Free Why I Let My Hair Grow Out by Maryrose Wood Page A

started to walk. “It’s no easy task to glean the true meaning of a prophecy. Time and fate alone will reveal what’s to come.”
    â€œAye,” I agreed, just for fun. Saying it made me feel like a pirate. “You’re not married, are you, Fergus?” He wasn’t wearing a ring, but who knew if rings were the custom here in dreamland?
    Fergus’s eyes turned sad as quickly as they’d grown merry. “What kind of husband could I be, with the Fairy Folk’s love-sickness curse upon me?” he asked. “And when Cúchulainn returns, my first duty will be to drive his chariot, as I swore to do when we were boys together. That’s no life for a woman, waiting at home and wringing her hands while her mate is off getting killed in battle.”
    He talked about getting killed as if it were just another one of life’s unpleasant necessities, like taking the SATs. I didn’t want to go there—why spoil my own dreamworld?—so we kept walking, this time away from the village and toward the field where the horses were grazing for the night.
    When we got to the edge of the grass Fergus gave a soft whistle, and Samhain appeared as if out of nowhere. I petted his velvet nose as he nickered softly, in pure contented-horse language this time. Fergus took off his cloak and spread it over the damp grass. We sat down and looked up at the night sky, with Sam grazing next to us.
    â€œSee,” he said, pointing upward. “The moon is waning. Tomorrow it will be gone. I’m free of my love madness now, but only till the first star appears tomorrow night.”
    Just my stinky luck to be having a dream date with a guy who’d be falling in love with some random livestock the next day. On the other hand, how long could this dream last? If it was a dream, that is. But if it wasn’t, what the fek was going on?
    Thinking about this was starting to make my head hurt. Time to change the subject.
    â€œSo tell me, Fergus,” I said, pulling the edge of the cloak up around my legs. “Who’s this ‘Kahoolin’ you keep talking about?” That’s what the name sounded like to me. “And where is he, and why is everyone waiting for him to come back?”
    â€œ ‘Who’s Cúchulainn?’ she asks!” Fergus laughed, his spirits rising again. “Am I destined to give up being a charioteer and take up the lute of a bard? Why else would you test my ability to tell you a tale you already know so well?”
    â€œJust tell me the damn story, okay?” I snuggled into the warmth of the cloak. It was made from the tanned hide of some fairly large animal, but this was no time to get squeamish. Besides, I was finding the whole situation—me, Fergus, the moonlight—quite agreeable. Dreamy, in fact. “Pretend I’ve never heard it before.”
    Fergus smiled and his dimples started to show again. “Attend my story, then, newborn Morganne, for surely ye can have spent no more than an hour on this earth if ye’ve never yet heard the name of Cúchulainn!” He pulled his side of the cloak up too, and rolled himself closer to me, pitching his voice low for an audience of one.
    â€œI speak now of Cúchulainn,” Fergus began. “Greatest of the heroes of Ulster, the Guard-Dog of our people, the Hound who is fated to save and defend us all! His battle cry is fierce; his chariot makes the ground shake; when the fever of war is upon him, he can hardly tell friend from foe. An entire war band is no match for one man, if that man is Cúchulainn when he is in his fighting temper. . . .”
    Kahoolin, ka-shmoolin. The night air was chilly but it was warm beneath the cloak, and Fergus’s voice was a smooth low lullaby, and the story was wonderfully boring, all about war and sword-waving and thundering hooves and crap like that.
    Can you fall asleep inside a dream? Apparently so, because that is exactly