Black Pool Magic

by Jennifer Willis

  The sisters gripped each other’s hands tighter. The wind whipped around them, tugging at Badbh’s long robes and threatening to tear the cloth from her body.

  “Vanaheim!” The Morrigan cried in a single, shrieking voice.

  “The spirits of our foremothers!” called Macha.

  “The spirits of our forefathers!” Nemain sang out.

  “The spirits of the Tuatha de Danann!” Badbh screamed into the wind. “The soul of Éireann, and the sovereignty of Vanaheim!”

  A deep moan rose from the darkness of the Oweynagat passage. Badbh felt her connection to Freyr sharpen as the vibration of a hundred thousand voices surged through him. He nearly took a step out of the shadows and onto the grass.

  “Stand your ground, Freyr!” Badbh commanded from above.

  She felt his exhilaration and confusion as tiny chips of bone flew past him from the depths of the cave and burst through the opening, scouring the moss and grass from the ogham stone marking the entrance to Éireann’s underworld. As the stone was scrubbed clean, its ancient carvings were revealed. Through his eyes, Badbh squinted at the old writing and tried to read the inscriptions from so many different ages.

  “Freach,” she heard the words in his voice. “Son of Medb.” She felt him shrug at the reference to legend while the wind howled over his head. The voices of The Morrigan drifted down to him as the sisters continued their screeching chant.

  Badbh willed him to fight the compulsion to step out of the cave. He was tired of the dark and being underground, and he had started to wonder if he were made of anything more than shadow himself. She felt his longing for the grass, the feel of sunlight on his skin, and the joyful chorus of birdsong.

  Soon, she whispered to him, her mind to his.

  Another blast of grit and bone churned past him and scoured more mossy growth off the lintel. Freyr himself remained unharmed. She felt his question—was the debris passing through him?

  Again she saw the ogham stone through his eyes. More chiseled writing had been uncovered. His lips moved in time with the ancient words as he read. Freyr’s eyes grew wide.

  “The Morrigan speaks!” the three voices called in unison above.

  Soon, so very soon, Badbh whispered to him again.

  She felt his astonishment as he stared at the jagged characters in the stone. “On Samhain day the spirits answer The Morrigan’s call,” he whispered as he read the inscription

  The faint shuffling of many scores of feet rose from deep within the tunnel.

  “The Vanir King ascends. Éireann rises, and the North oppressors are no more.” Freyr turned and looked into the depths of the passage. The footsteps were getting closer, and were growing in number.

  “The North oppressors?” Freyr wanted to peek out from beneath the lintel stone, but Badbh stopped him again. She was growing annoyed.

  “It is not yet time, but soon! Rest in the shadows, young one,” she commanded.

  Her black-and-silver hair had braided itself into Macha’s fiery mane and Nemain’s ebony locks to form a thick vortex that swirled around the sisters from their shoulders down to the ground.

  Sparks of lightning danced in Badbh’s black eyes as she communed with her sisters. “Our birthright!” she yelled into the wind. She pulled her sisters closer until they stood hip to hip in a tight triangle.

  “Drive out the Æsir!” Badbh screeched. “Banish Odin and his blood from Éireann! Drive out the North immortals from every land. Let every corner become Vanaheim!”

  Macha and Nemain exchanged confused glances. Badbh held them closer still.

  “Banish the Æsir!” Badbh screamed again. “Destroy the Northers’ blood-line, that they may never again defile Vanaheim with their foul magick! Exterminate them all!”

  “Wait!” Macha called.

  Macha and Nemain forcefully pulled back from Badbh, and she stumbled forward as they unlocked their hands from hers. The floating tapestry of their intertwined hair unraveled as the wind died.

  Nemain leveled a stony stare at Badbh. “What?”

  Badbh reached for her sisters’ hands. “The task is not yet completed! Only a few moments more, and the King of the Vanir can step out of the shadowy underworld and into the light of the Samhain sun!”

  She grabbed at their arms, but Nemain and Macha stepped back from her.

  “This is the destiny of Vanaheim!” Badbh cried. “This is what we’ve been waiting for.”

