by Tom O'Neill
As the night wore on Matha slipped outside. He knew he shouldn’t be uneasy with his own people. He should be eager to get as much of their company as possible after so much longing. But as he looked out at the path leading uphill to the woods and the dark solitary night, he was surprised to find it calling. There was a time he could not have imagined being far from any other human, moving across bogs and woodlands in the shadows of the sweet night air. Yet he had come to cherish dark solitude. And then he also couldn’t help thinking about the great fires far away. It was going to be harder than he had expected to clear his head of the bonds he had left behind, the untold secrets, the excitement and even the danger. These things had been quietly stealing a share of his soul all the time he was dreaming of a simple peaceful life.
His mother came out and stood next to him. Neither of them said anything as they saw a carriage moving quickly along the laneway outside their cabin. The reins were held by a stout black cat, sitting bolt upright, wearing a tunic and a smirk. He had no obvious companion though the contents of the carriage were covered in animal pelts. The cat and his cargo quickly disappeared into the distance.
‘Come back inside, a chroí,’ his mother said after some time, ‘you’ll catch your death of cold out there.’ Then she told the neighbours he was very tired and there’d be other nights for him to tell them more of the world.
When first light came, Matha was up and walking around the lands. It still seemed so much smaller than he remembered. Even with the ground he intended to get back from the chief, there wouldn’t be enough work there for more than one person. His mother, with the assistance of the black pony and Caoimhín, would be able to see to it without strain. His mother would be well catered for.
He also started to think again about the little worried man whom he had not helped even when he was being chased by crows. The recollection was not settling well on him. That confused person might not be able to find his way to Tara with his story, whatever it was; and even if he got there, he would hardly be taken seriously.
He went to his mother who was up and rekindling the fire. She looked sad. He didn’t have to explain anything. She said, ‘You go now, son. But you be sure you call in here to me every time you are passing.’
‘I’m not going for long,’ he said. ‘It’s only this one thing that I have to sort out. Then I’ll be back. It might only take a day or two.’
She had never been a woman who liked fussing and tears. She turned away and went to call Caoimhín to yoke up the little pony and make a start on ploughing. Matha set out fully intending to return within a week at most.
It didn’t take him long to find another traveller who had also met Saor. Sure enough, Saor had been unable to follow directions to Tara. He had given up hope of getting anybody to listen to him. He had headed back towards home to keep his notions to himself.
Matha got information about where Saor lived, along with very strong advice not to go there.
As he got closer he met more people who had known Saor for a long time. They were amused that he was wanting to ask Saor anything. ‘Sure poor Saor is a little bit light. He doesn’t say much. And what he does say, you wouldn’t want to pay a whole lot of attention to.’
Everyone reinforced the caution about visiting Saor’s abode, high on a cliff overlooking the deep inlet of the sea where foreign traders often pulled in. ‘No person other than Saor can go up there and come back in one piece,’ a kindly woman warned Matha. ‘There’s a very heartless family of wolves that owns the woodlands up on that hill. Sometimes they even come right down into the settlement at night, looking for anyone foolish enough to be out of doors. It doesn’t matter whether you are weak or strong. If you are out on your own they will run you patiently until you tire and then they will take you. Nobody but Saor would ever go up there among them. They say he reared the boss woman of those wild hounds from an orphan cub and that’s why the family is not allowed to harm Saor or his animals.’
Matha thanked the woman.
He had been long enough wandering now to know that Maire Fada had been right. He too had no reason to fear wolves. He didn’t try to explain this to the woman. When he had told people about it before, it had made them look at him warily.
Matha got up to the cave where Saor had set himself up.
‘Daghda bless the house,’ said Matha as he approached. Saor stood silently for minutes, his face paralysed by confusion. Matha tried to remind him of their meeting. But that wasn’t it. Saor remembered him alright. When he finally unfroze, Matha gathered from the gabbled speech that there had never before been a human visitor in Saor’s steep nesting place.
He put a pot of water on top of his little burning pile of sticks and made some kind of mushroom broth for Matha.
‘That’s the nicest drink of soup I’ve ever tasted,’ said Matha truthfully. ‘I am very sorry to have passed you by on the road without helping you and very thankful to you for drawing the birds away.’
Everyone on the lower ground said Saor lived like a wild man, eating berries, roots, crabs and insects he collected in parts of the hill that nobody else could get to. However, in front of the hillside cave it appeared to Matha that he had been cultivating several ledges and there were onions and turnips still in the ground. People also said, as if it was a fault, that he ate no flesh of bird, fish, or other animal because he was too fond of them alive. There was nothing however wrong with the creamy milk and small rich eggs that he offered to Matha before he would settle down to again try to communicate his information. There were a couple of goats and several bantam hens down on lower ledges and he kept peering over the edge to look down, checking that they were doing alright.
As they sat, Matha came to better understand some of the man’s noises. He had his own system for making himself understood. When his guest was fed, Saor started trying to tell about an object that was worrying him. A huge thing, like a giant fruit, golden yellow in colour, had been washed up on the shore in a remote area of the estuary below.
