So, this is the last Chapter in this book. If you want to see more, I'll think about it. Or if you have any ideas on the direction I should take the story, let me know.

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When we reached the island, Manannan began to fidget. Elatha was making him distinctly uncomfortable, as though he was waiting to be abused or something. I would catch him giving his grandfather covert little glances. I couldn’t blame him because I didn’t trust him either. The boat glided to a stop in the shallows before the island. A rich, perfumed scent assuaged our senses. It was like the perfume Cliodhna wore: ‘Ode de Crazy.’ Actually, it smelled of lilacs and wasn’t that bad, I just had developed an association between the smell and crazy people. It was actually rather calming, which was ironic.

“This is where you get off.” He said it to me more than to Elatha, although I’m sure he was hoping he would take the hint. When Elatha didn’t move I could hear Manannan audibly swallow.

Elatha turned to regard his grandson. He looked at him appraisingly. “You know, you were always a bit of a coward, you would have never made a good Formorian and as it is, a barely passable Tuatha.”

Manannan blustered a bit but hung his head in defeat. “It’s her island,” he bleated.

A fog horn suddenly went off and this made Manannan almost leap with happy excitement. “Oh, got to go. More dead to ferry, you know, got to rush, places to be people to...”

With a look of disgust on Elatha’s face, he hopped over the edge of the boat, and up to his waist, began to wade to the shore. “Fionn,” he said over his shoulder, “come, I have much to explain.” It was more a command than a request.

Manannan urged me over the edge of the boat and into the water. As he was doing so, he whispered in my ear. “If you get the chance...if things work out...could you tell Cliodhna I had nothing to do with keeping them apart.”

“Why don’t you tell him,” I said as I slid down into the water.

“You don’t know what he’s like.” With that he snapped the harness and the horse pulled the boat, almost at once, out of sight.

I was quickly learning that when gods explained something mortals often suffered. As I followed Elatha, I couldn’t help but feel nervous. Fortunately the water only came up to my waist.

The beach, where we waded ashore, was covered with small rocks which made it difficult to walk across. After crossing it, we made our way into the forest that provided the island with a protective canopy.

Usually forests were places of rest, full of soothing woodland sounds, mostly of birds communicating happily, sounds of life. On this island there was nothing. Not a single sound of anything alive. However this was where Cliodhna’s screams had been coming from and this was where we were. It felt that the entire place was coiling, readying itself for another scream, which, if my estimation was right, was due any moment. What did Manannan say? This was her island?

“What do you want to tell me?” I asked.

He didn’t respond right away. We began to walk casually through the forest. There was little underbrush, just a moss carpeted forest floor interspaced by the trunks of trees and what looked like tombstones.

“What do you know about my people?” asked Elatha.

I couldn’t help but stare at the five golden torques he wore about his neck. I suppose one wasn’t enough, but why five? His clothing was impeccably clean, and like Manannan were principally white and silver. There was a dark part in me that wanted to break the guy’s cool. “Didn’t you lose the war against the Milesians?”

If the lines in his face stiffened, I didn’t see it. “No, it was a truce,” he corrected me as an indulgent teacher would. “We tried to trick them. We said they had to stay at least nine waves from the land, which they obliged. We were going to conjure up a wind to blow them away, like you would a pesky insect.”

“Let me guess, it didn’t work.”

His face did tighten this time. “No, it didn’t work. They had a powerful druid with them.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

He turned to me his eyes sparkling. “Yes, you may.”

“How did they trick you into taking Faerie?”

His lips tightened more. I had hit a nerve, yet still the eyes sparkled. “We didn’t know that the side effect of living in Faerie was madness. It crept up on us, slowly, like a thief in the night.”

“You trusted them?”

Again the muscles around his mouth tightened. “No, it was the Milesian Druid that showed us the way.”

“And you took it? Sorry, but if someone came to my home an opened up an interdimensional portal and asked me to hop on through, I would have my questions.”

“We didn’t have many options. There were too many of them to fight.”

“Yes, but you had magic.”

“So, did they, and it was enough to cancel ours out.” A sly look came over his face. “That was then. This is now.”

“What do you mean?” I said cautiously.

Elatha paused and was now nonchalantly leaning up against a broken head stone. He flicked his hand and in his palm he held a glowing ball of light. Throwing it up into the air it vanished. “Their magic has been replaced by this peculiar thing, you call Science. Magic against science...no contest.”

“So, you’re planning to take over my world?”

He gave me a knowing smile, “Something like that.”

What was he holding back? “You were pretending to be Ciabhan, all this time. You helped me out. Why?” Actually, I wanted to ask a lot more questions than just that. I wanted to know if, as Sherlock, he had meant any of the things he had said to me, if any of his sage advice was meant or if it was all a con.

