Waves in the Wind

by Wade McMahan

  The porpoise extended its head above the water. “You spoke too well, for the priest did believe you. Now he thinks of little else.”

  “And so? To what end?”

  “To go there, Ossian! To go there! Even now he prepares to sail to the Blessed Isles to convert the Golden Ones living there to his religion.”

  To go there, she said? It was an astonishing thing! How could Brendan ever think to find them? Even with all my knowledge of the movements of the sun, the moon and the stars, I would at best hold only a slim hope of reaching the Isles…though I had no reason to try.

  “You are surprised, are you not?” the Morrigan asked. “Yes, he is going and if he is successful in finding Tír na nÓg, the fault will be yours.”

  “The fault would be mine, My Queen? What fault?”

  “I told you, many in the Sidhe have gone to Tír na nÓg and others will soon follow. This new religion has already swept Gaul, Pictland, Dalriada, Calchfynedd, Dumnonia…the list is endless, and now it has captured our sacred Eire. The Blessed Isles are the last sanctuary of your gods. Brendan must not be allowed to find the Isles and convert the Golden Ones.”

  “Yes, of course. I…I see it plainly now, but who would have thought Brendan would be so foolhardy as to…” My voice trailed away as I considered the enormity of it.

  “Make the attempt? Oh yes, he will certainly make the attempt. We look for you to travel with him so that he does not succeed.”

  “No man can find Tír na nÓg on his own.” I pointed out to sea. “Only the gods can lead him there.”

  “And you think Brendan’s god could not show him the way?” The porpoise head nodded. “He can, you know. Oh yes, Brendan can most certainly find the Isles, so now you must stop him.”

  An immense wave rose from the surface of the sea, rocking my boat violently. My grip on the gunwales tightened while the Morrigan hovered unaffected on the water’s surface.

  “You demand that I go with him?” My shaken mind reeled; my eyes swept the sea, the shore and the sky in confusion. “My Queen, surely you can’t be serious? I say again, Brendan’s quest is foolhardy and I would be equally foolish to accompany him.”

  “No, Ossian. It is foolish for you to remain here trembling in your cave. It is foolish to think that a Druid can survive here in the old ways in the face of the Corcu Duibne and the growing number of intolerant Christian tribes like them who would in the end destroy you. You, like your gods, must leave Eire and go to the west. Your future is there, not here.”

  I wasn’t convinced, her words made little sense. “Yes, I see, but if I were to agree to go—”

  “No, you shall go!” The fixed smile on the porpoise-face belied her temperament. “Your gods face a crisis, and forget not it is a crisis caused by you. We offer you no option but to go with Brendan and foil his plans.”

  My gods were leaving; running away in the face of the Christian god? And hadn’t the Morrigan herself just now chided me again for running before the Christian tribes? I held my tongue at the pretense of it. Yet how could I hope to prevail where the gods themselves could not? She offered me no choice. Though the gods’ powers might be waning, well I knew the penalty for defying their wishes…especially hers.

  I looked into her gray, porpoise eyes. “My Queen, it was not my intention to question the desires of the Lordly Ones, but rather Brendan’s. He will fill his boat with fanatical monks to spread his religion. Why would he allow me, a known Druid, to accompany him?”

  “Brendan’s why is not our concern. You must find a way to persuade him.”

  She made demands though offered no guidance? “Of course I understand—” But the porpoise had disappeared beneath the waves.

  * * *

  During the following week my thoughts often returned to the Morrigan. Had I truly seen her and heard her voice, or was it only the mad imaginings of a solitary man? Would Brendan truly journey to the Blessed Isles? It was unlikely, and yet…augh! The gods had their own plans and twisted words to their own ends. They were a wily group and could not always be trusted.

  Of one thing I had grown certain. Whether real or imagined, the Morrigan was right. Inexorable change was sweeping the land and, if my gods were leaving, Eire no longer held anything for me other than certain death by the Corcu Duibne or another Christian tribe like them.

