“This is the goblet of truth. It is what we will race for. Though you will soon see, to get this truth you must lie, threefold.” He laughed and did a jig, clicking his bare heels like a man mad with wine. He pulled a sword out from the air, its brilliant white steel gleaming bright. “Fragarach! Lugh has lost his sword! Lugh is no light god anymore!”
I started at the mention of the god’s name. “Where is Lugh?” I shouted.
“He cannot answer, for his Answerer is my answer now! He can’t question either!” He hopped backwards from one foot to the other, leaping to pillars in various directions in a mad flurry of ferocious mirth. “Come now, come! We race first and then you might perhaps have an answer yourself—perhaps you’ll sip from this cup of truth.” He stopped his hopping and flicked the sword and goblet into the air, and they both vanished in a sudden cloud of evaporating mist.
Manannán motioned for me to follow as he walked towards his waiting white horse. He stroked its silken skin and whispered to it. He then turned to face me as I continued warily behind, stepping down the pillars in his stead.
“Alas, you have no chariot or steed, so I will ride in my ship. She’s called Scuabtuinne—she sweeps waves without wind, for the water is happy to sweep her off her feet. She has none! She scrubs the ocean well, she does.” He smiled, nodded, and then shook his head up at me as I stood there waiting at the ocean’s edge. “But you have no ship. I told you we won’t use chariots or steeds, for you didn’t think to bring one. But a ship, well, how can one get here without a ship, right? A sea requires one, if it ever might be subdued, or at least ridden as a sailor should sail.”
I stretched my arms wide and said, “My body is my ship and I will sail your wretched water with my arms as oars and legs as rudders.”
“And what of your sail? Is it your hair?” He chuckled and leapt into what had served as his chariot before, though it had since changed its shape and color—a sleek black boat that was of medium length and had no sail or oars.
“My sail is my spirit,” I said, his loud laughter tearing my speech and tattering it windless but I continued, “for my flesh, my form is better than what any lot of wood might rot upon me. You cannot see it, god of the sightless sea, your eyes lulled by the gleam of sumptuous craft. Yet when one is left with the only craft that is truly his own, then the body peaks above the watery valleys, for I follow this creed: body and soul together is perfection, and where one goes, the other follows. My mind is sharper than any sword and my fitness more durable than any ship. You might have designed yours for this, but what I have here is life, being. The valleys of this sea are not seen by my mind’s eye, the intellect sees through and over your elected wood, parry-less in the face of my own body’s thrust. My sail is spirit and my body a ship. Both are better, for both are meant for more.”
“All right then Master Boat, hop right in and let’s finish this.” He tapped his foot in his boat and tousled his hair in a flurry of impatience, pulling back at it as if it were a squirming snake escaping his grasp.
I nodded and shed my armor and shoes while keeping on my weightless trousers. I looked at both my weapons, Solisinanis and Hrunting. Each weapon begged to be grasped, the silver of the sword and the gold of the axe equally enticing. Yet I bent to hold Hrunting and turned away from my glorious axe. If Manannán only had his one sword, I would not seek unfair advantage. I strained my ears, listening for Wyrd’s call. She would know if what I did was right... or true, for truth was this game’s play. Or was it deceit? I listened harder and there in the distance, a sweep of shorn strings high off in the heavens confirmed what I’d known. This was now my sword and it needed its failure to be fixed; I felt as if its redemption was not complete and that its salvation was a sort of metagame within and above these cursed circles. Perhaps a key? Wyrd’s song soared and vanished at the thought. Manannán showed no signs of having heard, he just stood there impatiently with his arms folded at his side and his feet tapping.
I set my jaw and cracked my neck, and after a few rolls of my shoulders, I plunged into the icy water, its black embrace covering me like soil in a grave. I whipped my head out of the water and floated over towards Scuabtuinne.
“The Stoor Worm!” Manannán shouted with his arms raised and head thrown back in anticipatory rapture.
A rumble shook from beneath the water as waves arose like quaking mountains, tossing me up and down as the frightful creature climbed out from its cold depths. The monster was blacker than the black sea it rose from. Like a coiled mountain it broke the water around it, shattering the black into fleeing white waves. The giant sea serpent blotted out huge swathes of sky, casting the realm in an even drearier darkness. Its individual scales were the size of ships alone, and its slimy black body dripped a venomous yellow liquid. Its yellow eyes were round and reptilian, and its snout jutted out with striped bands of that same venomous yellow on each side, split only by the black empty color of its scales in the middle. Its head was that of a dragon—less serpentine and more horse-like in the length of its snout and jaws.
It reared its head upwards and opened its mouth, letting out a yawn that sounded like the earth was breaking in two. Yellow gas poured out from the beast’s mouth, poisoning the sky and turning it the same vomit-colored hue. Its teeth were bright and sharp like icy mountain peaks. It lowered its head back down to the surface of the water, strangely keeping its mouth propped open. Tendrils of toxic gas still leaked out from its maw, but the Stoor Worm settled into its position and floated there like an island, no movement other than the endless trickle of gas from its still agape mouth, and its eyes that followed my bobbing in the sea.
