The Children of Lir

by Marion Grace Woolley

  I was supposed to take it straight to the sea and throw it in, but instead I kept it for a while. For a long, long, while. Magical gifts grow rarer by the passing of each summer. Once, in the early days of the Tuatha Dé Danann, they were plentiful. Each god tried to win favour with his followers, coaxing heroes from their midst with healing harps, truth-telling swords and horses that could race on water.

  Now, the reign of the Danann was fading. The common folk saw that as clearly as I. The only ones who refused to acknowledge it were the mighty Danann themselves. They drank and danced and fought and laughed as though their invasions were just beginning. They failed to see the length of the shadow as each day grew shorter.

  The common folk joked that the gods of the Danann had grown small and fled to the hills, whilst the heroes had grown tall and turned to giants. There was truth in that. The gods walked like men upon the earth, and seemed to grow smaller in voice and stature. The heroes, such as Cú Chulainn and mac Cumhaill, became the true giants of history. Their legends gave strength before battle, turned the craven brave, and boys into men. They were to be remembered when Bodb’s kingdom fell. Gods remembered as heroes, or not at all.

  I had kept hold of that sword for one simple reason. In a world where magic grows rare, you do not squander what little you have left. In this I had been right, for I doubted Lir’s son would have opened his gates for less.

  Aodh

  A wave rose as high as a horse. Within its pale-green landscape, a shadow stood, swathed in black, a hood covering its face. The wave crested above, shale deafening as it tumbled over itself, sucked towards the sea by the retreating current.

  My wings began to flap, but Bé Chuille reached down and lifted me up, holding me firmly beneath her arm.

  “You forgot one,” she said, shouting to be heard over the sea.

  “I forgot nothing, Witch of Lámhfada. You see the future as well as I.”

  The figure’s voice flooded forward, thick and salty as though half-drowned.

  “Shall I bring him?”

  “You have brought me enough, Bé Chuille. More than I ever wanted of you. Let the boy come if that is his wish.”

  “Tell me, brother sweet,” she said, crouching on the sand. “How did one as handsome as you turn so ugly? Too much time in the company of crabs?”

  I struggled in her arms, for I was a wild creature and hated to be trapped.

  “Fine,” the voice boomed, white froth spilling from his lips. “If you must come, come.”

  With a smile, my captor rubbed the feathers of my crown and stood. Her arm tightened as I writhed in terror. The wall of water seemed impossibly high, and a memory surfaced of a day on a lake, far away and long ago, when I had been dragged beneath.

  Ribbons of sky reflected in the wave, placing me in a trance. My ears filled with sound and my eyes with salt. When I opened them, I stood in the centre of a cold, dank room. I knew that something had changed, for I looked down on the world from a greater height. My mind froze for fear the illusion might not hold. Yet there were my feet, bound in leather boots, my legs in thick, soft wool, and about my shoulders a woolfskin draped.

  “Welcome,” Manannán spoke, watching as I held my hands before me, clenching and unclenching my fingers, unable to believe my eyes.

  “It is impossible!” I said, a smile on my lips.

  A wooden door clattered open to one side of the hearth, its eerie green glow illuminating my brothers as they tumbled towards me. They embraced me so hard that we fell to the ground, my head cracking against the flagstones.

  “Look at us!” Conn cried, laughing as I held him above me. “We’re boys again!”

  And boys they were. Exactly the same as I remembered them. Not a day older, not an inch taller.

  “So you are,” I said, rolling to my feet and placing him beside me. I ruffled Fiachra’s hair as he clung to my leg, delighting in the simple human scent of them. A swan barely smells of anything, it blends with the waterweed and the fish who sleep beneath the reeds. Only the fox can sniff its dinner from the air. Yet my brothers smelled like brothers. Their soft crowns of gold smelled of summer, of green grass and hay. I longed for home. “You said no one could return us to our mortal shape,” I said, turning to Bé Chuille.

  “That is true, it saddens me to say. You can never walk again as mortals on this earth.”