  Nemain gazed over Badbh’s shoulder to see the assembled Æsir looking on from a grassy mound within shouting distance. Odin stood at the head of the group, with Freya at his side.

  “Your dreams have disturbed your reasoning, sister.” Nemain shook her thick hair over her black shoulders. “Your ambition is too extreme.”

  “No!” Badbh cried. She reached again for her sisters’ hands, but they would not allow her grasp. “This is our chance to right the wrongs done to our people! The Tuatha de Danann will no longer be oppressed. Our kind will rule again!”

  “You are certain in this?” Macha nodded at Oweynagat’s opening beneath their feet. “Young Freyr is ready and willing to ascend?”

  “It is his due!”

  Macha took a step toward Badbh. “And you are willing to accept the consequences of this action?”

  Badbh threw her head back and laughed. “Consequences? You mean the restoration of our homeland? Establishing Vanaheim not only on this sacred ground but across the globe? For the peace and freedom of the Tuatha de Danann?”

  Macha blinked at her.

  “Yes.” Badbh nodded curtly. “I think the consequences of this resurrection and coronation are quite acceptable.”

  “Very well.” Macha stepped past Nemain and held her hands open to Badbh. “Will you join with me, then?”

  Badbh glanced at Nemain. “But it must be the three of us. The Morrigan speaks as one.”

  Macha’s deeply tanned features softened. “For now, let it be us two.” She glanced over her shoulder at Nemain.

  The darkest sister rolled her shoulders back and lifted her chin. “I stand at the ready.”

  Satisfied, Badbh called down to Freyr. “It is almost time, young one. Stay where you are until you are called.”

  She placed her hands in Macha’s open palms, and her sister’s fingers snapped closed over hers in a death-grip.

  17

  Badbh’s vision faded to black as Macha’s hands squeezed hers. Then there was a blinding flash of light.

  “This is it.” Badbh smiled in triumph as her eyes readjusted. She looked around the complex of ancient earthworks that comprised what had been the old capital Cruachain. Odin and Freya stood together on a near rise. Odin’s sons, Thor and Heimdall, were behind them and Badbh could see the faces of the young mortal witch and her land healer friend peeking out from the back of the group. The god of chaos stood to the rear them all, a good distance away.

  Freyr awaited her call, below.

  Badbh looked at Odin. Her dark lips spread into a wide smile.

  “You’ve had too long to gloat over my imprisonment,” she called to the Chief of the Æsir. “I don’t suppose you’ve come to offer your allegiance this time?”

  Odin sighed and his face darkened. She could tell he was working to keep his anger in check, and this pleased her.

  “Badbh,” he began, his voice level. “Mistress of The Morrigan.”

  Her smile grew more broad. She motioned her sisters forward to stand on either side of her.

  “Your voluntary retreat into the cauldron was one of the conditions of the treaty,” Odin said. “As was the continued wellbeing of my kin, Hœnir‬ and Mímir.”

  Badbh laughed.

  “For the sake of the peace, for all of us, I overlooked their murders,” he said.

  “Overlooked?” Badbh asked. “Is that how you remember it?”

  “I did what I had to do at the time.” Odin rested a hand on Freya’s shoulder. “I have kept your grandchildren safe by my own fire, and have adopted t
hem into my family.”

  “Yet you dare to set foot on Vanir soil.” Badbh spat. “To sully this sacred place and taint the air with your profane breath.”

  “Grandmother! Sacred sisters of The Morrigan! You must stop!” Freya cried. Odin lifted a hand to silence her.

  “There is still time to turn back this course of madness,” Odin called over the quiet grass. Heimdall and Thor shifted nervously behind him.

  “We can end this war before it begins in earnest,” Odin continued. “Let us not condemn this land nor the continents and seas beyond to this bloodshed.”

  Badbh laughed long and loud. She looked down on Odin and lifted her eyebrows in ridicule. “But my dear Æsir, this war never ended. Did you think that with a few words, you could drive me again into my cauldron for another geologic age while you and your kind continue to roam free in the world?”

  “The last few centuries haven’t exactly been a picnic,” Thor grumbled just loud enough for The Morrigan to hear.

