Dolmarehn - Book Two of the Otherworld Trilogy (5 page)

“She isn’t just any merlin, Meghan.  Look closely behind her eyes.”

I obeyed, having nothing better to do, and shone the flashlight back into the box.  The poor thing, covered in fuzz and bald patches, looked like any baby bird.  I examined the small beak, pallid eyelids and reddish-brown ear patches.  Wait, reddish-brown?  I shot my glance back up at Cade, my eyes wide and my mouth hanging open.

Eventually I spoke, “An Otherworldly spirit guide?”

Cade’s smile almost lit up the night.

“For me?”

“She’s all yours.”

Surprise hit me like a glass of ice water, and I brilliantly asked, “How can you tell it’s a she?”

“Spirit guides take on the gender of the master they bond with.”

“Um, are you sure she’ll bond with me?”

“Yes, of course, because she is just hatched and you’ll be the one to raise her.”

“What?”

My joy at his precious gift slowly turned to panic.  I couldn’t raise a baby bird.  Where would I put her without anyone seeing her?  I knew most faelah hid themselves from humans by using their glamour, but enough spirit guides had been seen by the ancient Celts for them to conclude Otherworldly creatures were white with red ears.  I’d learned that much in my research and from talking with Cade.  The chances of one of my brothers stumbling upon her at some point in the near future seemed highly likely, and should she not have enough glamour to render herself invisible. . . ?

“Spirit guides are different than other faelah,” Cade continued.  “They have much more power, even more so than many of the Faelorehn and they only reveal themselves to mortals when they wish to.  They don’t have to return to the Otherworld in order to regain their glamour, and newborns are especially magical.  No one will know she is here, except you.”

Oh, good.  What a relief.  But I had other questions.

“What do I feed her?”

Cade grinned again, a feature hidden due to a lack of light, but I heard it in his voice.  “Fergus will hunt for you.  You can feed her whatever he brings back, but it will get messy.”

I grimaced, even though I was no shrinking violet.  Okay, maybe a little, but I was pretty sure handling raw meat fell within my range of abilities.

“Care for her well, and she will be a good friend to you.  When she starts to fly you’ll be able to detect her, in here.”

He traced a gentle finger down my temple and I shivered, both at his touch and at the thought of having a bird messing with my head.  Communicating telepathically might not be too bad, though.  Cade didn’t seem to be burdened by Fergus.

“Goodbye Meghan, for now.  Fergus will stay with you until your spirit guide is old enough to protect you.”

He began to depart, leaving me standing in the dark, in the stupid, blue prom dress with a wooden box in my hand.

“Cade, wait,” I called out after him.  Propriety be damned.

He paused and turned around to face me.

I strode up to him and threw my free arm around his shoulder and gave him a genuine hug.  Not the psychotic, obsessive full-body tourniquet I’d been applying of late, but an honest-to-goodness hug.

“Thank you,” I whispered in his ear.

I released him and turned back up the path, casting him one last glance before I crossed my lawn.  His shadow stood in the same place where I had left him, and if I didn’t know any better, I would have sworn he was frozen in shock.  I grinned.  Might as well let that fantasy play out since no one was here to convince me otherwise, not even my annoying conscience.

Cade’s shadow had vanished by the time I closed my sliding glass door, but for once I wasn’t completely torn up about his abrupt departure.  He had given me a great gift, a rare and special one if my instincts had anything to say about it.  Someday I would ask him more about spirit guides, but for now, I wanted to tuck my little merlin away somewhere safe and warm and get some sleep before any other supernatural interruptions had a chance to stop me.

-Four-

Meridian

The next morning I woke to an annoying chirping sound.  At first I entertained thoughts of my brothers playing a birthday prank on me.  When the chirping continued and no one came flying onto my bed to force me awake, however, I concluded the noise had nothing to do with them.

