Song of Ireland

by Juilene Osborne-McKnight

  I nodded.

  “Just so the human mind. Smash or dent a piece of the brain and other systems in the body may not work.”

  “Such as?”

  He shrugged. “I have seen those who could not walk, though their limbs were whole. I have seen those who could not talk or feed.”

  “And Bile?”

  “We will not know for a time. Perhaps for some time.” He sighed. “And there is yet more sorrowful news.” He gestured at the dangling thread of arm. “This arm must go. I have no skill to patch so torn and shredded a limb.”

  I suppose something in me must have known the conclusion of it all. The arm dangled shriveled and useless from its thread, but the idea revulsed and terrified. My gorge rose, and I rushed from the tent and vomited. Not all the blood of the day had brought me to this, until the thought of my brother, crippled and maimed, all his life reduced to the awkward stares and muttered sorrow of the tribe.

  My love for him and my terror welled up in me and I curled myself against the ground and let out a single sob. Then I rose, knowing that my little brother would need my strength.

  Mil and Scota were waiting outside the tent, surrounded by the ebb and flow of my brothers and their wives, by endless cups of wine and murmured words of hope and sympathy. My mother cradled the newest babe in her arms, as if she could sustain her hope in the holding.

  They regarded me as I wiped my mouth on the fold of my cloak. Their bodies had gone rigid and still.

  “What is it?” my mother whispered.

  “The arm must come off. It cannot be saved.”

  She made no sound, pressing her hand against her mouth, but my father rose and swept into the darkness.

  “It would be better if he had died!” he called aloud as he vanished.

  And though I wanted to hate him for the saying, I could not. I had thought the thought myself and was ashamed.

  CEOLAS PRAYS FOR BILE

  Take my arm, this poet’s arm.

  I offer it as payment, gift

  for the arm of Bile,

  child of sweetness,

  best of all brothers.

  Take my life, the poet’s life.

  I offer it as payment, gift,

  against the life of Bile,

  child of sweetness.

  For if he is gone,

  surely there can be

  no more song

  no more song.

  4

  The sickness of a loved one is itself like a sea; we lose ourselves upon it, we ride its tides and currents like a ship, adrift on hope and sorrow.

  The hours of Bile’s recovery grew to days. We placed him on a raised sleeping platform and covered him with the finest linens of Egypt. Twice he rose and broke in fevers. My mother’s servants fanned him during the day with huge straw fronds, and my mother herself once bathed his forehead and his wrists with cool water. My father did not visit him at all. Mehmet changed the dressings on his arm and put poultices against the wounded stump, all the while sharing with Skena the medical skills of Egypt. Three times a day, Ith chanted for my brother, and through all of it Bile did not move. He uttered no sound; beneath his eyelids, his eyes did not move as those of a proper dreamer should.

  Mehmet insisted that my brother’s stillness was a blessing.

  “Let him be,” he warned. “While he journeys, as you of the Keltoi call it, he feels no pain, nor fear. His body has time to heal itself, free of his own fight against it.”

  Each night I slept beside him, stretching my body against the ground. Each morning, Skena arrived to awaken me, to spell me that I might bathe and eat. After a week, she no longer needed to touch me, for deep in my dreams I would smell the perfume of her long auburn hair as it cascaded toward me. I began to awaken each morning to those silken strands as they brushed my forearm, tickled the back of my hand. I began to feel that I needed them, as one who has wandered in the desert needs water.

  On the eighth day of my brother’s journey, I returned to the tent after my morning rituals. Skena’s back was toward me and she did not hear my approach.

  “Ah, little Bile,” I heard her say. Her voice was cheerful and singsong. “When the leg is healed up well, we shall set Amergin to teaching you to ride and to fight with that strong left arm. How wonderful you will be, the left-handed warrior of the tribe!”

  Joy leaped up in me! My brother was awake. Bile had returned to us!

  I shouldered in beside Skena and looked down at his little form. Nothing had changed. My brother lay still and silent, a one-armed sarcophagus. I turned on Skena, bewildered.

