Banished
by one tribe. Condemned by another. Will an outcast's supernatural strengths be
enough to keep him alive?
549 AD. Raised by monks, Conchobar is committed to a life of obedience and peace. But when his fishing vessel is blown off-course, the young man's relief over surviving the sea's storms is swamped by the terrors of harsh new shores. And after capture by violent natives puts him at death's door, he's stunned when he develops strange telepathic abilities.
Learning his new family's language through the mind of his mentor, Conchobar soon falls for the war chief's ferocious daughter. But when she trains him to follow in her path as a fighter, he's horrified when his uncanny misfortune twists reality, causing more disastrous deaths and making him a pariah.
Can Conchobar defeat the darkness painting his steps with blood?
The Curse of Conchobar is the richly detailed prequel to the mystical Adirondack Spirit Series of historical fiction. If you like inspiring heroes, unsettling powers, and lasting legacies, then you'll love David Fitz-Gerald's captivating tale.
Buy The Curse of Conchobar to break free from the fates today!
Trigger Warnings: Violence
Buy
Links
EXCERPT
From Chapter 25
I’m standing in a clearing on a hillside with a nice view of the river. It is a short distance from our home. I’m overwhelmed by a strange and unfamiliar feeling. I don’t know what compels me to step from the game path into the clearing. I feel a surge of energy, yet I feel dizzy at the same time.
I take another step and I walk through shimmering air. Abruptly, instead of a winter morning, it’s a balmy autumn day. I’m standing in freshly fallen colorful leaves, and I feel as though I have been moved from one place to another. Only, it is the same exact place. How can it be fall instead of winter?
I wander up the path in the opposite direction of my stone house, though I don’t know why. What compels me to walk in this direction? The path has quickly turned from a narrow game trail to a wide lane that only humans could have made. That turns into a thick flat surface that feels like stone beneath my feet, but looks too uniform to be natural stone. A pair of strange yellow lines divide the road beneath my feet.
A short distance down this path, I see a building. It is set a short distance from the stone road with the yellow lines. It’s a handsome cabin. Its log walls look perfectly uniform. I wonder at the uniformity of the logs. There are no signs of the woodsman’s axe on the surface of the logs. No two trees are the same and yet each log in the cabin appears identical. The door to the cabin stands open.
I step up to the door, peek around, and look for people. I don’t see anyone anywhere. I tentatively step into the cabin. The furnishings remind me of the kinds of tables and chairs used by the monks at Skellig Michael, but this cabin has some strange items that I don’t recall from the monastery.
There is but one room in this cabin, and a loft up some stairs overlooks the room. Everything in the cabin is tidy. Someone has cleaned it recently. Some sort of baked good sits on a ledge by an open window. I walk to the window and breathe in the delicious, fruity smell that reminds me of berries. I hold my hand above it and I can feel its heat. It’s been so long since I’ve eaten. I reach for the dish and my hands pass through it, unable to grasp it. I’m surprised and I try again.
In this strange place, I am a spirit. That means I must be dead. Such a realization is hard to accept. I find the need to grieve my own passing, but that sentiment is short-lived. Perhaps that’s the way it is when you are a spirit.
As I investigate further, I find a painting of a man and a woman on the wall. Only, in this painting, the subjects appear lifelike. I can’t discern any brush strokes. The man has bright white teeth and thick blond hair that looks unnaturally neat and tidy. The woman has a strange pile of hair on her head, bright yellow and white clothing, and some strange contraption perched on her nose so that you can’t see her eyes. I place my face even closer, and I can see the image of an older man. He appears to be wearing the robe of a monk. He has a thin, weathered face, and a long grey beard. He doesn’t look the same as the man and the woman, and he looks strangely out of place. His image is opaque, like he has been drawn from fog. I feel like I’m looking at myself as an old man. Then I’m startled at the realization that it is me in the painting. How can it be? I wonder whether this man or this woman in the picture are somehow related to me, only in the future.