Elatha looked delighted. “Actually, I got the idea when they were trying to swim to the island. I was musing on the power of love, how there is seldom anything less powerful. If I could utilize that power, and turn it into a weapon to use against the Milesians...”

“You’re the one that drove Cliodhna mad...you kept them apart by pretending to be Ciabhan?”

He gave me a blinding smile. “Yes, I know, brilliant isn’t it?”

I tried to control my temper. God or no god, this guy was really rubbing me the wrong way. “More sadistic than anything. Why?”

“Ah, yes, why? Why pretend to be Ciabhan? The good hearted mortal? I was able to crawl into his mind and get a good imprint of his behaviour so that I could be believable.”

“So, all that, back there was Sherlock?”

“More or less, yes, it is what he would have done, would have said, but back to answering your question about why. Do you know who William Shakespeare was?”

“About the most famous writer to have ever lived? Yes.”

There it was again, that insufferable condescending smile. “Do you, really? Have you ever wondered why the most famous writer of his time had so little written about him?”

“He was Tuatha?”

“Yes.”

“Then, he’s still...”

“Alive, no, unfortunately somebody removed his head. It’s the one way you can stop a Formorian from reforming.”

“I thought you said he was Tuath?”

We started walking again, moving deeper and deeper into the heart of the island’s forest.

“Formorian, Tuath de Danann, we’re so interbred that it doesn’t matter. Even you, a Milesian have the blood of gods in your veins. The only pure ones are like me, and there are precious few of us left.”

My mind was whizzing around conjectures and possibilities. “So, if I found Shakespeare’s head and rejoined it to his body, he would come back to life?”

“Fundamentally, yes, in one form or another, but we digress. The reason I mention Shakespeare is that there is a line about women: ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.’”

Before I knew what I was doing, I corrected him (the curse of my memory): “Wrong William, it was Congreve. He wrote: “Heav’n has no rage, like love to hatred turn’d/Nor hell a fury, like a woman scorn’d.”

Elatha stopped, turned and stared at me. His face was blank of expression and then he laughed. “Why, so you are right. You will make a wonderful ally.”

I refused to move. After a couple steps, Elatha turned around and fixed me with his disarming gaze. “What? You didn’t think I wanted just your companionship, did you, although I do find your humour rather entertaining.”

“So, what do you want me for?”

“Are you not the Captain of the Finnan Finn? The most ferocious fighters of the Milesians?”

“Yes, I suppose...”

“You suppose? How humble of you. You are the Captain and so you shall remain until you are killed.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t understand. Don’t you hate Milesian’s.”

Elatha nodded. “Indeed I do, but those Milesians are long gone and moldering in the ground. The ones with the magic are no more, and you fight for the High King, who is one of the Tuath De Dannan.”

“You haven’t met my Aunts,” I blurted out and then immediately regretted it.

He waved my comment away. “Tuatha, there are no longer any Milesian Druids.”

“You’ve talked to Morrigan about this, I suppose?”

“At great lengths. When the position of The High King is filled, you will be oath bound to fight for him or her, whoever The Morrigan selects.”

There was something about the story that was bothering me. “If you’re so powerful, with all your magic, then why do you need me?” Then it hit me. The simplicity was startling. “How many visas can you issue at a time?”

His face twisted sourly. “I think you have hit the target. Only a hand full can be issued at any one time, and the ones with visas are sprinkled around the world.” He looked a little embarrassed. “And of course there are the gate keepers that the Milesian’s left in place to make sure an invasion was impossible.”

I had been wondering how they fit into the picture. “Wow, and Blobby are guardians? You’ve got to be kidding.” I had a hard time imagining either of them saying no to anyone.

“You’re Milesian. They are not so harmless to us.”

I had a visual image of Blobby lifting a massive machine gun and smoking a cigar. “You can’t leave Faerie can you?” I said this with a little too much joy for Elatha’s taste.

“Very observant,” he said drolly. “We, as you would say, are caught between a rock and a hard place. If we stay exclusively in Shi, we go insane, and only a few of us at a time can visit the realm of the Milesians. So, we will need someone...like, let’s say, a Captain to do our work for us, a Captain who can make his own way, who can open a breach for us.”

“No, I understand that, but why would I do that? Why would I let a pack of homicidal gods into my world?” Even though I was trying to sound as defiant as possible, it was hard to ignore the fact that Elatha was a god, a very old one, but one who could probably snuff out my life with a puff of breath.

He gave me a honey smile. “Oh, I have one reason you will find most compelling.” Then he walked on and I, foolishly followed. “And I don’t think we will have to wait until a High King is appointed.”