  “But—”

  “You are not of this earth,” Manannán interrupted. “Here beneath the waves you are my guests, in a place few mortals ever tread. We are closer to Tír na nÓg than to Éire. For as long as you remain here, the sorcery of our father’s lands holds no sway. The moment you return to the surface, you return to your enchanted forms.”

  “Our father?”

  “Your sister never told you?” Manannán drew down his hood and I took a step back. His face was that of our father’s, only younger, as he must have been when he met our mother. His cheeks were sharply defined, cradled by a neat black beard. His hair was knotted to the side of his head, as large as two fists pressed together. Yet it was his eyes that defined him. They glowed blue with an unearthly light from within. “We are kin, you and I. Whereas you were born from his union with the earth, I am born of the sea.”

  “Where is my sister?” I asked.

  “She fell too far from my door,” he replied. “I have sent my wife to watch over her.”

  Bé Chuille snorted loudly.

  “You have something to say?” he asked, turning his attention to her.

  “You have always been heedless of the feelings of others, yet even for you that is distasteful.”

  The green of the hearth flared blindingly bright.

  “Careful, Bé Chuille. Your tongue flows freely where it should be tamed. Have you forgotten your mortality?”

  “Had you ever been mortal, you would know that one can never be free of thinking on it. Every sunrise and every sunset you think on it, wondering how many more there might be.”

  “Few, if you continue.”

  “Fine, then bring the ocean down about my ears. Drown me, as my sister wished you had. What little time I have left, what little power still flows through my veins, this weak, mortal magic that remains to me, I shall not waste it buttering your salty hide. You send my sister to watch over those she has ruined, and you think it a kindness?”

  “You do not know that.”

  “I know it for a certainty. As do you.”

  Manannán turned from her to thump his fist against the mantelpiece.

  The twins clung tighter to me as we gazed upon the figure’s back. His cloak was furrowed like rock, tendrils of slippery seaweed dripping as though he had slept on the ocean bed.

  “What does he mean?” Fiachra stammered. “How have we been ruined?”

  I squeezed his shoulder, glad that he had asked the question I felt I could not.

  “You have stepped inside a strange clan,” Bé Chuille said, plucking a jay feather from her hair. “Incestuous, jealous and greedy.” She smiled a rotten smile as she beckoned us closer to the flames. “Look,” she said, placing the feather there. It hovered for a moment in the cold heat before curling in on itself, folding into a seam of black smoke. Once the smoke had cleared, images played within the hearth, bright light upon dark light, shadow upon sun.

  “Who is she?” Conn asked, leaning in close to look at a beautiful lady. “Is that you?”

  Bé Chuille shook her head. “No, child, though you are forgiven for thinking it. That is my one remaining sister, Fand. We were all born of the forest, long ago. Two of my sisters were of my age, Dianann and Bé Téite. Dianann was bantuathaid, like myself, a powerful sorceress. Our youngest sister, Bé Téite, thought herself one. As a girl, she watched our games and wished to play. Yet her skills were never as great as ours. She rode into battle with us, but was not able to hold her own. Dianann died protecting her.” Bé Chuille’s voice ran thick, her eyes glistening against the flames. “Then there was Fand, the most like our mother of all. She carrie
d the heart of the forest within her. Wherever she walked, flowers bloomed. The animals would seek her out to speak with her, and she could transform herself into any of them. Her special gift was to take their form.”

  In the flames, the beautiful woman became smoke, twisting and reforming as a deer, a salmon and a hawk.

  “After the invasions were won, Fand’s heart was captured by the son of a Danann lord—”

  “She gave it freely,” Manannán snapped, turning from the wall.

  “Forgive me, yes. She fell in love with a Danann lord’s son.” Her smile slipped cruel across her lips. She never took her eyes from the flames, where the beautiful girl reappeared, standing by the coast. A wave rose to swallow her and a fish leapt from the silent depths.

  “Your sister married our brother?” My eyes darted between Manannán and the witch.

  “And from that day forth, she only took one form. A beautiful white gull, with wings that span the sky.” The fire reflected her story. “One day, those wings carried her far, far across the waves—”

  “Stop now,” Manannán spoke. This time Bé Chuille raised her eyes to meet his, yet she continued telling her story.

