The Children of Lir

by Marion Grace Woolley

  I wanted to say more. I wanted to tell Caílte so many things. We had spent three hundred years there by the lakeside, we had so much time to tell each other what we felt, and now there was no time left and I could think of a hundred thousand things I still needed to say.

  In that moment the stars above shone brighter than I’d ever seen them shine. It would be hours before dawn, yet the seeping light of the sun already flooded the horizon gold. The edges of the world curved away from us, the darkness above opening like a mouth. Without consciously thinking, we had taken flight, a string attached to our hearts, pulling us north to those watery wastes.

  Fionnuala

  The sky turned from black to blue as we sailed across it. Far down below, Éire spread like a patchwork quilt: dark green forests, rich brown earth and blue lakes. On wings as swift as ours, it did not take long to reach the coast, its salt-stained currents filling our lungs, washing out the sweet scent of home.

  Far off to the west we could just make out the remains of Benandonner’s bridge, its grey basalt formed in perfect honeycombs, folding down to the sea. One of the stories Sorcha told us as children was the tale of mighty Benandonner. When the Men of Dea came to claim this land, and Bé Chuille and her sisters tricked the Fomori into fleeing, they found a bridge that connected Éire to those across the sea. They called the bridge the Clochán na bhFomhóraigh, the Fomori Stepping Stones. Little did they realise that on the other side lay a sleeping giant, resting his head on his hands.

  When the Fomori reached Alba, they began climbing up the face of Benandonner, thinking he was a mountain, for over the years ferns and moss had grown about him. He sprouted wild garlic from his ears, and rough mountain grass from his chin.

  With a mighty snort that shook the ground from the north to the south of the world, Benandonner opened one eye. He looked upon these misshapen beings, swarming like ants across him.

  “My ancient foes have finally sent a plague against me!” he roared. Tearing himself from the earth, he shook off the Fomori and began to cross the bridge. Only, he was so angry, and so heavy, that his stomping began to split the rock. When he was only a few feet from shore, the bridge gave a loud crack, and Benandonner fell into the sea, forced to swim home to Alba.

  Far ahead of us lay the Island of Reachlainn. The Danann had little interest in the ragged islands of the cold North Sea. It was said that Reachlainn was occupied by shadow people, the last of Eochaid mac Eirc’s tribe, the king who had died of thirst when the druids denied him water.

  It was said that his people had once been slaves to ancient kings in Greece, and that they had turned barren land fertile by carrying bag after bag of soil on their heads until it was deep enough to plant crops. My people called them the Fir Bolg, the Bag Men, for this reason. It was said that on the Isle of Reachlainn, that is what the shadow people did, all day, every day, carrying bags of soil from one end of the island to the other, in the hopes that one day their small patch of land would grow once more into a kingdom.

  I felt sure that we were headed to Reachlainn, for there was no other land in sight, simply the blue ocean stretching out ahead. Fear gripped me then, for all any of us knew of that place was the legends. Leaving those we loved had been painful enough. To be cast into the clutches of ancient beings seemed a torment too cruel even for Aoife’s design.

  As we approached the island, a dull ache in my chest told me that I had been mistaken. The ache persisted, growing more painful with each beat of my wing, until I was forced to turn against the wind.

  “It hurts!” Conn cried.

  “We are going the wrong way,” I called back. “I thought that we were bound for Reachlainn, but I was wrong.”

  “Fionnuala,” Aodh cried, circling on the wind. “Look!” Behind us, to the east, the sky was turning black. Clouds rolled towards us like they had on the day of our transformation. “Come, we must try to make land!”

  Yet the closer we came to safety, the stronger the pain built until we could hardly breathe through it. The wind itself seemed to have formed a rope about our legs, tugging towards those threatening clouds.

  “I’m scared,” called Fiachra.

  I wished for all the world that I had some words of comfort to offer, but I was just as scared. I could see land, but I could not reach it, and the storm behind formed a black maw of the sky, sucking us in. The worst was that, the further we fell from land, the less our chests pounded. It was as though we were destined to surrender ourselves to the thunder. In that moment, I found my words of comfort.

