by James Comins
Chapter Fifteen
A Story About Icebergs
or, Weapons Aren’t Beautiful
It was early morning. Feathers and bones. Lenna had somehow slept, perched between the ragged wings of Annie Morgan. The world sweeping below them was a springy green, but as Lenna blinked and stretched, expecting the sunlight to be blinding in the rushing open air, she found that the darkness of her lies covered everything, blotting the sun to an evening dimness. She’d go blind soon. She could feel it. The dark halo was all around her, and she could feel someone watching, peering at her, invisible and dangerous. Shaking herself, clinging to the skeletous neck of Annie, she breathed in, breathed in, and felt the paranoia pass.
Looking over Annie’s side, she saw a landscape of a thousand different greens. Ireland was divided by gold walls, irregular boxes dotted by chimneyed houses and white walking clouds. The clouds were probably sheep. Something strange was happening. Wherever Annie’s eagle-shaped midnight shadow caught the ground, everything living died, turned brown and began rotting. It sprang back to life when the shadow passed.
“Why're you a bird, Miss Morgan?” Lenna asked.
“I’m the goddess of after-battle, Lenna. After a battle are the crows. They are the carrion eaters, the flesh-rippers. It’s the birds who mark the end of a battle. Nothing on Earth tastes like the skin of the fallen.” Annie sighed birdily. “Only there haven’t been any battles since the Troubles, so I’m only a bird when it’s needful. I can take on wings when I want, but when there’s a battle, I’m taken there in a second. I follow the battles.”
“Are we going to see Mo Bagohn?” Lenna asked.
“Yes,” said Annie.
“I like you, Miss Morgan.”
“I’m glad. I like you too.”
They flew higher, bursting through one of the two-dimensional honeycomb-patterned clouds in a puff of wet cotton. Lenna reached out to touch it, but her hand passed through the cotton cloud as if it were nothing at all. As they rose above it, she saw the impossibly thin cloud shrivel to a mangy black rainstorm and rain itself away.
“Why does this happen?” asked Lenna. “The clouds and the sheeps and everything dying when you go by.”
“My arrival brings the shadow of war. There is always ash after a battle. The water is always blackened. The ground falls sick from blood. There are always dead things. And the living never have food.”
“Do you watch every battle?”
“Every battle in Ireland,” Annie said proudly.
“Who are the Fomor?”
“I’m no good at telling stories, Lenna. It was the sons of Lir who were the storytellers. You should ask Pol. He’d tell the story right.”
“Aww. Isn’t there a battle in the story? I want to hear it.”
“I can’t ...”
“Pleeeease?”
“Oh, all right. It won’t be a good story, though. So. The Fomor are these iceberg people. I mean, they were people who lived in an iceberg. Lots of icebergs. They supposedly had a magic iceberg-castle. They weren’t really people, either. They were these ... ghosts. Sort of. I’m really not very good at telling stories.”
“It’s okay, Miss Morgan. I like the story. Will you tell me more, please?”
A tiny bird-growl came from the huge crow’s throat.
“So Brigid’s husband Bres came to Ireland from this iceberg palace. Before they were married, I mean. He came over and everyone said he was the most beautiful man in the world,” Annie went on.
“How can a man be beautiful?” said Lenna. “They’re supposed to be handsome, not beautiful.”
“It was mostly about the eyes.”
“Oh. Say handsome.”
“So handsome Bres arrived in Ireland and everyone said he was the most handsome. Before too long he was married to the most beautiful woman.”
“Who was she? Was she a princess?”
“She was Brigid, or Brugda, your old stepmother,” said Annie.
“What?”
“Yup. Brigid married Bres. Together they had a son named Taillvin. There was this other boy, Caoilte, who showed up uninvited and was allowed to stay, only nobody knew who he was. And Bres and Brigid raised the two of them.”
“You mean Talvi and Kaldi?” Lenna asked.
