Heir of Earth (Forgotten Gods) Read online

  Mom turned in her chair and took the rhinestone-studded readers off her nose. She folded them in her hand and shrugged at me with a simple smile on her face.

  “You leave the day after graduation. Rose and Phin offered to buy the ticket for your graduation present. But there is one condition.”

  “What? Anything? Tell me!” I was dancing around the dining room table with excitement. My huge t-shirt billowed out from my body like a ball gown as I twirled excitedly.

  “Well, you are going to work for Phin this summer. He needs help at the barn and I think this trip will be good for you. Give you a chance to get your life back on track before you start college.” Her forehead pulled together as she openly pitied the loser I’d become.

  “I’m working for Phin? At the breeding farm?” I was shouting loud enough for the neighbors to hear, but I didn’t care. My life had just gone from bad to great and even my mother’s veiled criticism wasn’t enough to dampen this celebration. “For the whole summer?”

  She nodded her head, and at that moment I felt my life was finally changing.

  If only I knew then the danger that waited for me in Ireland...but some things even my visions failed to see.

  Chapter 2

  A Town Called Paradise

  I woke up to a gentle nudge on my shoulder and another stupid vision. Sighing, relieved to see it was one of the rare happy visions my handicap sometimes offered, I watched a black and white version of Rose and Phin, waving a welcome sign over the crowd gathered to greet arriving passengers in the airport terminal. Seeing their smiles after a year of nothing but phone calls made me grin in a dopey half-a-sleep way. My shoulder was nudged a second time, disturbing the vision as it vanished from sight. I rubbed the sand from my eyes and looked up.

  “Ma’am? We’ll be landing soon.” The kind eyes of a flight attendant smiled down at me. “Sweet dreams?” she asked in a familiar southern accent, lingering in the aisle to help me adjust my seat to the upright position.

  “Huh? Oh, yeah. Thanks,” I managed to get out around another yawn. Why couldn’t my visions always be like that? Seeing Rose and Phin, beaming with excited smiles, was the best vision I’d woken up to in forever.

  My muscles were stiff and achy, not to mention how gross I felt after traveling for so long without a shower. The muscles would take awhile to loosen. The gross I could take care of. I grabbed my carry-on bag and headed up the airplane aisle.

  In the tiny bathroom with barely enough room to turn around, I brushed my teeth, washed my face and refastened the wad of unruly hair in a bun at the base of my neck, where it stayed 99.9% of the time. After my hair cut in the girl’s locker room freshman year I had never dared to wear it down ever again.

  I pulled the clasp of my necklace back up under my hair, pursing my lips and twisting the locket in my fingers. My necklace was the only thing I had from my birth parents. I had put it on years ago, and never bothered to take it off. The trip to Ireland was a homecoming for me in a way. My birth parents had emigrated from Dublin shortly after my birth, and decided to give me away shortly after arriving in America. I’d never heard a word from them, but more than once I’d wondered if my life would have turned out differently if I’d known them. Maybe the horrible plague of my visions might have been hereditary?

  “No, Faye, you’re the only freak,” I mumbled to my reflection with a sigh.

  Back in my seat, I grabbed one of the complimentary magazines to try and pass the remainder of the flight.

  IRELAND: YOUR GUIDE TO THE EMERALD ISLES - the bold headline popped off the cover photo that showed the famed Cliffs of Mohr. I flipped through the pages, skimming the headlines as I went: “The True History of St Patrick,” “How to Properly Pour the Famed Guinness Stout,” “Leprechaun Hunting,” “A Town Called Paradise.” I stopped on the Paradise article because the picture caught my eye. “The Famed Beauty of Clonlea” the caption read. Clonlea was Rose and Phin’s village and my new summer home.

