Hag

by Kathleen Kaufman

  But as she sized Paul up, categorizing his benefits and weighing the risks, she didn’t see that. Alice saw that their children would be intelligent and gentle. He had an almost magical quality with animals. Stray cats would wind their ways out of their hiding spots to rub against his legs and follow him down the sidewalk. Once, when they had been walking past a tiny pet store in a shopping center, a red-and-green parrot that had been placed in a wretched display in the front, chained to its perch, protected with only a small sign warning not to touch, jumped off its perch, fluttered its useless wings, and landed on Paul’s shoulder. As it landed, it began to squawk a series of complaints, and Paul had looked at it as though the senseless noises made perfect sense. It had continued until the pet store owner came running, bawling Paul out for grabbing the bird. No one could convince him otherwise, and Paul had laughed about it later. What was the bird saying, Alice had asked teasingly. What does anyone say, he had responded sadly. The bird had been unhappy and needed to tell someone about it.

  Paul gave his pocket change to anyone who asked. Alice wrinkled her nose and asked him how did he know they weren’t just going to spend it on liquor or drugs? “What do I care?” Paul had responded. “That man needs money, and I have some. Now we both have some.” Alice had, from that point on, kept a few quarters or even a dollar in easy access and gave it without question to the men who sat on the corners in Colorado Springs, some back from the war, some staring into space, their minds left behind in a jungle in Vietnam.

  But Paul also had a streak of wildness that scared Alice. His missteps were blamed on his tragic Welshness by Mum. But the thing that drove his actions had nothing to do with being Welsh, or a man, or even an inability to see the consequences of his actions. He was destructive, and in the moments when he lost track of himself seemed to revel in the abandon. His eyes changed color and narrowed so that the pupils became pinpricks of darkness. He could be cruel, and Alice had seen him turn his anger toward his strict Welsh mother and thin-lipped sister. He had older brothers as well who had moved from the family home, leaving Paul there. The mother and sister attended Mass twice a week and reminded Paul at every opportunity that he was bound for hell. As for himself, Paul had no use for the Church. He could not speak of it without his face clouding over with what Alice grew to understand was the precursor to his alternate self, the one who hurt others and lashed out at the world around him. But now he was out of his mother and sister’s house; he was a man on his own. Fresh out of boot camp and bound for war.

  “Let’s just do it,” Paul repeated to Alice as he settled back on the scratchy sofa, a beer in his hand and an unreadable smile on his lips. “Look, if I get blown up in a jungle next month—which, let’s face it, is likely—you will get all the benefits and money from the government. Otherwise, it’s going to Mom and Sis, and Jesus, you can at least appreciate the tragedy in that.”

  Alice had reached over and slapped his leg a bit harder than she intended. He’d winced slightly, but the grin on his face widened.

  “So it’s a financial arrangement, is it?” Alice had countered. “You really work a number on the romance, don’t you?”

  “Firstly, ouch. Secondly, not entirely. We get on well don’t we? We were meant to be together; I’ve known that since your hat nearly ran me off the road. You believe in signs; I know you do. Who else are you going to marry? Your aunt will sell you to the Mennonites if you hit thirty and aren’t hitched, and you scare the hell out of everyone else, except maybe that boy your Mum told me about from school…” His voice was light, but his eyes had taken on a tint that made the hazel look more gold than brown.

  Alice had closed her eyes then reached over, taking the beer bottle from Paul’s hands and helping herself to a swig.

  “That boy is brain-damaged, and truth be told, he didn’t have much up there even in the best of days,” she muttered. She was stalling, the precipice before her looming ever closer.

  “Alice, we could build a life together, you and I. We believe in the same things, we want the same things. If I make it back in one piece, we can build our own house away from here, live our lives without anyone telling us what is right or proper. We can have a family. And if I get shot the moment I step foot in-country, you’ll be set and you can do whatever you like. We all win.” He took both her hands and stared deeply into her eyes, not blinking, and Alice felt the old path, the one she had glimpsed back on High Street, open back up, and with a deep breath and full knowledge of the counter of light and dark, stepped off the precipice.

