The Children of Lir

by Marion Grace Woolley

  “Why would your maid—”

  Lir held up a hand to silence his father-in-law.

  “Enough,” he said. “I will listen to no more of your lies.” Turning to Fionn mac Cumhaill he said, “Bring me Fragarach.”

  I had heard that name uttered only in fables. It was whispered by firesides throughout my youth, cast in shadows by Sorcha’s fingers, yet I had never truly believed that it existed, or that my own husband held rule over it.

  I cast my eyes to the ground so that none might see my panic.

  Sorcha

  I had been charged to watch over little Bevan whilst the hearing took place, yet I could not bring myself to remain there whilst all the world changed without. I took the sleeping infant and wrapped him in furs. With his soft cheek pressed to my neck, I made my way to the fireside, hiding behind the tall men of the fort so as not to draw attention.

  There stood Aoife, pale as snow, her fine dress grubbed and sweat-worn, her hair lank beneath the torchlight. She no longer looked like the queen she was, the noble lady who danced with the likes of Ahern of the Gangani, or received her blessings from Blind Sile of the Nagnatae. She looked like a tired maid returning from the fields, in desperate need of a wash. It came to me then how much of the respect we bestow upon others is born of appearance. With the exception of Bodb Dearg, our King of Kings, who could never be disrespected, it seemed that even the poorest chiefs commanded loyalty when their clothes were clean and woven of fresh thread, whereas the richest could be looked down upon if they wore rags. All of which changed once you put a sword in a man’s hand.

  Still, we liked the heroes of our stories to look the part, and the villains to look like Aoife did at that moment.

  I arrived in time to see the great warrior Cumhaill kneel before Lir, a thickly jewelled scabbard resting across the palms of his hands. The blade rang sharp as Lir pulled it from its casing, a gasp rising from the onlookers. Years past, I had told stories of that sword, but I had never thought to see it with my own eyes.

  Fragarach, The Answerer, was a sacred sword forged in the flames of the sun. The common folk sang of it as the Truthsayer, for its glowing blue metal was said to turn blood-red in the presence of lies. Like many, I had thought it lost for years. I did not know that it had been in Lir’s keeping all that time.

  “Stand tall, Aoife of Aran,” Lir told his wife. She drew back her shoulders and stared him in the eyes. “Place your hand upon the blade.” With great composure, she did so. “Who was your mother?”

  “Oilell of Aran,” she replied.

  The blade continued to glow like ice-fire. Silent and brilliant beneath the black stars.

  “Who is your husband?” he continued.

  “You are, my king. My love. My Lir.”

  The blade remained bright.

  “Did you murder my children?”

  The crowd held its breath.

  “No,” she replied, so softly we barely heard.

  “The gods would agree with her there, Lir. They are changed, but not dead,” said Bodb Dearg.

  “Did you turn them to swans?”

  Aoife gripped the blade, causing her blood to shadow its perfect blue sheen. She shook her head.

  “Say the word.”

  “No,” she replied, in a voice as small as a child’s.

  Lir’s eyes narrowed as the colour of the blade remained true.

  In my heart of hearts, I had not expected that.

  “This settles the matter then,” Bodb said, and I could tell from his voice that he had not expected it to be the truth, either. “The girl had no part in the wickedness that has bound your children to the form of swans. She is an innocent.”

  “May I go, my lord?” she asked of Lir.

  He studied her silently before nodding.

  Just as she went to remove her hand, he placed his own above it, pressing her palm back against the metal.

  “One last question, if you will.”

  She nodded her consent.

  “Was there ever a wolf?”

  At this, Aoife’s reply was not so ready.

  “Yes.”

  Before our eyes, the blue of the sword began to turn red from hilt to tip, as though crimson storm clouds rolled across it. Voices rose in unison to call their surprise.

  “There was no wolf, was there, Aoife?” Lir pressed.

  She could not answer, attempting to stumble backwards, away from the sword, only her husband’s hand held her there.

  “Did you use another’s magic to transform them?”

  “No, no, no!” she cried.

  Yes, yes, yes told the blade.

