A Song for the Dying
Cahal dipped the rag into the ice cold water from the well and gently dabbed it across the brow of his wife Fiona. He could feel the heat from her forehead penetrating the cloth. Fiona moaned lightly in her sleep as he did this. It’s getting worse, he thought.
He pursed his lips in consternation, unsure of what to do; then he smiled at himself. Fiona always hated it when he made that face. She said that his puckered lips looked like a porcupine’s ass with his salt and pepper beard. Of course she never complained when he had a full black beard when they first were wed; she had considered him the most handsome man in the county back then. Cahal smiled as he continued bathing her face.
“You, with your hair of flame and me, a simple blacksmith, with hair the color of my coal; we were meant to be together my love,” Cahal felt a tear trickle down his cheek.
“So many years Fia. Our sons are long gone; now it’s just you and me. You can’t leave me now.”
Cahal, stroked his wife’s cheek. Hardly a wrinkle had settled there. Only her hair, now mostly grey, told of the passage of years for the still beautiful woman.
A high pitched sound on the wind snapped his head around. It almost sounded like singing. Cahal strained but didn’t hear it again. Probably an owl he thought, returning to his ministrations.
That time it was clear. Cahal stood and went to the door of the small stone hut. Darkness was settling across the moor. He could hear the hens settling in for the night and the grumbling of his goats as they gobbled another meal before bed. The moon was up and near full, a person couldn’t hide across the flat terrain that surrounded his house. If there was someone walking across the moor, he should be able to see them.
Definitely a voice, he thought. He could hear it faintly across the moor. It wavered like a gentle lullaby on the breeze.
“You’re probably hearing a woman singing to her child, you old fool,” he said.
The wind shifted and Cahal’s blood froze in his veins. The voice was clearly a wail. A high pitched keening that rose and fell like a mourner at a funeral; it could only be one thing.
“Banshee,” he said and ran back into his hut.
Slamming the heavy wooden door, Cahal knelt next to his wife. She was still breathing.
“Stay with me Fia,” he said, frantically dabbing her face with cold water. “That old sidhe is going to visit someone down the lane. She’s not coming here.”
In his gut he knew he was lying.
The sound became clearer as Cahal knelt next to his wife. The distant wail became a raspy voice, strained from continuous ululations. It sounded like a damned soul being tortured and weeping in its pain.
“Dear Gods, send this spirit past my house,” he whispered. “Not tonight, not tonight, please not my Fia tonight.”
The wail sounded almost outside. Cahal started as Fiona suddenly gasped, her eyes rolling beneath her inflamed eyelids.
“No,” he screamed.
Cahal leapt to his feet and raced to the door. He grabbed the only weapon he possessed, a stout bar of iron that he had forged in his youth. The bar was the length of a sword with a slightly bulbous tip and had a leather grip wrapped in steel wire. Cahal had made this bludgeon for himself years ago in case he needed to drive off bandits. He had joked with Fiona that he left it iron rather than temper it to steel so that the wee folk could also be chased off. He prayed that his jest would provide him with a weapon against the Banshee.
Throwing open the door Cahal saw a ragged oval shape, taller than it was wide. The shape appeared made of the mist from the moors but glowed with a sickly blue light. As he watched the wail came again; the light brightened and dimmed as the sound rose and fell.
“Get back you damned sidhe,” he shouted. “You’ll not take my Fia.”
The Banshee paused in its floating approach for a moment as if considering the words of the man before it but quickly resumed its progress toward the door of the hut.
With an animal growl Cahal swung his bar of iron at the glowing specter. The tip of the bar passed through the light without resistance. Even though Cahal felt no impact, the area where his bar intersected the Banshee flared with a red light and the spirit wailed even louder than before and retreated several feet.
“It’s true,” he said. “Iron harms you. Begone then, you’ll never get past me.”
The Banshee made its funeral wail and charged forward once more. Again Cahal drove it back with a swipe of his iron bar. Advance and retreat the spirit and man danced. Cahal fought with graceless ferocity. With each strike the Banshee’s wail grew louder and more frantic. With each strike Cahal felt the burning in his lungs and the painful pressure growing in his chest.