  Clonlea, located on Ireland’s southwestern coast, makes a great day trip from the Shannon area. Long famed for its beauty, the picturesque seaside village offers up the perfect backdrop for picnicking and hiking or any outdoor activity your heart desires. Just be wary of any beautiful strangers you may meet while in Clonlea. Local legends boast this little seaside retreat was originally a favorite haunt of the Spirit Folk of Ireland who cultivated the town’s natural beauty into the postcard perfection you will enjoy today. Where to eat: The town bakery serves up the best Honeyed Sweet Bread along the western coast. What to do: Enjoy a picnic along the cliffs just outside of town. What to see: The impressive Ennishlough Estate, one of Ireland’s oldest and best kept medieval castles.

  Reading that article made my chest rise with pride, suddenly excited to have a connection to the little town, and that had to be Rose’s bakery the article mentioned. She was known for her Honeyed Sweet Bread. It was even tasty after flying 10 hours across the Atlantic Ocean in Rose’s carry-on bag.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen.” The captain’s voice booming over the intercom interrupted my thoughts. “Thank you for flying with Delta today. We are beginning our final descent into the Shannon area. You will see the green fields of Ireland out your window in about five minutes and we should be on the ground in ten. Flight attendants please begin to prepare the cabin for landing. Again, thank you for choosing Delta, and enjoy your time in Ireland.”

  I leaned forward, straining slightly against the lap belt holding me in my seat to look out the little porthole window.

  Dark-blue ocean faded into a swirling mob of whitecaps when the plane passed through a cloudbank and the almost invisible crests of waves appeared. Frothy and angry, whipped to a violent foam by their relentless assault on a shoreline that wouldn’t budge. The vast expanse of tumultuous ocean ended abruptly when it slammed into towering, solid black, rock walls. Leaning at skyscraper heights in craggy pitches over the tormented water. The black walls stood like menacing sentinels, guarding the gateway to Ireland’s rich interior. I blinked my eyes when the black-gray walls morphed again, changing to an electric green so bright it didn’t look real. Until that moment, I thought everyone had been a bit ridiculous about the green fields of Ireland.

  They weren’t.

  The color was unlike anything I had ever seen—definitely not a color that occurred naturally in Georgia. Emerald was close, but not nearly lively enough to do it justice. Ireland’s fields shone like the electrified green of a traffic light against a wet midnight sky. Coming alive as the ever-present mist blew away and they looked up at me with unblinking eyes. Dots of black interrupted the green, and then little ribbons of grey snaked across the rolling blanket as the rock fenced pastures of grazing cows and sheep came into focus. A giddy feeling tumbled around in my stomach. I could almost feel my life changing as the plane descended toward dry land.

  “She’s beautiful, eh?” My sleepy-eyed seatmate yawned through his think Irish brogue.

  I nodded and quickly turned my head back to the magazine still flopped open across my lap, caught off guard by the sudden rush of nerves that punched my stomach when he spoke to me.

  This wasn’t my life. I really didn’t interact with anyone but my parents and horses.

  Panic curled around my chest, and the bunch of nerves turned to knots of dread when I realized just how far away from the safety of my old life I was. Suddenly, I wished I were waking up in my old bed back home instead of on a jumbo jet somewhere over the Atlantic. I began nervously picking at my nails, which had become my immediate response to any unsettling situation. Looking down at the rough and bloody cuticles that rimmed my nails, I thought about how uncomfortable the life I wished for back home had become. That life was utterly absurd to miss when I had a summer with so much promise waiting to greet me.

  Turning back to the man, I forced a smile and nodded my head. My life was never going to change if I didn’t let it. I’d come to Ireland to try to forget the secrets buried in my past. No one over here
knew anything about me. It would be easy to make a fresh start when there was no one around to remind me of my past. The hardest part would be convincing myself to forget.

  “WELCOME FAYE!” Messy black letters scrawled familiarly across a piece of cardboard, looking like it had been written on the drive to the airport, and my world went momentarily black and white, replaying my vision from earlier. It used to trip me up, seeing my visions come to life in such an unnatural way. Now? It was just part of my horror-story-meets-science-fiction life. I shook the vision away, just in time to see Rose toss the sign at Phin and begin to run my way.

  I had barely set my bags on the ground when she body tackled me, nearly knocking me to the ground as she wrapped me up in the biggest hug.

