The Rowan Tree: Chapter 8

The rest of the afternoon and evening passed just as awkwardly as before Eamon showed up.  Seamus remained quiet as he fed Rowan lunch and dinner, but she didn’t feel very hungry, and to her great shock, he didn’t seem too hungry either.  For the first time ever, her giant guardian didn’t wolf down every last bit of his meal with gusto.  In fact, he didn’t even finish his supper, and Seamus not finishing a meal was unheard of to Rowan.  She watched with great concern as he just stared blankly down at his plate, pushing the scraps of food around with his fork and not saying a word.
“What’s the matter, Shay?  Do you have a bellyache?” she decided to ask at last.  Seamus, however, didn’t seem to hear her as he didn’t respond or even look up from his plate.  “Seamus?” Rowan repeated with confusion.  This time, the Fomorian snapped his head up as if he’d just been awoken from a deep trance.
“Hmm?  Sorry, what was that, love?” he said.  Rowan pointed at his plate.
“You’re hardly eating,” she said.  Seamus looked back down at his plate.
“Oh…” he said, as if he was just noticing his food for the first time.  “I guess I’m…just nae that hungry tonight,” he said with a sigh as he ran a hand through his red hair.  This only made Rowan frown.
“But…you’re always hungry,” she said softly.  Seamus then gave a weak chuckle.
“Dun ye worry yer sweet little head, lass.  I’ll finish the rest tomorrow,” he said as he reached out to lightly ruffle her hair with his fingertip and stood up to clear his plate.  “Besides, it’s not like I’m in any danger of starvin’!” he added with a smile and a wink to her as he patted his round belly.  Rowan just sighed; she knew he was trying to brush off the issue and keep her from worrying, but she couldn’t help still being concerned as he gently scooped her up in his hands.  “Come on, little one, let’s get to bed.  I’m pretty wrecked,” he rumbled wearily and for the first time in her life, Rowan decided not to object.  She simply nodded obediently and let him carry her off to their room and tuck her into bed, not even demanding a story or a song this particular evening.
“Shay?” Rowan piped up a bit later on from her bed as she sat up and watched Seamus sit down heavily on his own bed next to her, rubbing the back of his neck.  As he looked up at her with those huge green eyes of his, she could see just how exhausted he truly was, both physically and emotionally.  “I love you more than the sun,” she began.  Seamus gave her a weary, yet loving smile.
“And the moon,” he continued.
“And all the stars in the sky,” she finished with Seamus repeating the lines in unison with her.  He then nodded as he bent down and nuzzled Rowan lovingly with his nose before engulfing the top of her head in his large, soft lips in a big kiss.
“And I always will, my precious little gem,” he said softly as he reached up to gently stroke her cheek with his index finger.  “No matter what happens, I’ll always be here to protect you and take care of you, alright?” he added as he fixed his large emerald eyes on her.  Rowan couldn’t help but notice that there seemed to be a flicker of fear in them, which both confused and concerned her.
“Alright?” she repeated with uncertainty.  Seamus forced another weak smile at her before he blew out the candle on the nightstand and sat back on his bed.
“Good night, me wee darlin,’” he then rumbled as he laid down on his bed and turned on his side so that he was facing away from her.  She could hear him give a long heavy sigh before all was quiet.  Before long, Rowan found herself drifting off to sleep, hoping that perhaps she might get some answers and things would be better in the morning.
Rowan wasn’t sure how long she’d been asleep when she suddenly awoke to the sound of heavy footsteps rumbling around her.  She rubbed the sleep from her eyes as she sat up in her bed.  It was dark in the room, but as her eyes adjusted, she could just make out the outline of Seamus’ large form standing up and moving about the room.  At first, she thought she must be dreaming, but as she watched Seamus quietly slip out the bedroom door, she knew that she wasn’t.
“Seamus?” she called out to him softly in surprise and confusion, but he didn’t seem to hear her.  A few seconds later, she then heard the front door to their home open and close as Seamus headed out into the night.  At this, Rowan immediately shot up and climbed out of bed frantically.  Where on earth was he going?!  And why?!  It was the middle of the night!  Not to mention, why would he leave without her when he rarely ever left her alone?  None of it made any sense and she couldn’t make heads or tails of the bizarre situation as she quickly scurried down the small ladder that led her from the nightstand down to the floor.
