“What do you want of the swans?” I asked.
“We have heard they can sing,” Ainmuire said. “That they sing more beautifully than anything living. We would have them sing for our guests.”
“What you offer is generous, my King, but still my answer is the same. I tend this island, it is my home, but I cannot sell you the swans for they are not mine to give. This is their home also.”
Ainmuire stared at me as one who is unaccustomed to being declined. I was afraid then. A king he might be, but also a Prince of the North, who won his crown by slaughtering those who stood in his way. What was to stop him from taking my head, and taking the swans?
“What would you have us sing?” Aodh asked. They looked down at him as though the Lord Jesus Christ had revealed himself to them. “At your wedding, what would you have us sing?”
“I— I don’t know, what can you sing?” Brigid managed.
“So many sad songs. Would you like to hear one?”
She nodded.
Fionnuala, Fiachra and Conn came to join their brother. They lifted their tongues in a threnody so sweet and sad that tears sprang from our eyes. It called to mind every hurt and loss we had ever suffered. It brought before us the faces of those we loved most, and those we had lost. The song tugged at our hearts like an undercurrent, pulling us down to the depths of our being.
Soon, the king, the queen and the oarsman fell fast asleep before the smouldering embers of the kiln. Only I remained awake, for perhaps I had fewer regrets than they, and I was used to the swans singing of an evening.
“Do not let them take us,” Aodh said. “You know we cannot leave these waters. If they take us by force, we will be in agony.”
“I will not let them take you,” I promised.
The next morning, Ainmuire and Brigid woke beneath the blankets I had placed over them. We ate a meal of fish and bread in silence.
When she finally found her voice, Brigid said, “That is far too sad a song for a wedding.”
“No, it is not a wedding song,” I agreed.
“Still, we should have the children of Lir at our wedding,” Ainmuire said. “They are the descendants of a king themselves. It only befits their status, and it would be a great honour for us.”
“My King, I am ever your loyal servant, but these children fall under my protection. They have lived far longer than is natural for them. They have endured such hardship and loss. They seek sanctuary upon this island that they may not be subjected to the scrutiny of others. There are many in this world less noble than yourself. Many who might seek to own them or to harm them for profit. I beg of you, do them this kindness and let them live out their days here, in peace. In return, I offer you my blessing today, here on this island, that they may indeed be present at your wedding.”
Brigid’s face brightened. “You would marry us here, today?”
“Unthinkable,” said the King.
“Oh, my love. It’s a wonderful thought. A secret between you and me. Everything we have prepared, the feasting and the music, the show of it all, that is for other people, but this – this is for us, and us alone.”
“It is against all convention.”
“Who is to know?”
They looked at one another for a long while, a slow smile spreading across Ainmuire’s lips.
“I can refuse you nothing,” he said eventually. “Very well, but priest, hear this. Should you ever tell another soul what happened here today, I will unite you with God sooner than you might hope.”
“I will tell no one, you have my word.”
And so it was, I prepared the altar and took up the cloth to bind their hands. They stood beside the shore, the swans and the oarsman their only witnesses.
Brigid ingen Cobthaig
The boatman’s name was Séarlas. No doubt he felt duped. He must have known we were noble by our clothes, yet to ferry his king and queen without knowing, that must have come as quite a surprise.
“Come here,” I instructed. “Mochaomhog will need a man to hold the cup whilst he reads. We’ll see you rewarded for your service, and your silence.”
Still, he was reluctant to step forward.
“What is it?” my beloved asked. “This is a wedding, yet you look as though it’s a wake.”
“I don’t want no part in magic,” he said, rubbing the white whiskers beneath his chin. “This isn’t a place for me.”
“What are you talking of?” Mochaomhog asked. “You’ve brought my food every month for years now. You can’t tell me you fear the swans? Have we not sat by the fire and shared a tale whilst they told theirs? Have you not stroked their feathers and sung to them before?”
“Aye. It’s not the children I fear.”
“Please,” I said, seeing his reluctance. “If it’s that we’re marrying before our time, I promise you, no scorn will fall on you. No one will ever know if you keep your peace and we keep ours. I love this man with all my heart. We simply wish to marry our own way, without a hundred eyes upon us.”
“It isn’t that, either.”
“Then what?” Ainmuire asked, losing patience.
“Don’t you know how the story goes? The way them children gets their form back?”
“Of course,” he replied. “Flowers will bloom in the north.”
“Not flowers, my King. One flower. ‘A flower from the south takes root in the north,’ is how the story goes.”
Mochaomhog frowned at this. In truth, so did I.
And then I laughed.
“You think I am that flower?” The boatman simply shrugged. “I assure you, these swans have been swans a long time. As much as I look forward to the day they are restored, I doubt very much it will be today. Even if it were, why would that be cause for anything other than celebration?”
“Don’t you remember who turned them that way?” Séarlas asked.
“Of course. Their stepmother, Aoife.”
“No,” came Fionnuala’s voice, soft by the shore. “Our stepmother cast the spell, but the magic was not hers.”
“Then whose?”
The swans remained silent, none would raise their eyes to ours.
