by C. E. Murphy
Grace muttered something not even she could understand, then said, "What name would you choose?"
The girl slid a glance laced with uncertain hope at her. "O'Malley?"
A bark of laughter broke from Grace's throat. "Well, you'll not be the O'Malley; that title is taken. All right, then. Máire," she decided, because to give a witch's daughter the Virgin's name seemed like the best way to draw her away from the witch. "Máire O'Malley. You're my clan now, girl, and no one will eat any more of you so long as I live."
#
They went south together, for Máire knew the way even when Grace didn't recognize the land. In only a little time the witch's glamour faded and Grace knew the way home. The serpent had thrown her far to the north, though: it was two days' walk before they came to the beaches that Grace called her own, and had the moon not broken through to shine half as bright as day, it might have been another morning before they found Grace's people.
It was testament to them, and to Grace's reputation, that no one had yet begun funeral preparations, or to call her oldest son the O'Malley. Grace kept the tale of the serpent to herself, and claimed that Máire, an orphan, had found her washed up on shore, and offered help. The clan embraced the girl for that, and laughed good-naturedly at her discomfort. Well, a mother who ate her bit by bit wasn't one to show much affection, Grace supposed. Máire would get used to it—or not—and soon enough she'd be judged on her own merits, instead of simply being welcomed as the girl who helped the O'Malley. A fire was built of driftwood, then built higher still, to celebrate the O'Malley's return, and the night ran long with joy. Grace went among those at the beach, reassuring them that it was her own self home safe again, and sent word to her castle on the island that she was returned. The lads in the boat warned her—as if she needed warning—that her children would insist on fighting the out-going tide, and come to shore to meet their mother. In the warning was a question they didn't quite dare ask aloud: why the O'Malley meant to remain on the shore, rather than going to her keep to see the children immediately. But they didn't ask, and she didn't answer, and they did as they were bid, bringing word to her family in their castle.
Her reason for staying a while longer stood on the shore of Clew Bay looking toward Clare Island with something like true fear writ on her dirty features, though. "Crossing a stream is one thing," Máire whispered when Grace came to stand at her side. "A bay of sea water is another."
"What happens, when a witch tries to cross water?" Grace kept her voice low, though with a bonfire going and fish roasting over it, not many were nearby to listen to the O'Malley and her new ward. "Does it drag her down and drown her?"
"Maybe, if she can get onto it in the first place. I saw my mother try, from time to time. It was as if she walked into a wall. At the edge of the water, she could simply go no farther."
"And yet she tried."
"There's never been a witch yet who didn't try to take more than was hers to have." Máire wet her lips, watching the changing tide. "I stood at the stream so long for fear of feeling that wall, if I stepped forward."
"Do you feel it now?"
"No, but…" Máire gestured to the sea, inching backward from where they stood. Even the tide mark lay a few steps ahead of her: she hadn't nerved herself up to the test yet. If it were her own child, Grace would seize the girl and drag her bodily into the water, laughing while she screamed and played at getting away. But her own children had no fear of the sea, nor of their mother's intentions, and so Grace put out a hand, not making quite so bold as to take Máire's without the girl's consent. Máire looked at Grace's outstretched fingers as though she'd never imagined holding someone else's hand, then carefully fit her palm against Grace's. Grace gave an encouraging nod and took a single step forward, waiting to see what Máire would do. She hesitated, then hitched forward, then again, hobbling through sand and stone toward the water's edge.
Grace stopped there, half a step before the retreating waves could reach their toes. "Feel anything, lass?"
"The sand is cold and wet between my toes," Máire said, revulsed and fascinated all at once.
"Well, aye," Grace said, amused. "But anything else? A wall?"
"No, but…." Máire shrugged. Grace clucked her forward like she might a horse, and together they stepped into the fading edge of surf. Máire yelped at the cold, but neither bounced backward as if she'd encountered a wall, nor fell foaming into the water as if determined it should drown her. A few more steps had them knee-deep, as deep as they could go without soaking their clothes. Máire stopped there, her breast heaving like a horse who'd run a race. "I feel its pull."
