Twice Upon A Time (The Celtic Legends Series)

by Lisa Ann Verge

  He turned his gaze away. “I’m a king no more.”

  His hand strayed to his hip, naked of the weight of his sword. Again he felt it, that shifting of the world beneath his feet, as if this ledge had cracked from the island and lurched into the sea. Even months after he’d tossed the bloody sword into the lake, he walked as if he’d lost a limb. He’d been fed his first solid food on its tip. He’d grown up with the weight of it slung across his hip, or firm in his grip, marking his life by the battles he’d won with it. He’d conquered a kingdom by it. And now he’d murdered his foster-brother by it, knowing Aidan—or any other mortal—could never best him.

  “Well, I’m a queen, so don’t you be telling me I married less than a king.” She turned and headed up the path. “It will take a strong man with a strong back to conquer this island. No less than a king will do.”

  Brave words these, but he had no ear for them. He knew he was a king no more. He was a man of flesh and bones and blood and something else, something wispy and impossible to grasp, even with his thoughts. He had abandoned more than a shining blade of steel in the north end of Lough Riach that morning after Samhain. He’d abandoned Conor of Ulster, Champion of the O’Neill, King of Morna. Now he did not know his name. He felt like a boat at sea without oars. His hands craved the grip of something, even if it were no more than a stone-pick or a fishing spear.

  A gull keened a lonely cry above him. He glanced up the slope to where Brigid climbed, growing more distant with each step.

  “Will you be standing there all day, Conor?” She tossed the words over her shoulder without pause. “You can’t climb a cliff by scaling it in your mind.”

  ***

  Conor grunted up the narrow path which lead to the height of the cliff, hauling the basket of seaweed upon his back. Ribbons of seaweed draped over his shoulders like a mantle. With a swipe of his forearm, he wiped the sweat off his face, and then eased his way to where he and Brigid were building their house.

  The beehive-shaped dwelling of stone swelled from the earth. The Connemara people called these clocháns. As he rounded it, he glimpsed Brigid perched amid fields of drying seaweed, gazing up into the air while shading her eyes. Conor trudged to the peat fire, then ripped apart the rope tied around his waist and let the basket of seaweed thud to the ground. She did not budge from her musings.

  “It’s enough of working for one day,” he said, loud enough to be heard. “Soon it will be dark.”

  She did not acknowledge his words. He trudged through the field of drying seaweed, wiping his sticky hands upon his cloak. How pale she looked. Her skin was as translucent as the strange light which came upon this island after the passing of a gale. Considering all the hard work they’d done these past weeks, piling the stones one upon the other to make a dwelling fitting for man and strong enough to withstand the forces of the sea, it was no wonder she was pale. Brigid worked as hard as an ox, losing weight, her bones jutting through her skin and looking fragile enough to break. They both worked so hard they spoke of nothing but work, and at night they fell instantly into the bonds of sleep, while the abyss yawning between them stretched wider and deeper.

  When he approached, she nodded toward the sky and murmured, “Look.”

  Above, two white swans wheeled in the sky. They stretched their wings and soared on a breeze. Beyond, on the horizon, boiling gray clouds threatened.

  “Fey swans,” he said, “to be flying out here with a storm coming.”

  “They don’t belong here.” The wind battered her long braid over her shoulder. “They belong in a cool lake with calm water and plenty of reeds to hide among.”

  “They’ll survive well enough, and if they don’t, we’ll be dining on them.”

  She granted him a swift, harsh glance. “We’ve not come so far from the world that we’ll be feasting on swan’s meat to survive.” She eyed the birds anew. “Do they not remind you of the Children of Lir?”

  His nostrils flared, as if he smelled anew the wood fires of a smoky mead hall, the strum of a harp, the lilting voice of a royal poet, the warm circle of comfortable camaraderie.

  He said gruffly, “I remember none of the tales.” This must be what it is like to age, he thought, for memories to cut like blades.

