Sorcha did come with us. Having no children of her own to tend to at Sidhe Fionnachaidh, I offered her the nursling at my breast and she was glad to hold him. Often I caught her pressing her nose to Bevan’s crown, as though transported back to the days when Fiachra and Conn had just been born.
My father and his men stayed for many moons, riding with Lir daily to search the woods and the lakes of his kingdom. Yet as the year grew long, so did their faces. Not a whisper was heard of the children, no sightings, not even bones.
Eventually Lir wished to be left alone in his grief. Though my father sent riders regularly for news, none were admitted to Sidhe Fionnachaidh, and each returned without words to speak.
“It is too great a loss for any man,” Bodb lamented. “A wife and all his children.”
The loss of his daughters weighed heavy on Bodb. Although Aoife was not dead, she may as well have sailed across the sea to join her sisters for all that we heard of her. Within my own heart I struggled to reconcile the compassion I knew that I should feel for Aoife, with the resentment of her silence. With only a few words, or a single visit, she would have reassured my father that she still walked in the land of the living, yet, like her husband, she remained mute.
That year, my father cancelled his celebrations at Áenach Tailteann. He sat by the cliffs, staring down at the sea, as though remembering Aodh’s triumphant race, where he had beaten the Fianna and the Red Rocks to take his prize.
Though dancing and singing could no more be suppressed at Sidh-ar-Femhin than the beating of one’s heart, the music was of a slow refrain, the jigs and reels stored within the musicians’ instruments for happier days to come. The dyers’ colours seemed faded, the looms less exuberant in their patterns, and the food contained less honey and more salt.
The whole of Éire felt the loss of the children of Lir, for everyone loves a happy ending, and within them, and within Aoife, they had seen the doors of Lir’s fort flung wide after years of mourning. That such happiness should have been false happiness, a prelude to further tears, turned the hearts of men as though recoiling from a rat. It reminded them too easily that their own lives were tied to a cartwheel, rising and falling in the dirt until their days were done, pulled by an uncontrollable force.
For my part, I managed to avoid such feelings of melancholy, staring into the eyes of my beautiful baby boy and my loving husband. Talking by the fireside with Sorcha, late into the nights. I had never been one to think too much on what I might lose in life. I preferred to count all that I had and feel grateful.
The moon circled many times in the sky, the land withered, fell white and came into bloom again.
It was very early one morning, the mist had not yet lifted from the valley, when riders approached the fort at speed. It was normal for a few carts to pass that way so early, carrying wine and vegetables to the firesides of those who lived within, but warriors approaching raised the alarm. We all fell from our beds, pulling on clothes and reaching for blades and bows.
“Who is it?” I asked, stumbling through the door to my hut, caught in the tempest of people about me.
“The Fianna,” one woman replied, pressing my shoulder for reassurance. “It is Fionn mac Cumhaill and his men that ride this way.”
I threw my knife back through the door of the hut, pulled a thick shawl about my shoulders and told Sorcha to remain with my son.
The guards lowered their spears and stepped back to allow Cumhaill’s band of warriors to enter. There were only perhaps ten, yet the size of both them and their swords cut a formidable sight. Despite the cool of the morning, the men were swathed in sweat. I had never seen Cumhaill look so pale, his eyes roaming wildly as he swung down from his horse.
“Where is your father? Where is the King?” he bellowed, the crowds drawing back as he strode towards me.
“Asleep still, in the great hall,” I replied, for that is where my father always was at that time.
Cumhaill pushed through my people and I ran behind before they could close the path. The great Fianna warlord stood in the centre of my father’s banqueting hall calling for him, whilst his brothers assembled therein. Among them, I caught sight of Caílte mac Rónáin. He cast his eyes down, his face stricken.
What horror have they come to tell us, I wondered. These were the fiercest men of the land, they had travelled across the waves to fight battles with savages, it was said their bones were forged of steel and their blood of molten metal. What could possibly have them spooked?
Eventually my father appeared, pulling on his red robe and running his fingers through his beard to dislodge crumbs.
“What is the meaning of this, Cumhaill?” he asked. “Even the horses are not yet awake.”
“We have news.”
“News of what?”
“The children.”
Fionnuala
We were of the wild. Transformed into swans, we knew not our own names, our histories or our faces in the reflection of Loch Dairbhreach. The only things we knew were each other, and a burning pain in our hearts should we attempt to fly too high, or too far, from our watery home. We fed on weeds and snails. We preened our feathers beneath the sallow sun, and hid in fear amongst the rushes when night fell and the foxes prowled, our white plumage a beacon to their hungry mouths.
How we had come to be there, I could not recall. What we had been before escaped me also. All that I knew was that the three swans who swam beside me were my kin, and that we should never be parted.
When the air turned cold, we huddled together on a nest of sticks just off shore. The larger of the three nestled beneath my breast, and I spread my wings across the smaller ones.
Later, they would ask how we endured so long, and I would reply that time does not exist in the minds of beasts. The sun rises, and the sun sets, and within that time you do what must be done. You eat, and preen, and stretch, yet you do not think on tomorrow, or the next day.