  Badbh nodded. “So I understand. I aim to rectify that.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about!” Freya’s voice was filled with pain and frustration. “If you would just listen to reason—”

  “Enough!” Badbh spread her arms and clenched her hands into tight fists. “I call on the Tuatha de Danann! I call on the natives of Éireann! Rise up and defend your homeland! Cleanse the earth of the Æsir defilement!”

  Freyr stood in the shadows below, listening to every word. He knew these voices but he couldn’t place them, other than his grandmother’s. With these last words from Badbh, there was a groaning battle cry from deep within the Oweynagat cave. Legions of heavy footsteps thundered forward as a mad swarm of Tuatha de Danann rushed out of the darkness and onto the field.

  Freyr tried to move out of their way, but they stampeded directly through him as though he were no more than a whisper. He tried to speak to them as they passed. He shouted questions of who they were and the identities of the strangers outside who challenged The Morrigan. None stopped to answer. They flooded past him like the rushing waters of a burst dam.

  Once clear of the cave opening, the Tuatha de Danann stood up tall and formed into loose ranks. They looked to Freyr to be more solid than he was, but they had an otherworldly sheen that danced over their skin in the sunlight. Iridescent, painted wings unfolded from the backs of some of the soldiers, while others sprouted antennae and third and fourth limbs. All had the same graceful point at the tops of their ears.

  Where they’d previously ranged in size from a speck of dust to a large dog, now the smallest of them stood nearly as tall as Freyr.

  Badbh stood above her newly reborn Vanir army. She took a step forward, away from her sisters, and glared down at Odin. “I won’t insult you by offering the option of surrender.”

  On her silent signal, the Vanir army surged toward Odin and his clan.

  Freya stepped in front of Odin and raised her shillelagh in the air. “Don’t make me hurt you!” she yelled at the advancing army.

  Badbh laughed.

  Freya shouted a wordless battle cry and leapt into the fray, swinging her club and cracking as many skulls as she could. The Tuatha de Danann returned her blows in kind, and soon a gang of a dozen of them surrounded her and drove her to the ground.

  “Join me, granddaughter!” Badbh called to Freya. “You should not war against your own kind!”

  A strangled word that sounded like “Never” arose in Freya’s voice from beneath the scrum.

  Thor pushed past Odin and raised a tiny cobbler’s hammer over his head. While her sisters laughed at his minuscule weapon, Badbh recognized it for what it was.

  “Where did you get that?!” she roared as Thor brought the hammer down on the neck of a disfigured amadán who had Freya by the throat. An eruption of golden flecks and colored candies sprang from the site of impact, and the vicious Danann fool was reduced to a heap of smoking ash amid newly sprouted shamrocks.

  “You have no right!” Badbh screamed as a second and third Vanir soldier fell under Thor’s borrowed weapon. She spread her arms wide, willing her fingers into talons and her flesh to sprout black feathers.

  A dozen Vanir soldiers swarmed around the defenseless Odin, forcing Heimdall to join the melée. He swung his shillelagh with an accuracy and ease that surprised Badbh, and he cleared a path for his father to advance on Oweynagat.

  “Kill them!” Badbh shrieked from atop the ogham stone. “Kill them all!”

  Freya staggered to her feet and bludgeoned an attacking clurichaun. The dazed Vanir stumbled backward, his pointed beard and tailored jacket soaking up the blood running down his face.

  “You are a blight on the ancient land of Éireann!” he yelled at Freya, spattering her cheeks with his own blood. “You will not triumph—”

  Freya brought her club down and crushed his skull before he could utter another syllable.

  Badbh scowled at her granddaughter. Even if Badbh hadn’t cared much for the clurichauns, their surly drunkenness, or their fancy dress, Freya had spilled her own people’s blood.

  Badbh straightened her elbows and flapped her dark wings.

  “Freya! You still have a choice!” Badbh lifted up from the Oweynagat lintel and hovered in the air above the battle. “Lay down your weapon before it’s too late!”

  “Grandmother!” Freya screeched as a group of spry buachailleens rushed her. One swing of Freya’s shillelagh sent the herding boys’ red caps flying. Her second arc caught the nearest buachailleen in the midsection. He tumbled sideways taking the others to the ground with him. Thor moved in and brained them each in turn with the cobbler’s hammer. Marshmallow treats and shamrocks exploded in a two-yard radius all around.