  “Oh, child,” Bodb breathed. “You are responsible whether you feel it or not.”

  “And your maid, did you murder her?”

  By this time Aoife was sobbing, unable to answer her husband.

  Lir removed his hand from his wife’s and turned away, pressing his fingers to his brow, unable to turn back to Aoife, slumped by his feet, where not even her sister would go to comfort her.

  “Daughter, what have you done?” Bodb whispered.

  “Stand her,” Lir barked.

  Ailill and Dinsmore stepped forward in their grey furs, taking her an arm each. When she was stood, Lir faced her, his lips as thin as his temper.

  “Do you know how to break the spell?” he asked.

  When she did not answer, he took her by the collar and shook her, repeating his question louder until she told him no.

  Hope faded from his eyes as he let go of her, defeat entering his voice.

  “Then what good are you to me?” Turning away, and then turning back, he asked, “Sweet Aoife, what shape would you yourself think worst of being? Are there forms more terrible than swans, do you suspect?”

  Unsettled by his question, Aoife thought for a moment. I watched her face carefully and knew what she would answer, for I myself would have done the same.

  “A wild horse, my lord. That would be a fearsome thing to become.”

  “A horse?” Lir repeated. “A creature as wild as you are? Yes, what a hardship that would be.”

  “I know what my sister fears most,” Ailbhe said, stepping forward. Bevan wrestled at my breast on hearing his mother’s voice. “She told me once of a dream.”

  “And why would you punish your own sister?” Lir asked coldly.

  “You forget, my lord. I am a mother also.”

  With that, Ailbhe placed her hand on the blade of Fragarach.

  “She told me of a dream in which she was flying. In which Blind Sile’s lotion threw her to the demons of the sky. A spirit of the air is what she fears most, lost and alone, unheard and unseen.”

  The blade remained blue.

  “That sounds like your sister,” Lir replied. “Unable to thrive unless every eye is upon her.”

  “Lir—” Bodb began, placing a hand on his arm.

  “You wed me to her, now stand aside. I have no mercy in me.”

  Their eyes held for a moment, Bodb’s once-bright gaze landing dully on his youngest foster daughter before moving on to the crowd.

  “Father,” Aoife screamed. “Father!”

  A word I had never heard her use of Bodb before. Now, I feared, it was too late to ask for his love.

  “You can’t!” she began, beside herself. “You can’t! I am with child!”

  “Enough of your lies!” Lir’s voice boomed, bouncing out across the valley, echoing from the mountains.

  To this day, I regret that his anger overruled the truth of his blade. It was not impossible that she were with child, yet we would never come to know, for her hands were held behind her back instead of resting on the sword. Even if she had been with child, what was Lir to do? She had stolen all of his children from him, would he have kept her alive to birth another?

  These riddles only the winds can answer.

  Fragarach arced through the air, Ailill and Dinsmore dropping to their knees as the blade took Aoife’s head clean off. In place of blood, wine flowed li
ke a river, whilst a thousand moths rose from her neck. The crowd drew back as their glossy grey forms swarmed above. Within their murmuration a face appeared. Aoife’s terrified eyes stared down upon us, her lips twisting and parting, yet no sound came. The vision was grotesque, no longer a thousand moths, but one emblazoned image of pain. Even Lir seemed to draw back in fear.

  Suddenly, a scream issued forth like the wind against the icy mountain crags. It was so sharp as to make our ears hurt. I could not even press my hands to mine as I held little Bevan, who burst into terrified tears. I pressed him close and closed my eyes until the face had vanished.

  TIME

  The hours, the minutes, the seconds; the blink of an eye.

  Amidst the mountainous thermal waters of Pella, the Daughter of Snakes parts her legs upon a soft bed of furs, giving birth to the most feared of all Argead’s dynasty. The boy grows to be a man. His vast, unrelenting armies sweep Europe, Asia and North Africa.

  A brief life that blazes brilliantly. Alexander the Great bows his head the same as Aristophanes. The renowned playwright smiling through his matted beard as Thalia, muse of comedy, takes him by the hand and leads him to the land of laughter and good cheer.

