Why I Let My Hair Grow Out (13 page)

So much so that, as Fergus and Cúchulainn sat together in front of the peat fire they'd built after the mob had scattered, trading tales of their adventures in the months since they'd seen each other last, I could close my eyes and imagine Colin and Raph hanging out together talking guy talk, even though the two of them had never met and, obviously, never would.

But Fergus did have this rough-hewn, red-headed resemblance to Colin. And Cúchulainn reminded me of Raph in other ways—like how he was so BMOC, always grabbing the spotlight, automatically taking charge and expecting everyone to do as he said. Physically, though, Cúchulainn looked more like a younger version of Stuart Woodward than Raph. Dark-haired and wiry, only medium tall but acting taller. Similar personalities, though.

Ewwww,
I thought. At the rate he's going Raph could grow up to be a self-centered, BlackBerry-wielding fool, just like Stuart.
Double ewwww
. That would not be very awesome, dude, at all.

If Raph were really here, of course, he would look at the awesome-dude phenomenon in a more
Star Trek
-type way, in which case it made sense (to the extent that any of this made sense), because whatever ancient Celtic language we were actually speaking was obviously being filtered through the universal translator of my own twenty-first-century Connecticut high-school-student brain.

I hoped that was the explanation. It was one thing to be stuck here as Morganne, not knowing if or when I'd turn into myself again. But if all my worlds were somehow colliding and combining—Ireland, Connecticut, Ancient Long-ago Wheneverville—it made me nervous, is all. I wasn't sure which reality was the realest one. Or which one I wanted to be realest.

Erin was playing with my hair, and we stayed quiet by the fire as the guys yakked into the night. Even Erin was about the same age as robot girl. Hyper and fidgety like Tammy too.

“Morganne, what do
you
make of the witch's riddles?” asked Fergus.

I didn't realize till he spoke to me how close I'd been to dozing off by the fire.

“Since I'm not destined to marry the king, we should try to figure out who is,” I said, drowsily. “How do people hook up around here?”

“When we attack a neighboring kingdom, we'll often steal their women,” explained Cúchulainn.

“That seems a little harsh.” I yawned. “Maybe we should write a personal ad or something. What was the first riddle again?”

“ ‘What's lost in the earth must be found,' ” recited Fergus. “But what has been lost? 'Tis a riddle indeed.”

“It's the last one that troubles me most,” grumbled Cúchulainn. “How can a war be won without killing?”

Erin had given up on my hair and was now lying with her head in my lap. “I'm tired,” she announced suddenly. “I want Morganne to put me to bed.”

I took her inside the thatched-roof hut and made a cozy nest for her out of the soft animal-skin blankets. We curled up together, which is something I hadn't done with Tammy since she was a baby. Not that I remembered doing it, but my mom's favorite photo was of us sleeping together when we were younger. We looked awfully contented. The way things had been the past few years, you'd think that photo was faked.

The witch's riddles were floating around my head as I closed my eyes. Was it really my job to figure them out?

 
I relaxed and let sleep overtake me. Maybe when I woke up I'd be at Durty Nellie's puking my guts out, or in my bed at the inn with an ass-kicking hangover.

As I slipped off to dreamland, it calmed me to think I might wake up as buzz-cut Morgan again. Strange, considering how little I'd enjoyed being Morgan lately.

I'd miss Fergus, though.
Shame to waste a sweet guy like him on a swamp full of salamanders . . .

thirteen

“Morganne, Wake up!”

Ak.

It was still dark, I was in deep sleep, I was lying in a nest of animal-skin blankets, dreaming—

“Get up! We must go and watch! It's too funny!”

Erin was poking me and giggling madly. Evidently I was still Morganne in Long-ago Wheneverville, but no matter who I was it was much, much too early to wake up.

“What,” I mumbled. I sat upright. My hair was a long red-gold tangle across my face. Erin parted it with her fingers like a curtain and whispered to me.