  “Those wings of hers took her to the heart of Éire. To the thickest of its forests, where she felt her ancestors calling. She stopped beside a stream…” Bé Chuille’s voice trailed off as the flames flickered and glowed. In their light the gull landed by a river and became a naked woman who knelt to wash herself. Behind, a great warrior appeared with shield and spear, mounted atop a horse like a bull.

  The image exploded into a thousand sparks as Manannán brought down a fire iron against the grate. The vision was gone, those unearthly coals faded to black. In their place, a soft blue glow arose from clumps of crustaceans nestled high on the watery walls. I could barely make out Bé Chuille’s face.

  “You may rage all you like, but the story holds true. You had your share of women, my sister took her share of men.”

  “Who was he?” Fiachra asked, his voice tremulous.

  “Why, the greatest of all the warriors, sweet boy. The one they called Cú Chulainn.”

  At this, our eyes grew wide. We had spent our childhood raised on Sorcha’s shadow-stories of the great warrior Fionn mac Cumhaill and the Fianna, yet Cú Chulainn was the greatest of them all. Raised by the bantuathaid of Mona, perfecting the arts of war and magic, he won every battle he fought.

  “What became of them?” Fiachra pressed.

  “They loved each other well for many moons—”

  “Until his wife found out,” Manannán interrupted, his breathing heavy in the dark. “Emer was a fearsome woman. She led a tribe of fearsome women. They armed themselves with knives and sought out the place that cur had bedded my wife. They wrote their names across her face and she fled home to me.”

  “And what a gentle welcome you gave her,” Bé Chuille spat. “Washing her wounds with saltwater to make her scream.”

  “Aye, she screamed loud enough.” His blue eyes blazed through the dark.

  “Did Cú Chulainn come after her?” I asked.

  “He tried, but your brother pulled a cloak of mist about her so thick he could never find her.”

  “She consented,” Manannán growled. “I did not force it on the woman. She knew she’d done wrong.”

  “As you knew Breena, and Tullia, and Whiltierna were wrong?”

  Suddenly he was there beside Bé Chuille, his hand raised in that ghostly light. Her face turned away as though expecting it to land. Conn cried out beside me, frightened by his surroundings and the brutish behaviour of our brother. Yet Manannán’s fist did not land, and Bé Chuille’s face did not remain turned. She looked back, holding his eyes as he held his rage.

  “I know,” she said softly. “I know, sweet brother.” She took his hand as he lowered it, and placed it against her lips. “But you must understand. Surely you must know what has happened.”

  Our brother turned his gaze on us, as though looking past to something far away. “Is it her?”

  “Isn’t it always?”

  “How do you know?”

  “Can’t you smell it? Her perfume clings to them.”

  “Sweet as sage, rotten as meat,” he whispered.

  Fand

  As Fionnuala slept upon the rock, I curled my legs beneath me and peered into the slate-grey waters, listening to my sister speak. I was angry that Manannán had granted her access to our home, knowing full well that I would never have allowed it. Though what she spoke of held me captive.

  It had been so many years ago. More than counting, and not long after I was wed. I loved my husband, truly I did. He was all that a man should be, tall and handsome, strong in battle like his father Lir. Every woman lusted after him, yet I was the one who held his eye.

  When the son of the Sea asks you to wife, you do not refuse.

  Yet I had not thought how hard it might be to leave the forests of my birth. Little that is green grows in saltwater, and that which does is slippery and malformed. Manannán’s home is grand and sprawling, for there are none at the bottom of the sea to argue over land. There are rooms built of coral, and rooms of mother of pearl, rooms formed of crab claws and others of salt, their mighty pillars glittering beneath the luminescence of water worms.

  It is a sight to behold, yet few ever behold it.

  We could not call the clans to us, to come and feast on fish and brine. Our fort lies on the border between life and death, where my husband keeps his watch, ferrying souls to the other side. No one comes willing, for fear they might never return.

