12. Blood of My Blood
Chapter twelve
Blood of My Blood
Eoghan
T he woods around the Green mansion boasted hundreds of acres. The wilderness expanded like the moss that grew vast and wide, crawling over an entire landscape, covering it in emerald colored hues. Even in the middle of winter, the trees refused to give up their cover of dark evergreens.
My father controlled a great part of the Catskill mountain range, ostensibly for lumber mills. That was legitimate, of course. Green Fields Enterprises was a legitimate business, with much of its assets operating on the right side of the law. You’d never hear ‘em say otherwise.
But the real purpose, at least for now, was something else.
Deep in the woods, beneath the high canopy, obscured from the prying eyes of the outside world was a small army, hidden like the Merry men in Sherwood Forest.
Barracks lined a square that was obscured beneath great trees to keep it from the view of satellites and drones. Beneath it was a black-clad army of men, standing in formation. Over a hundred strong, training every day for the insurgent war that would happen between the Italians and us.
Trained, disciplined, and loyal, these men were the lynchpin of my plan to take us out of the dark ages. I was training them for something… I just needed the spark to push my plans into motion.
I stood to my father’s left, as we looked out at the men before us. Their faces stared in our direction, as they waited for my father’s words.
“Kieran O’Malley, step forward!” my father bellowed.
Out of the sea of faces, in identical black uniforms with the four leaf clover symbol of Green Fields Enterprises emblazoned on the chest, came Kieran. The brown-haired, fresh-faced young man stood before my father at attention, his heels together, toes out at a 45 degree angle, his fists at the seam of his trousers.
“Reporting for duty!” the man said, giving a crisp salute. My father gave him a nod, and he dropped his hand back down to his side.
“Are you ready, lad?” My father’s voice was soothing, giving no hint of the temper he had displayed. The temper that had smashed my face, turning my eye swollen and blue. “Eoghan.”
He beckoned me forward with a slight flick of his index finger. Barely noticeable. But I noticed. If I didn’t, he’d beat me right here, in front of the men. I knew that.
“Do the honors,” he said, his eyes pointing to the knife at my belt.
I looked down at it, my brows furrowed. I had taken the oath. The scar on my hand was a testament to that, but I had never been the one to administer it. My father was still the head of the family. Their loyalties were to him, until the king was dead. Long live the king!
Not wanting to cause a scene, I took the knife I always kept on my belt.
It was a throwing knife, with no hilt on the handle. It was just one flat piece of iron, honed on one end so sharp that it could cut a piece of hair with just the slightest touch. It was primitive, but effective for the man who knew what he was doing with it.
On the handle, I had taken the time to carve out a celtic knot within my initials, ECG. There were two like it. There was a similar knife that belonged to my cousin, Dairo, with his initials. We had carved them together long ago, when we first learned of our birthright and first heard about these blood oaths. Our boyish little hearts thought it was romantic, and cool. Like it was something ancient…
In truth, it was something my father cooked up just to give pomp and ceremony to what was tantamount to a well-paid gang of mobsters.
Ah, but to lads of twelve years old, it all made us feel quite grown-up and important. Dairo and I made these blades and took an oath to one another, whining like girls when we first cut our palms. We clasped our hands together and, far from ancient profound words, we had simply said, “I’ll always have your back, mate.”
We weren’t the brightest boys.
I felt the blade in my hand. It was heavy, full of meaning and memories. I suppose it did no harm to take O’Malley’s oath. After all, I would inherit this ceremony when my father passed.
I handed the knife to O’Malley, blade first, holding the tip between my index finger and thumb. He grabbed it, and eagerly cut his left palm horizontally, from the meaty part below his pinky, all the way across to the space between his thumb and index finger.
It wasn’t deep, but it was designed to scar. A mark that he had taken an oath.
I watched as the streak filled with blood, until it dripped off his hand, onto the ground beneath the weeping willow we stood beneath.
“Repeat after me, boy,” my father said, his gray brows furrowing. “By my blood, I will be faithful and true.”
Kieran repeated the words as the blood trickled from his palm, down his pinky, before falling to the earth.
“I shall fight to defend those who pledge to our family, above all laws of man. We are one blood.”
My father grabbed the knife from Kieran’s hand and grabbed my wrist. He stabbed my palm with the tip, much harder than was needed. I clenched my jaw to keep from crying out, as an angry line formed, and my blood gushed out.
No weakness. Show no weakness.
It was twice as deep as O’Malley’s, matching the boy drop for drop as we stained the black earth scarlet.
“We are one blood,” I said my part, clasping O’Malley hand in mine so that our bleeding palms touched and mingled, squeezing our handshake to release more crimson to the earth.
“Blood of my blood,” I said in awe, as I felt the change in the air.
The pain of the wound shot through my arm, but I kept my face neutral.
If pain was weakness leaving the body, then my father was setting me up to be Ironman. If there was pain to be dealt, my father dealt it to me. Resentment coursed through me as I looked at my smug, sadistic father, who had the gall to bear the face of a man I once loved.
The things that I had thought were fun about him had taken on a sinister edge. When he had once taken me to the woods as a boy, and we searched for signs of fairies in the trees, I thought we were on a grand adventure. But now, those stories of witches and spirits loomed like dark shadows overhead, painting everything black in its wake.
Or maybe there was something more at work…
I swear I could hear something whispering in the trees, echoing among the sound of the grass as it danced in the breeze. There was a voice in the rustling of the leaves above, whispering that they accepted this strange, ethereal oath, and would punish anyone who dared to break it.
Or maybe that was just me. My mind, my heart, my imagination, making something out of this game of make believe that we all played.
The oath meant nothing, if I did not honor it. The oath meant even less, if we did not punish a person who broke it. The oath had meaning, because we gave it one.
Each of us had bled here, letting our essence stain the ground red. We were the dislocated Irish, sent here by famine, poverty, or war. Each of us, in turn, spilled a bit of ourselves to make this land our new home.
But I would not do it the way my father did. Since my mother died, my father made sure to choose war over peace, and death over life. But I knew that was not the way toward a future.
I was to beat our swords into plowshares and take us from the dark ages. To bring the Greens from the shadows and into the light. Like the Kennedy’s before us, we were expected to rise.
That was my burden…
I looked at my father, who stood with his wrinkled lips pursed, and his eyes graying with age. He looked at me and O’Malley like a man who was mad with power, and he collected soldiers like a miser collected coins.
This is my burden… but first, I must let the past die.
For now, my time was better spent in the city. Driving all night to sleep in my own apartment was better than spending another night in this Godforsaken place.