Chronicles of an Urban Druid

When a back-alley brawl leaves me marked with a bizarre Celtic crest on my back, I become a beacon for all things whacked and weird. My dad is obviously freaked when he sees the tat, but he won't discuss it. So, I do what any stubborn redheaded lass would - I ignore all advice and fly to the Emerald Isle to get answers. And yeah...you know that saying about hindsight being 20/20? True story.

My outlook on life isn't complicated - any day that passes when nobody tries to kill me or someone I love gets put into the "good day" column. Simple, right? Lately, good days have been hard to come by. Since I totally ignored Da's warning three months ago and flew to Ireland to embrace our super-secret heritage, I've seen the world in a different light - a mythical and magical light. I am a Druid.

Since being marked as the heir apparent, I've been stabbed, kidnapped, black-listed, tortured, targeted, and accused of being the cause of pretty much every magical mishap that's hit the streets of Toronto. To some, I'm a nuisance, to others a curiosity, and others still - a problem to be eliminated. Whatevs, haters gotta hate.

Growing up with five older brothers taught me how to take a hit. Lucky for me because the hits I take as a druid make me yearn for the good old days of sucker punches, rope burn, and steamroller.

Assuming my role as the druid representative for the Lakeshore Guild of Empowered Ones is both an honor and a curse. It puts me in a position to make important changes in a flawed system but also puts me in the crosshairs of a lot of powerful people.

On a good day, wearing the Fianna mark tosses me into topsy-turvy trials. It's a scramble but I manage to hold it together with the help of amazing family and friends: mythical, magical, and mortal. But despite best-laid plans, collateral damage occurs.

The moment you let your guard down and think you've got a handle on life—you jinx it. I bust my butt on the daily, smoothing the rough edges after moving in with the boyfriend, making amends to angry empowered ones, and patching things up with hostile in-laws. Things are good on the home front with my job, family, and friends. I've got this, right? Wrong. Cue the centrifuge of life spinning me around while the gods point and laugh. Or, in this case, the goddess. Hecate, Goddess of Witchcraft and Magic, deity of night and ghosts, supreme tormentor of friends.

The focus of my life as an urban druid is to stand as a guardian of nature. The focus of my life as Fiona Cumhaill to stand as a guardian of my family. Seriously. Don't screw with my family. It's a no-brainer, drop everything, and take up the fight topic for me—If you need me, I will come. So, when darkness conspires to overtake the light and people I love are sucked into the wake of evil, the Toronto crew grabs the go-bags and answers the call.

When Garnet brings Team Trouble in to investigate a string of discarded bodies, none of us likes where the evidence points. My Spidey-sense says something isn't right. In the human realm, the evidence doesn't lie. In the empowered realm . . . nothing is as it seems.