Foxfire, Wolfskin

by Sharon Blackie

  So it was Aife’s child who came sailing one day to Ireland, for Cú had asked her to send his son to him when he turned seven. But he had also lain three geasa on the boy while he was still freshly minted in his mother’s womb. He must not turn back once he began his journey; he must not refuse a challenge; and he must never tell anyone his name. And so it was that, when Conall Cernach asked who he was when he arrived on the shore there at Dún Dealgán, the boy could not tell him. Conall challenged him, of course, but the boy fought him and easily won. Conall was humiliated by his defeat at the hands of a child, so Cú Chulainn then approached him, and asked the same question. The child replied – listen well to this, Fand, and tell me when this story is done that your heart has not broken in two – ‘I cannot tell you my name,’ he said. ‘But if I were not under a command which forbids me, there is no man in the world to whom I would sooner tell it than to yourself, for I love your face.’

  I love your face. What did the great Hound of Ulster do then, Fand? Did he take pity on a seven-year-old child who was bound under a geas to tell no one his name? Did he remember the geasa he had placed on his own child, in his mother’s womb, all those years before? He did not. Instead, he challenged him to fight. A seven-year-old boy who had effectively told him he loved him, face to face with the greatest warrior Ireland has ever known. ‘Honour’ he called it, and I tell you, I have grown wearier of that word than I can say. There is no honour in their honour; it’s no more than an excuse for childish chest-beating. A pretext which permits them to ease their ennui. By picking a fight with anyone on whom the sun shines, while they themselves stay shackled to shade.

  But I digress. I ran to Cú’s side; I warned him not to fight. I told him that the boy was his; it was clear to me, who loved him. But it’s not for women to meddle in men’s affairs, Cú said. And even if he is my son, he said, I will kill him rather than have my countrymen dishonoured. And so he did. Fought and killed his own child.

  I – oh, there is a harshness in the souls of men that makes the gods weep.

  Well, he could not speak it himself, so I will say it for him. The boy’s name was Connla. Connla, and his killing was a wicked and a wasteful deed. So I found myself wondering then, Fand – though I tried so hard to put it out of my mind – if my glorious hero there might someday kill our son, too. If ever we should be fortunate enough to have one. And I realised that I could not trust that he would not. That perhaps the gods were right to refuse me a child. For he would not, in such a case, take account of the grief in my heart – no more than he had listened to me when he took up arms against Connla. His warped sense of honour would overcome all.

  I – have not spoken of these things before. I cannot think why I speak of them now, to you.

  I am seeing a man who is unworthy of me.

  I am seeing now, and perhaps too late, that it was at that moment that he lost me.

  FAND: Yet you fight for him now, and hard.

  EMER: I fight for my own pride, I think, and maybe not for love. Ah, the truth is, Fand, I am tired of it. Tired of the fighting, tired of the slaughter, tired of the killing code of the rabid-mouthed warriors of Ulster. I am so very tired of heroes, if truth be told. They do not serve life.

  And he does not serve me. Look how I come here armed with a knife – how my instinct was also to kill. I have seen too much death; I have become too accustomed to it. It was only the memory of Connla that gave me pause.

  I relinquish my fight as I relinquish my knife; it is true that you love him more. Take him, then. He is yours.

  Come now, Fand; isn’t this what you wanted?

  FAND: I will tell you a story, in turn, for your words have touched something in my heart that I did not know was there. You speak of the failings of husbands; I will tell you the story of mine. His name is Manannán mac Lir: Manannán, son of the sea.

  I wanted to marry the sea. I dressed myself for him in a white-frothed gown; I danced on the strand for his pleasure. And when he came to me in flood tide, the crests of his swollen waves surging up my thighs, I gave myself to him there and then.

  I thought I could tame the sea. But he’s as fickle as the foam on the waters over which he presides. The moment you reach out for him, he dissolves before your eyes.

  It’s our longings that are the undoing of us, and I longed for him each day. Through all the years I cast my shadow on him, I wanted him for my own. I flirted with him; I teased him. I swooped down and brushed the tips of his waves with my wings. He tantalised me in turn. Gave voice to the ebbing tides and had them sing me love songs. Hid messages in conch shells, wrote my name with the stones and bones he washed up on the beach.

