The Children of Lir

by Marion Grace Woolley

  He lent in to hold me. One moment brushing my hair from my eyes, the next his gentle breath against my lips.

  For a moment I did not understand what was happening, or I did not want to. I struggled backwards on one hand. Before I could think to stop myself, I curled the other into a fist and punched him square across the mouth.

  Climbing to my feet, I hobbled away into the night, leaving him there by himself. Feeling each stab of pain in my ankle helped to ease the pain in my heart. I found a quiet hut on the outskirts of the fort. It was abandoned, used for grain in autumn. I bedded down against one of the sacks and wept openly.

  I had no place for love in my heart. So set was I against this union of my father’s that all affection appalled me. Until that night I had known our friendship ran deep. Images of those writhing bodies, of flesh against flesh, both female and male, had returned to my dreams many times since. Sometimes I woke sweat-drenched and short of breath. In those first few moments, I will admit it was Caílte my eyes searched for in the shadows.

  Yet my father had changed everything.

  For so many years I had longed for him to break free of his desolate sorrow, willing him with every waking hour to stand tall and reclaim his dignity. I had been so ashamed that the leaders of great clans road wide of our fort, for they could sense the stillness that lay within. So many hours I had spent by myself, skimming rocks beneath our crannóg whilst the horses stood restless in the stables, the hunt forgotten. I suppose I had thought it would always be that way. That my sister, in place of our mother, would raise us and comfort us. That our name would grow old and wither before its time, my father’s legacy blown away like ash in the cold north winds.

  I had resigned myself to this.

  Of all women, how could he choose Aoife? My mother’s youngest sister. Could he not at least choose a woman further from our past? Now, every day we would have to look upon her and compare. She was nothing like our mother, not in looks or manner. She was wild like the wolves, always at a distance, never choosing to spend her time with Fin or the twins, or even with her own sister, Ailbhe.

  What did she see in my father, I wondered. How could she of all people be the one to break the spell of sadness about him? What bewitchment had she cast that years of his children’s love could not equal?

  I buried my head against the sack to muffle my rage.

  Only once I shook with cold did I think to leave that place.

  Hauling myself to my feet, I wiped salt from my lips with my sleeve. I leaned in the doorway, staring numbly ahead to the glow of the far-off flames. My outburst subdued, shame replaced anger.

  *

  It took a long time to find Caílte. He was sitting beside one of the smaller fires, drinking mead with two other lads. He didn’t look at me as I approached, pretending I wasn’t there. As though sensing my heart weighed upon me, one of his companions nudged him until he glanced up.

  “Please,” I spoke softly.

  Caílte turned back to the fire, running his fist across his broken lip.

  For a moment, I didn’t think he would come.

  We walked to a hut not far from the fire, its occupants out drinking or lost in the dark dreaming of the druids’ juice. He lent casually against the wall, arms folded, eyes sullen beneath his furrowed brow. I reached out my hand to touch the bright-red bruise I had left, the split flesh scored with blood. He tried his best not to flinch.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  His shoulders relaxed a little as he stared down at his boots.

  “Not your fault,” he replied.

  “No, you don’t understand. I’m sorry I pulled away.”

  Hope and uncertainty happened at once in his eyes, replaced in an instant by that cheeky grin which meant someone was in trouble.

  That someone, of course, was me.

  We spent that night kissing in the hut. Rough, harsh kisses of men, rather than the boys we once were. Soft, gentle kisses, more like the way women kiss. I enjoyed all of them. I enjoyed simply being with him. I felt like a warrior, dyed in woed, ready for battle, my brother by my side, calling to mind Cú Chulainn and is lover Ferdiad.

  Like Ferdiad, I prayed he would not be the death of me.

  Sorcha

  The banners of our clan fell limp and lifeless that day, for no breeze stirred the air.

  Ailbhe hugged me like a sister as we prepared to part, tighter even than she had hugged her true blood.

  “Send news regularly,” she urged me. “For I know that Aoife will be too fond of her new life to send a rider, and I cannot possibly wait so long again to see my beautiful kin. They have grown so fine, and I’m sure that is down to your mindful care.”

