The Children of Lir Read online

  Lugh was disgusted by his own tribe’s treatment of the parents he had loved so dearly. He dedicated a fortnight each year to his mother’s memory, saluting her legendary endurance with Áenach Tailteann, a trial that saw all of Éire’s greatest warriors compete in tests of strength, culminating on his own name day, Lughnasadh, on the first sunrise of harvest.

  In time, this came to be known as The Feast of Age. Even those who could not travel to the games celebrated Tailtiu’s memory with drink, dance and song. Bodb spared no expense on this festival. As children, we filled our stomachs with honey until our blood ran thick with it.

  My mother loved to visit Sidh-ar-Femhin, for it was a chance to meet with her sisters. Both of my aunts, Ailbhe and Aoife, would spoil us terribly. They lavished their attention upon us, taking every opportunity to kiss our brows and wrap us in fine cloth, until my brother Aodh would hide amongst the crowd for a moment’s peace.

  The night my mother died, I remained in the land of the living, guided back by the twins she had left to my care. My father, I think, followed her halfway across the forbidden sea. Each day after her parting he grew quieter, as though his voice were carried away by the wind. In stature he began to shrink, his black hair streaked with silver, and skin, which had always been fair, now rivalling the moon in its pallor.

  He built for us a crannóg on the lake at the foot of Sidhe Fionnachaidh. This was a large hut supported above the water by wooden stilts and connected to the land by a walkway. Inside, the rooms were partitioned with reed screens to afford privacy.

  Every morning we would find my father sitting in the centre of the crannóg, warming himself by our fire. He would gather Aodh and myself beside him and share our breakfast of fresh fish and bread. He would always leave soon after, and I came to understand that he had removed himself from our world partly to protect us from his sorrow, and partly because the sound of the twins’ crying caused him such pain he could not bear to hear them.

  *

  For seven turnings of the year we lived like that, in silence. I would spend my evenings in my father’s hut, eating with him and darning his clothes with my own fair hand, for I had come to look upon him almost as an invalid. As his daughter and eldest child, it was my responsibility to care for him.

  We spoke little, and what we spoke of was hardly worth the breath. My only confidante was Sorcha, my mother’s favoured maid, who would entertain my brothers and me with shadow stories told against the mud walls with a little help from the fire. In this way we came to learn of the battles that had preceded our birth, and in her words our mother lived again as a princess, or a kindly villager, or a songstress, yet never by name.

  The twins, who had never known a life any different, seemed immune to the weight of death that surrounded us. They would wake each morning and throw themselves into the lake to splash one another. Their laughter carried up the hill to the fort, where it died against its earthen walls.

  My brother Aodh was different. He was still that little boy, standing in the water, watching our mother float away across the waves. He could not shake the vision of her, nor the longing for her gentle touch. He smiled rarely and spent long days by himself, walking in the woods or watching the fading sun set against the hills. I tried often to talk with him, to share our recollections of her, and to speak of how we might draw our father from his sadness, but Aodh would never respond to my questions. He answered only with a distant gaze and a slow shrug of his shoulder.

  Time is a trickster. Moments stretch into months, and years rush past in the blink of an eye. Yet in all the years that were to follow, and everything that was to become of us, that time felt the longest. I was an old woman with the face of a child. I was a mother to three younger brothers, and a fourth if you counted my father, who could hardly lift a hand to wash himself.

  In time, even the sanctuary of sleep slipped from me. I would lie awake from dusk until dawn, listening to the wind against the thatch and the hushed lapping of the water against the stilts of our crannóg. Mostly, I thought of nothing. Dreams of the past hurt, and dreams of the future seemed inconceivable. When I thought of my life, I could see nothing tomorrow that I had not lived today, with age the only smile beckoning me forth through the years.

  It was in this wakeful state that I took to walking the enclosure at night. I would look down upon the light from our crannóg, sitting on the ridge of the hill, allowing silent tears to fall beneath those unforgiving stars.

