Dolmarehn - Book Two of the Otherworld Trilogy (3 page)

I let go and stepped away, but Cade kept his hands on my shoulders, holding me only a few feet in front of him.  I turned my head.  I blushed far too often in his presence, and looking him in the eye would only make it worse.

“Are you unwell?”

His voice was gentle, betraying a smidgen of concern.  My heart swelled.

“Um, I worried while you were away,” I admitted.

Of course, I didn’t need to go into detail about how my concern was more for him than myself.

“The faelah?  You worried about them?” he asked.

I nodded. 
Chicken
.  Why was I so afraid to tell him how I felt?  Like an idiot, I allowed myself to fall for him only to discover he had a goddess for a girlfriend (and then learning she
wasn’t
his girlfriend after all), right before he left me hanging for the entire summer, wondering if I’d ever see him again . . .  Ugh.  I guess you could say my emotions had been banged up a bit.

He used his index finger to lift my chin so that I looked him in the eye. 
Drat
.  His had darkened even more.  Mine, I couldn’t say what color they took on at the moment, but if my nerves were any indication, I’d say they resembled a slide show gone berserk.

“Nothing attacked you, though, right?”

The hard tone of Cade’s voice sent
prickles
down my spine.  Why must he be so appealing?

“No,” I finally managed.

He sighed and dropped his finger from my chin and released my other arm.  He ran his hands through his hair and stepped away.

“Good,” he said.

“I did run across a few things, over the summer, but only some more of those gnome creatures and they didn’t bother me.”  I thought it best to make practical conversation as I recovered from being so close to him.  “Oh, and a Silkie just last week.”

Cade arched an eyebrow.  “A Silkie?”

I nodded, wrapping my arms around my torso.  A chill settled on my skin for some reason, as if leaving Cade’s embrace also took away all my warmth.

“Logan had his birthday party at the beach, and when we went to the tide pools I noticed a woman in the water with a seal skin draped over her shoulders.  She caught me staring, then pulled the skin tighter and transformed back into a seal.”

Cade seemed to have stopped listening to me.  He grew still and his face turned stony.  “Logan?”

I blinked up at him, my mind blank.  His height still astounded me.  He stood a good eight or nine inches taller than me, and I was the tallest girl in my high school.

“Who is Logan?”

Uh
. . . ?  Had I never told him about my brothers?  “My little brother.”

Could I have been imagining things, or did that information cause him to relax substantially?  Had he been worried?  Jealous?  A tingle of joy pulsed through me, but I squashed the stupid sensation and told myself I was being delusional again.

I cleared my throat.  “So, how have things been in the Otherworld?”

I know it was a lame thing to say, but moving the conversation, even in the small talk direction, was better than silence.

Cade arched a brow and cast me a sidelong glance.  Okay, was he
trying
to make me blush?  Or was I just that pathetic?

He shrugged and glanced away.  Thank goodness.  “I’ve managed to keep most of the faelah from trickling through the dolmarehn I’m responsible for, but if you’re wondering if I’ve redeemed myself for breaking my geis, I’m afraid I have to disappoint you.”

Oh.
  I hadn’t been wondering, at least not until he brought it up.

“I’m sorry Cade,” I confessed quietly, stepping even further away from him.

I couldn’t imagine what being punished for saving someone’s life felt like.  Because of his actions on the day I almost got mauled to death in the Otherworld, he ended up breaking his geis, his taboo.  Violating a geis came with a heavy price.  True, I didn’t know what his particular punishment was, but such a thing couldn’t be pleasant.

Cade moved closer, following me.  He spoke low, and curse it, his voice made me go weak in the knees again.

“Don’t be sorry Meghan.  I would make the same choice again in a heartbeat.”

Oh, how I wanted those words to mean he liked me back.  Perhaps they did, and perhaps he was about to say so, but unfortunately Fergus’s bark interrupted any further conversation.

Cade tensed, and then forced himself to relax once more.  “I’ve got to go Meghan.”

I just managed to exercise a bit of restraint before wrapping myself around him again.

“When will you be back?”  I wanted to know.

He smiled.  “As soon as possible.  In the meantime, keep up your archery practice and be sure to check the oak tree every once in a while.”

I grinned back, despite my forlorn state of mind.  I watched as he disappeared down the trail leading to the dolmarehn, the same dolmarehn that had thrown me into the Otherworld a scant few months ago.  The memory of the ordeal made me sh
udd
er, but I focused on watching Cade for as long as I could.  He was leaving, yet he promised to come back, and he had insinuated he would be dropping off messages in the oak tree.  Love letters?  I grinned in self-chastisement. 
Silly Meghan!  When are you going to stop daydreaming about him
?  Unfortunately, my common sense told me the truth:
never
.

-Three-

Surprise

I
spent the rest of the weekend in a fog of housekeeping and studying.  I’d put off tidying my room for weeks and I had grown tired of wading through stray laundry to get to my bed.  Besides, cleaning was the one activity I could actually accomplish while my mind was still caught up in the memory of seeing Cade.

By Sunday morning, however, I told myself to snap out of my weird funk and get some homework done.  Moping around the house like some forlorn ghost would do me no good, and letting my grades suffer might have dire consequences.  I turned on a classical music CD and got to work.  To my delight, I only thought about Cade twice for the rest of the day.  Maybe three times.

On Monday morning I woke up before the alarm clock, so I decided to get up earlier than usual.  I showered, got dressed and headed upstairs for breakfast.  My brothers nearly knocked me over as they ran circles around Mom.  I grinned and managed to capture a bagel amidst all the chaos.  I called a goodbye to my dad as I headed out the front door.  I had every intention of walking down the street and catching a ride with Tully.  As I angled down the driveway however, a sharp bark stopped me in my tracks.

