An account of May 25-27
Lark Harbor, Oregon, holds more than its fair share of mysteries, this we know. It’s why, after all, women of our Tuath clan, the dobran—the wish givers—have been drawn here. My mother predicted when I left town to go to college that I would be back, settle down and raise my family here, and of course she was right. The land’s spirit called to me, too earnest for me to ignore. I heard it in the loon’s tremulous song, tasted it in salt air, felt it when I came to visit. The moment I would again set foot on Willamette Drive’s crest—that spot in the business district where you can see the city of Eberhart’s skyline to the south, and the sparkling harbor to the west, with the white-capped Pacific splashing beyond—it’s the same feeling I get when I enter the energy realm of the Réimse Uile to whisper to the Universe wishes of those I am charged to watch over. It is a warmth, a sense of belonging, like stirring in a soft bed under a puffy comforter with hours more to sleep.
Yet it is also ominous. A storm brews in Lark Harbor, has been brewing for more than a generation. I don’t yet know why. I don’t yet know when, finally, it will break.
Yet of all these mysteries, none fills me with more hope, more pride and joy, than those surrounding my daughter. At just nine years old, Eleanor has been entrusted with her first charge. A girl bullied her at school, gave her a black eye in fact, and Eleanor responded by telling this girl that her parents’ divorce wasn’t her fault. Eleanor didn’t even need to travel into the girl’s subconscious (though admittedly, with charges who are children, many times mind-traveling is unnecessary). She knew this girl’s deepest wish was that she could forgive herself for, as she saw it, driving her parents apart.
Nine years old. She is the youngest dobran I have ever heard of. Mom is just as amazed, and she knows far more than I do.
Mom and I will sit Eleanor down today and begin her lessons. She must learn how to enter the Réimse Uile, and how to greet the twin guardians, and how to advocate for her charge. She needs to know how to control her instincts and her emotions, how to mind-travel and empathize with her charges without losing herself in them. I have an idea how to communicate this much to her, at least, by drawing on her insatiable love of board games. (I have a feeling that one day, when inevitably she, too, settles in Lark Harbor as an adult, she will find her vocation somehow in gaming or strategy and deduction. Maybe all of the above.)
That my child may be a wunderkind among dobran and she happens to have been born of Lark Harbor as its skies darken with each passing year is a connection not lost on me. I only hope that if she is swept up in the storm, she will be prepared, she will be loved, and she will be safe.
