Warmth caressed my face. It was so nice, nice – and wet. Then I felt my entire head rising off the ground, lifted by some external force. My head fell back...then a rough wetness, and then my head was being pulled up again, only to fall again. Had I become a yoyo? Flailing about, I opened my eyes, to see a big pink tongue coming at my face. I rolled away to coming up on my haunches. A cow was licking my face, and what a cow it was.

I’ve seen black cows, white cows, hairy highland cows, but I’ve never seen psychedelic cows. This creature was a black backdrop with red and orange swirling flames shooting all over its body. It was like a crazed painter’s expression of what country life was. The cow, a big hoof clumping into the ground, stepped forward to lick my face again. I crossed my arms defensively.

“You’ve been crying,” said a detached, unemotional voice.

Turning around; I knew who was talking. I thought of Alice in Wonderland, maybe I was in Wonderland and I had fallen here with the Queen of Crazy Eights. Madame ‘H’ was sitting on the grass in full lotus, arms resting on her inner thighs, fingers in the classic ‘Ohm’ position. Her eyes were closed in meditation.

“I wasn’t crying,” I said defensively, “besides it’s creepy to watch someone sleep.” She had no right to be meditating peacefully while I got licked by a cow. This is a dream, this is all a dream. I rolled back and closed my eyes. I’ll just open them in a few minutes and wake up to my old life. I’ll go to school…I’ll fail…everything will be normal.

“Sure you were,” said miss serenity, eyes still closed and breathing deeply. “The cow was licking the salt off your face.”

“Right, the salt off my face, listen…” then I recalled the lethal ball of fur colliding with Cliodhna and suddenly had the impression that I should be polite to her. “You were the panther, weren’t you?”

“Yes,” was all she said taking another deep breath in through her nose and letting it out slowly.

“Why?” I was wide awake now. The black cow with the racing flames on its flanks gave me a baleful, bovine stare and mooed.

“It was the only solution to the problem.”

“Sure, makes sense. Just go on out, change into a panther and attack an insane Queen of Faerie, seems perfectly logical to me.”

“As logical as you tackling her and manipulating the elements.”

“What are you talking about?”

Madame ‘H’ opened her eyes. It was then that I noticed that she wasn’t dressed in her normal robes of black. In comparison to her Goth self she looked rather cheery. She wore a flowing blue dress that was cinched at the waist by a gold belt. She noticed me staring.

“What?”

I blushed. What should I say? Oh, madame ‘H’ you look very beautiful today. That would just lead to another contest of wills. “Nothing.”

She gracefully came to her feet, straightened her dress and strode by me with a knowing smile. She knew what I was thinking, and the fact didn’t really bother me. I watched her walk – no, that really wasn’t what she was doing. She was swaying with each step, just like the wind blowing through the grass. I caught my thoughts. What was happening? Maybe the place was changing how I thought. Was it making me a poet? Please, no. I didn’t want to be a poet. She was the one that belonged here not me. Even the cows had given up on my salt stained face to watch her. So entranced was I, that she had to stop and look back over her shoulder to break it.

“Are you coming? Or do you want to wait for Cliodhna?”

I stumbled forward into clumsy action and soon we were walking through a golden field of some type of grass, together. She smelled of lavender.

“You’re a panther?”

She nodded. “Amongst other things.”

“How did you do it? I mean…”

“Who am I really, I can’t be human, right. Is that what you’re asking? This is my home. Besides I should be the one asking the questions.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sherlock was trying to stall her, maybe distract at best. You removed her.”

“I did what?”

She stopped and turned on me. “You really don’t know what you did back at the Library.”

“You mean I cause the black hole…”

“Worm hole is a better term for it. If it was a black hole…well, we wouldn’t be alive.”

“I made a worm hole?”

“Supposedly,” she said dryly.

“So, If I make one now, we can get back? All I need to do is make another one?”

“Try.”

I waved my arms around like I thought a magician might, but nothing happened. “Suppose I got lucky.”

Madame ‘H’ started to walk again and I followed.

“This place is familiar,” I mumbled to myself. It was similar to a series of fields on the outskirts of town: Crazy Potter’s field we called it. He had apple trees we used to raid when we were kids. He’d come chasing after us with a pitch fork threatening to skewer us and roast us for barbeque. It wasn’t until much later that we found out that Crazy Potter wasn’t crazy at all, just lonely and looking for a bit of excitement.

I began to remember some book I had glanced at. It was interesting enough, a book of magical creatures. “You’re a skin changer?”

She stopped, her shoulders rising and falling with the defeat of a big sigh. “You ever shut up?”

“I’m not like this, usually, but near death experiences and killer Queen’s from Faerie and Librarians who turn into fury spitting panthers sort of get me going.”

“All right, fine. I am a skin changer. It’s a form of magic, like your ability to manipulate elements. Mine is just more personal.”