We ate, though we felt no hunger. We slept, though we felt not fatigued. We huddled more for comfort than for warmth, for the magic that ensnared us stole from us much that was human. Not simply our forms, but our needs and wants.
For over a year we knew not ourselves.
We feared the fishermen on the shore, and the round coracles they pushed out onto the lake, for both were far bigger than us. In our minds, these things were sent to trap us, and we wished to live, as all beasts wish to live.
Then, one evening we had taken to the shore to rest a while and feel the last of the sun on our backs. We sat there in a circle, so that each could keep watch over the others, though it was too early for the fox or the stoat to prowl.
On the far shore, we chanced to see men come riding. They were in high spirit, and their laughter carried across the lake to where we rested.
Something in the depths of my mind began to stir. I stretched my slender neck that I might get a better look, yet before my eyes could clear, a part of me had already set off across the lake. I struggled to my feet, watching the brother who slept at my breast swimming out towards them.
Panic gripped me. Those men were tall and their horses taller. They looked as though they were setting up camp and soon they would want meat for their supper. I hurried into the water, following my reflection towards them. A warning lifted in my chest, trembled up through my throat, and burst from my orange beak as a shrill honk.
Still, my reflection did not turn back. He kept swimming, picking up speed.
Behind me, I sensed the two who slept beneath my wing, swimming abreast in my wake. I turned my head and honked again, warning them to turn back, yet I knew that wherever I went they would always follow. There was no use trying to turn them away. We lived or we died together.
The sky was growing dark, the first stars showing above. Two of the men were hammering thick posts into the ground and hanging them with hide to form a shelter. Another, with red hair and muscular arms, collected logs for a fire. He knelt down, piling them together in a neat pit ringed with stone
s.
As we came closer, he looked up and smiled.
“Look, swans!” he called to his companions.
It came as a shock to me that I could understand him. Perhaps the fishermen had never spoken, or perhaps we had always swum so far away from them that our ears could not comprehend. Yet this man spoke, and I understood.
“Four of them,” another man said, broad as an ox with fair hair in ringlets to his chest. “Good thing we brought that calf with us, otherwise we’d be eating Óengus and his bride tonight.”
They all laughed.
Though I understood their words, I did not understand their meaning, for in those early days we remembered so little. Some nights I would dream, but on waking those faces would slip from me. They made no sense.
As I held back at a safe distance with the two who were smallest, the one who slept by my breast moved silently towards the shore. As he did so, the red-haired man lifted his eyes from the fire, watching him approach.
“Are you hungry?” he asked.
Reaching into his pouch, he pulled out a hunk of bread and tore a little off. When it hit the water, my smaller kin and I drew back, our wings spread to defend us. Yet my reflection did not flinch. He remained by the shore, the bread ignored.
“Not hungry, huh?” The man smiled. “Well, perhaps you’d like to sing for me. Can you do that?”
He reached back into his pouch and withdrew a slender bone flute. Lifting it to his lips, he played a few lonely notes.
Something deep within us rose to that sound. Unthinking and unknowing, we opened our beaks and the depths of the lake rose up through our throats to meet the music. Our song was so keen as to cause the men to weep, for it touched the very core of them.
The man lowered his flute to wipe away his tears, and our song ended. All of them gathered there by the shore to stare at us.
“I do not like this place,” one of them said, stout and black-bearded. “There is an enchantment here, I can feel it in the air. Let’s strike camp and move away before it takes hold of us.”
The fair man held up his hand to silence his companion, and stepped down to the water. “Who are you?” he asked. “If you can sing, surely you can speak?”
My reflection, closer to the shore and the large man’s boots, beat his wings and opened his beak. Honk-honk. Honk-honk, he cried.
A dark, slender man threw a wide grin. “It’s calling your name,” he said, nudging the fire-builder with his foot. “It sounds like Caíl-te, Caíl-te.”
But the fire-builder did not laugh. He stood from the place where he was crouched and came towards us until he was up to his ankles in the water. Reaching out his hand, he took my reflection’s beak gently and brought his face to it.
He stared for a long time, then straightened and looked about.
“There are four,” he said softly.
The men fell silent.
Honk-honk. Honk-honk. Caíl-te. Caíl-te, my reflection repeated until it was so clearly a word that all by the shore came to stand in the water.
“Can this be?” the fair man asked, his eyes grown wide.
“Aodh?” Caílte whispered.
My brother drew up to his full height, wings beating in answer.
Aoife
I did not know that I had been discovered.
I woke one morning to find my husband gone, and I assumed he had made his way to the crannóg to sleep there, as he often did, upon his children’s beds, where he said he could still smell their scent.
For my part, I hardly rose from my own bed. It is a heavy thing to carry such a secret. To know yourself to be so wicked, and to have no one to confide in. It was as though a madness had taken me that day by the lake. I remember so little after I plunged the rod into the water and wished them gone.
When I awoke on the shore, Guennola was curled against me like a frightened whelp, shivering and repeating constantly: “The children of Lir, the children of Lir, the children of Lir have nothing to fear...”
I slapped her hard across the face and she fell dumb.