I see a small, box-shaped object sitting on a long table. It has numbers on it. As I’m looking at it, one of the numbers flips. Instead of 2:31, it now says 2:32. The plastic box is connected by some kind of thick string to the wall.
Next to the object with the flipping numbers, I see a yellow booklet. I bend to look at it closely. In big black letters, it says, “The Old Farmer’s Almanac.” A four-digit number appears in the middle of the cover: 1984. At the top of the booklet it says, “192nd Anniversary Edition” and at the side where the book is bound it reads, “Published Every Year Since 1792.” I do some quick figuring. If my numbers are correct, it is 1434 years in the future. It is no wonder that I’m a spirit.
I hear music in the distance. I follow the sound and find it coming from within another small box that is connected to the wall. A singing woman’s voice repeatedly asks the question, “What’s love got to do with it?” I marvel at the notion that music can come from a box. There’s nobody in this cabin singing, and nobody is here listening either, and yet there is music.
Next to the music box is another strange-looking object. There’s a small string of dots hanging from a shiny cylinder, under a conical covering of some sort. I concentrate on the shiny beads until the string is pulled. It snaps back into the cylinder and light floods the room. I jump in surprise. I’ve seen enough of such objects, and I rush back through the open door.
Outside, I wander around the cabin. I notice that the cabin is surrounded by very short grass that is uniformly sized, perhaps a couple of inches thick. There is more of this grass behind the cabin. Beyond that, I see trees at the edge of a forest.
A slight movement catches my attention. It appears that there is a man near one of the trees. He is wearing a red shirt with overlapping dark squares on it. His legs are blue; perhaps it is some kind of fabric that he’s wearing on his legs. He also wears blue shoes on his feet. I wander closer to get a better look. He lowers himself to a sitting position beneath the maple tree, his arms resting on his knees and his head in his hands. He seems sad, or distressed.
I step a little closer. The man has a long length of rope in his lap. I see him make a loop at one end of it. Then he wraps one side of the rope around the other, fashioning the rope into a noose. I’m overwhelmed by sadness and angst. What could cause a young man like that to do such a thing? I wonder if stopping him is the reason that I’m here. But how can I stop him? How long do I have? What can I possibly do to prevent what I can plainly see is just about to happen?
I hear a knocking behind me. It startles me, and I can’t find the source of the knocking. Whatever it is will have to wait. I turn back to look at the man under the tree. He is standing now, and he is tying a knot around a stone at the end of the rope, opposite the noose.
Then he throws the rock up and over a thick branch of the maple tree, eighteen feet above the ground. The rope follows the rock, and the rock lands on the ground a short distance away. The man unties the rock from the rope and pulls the rope behind him. There is a large boulder ten feet away. He ties the rope securely to the big rock and returns to the tree. I feel his sense of hopelessness as he looks up into the tree and sees the noose hanging. It would seem that the rope is the perfect length for what he has in mind.
I have a hunch that this man is related to the people in the painting on the cabin wall. Maybe he is their son. Somehow, I can’t help but think that he is related to me as well.
It looks like he is drinking from some manner of container that is wrapped in a bark-colored sack. After a while, I see him toss the sack into the woods and it makes a clinking sound as the contents of the container break upon impact. The man doesn’t flinch at the sound.
He climbs until he’s sitting on the branch that the noose hangs from. Slowly he pulls the rope until he’s holding the knot in his hands. I look back and forth quickly, trying to figure out what I can do. When I look back at the man, he’s placing the noose over his head and pushing the knot against his neck. I run around the tree like a crazy man. Why am I here? What can I do?
I look up and see that the man is rising to his feet. This is it. He is preparing to jump. His legs bend, and I’m sure that he is about to leap from the branch.
In a fraction of an instant, I remember that I can enter the tree. I consider it a miracle that somehow this healthy tree drops its living limb. I hear it crash to the ground as my spirit separates from the tree.