  It was on a night such as that when I first saw my father leave the fort.

  He left alone, on horseback. Over the coming moons I watched as once a month he would leave the safety of Sidhe Fionnachaidh and return just before the light began to grey. He slumped in his saddle, his fine horse guiding him as though walking a path it knew by heart. Although curiosity overwhelmed me, I could not think of a way to follow without drawing attention.

  “Where do you think he goes?” I asked Sorcha, after recounting all that I had seen.

  “I do not know, my darling,” she replied, frowning into the fire. “There is but one way to find out.”

  “Tell me.”

  “First, you must think on this carefully. Are you sure you wish to know? Sometimes it is best to allow those we love their secrets.”

  “You think he has a woman?”

  “Perhaps, though I doubt it.”

  “Then what?”

  “I do not know, and neither do you. Perhaps it is better that way.”

  I took her words to heart and thought on them for many nights whilst I lay there not sleeping. It had never occurred to me that my father might seek comfort in the arms of another. The thought stung. My mother was the only woman I could imagine sharing my father’s bed. Would I hate this person for taking her place?

  Like Sorcha, I doubted that notion. If he did ride out each month to visit a woman, he returned with his heart just as heavy.

  “I am sure,” I told her. “I wish to know.”

  When my father rode out some days later, he was so engulfed in darkness that he did not notice the thin stream of salt leaking from his saddlebag.

  The next day, Sorcha and I dressed in warm furs. We had the stablehand ready two horses. At first we walked them down the hill, squinting between blades of grass for the near-invisible trail we had set. When we were confident that it continued in a northerly direction, we mounted our beasts and cantered on, stopping at each junction or trampled ditch to check he had not turned off the path. When we tired, we stopped to eat bread and cheese in the heather, bound by the strange mystery of my father’s monthly disappearance.

  At last the trail ended in a small pile of white crystals.

  “I remember this place,” I whispered. “This is where my mother’s boat set out upon its final voyage.”

  The place had changed little since I was a small girl. It was an outlet to the sea, by the mouth of a river whose goddess had long since lost her name. The hills rose high to the right, grey and foreboding, yet ahead was a beach of the softest sand. I slipped off my sandals and made my way towards the water, its calm surface the colour of woad.

  This is where Aodh had stood, up to his waist, watching our mother depart. This is where I had held Conn in my arms, a wisewoman beside me holding Fiachra. This is where my father’s heart had floated out upon the sea and never returned.

  “He comes here to mourn?” I asked.

  “It seems so,” she replied.

  “Then why does he come at night? His horse could stumble in the dark, and who knows what savage hillsmen lie in wait?”

  “I’m not sure your father cares for his safety as he should.”

  I shivered to think of it, my poor creator all alone without even a torch to guide him.

  “I cannot let him continue like this, Sorcha. He will kill himself, and then what shall we do without any parents?”

  In our silence, a plan formed.

  Sorcha

  No single person can make a story. A story is something woven of many
threads, each dyed a different colour. At times that colour fades, as it had with Lir. At others, it bleeds brightly to the surface, outshining all else.

  Although she did not believe it of herself, Fionnuala was a brightly burning thread. Though her flesh seemed famished and her voice came soft as summer rain, she dazzled like kermes. I do not know whether it was a blessing or a curse that my own story should have been wound up in hers.

  When we learned of her father’s midnight rides to the coast, I was as intrigued as she. My curiosity shone like a pebble beneath the stream, and I could not help but reach down and touch it. At that time, I felt no foreboding.

  “We will come back,” I told her. “On the next moon, when he leaves Fionnachaidh, we shall be with him.”

  “How?” Fionnuala asked. “We don’t have horses fast enough to keep up with his, and he would notice if we followed behind. In the silence of night, hoofbeats echo like drums.”

  “We will not follow him. We will already be here, waiting.”

