Emily's House (The Akasha Chronicles) (23 page)

“I sever my soul. I sever my self. Go to the Umbra Nihili, oh part of me that is lost, so that I may gain all that the whole of me desires.” He knew it was time. He took a deep breath and then swallowed the concoction that Cian had made earlier. As he felt the last of his breath go from his body, still repeating the incantation in his own mind, he pictured having all that he desired and fulfilling a promise made to himself – and to the dead body of his most beloved – all those years ago.

40. Dughall Wakes

Dughall awoke to an impenetrable darkness. He knew he was alive by the sound of his lungs coughing and wheezing as they sucked in the first air they had breathed in over a thousand years. As he lay in the dark rasping in breath, the reality of his new situation dawned on him.

It had worked! Here he was, in his own body, alive again after so many years. But how would he get out of this icy tomb?

Dughall lay there quietly for a few moments, trying to use as little air as possible. Then he heard a sound. It was muffled, but he could hear the sound of someone pounding on the granite coffin.

A few minutes later he heard the lid of his stony coffin being removed. Fresh, cold air wafted over him. As his eyes adjusted to his surroundings, he could make out the faint shadow of a tiny being. Macha.

Macha and Cian had built an underground tomb in the frozen wasteland. She had been true to her word and had put herself into a deep pixie sleep in the gruesome tomb. Besides the coffin, they buried items that Dughall would need when he arose: the warmest furs to protect him when he exited the tomb; a torch and flint to light his way; cured meats and water sealed in airtight jars, and Macha herself whose magic was always of assistance to him.

“You are with the living once again,” Macha croaked as Dughall stretched his arms. For her part, Macha looked exactly like she had a thousand years before except that her skin and hair were a dull, lifeless grey. Even her wings, once a beautiful iridescent rainbow of color were now grey and without any hint of their former luster.

“Yes, Macha, I live!” replied Dughall in a raspy voice.

“You will need to drink and eat to regain your strength. Your body is much withered from lack of sustenance.”

Dughall looked down at his own hands and arms and could see that Macha was right. He still had flesh, but it was wrinkled like a raisin and clung to his bones. His skin was brown and weathered like a mummy, yet he was not a mummy – he was very much alive. But he looked like no more than a skeleton with flesh covering it.

Fear gripped Dughall, a feeling that was most foreign to him. This was not what he had expected. He could not go out amongst the humans like this. He looked like a monster and would be tracked down and killed. How could he achieve his deepest desire looking like a mummy?

As if reading Dughall’s mind, Macha said, “Don’t worry. Your flesh will plump out again in time. With food and drink and the special cream that Cian left for you, you will look normal in a few weeks’ time.”

“A few weeks? We don’t have that kind of time. I need to get out of here now!”

“You must stay in the chamber. You cannot complete your task in your present condition. Look at you!” she said. In Dughall’s mind he quietly conceded that irksome Macha was right. He couldn’t even rise to leave his grisly stone casket.

“Eat the stored food and drink,” Macha offered. “I will go in search of more food for you.”

With that, she flew to the ceiling of their chamber and removed a large stone that had been left unsealed for their escape. Then Macha grabbed a small spade and dug furiously as she flapped and flapped her wings. It wasn’t long until Macha had a small hole, large enough for her to squeeze through and poke out the top.

Macha flew down to Dughall and handed him a jar of cured meat and a sealed jar of water. “Eat this and stay here, Dughall,” Macha said before she flew away.

Dughall had no intention of staying put, but he hadn’t the strength to raise his body out of the coffin. Cursed Cian! Dughall thought. He had completed the spell but had neglected to care properly for Dughall’s body. Dughall had not bargained for being a cripple upon his return. He tried to scream out a curse in his rage, but it came out as a mere raspy strangled yell.

In utter frustration and with nothing else to do, Dughall opened the jar and grabbed a handful of salty cured ox. It tasted like leather that had been covered in salt.
Awful!
Dughall chewed and chewed, swallowing it down with the stale water from the other jar.

