The Children of Lir
Page 36
Yet it was someone else entirely that Aodh embraced. Since the day he died, Caílte mac Rónáin had chosen the image he had held the first day he met Aodh. Gone were the thick muscles and red beard of later years. He’d lain down his sword and plucked up the cláirseach to compose a thousand songs. Most had been about Aodh, or someone very much like him. The rest had been about swans.
And there, at the back of the boat, twisting her hands against the dying glow, was Sorcha Shadowfingers, telling her stories of dragons and heroes.
“Who are they?” Mochaomhog asked.
“The people they belong with.” I studied his face closely. “You seem disappointed. No angels, only men.”
“It’s not that. It’s simply that I feel as though I know them.”
“As well you might. You have heard their stories all your life.”
The boat was close enough. I turned my back and began walking towards it.
As I hauled myself over the side, Fionnuala leapt out, her beautiful white feet, so used to floating across the surface, finding their footing awkwardly. Before her mother could reach her, she set off towards Mochaomhog.
“Stop!” I bellowed. “Fionnuala, stay where you are. If you place one foot on land, you will be lost to us.”
“Lost?” she asked, gazing back across her shoulder.
“A few years you may live among them, but you will never come home again. You will die beside them, you will go wherever they go.”
“I want to go wherever he goes,” she spoke.
“What of our father?” Conn asked. “What of us?”
At this, her face faltered.
“Forgive me, Mochaomhog,” she said softly. “I do love you. Yet I have loved my brothers all my life. My time has passed. I would not survive on land.”
They stood face to face, Fionnuala’s tears adding salt to the sea.
“Then forgive me, Lord,” Mochaomhog said.
Walking to the bell beside the church, he tied his wooden cross to it.
The Morrígan
Those who cast the spell, become the spell.
Those who tell the story, own it.
None ever saw what happened the night Manannán came to claim the children, so no bard ever spoke it. All that remained of Mochaomhog was a white cross, blowing in the wind beneath the rusted bell of his one true God. Even had anyone witnessed, who would tell such a tale? Whose interests would it serve? That a priest should renounce his faith and follow the ancients to their land beyond the waves – for what?
For love.
They said that I cast that curse for love. They said I cast it for vengance. For Cú Chulainn and Fand, names all but forgotten.
Yes, that is true.
Anger and love are poured from one cup, yet sweet outshines bitter on the tongue. In time, my anger left me. In time, I forgot the faces of those who had caused my pain. In time, I came to realise that I was alone in this world, and that I was afraid. Me, who had never been afraid of anything, not the Fomori, nor the wildwood with all its ghosts and demons.
In the world that I knew, age equated to power. Everyone knew that the old ways, and old magic, was strongest. Even Bé Chuille and her sisters knew that, for they were almost as ancient as myself. We laid waste to the weak, watery magic of those that came after, the Fomori and even the Danann. Their druids held power, certainly. But it was a rational power. They worshiped enlightenment, and thoughts obedient enough to be put into words. They thought themselves above the ferocious emotions, the ríastrad – pure will. They believed that even nature herself could be tamed if you sang sweetly enough.
Yet something began to change, long before the Christians arrived with their limp and lifeless god. A subtle derision of old understandings, that Cú Chulainn first taught me when he laughed and turned me away.
I could not lift the curse once cast, for I needed Aoife and she was dead. Even had I the power, I would not have done so. As Mona burned, and Manannán and his kind drifted further from the shores of man, I remained. The children became my tie to this world. A world I had once ruled.
As long as I could hear their heartbeats, I could hear my own.
And I was so afraid to die.
I watched from the church that night as Mochaomhog climbed aboard Wave Sweeper. I watched Aodh embrace his lost love. I watched Fiachra and Conn embrace their mother.
As the boat left the shallows and made its way into the deep, I looked down at my hands, and watched them wither. For the first time, I felt the cold, for I knew that I could not follow. Manannan would never bring his boat for me, and even if he did, I would not board. I, who had been queen of all men’s hearts, who had brought the Fianna trembling to their knees. What a poor subject I would make in Tír na nÓg.
No, it was not my fate to find peace. Time would scatter the last of me to the winds where I would remain, forever a whisper of chaos on the quiet summer breeze.
Those children were the last of my kind.
My own name, forgotten or feared.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Each ending its own beginning.
Acknowledgements
This is a story I have wanted to write for a very long time.
My admiration to Michael Scott, whose omnibus edition of Irish Folk and Fairy Tales I read on a family holiday to southern Ireland as a child. It first taught me that mythical heroes could speak and breathe, as full of character as anyone living.
To my friends Martine Oliver and Ruairí Ó hEithir for giving it a first read and offering insight into the Irish language and ancient legends. Also, thank you to Lady Gregory (1852–1932), whose translation of The Fate of the Children of Lir formed the backbone of my own telling.
Finally, to family: Mum, Dad, Merrick, Marilyn, William and Damian, who read just about everything I write and make me want to write more.