“I lied!” Manannán yelled over the racket of rolling waves. “We are not racing around the Stoor Worm, we are racing through it! The first one to its liver wins!” And with that, his boat sped away.
I grunted at his head start and swam forward, my already tired arms dragging like stones through the unforgiving surf. I let Hrunting drink both my blue and red light, each mark feeding the weapon with energy. I sped after the ship, trailing in its wake but unable to come close. The putrid air stuffed with the sour spoil of the Stoor Worm tore at my flesh. I lowered my sword so as to avoid the air and submerged just beneath the surface as I skimmed along like a dolphin. But still, that slippery god was carving through the water with ease, white sea foam crashing after him like an avalanche of snow. My body dragged behind like a caught fish as my sword flung me forward. I could barely see through the black water stinging my eyes.
I at least knew where I was headed. For the mouth. For the toxic worm’s mouth. I flung my sword upwards, my arm latched on like a notched arrow to a bow. I shot out of the water and into beast’s black maw as its pale green gas sizzled my skin. Numbness wrapped my body as I went in and landed with a plop in pulpy liquid. The stench and feel of the worm’s cavernous maw was of sludge and slime. Despite the stink, a strange calm in the beast’s murky mouth descended and all was quiet but for the groaning of the worm’s innards. I could not see Manannán anywhere; perhaps he’d already made it through the worm’s dark depths.
The Stoor Worm roared and my surroundings flipped as I was thrown against slimy walls. The worm’s mouth closed shut and a dark black fell over me like the earth itself had swallowed me whole. Its throat flexed and the water surged downwards, the gas and smell of rot reeking to the point of making me weep; even with eyes shut I could not prevent the tears that streamed in vain, for there was no purifying myself in here.
The slippery wall I was stuck on slid out from underneath me as the Stoor Worm reared its body vertical and swallowed at such a force that water, noxious gas, and what little of the untainted air remaining, were all sucked downward. I fell and plunged my sword into the beast’s inner wall, sliding downwards as Hrunting carved a jagged line until I stopped, clinging on as the sword held true. Hanging vertical as I was allowed for the air’s toxicity to thin, the gas falling back into the stomach. I cautiously took a few slight breaths. What was I
to do now? I’d followed the rules of this inverted boat race, yet Manannán was a cheating wretch. Where had he gone? Had he actually plunged into the Stoor Worm’s mouth or had it been a ruse?
I sighed, my body tense and secure, and I pulled myself upwards and rested my chest on the sword’s hilt to ease the burden of holding myself aloft. It was oddly peaceful now. It sounded as if the worm was holding itself upright and waiting in perfect stillness for me to dissolve in its stomach acid. There wasn’t much I could do stuck here like a canker sore. I needed a song. Where was Wyrd? I heard a humming that accompanied my thought, yet it wasn’t Wyrd who sang. The voice was a soft yet throaty echo from somewhere below. The humming arose pleasantly with an aroma of warm smoke like that from a cozy hearth. The humming swelled slowly up, building in volume until words burst free from the soothing rhythm.
Into the ash the rootless tree digs
Its branches gasping, its trunk already dead
Light arrives. The drought lingers in shadow.
Into the darkness the rooted light shines
Its rays quenching, its path aflame with life
The song was now a full tune, echoing somberly about the darkness. I could no longer tell where it came from for it had coursed over me like a stormy sea, spinning me under its surf and into its melody. That lovely smell of smoke made my entire body tingle, incense holy and right like that once used in Hagia Sophia. I smiled, holding myself on Hrunting as if I were lying on a soft green pasture, gazing at the sun. And as the scent ascended in swirls of smoke, my soul seemed to join in. And now the music grew louder, the voice filling out into a choir, no longer low in tone but angelic and high in its tenor. The words burst free from the dark humming cocoon, the flight of voice like light shining forth into a new lyricism.
Arrival is departure, a paradox of motion
Light loves dark, an unceasing ocean
The song exploded, rising with that last line in a sustained note. As rapturous as it came, just as powerfully it vanished, and once more a slow hum of melancholy filled the darkness. The lingering smell of burnt-out flame was all that remained. And from the whispering hum, words sputtered out like dying embers of the last of light.
Evil is great, and good is evil
Great is good, and evil is the nothing
The nothing
The nothing
Good is something, but sometimes something—
Sometimes something belongs to the nothing
Light burnt shadows
Dark swallowed sun
Absence and presence together as one
We are one
Vapor to ash, and ash back to sun
Shadows burning the light
Light swallowing shadows
No duality.
The good evil. First among the last—
From the beginning there was a first and end.
A start amidst a never started.
A something before the nothing, and then with it.
They existed together, nonexistence and being.
The Good Evil.
This is a snake that has finished swallowing.
This snake has consumed itself, not in perpetuity—
in finality.
The swallowed nothingness is our digested somethingness. Neither end, for when it started, it was already eaten.
Eat.
At last the strange song finished its whisper without melody, a flutter of flaring moth burnt in the glow of the flame. And in the stillness, all sense faded away. Even the motion of the Stoor Worm lowering itself back to the surface was somehow silent and without feeling. And then, a soft yellow glow emerged from the back of the beast’s throat, and a boat with a tattered sail came towards me. I stayed there dumbfounded, Hrunting still piercing the wall.
