by Ian McDonald
The riptide of panic, confusion, shouting voices, and flocking, snapping paper demons tore at me, tore away the underpinnings of reality to which I had anchored myself. In an instant I was swept away, into the Otherworld. Suddenly everything was clear, everything shone with a tremendous light. I knew what I wanted more than anything in this world or the other. I lunged forward and embraced the Maid of the Flowers in my arms. At my touch all the false life went out of it. It fell in folds around me, and I felt that I was drowning in cascades of flowers and wet, black, smothering earth. The stench of humus clogged my lungs, unclean soil filled my mouth and cheeks so that I could hardly press past it the words, “Yes! Yes, I will, yes.”
I was in the Room of Floating Flowers, before the mirror that stood in the middle of the bare floor. The floors, the walls, the ceiling, the glass skylight admitted a wind-driven moonlight, and all were covered with Wallpaper People. I stooped to touch one, apprehensive that it might leap for my eyes. It was inanimate and immovable, as if it had been painted there. I looked into the mirror. I beheld myself, the Maid of the Flowers, the long-expected Queen of the Morning, dressed in this garment which had been prepared for me from beyond time. I traced the edge of the gash my blade had torn, and the beautiful fabric hung away, baring me from breast to loins. My pregnant belly bulged through the ripped taffeta. I posed, I turned, I spun and wheeled, glorying in the sight of myself in my wedding dress, its folds soft against my skin, scented like spring, like sky. A giddy exultation, almost a drunkenness, burst over me. I raced to the skylight, threw it open, leaned out to bask in the warmth of the moonlight and survey my domain. To the left the land fell away toward the dark sea in parcelled farms and holdings. To the right Ben Bulben rose like a stone dragon breaking from beneath the surface of the sea. Before me, the garden twinkled under frost, its boundaries with the woodland soft, indistinct, as its designer had always intended. And beyond them were the woods. I gasped. Suddenly the house and the gardens became a small ark lost in an ocean of treetops. To my amazed vision, the woods broke the boundaries of the demesne, the land, and even the ocean. They stretched on forever into another country, another landscape. As I beheld, I heard, far off, the horns of the Wild Hunt and the baying of the red-eared hounds of the Ever-Young. I knew what it was they hunted, what it was they had always hunted, through Rathfarnham Woods, through Bridestone Wood, across the slopes of Ben Bulben and the hillsides of my dreams. Soon, very soon, they would come to take me from the dross and drear and ashes of this world into the endless light of Otherworld. Soon, very soon, I would, I will, break apart and cast off my human shape and name and history and all their limitations, and, a current in the sea of dreaming, ever moving, ever changing, immortal, inhuman, become legend.
December 28, 1913
Glendun
Blackrock Road
Blackrock
County Dublin
My Dear Connie,
At last, the hour of synthesis! Months of hacking my way through the jungle of false leads and speculations surrounding the Craigdarragh Case have finally ended; I am at last emerging from the general murk, and may even be able to proffer a tentative hypothesis.
Recent research in England into supernatural activity has uncovered a close relationship between emotionally or sexually troubled adolescents and psychic activity—phantom noises, the odd poltergeist, strange lights in the sky, bizarre changes of temperature in different parts of the home. I don’t think it would strain the definition of supernatural activity too far for it to include the faery manifestations of the Craigdarragh Case, and it seems appropriate for them to be expressions of Emily’s repressed sexuality lashing out from her subconscious.
This was the point I was striving to draw out in the interviews in inquiring about the regularity of Emily’s periods. Many thanks for the copy of the transcripts. This whole endeavor would have been sunk without trace if not for some documentary foundation upon which to build them. Menarche can be a most disturbing time. For some girls, it may be so alarming that it leaves a permanent psychological scar. My intention was to establish a link between Emily’s periods—those times of emotional, sexual, and physiological stress—the faery manifestations, and the electrical disturbances. These latter are far from the insignificant irritations the Desmonds made them out to be. More about them later. For the meantime, the correlation between these elements is exact enough to be extremely significant, though as with everything in this uncertainty-dogged discipline, a fraction short of the incontrovertible. Further, the fact that her periods coincide to an abnormally high degree with the New Moon (in all religions and mythological structures, a time of enormous symbolic and mystical significance), only reinforces my conclusions all the more.