  If it was also true that Brendan planned a voyage to find the Golden Ones, I must find a way to sail with him. Such an unheard-of adventure could bring unimagined rewards, though it was far more likely to end in disaster and my own death. It mattered not. Why remain here and die at the hands of Christian zealots when I might yet serve the will of my gods?

  * * *

  I spent three days gathering all I might to trade within the village. It was night as I sat by my fire thinking to travel there the next morning.

  A large wolf prowled outside my cave mouth and sat down to stare at me. I knew it for the Morrigan even before she spoke. “So, you would obey our wishes and go to the village to speak with Brendan?”

  I was no longer surprised by her magical appearances. “Yes, My Queen. I leave in the morning.”

  “What will you offer that you might convince the priest to allow you to travel with him to the Blessed Isles?”

  “I have nothing to offer but myself and my knowledge.”

  “Your offer will not be enough. Brendan will demand higher payment of you. He is a priest of the new faith and knows you as a pagan. He will not allow you to accompany him to spread his religion unless you first come over to his Father.”

  “That may be so; yes, that will likely be Brendan’s demand. I must think on this.”

  “Think on this, Ossian? So like a merchant you would think of trading your gods in exchange for the slender hope of reaching the Blessed Isles?”

  “What? My Queen, you suggest that I would barter my own gods to further myself? No. Never would I consider that, and a poor man I would be if I did. I shall go with him as you commanded.”

  “So,” the Morrigan cackled, “perhaps at last you have found your lost spine?”

  My face flushed in the firelight. “Perhaps I am remembering who I was before the Corcu Duibne…before I came here.”

  “If that is truly so, I might help you after all.”

  “Thank you, My Queen. You are right; Brendan will demand high payment of me. I must convince him of my knowledge of the stars. I could be valuable in plotting his voyage.”

  “Brendan is not a man of the sea. Your offer will seem of poor value in exchange for a voyage to the Isles of the Ever Young. You must put forward much more. Hear me,”

  If you search for Tír na nÓg,

  Treasure will avail your quest.

  Gold will speak where not the truth,

  For a journey to the West.

  When you voyage to Tír na nÓg,

  A sacrifice must be made.

  To the throne of Paradise,

  A sacrament must be paid.

  My hands scrubbed my face and I shook my head, stifling a yawn. “You speak in riddles, of treasure and sacrifice. Look about you, My Queen. You see treasure here? Have I anything of value to sacrifice?”

  “You must try to remember.”

  “Remember what?”

  “Remember everything…back to before the Corcu Duibne came. You knew many things then, things taught you by your father and the Master at Dún Ailinne. You stood in your father’s shadow then, but no more. It is time you stand alone under your own sky.”

  I nodded, understanding the truth in her words.

  The Morrigan continued. “Should Brendan allow you to go with him, how will you prevent him and his followers from influencing the Golden Ones?”

  “It will be hard, My Queen, and I have not thought on it. There may come a time when I must but it matters not without I go on Brendan’s ship.”

  “Remember what I told you,” the Morrigan sighed, “but this much I owe you as a warning, for I see it is true. Should you go search for the Bless
ed Isles you will embark upon a voyage from which you will never return.”

  Chapter 17

  Trá Lí Bay

  It being a strenuous trek to the village, I left early in the morning, my trade goods on my back. As I walked the Morrigan’s words haunted me. “You must try to remember.” It was true. I had chosen to forget much, beginning with the many painful memories of the attack on my village. I forced myself to think back. The Morrigan spoke of treasure and sacrifice, but what was I to remember?

  I rested on a ridge crest and the memory came. Of course! There were the sacral ornaments hidden beneath the hearthstone of my father’s home—the golden headband of Etain who was once poet to the Tuatha beneath the Earth; the jeweled collar of Druth the cupbearer; the thirty golden coins bearing the visage of an emperor of Byzantium. My father’s bones would have no use for them and Etain and Druth were now ghosts.

  Was the treasure still there, or had the Corcu Duibne found it when they sacked the village? It could be sacrificed in exchange for a voyage to the Blessed Isles…if need be. I still thought of these things as I came to the headland and looked down on Trá Lí Bay.