As she made her way out of the bedroom to the front door of the hut, Rowan noticed that Seamus hadn’t managed to close it quite all the way.  It was open a crack, big enough for her to slip out of.  She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered a little as the chilly night air whipped at her thin nightgown a bit.  As she looked off into the darkness, she saw Seamus slowly making his way towards the forest.  She was about to call out to him as loud as she could, but she stopped herself.  Wherever he was going, he clearly didn’t want her to know about it.  Why else would he have left in the middle of the night while she was asleep?  The curious child was getting a bit annoyed with all these secrets and with her guardian’s unwillingness to talk about any of it.  She realized that if she wanted to get some answers, she would have to follow Seamus in secret, which would be no easy task considering it was dark and keeping up with his giant strides would mean she would have to run most of the way while still keeping a safe enough distance so that he wouldn’t hear her.  The very thought of it was exhausting, but she just had to know what was going on.  With that in mind, Rowan took a deep breath and took off running into the night after her large friend.
Keeping up with Seamus’s ground-shaking steps was indeed difficult.  Rowan could feel her lungs burning and the sweat dripping down her face as she ran after him, stopping only every few minutes for just a moment to catch her breath and keep a safe enough distance from him.  She was breathing so heavily from the effort that she feared his sensitive ears would hear her and found herself covering her mouth with her hand to stifle the sound.  The darkness didn’t help either, but thankfully, the moon was full and the light it provided was just enough for the small girl to avoid running into tree.  Even more luckily, Seamus seemed to be walking quite slowly, slower than he usually did at least, almost as if he was hesitant and having second thoughts about wherever it was that he was going.  This allowed his young charge to just barely manage to keep up with him; if he had been moving any faster, she would’ve lost him long ago.
After what felt like forever, Rowan stopped to lean against a large tree, feeling as though she was about to collapse.  Her little body was exhausted and utterly drenched with sweat.  Not to mention, both she and her nightgown were filthy with dirt and various leaves and twigs clung to her tangled golden girls.  Her bare feet were sore from the journey and one was cut and bleeding from a sharp stone.  Just as she was thinking that following Seamus had been a foolish, terrible mistake, she heard something that made her jump; voices.  Huge, loud, booming voices, just like Seamus.’  But there were many of them!  Shaking and rumbling through the trees like thunder!  The strange voices frightened Rowan a bit, but not enough to deter her curiosity.  After wiping a few beads of sweat from her forehead, she swallowed hard and braced herself as she cautiously made her way towards the source of the voices, hearing them steadily grow louder as she neared it.  Finally, she could tell that the sources of the voices were just on the other side of a thick cluster of tree branches.  Still being as quiet as she could, she carefully moved the branches aside and peeked through them to the other side, and what she saw made her gasp in shock in spite of herself.
There, in a clearing before her, in front of another large hut not unlike her home, around a large, roaring fire, sat seven enormous Fomorians!  All even bigger than Seamus!  Rowan immediately recognized the scarred face of Cillian, the brother she never knew he had, sitting on a log in front of the hut.  Seeing his frightening image again sent a shiver down her spine.  She also recognized Eamon, the friendly giant who’d visited them earlier that afternoon.  But who were the other five?!  They all looked as though they had just walked right out of one of Seamus’ stories; huge, strong, built like mountains with muscles bulging.  They all sported some kind of facial hair at varying levels of thickness and they all had different spiral-type tattoos and scars on their muscles, though Cillian was still outmatched in that vein.  Rowan also noticed that they all carried enormous weapons of all sorts at their sides, from axes to swords to bows.  She couldn’t help but swallow hard at the thought of the type of damage that these huge weapons could inflict, especially in the hands of these giant, beastly looking men.  
“So what yer saying is,” one of the Fomorians suddenly boomed, startling Rowan as she watched from her hiding place among the branches.  “The humans are back in The Glens, so we best prepare for war.”  To Rowan’s shock and slight terror, this one was even bigger than Cillian!  She felt herself trembling a bit as he spoke, stroking an enormous, bushy brown beard.
“Oh bollocks, Diarmuid!” another with a spikey black fauxhawk then snapped.  “All the chief is saying is that there’s been RUMORS of humans being spotted here in The Glens.  No reason to fly off the handle!”  The larger Fomorian glared hardly at the other.
“Dun talk back to ME like that, Cormac!  I’m still yer superior warrior!” he shouted, his voice shaking the tree branches Rowan hid among as he pointed an enormous finger at the smaller.
“And I’m yers, Diarmuid,” Cillian then said in that same cold, hard voice that had so frightened her before.  His icy blue eye was fixed sternly on the Fomorian called Diarmuid.  “So mind yer temper.”  Diarmuid cleared his throat awkwardly and nodded before casting his eyes down and nodding.