"Acht," Grace replied softly, "so have all of us, child. It's what draws us to the sea again and again, even when the storms take our lovers and our fathers and our brothers."
"That isn't—" Máire stopped, seeing that Grace knew that wasn't what she meant, and letting Grace see that surge by surge, Máire began to understand, too, what Grace had meant. "Will it take my foot out from under me?"
"If it can. Make no mistake, Máire O'Malley. The sea will drown you if it can, as sure as if you were a witch, but I think, my girl, that it won't do it because you're a witch. Now, will we go back to shore or wade in until we're wet through and through? There are blessings in the sea, a chuisle mo chroí, as sure as there are deaths."
"'Cushla machree'?"
"It means my pulse, or my heart."
"My mother had no such fond names for me."
"Your mother," Grace said pleasantly, "was an auld bitch, so to hell with her and her ways."
Máire O'Malley laughed for the first time then, and went into the sea to come away a witch's daughter no more.
#
Nothing, Grace knew, was ever that simple, and yet she was surprised when the witch came for her daughter.
#
She came at night, in the dark of the moon, two full weeks after Máire crossed to the island for the first time. She came to the edge of the bay and stood wreathed by flame that seemed to have no smoke, and there lifted her voice so loudly that she could be heard across the water, all the way on the island, where Grace O'Malley stood listening and watching from the height of her tower castle. Curses spilled from the witch's lips, but Máire, at Grace's side, listened and shook her head. "She's only raging. There's no power in her words. Even if there was, the water would stop it."
"I may be born and bred to the sea, but even I can't stay on the ocean forever," Grace said wryly. "What happens if I go to parlay?"
"She'll kill you."
Grace's eyebrows rose. "She can try."
"She is Fúamnach, witch of the west, daughter of the barrows, and she will kill you. Perhaps not all at once, but your death will be hers and every day you keep from dying will fill her coffers with a little more of the power of the O'Malley. Do not treat with her, or the price paid may echo down the centuries."
"So I must not go, I cannot stay, and I will not give you back to her. Where does that leave me, Máire O'Malley, once a witch's daughter?"
"It leaves you a fool for helping me," Máire said quietly, and slunk away with her head bowed in guilty relief. Grace watched her go, then stood, listening a while longer to the witch on shore roaring threats and anger across miles of shifting water. Below, keeping watch on the island shore, her own men shifted uncomfortably, clumping together in ways they usually would not. Some tested the wind, as if it blew ill, and others hunkered down with a scowl so deep it changed the set of their shoulders: they liked the witch not at all, even knowing nothing of who or what she was.
Well, they must be shown that the O'Malley was not afraid, whatever else might come of it. Grace went below to put on her finest léine, thigh length in saffron, with snug sleeves that stopped at the elbow, so the great loose cuffs could fall free. Over this went her coat, short and snug heavy wool dyed deep green, with the seam unfastened from the elbow down so the léine's cuffs could fall free, and the sleeves wrought with leather knotwork patterns that told
of her own exploits—for while she might do the witch an honor of wearing her best, even a witch ought to remember who the O'Malley was, and what it meant to bear that title. She wore trousers beneath the léine to ward off the wind, and boots, but her head she left bare, to remind all who saw her that she was Gráinne Mhaol, the O'Malley, who wore her fiery hair cropped short that it would never tangle in the ropes aboard her ship.
Those who saw her stride out from the castle took heart: she saw it in the corners of her eyes, how they straightened and pulled their shoulders back, lifting their chins and finding defiance to replace fear. She went alone despite that, in a currach with a sail to go with its oars. The wind was with her, so she made a fine sight, leaving the island behind, and the truth was that curiosity, more than terror, writhed in her gut. She had never met a witch, and only believed in magic because she had sung to the Serpent at the heart of the sea.