  At the fairy mound of Bri Eile, that Fionn mac Cumhaill knew in his youth, a beautiful maiden appears to steal the souls of men. All who lay eyes on her lose their hearts. So it is that one Samhain, when the mound becomes visible to mortals, the servant of a great king disobeys an order to wake him when the first rays of sun draw her likeness from the shadows. Instead, the servant steps forward himself to declare his passion. The beautiful maiden smiles her sweet, sad smile, then refuses him as she has refused a thousand before.

  When the king wakes to find his trusted servant has served only himself, he stabs the man through the heart and removes his head from his shoulders. They throw his corpse into the lake to appease the spirits. For two thousand years his remains remain there, beneath the blue waters and the black bog. A mystery for a new world, with its new god, to unearth.

  As flint is ground to dust, the smoke of the smelting pits fade. Green malachite transformed to copper, transformed to gold, dulled to grey. Rivers of bronze become rivers of iron, flowing forth from the Rhine and the Danube, the cradle that birthed the Children of the River Goddess. Swords lose their backbone, weighty blades draw flat and thin. Their razor edges hold longer, cut harder, cut more.

  La Tène, their swirling triskeles and spiral art, trade in ships; stonework and gold more coveted than the lives the jealous steal to obtain them. All the world a painted canvas, bleeding dark juices across the cultural cloth of Lir’s people. In the south, cities grow bigger. Great oppida sit atop hills as high as the sky; warlords with beards bushy as beer froth, overflowing the red lip of their cups.

  Barrel-chested warriors grow fat off the land, no longer hunters but gluttons, feasting on the flesh of a thousand slaughtered cattle as each moon a new chieftain’s daughter is wed, a new maiden bled, a new child bawls its bellowing lungs at its mother’s breast.

  The ancient marshes are drained. Those sacred places where the spirits sought sanctuary. The secrets of their murky depths revealed and pillaged. Jewels and weapons and the faces of the deceased, preserved beneath the peat as though buried only yesterday. Torcs and rings pocketed by common folk, their old-craft detail and primitive metals turning up the noses of nobles.

  As the waters are drained from the land like pus, the trees are felled to make way for farmland. Purulent ground punctured, green ground burned brown as scar tissue. Wolf and fox and badger swept aside for grazing beasts, the sheep and the cattle. Bellies filled with milk and eggs, bodies wrapped in warm fleece. Chops wet with grease, sucking the last of the marrow from the bone.

  Trade ships, like the golden boat of Broighter, bring wine as rich as reason from the Roman republic. Harder liquor than heather mead or the fermented fruits of former years. Fists fly, men brawl, and all rub their heads next day, squinting against the morning light. The golden syrup of crushed olives burns longer, burns brighter; replaces the smell of fish oil. Women rub it through their hair to make it shine, and across their breasts to make them soft.

  Tribes and races wander, from the Danube to the west coast of Éire. Royals send their wise boys to be raised by wise men in Wales. The druids’ knowledge washes ignorance from their brows, places a crown of knowledge upon their heads and cloaks them in white. The Belgae arrive to do battle with ancient dragons, crossing the narrow sea between northern Gaul and south Pretannia. These half-cousins of the Celts rage and rampage, earning them the name The Angry Men. In the wake of their destruction they pull ploughs. Furrows run deep, planting the seeds of an agricultural revolution. Between their brawls, men of ire grow fields swelling with grain, their ships trading surplus with the mainland.

  The great ceremonial sites of Navan, Tara, Dun, Cruachan and Uisneach fall silent. Their legends hushed upon the lips of babes as the sons of kings are slaughtered to water the grain. Yet year after year the harvests fail. Those sons that remain no longer stand tall, bending the knee to mightier men.

  The time of the Tuatha Dé Danann draws to its close. The last of them live out their days, mere mortals amongst Milesians. The greatest of them retreat to the barrows and the streams, cowering in shadows as the Fomori once cowered before them, long ago. In the tradition of righteous conquest, those once-great warriors were reduced to elves, imps and leipreacháns. Their might turned to mischief in the songs of a dying age.

  Time stands still for no one, man or god alike.