  “Why do you speak to him thus?”

  For answer, she placed her fingers on her lips and led me outside the silken tent. Her hand never released mine. She answered in a soft whisper.

  “Just because he travels does not mean that he cannot hear us. Your uncle Ith will tell you this as well. The journeyer moves above the world, swift as wind. We cannot let him become confused about his dwelling, for during this time, his spirit dwells wide in the world. So we speak to him. We remind him of the dwelling of the body. We call him back to us.”

  A sense of wonder overtook me.

  “You love my brother,” I said.

  Skena’s eyes met mine.

  “Of course I love him, Amergin. I am his healer; a healer mends the spirit as well as the body. The truest healers pour out their love with their skill; we healers of the Keltoi know this to be true.”

  And that was the moment that I fell in love with Skena. Deeply. Irrevocably. The difference was clear to me immediately. My brothers fell for their women for beauty or sensuality or warrior skills or wit. I had fallen in love with Skena’s spirit. Now I saw her whole, the silken skeins of her hair, the wide gray eyes, each soft motion of her slender hands; all were the mirrors of that great and generous spirit. My heart was overwhelmed with gratitude that she, of all the Galaeci, should be my little brother’s healer, for in that moment, I was certain that only she, among all humans, could return him to us. I was awestruck.

  Of course I did not tell her. I was a stripling lad of seventeen summers, and though seventeen is the year of manhood among the Galaeci, she had five years upon me and was a healer’s apprentice. She thought of me in the same way she thought of Bile. I was a boy. But in her reflection, I knew the man that I wanted to become.

  Heeding her words, I began each night to sit beside Bile’s bed on a small camp stool. I would hold his good hand in my own, stroking at the long fingers, and while I did, I would tell him stories. I told him of our grandfather’s people, the warriors of Persia, and of the Galaeci, the history of our father’s tribe. I spun him wondrous stories of Inisfail, the Isle of Destiny, of the wide-eyed and magical people of that island, of hidden waterfalls and forests of fairy ferns. Of course I knew nothing of the place, but I invented, drawing out the stories of our father from childhood, spinning upon the fanciful tales of Greek and Roman sailors and soldiers. But as I spun them I came to believe them, came to think of Inisfail as the green and magical land of my own invention.

  Finally there came a night when I thought that perhaps our little traveler might enjoy Ceolas. I tuned her to sweet perfection and began to sing. The song was a long and complex one, another story of the journey to Inisfail, and I closed my eyes and began to sing Bile on the journey with me. I was some way into the song when I noticed that a soft, harmonious humming accompanied me. Thinking that perhaps Skena had joined me in the tent, I opened my eyes. I was alone!

  I looked around and behind me and finally down at my little brother. His eyes were wide open and his mouth was slightly pursed as he hummed along with me!

  CEOLAS SINGS JOY

  Here you are returned to us

  Bile my brother,

  child of my heart

  journeyer returned.

  What stories you will tell us,

  what far countries you will draw.

  Here is our joy at your return

  that these strings quiver to hear y
ou.

  I did not dare stop. I wanted to set Ceolas down, to call aloud to Skena and Ith and Mehmet, to send for my mother, but I could not. I feared that if I stopped, Bile would disappear again, would fold back down into his travels and disappear forever. So I kept on singing, Ceolas thrumming beneath me, my own harp quivering with so much joy at the return of my little brother that my legs trembled beneath her. On and on we went. I sang of the journey on the sea and Bile hummed the tune. I took us to the far green island and Bile hummed the tune.

  At last, outside in the darkness, Skena must have awakened from her rest, must have realized that my evening song had gone on far too long. She came into the tent softly, her hair undone and tousled, her white sleeping gown billowing around her in the torchlight. I could see her long-limbed shape beneath its diaphanous folds.

  She looked at me, a query, and then followed my eyes to Bile. She started back, then dropped to her knees beside him. Gently, gently, she kissed his little cheeks, his forehead.