  ON THE DAY OF her twelfth year, Muireall kissed her mother and father goodbye and left for the ancient temple in the highland hills. Her escorts were young women wearing blood-red robes that covered their faces. The townspeople feared them, and no one would meet her gaze as they walked the lane out of town and to the road. The journey would take days on foot; that was what Mum had said. And we won’t see you for many years, perhaps never again, Mum had also said with tears in her eyes. Muireall hadn’t understood why she had to go, but Mum and Da had been insistent. The smallpox was creeping around the harbor, Da said. The ships that came from England were ripe with it; a cargo ship full of bodies sat far off in the water, no one daring to touch it. It would sit there for years, the bodies rotting into the frames, the abandoned ship eventually sinking into the water from disuse. Already, the fishmonger and his wife were dead of the pox, his children left wandering the lane. No one would take them in for fear of infection.

  Mum knew how to mix medicines, but her poultices and compotes only eased fever and rashes; they couldn’t fix this. She fussed over Muireall and Da, and Granddad and Grandmum too. Muireall’s cousins were all men now and worked on the ships. Mum made them drink solutions made from berries and herbs she found on the cliffside whenever they came around. Muireall had heard stories of her Mum, how Granddad and Grandmum had taken her in when she was a girl. No one would believe it to see; Mum and Granddad had the same fire-red hair and coral eyes. That was how she got her name according to Da: Coira, for the sea rocks. Mum still claimed not to know what had happened to her before she ended up in the village, but Muireall wondered why she knew the things she knew. No one could heal like her; no one understood the plants and herbs like she did.

  The elders mistrusted her and had once even raised a case for witching, or so Da told Muireall. They were to hold a trial over a poultice she made for the reeve’s son. The boy had had the flu, and death was certain, but the next morning he had woken as though never was a brighter day. His fever broken, there was no trace of illness about him. It was witchcraft, the elders said, and Mum was taken in for questioning. However, before the trial could begin—as Da told Muireall late at night as he tucked her into bed—before the trial could begin, a wave larger than any that had ever been seen rose on the sea, a storm the likes of which even the most seasoned sailor had never known rose up, and the town was near destroyed. The chief elder who had raised the complaint was killed, drowned and his body drug out to sea, not even a proper burial. No one had much interest in pursuing it after that, Da said. The townspeople love your Mum; she’s saved so many lives here, he had said to Muireall, and no one thinks her a witch except the old man who drowned in the storm.

  Muireall wept when Mum and Da told her she was to leave. It’s a school of sorts, Mum had said. All women, and you’ll learn so much more than we can teach you. You will learn to read and how to make medicines. Mum had paused then and leaned in to Muireall’s ear:you’ll learn how to call the winds and songs to ease the fussiest child, and how to raise the sea, and the order of the stars. But you can teach me that, Muireall had sobbed, holding her mother tight. I can’t, Mum had cooed in her ear, I can’t. I don’t remember.

  So the women in the blood-red robes had arrived and waited while Muireall kissed her mother goodbye. Her wrist ached a bit from the sewing needle and the ink. It’s all I can leave you with, Mum had said with tears in her eyes; I think mine came from my Mum but I cannot remember fully. This is
all I can give you, she said as she inked the interlocking lines of Ingwaz onto Muireall’s left wrist. To remember us, Mum had said. And as she walked down the lane with Mum and Da watching, Muireall was glad of the sting; it would remind her of who she was and what she was capable of.

  They walked for days, stopping only to sleep. The robed women never spoke. Muireall would learn later that they were neophytes and not permitted to speak for any reason. They prepared meals of grains and plants. They stopped as the sun went down and began at first light. Muireall, not accustomed to the trek and desperately missing her family, wept as she walked. The robed women placed their hands on her shoulders and moved her along gently. Muireall missed the rosewater scent of her mother’s fire-hair. She missed how Da made her laugh and the magical sound of it. Her mother had been herding her brothers through the market when he saw her, as Da told it. He had been an apprentice in the blacksmith shop; later he would take over the trade and come home smelling of sulfur and soot. As Da told it, though, on that day, he saw Mum with her fire-red hair trying to move this legion of little boys through the market, and as soon as she’d set them one way, they’d go another. He fell in love fast, Da said, and they were married in the summer under a canopy of meadowsweet and sage.

