.” With a wink, he moves a few feet along the path and then zips off into the forest. “Over here.”
Stepping into shadows, I watch him reach into the middle of the same trio of white trunks where he retrieved the clothing bundle before our jaunt to Leap Castle.
“Didn’t we leave your bag…” I search the immediate area. The tree with the clothes was at the edge of a forest, and now it’s in the middle of one?
Sion strips the sixteenth century to his ankles. I turn my back, but not before I treat myself to another peek at the expanse of his freckly sculpted chest with its center of foxy fur. “We did. The tree follows me when I travel. You might say tree energy and leaning stones give Veil travel a grand boost.”
I drop my head back. There’s so much of this that’s normal to Sion and beyond unbelievable to me. Will my thoughts ever stop furiously spinning?
“I considered trying to keep a family of hedgehogs for company in there.” He rattles on while my modern-day clothes sail over me and into the dirt at my feet. “The white poplar is a sacred tree you know. These green triangles in the bark form a pattern saying it’s mine so no other guides try to use her. Some call this the tree of life, Eadha, and claim her roots go down past our world to the other.”
I slip behind a wider trunk to change back into jeans and a sweater. Máthair’s scarf is balled up in one of the sleeves. I smile at a fleeting image of Sion and my grandmother chatting over Irish breakfast tea in the kitchen of our New York apartment about hedgehogs and sacred trees. She’d like him despite all the riddles.
“I call her Alfie.” Sion pats the trunk. “As in Al—find your sorry arse, Sionnach, no matter where you fly off to.”
It’s strange to accept that this merry, laughing version of my new partner is the same snarly chancer I met in the Blarney Castle Druid’s Cave less than two days ago.
Two days.
The intensity of our time together makes it feel like two years. I toss my serving wench costume to him. He jams it into the canvas bag, which he deposits in the space between Alfie’s slender white trunks. I make a mental note to zip into a Tesco market and buy dryer sheets for the clothes sack, hopefully cutting back a smidge of sixteenth or whatever century odor.
Sion offers his hand, and I take it. Yesterday, he was off-putting, but this morning, walking hand in hand feels as natural as if we’ve been doing it forever. I press my lips together. He is a form of forever. My forever companion who sends souls to the light.
“We did something good tonight.” His thumb slides across the back of my hand. “Something very good, and I thank you for it.”
We.
Sionnach and Eala.