A hundredth of a second later, I levitate the big rock with my open palms toward the sky. It turns out that it isn’t necessary.
He has landed heavily on the ground. His breath has been knocked from his lungs, and he gasps for air like he has a will to live. I can see that he is scraped up, but he appears to be unharmed. I move the boulder so that it is directly above his head.
He looks up at the rock that hangs over him, and he shields his head with his arm. Then he rolls away so that the rock no longer hovers above him.
I lower the rock slowly and I see the look of astonishment on his face. From where I stand, he no longer looks like a man. Perhaps he’s in his late teens. With one upward-facing palm, I maintain the rock directly in front of him. With my other arm, I direct small stones to levitate from beneath the leaves on the forest floor. They gather, swirling around us under the maple tree. Their movement reminds me of the slow swirl of Tends Hearth’s spoon in her cook pot. The young man’s mouth hangs open and his body shivers in fear.
It strikes me that I should speak to him. What can I say? I set the boulder on the ground and gather the flying stones into a pile as he watches. I approach him so that I’m inches in front of his face. I cite Lector Beccán’s favorite prayer. The man turns his head slightly, innocently, like he’s listening to a distant voice that he can’t quite hear. It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t need to hear the prayer for it to have power.
I place my hand on his shoulder. He shrinks from my touch at first, then his face fills with an expression that I would describe as wonder, or maybe it is hopefulness. Touching his shoulder isn’t like touching the plate of food by the window in the cabin. It is more like the sensation that I got when I passed through the shimmering air. I place my other hand on his opposite shoulder. His eyes widen further. He crosses his arms over his chest, placing his hands on top of mine. Then I kiss him, on one cheek and then the other. I withdraw my hands from his shoulders and step back.
The man touches his cheeks gently with the tips of his fingers, then he looks at the tips of his fingers. I hear him say, “I’ve been kissed by God. God loves me. Oh, how can it be?” Then he cries into his hands, asking, “Oh, what have I done?”
I place my hand on his shoulder. I tell him not to worry about the past, and then I tell him to share God’s love with the world. He nods like he understands me. I back away from him, and I can see his gaze follow my departure. I turn my back to him and return along the path that led me here. I laugh at the thought that this young man thinks that he encountered God. It was only me in front of him, not God, but without God, such moments would never be possible.
As an afterthought, I turn back toward the man. I raise my palms and summon the boulder. I set the big rock on the ground just outside the door of the cabin. Then I call the stones and pile them on the other side of the cabin door. I’m taking a chance that the young man lives in this cabin. I want to give him something to remember, something that he can wonder about, and something that he will never forget.
I hope that I did what I was supposed to do. I think of my little family―my wife and the healer. I hope that I’m able to find my way back to them. I’m supposed to be hunting so that we can eat.
When I return to the magical spot
on the hill overlooking the river, I’m grateful to find that the air still
shimmers. What’s love got to do with it? Everything, I suppose.
As I pass through the shimmering air, I return from autumn in the distant future to the cold winter day of the present. As I hurry home, I wonder: am I able to break the curse? Is that poor man by the tree suffering from the wretched curse that was placed upon me? What can I do to end such misery? How will I ever know?
¸.•*´¨)✯ ¸.•*¨) ✮ ( ¸.•´✶
David Fitz-Gerald
David Fitz-Gerald writes fiction that is grounded in history and soars with the spirits. Dave enjoys getting lost in the settings he imagines and spending time with the characters he creates. Writing historical fiction is like making paintings of the past. He loves to weave fact and fiction together, stirring in action, adventure, romance, and a heavy dose of the supernatural with the hope of transporting the reader to another time and place. He is an Adirondack 46-er, which means he has hiked all of the highest peaks in New York State, so it should not be surprising when Dave attempts to glorify hikers as swashbuckling superheroes in his writing.
The Curse of Conchobar is available for free in exchange for signing up for David’s email list via BookFunnel
No comments:
Post a Comment