The Kingdoms of Eden

CHAPTER THREE: Kingdoms of the Gods

Amy Coren sat down atop the blue mountain and she sighed despondently. She could have cried, but crying was not a natural state for Amy, and it certainly wasn't something she would ever do in front of someone. The someone she was in front of was a virtual stranger, but he was grounded and straight-talking, and he reminded her of the kind of everyday folks she encountered in her native New York City—she missed those people, for all of their faults and failings, and it made her sad; sincerely sad. She missed their honest bluntness; she missed their certainty in the bleakness of life and their enthusiasm for the belief that their individual dreams would one day come true. She missed the pollution of the city, even in the deep heat of summer when it teased at her asthma and tormented her sleep. She missed her friends, with their intrigues, and broken hearts and tales of eternal love. She missed working in the strange little boutique; she longed for the assorted misfits that came through the door of the shop and annoyed her with less than worthy questions, or who engaged her in the kind of small talk she could waste hours on without ever drawing breath, or being overcome by fatigue. Yet as much as she missed New York City, the memory of, and the sense of connection to her home was fading fast—and that sense of loss terrified her, and it was at the heart of her melancholy. With only a few years of her teenage life left to experience, she felt entirely short-changed. Her friends, her taste in music, her wardrobe and her general attitude to life was proudly alternative—she was accustomed to living her life her way, but in her new home her entire sense of self had been completely turned on its head.

Cathal, the someone with her on the mountain top, was the father of the young witch Branna, and it was Branna who had convinced Amy that she should give up the comfort and security of her modern-day, New York life—even if the frenetic, and deadly circumstances that brought her from that familiar place to a strange new land, was less of a choice, and more of a fight for survival. The city of her birth was no longer safe, and the evil that had now found a sure foothold in her hometown was poised to spread across the face of the Earth. She had been faced with a straightforward choice—stay in New York and watch as an unstoppable force of evil destroyed everything and everyone as it searched for her or leave the city in the hope that the evil would also leave. The young witch had some help in convincing Amy to turn her back on her family and on the city that she loved. That help came in the form of Saint Patrick and Doctor John Dee—they formed an unlikely and somewhat random collaboration, yet on the vast tapestry of history it was a partnership that made sense, if only to those more informed than Amy. Both men were certain that Amy was special and important in the eternal war against evil. Their belief in her came to nothing; at least that's how Amy saw it. Patrick was left a broken shadow of his former self, wandering the grand empty buildings of the city by night, and hiding from the curious population by day. John Dee had fared even worse. His slain body lay on the floor of a French castle in the distant past—a failed attempt to recruit another potential saviour into his righteous army. Amy did not know for certain that Dee was dead; he was lost, as far as those who knew him well were concerned, but Amy somehow sensed that Dee had taken more than a wrong turn as he travelled into the past on his ill-fated quest. His death was merely a gut feeling, but her gut was seldom wrong.

"I would offer you a penny for your thoughts," said Cathal. "But you are a modern girl. Would you accept a card? Bitcoin?"

Amy smiled warmly, but the lack of contours around her eyes betrayed the falseness of the expression.

"What would you know about credit cards? Or cryptocurrency?" Amy replied, playfully.

"I have been to the modern world. I am not a prisoner to this place. I love superhero movies, even if they are farfetched and overblown."

"Yeah, it's not like anything like that could happen in real life," Amy teased.

Amy's expression darkened.