The Isles of the Blest

by Morgan Llywelyn

  “So.” The ant considered this. “If I had no body, only a head, I would be dead. Are you dead?”

  Connla considered this. In the Isles of the Blest, he had seen men with severed limbs recover to laugh and live. But could a decapitated man do so as well? Having lost one’s head seemed horribly permanent, even in a world of magic.

  “I cannot say if I am dead or not,” he told the ant at last.

  “Do you feel any pain? Any hunger?” asked the deep-voiced insect.

  “None.”

  “Can you go away from this place if you like?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “So.” The ant fell silent again.

  “But my mind keeps on thinking,” Connla offered hopefully. “As long as I am thinking, I must be alive.”

  The ant pondered this. “There are many who never think, yet are considered to be alive,” it said.

  “Then what is ‘being alive’?”

  Coming down its grass blade, the ant ventured closer to Connla’s face. It found a perch for itself on the very end of his nose, which tickled, but Connla had no fingers with which to scratch and it seemed impolite to mention his slight discomfort to his new—and perhaps last—friend. Having someone keep him company while he waited to be dead had become very important to him.

  “Being alive,” said the ant, “means being part of something and taking part in something. I am part of an ant colony, and I take part in the support of the colony. You—” and here the creature waved a feeler disapprovingly at what remained of Connla—”are not even part of a whole person.”

  “Surely there is more to being alive than that.”

  “Perhaps,” the ant agreed. “There are others in my colony who recognize my smell, and if I did not return, they would have a small memory of me for a while. That may be a form of being alive. Are there those who would remember you?”

  Connla’s lips were becoming very dry, but he managed a smile. “Blathine!”

  “One of the Sidhe, is it? Well, I would not count on the memory of one of the fairy folk for much,” the ant warned him. “Their lives are so long and they are so wrapped up in themselves, they do not burden themselves with a lot of memories. You are—were—a mortal, were you not? Will mortals remember you?”

  “My mother would.” Connla started to say, then felt his eyes stinging as if he were going to cry. “But she is already dead. My father, a famous warrior called Conn of the Hundred Battles, surely remembers me.”

  “So you are alive,” the ant said with conviction. “And you will remain so. For a while.”

  “For how long?”

  The ant began rubbing its face with one forelimb. Obviously it had an itch of its own. “Who can say?”

  On the Hill of Usna, Connla was indeed remembered. Conn of the Hundred Battles had aged since his son’s disappearance; each season made his hair whiter and thinner, his shoulders more stooped. He had given up hope that Connla would return, for too much time had passed in the land of men. Yet there was not a day when he did not recall some favorite gesture of his son’s, or catch a glimpse of some bit of polished copper that reminded him of Fiery Hair.

  His chief druid was in deep disgrace. Conn blamed the druid for Connla’s loss and had banished him to a bog, where the old priest had made a hut for himself from blocks of turf. Weeds sprouted on the roof, and it was usually colder and clammier inside the place than it was outside.

  Hundred Battles’ tribe shunned the bog, and if they were forced to go close to it, to fetch back a stray cow or pick some herb for the larder, they spat in the direction of the druid’s hut and turned around three times sunwise.

  Within his damp walls Coran the Druid inhaled the odor of the earth day and night, and wondered what had happened to him. From time to time he attempted some small spell in a futile effort to bring Fiery Hair back, but the spells never worked. He realized they were hopeless before he began; he only tried out of habit. And he never dared put much power behind them, for he had become afraid of his own magic—which, it seemed, was what had got him into this predicament in the first place.

  If only I had not sacrificed the woman! he told himself ten tens of times, beating his skull with age-spotted fists.

  As he agonized thus one day, a movement at the edge of his vision caught his attention. Glancing sideways he saw an insect, a strange bluish-green insect with an elongated body divided into three segments, and three pairs of translucent wings that glittered like quartz.

  Forgetting himself, the old druid sat upright and stared at the insect. He had spent a number of seasons beside the bog, suffering the intrusion into his house of every form of pest and vermin. He had awakened to find mice nibbling at his toes in the winter and gnats trying to get into his nose and eyes in the summer. He had no love for any of the small nuisances, yet this exceedingly unusual creature interested him.

  Had it been less strange, he would have taken up a clod and smashed it on the spot, before it could bite him or steal some particle of his food or make holes in his only remaining cloak.

  An opalescent light began to glow around the insect. The light pulsed faintly, like a candle that flickers, strengthens, and flickers again.

  Coran the Druid began to be afraid.

  “What are you?” he whispered.

  “Only a voice,” came an answer so soft he could hardly hear it. But with the sound, the light around the insect dimmed until it almost went out, as if making sound used up all the energy the creature possessed.

  “What do you want with me?”

  “I need you to be brave.”

  Coran crouched lower in his shabby rags. “Just surviving takes all the courage I have left. I am very much in my chieftain’s disfavor.”

  “He would restore you to your former stature if you gave him back his son.”

  The druid stiffened. “You have word of the boy? You know where he is?” Even as he spoke, he was saying to himself how familiar the voice sounded; surely he had heard it before. And not from an insect. But that was long ago ... He could not say when, or who...