  “Welcome back, my little traveler,” she whispered. He watched her with his great eyes and kept humming.

  Skena stood and came before me. She lifted my chin in her hand. “How great a spirit you have, Amergin, that you have called him back from his journeys. How magical is your song.”

  She dropped her hand and the place burned.

  “I shall call the others.”

  She swept from the tent, and I turned back to my little brother. His eyes watched me, huge and luminous, and I knew that he had learned much on his journeys. I was filled with anticipation to hear the stories he would tell.

  5

  In three days’ time, Bile made rapid progress. Mehmet and Skena assisted him to sit up, and he took some soup and drank cool water from a cup. My mother came in to cool his brow and hands with her own hands again and to elevate Skena to the position of Healer of the Household, an honor that Skena accepted with her head bowed humbly. Her only response was, “I thank you that I shall be able to spend more time with my boys.” Here she gestured at both Bile and me, and though I was glad to be included in her regard, I felt deflated to know that she did indeed think of me as a boy.

  Even my father swept into the tent; although he blustered and cried out a welcome, he would not look at Bile’s arm.

  By the evening of the third day Bile was sitting up on his own, propped against pillows. My uncle Ith came and held Bile’s remaining hand and sang a chant of thanks for his return while Bile hummed softly in accompaniment.

  Bile did not ask about the arm, nor venture any words on any subject. He watched the company with wide luminous eyes that seemed to me now much older than his seven years.

  I wanted desperately to hear him speak, to learn the wisdoms of his journey, to see if he remembered aught of the accident. But Mehmet cautioned me against conversation.

  “Let his mind and his speech return as they will,” he said. “Remember the fragility we spoke of? The mind must heal slowly, as it will.”

  So I contented myself with singing for my brother and listening to his sweet accompaniment. Indeed, his spirit, which had always seemed to me to be made of sweetness, seemed now large with joy.

  He smiled when our brothers swept in and out, looked upon our father and mother with both pity and love, laid his hand in Skena’s whenever she arrived.

  That was the scene that Airioch encountered when at last he made an appearance by Bile’s bed.

  Skena was kneeling by our brother’s side, her left hand enfolding his remaining little hand. Her auburn hair was unpinned; it tumbled forward over her shoulders and spilled like water into the folds of the blue tunic she was wearing. Her feet were bare, as they always were in the tent. She was talking to Bile softly as she bathed his face in cool water. I sat behind them, Ceolas in my lap.

  Airioch paid little attention to Bile and none to me. Beyond his perfunctory welcome back to our little brother, all of his attention was focused on Skena.

  “So … ,” he said. “This is the exquisite creature who has been elevated to Healer of the Household. It is no wonder my brothers never leave this tent.” Here he looked significantly at Bile and then winked at me, as though we were little children, privileged to be made part of his jest.

  Skena came to her feet before him and bowed her head, but she was silent.

  “I like a silent woman,” Airioch said, smiling. He boldly reached out a hand and lifted her chin. When her face came up, I could see that her eyes were blazing, whether with anger or fear, I knew not. I stepped up beside her and drew my arm around her. She did not resist, instead folding herself into my shoulder in a way that she had never done.

  “This is Skena, she who has healed our brother.”

  Airioch regarded me in surprise, as if, for the first time, he had heard speech from a tree. Then he lifted her arm and pressed his lips to the back of her hand. It was a courtly Galaeci custom, nothing more, but something about the way his lips lingered on her hand turned my stomach in its hasp.

  I knew not what to do. My hand itched toward my dagger, my mind reminding me that this was my brother, son of my father, a warrior of more than thirty-five years.

  We were saved by Bile. He began to gabble, to make noises that sounded like speech trapped below water. “Agghh, arrww, waahn, ah waahn.”

  All three of us relaxed our postures and turned toward him, Skena dropping immediately to her knees beside him.

