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“You have to stop the car right now!” Nox searched around him for a bag to breathe in and fanned his face when he began to see spots. His ears popped. “Holy shit.”
Nelson checked the road behind them before smoothly pulling over and turning to Nox. “It was just a dream. Why are you upset?” He asked, ducking and swiveling his neck warily. “Are you going to be sick again?”
“No!” Nox covered his mouth to hold back another burst of laughter. “But I think I might faint because this is…unbelievable!” He whispered excitedly. “Did I…play you?” He asked, strumming an invisible harp in front of him.
“No!” Nelson blocked his face. It turned an even darker shade of pink and his hands shook. “It wasn’t—! Nothing happened.”
“Okay…” Something clearly had, but Nelson really didn’t want to talk about it. “Nothing happened. Where were we?”
“At the crime scene. With the victim at first.”
“Oh.” Nox hummed thoughtfully and considered where to begin. “Well… According to the old legends, the Dagda had three sacred items. A mace—the lorg mór—that could kill all of his enemies with one blow or bring back the dead. A cauldron, called the coire ansic, that was said to never be empty and to always bring him good fortune. We saw both represented there with the dead body and cauldron at the altar. They collected our victim’s womb in the cauldron and I think we can extrapolate the meaning there…” He leaned closer and searched Nelson’s eyes and his aura. “But the Dagda’s harp—his uaithne—was his most powerful and prized possession because it could change the seasons and men’s hearts. It had the power to tell the Dagda what was in a man’s mind and undo his lies.”
Nelson’s frown had returned. “Why was I a harp?”
“It was his most powerful and prized possession,” Nox repeated scoldingly and shook his head at Nelson. “I would take it as a compliment.”
“I guess,” Nelson said with another shrug and started the car, but Nox grabbed his hand. It was warm. Shockingly so.
“I’m not finished,” Nox said distantly, enthralled by the warmth and how nice it was. Rain and sleet beat at the windows and doors and the wind shook the car, but Nox could have nodded off, he was so calm and he felt safe. He hadn’t felt that safe since his father had passed.
Nelson coughed softly. “Go on,” he attempted but it came out as a dry croak.
“Um…” Nox shook his head to clear it, but he didn’t take his hand off of Nelson’s. He didn’t want to. “In the early 1100s, a gentleman named Columb translated a set of very early Celtic texts and in several instances he attributed the uaithne with human qualities and referred to it as a he. Because of that editorial decision, he was widely discredited by his peers and later scholars. But I think Columb got it right and that his translations are the most faithful.”
“Columb. Got it,” Nelson replied, still sounding unsteady. “Why is this still so controversial?”
“Because my theory is that the Dagda was both a god and a man!”
“Like, the Catholic Holy Trinity, but just a Father and a Son?” Nelson said and Nox shook his head.
“No! I mean literally!” He stopped and gestured that they needed to rewind. “My theory is that to the first Celtic druids the Dagda was their Eochaid Ollathair, the All-Father, and he had an earthly, human vessel. Like the Dalai Lama—or the Avatar—whose spirit is reincarnated into his successor.”
“I already made a note to find out who the Avatar is,” Nelson said, making Nox gasp.
“Not the blue people, though. Avatar: The Last Airbender. It’s amazing and we should watch it together. But later because it’s really not that germane to the investigation,” he said quickly, not wanting to get sidetracked. This was truly one of the most exciting things he had ever experienced. And that was saying a lot. “Columb believed in a pantheon of reincarnating clerics, not a single god with some random magickal treasures. Which would make sense if you consider that the Greeks and Romans had gods, demigods, and heroes who changed shapes and were represented by specific animals and items. Take Athena or Minerva and the owl or Ariadne and her ball of thread. Why wouldn’t the Celts have similar traditions? And it would make sense to the Romans who were the source of most of our Dagda texts because they documented the peoples they conquered and converted.”
“That does make sense. I guess it’s good that I wasn’t the cauldron,” Nelson said with a grimace. They both shuddered and Nox clutched his stomach, feeling queasy.
“Columb believed the Dagda and his most powerful and valued allies were reincarnated as an order of supernatural clerics. That that was what the Tuath Dé Danann really were.”
“And why is that a good thing?” Nelson asked.
“This new Tuath Dé thinks there’s just the one god with a cauldron that always pleased the company.” Nox rolled his eyes because how could that ever make more sense than a god having minion gods and holy clerics who were demigods? “I believe that the Dagda, his Uaithne, his Lorg Mór, and his Coire Ansic were religious and governing figures of the godly realms, like the druids were to the Celts on earth. The Dagda was at the top of the pyramid and he had his top three.” Nox held up three fingers, then pointed one and wound it in a circle to mimic the swirls burned into the ground and the victim’s chest. “They’re even depicted as a trio in a triangular cluster. Like a king’s council, his negotiator, and his enforcer.”
“So, the myths were mistranslated and they aren’t about a god with a magick harp, a magick mace, and a magick cauldron?” Nelson confirmed.
“Yup.”
“And you think they were real and can be reincarnated?”
Nox snorted and flailed a hand. “No! Not that part. That would be impossible, right?” He widened his eyes appropriately. “But somehow, your subconscious has picked up some ancient clue or has received a message that was telegraphed a long time ago. It could be a matter of seeing a pattern that millennia upon millennia of scholars have missed and your psyche explaining it to you in a dream.” He raised a brow, hoping Nelson was buying it.
Because Nox had no concrete explanation for how Nelson could have come by that information. Maybe Nelson forgot that he came across an article about the Dagda on Wikipedia a long time ago or after they had visited the crime scene and before he fell asleep. They weren’t together every minute of the evening and Nox had stumbled into some pretty wacky corners of the internet when he was barely conscious. But when had Nelson learned how to pronounce uaithne? And he would have had to dig pretty deep to find anything referring to it as a man, instead of a literal harp. Nelson would have had to have gone all the way back to the 1100s or dig through Nox’s hard drive because he had nearly been laughed out of academia for agreeing with Columb.
“This is why it matters,” Nox said, releasing Nelson’s hand and gesturing for him to go ahead and start the car. “Some form of the Tuath Dé might still exist, but their dogma is wrong.”
“So? Most cults have a warped belief system and are willing to commit extreme acts to defend it,” Nelson argued.
