After the motion sickness of hurtling through space and time subsided, I arrived, cape around my shoulders and stinking spear in hand, into a place that was entirely dark. I hoped it was the library. Wow said I was being sent to the Library, but really I could have been anywhere, perhaps in someone’s musty old closet. The problem was in the dark there was no reference point to make up my mind about anything.

Then my mind froze. Either I was in a room that was entirely devoid of light or I was blind. I heard something rustling over in the corner and leveled the spear in that direction. Whatever it was it moved from one side of the room to the other and I tried to follow it with my spear. The rustling sound was more like a blubbering, the sound that jello might make if it were able to move.

“It would help,” said a thick blubbering voice, “if you stopped pointing your spear at me.”

“It would help if I could see,” I returned.

“The spear scares me,” whined the voice pathetically.

“Fine, I’ll stop pointing it if you just give me some light.”

“It stinks.”

“I can’t do anything about its smell.”

“Fine,” said the full voice testily.

In the center of the room a luminescent blue glow began to pulse, becoming brighter and brighter.. Although I was relieved to know I wasn’t blind, it was what I was seeing that made me gape. The light was coming from a transparent, gelatinous mass that vaguely looked humanoid. It looked like one of those fruit-jello salads that only people beyond the age of sixty still make. But what truly caught my attention was my mother stretched out like Snow White in a glass coffin on a table. The blob held out a bucket of goo.

“Could you put the head of the spear in this,” said Blue Blobby.

I figured if the creature was going to attack me, it would have done so by now, then I recognized it, or at least I recognized the iridescent slime that was dripping from its hand onto the floor.

“You grabbed me; put that slime all over me.”

Blobby looked a little embarrassed, if that was possible for a blob. Its orifice I took for a mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water. Its eyes, which didn’t have any lids, just stared at me in a white, unblinking gaze.

“Sorry,” he blubbered.

I slid the spear head into the pail of goo it had set on the floor, assured by the fact that people who say sorry rarely attacked, except instances in eastern literature... Immediately the stench left the room.

Blobby smiled. “Ahh, that’s better.”

I glanced at my mom. Sherlock had said he was going to place her into the vault in the basement of the library. This must be where we were.

“Don’t worry, she is alive.”

This made me relax a bit. “Listen, no offence, but what are you?”

“What am I?” said Blobby a little offended. “I am The Archivist.” He waited as though such an announcement should have triggered some type of recognition.

“Sorry…I thought Sherlock was The Archivist…”

“Ciabhan,” scoffed Blobby, the only thing he cares about is Cliodhna, and clothes. He really likes his clothes, and your red surge jacket. He hasn’t taken it off.”

“What do you know about my jacket?”

Blobby gave me a toothless grin and waved a blobby arm that suddenly extended from the gelatinous mass. “It is, after all, my job.”

The luminescent glow spread throughout the room making it brighter. The walls were honeycombed with little shelves, each containing a small sphere the size of a jaw breaker. I looked up. The vault didn’t seem to have any ceiling.

“That’s a lot of marbles.”

Blobby screwed up his face in distaste, which made him look rather funny. “They are the Archives, and like I said,” he puffed out his chest, “I am The Archivist.”

“Sorry, all I see are marbles.”

Blobby gave an exasperated groan and rolled over to the wall and absorbed one of the marbles through his hand and into his body. Suddenly, his eyes started to glow, projecting onto the wall a moving picture in full Technicolor. He opened his mouth and out issued a sound track. It was of me, Sherlock and Cliodhna, our limbs all tangled up. It was just before Sherlock broke away and H, in her panther form, knocked us, comically, into the worm hole.

“The sounds don’t match our mouths,” I pointed out.

Blobby gave his head a whack and the sounds synchronized with our mouths. He was silently giggling away, the jiggles of his laughter shaking his entire body. The projector lights went out and Blobby spit out the marble and put it back into the honey comb.

“You’re very funny to watch.”

“You’re not keeping that, are you?”

“It has value. I don’t keep random memory images, only the ones that have value…”

Then a thought occurred to me. Maybe Blobby had something that would help in my fight against Cliohdna and the terrorist Aillen.

“I thought the vault was just a portal into Faerie.”

Blobby seemed to think about this for a moment. “Places of great power are often places where the space time continuum tare, so yes, I suppose the vault could be used as a portal, but that’s not the prime purpose.”

“Which is to save videos of me making a fool of myself?”

Blobby seemed to blush purple. “You underestimate your importance...” he said defensively.

Beside my mom’s glass coffin, I could just barely make out the almost imperceptible rise and fall of her chest.

“So, why the glass case?”

“Oh, that. I don’t know it’s something that the druid Lia Luachra insisted on. She said it would extend her life until you got back.”

The rotund image of my aunt leapt into my mind: chasing me about an old oak tree whip in hand. At least she allowed me to return the favour.

“You look concerned,” said Blobby.

“Unless you have something that can help me against Cliohdna and Aillen, I’m afraid things look rather bleak.”

“Should that matter to me?” said the Blob.

“I don’t know. You tell me. What do you think will happen if Cliodhna takes possession of the vault?”