  “Don’t be afraid,” I cried to them. “It is not our destiny to die here today. We have been cursed three hundred years upon Sruth na Maoile. We have not been here a day. Whatever this sorcery, we will survive it. Have courage brothers. Have courage.”

  I did not know whether my words were true. I knew nothing much of magic. Perhaps the wind would throw us beneath the waves and we would drown, perhaps the clouds would swallow us whole and the lightning burn us like the Lake of Oaks. Yet, deep down, I trusted myself. If Aoife had wanted us dead, she could have done so easily. If her curse had been to spend nine hundred years adrift, then nine hundred years we must surely live to see? I gave up resisting. I tucked my wings against my body and turned into the wind. Thunder shook the air and lightning rocked the sea, reflected back upon itself.

  When my eyes recovered from the glare, a pillar of grey rose before me, unlike any cloud I had seen before. It twisted and turned, eclipsing the sun. In the failing light, I swear I saw a face. A great, screaming mouth, hair like thrashing eels, eyes wide and wicked.

  “Aoife,” I whispered, as I lost consciousness.

  *

  When I awoke, I found myself transformed. I was a girl again, naked and shivering upon a barren rock. I could hear the sea lapping against my island raft, yet I could not see it, for a thick mist had turned everything white.

  I held my hand in front of me, turning it over and stretching my fingers, unfamiliar with what had once been so familiar. It felt bitterly, bitterly cold out there on the ocean. Flakes of snow began to fall, dusting the rocks. Those that landed on flesh, melted away, then gradually lingered longer, as though growing brave of my heat.

  “Fionnuala.” A soft voice came.

  My mother sat beside me on the rock. She was dressed in a thin white tunic with blue and gold stitching, yet she did not seem to shiver. I stared at her as I had stared at my hand, for in all the long years of her death, I had forgotten exactly how she looked. In seeing her again, it was as though she had never truly been away. As though her face had always rested over my shoulder. If I had turned around, I would have seen it.

  “Mother.”

  In that single word, all of my fear and sadness, all of my terror and doubt, flowed to the surface. She pulled me to her and I sobbed as I had not sobbed since the cradle. Without my mother, I had become my mother. I had raised three children whilst still a child myself. Now I had lost them all, for I was alone on that rock. Perhaps the curse had only been for me. Perhaps Aoife had hated me alone, and I was destined to live for six hundred years in the knowledge that I had failed my brothers. In that moment, I knew that they were drowned, and that I was utterly, utterly alone.

  I cried until I fell asleep.

  Bé Chuille

  Sea ragged, sea rage, sea salted as the Feast of Age.

  I pared an apple with my skinning knife and slipped a slice between my teeth. Far down below the waves crashed against the rocks, white foam crowning them like princes of the ocean. I hated the scent of saltwater. The coast was no place for spirits of the forest, with its screaming winds and crumbling earth. Behind me, the treeline stopped, as though those mighty giants knew not to step any closer to the edge.

  Mighty Oak and mighty Pine, honey mead and apple wine.

  Once I had bitten to the core, I wiped my blade on the edge of my tunic and used it to pick clean my nails. Beside me, a single seed sprouted from the fruit’s remains. It twisted as it grew, its roots
like a fist, driving down into the earth, spreading its fingers. Leaves tore through its stem, palms facing towards the sun, hungry for Lugh’s blessing. Within moments that green stem turned to brown bark. White blossomed between its branches and ripe, red apples appeared.

  Love me now or love me never, you’ll find my bones beneath the heather.

  Sharp shells crunched beneath my sandals as I crossed the shore. Selkie-stenched winds ruffled my hair, causing my braids to mat. I reached down for a shard of flint and skimmed it across the top of the waves.

  Nobody answered my calls anymore. The waves never rose higher, the door no longer opened. Once there had been a time when I considered the sea a friend. Before my final disgrace, which had turned my skin to parchment and my hair to snow. I mourned the loss of my former face. The blue of the jay feathers looked paler against white than they did against black; they no longer shone that impossible colour I had so loved all my life.

