When Fillan awoke, he found himself surrounded by icy darkness. He tugged off the canvas bag covering his head, but it didn’t help him see any clearer.
“Kyle?!” he yelled, staggering to his feet.
Only the muffled echo of his voice answered. His eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness of wherever he’d been thrown, and he could make out four walls. Three of them consisted of a pile of uneven rocks that overlapped with incredible precision and towered a little over six feet. The fourth wall was the entrance, blocked by a huge smooth stone.
“Is anyone there?!” he shouted.
An oppressive and claustrophobic silence answered him. Above his head were other rocks, which formed a flat ceiling. A thin streak of light pushed through a tiny hole between two of them.
He realized that he’d been locked up in a dolmen, an ancient sepulchral chamber, a few ruins of which were dotted across Scotland. He’d had the opportunity to play in one around Mordington a few years ago. These ancient constructions comprised only one room and were built atop mounds and gigantic megaliths. This is where they once stored the bodies of the deceased for their eternal rest.
A grave, Fillan thought. I’ve been buried alive.
Panic gripped him. He threw himself against the smooth stone and nearly dislocated his shoulder. He tried twice more before frantically inspecting the rest of the burial chamber in search of an escape, to no avail. Realizing he couldn’t get out, he screamed until his voice was hoarse. But no sound could pass through the strongly entangled stones. In sheer desperation, he hammered his fists against the rock prison, only to cut his skin on the sharp edges.
The narrow room began to sway, and he let himself slide to the ground, trembling. His head in his hands, he tried not to sob and did everything he could to master the fear thumping in his chest. Who’d locked him in here? And what for? And most importantly, what had happened to Kyle? Just thinking about it terrified him. Like a statue, he had no choice but to face it and believe that old Tilda might have glimpsed the future.
Sooner or later, she’d said, you will have to face your fire.
Fillan tried to subdue his emotions as a new wave of anguish took his breath away, but a voice behind him startled him.
“Fillan,” it said, “what are you doing here?”
A shiver ran down his spine and he turned slowly. He saw his twin in the sliver of moonlight. Ailéas stood in front of him with a blindfold that had slipped down and a mop of messy red hair. She watched him with her big green eyes. His sister, however, did not look any older than eight years old and there was no scar across her forehead.
He couldn’t help but scream at the sight of the vision, backing up against the stones that cut into his back.
And better sooner than later, the voice echoed in his head.
“Fillan?” little Ailéas asked again.
He had fallen into the Sidh, the Other World. There was no other explanation. Or was it all the alcohol he had drunk? He gave another scream, closed his eyes, and shoved his fingers in his ears as he curled up in a ball.
Bealltainn, he remembered. It’s Bealltainn, the magical night where everything is possible and everyone burns their own lies in the fire of bonfires. Was the elder with the milky eyes, and Kyle, correct? When he found the courage to reopen his eyes, the little girl was sat on the floor and watched him without moving, her head tilted to the side, like she used to during a conversation.
“Ailéas, is that you?” called Fillan in a trembling voice.
“Of course it’s me! No need to shout, you almost broke my eardrums!”
He would have tried to touch her, to see if she was real, but he dared not make the slightest movement: he was terrified.
That damn fear that paralyzed him over and over again.
“Are you real?” he could only ask.
The child pouted and bit the corner of her mouth, twisting her face. It was the exact same expression she always wore when someone said something upsetting to her and she couldn’t hide her pain. Over the years, she had learned to hide that expression, especially when Fillan tried to hurt her.
All the emotions Fillan had been trying to bury for weeks came flooding in, and he began to cry as if he were a little boy again himself.
“I’m so sorry, Ale,” he said, using the pet name he hadn’t used in so many years. “I didn’t want to flee in Berwick. I didn’t want to, but the flames…”
He choked on his own sob. All the anguish of his guilt flared up, and his heart was ripped into pieces before the emotionless glare of his sister.
“I left you,” he moaned. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s no use,” replied the little one, continuing to watch him without showing the slightest hint of emotion.
“Why are you saying that?” he yelled in anger, his guilt fading at the idea that his twin would not forgive him.
