Texting the Underworld by Ellen Booraem Page B

I seriously doubt you have a brain tumor. You’re tying yourself up in knots about this Latin School baloney. If the idea of going there bothers you so much, kiddo, there’s no reason you have to go. You got the O’Neill Spark—you’ll do great wherever you are.”
    â€œDad wants me to go to Latin School and then BC.”
    â€œYour pop wants a lot of things he ain’t got. So does your mum. They’re good people, hardworking. But”—Grump leaned forward and gazed earnestly into Conor’s face—“they ain’t you.” He sat back as if he’d said something monumental. He focused on the glue again.
    â€œDad says I need to get out there.”
    â€œWell, he’s right about that. You gotta get out there and bend some rules.”
    â€œ
You
think I need to get out there?” Double-crossed again.
    Grump blew air out his nose. “Oh, cripes. ‘Out there’ don’t necessarily mean Latin School. Anyways, you gotta stop listening to everybody else tell you what to do, including me.” He ruffled Conor’s hair. “Quit worrying, kiddo. It’ll all work out. Out of curiosity, what’s this flute you keep hearing?”
    Conor gulped back his misery and told Grump about running into moon-dappled woods, fire and music behind him. About the sword scabbard. The girl screaming.
    â€œHuh.” Grump rolled the picked-off glue into a little ball between thumb and finger, concentrating on it, making it perfect. “And this scabbard, you say it had spirals and stuff on it? Did they look like anything in particular?”
    Conor shut his eyes to recall it. “Not really. Some of them might have looked sort of, I dunno, like a duck or something. There’s an eye and kind of a beak. It has a hat on.”
    â€œHere.” Grump dug for his notebook and pencil, which he kept stuffed under his chair cushion in case of brilliant ideas. “See if you can draw it.”
    Conor leaned over the table next to Grump’s chair and did his best. A thin line in a single spiral, thickening into something like a bird’s head in the center, with an eye and an upward-curving beak, sort of a fat torpedo shape at the top of the head.
    â€œYep. That’s a bird all right.” Grump braced his skinny arms to heave his belly out of the chair. He shuffled to the bookcase and ruminated, selected a book, leafed through it. “Ha.” He held the book out to Conor.
    And there, in a color plate, was the scabbard from Conor’s dream. The caption read, “Bronze Scabbard, Armagh, c. fifth century. Crested bird-head design.”
    â€œThat’s it! That’s the scabbard!”
    â€œYou must’ve seen it in this book,” Grump said.
    â€œI’ve never looked at this book. Really, Grump. I swear.”
    â€œKiddo, you could’ve come in here when I had it lying around. You could’ve been five or something, and it stuck with you.”
    Conor looked closer at the photo. It was the scabbard, no question. Maybe Grump was right and he’d seen this book before. “What’s Armagh?”
    â€œIt’s a city in Ulster, northern Ireland.” Grump replaced the book on its shelf and plunked back down in his easy chair.
    â€œWhere the Uí Néill and the Dál Fiatach lived.” He was careful to pronounce
Uí Néill
the way Ashling did,
Ee Nay-ill,
and to add the guttural sound at the end of
Dál Fiatach.
    Grump blinked. “Where’d you learn about them?”
    â€œIn a book at school. I looked it up today, because—”
    â€œNo, but how’d you learn how to say those names? They ain’t pronounced the way they look.”
    â€œThe banshee, Ashling. She said she’s one of the Uí Néill. Or she was, when she was alive. She got killed by the Dál Fiatach. They put an ax in her head. And the Lady kept her as a servant.”
    Grump eyed Conor as if he were