The Banshee wailed louder than ever and Cahal felt a sharp pain in his ear. He touched his left hand to his head and then examined it; blood was coming from his ear.
“I don’t care you bastard. Kill me if you want but you’ll not take Fiona.”
Cahal charged the Banshee raining blow after blow on the spirit until the light of its body was pulsing rapidly between its normal blue and the red of its pain.
Cahal staggered back toward his door, exhaustion beginning to take its toll on his aging body. The pain in his chest made him worry that the Banshee might claim both he and his wife tonight. Movement caught his eye and he whimpered. He could not fight another sidhe; he felt defeat rearing its head. Another ghostly shape was approaching from the moor.
Cahal swung at the Banshee once more then turned to face this new threat. The second spirit approached in silence. It was white rather than blue but otherwise was almost the twin of the Banshee.
Cahal raised his bar to strike.
“Cahal, stop my boy,” the new spirit spoke in a woman’s voice.
Cahal froze in mid swing and took a staggering step back. It couldn’t be. “Mother?”
The voice coming from the white spirit was that of his long dead mother. Even the long forty years since her death could not dim his memory, Cahal would know her voice anywhere. It was the sound of his heart, the sound of comfort.
“My son, you cannot stop the Banshee,” the spirit said.
“No,” he blustered. “It fears my iron. I won’t let it take my Fiona.”
The white spirit approached and coalesced into the well remembered shape of Cahal’s mother. Her spirit looked as young as Cahal remembered her from when he was a child. The aged appearance she wore at her death had been shed in the spirit world.
“Son, I love you. You’ve made a mother so proud to have become such a good man. You’ve raised your family and found love with a beautiful woman. But life must move on. You cannot change the natural order. Old life must end for new life to continue.”
Cahal lowered his rod, tears streaming down his face. He was gasping, a combination of sobbing and sheer exhaustion.
“But, I can’t lose her,” He said.
“My lovely boy; you can never lose her. Have you lost me?”
Cahal blinked through his tears to stare at the glowing form of his mother.
“No, Mother.”
“Let her go my son. Eventually, your time will come and you will find her again in the spirit world just like I found your father. “
Cahal nodded, and dropped the iron bar with a clang against the rocks of his door path.
“Forgive me spirit,” he said to the Banshee. “Be about your business.”
The Banshee resumed its funeral wail, much more gently than before and began to drift toward the door of the small cottage. Cahal staggered in the Banshee’s wake and dropped to his knees at his wife’s bedside as the Banshee hovered overhead.
The Banshee’s wail changed, transforming from funereal mourning into a gentle lullaby. Cahal recognized it from his childhood and smiled a sad smile. Taking Fiona’s feverish hand in his own he brought it to his lips and felt her shudder as her spirit departed.
“Goodbye my love,” he whispered.
Cahal looked up
to see the Banshee joined by a second white spirit form.
“Love is forever,” he heard his mother’s fading voice say beside him.
Tears filled his eyes and Cahal smiled as all three spirits faded into nothingness.
About the author
Thank you for reading, friend. If you’ve enjoyed this book, please remember to leave feedback where you purchased it. Every little bit helps.
As a young man Edmund’s imagination fell through a hole in the universe. Scenes of horror filled his mind. Vast world striding beings, greed and evil perpetrated by men and near-men poured through the rift into his mind.
Attempting to understand and combat the visions, Edmund studied science, religion, and mysticism; became proficient in martial arts, swordsmanship and all forms of weaponry, yet the onslaught from beyond continued.
Finally it occurred to him; there was a way to fight the images of horror and devastation. He began to write down the images in his mind, loosing into the world through his voice, the worlds that threatened to burst the seams of his mind.
Edmund de Wight writes fiction that has a touch of dark fantasy a smidge of horror, sprinkles of thriller and a boat load of imagination. Several books are currently in production for Ionosphere Press and will be released electronically in the near future.
Look for other books by the author:
10 Days to Samhain
Reality’s Edge
Read the author’s blog :
https://ionospherepress.com/dewight
or follow on Twitter: @EdmunddeWight
Visit our publisher’s site for other non-fiction and fiction books
https://ionospherepress.com
Death Songs Page 4