  “They were turned into swans,” she said, “and condemned to live amid the harsh seas for hundreds of years.”

  “How fanciful you’ve become, wife, seeing magic in birds that’ve done no more than lose their way.”

  “They’ve built a nest on the ledge of one of the caverns.” Her features softened. “Like the Children of Lir, condemned to walk the earth as swans for hundreds of years—exiled from Erin—until a prince of the north married a princess of the south—”

  “Will you be telling me,” he interrupted, “how you discovered this nest of theirs?”

  Her trance faltered. She discovered a sudden interest in the patch of seaweed at her feet. “I found it as I looked for eggs amid the rocks.”

  Anger shot through him. “I told you, woman, there will be no prancing about those cliffs—”

  “You’ll be singing another song when you see the dinner I’ve made you.”

  She swiveled and headed toward the fire before he could seize her arm. He clenched his fists on air. The rocky outcroppings where birds nested had been battered by sun and salt and sea and were prone to disintegrate without warning, falling into the yawning mouth of the ocean below. Would he have to chain her within the clochán to protect the fragile mortal soul lodged within those stubborn shoulders?

  When he reached her side, she poked at the ashes of the peat fire with a sliver of stone and rolled out a half-dozen birds’ eggs onto a matting of seaweed.

  He said, “Do you hate me so much, woman, that you’d kill yourself to be rid of me?”

  “Don’t be talking foolishness.”

  “When a woman dances upon the edge of a cavern for a bit of food, aye, that looks to me like a woman who wishes for death—”

  “—or dinner.” She rolled a hot stone into a nearby pit of water, sending up a hiss of steam amid the boiling periwinkles. “I’m no fainting bit of a thing like you seem to think.”

  He scanned the crouch of her thin figure, the hollows of her cheeks, the body denied to him all these weeks. “I have eyes, woman.”

  She rose proudly to her feet. Her dress was stained with peat grime where she had knelt. “I can fish as well as you, and gather food on the shore. I can burn seaweed, if I must, for there’s not a bit of peat on this island.” She gestured to the beehive of stone behind them. “Now that the clochán is built, I’ve no more need of you. I can fend for myself here.”

  She wants me to leave.

  His blood went cold. For too many weeks this thing had stretched between them. For too many weeks he’d watched her burrow deeper and deeper into a place within herself he could not reach. She should hate him for all he had done to her because of his foolish pride—the loss of her freedom, the eternal exile in this barren place, the loss of their child. Maybe now he would hear fighting words from her own lips, feel her angry blows upon him, for only then would he know that he had not destroyed her spirit as well as their child that last day in Morna.

  He said, “So you hate me that much then.”

  “There’s no hate in it.”

  “Can your eyes not bear the sight of one of the Sídh?”

  She turned the fullness of those eyes upon him, and he felt the soul-suck he’d always known. He saw the rich green swirl of forest shadows, dark shadows, rife with grief and mourning and something else, some greater knowledge.

  “Did you think I would treat you as others have treated me?” she asked. “I’ve known the truth of your birth longer than you. Even as I did, I took your seed into my body and gave it life.” Her voice cracked. The wind scattered pebbles across the earth. “I watch you sometimes, when you stare out to the land beyond the sea. Back to Erin.”

  “I’ve no liking for unwelcome visitors.”

>   “You’re like those swans. You don’t belong here.”

  “This place is fit for nothing but rock and gull.”

  “This island will be a cage to you.” She splayed her hand over the stones of their dwelling, searching for a chink amid the wall to fill with the wadded seaweed. “The mists of Erin still cling to your cloak. You need to go back.”

  “To what?” He snorted in the direction of the purple hills. “I’m denied the place where I belong—the place of my father. And you—”

  “This is not about me.” She wadded the dried seaweed into the chink, pressing it deep between the stones. “I’ve been an exile before, I know the way of it.”

  “And because of me, you’re an exile forevermore.”