  Bile turned the huge luminous eyes on Airioch. He kept voicing, the inarticulate sounds of cattle or yard fowl issuing from his mouth. His eyes never left Airioch’s face. Airioch regarded him for a moment and spoke, his tone surprised.

  “I did not know that the accident had made him both fool and cripple. He were best to stay mute. Does our father know this?”

  The anger that flooded me was white-hot and dangerous. “He would be neither dumb nor crippled had you not stirred the horses on the day of disembarking.”

  Airioch turned his full regard on me then, scrutinizing me as one would a new species of bug. “Think you so, little poet brother?” He turned. His cloak swirled in a dark arc around him. “Well, our father shall hear of it.”

  “Shall hear of what?” Our father himself stormed into the tent, wafting in the smell of horses and warm metal. In a single glance he took in Bile and the kneeling Skena, my angry stance and Airioch’s intention. It was when he looked on Airioch’s face that I saw something I had not expected to see: my father’s face shuttered, just as my uncle Ith’s had done; it grew wary, hidden, closed. I could not have been more surprised if serpents had risen, speaking, from the sea.

  “What shall I hear?” he said again, his tone testy.

  “It is nothing,” said Airioch, sulky as a child. “Or nothing that you shall not know soon enough.”

  He swept from the tent.

  “Never mind,” said Mil, his hand waving Airioch away. “I come with good news. Now that Bile is back among us, we make ready the wagons and strike the camp. We will journey in three days’ time.”

  Skena came to her feet, her eyes wide, one hand upraised. I saw that she would plead for waiting, to allow her little patient time to heal. But I looked beyond her to Bile. He made no sound at all, but when he met my eyes, he winked!

  I spoke before Skena could say anything. “We will be ready,” I said. “Bile is anxious to go!”

  I did not miss the look that Skena turned on me, nor relish the wrath that would follow the look.

  6

  She dragged me outside the tent and out of Bile’s earshot, eyes blazing with anger. “He cannot travel yet. He has returned to us from his journeys only three days past! Are you daft to tell your father he can go?”

  “Bile is ready to go.”

  “Bile is a child. By the gods, you also are a just a boy! I am arguing with children.”

  I could see the speckled heat of her anger against her neck. I feared making her angrier still if I could not stop my gaze from returning again and again to the red pattern on the white
skin.

  She followed the path of my eyes. “What do you regard?”

  “Your anger blotches your skin. I fear that you would not be good at secrets.”

  She tried to look at her own neck, abandoned the effort. She sighed. “I sometimes think that Mil and his sons are too good with secrets. Give me instead a man who speaks his mind.”

  “I like it not that Airioch approaches you so. There is my mind.”

  She looked at me in surprise. “Should I fear him, Amergin?”

  I squirmed. “I know not,” I said. “He is not for you. Be cautious of him, Skena.”

  I sounded like the lame and foolish child she thought me. She sighed.

  “You see. You speak no more clearly than the rest. Your father will not look at his broken child, your brother threatens to tell him—what? That his little son no longer speaks? What does he hope from such a pearl of wisdom? That your father will send Bile away? I do not understand you sons of Mil.”

  “We are a family of brothers, men all. When have you known men to speak themselves clearly, Skena? Is that not why so many judges of the Galaeci are female? And as for Bile, you must not mistake his speech for his mind itself! The leg is healing and we can do nothing for the arm. But my brother Bile is there inside that broken, speechless body!” I grabbed her upper arms. “Do I speak clearly enough for you there?”

  She looked down at my hands upon her arms. “Oh my,” she said softly, and I saw the red speckling begin again across her throat. I dropped my hands.

  “I am sorry. Healer, accept my apology. I did not mean to hurt you or to frighten you.”

  “You did not,” she said, softly, but she would not meet my eyes.

  “Please, Skena. Do not be angry with me. I could not bear that. Nor your disappointment.”

  For answer, she simply turned her back on me and headed back toward the tent. Oh, I could have kicked myself for a gangling fool. I did not know whether to follow her like a dog or to turn and run away in shame. She solved the problem for me.