Martin & Marcella

Twenty-One

The late hours of the evening of the final feast came, and both brother and sister were still present among the ranks of the High King's Army. In the middle of the great camp, a glorious tent had been raised. Inside were a banquet fit for the Gods and the hundreds of men who had so gallantly risked their lives for their King and people. Drink as amber as the sap of ancient trees was poured into cups as large as bowls, and meat from the Forest of Dunehain, where all beasts were twice the size of normal creatures, lay steaming on platters across the tables. No feast had ever been so grand to Martin, and he was anxious to take part in the celebration, forgetting entirely the anxiety that had been building inside him.

At the very head of the massive table was an empty seat, waiting for the most glorious warrior of all to fill it. To the left of this place of greatest honor rested Finn the Bright's high counsel, and at the right, on a mound of stuffed hides, sat Martin, whose own pride boiled like the hot blood shed by their enemies past.

Just as the feast was near beginning, Finn himself, the chief of the Army of the High King, entered the tent, a magnificent stag-horned cloak draped across his shoulders. It was in this moment, when the valley resounded with cheers for the most noble of men, that Martin realized his mistake. What was adorning Finn the Bright was strikingly familiar, and the boy recognized it within seconds as the same garment he had seen on the riverbank . . . the exact article his sister had seen Her washing. And as rampant fear bounded into his bones, Her echoing cry silenced the joyful voices as Finn the Bright drank deeply from the flask that was his own.

When Joel entered his bedroom that evening, he found that a sheet of paper had been slipped under his door. Upon first spotting it, he wondered momentarily whether the note had been accidentally delivered to his dormitory. Most likely, someone had wanted to send a letter to another friend and merely mismatched the rooms. However, when Joel actually bent down to pick the paper off the floor, he found that the note scrawled across the top of the typed information was addressed to him.

"Joel," it read, "I found this in my web surfing. Thought you might find it interesting, you being into this weird Celtic story. Rob."

Skimming the paper, Joel realized that it was an informative passage on Irish faeries. Leprechauns and pookas danced in a border around the edges; a headless horseman sort of figure was plastered in the center. All around the pictures were blurbs of explanatory print. Joel found it rather childish, though. None of it interested him in the least. Was Robert trying to be funny? He should be doing my research, thought the boy bitterly, not screwing around online. Ready to toss the paper into his trash can, though, Joel caught sight of a word that stuck out on the white parchment like the neon sign that had flashed in front of the pizzeria.

Quickly, the boy moved to his dresser and held the paper under his lamp; the room was too dim to read in unless the material were placed directly under light. When Joel re-read the words, he felt his heart beat wildly. "Bean Sidhe," it said. "The Bean Sidhe, more commonly known as the Banshee, is a spirit said to foretell death. It takes on many forms, including variously aged women and creatures such as ravens and hares, which are frequently associated with witchcraft. The Banshee supposedly appears and cries out when a death is near, usually to those who are friends or relatives of those approaching death and rarely to the nearly-deceased themselves. The wail of a Banshee has been described in numerous ways and in frightening tones, although the spirit itself does not bring harm to those to whom it shows itself. Other signs related to Banshees can include clocks chiming at irregular times and peculiar clusters of bees and other insects, as the spirit frightens living creatures in its foretelling of death."

Wildly, Joel read the words over several times before he realized what he was doing. In his fervency, he found himself breaking into a cold sweat. A large portion of his own possible insanity was suddenly being made miraculously clear to him. What strange chance had brought this information to him? Why hadn't he thought to look up the Banshee earlier? He had, he knew. He'd just been too stubborn to do any work. The strange cries, the insects, the blackbird: all of the frightful images that had been plaguing him were so sharply drawn together for him. At that moment, Joel felt that he would give his life for Robert Buchanan's.