  “Connla Fiery Hair still lives,” the voice went on, “but you and his father must reach out to him with all the strength you possess or he will fade and be gone forever.”

  The druid jumped to his feet. “How? What spells do I use?”

  “The only spell that can reach through enchantment and bridge even death,” the voice answered. Then it faded. The halo of light surrounding the strange insect grew very bright for the space of a heartbeat, until it went out all at once, like a snuffed candle.

  When the druid bent closer, the insect had disappeared.

  “I know where I last heard that voice!” the druid exclaimed to himself. “On the hill, when the wicker was burning. The boy’s own mother had that voice!”

  Without waiting to put on his raggedy cloak the druid burst from his turf house and began running as fast as his tottery legs would carry him, toward the stronghold of Conn of the Hundred Battles.

  From a long distance off, the sentries saw him coming. They shouted to the gatekeeper, who shouted to a servant, who shouted to Conn’s steward, who eventually went to tell his master: “The former chief druid is coming.”

  Hundred Battles was slouched on the base of his spine on a bench covered with the skin of a huge ram. Once the wool had been white; now it was matted and stained. Only the great horns curving from the ram’s head still spoke of former glory, but they were flung over the back of the bench and no one saw them.

  “What can he want here?” Conn grumbled. “That man knows I would as soon kill him as look at him.”

  “He must have some urgent reason for daring your fort, then,” the steward pointed out.

  “Very well. Show him in. But warn him I am in no mood for any of his foolishness!”

  The druid soon entered the hall, all bows and nods and obsequious gestures. His former aura of self-confidence was gone. Years of living on the lip of a bog had made a different man of him.

 
“Have you some important message for me, you old fraud?” the chieftain of Usna demanded to know.

  In a halting voice, the druid related his recent experience, including his recognition of the mysterious voice. At first, Hundred Battles listened with a bored expression and tapping fingers; then he began to lean forward, and his fingers fell silent upon his knee.

  “You say it was the voice of my first wife? Are you certain of this?”

  “I am.”

  “And why would she visit you and not me?”

  The druid shrugged. “You know how women are,” was all the explanation he offered.

  Conn of the Hundred Battles knew many things. He knew how to judge the edge of a sword and the worth of a cow; how to build a campfire so an enemy could not see it; how to pad the inside of a helmet so it did not make his head sore. But he did not know women, though he had lived among them all his life.

  He had no intention of admitting this to the druid, however.

  “I do know,” he said with a nod. “Since she has come to you, I suppose we should make the most of it. What did she mean by a spell that can reach through an enchantment and bridge death?”

  The druid had been contemplating this very question. “The only magic that answers to that description is love,” he said.

  “Love...” Conn spoke the word and left it hanging in the air in front of him. The two men stared together, as if they could see it; as if they could see its size and shape. “And just how in the name of the sun and the stars,” Hundred Battles demanded to know, “are we supposed to use love to get my son back?”

  The druid shifted from one foot to the other. “I have not had much experience with ... love, personally,” he said. “It’s tricky stuff. Volatile.”

  “You mean you don’t know how to do it. I should have expected as much.”

  “Ah, I can work with it,” Coran hastened to assure the chieftain, noting the fires of anger mounting in Hundred Battles’ cheeks. “But I warn you, I cannot guarantee the outcome.”

  The other snorted in disgust. “When could you ever? Still ... I’ll try, if you think there is a chance. But if you fail me again, Coran, I will have your head to decorate my walls!”

  Conn of the Hundred Battles did not really have much hope of seeing his eldest son again, but he would have tried anything. Since young Connla’s disappearance, the land had continued to produce well for his people—some claimed it was because of the sacrifice of Conn’s wife—and he was in no danger of being deposed. But the heart was gone out of him. His other children were colorless by comparison to his memories of Connla. When he thought of them living in these buildings after he was dead, he grew depressed. He would not feel as if some part of himself were living on with them, for they were nothing like him. Only Connla had been like him.

  He did not dare to hope.

  But he did not dare to refuse to try, either.

  “We must assemble everyone who loved your son,” the druid told him. “All together in one place. The birth of the sun is the most potent time for sending messages, so we will convene on the hilltop at sunrise and you will all call out his name in a loud voice.”

  “You will not be calling with us?”

  “I did not love him,” the druid admitted honestly. “I liked him, you understand ... but it is not the same.”

  “It is not the same,” Conn agreed, wondering to himself how many had really loved his son and how many had only liked him. How could he be sure?

  “While the call is sounded, I will build a special fire whose smoke can carry the message a long way,” the druid went on. “Fiery Hair was stolen by the magic people, the fairy folk, and their lands lie very far to the west. We will have to wait until a morning when the wind is blowing in that direction—which does not often happen here.”

  Grimly, Conn nodded. “We will wait,” he said. “We have waited this long already.”

  Preparations were begun. Conn ordered everyone who had known his eldest son to come to the stronghold and appear before him. He asked each person questions, endeavoring to discover the depth of their feeling for the boy.

  “Ask them sharp questions,” the druid had advised. “Those who really loved him will remember the small details about him; those who only pretended to love him will speak in generalities.”