  The village little resembled the quiet community I knew, for there were plumes of smoke rising everywhere. As I walked down the hillside my nose puckered. There was a reek compounded of rotten things and excrement. Men scurried about laying lathes of wood on the ground. Women tended fires over which fish hung to be smoked, and an annoying stench rising from long pits dug in the ground wafted toward me.

  As I neared the beach I found the rough shape of a boat pegged out on the ground. I hardly recognized it at first, for it was larger than any craft I had ever seen. Men were hacking at oak planks with adzes, shaping them to size and fitting them to the outline scratched on the ground. Others shaved bark from two long oak logs seemingly meant for masts.

  The selection of trees for the building of boats was no small thing. Not only should trees be chosen for their strength and character, but their individual spirits judged as well to ensure their affinity for joining with the sea. No doubt the Christians ignored the vital selection ritual and it was discomforting to think that Brendan and perhaps I would come to rue their negligence.

  Two arced beams that would join together to form the bow of the boat lay side by side, and I gazed at them with puzzlement. A ball of twine was nearby and I used it to take simple measurements of the boat’s width and length and the curvature of the two beams. I took up a scrap plank, found a piece of charcoal and sat down on a log. A smile touched my lips as I wrote the equation, all the while offering blessings to the ghosts of my instructors at Dún Ailinne.

  Erc strode over to me while I was completing my calculations. “And what are you here for, Druid?” he hissed.

  I stood and gazed down into his burning black eyes. “Brendan wished to hear more of me about the Blessed Isles.”

  “We know enough. They are to the west. We go there to bring the Lord’s Light to your Golden Ones.”

  I paused. So, it was true. The meaning within my dreams of the Morrigan…it was all true.

  Little it was I cared about Erc’s opinion of me, though I knew it well enough. “I thought you planned to sail to the north to Patrick’s Islands.”

  “Aye, so we did until you,” he pointed a finger at my nose, “befuddled Father Brendan’s head with your songs. For a week after you left he thought of little else.”

  Erc crossed his arms, rocking back on his heels as he glared up at me. “Then he called a meeting of the chief men in every village within a day’s walk from here and told them that the Lord had called on him to sail west. He bid their aid in building a great curragh for the voyage, and in laying in enough provisions to feed thirty men for ninety days. The villages have been stripped bare and there is much resentment.”

  He took a step closer to me, fists clenched at his sides, his hatred blazing. “I blame you for all this, Ossian the unbeliever, for filling his head with these wild dreams. He bade me not to molest you and to let you pass if you came again, but if I had my way, I would throw you in yonder tanning pits.”

  Perhaps he thought I would quail before his wrath, but the silly man failed to understand that revealing his emotions before his enemy merely exposes a laughable weakness. I wished only to be rid of him. “And where is Brendan now? I would speak with him.”

  “He is there by the sea,” Erc pointed, “in prayer. You are not to disturb him.”

  I ignored him, tossed the plank aside and walked on to find Brendan on his knees, gazing out to sea. He rose when he saw me.

  “Ossian!” he exclaimed, though now it was his face that lifted to mine. “Something has happened; you are no longer stooped, and stand upright. Your illness is passing then?”

  “Yes, thank you. I feel much better.”

  “Praise God. I am glad to see you here. I sent Erc to fetch you weeks ago but he said he could not find you and thought you had moved on.”

  No one had come to find me but I said nothing of it. “It is true what they say? You sail in search of the Blessed Isles?”

  Excitement glowed on his face. “Of course it’s true, and a blessing upon you for the inspiration for it. Think of it, Ossian, think of it!” His gesturing hand swept the ocean’s wide expanse. “They are there; your Blessed Isles are there! There can be no doubt, for the truth of it was revealed to me by none other than God Himself.”

  “Your god spoke to you about the Isles?” My heart sank, as I remembered the Morrigan’s warning that Brendan’s god could guide him to Tír na nÓg.

