Part Four
A cool cloth pressed to his forehead woke him but the sharp tang of ozone still filled his senses.
‘Thank God you’re still with me!’ As he opened his eyes, Katie’s own were concerned. For him.
The grin he summoned came easily, but then he remembered. As he struggled to sit, his head spun and tilted strangely.
‘Watch it! Stay down. I’m calling the hospital.’
‘Katie, there isn’t much time...this situation isn’t as black and white as you might believe.’ She made to rise, but his hand shot out and grabbed her wrist with surprising strength that frightened her. ‘Get the other half.’
A fleeting frown crossed her pretty face, but he saw the moment she understood. ‘Aye...wait here then.’
Jack rose unsteadily as she left the room. The things he had just experienced were scenes from his dreams. Though this time he was there...he’d felt the wind, heard the evil howling...felt his heart rend as he left her. He picked up the half-cross, shivered, and then straightened himself with new determination. Although things were a little clearer than before, fear crossed his heart. He felt separated from this life. Time pressed its weight on him and he could feel it, as he had many times before...but this time he understood. Time was but the thinnest veil. Fragile, and lonely...crying out with the voices of a thousand lost souls and times long past.
Returning with the other half of the cross, Katie stood in front of him watching his expression. God...it’s like he’d aged a thousand years in a heartbeat. No more the funny Welsh guy. ‘It’s more than even magic...isn’t it?’ she cried; her hands trembling visibly with fear.
More than even magic...
Jack thought about lying...but in seeking the depths of her eyes, saw her need for truth; saw her strength and bravery in what she had been and who she would become. ‘Yes, but exactly what...I can’t say.’
Good and evil. Life and death. Continuing some of what Saint Patrick himself had started; of sacrifices to be made and promises kept. Those things he kept from her, for she would remember soon enough.
She nodded, trusting, and reverently held out the cross as he did the same. Ancient feelings stirred within his soul and he knew neither of them would ever be the same.
Her voice, though trembling, came clear and new, but she knew not what she said until it had escaped her lips. ‘Above you are the stars, below you are the stones, as time doth pass, remember...’ Surprise and dawning knowledge flickered in his expression and as the cross became one again; a breeze fluttered lightly and grew, curling around their legs as fleeting images of old dreams passed behind their eyes.
Kate tried to ignore the wild thumping of her heart. As her fingers touched his, a jolt of electricity passed through her and she gasped. It was more than lust...more than love...and much more than mere magic. Day blurring with night, present with past. Indecipherable sounds keened as the day light faded.
Through the cacophony, Jack saw her shock, and grabbed her free hand with his own. ‘Stay with me, Katie.’
Feeling distinctly as though she were falling from a cliff’s edge, yet relentlessly drawn, Katie tumbled into Jack’s embrace as the room tilted and spun. Wind flailed at them, encouraging flight and they smelled, heard, and saw...earthy things from somewhere within themselves.
Of being born.
Being surrounded by deep, forest green...voices of long ago, lilting songs...myth, passion and blood, thundering horses with dark riders in the company of shadowy intent. The generations of descendants who would surpass them. Magic, and in the dawn of a single legend—of prophesy and death. They plummeted through the ages together, each holding the other with the grip of the drowning with the weight of the ancient cross pressed between them as they were enveloped by a diaphanous veil that separating time.
*
Part Five
The earth was cool, clean and raw. She smelled deeply of the morning, and recognised the white wild flowers that grew near her home. She wrinkled her nose at the distinctive odour of unwashed bodies, though it was not entirely unpleasant. She felt him near her, and remembered, then opened her eyes.
He heard her gasp, and rose sleepily to a sitting position. Day had dawned with a God given luminescence - crisply clear without a cloud in the ethereal sky.
‘Where...what?’ Her chest heaved, as she scrambled up wildly, her dark hair falling boyishly around her elfin face. It was then she noticed her dress. As deeply green as the forest, velvet bodice and skirt. Embroidery tangled the hem of the bodice. ‘What is this? This is…God, tis ancient. M.my voice?’ Her brogue was thicker; her voice lower.
He groaned as he got to his feet, and then grabbed her hands. ‘Please, stay calm. Tis over...’
‘Your accent...tis the same as mine! Yer voice is…different!’ She looked him up and down, seeing that he too wore medieval clothing, complete with battered chain mail and a broadsword in a dented scabbard. They looked around and saw they were in a weald, beside a cave. A slow dawning fell upon them; a trickling awareness as their minds assimilated the past and present, until they knew that the present was the past.
‘We died here...in this place,’ His voice trembled. ‘We were meant to protect the cross, to bring it back. Now...’ He shook his head with a mixture of awe and emotion.
She touched his arm gently. ‘Aye, and by doing so, we have fulfilled one part of the legend, and have been given our lives back.’ They remembered everything as understanding filled their minds, in the waking as from a dream.
He stooped to pick up the now whole cross - a symbol of all they had fought for.
‘Háe the evil gone?’ she asked him, the love of her life. Her Ciaran. Strangely, her two lives had melded and become one.
Ciaran looked at her and fingered the Celtic cross he’d given her seemingly eons ago, and shook his head. ‘Aye...for now, and 503AD is not such a bad place, Aisling.’ His laughter was richer, somehow. ‘Let us return to the castle.’
…And at the end there was a beginning,
then the circle must return.
There would always be a beginning.
Maireann croí éadrom a bhfad.
The End
If you enjoyed this story be sure to read Rhuddlan, a full length novel that follows on from Black Irish.
Imagine waking up in Medieval Wales, transported to a world that existed long, long ago. To live as the betrothed daughter of a Chieftain surrounded by the stark reality of Medieval Wales. Of legend, magic, romance, betrayal and its ancient peoples.
Would you really want to go?
Other books by this Author:
Rhuddlan – Book One of the Conwy Series
Conwy – Book Two of the Conwy Series
Pádraig – Book Three of the Conwy Series
Galen’s Child – Book Four of the Conwy Series - Out now!
Coming next year:
Caery’s Gift – Book Five of the Conwy Series
Isobel’s Dream
Other titles:
Lilláen of the Lake - Short Story
Cadwy’s Haircut – Illustrated, Young Children’s Story
What Brainstem – Humorous Anecdotes
Writing was the Easy Part – non-fiction
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