“Don’t be tickling me ass with a feather, now I’m asking seriously.” Owen-I hope you don’t mind me calling you that, because I can’t walk around calling you Archdruid-you’ve been on that island for more than two thousand years.” “That’s a question you’ll be asking a lot.
I’ll call Hal and get you some ID with that name.” “Ha! If you Anglicize that, it’s Owen Kennedy. But now that you’re grown a bit and a full Druid, I suppose I can tell ye. “Well, it was right that ye should, ye wee shite. “I’ve never called you anything but Archdruid.” “I will tell you in exchange for something I’d like to know: your name.” By the looks of ye, it can’t have been more than three or four years.” “How long was I on that island, Siodhachan? You still look pretty young. He’d have to learn English quickly if he wanted to talk to anyone besides the Tuatha Dé Danann and me. His voice, a sort of perpetually phlegmy growl, barked a question at me in Old Irish. I hope that if I ever travel two thousand years into the future, there will still be bacon. But for reasons unknown, the Morrigan had frozen him in time in Tír na nÓg, and now he was about to confront the fact of his time travel-with, I might add, flecks of spittle and bacon around the edges of his wrinkled lips. After he bound me to the earth prior to the Common Era, I’d seen him only a couple more times before we drifted apart, and I’d always assumed he’d died, like almost everyone else I knew from my youth. Apart from being brilliant and magically gifted, my archdruid had frequently been abusive and had made few friends during his life-a life that, until recently, I thought had ended millennia ago. The ancient man who was pushing himself up into a sitting position in front of me triggered very few memories of the warm sort. More often, however, they have the sting of hoarfrost, which bites at first, then numbs and settles in the bones for a deep, extended chill. Sometimes the memories are warm and blanket us like a mother’s love. I’m not saying those memories are necessarily good ones they’re simply old and tend to cast us back into roles we thought we grew out of long ago. Few things trigger old memories so quickly as authority figures from our youth.
0 kommentar(er)