  I fell in love with the sea. Do we always yearn for the element that’s not our own? Do we always hunger for something that we ourselves can never be?

  It was never going to end well, and it didn’t. He left me last year to return to his woman in Beara, but he did not stay with her long. It is said that she stands on the heights of Cill Chaitiairn, looking out to sea; she is waiting again for his return.

  I fear that woman will be waiting a long time.

  EMER: Your Otherworld, it is said, is a country filled with beauty and joy. Is there heartache, then, even in the Land of the Living?

  FAND: There is sadness woven into the fabric of every world, but it is weariness, perhaps, which lies at the heart of mine. I envy you the brevity of your mortal life; the passion that makes you burn so bright.

  EMER: Bright? If you sliced open this chest and tore apart the cage of bones which binds it, you would see no fire burning in my heart.

  Come, look. I have put aside my knife. Your people, it is said, see deep and true. Come close now, Fand, and look into me. Fetch your rock hammer and your hand lens, and I’ll show you how to dissect the landscape of a human heart.

  It’s a strange geology, do you see? A sack filled with stones, packed tight in the sediment of the years. Can you fathom its fault lines, discern the strata of its sorrows? Each layer holds a pebble for each hurt, a rock for each betrayal. It would take me an age to name them all, but let’s see what we can find. Look: there’s gneiss there, down at the bottom: the oldest rock of all. A coarse-grained stone for Scathách’s daughter, another by its side for Aife. Above it, a layer of granite. A storm-coloured rock for the absence in his eyes on the day he stole me from my home – when he caused my father to falter, and plummet from the walls to his death. Twenty-four silver pebbles beside it, one for each of the men he killed that day. My father’s men, who I had grown up with; men who had protected me all my life.

  A layer now of limestone, fashioned from the crushed shells of what once were living things. The palest of stones – from the bones of dead molluscs – for the hundred and fifty women he slaughtered last year. They’d tormented his favourite, Derbforgaill, and causing her death was wrong. But a hundred and fifty butchered women to assuage a warrior’s outrage? And look, here’s a coverlet of coral-gravel – grain after grain of it, piled high like the wall of corpses he made of Mebd’s bright army. So many sons fatherless because of him. So many fathers sonless because of him. So many husbands, wifeless. When will it end, the killing? And if I am bound to the killer, is their blood also on my hands? I fear that blood on my hands.

  Rise a little higher now, chip away that crust, and reveal the volcano at the crest. Look – there’s my blanket of lava-formed basalt, black as the Morrígan’s beak. A fire-forged bauble for each of his mistresses, too many for me to name. There’s only one diamond, and that’s for Connla: the hardest, shiniest hurt of all. And perched there on top, a single wild sea-pearl. That one’s for you, Fand; it’s as pure and pale as your beautiful, merciless face. The lightest of burdens, but the final affront. The card that brought the whole house down.

  So there you have it, my white-winged foe. My sack of sorrows, my burden of boulders, the weight of my human heart. What does your bird’s heart make of that?

  FAND: A bird’s heart is no mausoleum; it does not house
cairns constructed to commemorate the ever-swelling numbers of the dead. A bird’s heart is built for efficiency. My heart is made to serve my wings, and my wings are served also by wind. My heart, then, Emer, is a lover of wind. I am a creature bound to ever-shifting air; it flows through my feathers and leaves no trace. I do not seek to hold the wind, and nor do I spurn the tempests it turns on me. I shape my wings to it, I accommodate its gusts; it passes through me and travels on its way. I am not defined by the weather through which I fly; it simply does not accrete.

  But I will not add to the sorrows of your heavy heart: I take back my pearl. See? There, it is gone. He is yours.

  EMER: I – do not think I want him. I do not think I can. I cannot live again with such a man; I have seen him now too clearly for what he is. Such sights cannot be unseen.

  FAND: Emer, the hour is not too late. I have lost him anyway; do you see how his eyes now shine as he looks at you? And were I in his place, I would love you always, too; I would never waver. You came here as the finest of warriors would, fighting for the only thing you could not bear to lose. I have what I deserve, and that is nothing. I have wronged you, and hurt you deeply. And I am sorry.