  She smiled at this, and bent to run her fingers through the chill waves at her feet. “I can see why my mother was so fond of you, Sorcha. It is rare to find cunning married with kindness.”

  So, that was our plan. On the afternoon of the night that Lir was to visit the coast, we went ahead of him and pitched camp. As darkness fell, we ate our supper of oatcakes and honey, and extinguished the fire so that its rising smoke would not give us away. We crept to the spot where the salt had since been scattered, and crouched behind a fallen tree.

  My bones grew stiff with waiting. When at last Lir’s horse came into view, I feared the cracking of my knees would spook the poor beast.

  Lir dismounted, allowing the reins to drop from his hand. After a moment he came, step by step, to the water’s edge. We watched as he drew a leather pouch from his cloak and tipped its content into the palm of his hand.

  “What is it?” Fionnuala asked.

  I could not answer, for there was not enough light to see.

  “I have come,” struck Lir’s voice, harsh through the soft silence.

  At first we thought he was talking to himself, for no one else was present. Then the water began to swell. Mist rose from the surface, and in that mist appeared a figure, tall and slender, its face cowled.

  “Tell me,” Lir spoke. “What news?”

  The voice that issued from that spectre froze the blood in my veins. If you crushed shells beneath a quern stone, you would not match the grit in its tone.

  “Father,” it laughed. “You throw me silver as though I had use of it.”

  “I throw you silver because you know those who might.”

  “All this time, and still you do not understand my nature.”

  “I know that you are my son, and that you would not insult me by returning it. Now, what news?”

  Fionnuala and I exchanged glances, her eyes wide with surprise.

  “What news, what news,” the figure mimicked, as though mocking Lir’s desperation.

  “Please,” he begged, his voice on the point of breaking.

  At first we thought the figure would not reply, that it was ignoring Lir’s anguish. Tormenting him, even. Then I felt Fionnuala’s fingers tighten about my wrist and she pointed to a silhouette on the waves. As it drew nearer, it took the form of a long wooden boat, a funerary boat. At its helm sat the gaping figurehead of a horse, its eyes glowing blue as fury through the mist.

  I drew back a little, yet Fionnuala held me there, refusing to flee.

  The boat drifted to shore, mere feet from where her father stood.

  Lir sank to his knees, his hand outstretched. “Please!” he cried, in the high pitch of a harp string.

  “Oh, my love,” the horsehead spoke in Aobh’s voice. At this, Fionnuala did start back, and it was I who held her. “Dry your tears, for I am well and will always be well. I feel neither the cold nor the pangs of hunger, nor do I want, nor do I need, nor do I go without.”

  These words, far from comforting Lir, contorted his face in the image of pain. I knew this was not what he longed to hear. To know that his wife was happy in the land beyond the waves seemed a rejection of their love, and all that they had once shared. He longed to hear her tell how much she missed him, how she could not sleep until they were reunited. Yet, in death, Aobh of Aran seemed to have found a sublime peace which the living could no longer disturb.

  “What of our children?” the horsehead asked.

  “They are well, my love,” Lir replied, barely able to meet her gaze. “Our sons are strong, and our daughter healthy.”

  “And what of you?”

  “Can you not see?” he implored, finally raising his head.

  “I can see only with the eyes that have been granted me this short while.”

  “And blessed with a memory to forget every meeting on this shore! That each time you should ask again how I am. My heart is forever bleeding into the cold water that separates us. My knees become raw from kneeling upon the sand, waiting for you to return.”

  “I do not understand,” came that unearthly voice. It was Aobh’s, yet in some strange way it was not, for there seemed no compassion to it, no warmth. “Why do you wait for me when I cannot return?”

  “Because there is nothing left for me to do,” he replied. His great shoulders rose and fell as he sobbed. “I have nothing except the hours and the days separating you from me. I come here on the high tide in the hopes that it will wash me away. Please, please Aobh, let me climb aboard and travel home to you.”