  “You say too much.” I smiled, my own eyes brimming that she should be the only one ever to truly recognise the attention I had lavished upon those children. “They are easy to love.”

  Bodb hugged each of us like a bear, his meaty paws slapping our backs and his rampant beard tickling our cheeks.

  “Lir!” He roared. “You take care of my daughter now, else it’ll be me marching my armies west this time.” They embraced like brothers, Bodb seeming the older of the two in as much as power and wine had caused his gut to broaden, whereas years of worry had rendered Lir lean.

  I watched Aoife carefully, this woman who was to return with us to Sidhe Fionnachaidh as my master’s new wife. I did not know her in the way I knew Ailbhe, whose easy manners and good cheer thawed even the frostiest hearts to her. Aoife was a quiet, aloof woman who kept to herself. I could not decide whether she was simply shy or whether she truly disliked the company of others. For the sake of our future family, I decided to give her the benefit of my doubt.

  Lir and Aoife’s union was the most obvious to all, but certainly not the only.

  Whilst the twins straddled their ponies, poking each other with sticks they had picked from the woodpile, eager to get on the road, I saw two of my charges who were less enthusiastic to part.

  Fionnuala stood to one side, twisting her shawl as she spoke with Conall of the Red Rock, her eyes hardly able to meet his. Conall was a handsome young man, his mass of dark curls bouncing as he talked, animated lips and white smile drawing her to him as though she were starving and he were an oatcake dripping with honey. Inwardly, I shook my head. Poor Fionnuala, such a rare wildflower, hidden away in her father’s fort all this time. Did she know how to handle herself around men? Did she understand what they wanted of her? Although I had little desire to return to Sidhe Fionnachaidh, I was not sorry to be parting her from this fancy. It was her first, and I hoped that under the guidance and wisdom of her new mother, she would tread softly through the pastures of temptation.

  Less surprising, perhaps, was the reluctance with which Aodh separated himself from Caílte mac Rónáin. The two had been thick as thieves these past weeks, you never saw one without the other. It was a good and wholesome type of love, befitting two young men. They were well suited, neither one exactly warriors, yet neither one shying from a fight. Both with a love of the bard’s sagas and an ear for poetry. Aodh had always seemed more distant than Fionnuala, yet I feared for his heart far less.

  As our procession left the gates of Sidh-ar-Femhin, we called back and whistled to one another until we were far out of range. At the base of the fort we were met by oxcarts and guards, our camp struck, the skin tents packed high upon those rolling wheels. It was going to be a slow, steady march across Éire.

  We had been some of the last to leave Bodb’s fort, and it looked far different on the way out than it had coming. The Plain of Cashel seemed hushed somehow, now that the revelries were ended. A grey mist dampened the horizon and the swallow-tails and martins swooped low as though rain were approaching. I did not mind, though. Drawing my cloak about me for warmth, I remembered that night by the fire, how we had cheered and danced once the shock had worn off. How tightly Lir held Aoife to him, as though he would never let her go. How the mighty druid Bodbmall was called upon to perform the handf
asting, and how she appeared from the crowd like a vision, her white robes billowing by the fireside, her red braid as thick as a man’s arm, draped over one shoulder. That fearsome face of hers softened by the occasion.

  Only three nights past, yet it seemed a lifetime.

  That evening we stopped to rest by the Silver Lake, sore from the saddle. The twins were asleep the moment their heads hit the pillow, yet Fionnuala and Aodh remained by the fire, restless and silent, each struggling to call their hearts home with their flesh.

  “Aoife will make a fine mother, will she not?” I ventured.

  Aodh shrugged and Fionnuala simply nodded absently into the fire. I could see from their expressions they felt neither one way nor the other about her. Aoife lay that moment in their father’s tent, and from time to time thin strands of laughter wove their way across the camp to where we sat. Occasionally it was complimented by the resonant rumble of Lir’s own laughter, a sound so strange to our ears that at first we did not know what it was.

  I tried to distract them, twisting my hands into subtle shapes, casting shadows across the ground, but they barely noticed.

  “Come,” I said, when the silence proved too much for me. “Let me show you something.”