“Dunno. Probably,” said Annie. “Where was I? Kids. Queen. Um. Storystorystory, um, right. King. So there was a rule among the Irish. It said that to be the High King, you couldn’t be injured or crippled or stupid or lacking in any way. And when Bres arrived, the old High King had just got his arm cut off in battle, and he couldn’t be king any longer. And everyone looked over at handsome Bres and his beautiful wife Brigid and said they ought to be the new king and queen.”
“Brugda was queen of Ireland?” Lenna asked.
“Yes, she was. The two of them were the new king and queen. Only beautiful King--sorry, handsome King Bres loved the sea where he grew up and the iceberg people who lived there more than he loved Ireland or the land people. So he made a decree.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Um,” said Annie. “A proclamation.”
“What’s that mean?”
“A new rule that everyone has to follow.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“The rule was that everyone had to take the most beautiful cows and the most beautiful weapons and the most beautiful people and throw them into the sea, where the iceberg people could have them.”
Lenna frowned. “Weapons aren’t beautiful,” she said.
“Yes they are,” said Annie, looking over her shoulder with her paper-dry eyes. “Don’t argue with me about this. Weapons are the most beautiful thing ever.” Her wings banked north in the blue. “Norse saxes, two-handled Craisech spears, leaf-shaped claymors with gold and coral in the hilts ...” She sighed happily at the thought.
Lenna thought. “I guess you couldn’t have a battle without weapons. I think.”
“Not a good battle, anyway. So right. Bres. Swords. Um. Oh, cows! Yes. The people of Ireland really hated throwing all their best cows and their best stuff and their best friends into the sea, just because the handsome king told them to.”
“Couldn’t their friends swim back to shore?” asked Lenna.
“Not if you threw them off a cliff. And anyway, they weren’t allowed to.”
“Wait.” Lenna thought and thought. “Why didn’t they throw King Bres off the cliff, if he was the most beautiful?”
“Handsome,” said Annie. “We’re calling him handsome today.”
“Why not throw him off the cliff, Miss Morgan?”
“Nobody throws the king off a cliff. But they did get angry at him. After, like, the second time they had to push all their best cows off a cliff, they sent Bres away.”
“I don’t like people who hurt animals.” Lenna hugged the neck of the giant crow who was Annie.
“Well, the cows wouldn’t just sink and drown or anything,” said Annie. “The Fomor would become sharks and drag the cows back to their nests.”
“Sharks don’t have nests.”
“They might,” said Annie, looking over her shoulder with her creepy human face.
“Don’t argue with me about sharks. I’m from Iceland, Miss Morgan, and do not tell me sharks have nests. And anyway, it was only ghosts or, or monsters dressed as sharks.”
“I don’t know anything about sharks. Right, so back to their icebergs for a feast. But the druids got together and kicked out Bres. He got angry at them for taking away his kingship, so he got an army of the iceberg people together and they attacked Ireland dressed as a horde of unicorns.”
“Unicorns?” Lenna’s eyes sparkled.
“Some people call them rhinoceroses.”
“Oh.” That wasn’t the same thing at all.
“The druids saw the Fomor army coming. They cast spells that hid the people and hid the sea and made the unicorns run in a circle forever. The Fomor didn’t understand magic, so they couldn’t find the way through the spell.�
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“Why not change into druids? Then they could see through the spell.” Lenna nodded to herself sensibly.
“But they still wouldn’t know the magic words,” Annie replied.
“Hm. So what happened to them?”
“Nothing. People say they’re still there, running in a great circle across Ireland, and they always will be.”
“... Unless they have someone who can see through magic!” shouted Lenna. She thumped a wing in excitement.
“Ow.”
“Sorry. But but if they’re trapped, how did they get to Binnan Darnan? How did they get onto a daedelus? And how did they get to Iceland?”
“Dunno. Someone helped them, I guess.”
“Who?”
“Dunno. Hopefully Mo Bagohn does. Here we are.”