  In those days I missed my sisters, especially Bé Chuille, my closest in age. We looked so alike. Though her hair was dark as the raven, and mine white as the owl, our eyes were the same black and our features sharp. She took to wearing jay feathers in her hair, and I plucked the blood-red of the robin’s breast. Back then we confided everything in one another, except my husband’s infidelity.

  Even before we were wed, I knew that he had a lust for life even a dying man cannot match. Like his father, he drank and sang and warred and whored. Yet women were drawn to him. Every daughter of a chief thought they could tame his wild ways. They lined up in winter to hitch up their skirts and urinate in the snow, trying to prove themselves most desirable by pissing deepest. Yet it wasn’t for my ability to steam the frozen grass that he loved me most. I believe it is true what the cunning folk say, that mirror images despise themselves. He loved me because I was so different to all that he knew. I was quiet where he was loud, I was light to his dark, and walked the earth where he trod water.

  I suppose I loved him for the same, and for his noble name, which is a vanity I have long-since regretted. For I had not thought how opposites could form a whole together. In my childhood I had loved to change form. I pranced with the deer, slunk with the stoats, suckled from the wild she-bear and climbed with the tree cats. Yet there are no bears in the caves beneath the sea, and there are no trees to climb or places to slink in the salty depths. Down there, the shades of brown and green are very different to the forest, and always there is the thick scent of brine.

  Most days I was happy enough. I took the shape of a giant gull and roamed far and wide across the ocean, stopping to talk to the fishermen and diving for my dinner. Manannán afforded me a shield of sea birds above, and a steward of selkies and merrows below.

  Yet I knew these were for his protection, not mine. If I turned for home too early, they would race ahead, announcing my arrival in time for him to throw whichever woman he was coveting from his bed.

  One day I played a trick on them. I turned suddenly for home, and in the flurry of the sky, I dropped fast into the ocean and changed myself to a seal. I swam off quickly in the opposite direction until I lost sight of them. Turning back to the wide-winged gull, I sped for shore with the harshest yearning to see home.

  I dashed over the frothing waves and up above the bright white cliffs. Over the fields and the farmland, over the lochs and the lakes. I wa
s still a long way from the forest of my youth when my arms began to ache. I rested for a while in a small glade, beside a pool of water. It tasted so sweet that I decided to bathe, taking great clumps of grass in my fists to scrub away the salt. It was there that Cú Chulainn found me. I turned to see him beneath the trees, holding his famed Gáe Bulg with its wicked spikes. I was afraid, for I had heard tell of that spear. How, once thrown, it had to be cut out of its victims. I also knew of Cú Chulainn’s temper, the ríastrad that fell upon him, causing him to hack down women and children after battle, or to bring down the roof of a house on the girls who had attacked Lugaid’s wife.

  I froze in the water, with only grass to cover my nakedness.

  “Forgive me,” he said gently, turning his eyes away and causing his horse to move on.

  I thought he had left me, so I finished washing and stood from the water. That is when I saw his cloak upon the rock. Beautiful, rich blue fabric. I took it and wrapped it about myself, for I wore no clothes when travelling as a beast, and I had not planned to meet with mortals in my human form.

  As I stood there, drying in the sun, I felt his hand press against my shoulder.

  “I simply wished to know that you are real,” he whispered. “I thought perhaps you were one of the hill folk. I feared you might disappear beneath my touch.”

  He smelled of the warm forest earth, not of the dead salty depths.

  I did not resist as he swept my hair from my neck and placed there a silent kiss.

  Like summer grass, I bent as he leant me against the rock, pulling his cloak up over my thighs. He placed his hand between my legs, exploring with fingers deft and slick with my desire.

  “Please,” I breathed, though whether I meant it in protest or passion, I cannot recall.

  His flesh was as wide as any man I had known, the pain of his entry giving way to a terrible pleasure as he began to move within me. The sound of the sea, which had drowned all my thoughts, gave way to birdsong at last.

  He pulled my hips towards him, further from the rock, so that he could continue to touch me whilst he thrust. I cried out so loudly that the songbirds fled the trees. When his seed flooded me, he slumped down across my back, breathing hard.