Shadowmagic - Sons of Macha by John Lenahan Page A

end and you know how I hate loose ends, but I understand your sentimentality, I will do it.’
    â€˜No,’ she said, and for a moment I thought she was about to fight for me until she said, ‘Let me. Sleep.’
    I felt my knees buckle but then I heard her speak again and my body stopped its race to unconsciousness just long enough to hear my own grandmother say, ‘Sleep and
never
awaken.’

    Sleep and never awaken.
That refrain followed me down into the well of unconsciousness.
Sleep and never awaken.
Unlike the well of despair the oak tree had dragged me into, this well had no sides, no bottom, no top. No nothing. Calling it a well was wrong. I wasn’t falling, because falling would imply I fell from somewhere and there was no longer a somewhere to fall from. As I existed in a void so lacking anything, my mind tried to grasp onto thoughts. Thoughts of a world where senses actually sensed things. Things, tangibles, objects began to be impossible for me to even imagine. As I fell … no, drifted … even words to represent anything were slipping away from me. I forced myself to at least remember where I was.
    I remembered going to an old cemetery once when I was a kid and seeing names on gravestones where underneath it said ‘Sleeping’, and I remembered thinking,
they’re not sleeping – they’re dead
. But now I was doomed to an eternal sleep and I thought maybe those stonemasons got it right. But I didn’t think that for long because my thoughts were fleeting. Or maybe my thoughts were long thoughts and just seemed fleeting because I had thought them for a long, long time. Never is a long time to not awaken. What is time when the last hour on the clock – is for ever?
    It was only a matter of time in that un-land of timelessness before I would go mad. Either that or sail into nothingness.
Madness or nothingness, here’s a choice you don’t get every day
, said the man existing in a realm with no days.
    Vivid memories filled my thoughts. I was a child. I was sick. My mother sang to me in a language so old I couldn’t understand it but I felt it healing me. My mother placed a cool compress on my brow. I could feel her smile but not see it. Then it came to me that this couldn’t be a memory. My mother was never there when I was a child. These memories were false and I was losing it. I was slipping into a world made only of my own making. Madness – that’s what my mind had chosen – an eternity of madness. I wanted to shout and wondered if I could. I almost felt my lungs expand, I …
    I shot up in bed and screamed, ‘NO!’ The cold compress fell onto my lap. Mom had her arms around me in a second.
    â€˜It’s all right, Conor,’ my mother said, patting my hair. ‘You’re safe, you’re with me, it’s Deirdre.’
    I reached up and felt her hand – the first sensation I had actually felt in … I don’t know how long. I looked and she was there. I touched her face and she felt real.
    â€˜Mother?’ I asked and was surprised at the sound of my own voice. It was deep. I felt my chin and the stubble there brought me forward in time – I was not a boy – I was a man. ‘Where am I?’
    â€˜You’re safe, my son, you’re with me in your own room.’
    I looked around and saw the knife-marked wood panelling and said, ‘In Duir?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    I pushed myself higher in the bed. The world around me solidified as the dream world I had been lost in receded. ‘How long have I been gone?’
    â€˜You have been asleep for two days. We could not wake you.’
    â€˜Two days?’
    â€˜Yes I have been worried about you. How do you feel?’
    â€˜Only two days? I feel like I have been gone for … ever.’ I smiled then as that blessed relief hit me. The relief that comes with the realisation that the nightmare was only a dream and its burdens