I sat up, feeling groggy and slightly dazed.  The racket was coming from my bathroom.  Had Logan and Bradley planted some weird booby trap for me?  Grumbling, I got up and shuffled over to investigate.  I nearly screamed when I peered into the bathtub, and then everything that happened the night before came flooding back: Cade, the baby merlin,
my
spirit guide . . .

The little chick stopped chirping as soon as it,
she
, saw me.  Her eyes had opened and they stared at me with doleful longing.  Then the merlin opened her mouth impossibly wide.  Oh.  She was hungry.

“Um,” I fumbled, looking around as if some form of sustenance would appear out of thin air.  “Hold on a moment little bird.”

What the heck was I supposed to feed the poor thing?  I was already failing as a mother.

A scratch at my sliding glass door caught my attention.  Fergus!  I dashed over, almost tripping on all the empty bowls from last night, and yanked open the door.  The wolfhound sat waiting in silence, something with red fur and a tail hanging from his mouth.  He dropped the dead animal at my feet and I squealed, hopping out of range. 
Gross
!

A few seconds later and I remembered what Cade had told me the night before.  Oh, right, food for my spirit guide.  Ugh, this was going to be all kinds of unpleasant.  I took a closer, wary look at the furry thing.  It resembled the demented squirrel I had seen chatting with the raven those many months ago.  He had brought me something Otherworldly.

“Is it safe for her to eat?  I mean, I saw it fraternizing with the Morrigan once.”

Fergus flicked his ears forward and panted.  Okay, I guess that was a ‘yes’ on the safety of its consumption.  But I knew there was no way the little bi
rd could eat this thing whole.

“Hang on a moment Fergus.”

I walked over to my desk and flipped on my computer.  As it booted up, I tried to ignore the hungry cries of the baby merlin.  So she seemed invisible to people, but would they be able to hear her?  The computer monitor was asking for a password and soon I was browsing the internet for information on feeding merlin chicks.  Apparently the parents fed them meat, torn off in little bits from whatever prey they caught.  My stomach churned.  I had to cut the dead thing up? 
Wonderful
. . .

Sighing, I pushed away from my desk, picked up a pair of scissors and my manicure tweezers, and walked back to my door where Fergus lay patiently waiting. 
Okay Meghan, you can do this.  The faelah’s already dead, and you have a hungry baby in the bathroom.
Just like dissecting a frog in biology
. . .

After
fifteen minutes of snipping and tugging, three near-puking incidents and several muttered grievances, I managed to accumulate a small pile of meat strips for my bird.  Placing them on a stack of several napkins, I carried the mess back into the bathroom and set it in the tub next to the box with the baby merlin.  She must have smelled the blood, because she started cheeping more insistently.  I’m glad I chose to keep her in the bathroom because the tub would be the easiest thing to bleach when feeding time was over.

I fed the merlin with the tweezers, dangling each strip of meat in front of her.  The spirit guide was an enthusiastic eater, and despite my earlier disgust with regards to how to feed her, I smiled.  She was rather cute.

“Good job little bird!” I whispered as she polished off the rest of the meat.

When she was finished, she gazed up at me with big, dark eyes and released a few cheeps.  I interpreted them as sounds of satisfaction and became even more convinced when her eyelids drooped.  She fell asleep with her head tucked next to one wing and I felt my heart melt.  I was already in love with my little spirit guide.

“Sleep well, little merlin.”

As I watched her snooze, a thought hit me.  I couldn’t keep calling her ‘little bird’ and ‘little merlin’.  She needed a name.   I stood up and cleaned up the mess I’d made and left my tweezers and scissors to soak in bleach water.  I moved my spirit guide out onto my desk while I took a shower and scrubbed the bathtub.  When I was done, I put on my old bath robe and wrapped a towel around my head.  Time to research some names . . .

I spent a good half hour browsing through websites featuring old Celtic names.  I sighed.  Many of them seemed really unique and fitting for an Otherworldly spirit guide, but for some reason they didn’t quite fit.  Giving up, I pulled out my Irish myths book and browsed through the glossary, looking a
t the names of the characters.