When Dughall’s jaw tired from chewing on the leathery meat, he lay back and envisioned his next steps. While in the Umbra Nihili Dughall was still connected to the ether – to the web of all existence. Even though he could interact with it in no way, he was still able to know what was happening in all of creation.

Dughall knew well why his soul chose to come back together at this time and place. Modern humans were building a most magnificent machine. “They think they are so clever,” thought Dughall. “They haven’t even dreamed of what that machine of theirs can do! So lacking in imagination, these modern humans.”

Dughall lay in his cold, hard home of the past thousand years, smiling a gruesome smile to himself.
Soon, all that I have worked for will be mine. Soon, my most beloved, we will be reunited.

41. The Face in the Bucket

It was a whole night and day before Macha returned. In that time, Dughall had forced himself to eat all of the briny meat and putrid water. Macha was right too – his skin was starting to plump up again. Now he looked slightly less gruesome than he did but still not acceptable to walk among humans again.

“Macha, my favorite gnat! What have you brought me to feast on?”

Macha flew down through the small opening to Dughall, all the while levitating several dead rabbits tied together by their legs. Dughall thought he saw one of them still twitching.

“The Devil take you pixie woman, I’m not eating half-dead hare!”

“Raw meat has more energy in it,” Macha replied. “It will help you regain your strength faster. Blood is good for one like you.”

“I’ve already tested my ancient gut as much as I care to, Macha, by swallowing that retched ox. You will cook those for me!”

“If you wish, but it will prolong your stay in this crypt, my intolerant one,” Macha quipped.

With that, she began her work. She used her small but extremely sharp knife to skin the hares and gut them, removing the entrails. With the wave of her hand, she produced a large copper pot and set it over a fire that she conjured with the clap of her hands. She made a horrific stew of the rabbits in the pot with melted snow from outside. She threw in parsnips and other roots she conjured into the pot in an attempt to please Dughall. The stewing rabbits produced an odor most foul. Dughall was certain that his ancient intestines would surely seize up and cause his demise in one bite of this putrid stew.

Macha practically forced the fetid stew down Dughall’s throat. For two more days, Dughall endured her force-feeding him the blood, guts and meat from the poor hapless hares that happened to have been in Macha’s path.

Dughall also endured Macha rubbing the rank cream that Cian had created for him all over his body. Her small hands were more like cold claws than human hands. It felt like nails scratching him all over on his delicate mummy skin.

But for all the torture that Dughall endured, the results were nothing short of miraculous. His hands looked more and more normal. The skin, less yellow and more white and luminous. He no longer looked like a skeleton but instead like an extremely thin older man. Dughall was finally ready to see what his face looked like.

“Macha, fetch me a bucket of water so that I may look upon myself.”

As Macha placed the bucket in front of him, Dughall braced himself for what he might see. He sucked in his breath and looked down into the smooth water of the bucket.

The man he saw staring back shared little resemblance with the face of the man that he once knew himself to be. The man in the bucket had long, shaggy hair, not well-groomed short hair in the Norman style. This man had sallow cheeks with all the bones in the skull clearly visible under the thin, papery skin, not the firm but fleshy masculine face that he once knew. To Dughall, he looked like the lowliest old beggar.

But at least he now looked human. He would need to set aside his vanity for now.
Bide your time, Dughall
, he thought to himself.

“I am ready,” he said to Macha as much as to himself.

With that, he put on the fresh linen clothing and furs that had been put in this icy tomb so many years before. Covered from head to toe in fur, he looked the part of an old nomad from the north.

Macha levitated Dughall right out through the opening in the ceiling and into the wide-open snow covered north. Dughall squinted and covered his eyes. So much light! Slowly his eyes adjusted to the light of life again.

Dughall wasted not a minute more. He knew he must make his way south. He trudged, Macha flittering beside him, for many days as he made his way to the ancient continent of his ancestors and of his former self. On to his destiny.