The blessed Yeats would no doubt have us believe that County Sligo (for that matter, all Ireland) is aswarm with faery warriors and mythological heroes only waiting to be discovered, have their photographs printed on the front page of Stubb’s Gazette, etc., etc. My approach would be less literal. Whereas he would maintain that the faeries already existed and were only observed by Emily, I would argue rather that the faeries had no existence at all until Emily observed them; that is, that she in fact created them. The power of will over matter has long been attested to by our navel-contemplating mystic cousins on their snowy Tibetan mountainsides; their contorted psyches can apparently create material, living objects purely by force of will. If they are merely exercising for their own amusement a talent latent within all of us, perhaps it is not so surprising to find it hiding out in deepest County Sligo.
So far so good? Right. Then I shall lead you a little further into the realms of speculation. Taking all the above into consideration, I wonder, is it possible, at a deeply subconscious level, far beyond any yet tapped by hypnosis or even theorised by the good Dr. Freud, that the human mind is in direct contact with the intimate fabric of nature? That there is an underlying mental structure to the universe with which certain individuals, at certain times, under circumstances, can come into direct contact? (Pardon the purple prose, Connie, but the King’s English has yet to devise expressions adequate for expressing this primordial structure.) If, as philosophers insist, reality can only be what we perceive it to be, is it possible that, in contact with this subjective sea of being, the very nature of it, and thus of our reality, may be changed?
By now (I hope), my reasoning should be becoming clear to you, Connie dearest. Emily’s frustrated sexual desires and fears touched upon this ancient reality-shaping consciousness deep below any sentient level of her mind and that power, acting through her personal symbolic mythology, gave the ultimate shape of her fancies and fantasies. I cannot help but wonder, would the Olympian Yeats be fair tickled to learn that he was, in a sense, responsible for the creation of his own symbolism? Or would he be horrified? Rather the latter, I think.
Yet there are inconsistencies in applying this theory as a universal panacea. This is the problem with research in this damnable field. Nothing is ever cut, dried, and pickled in formalin. It is like fighting the sea—you think you have one bit pinned down, and up pops another. Nothing plays by the rules, if, indeed, there are any rules to play by. The most glaring inconsistency is this: if the faeries were the wish shapes of Emily’s repressed sexuality, why then did they turn on her and rape her? (I am convinced that, popular press notwithstanding, the perpetrator was not of earthly origin. The timing of the incident is too pat; the location, the entire symbolism, is too appropriate to be coincidental.) I do have a plausible offering. Tell me what you think. Back to the deep levels of the preconscious mind, if Emily was capable of giving form and shape to her subconscious desires, could she not also be capable of giving shape and form to her subconscious fears and dreads? For in the deep levels of the mind, fears are as uncontrollable as desires. So I would argue that at the moment of her greatest desire, for sexual, romantic fulfillment, all the fears, dreads, and guilts she learned from the Sisters at Cross and Passion (I am under no illusions about ev
en “enlightened” convent schools) transformed her dream lover, the Lugh figure from the interviews, into her nightmare violator, punishing her for her sins.
I haven’t forgotten about the electricity. Things really start to become outré here. Please bear with me. I have no evidence for what I am about to say, nor even know whether it is scientifically allowable, but I believe that Emily generated her mythological forms out of electricity. In this world, or Otherworld, you cannot get something for nothing. Something must power the transformation. The scientists tell us that matter and energy can neither be destroyed nor created; but may they be mutually interchangeable? Improbable, even impossible, in this level of reality, but at the preconscious level, the primary level of the universe, this might be more easily achievable than one would imagine. Mere unconscious reflex could cause Emily to draw upon whatever source of energy was convenient to generate her faeries.
Indeed, she may have been unconsciously drawing upon this power to create faeries for quite some time. For your delectation and delight, I enclose this rather intriguing cutting from the press:
May 27, 1913
Irish Independent Morning Edition:
MYSTERY POWER FAILURE STRIKES DUBLIN!
The Dublin Electrical Company has still to provide an explanation for the mysterious current failure that plunged the entire south side of the city into chaos between the hours of six and seven o’clock yesterday evening when domestic supplies were cut off, causing widespread public consternation.
Transportation was brought to a standstill. The electrical failure immobilised trams, which then created further congestion as other road users and vehicular traffic piled up around the stranded cars. Adding to the general chaos, telegram and telephone services were suspended for the hour, effectively isolating South Dublin from the rest of the country and the Empire.