  As the storm approached across the northern straights, I knew the time had come. Squatting down upon a rock, I watched as the sky turned from dawn to darkness, thick black clouds rolling in from the open waters, illuminated by the flash of dragons fighting in their midst. Waves rolled and split across the jagged rocks of Reachlainn, the Fir Bolg hidden in their paltry huts like the frightened mice their race resembled.

  As the storm worsened, I raised my face to the sky, allowing hail to leave its mark against my aged skin. Once I had lived for the scent of blood, fancying myself a match for Scáthach, the Scottish warrior woman they called The Shadow. I laid waste to wooden forts and Athenian witches. My name was something to be feared, regardless of kingdom or clan.

  My name was still known, yet my powers grew weak, like the blood that dripped from my cheek. Weak to match the weakness of my character. I was no great lover of wine, no gambler. Nor did I glut myself on butter or honey. My weakness was far simpler than that. I was a lover of beauty. I had married old men for their power, or for pity, and bedded their sons for their brilliant youth. It glowed within them, clear and confident. I was drawn to sweet warriors’ smiles, before the first flush of battle pursed their lips. My eyes sought out the flex of their muscles, my ears the arrogance in their throats. I revelled in the way they span on their heels, swords held high, before the death of a brother blunted their appetite for war.

  Innocence, strength, honour. Those three words combined on my tongue as an elixir. It was my pleasure and my poison, for I had brought myself to ruin over it many a time. The great Bé Chuille, to be trusted in battle yet never in bed.

  It was always at my feet they lay the blame. Never at the feet of those beautiful boys, who knew just as well how the faces of their fathers would fall.

  *

  A scream blistered the air, causing me to place my hands across my ears. Though muted by flesh, the voice was still clear. An ancient tongue of the Aos Sí. A language even the Fir Bolg would not remember.

  “Please. Please,” it cried, over and over in its pain.

  My blood grew cold as sleet. When the clouds finally lifted, I cast an eye about the ravaged shore for the thing I had seen in my visions. There, tattered amongst the driftwood and bladderwrack, was a shot of white.

  As I picked my way across the debris, I saw that it did not move. Despite all that I knew of their curse, despite all that I knew of destiny and history, for one brief moment my heart grew still.

  “Aodh?” I whispered, gazing upon his slender neck and outstretched wing.

  His beak opened a fraction.

  From a pouch around my waist, I drew a vial of pepper potion. One drop on his tongue and he was soon wide awake, spluttering up seawater and sand. At first he tried to fly in his panic, his wings beating against the ground as I bound his feet with a thong of leather and placed a hand about his beak. I held him tightly until he calmed.

  “Hush now,” I said in the language of swans. “You are safe.”

  When I finally released him, he staggered about as though drunk.

  “Fionnuala! Fionnuala!” he cried.

  “She is safe also.”

  “Where is she? Who are you?”

  That stung. I had not looked in a mirror since I had been granted mortality. I knew that I had grown old, yet I still felt like myself beneath the skin. It was a hard truth to accept that others did not recognise me. That, after hundreds of years of being beautiful and feared, I now appeared as little more than a feeble old woman.

  “Truly, you do not know me?”

  He looked a long time, then came close and plucked a jay feather from my hair. Placing it in my upturned palm, he nodded and whispered my name.

  “Aye, I have changed somewhat.” I smiled and stroked him beneath the chin. “Neither of us possess our true forms any longer.”

  “What happened?” he asked. “We were on our way to Sruth na Maoile, flying towards Reachlainn—”

  “You are on Reachlainn,” I explained. “A storm came and you were separated.”

  “How could such a storm be? The sky was clear as we left the land.”

  “When your father transformed Aoife into a demon of the air, he did so in punishment. It was a good punishment. Demons of the air are wild creatures, so enwrapped in their pain they feel no remorse for the pain of others. Think of a bull with a stone in its hoof. It becomes so consumed with its own suffering that it pays no heed to where its horns plough. It turns over tables and tramples children, only feeling how its hurt grows by the minute.”