In the centre of the island, before the strangest tree I had ever seen, we found Cliodhna. She was curled up into a ball weeping at its base. The tree looked a bit like a human figure all twisted and knotted, its arms reaching up to branch out to form a canopy above its head, but the disturbing part of it was that the tree was nearly dead, most likely killed by the hundreds of coins that had been thrust into its trunk. As we moved closer one of the coins fell out and hit the ground with a metallic ring. Cliodhna threw back her head and screamed. Then I saw a second tree, much newer and still looking like a person. In fact the bark of the tree resembled human flesh. I recognized the tree, or the person that was slowly being transformed into a person. It was H.

“Turn her back,” I snarled at Elatha.

“Turn her back,” he responded in surprise. “Now, why in the world would I ever do that?”

“Because I told you to,” I snapped at him looking about the forest floor for some type of weapon.

“No, she is my ace, to get to you. Through you and the Finnan Finn we will create a toe hold in your world, you will, for me, create a breech, if you will and we will begin to take back what was once ours. The Milesians will be exterminated.” His eyes seemed to glow as the passion infused his voice.

“And if I refuse,” I responded.

Another coin fell from what I assumed was the wooden Ciabhan and Cliodhna screamed again.

Elatha bent and picked up one of the coins. He twirled it over his knuckles like a magician making it vanish to appear between his thumb and index finger. Holding it up in the air the tarnish of time faded from it until it shone.

“The coins are necessary, to keep him alive, but when one falls out he becomes a little more like a tree than a person. It’s also very painful.”

Cliodhna, head to the earth, was panting heavily as though she was going through some great ordeal.

“They are linked...lovers are always linked,” explained Elatha. “They feel each other’s pain.” He moved to where H was frozen, her mouth contorted in an open scream, took the coin and shoved it into her flesh.

I dropped to the ground but refused to scream. I wasn’t about to give Elatha the satisfaction of seeing me in pain. He seemed like the Schadenfruede type.

It wasn’t until that moment that I knew what pain was really all about. Suddenly Cliodhna’s agonizing screams made sense. It was as though every nerve in my body was being fleshed apart, peeled back right down to the bone. When it subsided it left me panting and exhausted almost entirely unable to move. Now I knew why Cliodhna was screaming.

I felt Elatha’s breath on my face. The nut job was enjoying this. “You are linked to her, to The Morrigan’s daughter. I knew you were. So, now, do you see why you’re going to help me?

”

In great effort I pushed myself up onto my knees. His gloating cleverness edged me on. My hand inadvertently closed around a smooth rock. Summoning all my strength I went to move my hand, but Elatha must have seen the movement and stepped on my wrist. I felt it snap. What was one more bit of pain in a universe of pain?

“Cliodhna,” I shouted, desperately trying to get through the agony. “He pretended to be Sherlock. He did this. He did this to you. He did this to Ciabhan. It wasn’t Manannan. It was Elatha.”

He laughed confidently. “She can’t help you. Her link is too strong with Ciabhan. There’s no healing here for her only pain and insanity.”

“Why, why her? Why them?” I panted. I was up on my haunches holding my wrist.

Elatha flashed me that irritating smile and moved a hand over his face. His features changed. Suddenly I saw Mr. Itchyberry standing there, wringing his hands in concern: “I’m sorry, Will,” he said in a mocking voice.

“You didn’t know it was me did you?” He passed his hand over his face again and there stood Tom McCreedy, Ciabhan and Cliodhna’s son. “What a scoop,” he said pretending to take a picture. The hand passed again and there stood Russel Crowe, or The King of Kerry. “At every stage of your journey, I’ve been guiding you. Making sure you came to this point. I orchestrated everything. How can you fight against that? Join me, join me and take back what once was ours, what will be ours again. You may be Milesian, but the blood of the Tuath de Dannan flows in your veins.”

It was then that Cliodhna struck. She hit Russel Crowe with a branch the size of my forearm, right against the chest. She hit him so hard that it sent him flying through the air, to only stop once he collided against the trunk of a tree. Instead of having the decency of falling unconscious onto the ground, he changed back into his pristine Elatha self. There was a little drop of blood at the corner of his mouth.

He looked at us a rather irritated expression on his face and licked away the blood. Cracking his neck and clenching his fists he snarled and got to his feet. “Whether we do this the compliant way or my way was entirely up to you, and since you’ve decided to do this my way...”

I noticed that he was standing, his feet, on the edge of some very low lying crumbling masonry. It looked like a well, but it was hard to be sure from where I was. Cliodhna was shaking her head as though trying to clear away the decades of madness.