“I can manipulate elements, like the periodic table will listen to me?”

“Unfortunately, I believe so.”

“But I can’t remember…”

“You will. Your Aunties taught you.”

We started to walk again. The field had changed. Up in front of us was a tree line. Just then we heard the strains of music from the woods. If I live to be a thousand years old I will never be able to forget that music, it was really that bad. Imagine a cat with its tail caught in a door, and that cat is playing an electric fiddle with its teeth, and then add a chorus of doomed souls from Dante’s infernal and you might understand what I heard.

“What in the world is that?” I said placing my hands over my ears.

“It’s your destiny.”

“Listening to bad music is my destiny?”

We followed the cacophonous caterwauling noise, leading us deeper and deeper into the forest. I had thought that Faerie, if that’s where we were, was supposed to be somehow different. When I expressed this to Madame ‘H’, she laughed.

“What? You thought it would be full of flouncing nymphs and come hither water sprites?”

“Well – yes.” I knew I was sounding really shallow. “Is there something wrong with that?”

Just then the noise stopped abruptly. She put her finger to her lips and motioned me to creep along closer to the ground. We were very close and I noticed the lavender scent was stronger. “There are,” she whispered, “indeed nymphs and water sprites in Faerie, but they’re more likely to rip your throat out than to kiss you.”

“That’s really good to know,” I said talking through what felt like cotton thick air.

Madame ‘H’ gave me a discerning look and the vaguest hint of a smile flittered across her face, but the moment was destroyed by a heart spiking scream ripped out of the woods as if someone was being murdered.

“Come on,” shouted Madame ‘H’ as she leapt into the woods towards the screams. I say screams, because instead of one, there were many now.

I felt like telling her it would be a better idea to head in the opposite direction, but she was gone. The screams weren’t so different from the music, same voices just different intensity. I rushed through the trees until a scene, full of violence, on the bank of a stream, opened up to me. There was a wild man, a great double gripped sword, clasped and held above his head, in preparation to strike down. In front of him, Madame ‘H’, in panther form, was crouched ready to spring. She snarled, her white fangs gleaming. Behind her huddled a group of young men. All of them were dressed in mini-togas and sandals. Half of them had broken harps. Around their crowns were laurel leaves, most of them had been torn and now hung like leafy camouflage.

Made brave by Madame ‘H’, a particularly golden locked fellow pointed an accusing finger at the wild, hairy, sword wielding man and bleated plaintively. “He broke our harps! He came out of nowhere, kicked them out of our hands and started to break our harps. When we tried to defend ourselves he drew that…that…great thing of his!”

“I repent my actions,” snarled the man who took a menacing step forward. “I should have taken me sword to your untalented heads first and then the caterwauling would have ended, permanently.”

The man tried to slip over to the side, but Madame Panther was having none of it and she followed him warily with her eyes.

“We are poets. We claim clemency! The High King has proclaimed this,” wailed one of the young men.

“If you’re poets then I’m a dancing dryad, and as for your High King, I have none. My king was killed long ago. I would be asking you to be giving him a message for me, in song, but I would never, ever inflict anyone with your noise.”

He made a threatening stamping motion.

The poets screeched.

Madame Panther snarled.

This wasn’t going to end well. I could sense it, almost see it. The hairy fellow, who reminded me of Animal from the Muppets, was going to attack, and Madame ‘H’ wasn’t going to back down. She was determined, for some reason to defend the poets. I never liked poets, not that I knew any, not personally. That wasn’t true. I like some poetry, like Browning and some Elizabethan poets like Sidney and Raleigh. But contemporary poetry, to me was full of whining and complaining about how terrible life was. I just felt let telling them to shut up; life sucked, best to get on with it.

The big hairy fellow was also aware of the standoff. He took his sword down a notch to a less threatening position. “Listen, I’ll be making you a deal I will. Tell me a poem and if it’s any good, then I’ll let you live, but if it is anything like your singing, I’ll dice you right out of existence. And in the waiting, you, miss kitty, you can turn back into your real self, and I promise not to attack – until my decision.”

Madame ‘H’ morphed back into her fashionable self. Her dress seemed a bit rumpled. She was panting, visibly exhausted from her effort to maintain her panther form. Had the big fellow wanted to attack now would have been the perfect opportunity. He raised his sword…

“Swear by the High King Uail of the clan Baiscne,” said Madam ‘H’ quickly.

The sword went down and a sad note seemed to play in his eyes. He gave his big, shaggy head a nod. “By him, I will swear.”

Was that a tear in the corner of his eye? He pulled up a log and sat down on it laying the sword flat across his massive thighs.

“And your name is?” asked Madame ‘H’.

He looked at her obliquely and then wagged his finger like you would at a naughty child. “Oh, you’re a sly one you are, a worthy opponent. I’ll give you that, and my name. My name is Fiacuil mac Cona.”