Fergus stood by the old barbed wire fence denoting the road’s stopping point and the beginning of the equestrian trail that led into the swamp.  He wagged his tail and turned around, trotting into the woods.  A goofy grin spread across my face and I took hold of my backpack straps and followed him.  When he stopped at the oak tree, a small twang of disappointment snapped in my stomach.  Oh, so he wasn’t taking me to Cade.

Sighing and trying not to show my frustration too much, I stepped up onto a tree root and pulled the note out of the knothole on the other side.  Fergus stared at me, panting as usual, as I unrolled the paper and began to read.

Meghan,

I hope your weekend went well.  I’m very sorry I couldn’t stay longer and catch up with you or even witness your progress with your bow, but I’m glad I was able to get away at all.

Unfortunately, I fear I’ll be held up in Eilé for the next month or so, and will only be corresponding by letter.  In order to make up for my rude neglect of you, do me a favor and take the back way to school this morning.

Sincerely,

C.M.

Despite my intense regret at learning Cade would be gone for a month, I smiled softly.  He sounded truly remorseful that he wouldn’t be able to visit me.  I tucked the letter into a backpack pocket and made a mental note to set aside a shoebox for them before taking out my cell phone and texting Tully, telling her I was going to walk to school that morning.  It was still early, so if I didn’t dawdle I should make it before the bell.

Coastal fog curled along the trail and in the deepest recesses of the swamp.  On a normal day, I’d be terrified to come down here on my own when it still wasn’t fully light, but I had Fergus, trotting silently ahead of me.  For the first time since the spirit guide had been left with me, I wondered if Cade was suffering because of it.  I dashed that thought away before it culminated into a full blown, single-minded desire to go back to the Otherworld to check on him.

A small flash of color and a chirp that sounded similar to a cricket’s stopped me dead in my tracks.  I sensed myself going white.  Were there faelah around?  Why would Cade tell me to walk to school if he had somehow let faelah slip past him?  Was the Morrigan trying to set me up again?  But, wouldn’t Fergus know if it was dangerous?

I turned to go back the way I had come, but Fergus blocked me.  “No Fergus, perhaps this isn’t such a good idea after all.”

I started to text Tully again as I tried to get by him, but the wolfhound wouldn’t budge.  In the next breath, something the size of a swallowtail butterfly fluttered past my ear, making the soft chirping sound.  I screamed and threw my arms up to protect my head, almost losing my cell phone.

Now I caught a glimpse of what had been creating the noise and my mouth dropped open.  Was that a . . . fairy?!  I shook my head and blinked my eyes clear.  The creature’s body, humanoid in shape, measured about the length my thumb and its brilliantly colored wings were somewhat translucent.  I simply stood there, gaping and following the creature with my eyes.  After floating in the air for a few minutes, the fairy landed among a thicket of ferns.  Fergus pulled away from me then and trotted alongside the fronds, brushing them with his legs.  What followed completely transfixed me.  As he moved down the line of ferns, hundreds of the little fairy creatures took to the sky, chirping in agitation and flashing their multicolored wings.  A living, breathing rainbow.

I was dumbstruck, and a sense of pure joy filled me as the fairies fluttered all around me.  Wait, not fairies.  In Irish lore fairies were more like humans, but with supernatural powers.  The term ‘fairy’ might even apply to the Faelorehn.  These charming faelah were most likely pixies.

Taking a deep breath, I tore myself away and started back down the trail, grinning like I’d received a dozen roses from a secret admirer.

Cade’s gift probably meant I’d be late for school, but the delay had been worth it.  Whether the delightful little creatures were pixies or some other form of faelah, I couldn’t say.  What I did know, however, was that Cade had more than made up for his so-called neglect.

* * *

The next several weeks passed with just a hint of bitter sweetness to them.  Cade stayed away from the mortal world, like he promised, busy paying back the damage caused by his broken geis.  He also kept his other promise and wrote to me at least twice a week.

Fergus was always diligent in letting me know if there was a letter waiting in the oak tree for me, but to be honest, I checked the knothole every day after school.  Nothing thrilled me more than getting notes from Cade.  He would start the letters by telling me how much he missed our archery lessons and how he was looking forward to showing me the Otherworld (without the Morrigan and her minions tagging along, of course).  My heart would leap when I conjured up images of wandering those misty hills with him, to see him in his element.  I also dreaded the possibility of my memories from that horrible night returning; when the Morrigan’s demons nearly killed me.  Despite everything, however, Cade would protect me, I hadn’t a doubt.

As fall progressed, the days got shorter and my school work got more intense.  Nothing I couldn’t handle, though.  I mean, what was an impending calculus test and a biology report compared to the anger of a Celtic goddess?  Hah!  A walk in the park!  If only I could convince myself such thoughts were true.

A few days before my birthday and Halloween, I dreamed of my childhood again.  I had almost forgotten about it, what with everything I’d learned in the last several months.  But I shouldn’t have been surprised.  It came every year, and nothing had changed this year: the younger version of myself, wandering L.A.’s streets, clinging to a huge white hound.

When I woke up, however, I sensed the puzzle pieces of my mysterious past had finally fallen into place.  Sure, they hadn’t been pressed together yet, but I envisioned all of them clearly, lying on the glass coffee table in our living room, each one lined up and ready for my fingers to slip them into place.  I had been taken through a dolmarehn at the age of two, I’d already determined that much, but who had brought me to the mortal world and why?

I grumbled under my breath and shut off my radio alarm, another old question floating up from the depths of my mind to mingle with my other thoughts.  Exactly who
were
my parents?  I still didn’t know, and every time Cade had visited in the past, he managed to distract me with his essence, thus striking any other questions from my mind.  Of course I loved my mom and dad, but some undetectable sense inside of me insisted on knowing who I had once belonged to.