“Can you get to the well,” I whispered to her, just loud enough to be inaudible to Elatha.

She gave a very strained nod.

My try out for football hadn’t been entirely useless. I mustered the remaining strength I had, prayed this wouldn’t entirely rip my hand off, and charged. I imagined Elatha to be the biggest sledge ever invented. I don’t know whether he was just surprised or amused, but he didn’t move and I hit him directly in the solar plexus. It was like hitting a cement wall and I felt my should dislocate.

But it was enough so that he stumbled backwards, arms spinning like a windmill. Even so, he would have managed to regain his balance if it hadn’t been for Cliodhna. What happened next was exactly what I hoped for. Cliodhna, breaking out of her malaise, dashed to Elatha, and with one finger – nail red as though dipped in blood – pushed Elatha into the well. I waited for the splash, or the crunch, but nothing came.

“How deep is the well?” I asked.

Cliodhna’s face no longer had that plastic sheen of madness. Her eyes were bright and the expression on her face determined. “I don’t think it has a bottom.”

“I thought you were supposed to drink from the well…”

“Why would I do that?” Her voice was softer, more pliable, but immensely tired.

I grimaced in pain. “Isn’t the well supposed to cure insanity?”

“No, that’s a silly myth. Here, let me help you.” Before I could say no, she grabbed me and wrenched my shoulder back into place.

“Thanks.”

“It’s the least I can do.”

H was on the ground slowly coming out of her wooden state. I took my cape off and placed it over her shoulders. She sat up, shivering hugging it to her like a life preserver. Maybe some of the heat Aillen was still in it.

Cliodhan was anxiously standing in front of Ciabhan. The last of the coins fell from his body and she gave an involuntary shiver. I couldn’t imagine having hundreds of coins imbedded in my body. He would live. His bark was becoming healthier, but it would take awhile for his flesh to come back.

“You all right?” I asked H wondering how she had gotten here.

She looked up at me with those wide; expression filled eyes and gave a tremulous smile. “I think so. What about her?” She asked about Cliodhna.

“Better than usually. How did you…”

“End up as a tree?”

“Yes.”

“Elatha is my Grandfather. He came for a visit, said he had something really exciting I should see. Like most people in my family, it’s impossible to say no to them.”

“And he turned you into a tree? Why?”

“It was all about you,” said H through her chattering teeth, “all about you.”

“I’d rather it wasn’t,” I grumbled.

“The passages between the worlds are limited, and guarded, but you, you can make passages. You also seem to be able to move between them with no side effects. He wanted to convert you to his cause.”

“By forcing me? Obviously he doesn’t know me.”

“That’s good.” The voice was Cliodhna’s. She joined us, knelt and looked at H’s eyes and nodded. “She’ll be fine. Ciabhan will take a little longer.” She sounded so – sane. It was going to take some getting used to.

“He’s fine, then?” I asked hoping Ciabhan would turn out to be a good guy like Sherlock. “I mean I saw you trying to get here, in the beginning, and the two of you getting separated…they said the well was supposed to cure insanity.”

She gave me a startling lucid gaze. “I knew I had offended Elatha when I picked Ciabhan. He’s a bit of a nut case when it comes to keeping the blood line pure, which makes him a raving hypocrite. I wanted to get Ciabhan here, because this is my home. I’m most powerful here. Now that he’s gone. I am myself once again.”

“So, you’re not, like a banshee or something, set on vengeance?”

She frowned. “Heaven no, I’m the goddess of love.”

“And you don’t remember trying to kill me or my mom?” I just wanted to make sure that when I turned away from her I wouldn’t end up with a knife between my shoulder blades.

“Oh,” she said with real concern on her face, “if I’ve offended you or your family in any way, I sincerely apologize. “But what she says about Elatha is true. He wants you to join his cause and he won’t stop until he gets his way.”

“But you pushed him down the well.” I was hoping that that would have been the end of it, but no such luck.

“He will be back,” said H. “You can’t really kill a god. He’ll force Manannan to come pick him up. It will take him time, but he’ll be back.”

I gave a sigh. Nothing in Faerie seemed the way it was, so, why should anything be easy. “What will we do when he gets back? He broke my wrist like a twig.”

Cliodhan reached for my wrist and when she touched it I was healed.

I flexed it. “Thanks, again.”

Cliodhna looked adoringly at Ciabhan. He was slowly coming out of his wooden prison. “Love heals all. When Elatha returns, you will have to remove his head and keep it separate from the body, and then the two can’t reform.”

“But do you think he can do it, you know conquer the world?”

H stared at me with those big, wide eyes. “With you, he can do anything.”