As of yet no explanation has been received by this newspaper for the power failure. Scientific opinion is utterly baffled, and a spokesman from the Dublin Electrical Company has stated that during the period of the failure all the Company’s generators at the Ringsend plant were operating at full capacity and the gauges in the plant registered that full voltage was being supplied. The Company engineers are at this moment checking and rechecking the transformers (which reduce the voltage supplied by the generators to a level safe for domestic usage), and though it is assumed that the cause of the failure will be found in the transmission system, Mr. Norman Parkinson, the Company spokesman, says that he has not ruled out sabotage by some extreme nationalist group.
Intriguing, no? And how similar to the notices a few months later when a massive electrical failure coincided with the disappearance of Bell’s Comet. Which leads me to my most outrageous observation of all. If Emily could generate a host of the Sidhe out of stolen electricity, she could as easily have generated the astronomical object Dr. Desmond maintained (and still maintains) was an otherworldly space vehicle. It is only a matter of scale and projection, after all, and the scientists tell us that energy is many, many times more plentiful in the void than upon this earth. There are just too many coincidences between the faery and the astronomical for any other conclusion to be tenable. In the words of Conan Doyle’s admirable Holmes, when we have exhausted the possible, whatever remains, however impossible, must be the truth. Emily created both faery host and Altairii, the former to fulfill her own emotional and sexual needs, the latter to punish what she clearly saw as her inadequate father—the father whose work came fair and square first and foremost in his life.
So, what now? Is there an end to the Craigdarragh Case with the conception of the baby? (Further thanks for keeping me so well informed as to the goings-on over there in Drumcliffe. More direct inquiry would be impolitic, given the turn of events.) I think not. From what you have told me, Caroline Desmond fears that the faery manifestations may be returning, though it must be noted, without the attendant electrical disturbances. The child in Emily’s womb may be responsible for this. What she is carrying is, in a sense, half human, half mythical, and I feel it may be acting as a kind of taproot into the energy of this preconscious symbolic domain. It may be utilising the energy inherent in all things animate and inanimate on the earth—living things, growing things, stone, sea, sky. (Did you know there is a potential difference between the bottom of the atmosphere where we poor humans grub out our existences, and the outermost layers, of some twenty-five thousand volts? Power enough, and to spare, to generate whole legions of the Sidhe—power being constantly siphoned and shaped through Emily’s unborn child.
So, in closing (this letter has, I fear, like Topsy, just growed and growed), the final question must be, what of the child Emily Desmond bears within her? Be it mortal, be it god, I can only say that it will stand forever before her as a haunting reminder of that Otherworld which, for one single, searing second upon that hillside, embraced her, and which she has irretrievably lost.
Yours,
Hanny
The Lost Girl
(FROM THE COMHALTAS CEOLTOIRI Eireann sound archive: Belgrave Square, Monkstown, Dublin. The MacNamara Collection of Oral History recordings, 1921–1939. Archive B34/6: Mr. Gerard Brennan of Drumcliffe Parish, County Sligo, farmhand on the Cunningham demesne, Rossnaree, speaking in the Sweet Briar public house: August 29, 1927.)
’Twas as foul a night as I can remember. The wind was blowing straight off the Atlantic; take the polish clean off the toe of your boot, it would, and the rain, the rain! Soak you to the bone in one second, it would; the kind of rain it was you hear beating on your windows of a night and in your warm bed you say to yourself, “Pity the poor soul has to be out in that,” little thinking it might be yourself.