  “My sweet girl! I can’t believe you are finally here! How was your flight? Oh, you must be exhausted, and hungry. Are you hungry? Phin, take her bags!” Rose fussed over me like I was her own child, just as she always had.

  “Aunt Rose!” I hugged her back for a long time, the embrace helping to ease my homesickness. For a moment it felt as though my knees would buckle with the relief of seeing her familiar face. “You have no idea how glad I am to see you!” My voice trembled and I blinked back a tear.

  “Don’t I get a welcome? Or I am just here to carry the bags?” Phin’s gruff voice was right at my shoulder.

  I grinned at Phin and broke away from Rose’s embrace to give him a hug, too. “Oh Phin! It is so great to see you. But it is nice to have a bagman, too! So long as you don’t expect a tip!” I said, returning his sarcasm and beginning the playful banter that always went on between us. The familiarity of them settled my nerves and I breathed deeply in a calming way that untied the remaining anxious knots from my stomach.

  “That’s enough, you two. Let’s get on the road so we can miss traffic.” Rose grabbed my shoulders and turned me toward the terminal door as she tucked me under her arm and began to guide me through the crowd.

  “I tell you, Faye, you get prettier every time we see you. I hardly recognized you. That school picture your mom sent looked so grown up. You’re blossoming into such a beautiful young lady.”

  I blushed as soon as the words were out of her mouth. “Oh Rose, I don’t…no… I’m not…” I looked down and quickly shook my head, not knowing how to react to such a compliment. Instinctively, I began to tear at a piece of dead skin around my thumbnail. It was a nasty habit I had picked up somewhere along the way, but it gave me something to do when my rusty social skills failed me, which was pretty much all the time.

  It never ceased to amaze me how quickly Rose and Phin felt like home to me. It had been a year since I’d seen them, but five minutes on Irish soil and I felt like I’d never been anywhere else.

  Rose was the spitting image of my mother, a few years younger, without the disapproving scowl that usually greeted me when I did something horrible enough to gain her undivided attention—like failing to get asked to Prom.

  From pictures I saw, both Rose and my mother took after their grandmother. The beloved matriarch whose name I share. Rose had an easier way about her. She always seemed to smile at life, regardless of what it brought her. My mother said it was because she never had any children of her own to turn her ginger locks gray. I cringed whenever she said that. Rose would have been a great mother.

  Over the years her bakery became her baby. She poured her love and attention into everything she baked. Pulled out family recipes from generations ago and baked the kind of pastries people drove hours to eat. She could have been the next Sara Lee. But that wasn’t the life she wanted. She was happy were she was, in sleepy little Clonlea, with Phin by her side.

  I really wasn’t paying attention to what she said as we drove through Shannon, the bustling city by the sea, the gateway to western Ireland. One eye focused forward, watching the road and trying not to scream every time Phin made some dangerous maneuver that would’ve caused a ten-car pile up on the freeways of Atlanta.

  The eye that watched Rose was entranced by the way her pale green eyes sparkled in the sunshine, how the smile lines around her temple creased and released when she flashed her toothy grin. A breeze caught in her hair and sent the loosened strands of her ginger ponytail flying wildly around us. Her freckled hands constantly tried to tame them, but failed miserably. She was easy to be around, calming— like the feel sunshine on your face or the sound of flowing water.

  Phin, on the other hand, had a taste for adventure that was only contained by the injury he sustained earlier in life. He was a minor celebrity in certain circles.

  In his younger days, he was the most sought after steeplechase jockey in all of Ireland. He made a name for himself riding the meanest beasts in the stable to victory. That meant a lot more back then. “Anyone can sit in the saddle around a track! That’s not really riding!” He barked anytime people started talking about some new jockey on the scene.

  Back in his day, a jockey’s job was really a job. Back then a steeplechase was true to its name. A race from the church steeple in one town to the church steeple in a neighboring town, no clear course, the first one there wins.