“It were the Morrígan,” the boatman said. “The Phantom Queen. They say she knew the old magic—”
“What is older than the Tuatha Dé Denann?” Ainmuire asked.
“Many things,” replied Aodh. “We conquered these lands from the Fomori. Our mother’s people.”
“And before that,” Fiachra said, “there were the Aos Sí.”
“As you say, we have been swans a long time,” Fionnuala said.
I felt a chill, a soft breeze flowing from the ocean.
“Then it should be your choice,” I told them. “We are guests on your island. We came to take you away from here, and you did not wish to come. If you would like us to leave now, simply say so, and we will go.”
It was Conn, the littlest one, who came forward.
“We do not know what will happen when the spell is lifted,” he said. “I have been afraid of this moment for so very long, and I am tired of being afraid. We have lived such a long life that I am tired of life itself. All we have loved we have lost. We love Mochaomhog, yet we know, one day, he too must leave us.” Mochaomhog opened his mouth to protest, but Conn continued. “When I am by myself, I am alone with my sorrow. When we are together, we remind each other daily of the sorrows we have shared. I am weary of being surrounded by sorrow. I want to live again. I want to be a boy, who grows to be a man, who loves and is loved, who takes a woman as his wife, who has sons and daughters of his own. I want all of that, or none at all. I cannot be what I am any longer.”
He looked behind to his siblings, and they stepped forward to stand beside him.
“It is time,” Aodh said. “We have lived nine hundred years together. We will face what is to come, together.”
For a moment, I felt uncertain. It seemed far better that Ainmuire and I simply get aboard our boat and row home to the mainland. I felt that
we had stumbled upon a story we did not understand, and I was afraid of our part in it. Yet something else called to me. These were the last of the Tuatha Dé Denann, and none had seen their faces in nine hundred years. If our marriage truly could break the spell upon them, what a thing it would be to behold those ancient gods. What a thing to present them at our wedding before all the Men of Ireland. People would talk of nothing else for generations.
“If we are all agreed?” I asked, taking my beloved’s hand in mine.
So it began.
Mochaomhog read from his sacred book whilst Séarlas held the cup of wine.
“In the sight of the one true God, in the light of Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour, you come here today of your own free will, to unite as husband and wife?”
“I do,” my love and I replied.
“Brigid ingen Cobthaig, being of sound mind and loving heart, you take this man before you, Ainmuire mac Sétnai, as your sworn husband? You promise to protect him from harm, to stand by his side through all that may come, to share in his sunlight and be his shelter from the gathering storms? You will bring no dishonour to his name, you will tell him no lies, and you will treat his enemies as you would treat your own? Nurse him when he falls sick, dance with him when he be merry, and bind yourself to him from this day forth until your soul is claimed for God?”
“I will cherish my husband always, and accept all duties as his wife.”
Mochaomhog turned to Ainmuire to repeat his vows.
Then he took our hands and placed mine on top of my husband’s, wrapping them in a length of white cloth embroidered with the Holy Cross at either end.
“Here, on this day, I grant the blessing of our eternal Lord. I pronounce you Man and Wife. High King and Queen of Ireland.”
Laughter escaped my lips and I pressed them to my husband’s. At that moment, I knew there could be no happier woman in all the lands. The man I had loved since I was a child had taken me to wife, and I felt certain that we would live a long and joyful life.
As I released his face, my hands fell to my sides.
There before us stood four young figures, naked as the day they were born!
They raised up their arms and turned their hands before their faces as though they had never seen themselves before. Their skin was paler than ours, almost as white as their feathers had been, and their hair was the brightest, buttercup gold.
“The children of Lir,” Ainmuire whispered.
Fionnuala looked to me, her bright-blue eyes searching mine for some explanation. Her brother Aodh was still a few years shy of manhood, yet he bore the body of a warrior. And the twins – the twins were astonishing. Mirror images of one another, if Conn perhaps a shave slimmer.
It was the twins who broke our silence. Fiachra leapt at Conn and pushed him to the ground. They rolled over and over across the sand, laughing and shouting with joy. We couldn’t contain ourselves, we all began to laugh too.
Then Fionnuala took a step towards me.
In that moment, black clouds spilled like ink across the sky. A strong wind whipped up sand devils on the shore whilst the waves grew tall as men. Thunder cracked, and lightning struck the roof of the church, causing the stones to collapse at one end. The air grew thick with ancient words. Words whispered over and over in a language I did not understand.
Our shrieks of joy turned to shrieks of fear, as we cowered on the ground, our hands held over our heads for protection. As Fionnuala took another step towards me, her hair flowed out behind as though she floated in water. With each step her skin began to age. Her breasts became fuller, her hair and nails longer, her waist thicker; a rose blooming. Then, faster than I believed possible, her smooth skin began to wrinkle, her golden hair turned grey and her spine bent in upon itself like a crone.
“No!” I heard the priest cry. He got to his feet and ran towards her. Even before he crossed that short distance, her flesh started to peel and flake, blown away by the wind. I wanted to cover my face, but I could not move. I watched as her eyes whitened and her lips fell away to expose teeth.
