Spear Through Time

[Aiden Finnegan]

“The Gae Bolg flew to the seat of the Tuatha De Danann kings, Lia Fail. There, it buried itself into the stone beneath the stone, burying the Spear deep beneath the ground, guarding it from the tamperings of any man who dared try to reclaim the mantle of King of the Isles,” Aiden said under his breath as he re-read his translation for the seventh time. It was as close to the original prose as he could tell, but it only left him with more questions.

Dawn started to break over the city, as the soft red glow spreading across the room evinced. Dimitri had passed out a few hours prior, his gaming laptop still running and his digital character idling on screen. Aiden had been kind enough to log him out and place the rig on the coffee table before Dimitri’s inevitable shifting knocked it to the ground. The man now snored quietly beneath a woven throw blanket that Aiden had draped over him.

With a yawn, Aiden threw his notes back onto the coffee table and lit the last cigarette in his pack. His throat felt raw and his chest felt heavy, but the combination of whiskey and writing had demanded smoke infusing his lungs on a constant basis. He would take a break from the stuff once he had finished his experiments with the spear. Maybe a day or two – perhaps a week – and he’d feel better. Then the cycle would start all over again when he finally started working on the next novel.

Aiden hadn’t started working on the sequel yet, of course, that was just a convenient lie he told to get Dimitri to send him all the books he could on Lugh and the Tuatha De. What else was he to tell the man?  That he had recovered an ancient, magical relic from snake people in another dimension?

Even Aiden had to chuckle at that. Reality really was stranger than fiction.

The book he had just translated surely was fiction; there were too many oddities in it. Lugh and the Spear took center stage, to be sure, but the snake people did not make the slightest appearance in the story. The closest connection he could find amongst the pages was the description of the Gae Bolg. In most myths, the Gae Bolg was the name of Cu Chulainn’s spear – the name itself was loosely translated into ‘belly spear.’  Cu Chulainn himself was said to have been Lugh’s son and also Lugh reborn.

In this book, the Gae Bolg was described as a dragon-like monster controlled by a metal collar clamped upon it by ‘the Usurpers.’ Celtic mythology was rarely consistent, but the Gae Bolg issue had been enough for Aiden to raise an eyebrow. The book looked old enough, but so had the Shroud of Turin. He had caught himself wondering how much a carbon dating session might cost him.

Then again, there were certain scenes inside of the little book that sounded a little too much like the magic Aiden now wielded. It had even said that the Spear had magnified Lugh’s ‘Light.’ The story never said how, of course. Perhaps all the other myths Aiden had learned were the false ones and the one he had just translated was the actual truth.

Aiden had to chuckle at that thought too, and his own vanity.

Dimitri had been right. Aiden needed Sage and his own technological form of magic. It was time to leave Tverskaya and return to Suzdal.