“It's almost dawn, and Fergus has gone to visit his beloved toad-lady. ‘In the darkness before dawn is when she sings the sweetest,' he says. Come! We must see him woo her!”

Little sisters. Pains in the ass, wherever and whenever you go. But the idea of spying on Fergus and his toad sounded pretty funny to me too.

“Awesome,” I said, warming to our prank. “I wouldn't miss that for anything.”

 
 
erin said she knew the Way to the swamp, but i thought it best to take Samhain. I didn't know how to ride a horse, but since I could tell Sam where to go I figured it would be more like taking a cab.

“Swamp, please!” I said, once Erin and I were on Sam's back. “And keep it quiet. We're trying to be discreet.”

“I'll drop you a hundred paces away,” snorted Sam. “You'll have to walk the rest of the way if you don't want to be heard.”

“You can talk to Samhain?” Erin said, wide-eyed.

“Uh, sure.” It hadn't occurred to me that everyone here in Long-ago couldn't. “Is that unusual or something?”

Erin laughed. “He's a
horse
, Morganne! Of course it's unusual!”

“But Fergus can too,” I stammered. “Sorry, I just assumed—”

“Fergus can because he was given the gift of horse-language as a baby, when the Druids prophesied he would drive the chariot of the greatest hero in Ireland,” Erin said, as we trotted along through the night. “But apart from Fergus, only those with faery blood can understand the speech of horses.”

“Huh.” Fergus had referred to the faeries as “your people,” but I didn't know what he meant. Who were “my people,” my parents, my family in this world?

There are an awful lot of things I can't remember about myself,
I thought, but that made me think of the photo of me and baby Tammy, again.

On Samhain's back we'd left the dun and crossed a field full of sleepy cattle. The cows mooed in annoyance and ambled out of the way as we passed. Even in Long-ago the cows looked animatronic, like crudely mechanized heads attached to bodies made of painted carved wood—but that is what cows tend to look like, if you think about it. We reached the edge of a wood, where Sam slowed to a walk and picked his way carefully through the trees, over roots and stones and through low branches that made us cling tightly to his back.

Samhain stopped at the edge of a clearing. “I'll wait for you here,” he said, tossing his head. “Be careful. The hour before sunrise is the night's last chance for mischief.” I wondered what his voice sounded like to Erin. Snorting and whinnying, probably.

“I know where we are!” whispered Erin. “Follow me!”

Silently Erin led me through the clearing, through another small patch of trees, and then to the edge of the swamp. The water shimmered oddly, catching and reflecting the light of the moon.

Erin stopped and grabbed my arm. She put her fingers to her lips and pointed.

There, in the middle of the swamp, stretched out on a half-rotted log, was Fergus. His amphibious girlfriend was next to him, squatting on a lily pad and croaking her froggy little heart out.

“Say it again, my love!” Fergus's lovesick voice carried over the water. “Tell me once more, that I may remember your words when we're apart!”

“And I love you just as much, my darling.” He stretched one hand out as if he would gently stroke the toad, but the log started to roll. “No, no, don't leap away from me again! Let me gaze upon your mottled beauty a precious moment more—”

The toad, startled by the movement of the log, hopped into the water—
plop!
—and disappeared. With a pained sigh Fergus started to paddle around the swamp, using the log as a flotation device.

“Brilliant!” whispered Erin. Her face was glowing with delight. “I want to get closer!” Before I could say anything she scampered off into the darkness. I could hear the crackle of her footsteps receding as she circled along the water's edge to the far end of the swamp.

“Wait!” I whispered, too late. I followed in the direction I thought she'd gone, but I didn't know the way and it was harder for someone my size to pass through the tangle of reeds and bushes she'd slipped through like an eel. I followed, one step at a time, using the contour of the swamp as my guide. After a minute or two I couldn't hear Erin's footsteps at all.