“What of the children?” I asked. “Where have they gone? What has happened?”
She lent close to me, as though to whisper in my ear, then cackled and repeated, “The children of Lir, the children of Lir, the children of Lir have nothing to fear...”
I knew something terrible had happened. I knew that Guennola had witnessed whatever it was, and that she had given leave of her senses. As I pulled myself to my feet, I noticed that the water was no longer green but black. The mighty oaks it had once reflected were burned to ash. The ground still smouldered and smoked, my eyes raw with it.
All of the horses had fled, except my own, which had become tangled in one of the branches.
“The children of Lir, the children of Lir,” Guennola began, clawing at my skirts.
“Yes, yes,” I replied, brushing her hand away. “Aodh, Fionnuala!” I cried out. “Conn, Fiachra!”
No reply came.
“The children of Lir, the children of Lir—”
I reached down, unsheathed my knife from my boot and slit her throat.
Guennola looked surprised as her life bled before her. Though I felt revulsion at my act, I knew that there was nothing else for it. The woman was quite mad. I could not take her with me, and I could not leave her to wander the lakeside alone.
I dragged her body into the ashes and smeared her blood across me. The story I would tell already beginning to take form. The children’s clothes were still by the water, so I ripped them and scattered them. I tossed the food we had brought as far as I could throw. Perhaps by the time my husband’s men came looking, it would have attracted wildcats and wolves to ravage my maid’s body and give truth to my tale.
Eventually, sure that my wish had been granted and the children were nowhere to be found, I untangled my mare and rode as hard as I could for home. Before the fort was in sight, I slid from the saddle, slapped its flank and lay down on the road.
When they found me, I was slumped against a rock, pretending to be unconscious. My husband’s strong, warm arms slid beneath me, lifting me onto his saddle. He rode me home with such gentle compassion that I truly felt sorry for what I had done. All I had wanted was a child of my own, and in pursuit of my desires I had robbed him of his. I was not a monster. I understood what I had done. Yet the course had been set, and there was no way back.
They asked me, and asked me again, what had happened. Each time I repeated my story. A wolf, filled with the fury of the Fomori, larger than a horse. It had been drawn by the food. Aodh and I tried to chase it away, for it was important for Lir to know that his son had died bravely. Our torches set fire to the wood, my maid savaged, the trees aflame.
When my throat grew hoarse with telling this same tale, my father and my sister left for home, taking the children’s nursemaid with them. My husband closed up the gates of Sidhe Fionnachaidh and forbade all entry, except those carts that brought provisions.
I grieved by his side. For it was only in the loss of my former life that I realised how good it had been. We held such gatherings around the fire atop that hill. Chieftains from the furthest reaches of Éire had graced us with their presence. Never again would I hear such laughter, or dance until I fell down with exhaustion. Lir was old, but I was still young. I had sold my youth for a silly wish, cast like a hot coal into a bath of mead, my future shattered by my own jealousy. When I did not mourn the loss of my former life, I mourned the failure of my future one. Nyle’s seed had not taken root inside me. I was not with child of my own. I had nothing to offer my husband that might alter his mood. My chances of motherhood had come to naught, for he no longer reached for me in the night. I had nothing to look forward to.
One night, almost a year after the children were gone, I dreamed again of being that hawk, soaring high above Anamcha’s tree. I dreamed that the sky darkened and the storm clouds gathered. At the first crack of lightning, I woke, afraid, and began to cry against my pillow. All that had happene
d seemed far greater than myself. My fears seemed world-swallowing, as though I were merely an ant cast adrift down a leafy river, as though I had no sense of where I came from or where I was headed, nor even of who I was.
As I cried, I felt a warm hand encircle my waist. For the first time since their disappearance, Lir reached for me, his long hair falling against my shoulder as he kissed my neck. I turned towards him and he pressed his lips firmly against mine. My fear forgotten, I felt such hot arousal. To feel him between my legs caused me to cling to him as though the world were ending. I pulled him deeper and deeper into me, until I ceased to exist. He pressed his hand across my mouth as I shuddered in his arms, perhaps not wishing anyone to know that we sought pleasure in the midst of such grief.
I was sick for the first time that day, the day they came for me.
There was only a little clear liquid, which soaked into the earth, leaving a sour scent behind. Yet I knew what it was. I turned to reach for Lir, which is when I found him gone. I was glad at first. I ran my hand across my belly and savoured those silent moments alone. With certainty, I knew that I was with child, and that this child was my husband’s. Mother Moira had not forsaken me, and it made me sad that perhaps she had died in the woods, for she had never returned.
When my husband had not come home that evening, I rose and washed myself. Pulling my finest furs about me, I went to search for him.
“A rider came this morning,” one of the horsehands told me.
“A rider from where?”
“I could not say, my lady. He was dressed only in leather.”
I thought on this for a while, but assumed it must have been trouble at one of the farms. It bothered me though, as Lir paid little attention to the needs of his countrymen. He had left his men to deal with business in the valley.
By morning, he had still not returned, and my anguish built. I spoke with every guard I could find, but none could tell me where he had gone or how long he would be away.
The Children of Lir Page 17