  He was almost dancing upon the beach like a gleeful child. “Yes! Yes! Listen. I was intrigued by your description of the Isles and you convinced me of your sincerity, but still I doubted their existence. Therefore I fasted for three days, and prayed for God’s counsel. Finally, at the end of those three days, God spoke to me. Yes, He spoke to me and commanded that I sail west, west to find your Isles. And I shall find them by following the Guiding Hand of God while sailing under the protection of Jesus Christ. I know I shall!”

  I could not share in Brendan’s joy, for I very much feared he would find them, and, if so, the fault would be mine. His god commanded that he find the Isles, while my god, the Morrigan, commanded that I saw to it that he did not. The Druid in me recognized the irony in the manner gods manipulate men for their own ends.

  Brendan took up his staff and bade me follow him. “Come. I have much to show you.”

  We walked together through the village. “Look there!” He pointed to the tanning pits where four men were peeing into clay pots. “The hides of sixty bullocks nearly tanned already. Urine mixed with the oak bark speeds up the process. And over there, flax being retted for our linen sails. The women of three villages are weaving for us. Praise be for Erc, he used to be a curragh builder in the Aran Isles before the Lord called him.”

  Brendan paused. “He does not like you. Erc sees Druids and people who hold to the old ways as a threat, where I see them as those who can be led gently to the Lord. But he gets things done and I depend upon him.”

  I dismissed his comment with a wave as I told my lie. “Little I know Erc’s thoughts whether about me or my beliefs. It is good though that he is able and can be trusted to carry out your wishes.”

  “Erc carries out God’s wishes. I am merely the messenger.”

  The time had come. I must gain a position upon Brendan’s boat. “It is a bold adventure you dare take. Who will guide you to the Blessed Isles?”

  “Why, a fisherman much like you. Our own Lord and Savior Jesus Christ Himself will show us the way.”

  What kind of man was this Brendan? He would go to sea and simply trust that his god would lead him safely to his destination? For a moment I questioned the wisdom of joining such a man even if he would agree to it.

  Yet my obligation to the Morrigan left me no choice. “Your god was a fisherman?”

  “Yes, our Lord Jesus Christ was a fisherman and also a carpenter.”

  I bri
efly wondered why Eire’s old gods, the Lordly Ones, would flee to Tír na nÓg in the face of this common god of the Christians. “Is your god, Jesus Christ, familiar with piloting the western sea?”

  Brendan shook his head. “Jesus is not a god; he is the Son of God, unified within the Holy Trinity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Jesus knows all seas better than any man.”

  A Holy Trinity was not new to me, a Druid, whose business it was to know of such things. The Goddess Morrigan was also a trinity. Indeed, she was a trinity within a trinity. As the Goddess of War she incited warriors to riastradh, battle fury, as Fea, Nemon and Badbh.

  Brendan would have no interest in my gods, those he considered pagan, so I spoke again of the sea. “Your Jesus knows the dangers of the Red Wind of the east? He knows the movements of the tides and currents? He understands steerage that relies upon the position of the sun and the balance of the stars around Polaris during each season?”

  Brendan was looking uncomfortable as the monk, Erc, walked over to join us, saying, “Father, I told this heathen not to disturb you.”

  “Ossian is welcome and he is not disturbing me.”

  Erc looked at me. “I overheard your last words. You were making a point?”

  I nodded, but turned to Brendan. “The work on your boat is not complete. Perhaps I can help you.”

  Erc sneered. “We have no need of your help.”

  “Perhaps not, but the design of the boat is flawed."

  His dark eyes pierced mine. “And who are you to say such a thing? I built many a curragh, have you?”

  “No, but see here.” I knelt down and began writing an equation in the dust. “The beams hewn for the bow of the boat will not join properly. I have already calculated—“

  Erc stepped forward, his foot swept across the dust to erase my work. “What manner of evil is it you attempt with your magical signs?”

  Still kneeling, I looked up. “Magical signs? Did you not recognize the Greek lettering? I simply meant to show the calculation of the curvature of the two beams. As they are they will miss joining by a full three hand-widths.”