Blobby jiggled there in silence, and then the jiggling intensified until its flesh, or jello was rippling back and forth like a tsunami.

“Whoa, big fellow,” I said in a forceful but hopefully calming tone.

Eventually Blobby did calm down. “Sorry, the permutations of what you suggest are horrendous.” He slimed his way over to the wall. Stretching out until he was twice his normal height, he reached up and to the left where he absorbed a particularly bright blue marble. His eyes flicked on beaming brilliant images and I watched the wall.

It was Cliodhna as I had never seen her. She was happy, radiantly happy. If something could ever embody the word love, it would have been her image. She was radiating it, and the one basking in it was Ciabhan. He was youthful, strong and like her...happy. They were standing on the shore of some river, or lake somewhere. It looked like they needed to get across the water to an island.

Ciabhan, laughing, lifted Cliodhna up into his arms and began to wade into the water. I suppose they were going to swim to the island. When they were chest deep and beginning to swim the lake became rough. A slight breeze turned into a stiff wind, which became a raging torrent. The water became a field of white capped waves. I had the suspicion that the increase of the wind was no natural event. It felt supernatural.

The waves pounded onto the two diminutive forms in an attempt to drown them, but even so they would have made it to the island, except for the supernatural. Curling and running fast over the surface of the water an enormous wave caught them, rose up and crashed down on them. When the wind suddenly died and the waves abated Cliodhna was gone and Ciabhan was alone.

I was just about to ask what happened, when Blobby grabbed another marble and popped it into his mouth. His eyes blazed up again.

Cliodhna was searching, searching. She searched on land, on the seas, on mountain tops. Always the object of her search was the same: Ciabhan. It was pathetic and sad. She would catch glimpses of him in the distance, but when she got there he would be gone. This happened again and again and all the while like some sinister background music playing, a man was laughing. Slowly, Cliodhna went mad.

I had suspected that Cliodhna was the villan, but all along she had been manipulated. By who, I didn't know.

The wall went blank.

“How do you defeat someone who is a goddess and is mad?” I whispered into the dark.

“Remove their madness,” said a voice from the glass coffin. I tmade my skin crawl.

“Blobby,” I said urgently, “could you get some light on over here.”

A blue luminescence sprung up out of the dark to shine around my mom. Blobby was blowing his nose into a stained hanky. He looked at me all bleary eyed. “I hate sad endings.”

The glass coffin had vanished and I slipped my arm under my mother’s head, propping it up. She opened her eyes and smiled. “You can’t defeat a goddess. Even if you manage to kill them, they come back in another form.”

“Like Cliodhna?”

She gave a weak nod. “Yes. You have to remove her madness, then you have an ally, like Dagda.”

“How do you know about Dagda?” I asked her and then looked at Blobby who was staring at his nobby blue feet.

“He’s one of your biggest fans,” whispered my mom.

“Blobby, how long have you been spying on me?” I demanded forcefully.

“I…I…am The Archivist.”

“More a voyeur,” I mumbled to my mom who smiled. “Any ideas on how to deal with Aillen?”

The door to the vault opened then. We squinted. Back lit by bright light stood the tall, thin silhouette of Sherlock, and the short round one of Aunt Lia. They stood back to back...more waste to back. I expected the theme song to ‘The good, the bad and the ugly,’ to start playing. If Sherlock was good and Aunt Lia was bad, I suppose that left me, ugly. I felt ugly, deathly ugly. Someone was going to pay for all this.

“Why, Fionn,” said aunt Lia, “you just stick the pointy end of that foul spear in his black heart.”

Blobby was blowing bubbles and throwing confetti up into the air. He was blubbering around uncontrollably, blowing a party horn that he had made out of his gelatinous lips.

“What’s up with him?”

Sherlock smiled. “Why, he’s happy. Besides, it’s your birthday, the vault is open and your mother is recovering.”

“It’s my birthday?” I said rather stunned.

Even though my mom had swung her legs over the side of the platform that had supported her coffin, she still looked rather tired. She placed an arm around my shoulder for support as aunt Lia joined us. She was staring at me rather expectantly.

“Well?”

“Am I supposed to feel different?”

She pulled out an ogham wand and rapped me over the head, rather sharply. “Well?”

I shrugged. “Sorry. Is it supposed to come all rushing back?”

“You are supposed to remember something, at least...” said aunt Lia in a rather frustrated voice.

Sherlock stepped up to me. He was still wearing my red surge jacket, with a few added stains. His braided beard and been thrown back over his shoulder to keep it out of the way. Setting his half moon spectacles on the end of his nose, he pealed back my eye lid and waved a pen light, its beam nearly blinding me. He gave a few observational grunts.

“What?” I said.

He flicked off the pen light. “Well, you don’t have a concussion.”

I grabbed the haft of the spear and went to pull it out of the bucket of goo. “So, how to…” Then an image flashed into my mind of an island in a lake. I was going to say ‘heal Cliodhna.’

“What’s the matter, Will?” asked my mom.

“I was just thinking about how to heal Cliodhna and I got this image of a lake and an island.”

Sherlock’s face went white. “That’s Loch Maree. It’s where we were separated. We were trying to get to the island and drink from the spring there. It’s the only protection against madness.”