  Coran was proven right, and to the chieftain’s surprise, it appeared that those who loved his son most were not always the ones he would have expected. His other wives, his own sister, and some of his nearest kinsmen, referred to Connla as “charming,” “brave,” “beautiful.” But his charioteer remembered a time when the boy had fallen and skinned his knee and laughed instead of crying. And the steward recalled the way Connla used to cock his head to one side when listening to the music of the harper, and the gentle smile that played around his lips at such times.

  So it was that Hundred Battles learned who had really cared for his son, and when the morning finally arrived and all the portents were right, he and they gathered together on the hilltop to call out to Connla of the Fiery Hair, with love.

  Nine

  CONNLA’S HEAD LAY, left ear down, in the deep grass. His right ear could hear the sounds of the battle dwindling. No one came near the head; his only companion remained the ant.

  But even ants have business to do. The small creature began to march purposefully down his nose, then across Connla’s cheekbone. “Where are you going?” he asked it.

  “To find a crumb to take to our nest,” the ant replied.

  “Can you not stay with me just a little longer?”

  The ant said in its deep voice, “My time is not your time. If I do not go back with a crumb now, I have failed to perform my duty to my colony. If I stay here with you, someone would suffer because of me. But I wish you well,” it added, just before it crawled from his face and vanished into the grass.

  I left my people, Connla thought with a stab of mental pain. Did they suffer because of me?

  He wondered if he were dead yet.

  If this was death, he did not like it. He did not like having his thoughts torment him, and he did not like being alone in the grass with nothing to look at but a ... foot.

  A foot?

  He rolled his eyes in his head and followed the foot upward to an ankle, wrapped in thongs made of some leafy vine. Above the ankle was the swell of a calf, and then a knee, and somewhere above that, higher than his eyes could look, was a person. Or something like a person.

  “Here you are,” said Finvarra.

  The king of the fairy folk reached down and picked up Connla’s head. He brushed the dirt off it and plucked a spear of grass from the fiery hair.

  Connla tried to wet his dry lips with his still drier tongue, but it was no use. “My nose itches,” he managed to say.

  Finvarra grinned at him. “Scratch it,” he advised. He lifted the head higher, reached out with his other hand and caught hold of something he had propped against a tree—and Connla found his head settling down onto his own two shoulders again.

  There was a moment of blinding shock, like countless tiny fires racing through his body. He leaped, he twitched. Then he was whole again, gazing in astonishment at Finvarra.

  “You said something about your nose, I believe?” the fairy king prompted.

  Connla reached up, delighted to find he had an arm and that arm was obeying a command from his brain. At his order, his fingers performed the task he set for them, scratching his nose. What a wondrous achievement it suddenly seemed, to have an arm and a hand and fingers and to be actually able to scratch an itch! He felt like a man who had received a great gift.

  The itch relieved, Connla explored his other bodily functions. He had legs and they could stand and walk. He could bend a knee, lift it, touch it with one of his wonderful hands. He could twist his torso from side to side, he could make it move forward and back, he could do countless wonderful things with a body he had always taken for granted before.

  Finvarra watched him with amusement. “
Everyone should be dead from time to time. It is very good for you.”

  “I remember seeing babies staring in delight at their own toes,” Connla told him. “Now I understand how they felt.” His glands were working again; saliva flooded his mouth and he was able to speak more clearly.

  “Is the battle over?” he asked Finvarra.

  “Indeed it is. My side won, of course. Fiachna was badly beaten for the mean trick he played on you.”

  “Did you kill him?”

  Finvarra’s face glowed. “Of course we did! I did it myself, with a great fanfare and a flourish of trumpets! There were blue swords slashing the air and blue spears singing over our heads, and songs of valor on every tongue. A great battle was fought just over that rise. We trapped a horde of Fiachna’s followers there and drove them to earth like badgers. Some broke and tried to run, but most of them stood to fight, Fiachna among them.

  “When all the others were slain, I, Finvarra, singled my enemy out and fought him in hand to hand combat. A great struggle it was; we tore up all the ground around us. If you had not been dead, you would have heard us.”

  “I was not dead,” said Connla.

  “Of course you were. Did I not find your head myself and restore it to your body for you? You were not permanently dead, for these are the Isles of the Blest and death is never permanent. But you were dead enough for regular purposes. Dead enough to justify Fiachna’s claim of having killed you.”

  Stubbornly, Connla repeated, “I was not dead.”

  The king bent a long look upon him. “You were not in the dark?”

  “I was not.”

  “You could think?”

  “I could. And hear, and speak. I had a most interesting conversation with an ant, in fact.”

  Finvarra shook his head. “You cannot be dead if you are going to behave in that fashion. We will not allow Fiachna to count you as his victim unless he really killed you.”

  “But he did cut off my head,” said Connla, surprised to find himself arguing the matter from Fiachna’s side.

  “I’m afraid there is something wrong with you,” Finvarra said disapprovingly. “You may be under some sort of protection we did not know about. I must ask Blathine; she brought you here. But you have to be governed by our laws, Fiery Hair. When you are killed you must be dead.”