Matha remembered all of the advice: no attention was to be paid to this little man with staring blue eyes and pieces of sorrel escaping out of the corner of his mouth when he chewed. Matha believed every word. Saor had seen something. But it was probably just some debris from passing traders, washed up by the tides. His mind at ease, he started thinking about going back home again. Saor saw this and became quite insistent: ‘Matha tell Tara. Something wrong. They must know.’
‘You have honoured me with fine hospitality,’ said Matha after thinking about this for a while, ‘so I will honour your earnest request. I will let them know in Tara.’
Saor asked him to stay another night before going to Tara. ‘No,’ said Matha rudely, thinking of other things and forgetting that not everyone knew of his geis.
Saor stared at him with hurt all over his face, filling Matha once again with regret. He allowed himself to think about it. Spending a second night in the same place. A strange thing occurred then. Normally, the first admission of such a thought would fill his body with a wave of anxious restlessness. But this time it didn’t come. There was not the slightest sense of anxiety. ‘Understand this,’ he said after a long silence. ‘It would be the first time in seven years I’ve seen the sun rise from the same place twice in a row. If I have to leave in the middle of the night don’t be offended. Know that it was just that I was overcome by other thoughts.’
Saor nodded quickly; this was something he understood completely.
Matha settled down that night on the same heather bed that Saor had arranged for him, expecting every moment to be driven out of it by his faceless torment. But it did not happen. He slipped into a most comfortable sleep and woke to rays of very beautiful sunlight entering Saor’s cave through the tops of the same scraggy birch trees through which it had entered yesterday. Matha was elated. He had another very good bellyful of egg and oatmeal before he set off. The geis was gone.
At Tara, he was welcomed by Dreoilín and others who no longer
even feigned surprise at seeing him travelling again. This made him all the more determined that he would prove them wrong; prove that he really was done with the travelling life. He met with Mac Cumhaill and told him what he had heard. He said solemnly but not entirely honestly that he believed his source to be completely reliable.
He did his job too well. He described the object so fantastically, a multi-coloured ship-like thing stranded on the rocks, that Mac Cumhaill and Conán were not the only ones eager for the outing. The weather being summery and the evenings long, even King Cormac decided that he would like to go and see this thing.
Cormac unfortunately insisted that Matha must lead them there rather than going back home just yet.
Within a day there was a large entourage, including the High King of Ireland, standing at the foot of the cliff side where Saor lived. Cormac was looking up and shaking his head and saying only a madman would venture up there. ‘As if the ledges weren’t dangerous enough, no sensible person having heard of this particularly bloodthirsty Mac Tíre family, would venture up there. Conán, you are mad and lucky in the Black Mountains – why don’t you go up there and bring the man down.’
‘That sheer mountain is not part of the Black Mountains,’ said Conán, laughing and not moving. ‘Good luck runs out quickly unless it’s accompanied by a small bit of sense.’
Everyone waited quietly. They all knew the story that the King could talk to the Mac Tíre. He would be safe. But Cormac seemed to suddenly develop a tight chest and said he needed a lie down.
‘Two or three of us could go up and if we have our spears on alert, that wolf lady will be wise enough to keep her distance,’ said Mac Cumhaill. Then he looked at Matha and said, ‘But it makes more sense for Matha to go alone. It seems that there is no wolf family that wishes to quarrel with him.’
This bloodthirsty wolf family would not harm Matha.
The King gave Matha a peculiar look. Matha didn’t care. He was already starting to clamber back up.
Saor was surprised to see Matha. He was not used to people keeping their word to him. He had assumed he’d never see Matha again. He took Matha down ‘the fast way’. Matha was terrified as he tried to follow Saor, jumping and bobbing down from ledge to ledge along the cliff face where even the nimblest goat would not tread.
With a sprained ankle and bruised head, he eventually made it to ground level where Saor stood waiting. He was most thrilled to meet the people from Tara. He could not believe that the High King himself had come to listen to him. He was very proud. Then he forgot all that. He ran along in his peculiar fashion talking only to Matha. The others came after Matha. They were all tired and thorn-torn when they arrived at the deserted beach, but they forgot all that immediately. What they saw there astonished the Fianna men as much as it did Matha. The thing on the beach was not the ship that Matha had invented. It was even stranger. It looked like nothing else, only an enormous yellow damson. Though what kind of tree it could have grown on was beyond imagination.
The thing was bigger than a ship. It was bigger than Mac Cumhaill. It was bigger than a castle. It covered most of the sand on the beach.
The King gazed in admiration. He saw beauty in many things. He had no suggestions as to what to do about it.
‘Well let’s go at it,’ Goll said. ‘If it’s as tasty as the normal apricots, there’ll be satisfying sucking for thousands of people here. Let me just stick my old spear in here and test its flesh.’
Mac Cumhaill held him back. ‘Don’t be hasty.’
‘Let Goll go ahead and try it,’ said Conán. ‘For all you know the juice in this thing could be poisonous.’
‘Whisht,’ said Mac Cumhaill. ‘I thought I heard something.’
To the disappointment of the many soldiers and followers who had now gathered with buckets and bowls expecting the giant fruit to be pierced, the King agreed with Mac Cumhaill that it was best to just watch the thing for a few days.