  She dragged her hands down the length of her ragged cloak leaving two trails of salt and sand. “I was an exile before you came, Conor, no less than now. It’s my fate to be alone. But you’ve left a world behind, a world which needs you.”

  “A world which calls me monster—”

  “You are still a warrior, a king.”

  He spread out his arms as if to embrace the whole of the barren island. “Regard the great King of Inishmaan, and his subjects, the bird and the fish and the seaweed.”

  “You mock yourself even now, but there’ll be no denying your nature.”

  “What nature is that? The liking for blood, the lust for death, the mockery of a battle challenge which I cannot lose?”

  “On this island, you’ll do nothing but grow more bitter over the years. You must have your vengeance.”

  For a moment he thought about returning to the world and wreaking his vengeance on all who had tormented him, on all who had tormented her, on taking up the sword again and proving himself as invincible as he was—wrestling that high kingship from the hands of the O’Neill as he’d wanted, and ruling Erin as it should. Barely was the thought formed before he dismissed it. The last burning ember of ambition had been doused with his brother’s blood. He was a warrior no longer.

  He felt her presence just behind him as her words fell softly on his ears. “Have you thought that there may be another reason, a greater reason for your existence?”

  He snorted. “Nothing more than the folly of a fairy and a woman by the light of the Samhain fires.”

  “If it was folly, then surely it would be oft repeated, and there’d be many of you amongst us.”

  There was no arguing with her soft logic. He had wondered the same, but the question just echoed in his head with no answer.

  Why?

  She laid her hand on his arm. “There must be a reason why the gods denied you access to Tír na nÓg. Go back to Erin and follow your fate.”

  He could smell her, all warmth and woman, and her eyes were full of shadows. “What has the Sight told you?”

  “The Sight fails me in this place.” Her hand slid off his arm. “But I’ve thought about everything you said that day in Morna—”

  “That was my pride talking, and look where it led me.”

  “You could change the way of things.”

  “I tried that. Against your wishes.”

  “You told me once that fire worship still rages in Ulster. Perhaps among your tribesmen you’ll find those who believe in you, and then the old ways might return to this land—”

  “There’s no teaching the dull and closed-minded.”

  “There you go using my own words against me.”

  “That battle is lost, Brigid. Even if it weren’t, it is not my battle to fight.”

  “Then whose is it? No one else could fight it as well as you, Conor of Ulster, Champion of the O’Neill, King of Morna—”

  “These hands will not touch the hilt of a sword again.”

  “Then fight with words what you cannot fight with iron.”

  “Words don’t cut as deep.” He slapped open the edges of the seaweed basket and began pulling the harvest out for drying. “You won’t be rid of me so easily, woman. It’s better you suffer my presence and live, than be without it and die.”

  “When you win your war with the ignorant, you can send for me, and there will be no more want for either of us.”

  “It’s the loss of the babe that makes you talk like this.” He tossed the seaweed aside and took her shoulders in his grip. “I can’t bring him back to life, Brigid, but there could be more, if you willed it.”

  “There will be no more children from my womb.”

  The words rang between them. Brigid arched away from him on an anguished cry, for it was the Sight speaking, and in that moment he knew it as well as she. It was if some great rift broke open in his heart, and left a ragged, yawning hollow.

  She said, “Leave me in peace, Conor.”

  A trail of tears gleamed on her cheeks. He did not release her. He knew nothing about tearful women. He knew nothing of comfort, of sympathy, of such things that she might need. By the Dagdá. He knew how to lure a woman to his bed, how to please her body, even how to tempt her into marriage—but he knew nothing of a woman’s sorrow. Or even of a man’s. The frustration added fuel to his fury.

  He had already lost everything: Name, honor, kingship, sons.

  He would not lose her, too.

  He pressed her body harder against his. “What do I want of children? Do you think I would bring another like me, another like you, to suffer in this world?”

  He bent to kiss her, but she twisted her head away.

  “You deny me, wife?”