Fergus, meanwhile, had begun to sing. I wanted to find it funny, but all at once I was uneasy out there in the dark.

 
I heard another sound: a high, shrill whinny in the distance.

“Listen, my dear! The seahorses themselves are singing your praises!” Fergus was delirious with passion.

“Erin!” I yelled. I didn't care if Fergus heard me. “Erin! Where are you?” I moved as quickly as I could through the undergrowth. The sky was still dark and dotted with stars, but there was a strange glow in the distance. I wasn't used to being outdoors before dawn—did the sunrise always look like this?

“Who's there?” Fergus turned around so quickly he slipped off the log and into the murky waters. He splashed and burbled, completely covered in mud.

“It's me, Fergus! It's Morganne.” I said the name without thinking, as if it were my own. “We have to find Erin!”

“I'm here!” Erin's voice was playful and happy. “Don't worry, Morganne. I'm fine. And there's a boy here too.” She sounded so close, but I couldn't see her.

Behind me I heard Fergus flailing about the shallow water, trying to crawl to dry land but slowed by the thick, sucking mud of the swamp.

“What boy?” I said, panicked. I turned in the direction of her voice and pushed my way through a high thicket of cat-tails. They whipped my face and got tangled in my hair as I thrashed my way to the unexpected clearing that lay beyond.

There was Erin, and there was the boy.

The glow I'd seen was not the sunrise at all. It was coming from the boy. He looked maybe twelve or so, slender and handsome and dressed in formal Victorian-style clothing, as if he'd just come from an elegant party many centuries from now. He gave off a soft, greenish light, and he was holding something out to Erin. She seemed transfixed.

“Don't touch that, Erin!” I used my meanest, sharpest big-sister voice. “Do. Not. Touch.”

“Don't be silly, Morganne,” Erin said, slowly. “It's only a peach. And I haven't had any breakfast.”

Samhain's whinny cut through the air again. There was no mistaking the sound of alarm.

“Poor old nag,” said the boy, turning his head and looking at me. A trail of brilliant, sparkling light followed his movements, then vanished, like the fading streaks of a meteor shower. The boy smiled. “He says you've been away too long, and it's time to go back. Morgan.”

Fergus appeared next to me, caked in mud and slime. It took him only a split second to understand what was happening.

“What are you doing—Erin!
Stop!
”

But Erin was already taking a juicy, slow-motion bite of the peach. The boy smiled again and turned away from us. He took Erin's free hand.

A raw, bottomless crack in the ground opened up, and Erin and the boy sank into it, quickly and smoothly, as if they were riding a down escalator into the earth.

I leapt after her, with Fergus right beside me, reaching hard like I was sliding headfirst into home plate, stretching out my fingertips to grab hold of the crevice's lip before it closed completely. . . .

fourteen

my mouth Was full Of dirt.

That's what it tasted like. A foul, swamp-dirt taste, like how your mouth feels when you wake up with a skull-splitting hangover in a foreign country and can't remember how you got into bed or who cleaned up your puke.

“Erin,” I tried to yell, but my voice was a croak.

 
 
the day, the time—this information Was not available to me. I stumbled to the bathroom and washed my face before I looked in the mirror.

I was Morgan. Green-faced and nearly hairless as a toad. My brain was pounding, and my eyes felt like they were being pushed out of their sockets. I could hardly turn my head.

The bottle of Advil was still open from when I'd used it last. (Was that yesterday? Last week? Last year?) No pain-killers for me now. I needed to feel every scrap of misery and accursedness.

I couldn't afford to get comfortable. I had to get back and find Erin.

 
 
in the lobby Of durty nellie's the entire merry padded-ass band of travelers was already gathered to receive their maps and instructions for the day. Lucia, actually smiling, was finishing some sort of story.

“Because we argued like an old married couple from the moment that we met, that's how we knew!” Everyone laughed.

“He sounds like a king of men,” Heidi said, wiping away a little tear.