  “Aoife is that bull,” Aodh said, “and we were in her path.”

  “Perhaps she remembered something of her former life and was drawn to you by that memory. Whatever the reason, she no longer knows you through her suffering.”

  “I wish I no longer knew her through mine.”

  I smiled and ran my fingers down his soft wing. He was distracted for a moment before remembering his brothers.

  “Come,” I said, standing stiffly and beginning my journey back along the shore.

  By the far end of the beach, grey stone rose like foam. My sandals slid against it as I began to climb. Aodh’s webbed feet seemed more adept than mine to the task. Between each of the folds of rock was a pool. Hundreds of them. Some shallow, teaming with shrimp, others deep and dark and bottomless. Here and there a crab scuttled from one pool to the next, seeking shelter from our strange shadows. Patches of seaweed hid barnacles that awaited the return of the sea.

  I stopped beside one pool. Not the shallowest, nor the deepest. It was perhaps knee-height in water, its bottom dusted with sand and fist-sized lumps of bright white quartz.

  “Look,” I instructed, waving my hand across its surface.

  An image arose from the depths as Aodh strained his face towards it. There were the twins, Conn and Fiachra, laughing and playing beside a green-glowing hearth. Only, they were not as swans, but as the children they had once been.

  “I don’t understand,” he said, voice thick with longing for a life they had long-since left.

  “Would you like to join them?” I asked.

  “Is that possible?”

  “You have friends in the depths, my darling boy. Did your sister never tell you?” From the blank look on his face, I could tell that his sister never had. “More than friends, in fact. Though the same cannot be said for me.”

  When we returned to the ocean’s edge, I instructed him to wait for me there. It was a long climb to the top of the rocks, and my body was no longer capable of flight as once it had been. Hand over hand, I clawed my way to the trees above, cursing my aching bones.

  Deep in the forest I had built my home. There, beneath the whispering canopy, where the voice of the woods drowned the ocean waves. I yearned to turn back time, to return to the forests of my childhood, before men cut them down to build fires.

  No one bothered me there on Reachlainn. The once-mighty Fir Bolg, whose people had walked out of Egypt with the slaves of the Pharaoh, whose hands had turned fertile the barren rocks of Greece, whose kings had ruled �
�ire and proclaimed its first laws, now shivered in the caves of their island tomb.

  Behind my hut I had erected a small circle of stones, each a sentinel carved in patterns even the Ovates, in their madness, could not navigate. The smaller of the nine protected a secret I had carried for three hundred years. A secret I had agreed to keep in the days when I was still a god, resplendent in my powers.

  Taking an antler from above my door, I began to chisel away at the tough earth. The sun melted down the forest’s edge, turning the ground to gold.

  It took a long time to unearth my precious package, wrapped in oilskin and the stench of mildew. As soon as my fingers pried it loose, I strapped it to my shoulders and set off back towards the sea.

  “I cannot promise that you will like your kin,” I told him, throwing my burden to the ground, “but it is past time you met them.”

  The skin had fallen aside to reveal a sliver of bright blue light. Even before I had fully unwrapped it, Aodh had guessed its name.

  “Fragarach,” he whispered.

  I lifted the great sword in both hands and approached the sea.

  “I know you are listening, and that you stay silent, but hear me now Manannán. I present to you your brother by blood, Aodh mac Lir. Whatever anger you bear me, put it aside and embrace your kin. For your father’s sake if not mine.” I swung back the sword and launched it into the waves. “He sends you this for their safe passage,” I lied. “He said it cuts too deep, its truth too sharp.”

  That last bit was right enough. After my trip to Loch Dairbhreach at King Lir’s bidding, he had taken me aside, heartbroken. There, he had placed Truthsayer in my hands and bid me bring it to his eldest son. He said that it belonged to his line, but that his arms grew heavy of carrying it.

  “Its gift is its truth,” he told me. “Truth is said to save us. Well, I want no protecting from lies. Truth has brought me nothing but hurt, and I’m hurt enough.”