Chapter 16

The Vísdómur came again for the boy, Lachlan Quinn at midnight on mid-winters eve. He’d been with his foster father for five years.

“Come,” the eldest grated after she woke him out of a sound sleep. She took his hand in her green skinned fingers and led him bare footed through the drifts of one of the region’s rare snow storms into the forest behind the old man’s cabin.

The boy now fully awake and shook in utter terror. He remembered well the night of the glyphs. He’d had nightmares about them long after the pain of his healing had passed.

They paid his distress no mind. Inside the forest the air was summer warm—the chill of winter left behind. They walked swiftly, the boy stumbling along beside them until they came upon a vine swathed massive maple tree. They laid him down on thick moss that mantled the tree’s base.

Once again, the three took a position around him. They chanted singsong spell after spell and once again the boy was aware but paralyzed. The youngest stroked a comforting hand through his hair.

“Do not fret, boy. There will be no pain this time.”

Stone-still, their legs folded in a lotus, the three stood watch over his body.

“The Goddess Opari comes,” the eldest whispered to him. “Few get to meet her. Watch and learn, boy.”

 A blue butterfly—no it was a tiny, winged sprite fluttered about the flowers of a hanging vine then flew in a circle around his face and lighted on his head. Her feet tickled him as she walked around his face with dainty feet. She peered into his eyes and giggled.

 ”She’s curious and getting to know you,”

A whispering started up in his head. It seemed to the boy that it held a note of childlike eagerness. The butterfly sprite walked to a spot directly above the bridge of his nose and stopped. Lachlan’s eyes crossed as he watched it preened its antenna. She spoke, a tiny whispering that reached into him and tickled the deep recesses of his mind. It quested and snuffled and rummaged through his memories. His mind slowly stopped analyzing and with a quiet watchfulness, slid aside for her to enter. Memories came and went as the pages of his life were turned. Some good—most awful.

He watched as a giant bearded dirty face loomed into sight, frightening him into tears. Huge hands come into the dumpster and lifted him into the frigid air.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Jeff, there’s a baby in this dumpster. Call the cops.”

Once more he listened mutely as the woman told his five year old self that his mommy and daddy where never coming home because they died.