The Keeper
Copyright© 2021 by Charly Young
Chapter 13
Interlude
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’s grating voice woke him out of a sound sleep. She took his hand in her green- skinned fingers and led him still dressed in his pajamas and bare footed through the drifts of one of the region’s rare snowstorms and into the forest behind the old man’s cabin.
The boy, now fully awake, 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.
The three 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 massive vine swathed maple tree. They laid him down on thick moss that mantled the tree’s base.
Once again, the three took a position around him and chanted a singsong 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, they sat legs folded in a lotus position, the Vísdómur 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.” the voice sounded far away.
The butterfly sprite walked to a spot directly above the bridge of his nose and stopped. Lachlan’s eyes crossed as he watched she preened her antenna. She spoke, a tiny whispering that reached into him and tickled the deep recesses of his mind. As the whispering quested and snuffled and rummaged in his mind and he gradually stopped analyzing.
As he stood by helplessly, his memories began to unfold. They came and went as if the pages of his life were turned. Some good—most awful.
He watched as a tiny baby when a giant bearded dirty face loomed into sight, frightening him into tears. Huge hands came 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.”
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