I snorted after reading the first few entries.  For all I knew, some of these legendary heroes were still living in the Otherworld and I might be meeting them one day.  It would be pretty awkward if I stumbled upon one of them and they learned I had named my bird after them.  No, that wouldn’t do.

“Meg!!”

Bradley’s harsh voice startled me into dropping my book.  Luckily, the noise didn’t wake up the merlin.

“What?” I hissed back.

“You gonna come up and open your presents?”

Oh, yeah.  It was my eighteenth birthday.  How on earth had I forgotten that?

“Yeah, um, let me get dressed. 
I just got out of the shower.”

I carefully carried my spirit guide back into the bathroom, placing her box in the bathtub.  I gave her one last look and smiled.  Her name would have to wait until later.  I pulled on some jeans and a t-shirt and headed upstairs, anticipating some grand attack from my rambunctious brothers.

* * *

I spent the afternoon getting some homework for next week out of the way.  True, I could have taken my family up on the offer of all of us going out to catch a movie, but to be honest, I had had my big birthday surprise the night before.  I told them that if they just made something special for dinner, I’d be happy.  Of course, Mom being who she was, insisted on running to the grocery store to pick out all my favorites.  She forced Bradley and Logan to go with her, and I couldn’t help but grin.  They would be good sports for my sake, but they hated shopping.  Dad, being left with Aiden and the twins, decided to take them on a walk.

“I think we’ll check out that swamp at the end of the road that you’re so fond of Meggy,” he told me as he lathered them up with sunscreen and mosquito repellent.

I froze for a second, suspended in fear.  Would the faelah bother them?   Would my family even notice them?  The day remained bright and sunny, so I released a breath, telling myself that I needn’t worry about Otherworldly monsters lurking in the swamp.  Despite the fact that today was Samhain, the one time of year they preferred to sneak into our world, the sun would surely encourage them to stay in Eilé.  I winced.  Robyn had mentioned doing something for the Celtic New Year earlier in the week, but I’d been too distracted to pay attention.  I thought about calling her later, but honestly, I’d experienced enough Otherworldliness for the time being.

After Dad and my three youngest brothers left, I returned to my room. I checked on the merlin chick right away and she blinked up at me, cheeping in hunger.  I sighed.  I should have cut up more meat to store for later.  Though I didn’t know where I could have stored it . . .  If I put the faelah meat in a sealed container in the refrigerator, would it look like something else?  Would someone eat it, not knowing what they consumed?  I grimaced.  Okay, so I couldn’t save anything.  I glanced over at my door, wondering if Fergus was around.  A twinge of disappointment hit me, but then I caught sight of a small, red furry lump on the concrete right outside the glass.  I walked over and grinned, despite the gory scene.  The hind leg of the faelah I had cut up earlier, if I was judging correctly.

Okay Me
g, time to feed your baby
. . .

Cutting up the raw meat wasn’t so bad this time.  Perhaps I was getting used to the gore or maybe I knew my baby needed this sacrifice from me.  I carried the bloody strips in on a paper plate I’d filched from our pantry.  As I fed my little bird, I kept thinking about a name.

“What am I going to call you little one?”

Of course she didn’t answer, only snapped at the strips of meat and swallowed them whole.

Eventually, I ran out of food.  I took the plate to our trash bin outside and scrubbed my hands and set the tweezers and scissors to soak in bleach again.  I made sure to clean my merlin too, using a wet paper towel to wipe off the blood.  Not wanting to go outside again, I flushed it down the toilet.

Finally, I picked up the box that acted as a temporary nest for my chick, admiring the design and wondering who had carved the wood.  I placed the box on my bed and grabbed my world history bo
ok.  Time to study for a test.

The baby bird examined me for several minutes before she let out a tiny cheep.  I peeked at her, but she didn’t open her mouth, begging for food.  Shrugging, I got back to studying the old Atlantic trade routes and the list of goods shipped along them
.  Cotton, sugar, tobacco . . .