“I am Ashipattle,” the man called out, his boat slowly inching towards me. “I killed the Stoor Worm back when nobody else could. I killed the wicked wizard too. Yet this pulling, this strange bleeding of myth has brought it back to life and me with it. Somebody is causing this. But I’ve been here since the cause, whenever that may have been, I do not know. And now you are here to bring about the cause’s effect. Make it your own cause, I beg you. Do not follow through with an effect that is someone else's design.”
As far as he was, he didn’t shout but called out in a smooth and comforting manner, the kind of voice that carried itself without needing an affectation of tension and forced volume. Now that he had drifted close enough, I squinted and was able to make out his figure beneath his soft-lit lantern that hung atop a mast. The lantern’s light was a fading flicker of yellow-orange like that of autumn leaves. The man was no fall and he stood in a wintery fashion. His icy demeanor was fitting of his gray robes. It appeared as though he was wearing a strange sort of silk ash. His eyes mirrored his clothing’s color. He was of medium stature and lean. His oblong face sported a wide brow and a long and narrow chin.
His red hair hung straight down, curtaining the sides of his face just past his chin. Atop his head sat a plain silver crown without adornment. He was pushing his way through the water with a large broad sword serving as his paddle. The sword was as gray and piercing as his eyes, and its white diamond-studded hilt glowed as bright as the lantern above his head. His boat lurched beneath me and at last he stopped rowing, looking up at me perched there on my sword with kindness in his eyes. He offered his hand and I accepted, pulling Hrunting from the beast’s meat and hopping onto the boat.
“Can you tell me where Manannán mac Lir went?” I said, standing next to Ashipattle as the boat rocked in place.
“He came in here. Yes, he came in.” He sighed and looked back towards the darkness he’d emerged from.
“And where has he gone?” I said.
“To hide the truth of course.”
I frowned, staring at Ashipattle’s ashen face, gray as his robe and eyes, and just as dulled. As simple as the crown was, it at least shined. I stared at the crown until his face blurred into a cloud of unclarity. Truth. That was what this race was for, that goblet of truth. Manannán had claimed I’d need three lies. But what could that mean?
“Three lies to win the truth,” I muttered, itching my chin through my beard.
“A riddle, no doubt,” Ashipattle said. “I once defeated this worm as a mere child, my wit winning the day. Where is your wit? This is not my truth to win.”
“Three untruths. I wonder. Like St. Peter’s three denials. Could a lie be true if denying the truth of a lie?” I rubbed my eyes and lowered my head to concentrate.
“Whom do you love? Why do you do this? What is it that you are doing?” Ashipattle said.
“I love myself. I do this because it is better than the nothingness. I’m journeying to live again.”
“Truth or falsity?” he said.
“I only love myself when I love my people. I only exist in somethingness because the love for my people drives me away from nonbeing. I’m journeying to make my people live again.”
“And thus your selfish deceit and truthful lies become true untruths. For it is untrue until it is finished. And can such a task be finished?”
“Never and always,” I answered, raising my head smiling. Ashipattle smiled back.
“Manannán mac Lir comes,” he said, his mouth tightened straight and serious.
I looked over Ashipattle’s shrouded shoulder, and there from the dark depths of the Stoor Worm’s belly, the infernal black Scuabtuinne came. The ship was suspended in the dark water in a strange white glow of light that exuded from the boat’s black wood. It glided out from the darkness and towards us as Manannán smirked and waved his hands about as if to a crowd during a victory lap.
“What kind of race is this?” I said, my words weighed with weariness from the inverted games of this strange realm.
I’d faced much thus far, and this by much was the shortest in stature. Where was the glory here? I hardly felt like my ancestor Aeneas. No celebration. No glory. Only tired aloneness. If these w
ere my funeral games, I wasn’t sure who was being honored. Perhaps I was being mocked by those who’d survived me, my enemies spitting on my grave.
“A race of untruth. I have my Answerer here,” Manannán said, holding his gleaming white sword aloft as the boat slowed to a lazy lull, floating a few feet away. His face waxed wicked in the white light, carved shadows intensifying his evil mirth and highlighting the concaves of his narrow countenance. “Ashipattle has his Sickersnapper: a sword that bites severely, but can its bite breech a sword that retaliates with a force that is always in perfect reply? Can a response be bitten when it is the answer to the bite?” He tossed his sword from one hand to the other, chuckling as he turned his bright eyes my way. “And your sword, that Hrunting, that sword that failed! How can you expect to hold your weight against a biting sword and an answering one when all your sword is known for is failing to hold up against Grendel’s mother? She was a ghastly, old beast that Beowulf had to slay with another, better weapon.”
“You’re a fool. This sword is no longer the one that failed. It set Hercules and Beowulf free. It killed Turnus. It has shed worthy blood.” I pointed the sword at Manannán’s direction. “Insult me as you will, but this inverted boat race finished the moment you went backward. You came back here to what... gloat? You fool!” I laughed and swung Hrunting through the air, its gleam silver and cold, icily waiting to shatter the shadowy sea god’s might.
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