  The women in the blood-red robes never spoke but nodded when Muireall had shown them the ink mark on her left wrist. She was expected at the temple, that much she knew. And so she walked, the first of her kind to leave her home without the weight of Lethe. Deep in her cave by the still black waters of the underground lake, the Cailleach stretched her ancient joints and felt the bones crack and shift. She had long ago left behind an appearance that was human in nature, and she now existed in a feral state, a form more true to earth than to man. A faint ripple passed over the glassy surface of the water, and the Cailleach knew that something far more ancient than she had been was set in motion. A girl bearing the mark was entering training in the ancient arts; underneath the soil, the ley lines felt the vibrations and hummed in celebration. The intercrossed, jagged lines of Ingwaz, inked on her wrist by her mother as she had done to her daughter and hers after and hers beyond that—all the ancient marks borne to a line of women more ancient than the Scottish hills—began to beat a rhythm, slow and solid, that would become a rallying cry. The ancient peace promised by Ing and the bringing together of the worlds of man and hag were in sync at last. The Cailleach rose to her feet in a ragged motion and pulled herself through the bowels of the cave and into the night air, where she blew a soft breath at the stars; in them all the love she felt for her daughter passed to this girl who walked with the ones who would teach her the ancient arts.

  Muireall stopped and stared at stars with her robed escorts. They sparkled with a brightness that was extraordinary to see, light jumping from star to star in a silent song. Muireall felt the marking on her wrist vibrate in allegiance to the rhythmic beat of the night sky. The red-robed women exchanged glances and lowered their eyes to Muireall humbly. They walked on, Muireall suddenly comprehending why she had to leave her Mum and how important it was for her to reach her destination.

  “Come,” she said, and the robed women followed.

  THE TEMPLE WAS SET into the highland hills, the entrance a great wooden door that opened outward to reveal an entrance hall carved into the mountainside. Lit by torches that never dulled, the effect was as terrifying as it was magnificent. On that first day she arrived at the temple, an ancient woman with silver hair and deep-set green eyes greeted Muireall. The women in the blood-red robes knelt in reverence as she approached, so Muireall did the same.

  “The hills have been talking, little one. The hag Cailleach sends her blessings with your arrival.” The woman’s voice was broken and stilted but carried a power that reverberated through the hall. She took Muireall’s hand and led her through the structure. Sleeping halls for the neophytes, rooms for lessons, meditations, and spell-casting. Practical areas such as food preparation and an underground river where the laundry was washed. The temple had existed for thousands of years, and for thousands of years the neophytes had become priestesses and worked to maintain the balance of peace in the world of man. Wars nonetheless raged across the land.

  Muireall would learn the art of herbs and plants. She would learn how to summon the rain and to bring the mist when one needed to cause confusion. Muireall would remember much of this rather than learn, and one night, after Muireall had been with the temple for many years, the old woman would lead her out the wooden doors and tell her the story of her great-grandmother and eventually how her mother had come to the fishing village with no memory of where she had come from. The old woman would tell Muireall the story of Ingwaz, the rune on her left wrist, and how her bloodline was even more ancient than the temple itself. She would tell her that she and her daughters would be the peace-bringers that had been foretold in all the ancient writings.

  Muireall felt her body vibrate as the old woman spoke. And some time later, she would take the vow of a priestess and the symbol of the sisterhood would be inked onto the back of her neck at the very base of her hair. Laguz, a simple straight line with a downward hook at the top, the symbol of the underworld, of magic and the power of those that understood its purpose. The next morning, she would don the indigo robes of the priestess and leave the temple. A mission set upon her by the old woman. A task that only Muireall could perform, one that meant she could never return to the temple that had become her home.

