To Dust You Shall Return

by Sean Melican

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  The skies are gray like an old man’s eyes and promise a storm soon. The boat is buffeted by white-topped waves. Few birds brave the winds, but those that do tumble in the chaos. They cry not for food or their mates, but in fear for they cannot find a safe haven. Just now there is a soft gentle rain. A prelude.

  As the boat nears the shore, gray shapes take form.

  “They are men, not demons. Thank God.” The priest’s hair is twisted in the wind, like a wild man who has forgotten civilization.

  Everyone steps off. One of the gray forms steps forward, and now it is clear both he and his men and women are weary and have fought for a very long time. Their cloaks are ragged and in some places torn as if by claws. Blood stains their armor, their swords. Their hair is greasy. It does not fly in the wind as the priest’s does.

  “I am Una,” says the leader.

  “Lamb,” scoffs Dichu. “Is he one of your flock, priest?” He laughs.

  Una draws his sword and in a flicker of a moment there is nearly armed combat on these shores.

  Pádraig steps between the two armies. He is a small man and looks smaller, but his hands are empty and open. “Hold!” he cries. He turns to Una. “What has happened here?”

  “What--? I—“ His mouth moves for a moment, then he decides on the simplest answer: “War. There are black things everywhere.”

  “Then why do you want to fight these people? Do you need two enemies? I am the priest that Dichu here spoke of. He has a vicious temper but also fresh warriors. Together they are a deadly combination. Do you, exhausted and wounded as you are, wish to face them or join with them?”

  Una makes a sharp motion toward the boat. “That is a demon boat.”

  Pádraig nods. “They came to these peoples’ shore and were driven off.”

  He says to Dichu: “You defeated them? I have lost so many.”

  Dichu clasps Una’s hand. Una looks at him, surprised, then nods. “We would gladly accept your help. But I don’t think even between us there are enough. Every night they come, when we are exhausted. I once led four times this many.”

  Pádraig says, “The wall. Do you know of it? That is where they originate. That is where their leader is. If we can kill it, the remainder will be nearly mindless. Easy to kill.”

  “It is a week’s march from here. How do you know this?” He is both frightened and wary. That is as it should be.

  Quickly, the priest explained.

  “So you have been bitten then?” He turns to you. “And you?”

  The priest says, “Holy water kills the poison if the victim can be reached in time. And this cross that we wear is anathema to them. You would call it a talisman. I call it a crucifix.”

  “I have seen those before,” says Una fingering it. “You are a Roman priest, then. Do your charms really work against them?”

  “You will see tonight.”

  Neither side fully trusts the other. Dichu and Una each assign guards so the rest sleep. They also have someone watch the other’s guards.

  Still, when the gray and wet day ends, the demons come and Una’s people fight as valiantly as Dichu’s. Una spoke the truth: the night is a long series of vicious, short-lived battles between men and black things barely seen. Dust piles up thick and many suffer wicked cuts from their long claws. They come for you and the priest first and because they do they are easier to kill.

  It is possible to tell it is morning only because the demons are gone. The clouds are darker and lower than they once were. The gentle mist that was is now a violent and freezing rain. It soaks through cloaks and armor. You think of Cuan and Tadhg and the others safe beside a warm fire. You can almost hear his voice:

  “And Setanta, with only his bare hands, took Culann’s hound and snapped its neck as if it were no more than the thinnest of twigs. Thereafter, Setanta was forced to be Culann’s hound, protecting his master and his things and harming those who would harm him until Culann raised a new hound. And thus Setanta became Cuchulainn.”

  Cuan has a big smile and his big hands show just how the boy broke the dog’s neck, like this. When this is done, you and he will make another child before a great roaring fire. The rain makes your face wet.

  The invisible blood charms give Dichu’s people the strength to march without sleep and only the least amount of food. Una’s people struggle, but they are a strong and willful people. They know the more nights spent in the open the fewer warriors there will be when the wall is reached.

  Pádraig sprinkles the dead with some of the water, says a few words.

  “Does the water kill them if they rise?” says Una.

  “Perhaps,” says Pádraig. “But we do not know when the soul departs the body for Heaven. Thus, I baptize them even after death in the hopes that I can save them.”

  “And if the soul is gone?”

  “Then they are in Hell.”

  “Tell me more of this God of yours,” says Una.

  Pádraig wrinkles his brow as if he is uncertain of what he should do next. “None of Dichu’s people have asked me though I have told them much. Do you truly want faith in my god, or do you simply have none in your own?”

  Una laughs without humor. “Look around: Do you see evidence that our gods aid us? I have seen what your water and cross do to the demons.”

  Finding that he has an audience, one that cannot not escape his words and one that desires warmth of any kind, he speaks enthusiastically about Lucifer and the torments of Hell that await those who have not been baptized. He talks too of Jesus and his followers, but it is the flames of Hell that blackens souls but does not consume them that most intrigues Una.

  This Jesus must be strong if the priest is able to march and speak as he does though he does not have the benefit of the blood-charms.

  The second night less men are lost, and the third night no one is killed. Thereafter there are no more skirmishes.

  Once Una says, “I love anyone, god or man, who hates Romans.”

  This rankles the priest but he says nothing. Some time later you say to Una, when the priest is not around, “He is a Roman.”

  “Oh, I know,” he says, laughing. “Did you see his face?” It is easy to see that though Una likes to torment Pádraig, he is equally interested in his words.

  Thus it is no surprise that he says, “I would like to be baptized. Some of my warriors do as well.”

  “Is there a lake nearby?”

  Many mutter beneath their breath but they follow the detour through the underbrush to a small lake. The priest says, “Those who wish to be baptized must undress, and follow me.” He strips naked, steps into the water. He is well-muscled. Beneath his stomach he is in every measure a man. It is hard to imagine how he can love his God more than any woman.

  He does not shiver. With one hand you touch the edge of the water: it is like ice.

  Una and several people, men and women, follow the priest. He dunks them beneath the water, his lips moving but the wind tears the words from his mouth so that even standing on the shore he cannot be heard. But each one who rises from the water is warmer than when he or she entered.

  “Lamb,” scoffs Dichu to Lommán. “All of them are sheep. But the priest was a shepherd once.” A few of his warriors enter the lake but most stand only on the shore.