  EMER: And what of you, then, if I should take him now and go?

  FAND: I’ll leave this place – return home. I will mourn, for a while, the death of another love, then I’ll take to the skies, and fly. To the Blessed Isles in the west, or the many-coloured plains of Mag Ildathach.

  EMER: What are they like, then, your Otherworldly isles?

  FAND: There are lands beyond the waves which few mortal eyes have seen. The sea is still there – still as glass; it offers itself as mirror to a mild but mutable sky. On Emain Ablach, island of apple trees, the air is thick with blossom and bees. On Tír na nÓg, where Niamh still mourns Oisín, the moon is always full, and stars beam blessings brightly throughout the day. We do not lack for nourishing food and drink; there is music always, and song, and dance. It is a strange place, Emer, and not to be taken for granted; the Otherworld has perils of its own. But if your heart is honest, and your words are true, the veils which obscure the sight of humans will lift for you. You will see the many-layered worlds for what they are.

  EMER: My heart is heavy now for lack of wings.

  FAND: Then come with me, beautiful queen, and leave your sack of stones behind. Let me bring you to the Isle of Women; we’ll walk together on its shining, pearl-white shores. We’ll take up strong and silvered threads, and weave our world anew. Will you come, then, Emer? Will you come? Will you let me heal your heart of the heaviness of men? The element you cleave to is earth, but its gravity pulls you down. I will teach you to cleave to air; I will show you how to grow wings. Take my hand, and I’ll show you how.

  Look. It is like this.

  Fly, Emer; come with me into the sky. Unfurl your new-found wings, and fly.

  Tír na mBan (Isle of Women)

  EMER: You spoke true when you told me there is no weight in the heart of a bird, just the bright swiftness of shifting life. I have been the shadow on the upturned face of the cloud; I have tested my wings against the darkest face of a storm-strewn sea. I have eaten the silver apples of Emain Ablach; plucked everliving flowers from the plains of Mag Mell. I’ve swum in the ocean at the edge of the world, and laughed my cares away in the flame-lit feast halls of Tír na nÓg.

  When you turned to me and held out your hand, the long centuries you’ve spent on this Earth stretched out between us. Your otherness, your knowledge, the way you see everything true. How could I ever aspire to it? But there was no loftiness in your eyes, no sense of patronage in your manner. You brought me to this place as an equal, and showed me the safety of sisterhood.

  I do not think much of my old life, now; I do not think much of Cú. The prophecies said he would die young; perhaps that’s for the best. You say that time runs differently in this place; that if I returned to my world now, a hundred years might have passed for each year here. I wonder, sometimes, what its future holds. Perhaps we’ll fly there together one day; I wonder what we would see? Will the men have stopped their fighting; will the warriors of Ulster have finally laid down their swords? Will peace settle over the island of Ériu, and all hearts be light as a bird’s?

  For now, though, I am content; the dancing breeze from Tír Tairngaire has swept my cares away. And I have you, my beautiful Fand, glowing always like the evening star at my side.

  FAND: When I turned to you and held out my hand, you stood there, tall and proud, like the dignified queen you are – but cloaked in the darkest solitude, like a shroud. I loved you first, as he did, for the artistry of your speech; I loved you next for your geotectonic heart. Where you saw boulder, I saw bedrock; where you saw crack, I saw lush canyon. The burning core of a volcano in you; the molten power of earth. I loved you then for your honesty – an integrity which did not falter under the fathomless sorrows which weigh down a human heart.

  I am no oracle; when I reach for the future, mist gathers before my eyes. But they will remember you, I think; just as they will remember your Cú. They’ll sing of the only jealousy of Emer, and the fickle ways of her white-winged fairy foe. Yes, we’ll fly back together one day, and see what your poets have made of us. We’ll see if they told our story true.

  But now, my Emer, night is falling; the shadows will soon roll in from the Plain of Two Mists. Let’s go home.

  FLOWER-FACE

  I SEE YOU, GWYDION. I see you, tucked up tight in your house of stone. You think you’re safe there, don’t you? Dream on. Dream your fine dreams of magic and gold. I see your dreams, and I’ll haunt them. I’m an owl now, a screecher, a creature of the night. And you’re no safer from me than I was from you, back in the days when you enjoyed the fullness of your power.