‘Yes. Why don’t we just watch it go bad?’ grumbled Goll under his breath.
Most of the Fianna people present headed off to enjoy the hospitality of the Déisi clan, not far away. Saor wanted Matha to visit him again. That was no punishment. Matha was already thinking he would like to find his own perch some day, somewhere windy and isolated that he could go when he didn’t want anyone to interrupt his thoughts.
During the night, as Matha again slept soundly, Saor left the cave. The next morning Matha was awoken by Saor slapping him with a stick and dancing from one foot to the other, unable to contain his news. He had been back down to keep an eye on the thing, fearing correctly that the soldiers who were on watch might fall asleep, not taking the whole thing very seriously. Only Saor was awake to see what happened.
‘All of a sudden, a hole come in the side of the auld gold ball, right near the ground,’ he babbled. ‘And then doesn’t the world of small hairy horoboricles start hatching out of it ... They marched like proper little soldiers on down a bit of a board in twos or threes or fours or fives or sixes or sevens. They were smaller than a good-sized dog, but had woeful teeth like an auld scurby.’ Matha didn’t know what a horoboricle or a scurby was but guessed they were things that lived safely inside Saor’s head.
He again hopped and slid down the jagged hill to call the others. When Mac Cumhaill and Conán were woken, Saor, with Matha as his interpreter, explained some more, ‘And they had a power of muscle on them and looked like they could be fair mean. They weren’t happy or humorous looking little craturs. They walked on their hind legs and carried daggers, bows, and scythes over their shoulders. As they left, they made straight for the cover of the bushes on the sand dunes, and disappeared out of my sight anyway. I can’t say whether they really disappeared. I’ll tell you one thing though, there was a quare lot of them.’
Saor couldn’t recall how long the procession had lasted but he knew it was a long, long time. It was nearly daybreak when the last of them finally emerged.
The next day the whole country got to know all about them. There were reports of swarms of strange and fearsome horoboricles (Saor’s name for them was as good as any) attacking people and soldiers all over the country.
They could be killed in battle, by spear, arrow, sword, pitchfork or with a hoe if a very experienced person was operating it. But there were just so many of them, and they seemed to have no fear. Even if a person being attacked could kill twenty of them, more would keep coming at him till he got tired and the horoboricles got in close enough to start hacking him with their daggers and taking slices off him with their scythes.
The battles went on for many, many days. The Fianna broke into small bands and scoured the country, wiping out groups of them wherever they could find them. Many farmers and hunters had to join in, doing their best with feacs, sickles, snares, and rabbit spears. Sometimes, where there was a large group of them, they would kill a soldier before the Fianna group got the better of them. The ordinary people were ordered to travel in groups of no less than five. That way there was less chance of being overpowered by the horoboricles.
Everyone got to hate and fear the horoboricles hatched by that beautiful apricot. People started telling terrible stories about their powers. Some traders began offering special remedies, which they said would keep the creatures away at night. People were told that a certain kind of toadstool, put over your doorway, would ensure the horoboricles would never enter your house; that putting salt on your garden would burn their feet; and that drinking young ewe’s milk would give you immunity from their swords. None of these things worked, of course, but believing made some people less afraid.
After months of fighting, people started saying, ‘Maybe we’re never going to get rid of these things. Maybe we’ve just got to learn to live with them. Maybe we just have to get used to them killing some of us if we are foolish enough to go out on our own.’
Mac Cumhaill wasn’t too happy with such attitudes. He was prone to raising his voice in an uncomplimentary way when he came across people
who had given up.
‘But what else is there?’ people dared to complain. ‘It’s many months now and the Fianna is not making any progress in the battle against them. Maybe we should try to make peace with them.’
‘They’re not interested in peace,’ said Mac Cumhaill. ‘Their only interest is in taking over this country. We’ll defeat them or they’ll defeat us. There are no other roads this situation can follow.’
But secretly Mac Cumhaill himself was worried. After so many months they had hardly made a noticeable dent in the horoboricle numbers. And the pursuit was getting more difficult. The horoboricles were learning. Their already good hiding strategies were ever improving. They were learning to blend in with the autumn colours and burrow in when there were too many soldiers about. They were devising new ambushing strategies. They were doing more damage by the day and every small victory against them was ever harder won.
Mac Cumhaill talked to Dreoilín and to the King at length. They seemed to be looking straight back at him for the solution.
Then one day word came to Tara that Saor was asking for Matha again. Matha made his way down to Osraighe. Mac Cumhaill came with him because he was starting to appreciate that the quiet little man didn’t make a habit of wasting anyone’s time. He would not be calling Matha for a chat about the weather.
Sure enough, there was Saor pacing around the bottom of his cliff, ready with another surprise for them. The sight of him! Saor’s arms were covered in bite marks. He talked to Matha. ‘The little old horoboricle died. The little fellow died. Went phlop it did. Phlooop!’
‘It’s alright now, friend,’ said Matha, rubbing some ointment he had onto Saor’s arm. ‘You can tell Fionn here what’s on your mind.’