  Freya stepped over the piles of ash which moments before had been raging buachailleen sidhe.

  “Grandmother!” Freya planted one hand on her hip and used the other to lift the shillelagh over her head. “I will not stop this until you do.”

  Badbh flapped her massive wings and looked down at Freya’s blood-spattered face and clothing. Freya twirled the shillelagh in the air and brought it down on top of a pair of fir darrigs as the rat-faced faeries scurried past, bent on striking down Odin.

  Freya turned her face to the sky again, and Badbh recognized the weapon Freya was carrying.

  “You plundered Creidhne’s store!” Badbh’s face darkened with outrage. “You dishonor the memory of the Trí Dée Dána.”

  “I can’t keep track of all of these new names,” Sally complained to Niall as they stood behind Odin. “I don’t know who’s what. Not that I think it matters much right now.”

  Niall didn’t answer but kept staring at the battle raging just yards in front of them.

  “I need to do something.” The shillelagh hung loosely in his fingers, the club end resting on the grass.

  Sally tested the weight of her own weapon in her hands. “Do you think I could use this thing as a wand? Or would that go horribly wrong?”

  She glanced back at Loki, standing far apart from the battlefield. He had his hands in his jeans pockets, as always, as was looking on with an expression of cool curiosity. A chill ran through her as she watched him, so calm and unconcerned while blood was being spilled and his kin was in danger.

  As a new burst of gummy Guinness pints and gold harps flew over her head, Sally crouched on the grass and pulled Niall down beside her.

  “I don’t think I can do this,” she said. “I blasted Managarm when he was trying to destroy the world, but I had help.” She thought back to the Køjer Devil she’d smoked all by herself when the creature had gone after Freyr. But that had been from a safe distance. This was too close, too real.

  “Dammit, Clare!” Sally balled her hands into fists and pounded at the ground. “Why did you have to get me mixed up in this?”

  Niall turned and watched Sally. He released his shillelagh and rested his hand atop one of her fists. “This isn’t all her fault. It’s not anyone’s fault. Not r
eally.”

  Niall pulled Sally farther back from the action, though none of the faeries seemed intent on advancing toward them. He left his shillelagh lying in the grass, just out of his reach.

  “Don’t you think you might need that?” Sally asked.

  Niall laid his palms flat on the ground. “I have a different kind of tool.” He took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

  “What did she used to say?” Niall whispered. He leaned forward and centered his weight over his hands. “What are the words she used?”

  Sally’s grip on her own shillelagh tightened as she watched him. “What are you doing?”

  “Spirit of the land,” Niall pleaded in a louder voice. “Give me the words. Give me my grandmother’s teachings. Help me to end this violence on your soil.”

  Sally felt a tingle in the ground beneath her. She looked at Niall, her eyes wide. “I think I can help.”

  Leaning close, Sally let go of her weapon and rested her hands on Niall’s spine. “Adding my power to yours,” she whispered.

  Sally waited a moment, then asked, “What are we trying to do, exactly?”

  “Calm the ground.” Niall’s breath was slow and even, his eyes still closed.

  “Calm the ground?” Sally repeated.

  “Calm the ground, calm the people standing on it,” Niall replied. “Calm the creatures still living in it.”

  “So they don’t come up to join the fight,” Sally said.

  Niall pushed his hands more firmly against the grass, and Sally increased her pressure on his back. Over the chaos of the battlefield, she could hear a low chanting in Niall’s throat but in a language she didn’t understand. Ancient Gaelic, she guessed.

  Sally closed her eyes and willed her own magick into the ground, too, using Niall and his chant as a conduit.

  Thor stood back-to-back with Heimdall as a circle three faeries deep of mixed tribes bore down on them.

  Thor repeatedly lunged forward and swung his hammer at whatever creature was closest. He took out a winged-thing with pink eyes by catching it on the knee as it tried to dodge his attack. A growling clurichaun crawled toward Thor in an effort to stay out of range of the leprechaun hammer, but Thor kicked him back and then caught him under the chin with the hammer as the faerie scrambled to his feet.