42. The Machine

As Dughall made his way back to human civilization, he was amazed at how little the humans around him saw. Macha was with him all the time, her wings now slightly less grey and the color coming back to her skin. But there were no looks of surprise or awe, no questions from the humans he encountered about his magical pixie companion.
How is it that they cannot see this diminutive yet strong presence beside me at all times?

The more time Dughall spent among modern humans the more he knew the answer to this perplexing observation. The humans were so busy with those things they called ‘cell phones’, with the tiny pads of letters, and looking at their small glass windows with moving pictures and words printed on them. These modern humans were constantly moving and talking and thinking. Dughall doubted they would notice a fire-breathing dragon scorching their arse until it was too late.

All the better for him. A distracted mind is an easily fooled mind. He only hoped the humans at CERN were as distracted and easily befuddled as the humans he had encountered so far along his way.

In a matter of just a few weeks, Dughall hoodwinked, swindled and downright stole food, clothing, money and all that he required not only to survive, but also to fund his way to the French/Swiss border. With a sharp mind wizened by the extraordinary amount of time he had been alive and without a conscience to deflect his attention, Dughall easily worked his will on any he encountered.

It wasn’t long until he found himself in Merino, Switzerland, site of CERN and the Large Hadron Supercollider, the LHC for short. All was working according to plan.

Between his own formidable powers of persuasion and the help of Macha’s pixie magic, Dughall easily usurped the persona and credentials of the lead scientist on one of the collider experiments. Now he was in charge, calling the shots for this wondrous piece of equipment.

Even Dughall had to admit that the humans had achieved something quite remarkable here. The sheer size alone was commendable. There was no hint above the ground of what was happening below.

Dughall delighted in the idea of the deceptive nature of the machine. Above, farmland and rolling hills. A mile below, a machine so powerful that it would force beams of particles to travel to within a fraction of the speed of light, smashing into each other in violent collisions.

The human scientists said that they wanted to look into the ‘face of God’ – to see the beginning of the universe. Billions upon billions of their dollars spent to build a twenty-seven kilometer tube of superconducting magnets, some five stories tall, all for a hope to see back in time.

Dughall laughed within himself at the thought. Humans, always so preoccupied with their past and their own existence. ‘Who are we?’
What a stupid question to ask
, Dughall thought.

As Dughall’s eyes swept over the computer screen in front of him, all numbers and formulas, he couldn’t help but have a smirk come over him.
They are so focused on questions of their past and their existential nature, they are missing out on the opportunity that lay right under their noses.
If only they knew what will soon happen
, he thought.
So wrapped up in their computers and charts and formulas and self-importance, they may not even believe it when they see it!

As Dughall waited for the computer to catch up its calculations to where he wanted it to be, his mind wandered. Wandered as it had done so often in the thousand-plus years he spent in the Umbra Nihili. Plenty of time then, and now, to remember his own history and the reason he risked his very soul to go to the Umbra Nihili – his soul’s most fervent desire.

It won’t be long now, my dearest one
, he thought to himself as he recalled in an instant all the suffering he had endured that brought him to that place of the deepest of human longing, a longing large enough to cause a person to commit the most despicable acts in the name of love.

43. Dughall’s Story

Dughall was back in his own small boy body, peering out of deep brown eyes watching his mother gather water from the town’s well. To say that he was close to her would be an understatement. He felt he was a part of her, and she a part of him. The slave’s life of abject misery can do that to two people who find themselves suffering through it together.

Dughall was born into nobility in a small town in the beautiful Mediterranean countryside. His people grew grapes and olives and made wine known to all as a most excellent elixir. He was born into what could have become a relatively blissful existence, but such was not his destiny.

One fateful day a marauding band of soldiers came intent on taking what did not belong to them. Dughall’s father died protecting his family, cut down by a blade to his unarmored chest. Dughall’s mother wielded a small dagger and hid her boy behind her as two marauders approached her. Dughall never knew that his life was spared only because no soldier could bring himself to end the life of such a beautiful creature, Dughall’s own mother.