‘Conor, oh my Conor,’ she said.
I could have stayed in those arms for days, for months, for the rest of my life. She gently pushed me back by the shoulders, and in a motherly voice I so long had yearned for, said, ‘Conor?’ When I didn’t reply I heard the other motherly voice, the one that says, I’m your mother and you had better listen to me or else. She shook me and said again, ‘Conor!’
That got my attention.
‘We don’t have time for this. We must leave here.’
Still in a daze, I wiped my eyes and nodded.
Mom gestured to our right. ‘This way.’
That was when I heard his voice at the door.
‘You!’ shouted Cialtie.
That snapped me right out of it. I looked to the door and saw my uncle standing there with some tall, spindly, pale woman. She was dressed in hanging black lace with dark, dark eyes, black lips and a skunk-like streak in the front of her jet-black hair.
I lost it – I flipped out. ‘Leave me alone!’ I screamed so forcefully that spit flew out of my mouth. Neither of them was prepared for a fight. They expected to find us chained to the wall. I loved the look on Cialtie’s face as he reached for his sword and realised that he had thrown it across the room after he had failed to cut off my hand. It was lying on the floor to my left. We both looked at it at the same time. Cialtie went for the sword, but I went for Cialtie. Some people would think I was brave, but bravery had nothing to do with it. I was plain loco. All of the day’s craziness, the pain, the revelations, the emotions – I had just had enough! I hit Cialtie with a picture-perfect American football tackle. My shoulder caught him square in the solar plexus and smashed him into the wall. I actually heard all of the air fly out of his lungs and I knew he wasn’t getting up in a hurry. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the goth woman smash into the wall with a shower of golden light from something my mother did. I reached down and picked up the sword. It was so much lighter than it looked. The pommel fitted in my hand as if it was made for me. I started to raise it, fully intending to bring it down on my uncle’s head, when two guards ran into the room. As they reached for their weapons my mother grabbed me by the collar and threw me at the wall.
Passing through a wall is a scary thing. I instinctively threw my hands in front of me but they went right through. When my face reached the stones every cell in my body said, This is going to hurt! – and then pop – I was on the other side. Technically speaking I hadn’t gone through a wall, I had gone through an illusion of a wall. The real wall was in front of me with a big hole chiselled in it. I could see daylight through the opening and Dad beckoning me through. My mother appeared next to me and lobbed an amber ball behind her. I heard screams of, ‘My eyes!’ and then I crawled through. Dad was on the other side standing next to three enormous horses but I hardly noticed him. My eyes were filled with my first look at Tir na Nog – The Land.
Imagine spending all of your life in a world of black and white and finally seeing in colour … No, that’s not right. Imagine never being able to smell and then walking into a bakery, or being sealed in a bubble and feeling a touch of a hand for the first time. Even that doesn’t explain it. Try to imagine that you have another sense, one that you feel in your soul. A sense that activates every nerve in your body. Imagine a view that makes you feel like you could live forever – and you can. That’s what I was looking at now.
Ahead of me I looked down onto a vista of magnificent oak trees. Trees that if you hugged, might just hug you back. Trees that you could call family without irony. Trees that if you were to chop one down, it would mark you as a murderer to the end of your days. To the left, rolling fields started as foothills and culminated in blue, snow-capped mountains that seemed to touch the sky. To my right the trees changed to beech, but not the thin spindly trees I was used to; spectacular white-barked beeches with the girth and height of California redwoods. When I finally tore my eyes away, I saw that my father too was lost in that panorama, and his eyes were as wet as mine.
‘Come on, boys,’ my mother said as she came through the wall, ‘tearful reunions and sightseeing will have to wait for later.’
‘What about Cialtie?’ I asked.
‘He didn’t seem to be breathing all that well,’ she said with a smile. A smile of approval from my mother – I can’t tell you how good that felt.
‘Nice sword,’ Dad said.
‘Yeah, my Uncle Cialtie gave it to me.’
Dad smiled. ‘I always liked that sword.’
‘You recognise it?’
‘I should,’ he said, as he swung himself up onto a horse. ‘It used to be mine.’
‘Come, Conor,’ my mother said as she jumped into a saddle, ‘he will be back with reinforcements in a minute. Mount up.’
‘I can’t ride that thing!’
‘Surely you know how to ride,’ she said.
‘Nope.’
She gave my father a stern look. ‘You didn’t teach him to ride? You, of all people, didn’t teach your own son to ride?’
‘I taught him to speak the tongue,’ he explained, ‘and I taught him swordplay.’
‘But not ride,’ she said, in a tone that made me realise she was not a woman to be trifled with. ‘Typical.’ She kicked her steed and galloped directly at me. Next thing I knew she grabbed me by the collar and hoisted me into the saddle in front of her.
‘Hold on tight and be careful with that sword.’
She took two amber balls out of her pouch and hurled them over the top of the wall above us. ‘Cover your eyes!’ she said. Even at this distance and with my forearm over my eyes, I saw the flash and could imagine how painful it must have been up close. To the sound of more screams, we galloped off towards the beech forest.
Considering that this was my first getaway, I thought it went pretty smoothly. I got spooked by a couple of arrows that zinged past us, but by and large we just rode away. I sat in front of my mother as we galloped and imagined I was an infant and she was behind me in my pushchair.
‘What is your name?’ I asked.
‘Deirdre,’ she whispered.
We entered the beech forest. Every time I spoke she shushed me, like I was speaking in a library, but when the trees thinned out, Mom answered a couple of my questions. She told me that she had been planning this jailbreak for a long time. She and some people she called the Fili had been secretly tunnelling through that wall at night for weeks. Each morning she would cast some kind of magic to conceal it. I asked her how she could have known that we were going to be there. In a conspiratorial tone of voice, she told me that she cast Shadowrunes. When I asked her why we were whispering she answered, ‘Because beech trees are very indiscreet.’
Other than that we rode in silence for about an hour. The beeches gave way to flowering ash trees. Fine yellow flowers covered the ground and marked our hoof prints like snow.
Dad pulled up beside us. He looked very tired. ‘Castle Nuin is near. Can we get sanctuary there?’
‘I’m afraid when the lords find out about Conor,’ Mom said, ‘we won’t have friends anywhere.’
Dad nodded in resignation.
‘We don’t have much further to ride. I have a boat up ahead. If we can make it to the Fililands we will be safe.’
We travelled for another fifteen minutes or so until we came to a river. Dad dismounted and splashed his face with the water. ‘River Lugar,’ he sighed, ‘I thought I would never see you again.’ He looked up at my mother. ‘Nor did I think I would ever see you again, Deirdre.’
‘Come, Oisin.’ Her voice cracked a little