She expected Fúamnach to stand twenty feet tall, so easily had she been seen from the water, but the closer Grace got, the more ordinary in size the witch became, until Grace leapt from boat to shore and found she stood taller than the daughter of the barrows, and had bathed more recently besides. Not even the wreath of flame could burn away the witch's scent, if flame it was at all: Grace felt no heat from it, and smoke still did not rise. Despite the stink, though, Fúamnach was not as Grace imagined, ancient and wizened and grey. She had the lines of beauty in her face, and her carriage was strong and certain. Máire, once clean and combed and dressed in more than rags, favored her, a thought the girl would hardly appreciate. Fúamnach herself wore—not rags, but a gown that should have long since tattered to thread. It was too aged or too dirty to be named any particular color, but its cut was exceptionally fine, and the fabric beneath the grease had once been expensive. Gossamer and gold, Grace thought, such as the fair folk were said to wear.
The witch spat the same words she had been speaking all along, in a language so old Grace was hardly certain it was Irish at all. As she touched the shore, the force of the phrases hit her, nearly knocked her back into the currach. She staggered with them, feeling the weight of Fúamnach's hatred, then gathered herself and stepped forward. Something flickered in the witch's eyes: fear, or surprise, or perhaps simply more anger, but it gave Grace a branch to hang on, and so a smile pulled at the corner of her lips. "I am the O'Malley. You have something to say to me?"
"You have stolen my child. Give her back to me." This time the witch spoke an Irish Grace could understand, though that was no surprise: Máire knew the modern tongue too.
"I can't give back what I haven't taken. Máire came with me of her own free will, as God intended she should be able to."
"She is mine."
"She belongs to her own self and no one else," Grace murmured. "What will it take to drive you from my shores? Our oldest filid have reached back to the stories of their fathers and their fathers before them, and the secret that made you is not among the stories that they know, so your death is not a thing I can command." The witch's eyes flickered again and Grace hid a smile: she ought not know of how witches were born, and it discomfited Fúamnach that she did. Pressing the advantage, Grace repeated, "What will it take to send you away?"
Fúamnach's lip curled, showing a bit of fine white tooth. She sniffed the air, though how she could smell anything besides herself, Grace didn't know. Still, sniff she did, then said, "You've the scent of magic about you."
"I am trucking with witches," Grace replied dryly.
The witch hissed like a cat, showing a whole mouthful of good teeth. Perhaps it was magic that kept them strong, for surely the witch was as old as the hills, and ought to be toothless. "Other magic," she snapped. "Deep magic. I will have that, and leave you."
Grace waggled a finger. "I might trade it, for Máire's freedom and your departure. But how do I know you'll keep your word?"
"Witches don't lie."
"I doubt that."
Fúamnach hissed again. "The Tuatha cannot lie."
"But there's never been a faerie born who couldn't twist the truth. I want a blood oath on it, that Máire is free and you'll haunt Connacht no more."
Rage glittered in the witch's eyes, but she drew a knife from beneath her gown and lifted her hands, shaking her sleeves back to expose her wrist. Grace stepped forward and caught the knife hand, staying the blow. "Blood spilled on the earth will do me no good if you break your word and return. I'll fetch a cup, and the deep magic besides. Wait on me, Fúamnach, daughter of the barrows, and cry your terrible cries no more. My men need sleep, and I have no patience with theatrics."
She took a perverse pleasure in Fúamnach's impotent fury, but then, since the day she threw her hair at her father's feet she had always enjoyed thwarting those who thought themselves more powerful than she. She wouldn't have grown up into the O'Malley, otherwise; for a woman to lead the clan she had to be more than anyone expected. And she was, it seemed, more than Fúamnach of the barrows expected, for the power in the witch's arm relaxed, and she strained no more against Grace's hold. Grace nodded once and released her, then returned to the currach and cursed her way back across the water to the island, in part because the wind was against her and more because if a witch was interested in the serpent's gift, there was more to the thing than a bit of shining rock. Though Grace, being no witch herself, could hardly imagine what good it would do her, so the bargain seemed sound enough.
She took herself into the castle whistling, and back out again as cheerfully, with a bag with her treasures at her hip. Dawn colored the sky gold and rose as Grace returned to shore and presented Fúamnach with a bowl of lacquered oak to bleed in. The witch glowered but cut her arm, dripping blood into the bowl as she snarled, "On my blood I will not return to Connacht so long as the O'Malley holds Umhaill," a vow that Grace considered, smiled at, and agreed to.