  A new Laird sat on his throne in a castle on the sea cliffs. He was young and brash and full of war. He fought his way to the throne, killing indiscriminately, locking away anyone who questioned his authority. He stood in the way of another who was meant to lead. A war would be fought, and many would die if something were not done. This new Laird sat in his seaside castle and listened to the wind. He believed in signs and the old magic, and so when the priestess appeared on his door in indigo robes, bearing a potion that she claimed would bring him long life, he happily drank it down. It was foretold, he said to the hooded woman. I am immortal and will rule this land until the very end.

  It was not to be, though. For as he spoke, he choked and gasped for air. His pages and advisers ran to his side, but it was far too late. His immortality had been cut short; the war he would start ended before it began. The priestess in the indigo robes had vanished before any of the court had realized she was there at all.

  Muireall understood the meaning of the words the old woman had spoken to her. Her bloodline was the very thing that would bring about the peace promised by Ingwaz. Her daughter was born on the Solstice night, just as Muireall had been and her mother before her. The father was a nobleman in the new Laird’s house, and the three lived peacefully and comfortably. Muireall taught her daughter all she knew, and as the daughter became more woman than child, Muireall sang softly to her as she inked the symbol of their blood onto her left wrist. She told her the stories of the Cailleach and the Temple. She taught her daughter the arts of saving and ending a man’s life.

  It was a new time, and the girl took her talents and studied the new medicine being discovered and unearthed by the men around her. She used her gifts to open the doors that had stood closed to women, and soon her name was known far away. A healer more skilled than any in the land, a formidable presence with her dark eyes and raven hair, passed on from her great-grandmother. She walked through disease and death and never it touched her; it glanced off her as it had her mother and all the women who had come before her. She lived a long life, practicing the arts of the ancient women mixed with the knowledge and science of the day. She had one daughter who, upon her grandmother’s insistence, received the mark of Ingwaz as she grew into adulthood. The vibrations in the ley lines reverberated around them, and the power of Cailleach echoed in their hands.

  PAUL HADN’T WRITTEN IN nearly three months. In the very beginning, Alice had received two or three letters at a spell. Knowing exactly how slowly the military mail ran, she hadn’t let herself worry; when it
did arrive, there would be a small bundle of letters, proof that not only was he okay but also that he had not forgotten the life they planned on building together. They were inconsequential for the most part, descriptions of the Vietnamese countryside. He was at an airstrip on the edge of a jungle. The Air Force dropped supplies for the troops as well as the Vietnamese civilians caught in the crossfire. Paul was an air traffic controller, out on the strip, directing the fighter planes and helicopters. He wrote about a constant ringing in his ears, which Alice knew in a few years would become near-total deafness that would leave him dependent on hearing aids. His writing was poetic; it was a side of him that Alice had no idea existed, and, in the moments when she was doubting her decision, it comforted her some.

  I lie here underneath the stars. They seem to shine brighter here, but that might just be for lack of distractions. I spent so much of my life to this point seeking out distraction, that it’s alarming to have to spend so much time with no other way to look. I have nightmares nearly every night; the night is full of things that I cannot even begin to describe. A base medical unit is nearby, and we transport the wounded that are headed to the hospital in Saigon. Alice, you haven’t seen this sort of hell; I pray you never do. I’m not sure how we are supposed to feel about each other. I realize now that we hardly know each other, not really. I’ve only ever known that you fascinate me and have since the day I saw you.

  Alice kept the letters in a box at the back of her closet. She read them out loud sometimes, in case Arthur was listening. She still whispered to him at night, even though Arthur was long gone; his spirit had never been among the ones who walked the house. Alice still heard the raps in the hallway when she laid her head down to sleep at night. The furious pranks still occurred. One day, a man who Mum had hired to fix a broken plank on the back deck went running for his truck, leaving his tools behind and the job half-done. Mum had chased him out of the driveway, where he paused long enough to tell her that someone had blown in his ear, and there were children giggling all around him as he tried to work. Mum tried to explain that it wasn’t anything to pay any mind to, but the man had none of it, never even returning for his tools. Mum had just sighed; it was hard for people who didn’t know the house to accept its ways.