In a blink of an eye, little Ailéas disappeared.
Fillan crawled to where she had been, feeling the air and running his hands along the ground, but there was nothing. He curled up like a newborn and cried long and hard beneath the beam of light.
The night passed, bringing an ever more biting cold across the dolmen. Eyes half-closed, Fillan observed the mist that escaped from his mouth with each of his exhales while his mind was tangled in thoughts and emotions.
Guilt, of having done nothing to find the body of his sister. Anger, at himself for running away like a coward. Loneliness, because of the loss of his other half, an orphan now even more orphaned. Guilt again, to have been so mean in recent years while Ailéas had done everything she could to reconcile their opposite characters. Doubt, because he did not understand why he had come to hate her. Sadness, to imagine that he would never hear her voice again. Anger again, towards the whole world, as if every person could be guilty of his own faults.
With each new emotion, the consuming fire in his chest grew bigger.
“There’s no point in wanting me to forgive you,” the little voice of his sister said, who had just reappeared in a corner of the tomb.
Fillan watched her without bothering to get up.
“It is you and only you who must forgive yourself,” continued the child.
He felt stupid for getting so carried away.
“It’s impossible,” he replied, shaking his head. “You’re dead…”
…because of me, he thought, unable to say the words aloud through his dry throat.
“You have to stop beating yourself up about it,” little Ailéas continued. “There was nothing you could do.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. You just have to want it, or the fire will continue to devour you. And the more you bury it, the more it devours you. It is what makes you doubt yourself and paralyzes you, instead of animating you!”
His twin had ended up with the voice of old Tilda.
“What good would it—” he whispered.
His hallucination shifted and flames ignited in the stones around him, without producing any heat. Ailéas was now covered in dust and blood.
“You have to survive,” she said, pointing the birthmark on her wrist, which gleamed in the light of the blaze. “You must fulfill your destiny, Child of Fal. You are no longer the Fillan who simply hides.”
While he was consumed by misunderstanding, the creaking of a beam rung through the small space of the burial chamber. Ghostly embers flew into the air and everything disappeared in the darkness, even the little girl.
After a few seconds, Fillan began to believe.
“Only I can forgive myself,” he repeated in the silence of the dolmen.
As he stared at the stone walls, he felt something shift deep within him. A buried memory. It was a year ago, maybe two. His twin had just saved him from a group of Berwick bullies. “I won’t always be there,” she had lectured him, worried. “You have to learn to survive alone. Promise me.”
He had promised, just to get her to leave him alone.
What would she think of him today? He couldn’t talk of honoring her memory if he did not keep his promise; if he did not do everything to survive and fight like she would have done. It clicked, and the guilt that ignited everything in his body changed. The burden of his regrets did not disappear, but the fire—his fire—now became a catalyst of determination. He got up suddenly, determined to find a way to get out of there.
“Yes!” laughed the voice of little Ailéas, which echoed through the room. “Now you understand!”
Despite the cold numbing his fingers, he inspected each stone that made up the dolmen to see if one of them was loose. He tried again to move the large rock blocking the main entrance. He managed to unearth a broken femur that protruded near the bottom of a wall, in the ground he’d been walking on all this time. He considered using the bone as a lever to move the entrance stone, but it would not hold. He remembered a small gap he had noticed in the corner, as if a stone was missing. He had tried with a flat rock to get it out, but he hadn’t been able to shift it enough to pull it out. Using the bone, he now succeeded with a cry of joy.
“You understand!” echoed his twin’s voice.
Four more stones gave way as he pulled, and the cool night air hit him. A narrow passage came into view, which opened out under the stars. The teenager sprang out of the dolmen, taking in full breaths of air with the sudden urge to scream.
Bealltainn, he repeated in his head. It was the end of darkness, the buried fire that decided to burst forth. He understood why the old druid had spoken of rebirth. Coming out of the ground, motivated by a new determination, he felt he’d been born for the second time. He felt ready to do anything to survive. After all, that’s what Ailéas would do without hesitation.
Sören was waiting for him at the foot of the mound, surrounded by a mist that seemed to come from the land of the dead. A smile twisted his white-blond beard.