  We walked away from the camp until warm firelight gave way to the cold light of a full moon. We navigated a path along the side of the lake, our sandals sinking in the soft earth whilst our hands reached for the brittle branches of trees, to prevent us from slipping. Neither of the children complained or drew back, though neither made an adventure of it either.

  After some time, the land began to rise steeply and we climbed, the water below still as the sleeping twins. We stepped over rocks and scrambled over logs, the moss-covered ground springy beneath our step.

  Out of breath, we broke through the line of trees into a star-clustered night. The moss peeled back to reveal granite. An unusual grey stone that rippled like water. The whole of the head of the mountain looked as though wind were blowing gently upon a lake; as though winter had frozen those tremmors to stone beneath our feet.

  On the crest of the hill stood a shelter. Not the daub and wattle roundhouse of the forts, but something older. Something that belonged to the Aos Sí, those ancient spirits who preceded the ancestors, who formed this world and permeated it like silent sentinels.

  The shelter was formed of three large, flat rocks and a capstone, covered in turf to prevent the elements from rattling through it. As we approached, I could sense the children waking, their attention drawn by this mysterious place.

  I knelt before the opening, drawing from my satchel a clay lamp. I filled it with oil and struck flint against birch bark until it caught, allowing me to light the wick. With the lamp forming a petal of light in the palm of my hand, we entered.

  “It’s beautiful,” Aodh breathed. “What is it?”

  “A map,” I explained.

  All across the walls, patterns were etched into the stone. It glittered softly beneath the flame, as though flakes of snow had been trapped within. Spirals and circles confused the eye, whilst diamonds and serpentine snakes sprawled out from the centre. Here and there, small pock-marks had been chiselled deep, marking places of importance, anchors in an ever-changing landscape.

  “How do you read it?” Aodh asked.

  “It is the language of the Ovates, those who possess the second sight.”

  “Like the dark juice?” Fionnuala asked, tracing her fingers across the scarred surface of the rock.

  “Yes, only the Ovates never truly seem to wake. They live their lives as in a half-dream. Sometimes their words are wise and full of insight, other times they mumble like madmen. Somewhere in between the two they are able to see the past and the future. These maps have many meanings. They are the land, the sky, our inner thoughts, and time itself.”

  “I do not understand,” Aodh said, struggling to see a pattern.

  “You know when you go wandering down to the Black Vale?” I asked him. “How do you get there? Describe to me your journey.”

  He thought for a moment.

  “I leave the gates of Sidhe Fionnachaidh, down past our crannóg on the Blue Lake. I keep going until I reach Anamcha’s tree, then I follow the trail down through the Vale of Caoimhe until I reach Bear Rock. From there I cross the shallow ford and it’s the next valley over.”

  “Now, tell me young lad. If I were a stranger to your lands, would I be able to follow your directions so well? The Blue Lake, is it actually blue?”

  “Only in summertime, when the sun hits the clay beneath. Then more sort of grey-blue,” he conceded.

  “And Anamcha’s tree, how would I know which that was?”

  “It’s the tree where Anamcha thought himself a bird and tried to fly, only Taranis caused the sky to shake and he fell to earth, breaking his neck. They buried him there, beneath that tree.”

  “If I did not know that story, I would not know which tree.” I smiled.

  “Aye, but you’d recognise Bear Rock, you couldn’t miss that.”

  “So, I would have only half a map, because I did not know all the stories of the landscape.” Aodh nodded. “Well,” I explained, “this is a map of those stories. If you know the right story, you can navigate your way through all worlds.”

  Aoife

  Those first months at Sidhe Fionnachaidh passed in a blaze of passion. I had been as surprised as any by the vigour unleashed in my lover, after so long sleeping alone in a cold bed. Every night he reached for me, and it was all I could do to think of new ways to amuse him. We rutted like animals and slept like babes. I would scratch with my claws and he would bite with his teeth. I glimpsed for a moment the man he must once have been, far back in his youth. For the briefest of moments I saw how the sea must have fallen in love with him, how he must have seduced her with his rolling rhythm.