  Anyone who has passed remedial math can tell you that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Over the Irish countryside, that’s a different story. A straight-line met dozens of roughly constructed stonewalls, some small, some as high as five feet. Boggy marshes that could stick a horse’s galloping hoof in one step, wide ravines, rivers and countless other unforeseen obstacles. Phin was the best. You placed your money on the color of his silks if you wanted to win.

  In his final race he was hired to ride a horse imported from the King of Spain’s private stock. The race was so famous I was able to find a picture online of Phin aboard Adriano before the race began. Phin was dressed in his usual green and gold silk shirt and hat sitting proudly in the saddle atop a massive horse as black and shiny as coal. Adriano was the last horse Phin ever rode.

  They led the race by all accounts. Reports from lookouts placed strategically through the countryside all had Phin in the lead. But long after the last pony came in, there was no sign of Phin. A search party was formed, and they went back to the last location a lookout had seen Phin and Adriano.

  Not too far from there they found them both. Adriano, with a broken neck, lying lifelessly on top of an unconscious Phin at the bottom of a seven-foot ravine. Adriano had miscalculated his jump and crashed to the bottom, breaking his neck as he fell down the bank and pinning Phin beneath him.

  Phin’s injuries were serious. He slowly recovered, but never rode a horse again. To hear Rose tell the story, it was God’s way of playing matchmaker for them. “Made him slow down long enough so I could catch him!” She would beam to anyone who asked about the fall, but that’s just Rose.

  The drive to Clonlea—mostly along winding dirt roads that would have been considered goat paths in Atlanta— was peaceful, relaxing, and my body released the remaining travel tension stiffening my muscles, unwinding my mind further. A smile stretched across my face, a tale-tell sign of the new life I hoped waited for me in Ireland. If it was anything like Rose and Phin, I was pretty sure Ireland would be an old friend by the time my summer was over.

  “How much longer?” I asked Rose, not looking at Phin so he wasn’t distracted from driving.

  “Not much further. I hope you don’t mind if we pop by the town pub before we head home. Some of our friends are anxious to meet you,” she said, patting her palm on the knee that was squeezed against hers in the cab of their tiny truck.

  “But I’m only 18.”

  “18?” Rose asked with a wrinkled brow, but then understood. “No, no. Our pubs are like a town meeting place. All ages welcome. The food’s as good as the beer!” Rose said.

  “Speak for yourself, Rose. I would say their beer is better than their food!” Phin corrected with a respectful nod, leaning up in the seat to join our conversation.

  “Well, I’ll just be having the food, thanks,” I said, smoot
hing my hair nervously, staring at the road he was ignoring.

  “You’ll have to try our stout before you leave. It’s sustained many a family through rough times over here, you know.” My entire body tensed as we neared a curve. He raised a single eyebrow at my ramrod straight posture and faced forward again with an amused smirk. “A national treasure!” He added, removing a hand from the steering wheel and mockingly placing it over his heart as if to signify the passing of the queen.

  “Do you mind, Faye? I guess we should have asked you. If you’re too tired, we don’t have to. But so many people want to meet you, and you can get your bearings of the town, too.” Rose asked, but I could tell it would have been a huge disappointment if I said no.

  “That’s fine. I actually slept most of flight,” I answered.

  “Oh great!” Rose beamed.

  When we pulled around a sharp curve in the road Phin stopped, eyes fixed on the valley spread out below us. “There she is,” they both said proudly in unison.

  Poised in awed silence on the crest of a rolling hill, we all marveled at the view—me for the first time, Rose and Phin for the millionth. A wide valley stretched its green arms below us, reaching out to embrace the sea. The emerald slope lay dotted, here and there, with the quaint little buildings of Clonlea, as if an artist had haphazardly set his brush down in little blooming clusters of color. It was a breath-taking view no magazine article could have possibly done justice.

  The setting sun was a fiery, reddish-orange ball on the horizon, casting its final molten rays on every little wave that danced out to meet it. The ocean sparkled like one large, liquid ruby, cloistered between a rocky horseshoe bay; the shore’s stones slicked to brilliant onyx by salt water and time. Sheltered safely in the bay, brightly colored boats bobbed up and down, their sails slapping gently in the breeze.