There were, let me think, yes, eight of us. Yes, eight; myself, the brother Dermot; Old Tomas; the O’Carolan boys, God be kind to them, both of them dead in the war; Noel Duignan, the big fellow, clever with his hands, if you catch my drift; Mr. Cunningham, and Dr. Desmond from down at Craigdarragh. His it was the daughter who had run off. Run off, on a night like that, and she five months’ pregnant! ’Twas a great scandal in the village at the time, you must understand, the Desmond girl’s pregnancy. Now, I know all of you read about the rape case in the papers, how they never got hide nor hair of the boy as did it. It must have unhinged her a little, affected the balance of her judgement. She always had been a queer bird, that Emily Desmond—queer bird from a queer nest, given to daydreaming and wandering off by herself into the woods, head full of all manner of nonsense. Is it any wonder, I ask you, that what happened happened? Brought it on herself, I say. Asking for trouble. But what can you expect, with parents like hers? Marry your own kind, that’s what I say; oil and water don’t mix. The mother, she was of the other persuasion; always acted like she thought she was too good for our village. She wrote the poetry, so you can imagine what kind of a woman she was. The father, Dr. Edward Garret Desmond, he was a fine gentleman, but given to great and eccentric notions. You’ve heard no doubt of Desmond’s Downfall, also known as Desmond’s Disgrace, Desmond’s Despair, Desmond’s Disaster. Well, ’twas a big story in the newspapers at the time. That Dr. Desmond. Wired to the moon, all of them. Anyway, there was a financial scandal, and he’d been forced to sell Craigdarragh. Ten generations of Desmonds grew up within those walls, and now they’re gone, sold out to some foreigner from across the water. The end of the Desmonds. Well, I reckon young Emily couldn’t face the leaving and in her half-crazy state of mind ran away, on the very worst night of the year, to hide herself in the woods. Anyway, up to Rossnaree comes the good Dr. Desmond, such a panic you’ve never seen, and I for one wouldn’t condemn him, not on a night like that. So, Mr. Cunningham turns out the boys and tumbles us out of our cosy beds. We dressed as best we could in oilskins and sou’westers and rain capes, but I tell you, even standing there in the stable yard waiting for the lady of the house to light the lanterns for us, we were mortally soaked through to the skin, and half frozen to death, what with that vicious wind howling through
every crevice in our oilskins.
’Twas about, let me think, yes, eleven o’clock when we set out; eleven o’clock certainly, because I remember Mrs. Cunningham standing in the kitchen door and asking us what time we would be back so she could have the tea and fruit loaf waiting for us. And Mr. Cunningham says, we’ll be back when we’re back, and with that off we set, our lanterns swinging to and fro in the wind and the night as black and foul as the very pit of hell itself. The plan was for us to search the southeast end of Bridestone Wood. Dr. Desmond had already been on the telephone to the police station and Sergeant O’Rourke and the boys from the village were going to work their way down from the northwest. The idea was that we’d meet up somewhere in the middle. That was the plan, but within minutes we were all separated from each other, and I don’t mind telling you, this fellow was afraid. It was bad enough, what with the rain and the howling wind and me not able to see two feet in front of me, prodding out my way with this big stick I’d cut from the coppice. But the worst part of it was never knowing what I was going to find—whether the girl would be alive or dead, or what. Grim it was, grim. And I’ll tell you more, say what you like about idle superstition; there’s not a man here is going to tell me there wasn’t something strange going on in that wood that night. All those weird shadowy things moving out there among the trees just beyond the range of my lantern light, those crashing sounds in the brambles and dead bracken that always stopped when I stopped myself to listen. I tell you, it was enough even to scare Big Noel Duignan, and he the bravest fistfighter in all Sligo. Been on the circuit across the water, he had, fought for fifty-guinea purses, and he himself told me he was shaking like a kitten. But worse even than the shadows were the voices. At first they were the voices of Big Noel and the others, and I called out to them, but they would not answer. Then I thought maybe it was the lost girl, and I called out her name. No answer. Then I stood still a moment just to listen and I could hear them clear over the howling of the wind and the lashing of the trees and the beating of the rain—voices whispering and laughing, so close I should have been able to see who they belonged to, but wherever I turned my lantern I saw only the shadows, like something huge and dark flying between the trees. Well, I had no intention whatsoever of staying there one minute longer than I had to, so on I pushed, and then all of a sudden I saw this light, far off among the trees. It seemed miles distant at one moment, then so close you could reach out and touch it the next, and I thought to myself, ’Tis the faeries. This is the pixie light of the faeries come to lure me to their kingdom under the hill. I was petrified. Couldn’t move a muscle, not even to blink, I was so scared. Then there was a crashing and clattering like doomsday itself and out of the bushes came—well, who should it be but Sergeant O’Rourke himself. And says he, “What do you think you’re doing standing there like a buck eejit with your gob open, you stupid bugger? Don’t you know you’ve been wandering around in circles for the past ten minutes, long after everyone else’s met up and moved on?” He gave me a police whistle and pointed me up the slope, where the rest had gone on, and he shouted in his best peeler voice, “You see anything, you blow like buggery, for you could shout yourself hoarse and we’d never hear you in this storm.”