  Do you know I’m here, yet? Do you dream of me, Gwydion?

  You will.

  Do you know who I am? I’m the woman you created; the woman you imagined you owned. I’d say you thought you owned me body and soul, but soul wasn’t part of the deal. Making a girl out of flowers was one thing, but even you couldn’t cook her up a soul. Don’t worry, though, little man; I conjured up a soul of my own. Made it out of flowers, too; it seems to be all the rage. But I fashioned my soul from the flowers of the night. Evening primrose, moonflower, catch-fly. Catchfly, Gwydion – think well on that.

  Pretty little Flower-Face, meek and mild; that was the woman you thought you’d made. Just the sort of woman you need, I’d say, to satisfy the hungers of powerful men. And oh, what men you were, who made me! Gwydion the crooked enchanter, and Math the flawed king: a fine pair of fathers, to be sure. But what good could ever come out of a man as deceitful as you? What good from a king who couldn’t survive unless he sat with his feet in a virgin’s lap? Really, my dear – you couldn’t make it up. Well, you saw to it that Arianrhod wouldn’t get that job. No more virginity for her. What a fine brother you were to her, Gwydion. What a fine young man you must have been.

  I admire her, Arianrhod. Always did. She pulled herself together after you forced yourself on her; she got to do her own thing. Independent and alone in her beautiful, sea-bound tower. She wouldn’t play your games. And finally she outwitted you. For the son you made me for – the son she refused to recognise – had no joy, in the end, from me. And Lleu couldn’t take another wife once I was gone; his mother’s curse still holds true.

  So there you are, Gwydion; there you are. Challenged not just by one woman, but two. And defeated by both of them – a sister and a daughter. Tell me, now – how does that feel?

  I see you twitch, Gwydion; I see your eyelids flicker. I see you flinch in your sleep. What are you dreaming of, old man? Are you dreaming of the way things used to be? Or are you beginning now to dream of me?

  It didn’t begin well for Lleu; I can see that now. I used to feel sorry for him, you know. You always blamed Arianrhod for his fate, but I’ve learned the truth: all of it started with you. It never ends well when you take your own sister unwilli
ng to your bed. Not nearly as clever as you think you are, old man. Cock-ups all round, if you’ll forgive the pun. How could you imagine she would ever love those boys? Poor little Dylan, drowned at sea; Lleu, impotent in every way. What a fine young husband you made me for, Gwydion. What a fine rich life you offered me.

  She told me all about it; we’ve become quite good friends. I fly to Arianrhod in her night tower; I sleep there safe sometimes, during the day. She has made me a roost in the rafters of her silver-wheeled roof. I doze there, and dream; I plan my revenge. We know about revenge, your sister and I; we know all about you too. We see you, Gwydion; we know exactly who you are.

  You had a bit of a taste for rape, didn’t you? You and your fine young brother. Yes, Arianrhod told me about that too; she told me how it all began. Gilfaethwy didn’t have your powers, but still you made sure he had the woman he wanted. The virgin foot-holder of Math himself. Sweet little Goewin deserved better – but at least Math had the decency to marry her, after you forced her maidens from the room and looked on calmly while your brother tore her open. In Math’s own bed, Gwydion! Did you have no honour at all? Still, you had your punishment for that, after Math turned you both into animals and made you mate with each other. Funnier man than he seemed, old Math. One year as deer, another as pigs, and a third as wolves in the wildwood. Did you and Gilfaethwy like that, Gwydion? Did it make you feel good? Did it make you feel like a man?

  But who knows what you were thinking, to suggest that Arianrhod replace Goewin. Arianrhod, a virgin? Were you out of your mind? Had you fooled yourself into forgetting your crimes? So very surprised you were, when out the babies popped. ‘I had no idea,’ you said to the astonished king. ‘Can’t think what could possibly have happened.’ Well, there was no hope for Dylan from the start; he fell into the sea and drowned. But weren’t you just the generous little benefactor, taking on poor forsaken Lleu. And such a fine foster-father, wanting only the best for his ward.