I watched as nine hundred years took hold.
When the wind finally died, all that was left of the children of Lir was a pile of ash.
I placed my hands to my mouth, but I could not hold in the scream.
It took a long time for Ainmuire to reach me and place his arms about me, for he was trembling just as hard.
*
We found Séarlas inside the church, praying on his knees beside the altar. A thick trickle of blood ran from his temple where a stone had struck him.
We fell to our knees beside him, and repeated the words he spoke.
That night, wrapped in blankets against the cold, we helped Mochaomhog dig a shallow grave, shallow enough that the sea would not drown it. We worked silently, for Mochaomhog dug like a man possessed, and I could hear the words inside his head: You came here and destroyed that which you could not claim. I know that, because I thought it too.
Once the hole was deep enough, I went to collect the few bones I could find, only Mochaomhog held up his hand to prevent me. My love came instead, holding me to his chest as the priest unfolded a large white cloth and collected the remains himself. He placed Fionnuala first, bending to kiss her skull, stroking it as though it still had hair.
Next, he brought the twins, placing one to her left and the other to her right, I could no longer tell which was which.
Finally, he brought Aodh, and placed him across her breast.
As he drew the cloth across them, those faces I had so longed to see vanished from this world forever.
Manannán mac Lir
I had removed the quartz and piled it beside their grave like a mound of snow. By the time the priest woke to the sound of my shovel, he found me there, heaping earth beneath the moonlight.
“What are you doing!” he cried. “Get away from there! Get away!”
He ran at me, but found he could not reach me. The air about him thickened and all he could do was watch, drowning in the scent of sea-weed and saltwater.
“Put down your shovel – I’ll give you anything you ask for. I’ll give you the cup from the altar, it’s worth something. I’ll give you my bread and flour and what little wine I have. Only please, don’t disturb them.”
I turned and drew back my cowl. He could see that I was not of his world and fell silent. Though my eyes no longer glowed as bright as they had before Mona burned, I was still taller and broader than any of those mortals; the blood of the ancients flowed through my veins.
“I do not come to disturb them,” I replied. “I come to release them.”
“They are resting. I commended their souls to God myself—”
“The wrong god.”
Oh, how I longed to reach out and snap his feeble neck. This man who, through his own people’s ignorance, had slaughtered my people and betrayed all that I held dear. What good was an empty cup and bitter wine to me, when he had stolen everything of mine?
I turned and continued digging until the blade of my shovel found cloth. Then I knelt in the dirt and began clawing it aside.
“Don’t stand there,” I told him. “Help.”
Slowly, he came to my side and began removing the earth a fistful at a time. Once the pall was exposed, I ordered him to take one end and we carried them down to the shore.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“A friend of their father.”
His face declared that to be impossible, but he did not say so.
“You have a boat?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Fetch it. And the wine you spoke of.”
As I waited, I drew aside the cloth. Had it not been for their positions, I would not have been able to tell them apart. Dust and bones. Each emaciated face the portrait of age.
Mochaomhog made a great display of huffing and heaving that little rowboat across the sand. I could have beckoned it with my finger, but I took pleasure in watching him struggle.
Whe
n he finally arrived, I lifted my feather-light siblings into the boat whilst he brought the wine.
“The blood of your Christ?” I asked. When he gave no answer, I told him that it had been the blood of stronger men once.
I held the bottle to the children’s lips, grapes staining the white shroud as it trickled between gaping jaws. Then I poured part of it over them, took a sip myself, and emptied the rest into the ocean.
“Push the boat out,” I commanded. “Your grave was a kind gesture, but these are children of the sea, and it is to the sea – and to their family – they must return.”
Mochaomhog pushed the boat, though he did so weeping.
“Wait,” he said, removing the holly-wood cross that hung from his neck and going to place it in the boat.
“She does not want that,” I hissed.
He looked at me as though he loathed me, yet he stepped back.
Side by side, we watched the boat sail out upon the silent water.
When it was far enough from shore, I raised my hand and sent a bolt of blue lightning to it. The wood caught immediately and within moments the bodies were engulfed in flame, thick fingers of sapphire twisting and entwined, reaching for the sky.
Mochaomhog hung his head, pressing his fist to his forehead in the way of those milk-blooded men who try so hard to tame their emotion.
“Hush, and watch.”
The flames started to take shape, separating and merging, coils of smoky hair, tendrils of flickering light forming faces.
“Fionnuala,” he gasped.
“Fionnuala, Aodh, Fiachra and Conn.”
As the rowboat sank beneath the surface, another boat came out of the night to collect the children. When the prow of Wave Sweeper came underfoot, the flames shrank to a glow and became solid. There were my brothers and sister, as beautiful as they had been in the days of Tír fo Thuinn.
Mochaomhog stood, transfixed, yet the children themselves were more taken by the guests I had brought to greet them. They were not alone on my boat. There was a woman with hair as fair as sunlight. Two of the children recognised her, two did not. For this was Aobh of Arran, their mother. Fionnuala ran to her, pulling the twins close that they might meet for the first time since sweat and blood had separated them.
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