Fúamnach's eyes glowed with greed as Grace took the stone from the bag at her hip. It felt cool in her palms despite having been near her body's warmth, and its shimmer reflected her face back at herself as she offered it to the witch. Fúamnach cradled it close, stroking the glimmering surface, then lifted her gaze to meet Grace's with a furious smile twisting her lips. "Hear this, Gráinne Ní Mháille, called Gráinne Mhaol and Granuaile, called Grace, called the O'Malley. You have taken three things from me: my daughter, my blood, and Connacht, where I have long since dwelled, and you have only given me one in return. I take two more in exchange, to make our bitter bargain equal. I take your land for my child's life, and your death for my blood. I am banished from Connacht; so be it. Let all of Ireland be a stranger to you before you die, for your life will be long and your death longer yet. I curse you to walk this earth, Ó Máille, until you taste the kiss of angels, for that is the price of treating with a witch."
#
A silence filled the chamber as Grace finished her story, the sort of silence that didn't know if it should applaud or gasp or question. Jana was unlikely to break it, as she appeared mostly asleep, but Emma's eyes were enormous with interest. Tony finally spoke. "Did you all really talk that formally all the time?"
Exasperation blew out of Grace in a raspberry. "Jesus, man, have you no respect for the telling of a tale? There are forms, Tony, you don't just—" She saw him laughing at her, and subsided into mutters.
"I have a thousand questions," Emma whispered. "How could you have given up the Serpent's Tear, even for someone's life? Don't you know what it can do? Did you lose the Ireland you knew? Did Fúamnach ever get to return to Connacht? Don't you know a witch couldn't harm you, not if you had a tear from the Serpent itself? What song did you sin—"
"Stop!" Grace held up both hands. "You'd ask all thousand if I let you. Yes," she said more softly. "I lost Ireland to the English long before my own death fighting the bastards. And Fúamnach regained Connacht even before that, for England made a county of Mayo, and all our kingdoms were subsumed. I lost it all, little girl, all for the price of a child. She died. My foster-daughter, Máire O'
Malley, drowned on the sea not a year later. But she died free of Fúamnach, and perhaps I would have lived to see Ireland fall regardless of the old bitch's curse."
"You would have," Emma said. "You did. She didn't curse you. She couldn't."
"And yet here I live and breathe before you." Grace shrugged, throwing away the accuracy of the details.
Irritation crossed Emma's face. "You're not hearing me. How did you die?"
"In battle." Beside her, Tony made a surprised sound. Grace shrugged at him, too, as if to ask what it was he'd expected. He muttered, "I don't know," not loudly enough to interrupt Emma, who demanded, "And what happened then?"
Grace sighed. "I rose up a wraith, a ghost, young again in incorporeal body, but old of mind. I've walked the line between life and death ever since."
Emma, the witch's daughter, rose and came to stand in front of Grace. Behind her, still lazing near the heating pipe, Jana lifted her head as if making sure her sister required no support. For once, though, Emma's hazy gaze was focused, even intense. "Tell me what a ghost is. What it can do."
"You're mad. A ghost is a spirit of the dead. They walk through walls and—" Grace flung her hands wide, exasperated again. "They speak with the other side. They haunt people. They're ghosts!"
"They're usually tied to a place," Tony said. "A house or their place of death or even a person. They're often murder victims, or have some unresolved business to deal with before they can move on. Some of them have the ability to interact with the world, usually violently. Those ones are poltergeists. Ghosts are usually able to fly, or at least levitate. They're depicted as wearing sheets, which is probably meant to represent burial shrou—what?" he asked of Grace's half-accusing, entirely astonished look.
"When did you get to be such an expert on ghosts?"
"When I started dating one!"
A smile crooked the corner of Grace's mouth. "That's the nicest thing anybody's said to Grace in a long time."
"Well, what else was I supposed to do? A lot of my job is trying to understand things, and you're a hell of a mystery."