Madame “H’ gave him a respectful nod.

After a long pause, one of the poets stepped forward, but Fiacuil stopped him with the flat of his hand. “No, no, no. You must give me your name, now.”

The poet went to speak, but Fiacuil growled at him. “Not you, you unimportant dolt, her. The Lady with the teeth and the claws...you so do remind me of my wife.”

I had never seen anyone so uncomfortable as I saw Madame ‘H’. Then after another long pause, she also gave a terse nod. “My name is Helga Ni Murchu.”

When I heard her name I almost laughed. Nobody had a name like that.

“A noble name, although the first name is a bit peculiar.”

“My mother was Saxon,’ explained Madame ‘H’ as though it was a family secret she would rather not discuss.

Fiacuil looked a bit confused, as though he was trying to remember something. Then he gave up. He waved the hesitant poet forward. “Come on, come on. I want this argument settled, between me and my sword, on who shall drink first.”

The most senior of the poets, with his knees knocking and knuckles being chewed, stumbled forward. He took the only harp they had managed to keep safe from Fiacuil’s fury and was about to strum...

“No, harp,” snapped Fiacuil, “I’ve had enough harps to last an eternity.”

The nervous poet cleared his throat. “An Ode...” he began in his best declarative voice.

“No Odes,” growled Fiacuil. “I don’t like them. They give me indigestion.”

Helga rolled her eyes. “Well, what type of poem do you like? If you don’t like any you might as well get chopping.”

Fiacuil looked like he was just about to take her up on the offer, but then he laughed. “I like Limericks. Best structure for drinking. That’s it, give me a limerick. You know limericks don’t you?”

The poet swallowed and nodded his head so his blond curls bounced and he began:

“The lion is wonderous strong

And full of the wiles of wo;

And wether he pleye

Or take his preye

He cannot do but slay.”

Fiacuil tilted his head back as though to savor the words. Then finally making his decision he jumped up to his feet and swung his sword about his head and began bellowing: “Chopping time!”

Helga transformed back into a panther and coiled to leap on the big man and the poets gave a chorus of mortal screeches.

Caught between the fascination of the two combatants and who would win, I decided to do the right thing. Throwing myself into the opening I held out my hands and yelled: “I’ve got one. I’ve got one. It’s much better than these clowns.”

Fiacuil let his sword drop and Helga turned back into her human self and fixed me with startled eyes.

“How long have you been spying?” she snarled.

I suppose she still imagined herself as a panther.

“Enough to know your name,” I said and regretted it when she blushed. “But you, you want a real limerick, a real drinking limerick, right?”

Fiacuil nodded his great shaggy head. “Of course...” He was looking at me through his suspicion inspired slit eye lids. “You look familiar.”

“Right,” I rushed on. I figured I only had a few moments before Animal started waving his sword about again. “Try this on for size:

There was an Old Man of Nantucket

Who kept all his cash in a bucket.

His daughter, called Nan,

Ran away with a man,

And as for the bucket, Nantucker.”

There was a halting moment when I felt things could go either way. Helga was at my side...Helga, how was I going to get used to that name? Madame ‘H’ was just so much cooler. Then the laughter came. It wasn’t the psychotic out of control laughter of Cliodhna, but the deep earthy bellowing of someone that had been lost but had suddenly found that there still was humour in the world.

“Another, another,” shouted Fiacuil, eyes gleaming in anticipation.

“All right,” I was suddenly very grateful for my memory. “Try this...

A bather whose clothing was strewed

By winds that left her quite nude

Saw a man come along

And unless we are wrong

You expected this line to be lewd.”

Fiacuil was on the ground laughing so hard that tears were welling out freely from the corner of his eyes. He was like some great prize fighter who had just been floored. He motioned for me to hit him again. “Another...” he bellowed.

“I’ll give you another…

There once was a young lady named bright

Whose speed was much faster than light

She set out one day

In a relative way

And returned on the previous night.”

Fiacuil was pounding the earth, eyes streaming with tears. Having reached humour saturation he sat back on his heels and clapped his great hands together. “I haven’t laughed so much since...” then his eyes lit up and I thought we were all dead. He was suddenly on us, pulling us into his massive arms, hugging us to death. After a few more moments of odorous affection, he really did need a bath, he stepped back wagging his finger at me.

“You are just like your old man...you are Fionn, son of Uail mac Baiscne. I knew you were familiar!” Then he turned on Helga. “And you are his girl friend.” He wrapped his arms around both our necks, and pulled us into his smelly chest in a half-nelson grip. “Let the heavens cry for joy for today you have found your liege man. Your hand of slaughter!”

And with that, Fiacuil walked away with both of us embraced as though we were long lost family, which I suppose, in a way, we were.

The poets were left to clean up after their near demise.