Go on, kick your boots off, lean back, and pour yourself a drink. Relax. We’re safe now. No more running from wolves, no more freezing bogs, and thank the heavens, no more smelling like a wet dog on an Atlantic freighter. We made it. We’re home.
But let me ask you a question, and give me an honest answer: Have you ever spent years begging for a door to open, only to realize the room on the other side doesn't fit you anymore?
Because that’s the part the poets always leave out. They love a good grand finale, don't they? They want the trumpets to blare and the hero to live happily ever after. But let me tell you a secret about coming home from hell: the hardest part isn't actually surviving the mud. It’s surviving the clean linen.
When my feet finally touched the manicured lawns of my father’s grand Roman estate in Britain, I genuinely thought the ordeal was over. I remember walking up that familiar gravel path, the afternoon sun hitting the gleaming white marble columns of the villa. Everything looked exactly the same as the day those pirates dragged me away in chains. The lavender bushes were still perfectly trimmed. The fountains were still lazily trickling.
But when the estate servants saw me creeping up the steps, they didn't run out to give me a tearful embrace. They grabbed heavy iron hearth pokers, wielded them like clubs, and screamed for the armed guards.
And honestly? Can you blame them? Your guess is as good as mine as to what they thought I was. To those poor, refined people, I looked like a mythological monster that had just crawled out of a primeval swamp. I was completely emaciated, my ribs pushing hard against a filthy, salt-crusted tunic that was mostly holes. My hands were a brutal map of split knuckles, and I smelled so profoundly of wet wolf fur, woodsmoke, and ancient bog rot that my mother's prize lapdog nearly choked on its own bark. Pretty sure the poor little thing fainted right on the rug. I mean, wouldn't you?
Then my father, Calpurnius, stepped out onto the portico.
He looked down at me from the top step, his pristine white toga draped perfectly over his shoulder, his skin smooth and smelling of expensive olive oil soap. He squinted in the bright sunlight, desperately trying to locate his son beneath the thick layers of dirt and wilderness scars.
"Patricius?" he whispered. His voice was trembling, a mix of horror and utter disbelief cracking his aristocratic composure.
"It's me, Father," I said. My voice sounded incredibly low, raspy, and thick with that heavy Gaelic dialect I’d been using for survival. I held out my hands those raw, calloused palms. "I came back."
He didn't rush down to throw his arms around me. He froze. He looked at my matted hair, my blackened fingernails, and the way I stood hunched over, balanced heavily on the balls of my feet like a predator ready to spring, a permanent habit from my years on the mountain. To a refined Roman deacon, I didn't look like a long lost son. I looked like a barbarian who had come to steal the family silver.
When he finally stepped down and put his arms around me, I didn't feel warm. I just felt the rigid stiffness in his back. Have you ever hugged someone who was terrified of your very presence? It breaks something inside you. I smelled his expensive rosewater perfume, and it made my stomach violently churn. It tasted fake. It felt like an illusion.
They dragged me inside, stripped my rags, and threw me into a steaming marble bath. The servants scrubbed my skin with rough wool sponges until I was nearly bleeding, desperate to wash the island off me. They poured scented oils over my head, but no matter how hard they rubbed, the smell of Mount Slemish felt like it was trapped inside my actual bones.
That night, they threw a massive feast. The tables were groaning under the weight of roasted pheasant, spiced wine, and soft white bread. My family sat around me, laughing, drinking, and crying tears of joy.
But I couldn't swallow a single bite.
You see what was happening, don't you? Look across the table at me.
They were celebrating the return of the spoiled boy who was stolen. But that boy didn't exist anymore. He died in the dirt years ago.
The roasted meat tasted like dry ash in my mouth. It was too rich, too sweet. My stomach, shrunk from years of chewing on raw roots and watery porridge, violently rejected it. I had to excuse myself, stumbling out of the brightly lit dining hall and into the dark corridor just to keep from vomiting on their expensive mosaic floors. Imagine making it through six years of starvation just to barf at your own welcome-home party. Brutal, right?
When it came time to sleep, they put me in my old bedroom. It had a massive bed with goose-feather pillows and sheets made of the finest Egyptian linen.
I laid down on it, and within five minutes, my chest felt like it was being crushed by a boulder.
The room was too quiet. There was no wind. No rain drilling into my skin. No reassuring, heavy scent of the herd huddling around me. The plaster ceiling felt like it was dropping down to suffocate me in my sleep. The sheer, unnatural softness of the mattress made my lower back ache.
I rolled off the bed, dragged a rough wool blanket onto the cold, hard stone floor beneath the open window, and curled up into a tight ball. I laid there staring at the moonlight hitting the silk drapes, my heart hammering against my ribs, feeling more isolated in my family’s mansion than I ever did on the freezing ridges of Ireland.
My body was back in Britain. But my mind? My mind was still running through the bogs.
I was a ghost haunting my own life. And as the weeks crawled by, that bronze bell in my head started ringing again. Only this time, it wasn't telling me to run away from the wild.
It was telling me I had to go back.
Chapter 6