  Words came out then, wrenched from her soul. “Do you think I want to spend the years with you, watching myself grow old and withered in your eyes? Do you think I want to live in a world where I see the light of passion fade in your face, where I see you recoil from me as my hair thins and my skin sags upon my bones—”

  “Stop it.”

  “It’s easy to shake your head and deny it now while my body still stands strong and straight, but I won’t be fair of face and full of form forever—”

  “For this life, I am bound to stay with you, protect you, and give you what pleasure this life affords.”

  He found her breast beneath her tunic. His palm ached for the warm, full feel of her. It had been so long since they’d lain together. For so long both of them had been in too much pain to touch or hold, even in their hollow grief. Now the passion they’d both suppressed surged to the surface, like a banked fire set free, its flames leaping to the sky.

  He tore his lips from hers, drank in the sight of her face, softened by passion. “There will be no more silence between us.”

  He lifted her bodily against him, reveling in the feel of her. Her body shuddered as he kissed the length of her neck, then below the collar of her tunic. Her arms wound their way around him. He tasted tears in her kiss, salt and surrender, sorrow and sighs.

  Then Conor felt as if the horizon ceased its tilting, as if his feet once again felt the solid ground. Here was the thing he’d been craving all these weeks to bring his world to rights. It had been in front of him all the time.

  What a strange world it had become, for him to be finding his moorings in the embrace of a woman.

  He cradled her head in his hands.

  Of all precious things in this world, the best is still mine.

  ***

  Conor woke with a start to an empty pallet. He squinted through the dying fire and frowned to find himself alone. It would be just like the lass to slip away and cook him some bream and pollock for his morning meal—when all he wanted was to sup upon his wife, as he had done so often these past two days.

  He slipped through the low opening and out into the morning sun. Seabirds soared and dipped below the cliff. The rocky bones of the island gleamed like onyx, and sea-rain beaded like dew upon the grass. The gale had left the whole world bare and shining.

  Brigid had left her seaweed basket inside the clochán, and her shell basket, as well. The dew frosting the earth concealed all signs of footsteps. She’d gone down to the shore, he told himself, to search amid the refu
se for driftwood and other treasures. The exercise would do her good, after all the time she’d spent writhing beneath him in the darkness. The fire in that woman . . . . He’d thought it had gone out for him. Conor leaned back against the wall of the beehive hut. The deep place within him that had roiled too long with storms lay quiet now, like a gentle tide that flowed with the rhythm of the sun and wind.

  The things a man really needed in his life were simple. A solid roof over his head. A hot meal. A fine day. The love of a good woman.

  The thought set his feet upon the path.

  A thin haze shrouded the bay, burning off as the sun rose. The mountains of Connemara shimmered violet on the horizon. Below, hooded crows dropped shellfish on the shore rocks to break them, fighting off scavengers to feast on the soft insides. Amid the shrieks and cawing, there arose a sound unlike any other. Conor paused on a ledge to listen. The hairs on the nape of his neck prickled. It was a high, plaintive, Otherworldly wailing. And it came from a shadow wheeling in the north, guarding a fissure to one of the caverns.

  It was one of Brigid’s swans.

  Conor headed toward the ravine. The cave was a crack in the solid rock which made up the island. He heard Brigid’s sobbing long before he caught sight of her kneeling upon a ledge some ways into the cavern. She rocked back and forth. A ray of silver light seeped through the cavern’s roof and fell upon the snow-white wings of a swan, lying still before her, its neck bent at an awkward angle.

  Never once had he seen her cry so openly, not even all those months ago outside of Morna, when the babe was lost. He had admired her strength and thought no more of it, for too many other issues had flooded his thoughts. Yet here she sat, keening wildly, her spirit as battered as the broken swan.

  You’re like the swan, Conor. You don’t belong here.

  The words floated back to him on memory. Nay, it was Brigid, not him, who didn’t belong on this island. It was Brigid whose neck could more easily be broken. He eased his way along the ledge to join her, and then stopped as he glimpsed something in her arms. Gray feathers peeped out between the edges of her cloak.