“Aye…sorry, chief,” he mumbled.
“Right lads,” another unfamiliar Fomorian with a thoughtful looking face and hazel eyes then said.  “Arguin’ will nae get us anywhere.  Let’s try to approach this thing rationally.”  The Fomorian who was sitting next to the speaker rolled his eyes and shook a head full of extremely curly dirty-blonde hair.
“You and yer ‘rational’ mumbo jumbo…” he groaned.  “This ain’t just another case of the mumps for ya to treat, this is serious!”
“I agree with Ronan,” Eamon then interjected as gestured towards the hazel-eyed Fomorian.  “We oughta think about this whole thing carefully before we make any decisions.”
“Well that’s all well and good,” a Fomorian with long auburn mutton-chops said as he looked up from sharpening a large knife.  “But it was Cil who called us all here, and he would nae have done so without reason.  He’s still our chief and it’s up to him where we go from here.”
“Aye, Finbar’s right,” the black-haired Fomorian called Cormac then said, and the others all nodded in agreement.  The thoughtful-faced Ronan looked up towards Cillian.
“So what say ya, chief?” he asked.  A hush then fell over the circle of giants as they all looked to the one-eyed blonde whom they seemed to regard as their leader, waiting in tense anticipation for a response.  Cillian remained quiet for a moment and Rowan could almost see the wheels turning in his head.  He then out what appeared to be a large pipe, lighting it as he took a long drag before blowing out a thick cloud of smoke.
“Each of ye raise valid points.  That’s why I called ye all here,” he began at last between puffs on his pipe.  “Because even though it’s been years now since the war and since ye all went on yer own way, yer still the finest group of warriors any chief could ever hope for, and I knew you’d all come if I ever needed ya.”  The large Diarmuid then reached out and put a hand on Cillian’s shoulder.
“Yer our chief always, Cil,” he said.  Cillian nodded appreciatively as he took another long drag on his pipe.
“As it stands right now,” he continued.  “I dun see any immediate threat.  We all went through three years of hell, and ye all more than fulfilled yer duty to the clan’s army.  There’s no reason to work ourselves up right now and force ye all to abandon yer new homes and lives when we dun even know for sure what’s going on.”  The other Fomorians all looked around uncertainly at each other.
“Are ya certain, chief?”  Diarmuid then said.
“Ye know we’ll all stay stay if ya need us to,” the curly-haired Fomorian added.  “We may live in different places now with different clans, but The Glens are still our home, and yer still our chief.”  The others nodded and voiced words of agreement but Cillian put up a hand to silence them all.
“I know that, Malachy,” Cillian said softly.  “And I appreciate it.  Yer the most loyal of comrades and it’s been a blessing to be yer chief.  But as I said, I dun see a need for it right now.  I only called ye all here to make ye all here as a warning and to make ye all aware.  Obviously, if anything changes, I’ll certainly call ye all back, but for now, the rumors of humans being spotted around here are just that, rumors, passed around through all the chattering creatures here in The Glens.  Sure, ya know how they can be,” he said, and for the first time, Rowan saw a hint of a smirk on the Fomorian chief’s lips.  “Besides, I patrol these lands nearly every day, and I’ve nae seen any humans, ‘cept for that little pet of Seamus’ of course.”  As he said these last words, his tone darkened and Rowan felt her heartrate pick up, knowing that he must be referring to her even though she still didn’t know what exactly a ‘human’ was.  Another uncomfortable silence then fell upon the group.
“Speaking of which…” Eamon then said at last in an awkward-sounding voice.  “What about Seamus?  What are ya gonna tell him?”
“Aye,” a familiar voice then suddenly boomed, making Rowan along with the other Fomorians jump and gasp as Seamus suddenly appeared from the thick trees that surrounded the clearing and made his war towards the circle.  The little girl gawked at her guardian in shock.  She had nearly forgotten all about him or that he was the reason she was out here in the first place!  Where had he come from?!  And where had he been all this time?!  Had he been watching the other Fomorians in secret just as she had been?  But why?!
The other Fomorians all looked as equally shocked as Rowan was to see Seamus there, staring at him in wide-eyed, open-mouthed shock, save for Cillian, who’s mouth was a hard, flat line as his blue eye fixed steadily on his younger brother.  Seamus, however, just stood there and folded his arms across his broad chest, his face stern and serious as his green eyes unabashedly held the chief’s gaze as he spoke in a firm, sure voice.
“What are ya gonna tell Seamus, brother?”