  The sun rises and the sun sets as sure as the moon follows.

  For a child awaiting their birthday, time drags its heels like a slow horse. Yet the mother who holds her babe to her breast one morning, wakes to find him a man the next, with a wife and child of his own.

  Time tricks us all, yet one thing is true – time never stops.

  Eventually the day comes, one way or another.

  Part II

  Fionnuala

  It came upon us as a gradual yearning.

  Above, the sky shone blue as Fragarach. The reeds of Loch Dairbhreach were crisp with frost. Strands of silver beaded the spiders’ webs that hung between bulrushes. In the mornings the pale yolk of the sun was too weak to lift the veil of mist that haunted those dark waters. I welcomed this time, for it held a dream-like quality. For as long as I drifted beneath the cloak of early dawn, I would not have to look upon the world.

  In the first days of our discovery, my father moved his court from Sidhe Fionnachaidh to the hills of Lock Dairbhreach. Keallach mac Keallach, chief of that region, had given him leave to bring his warriors and servants. At first there were so many. Each night the shores of the loch resembled a battlefield, tents of all shapes and sizes erected from sheepskin, cow hide and sticks. For it was not only my father’s people who came to keep us company. Every chieftain in Éire wished to gaze upon us.

  Blind Sile came. She could not see us, so we sang for her, and whilst the others slept, lulled to sleep by our unearthly voices, she sat quite still, her cream-clouded eyes glistening in the evening dew. The Cauci came, entertaining the watchers at night with their formidable fire dances. Their hands held unusually tight to their staves, for they only burned down one tent in all the time they stayed.

  Faces drifted like familiar apparitions, stepping out of the darkness and retreating. They offered honey-oats which stuck in our slender throats, and wine which turned the water red as it seeped between the crimped edges of our beaks.

  One night, Caílte mac Rónáin offered my brother a horn of wild raspberry. As he drank, it dripped onto his chest. When Caílte lowered the horn, it looked for all the world as though Aodh’s heart were bleeding, right there for all to see.

  His heart may have bled, but my eyes bled softer still as Caílte fell to his knees in the mud, his face hidden by his hands as he sobbed.

  It was one of the few times anybody wept in our presence. Every druid in the land was called upon to atte
nd us, stretch out our wings, ruffle our feathers, and proclaim they hadn’t any idea how to cure us. Yet every day the scent of hog roast and tart apple sauce filled the air. The fluttering fingers of flute players skipped between cheerful notes whilst the drums beat out jigs instead of dirges. Women, both common and noble, dressed in their best dyes, held tight to their partners’ hands and swirled in a cèilidh until they lost their footing and fell down laughing.

  It was absurd in its way. A blithe display of good cheer, that we might be distracted from our misfortune. In truth, it was done because it was all that could be done. In those days we still held out hope that in all of Éire, perhaps all of the known world, there would be at least one person with the power to return us to our true forms.

  My father sat like a rock in the midst of that madness. Hunched over, wrapped in his thick cloak, chin resting upon the back of his knuckles, he would stare out upon us as we swam. I felt safe, knowing he was always watching. A hundred swords and more hid in the hills, sworn to protect us. No man was permitted to approach the loch without first announcing himself to my father. Those that did left via the Summerlands. A fine pile of fox furs had accumulated, and each of the Fianna wore wolf-claw necklaces that rattled as they walked.

  Every night little clay lamps lit up the shore. Three or four beside each tent, so that we were never alone in the dark. It cheered those who slept there, and allayed my father’s fears that we might drift out upon the water and lose our way home.

  After a year and a day thrice over, my father sent for Bé Chuille. Sick of the sound of sages and wise men who knew nothing, he was ready to resort to sorcery. Elatha removed her silver chain and threw it at his feet in protest. She left the camp that night and refused to return. Some of her sept followed, yet most remained.

  Bé Chuille was fearsome. The mention of her name was enough to cause even the Fianna to tremble, for she was no natural woman. When she arrived, she came mounted on a black stallion, its flanks bright-red with handprints in a spiral pattern. Her hair was braided with lightning-blue jay feathers, her eyes as black as her hair, as black as her horse.