  I glanced at Fionnuala and saw that she had grown white as snow. Here was her father, begging to die so that he might follow their mother to the land beyond the waves. Such a selfish thought, for who would protect them then? Who would see that Aodh learned to hunt, or that Fionnuala found a suitable husband? Without his protection, we were all of us flesh for the feast.

  I put my finger very gently to my lips, to entreat her to stay silent.

  Lir rose to his feet and took a few purposeful steps into the sea.

  A wall of water rose up before him and broke across his head, knocking him to the ground.

  “It is not your time,” the spectre announced, in that voice hard as shale.

  The boat was already beginning to drift, engulfed in mist once again. Lir crawled on his stomach, reaching out with a terrible cry. When the boat was finally lost to him, he lay there with his cheek pressed to the sand, his hair lapping like seaweed against the waves.

  “You disappoint me, father,” the shadow creature spoke. “If I did not know it to be true, I would never believe that I came from you.”

  With that, it slid beneath the surface and disappeared.

  Fionnuala’s first thought was to run to her father, but I shook my head and held her back.

  Lir remained, clawing sand into balls with his fist. After a while he began to dip those fistfuls of sand into the water, allowing sediment to trickle between his clenched fingers until it created towers of knobbly knuckles pointing towards the sky. It was a child-like pastime the twins often played by the shore of their crannóg. Yet it was disturbing to see a great man such as Lir transformed into a boy, quietly humming to himself as he drew roads between imagined villages with his finger.

  Fionnuala and I were both shivering with cold as he finally mounted his horse. When we were certain he had left, we returned to our camp and lit the fire.

  “Who was that?” she whispered, trembling from head to foot.

  “I cannot say,” I replied.

  For the first time, she threw me a look of true anger.

  “I said that cunning married with kindness is a rare trait, but that, Sorcha, was just cunning.”

  I swallowed and nodded.

  “I am sorry, but it was meant with kindness, believe me.”

  “After all we’ve seen tonight, there is nothing you cannot tell me, only that which you choose not to say.”

  “Very well,” I replied, turning the fire with a stick.

  Manannán
mac Lir

  I watched for a long time, her reflection shattered against the surface of my world, convinced that she would grow tired and return to her bed.

  At first she would come with her maid. They cowered behind a fallen log until Lir, having prostrated himself at my feet, crawled back to his horse, stiff and exhausted. Once he was gone, they emerged, these two women, sandals sinking in the sand as they crept to the spot where his figure still impressed itself upon the shore.

  “Hello,” they whispered at first. “Is anybody there?” Then their questions turned to pleas: “Please come out, we know you’re there,” and finally to anger: “Show yourself!” as they hurled pebbles into the sea.

  I am a man of infinite patience. When their frustration no longer amused me, I left. Perhaps they stood all night, skimming flint until dawn reflected in their eyes. Perhaps they simply shouted until they were hoarse, then fled for home to sooth their throats with milk and honey. It was not for their sake that I came to shore, and for their sake I had no reason to stay.

  Almost a year after she first came, the girl stopped coming. After Lir left, I realised that I was alone in the shallow waters of the bay. I breathed in the silence and waited, yet she did not come. Not that high tide, nor the next.

  On the third, she returned. This time only she, without her maid.

  Lir choked and wailed and clawed at the sand as had become his custom. A custom which did no service to Aobh. Instead of helping him to remember his wife, it had become a ritual without which he felt he could not remember her, yet in performing befell the worst kind of insult to the dead: that their loss outweighs the value of their life.

  I presented him with my boat, Wave Sweeper, and allowed them their time to speak, as I had promised the day I sailed her safely to the shores of Tír na nÓg. Had I known then that the salt of her words would forever keep open his wound, I would never have uttered such an oath.

  Whilst I stood and watched, I became aware of a presence in the dark. It burned with curiosity and fear in a way it had never done before. When Lir finally took his tiresome leave, I cloaked myself in mist and waited.