  Of his fortress I saw very little in the early weeks, for it became sore to walk. By the time we left his chamber, the first frost pinched the grass and the sky mimicked the dull dun of the oxen’s flank. It held that yellow bruise which threatened snow. I remembered how Aobh would complain all the time of the cold there. She longed for the summer festivals at our foster father’s fort, for the warmer air of the flatlands. Left to myself whilst my husband went to hunt the winter hares, I ran my hand across the soft furs of our bed and wondered whether it was the same bed my sister had once lain upon? She had been so young when she left us, still a maiden with dreams of straw dolls and ponies. I wondered what it had been like for her, that first time. We had never spoken of it, and I was curious whether my husband, back then, in all his stature, had intimidated her?

  I lay down on the bed, pressing my nose to the pillows, filling my lungs with Lir’s salty scent and something subtler, like apple blossom. A ghost, perhaps.

  That afternoon, I decided to explore my new home. I wrapped my feet in rabbitskin and covered my head with a fur cap. The first flakes of winter were gently falling as I stepped out into our enclosure, a tall fence that circled Lir’s hut to provide privacy from prying eyes. I untied the string on the gate and walked to the main fire at the centre of the fort.

  All manner of people were gathered. A group of elderly ladies had set up their looms and were industriously weaving cloth, gossiping and trying to keep their hands warm through work. Younger women sat salting fish from the lake and packing it into preserving pots whilst little boys warmed clay bowls of broth between the embers. Everyone was preparing for the cold to come.

  They greeted me with nods and smiles, though none of them knew me.

  Feeling uncertain of myself, I turned and made my way between the huts. Further up the hill I found round holes lined with chalk and packed with grain, preserving supplies from the damp, whilst down amongst the settlement, smaller huts raised on stilts held vegetables out of reach of the rats.

  Everything at Sidhe Fionnachaidh looked much like my father’s fort, only colder and smaller in size. Lir’s lands were impressive by most men’s standards
, yet when you have lived with the King of the Danann, the son of the mighty Dagda himself, there is no other to equal in all the land.

  I did not mind so much. What Lir’s home lacked in colour and warmth it made up for with a sort of desolate beauty. My new home suited me well, for it was wild and untamed, swathed in heather high above the marshes where the eagles cried their desire to the wind.

  Yes, I liked my new home well enough. From the store huts, I made my way to a side gate. There were fewer guards here than the main entrance. Although I had no doubt that I was free to come and go as I pleased, I felt somehow strange about marching out of the fort so brazenly whilst my husband was away. I preferred to keep to myself.

  “My lady,” the man at the gate said, nodding his head in deference. There was a small fire set against the side of the wall, its flames licking the stone soot-black. Still, he looked cold.

  “May I pass?” I asked. “I wish to walk for a while.”

  “Of course, my lady. You don’t need our permission for that, but you should take our protection.”

  “From what?”

  “From the wolves and the wildcats. Also, in case you should fall and hurt yourself. The land gets slippery in this frost.”

  I considered his words, then shook my head.

  “No, thank you. I wish to walk alone.”

  “Very well, but we’ll keep an eye on you from up here. Should you need us, wave your arms and we’ll come down to collect you.”

  “That is very reassuring.”

  The path down from the hill was a steep one. Once I passed the palisade, the track narrowed to hardly an arm’s length. I stepped unevenly between the trail and the bank, afraid of twisting my ankle. After a while my knees ached with the effort and I wished I had come on horseback. Sitting down on a rock, I stared out across the valley.

  The land was dark green and burnt by the heather. In the near distance, towering hills loomed like sleeping giants, cloaked with impenetrable canopies. The sky was clouded and grey, the snow retreating back to the sky for the time being. As I watched, a shaft of sunlight broke through the clouds and illuminated the scene below, turning streams to seams of silver and rusted undergrowth to flame. A golden eagle soared above, its wingspan the size of a fully-grown man. As my eyes followed it circling across the sky, I became aware that I was being watched. Turning my head, my eyes met those of a giant white stag. Its chest was thrust forward, its head raised, those antlers like sharpened spears held aloft. A sight so glorious, I thought the seasons might stop turning and that moment would remain frozen, forever.