The Children of Lir Read online

  I was sick with worry the next morning. The way it had been explained, I expected Lir to take his pleasure like a common horse, and for her to return to me soon after, shaken and tearful. Yet she did not come. Not that night, nor the next morning. I was ready to march to his hut myself when a young girl arrived to collect her belongings.

  “She’ll be staying at master’s hut now,” she informed me, bundling up my mistress’s clothes from her bed.

  “My oath, she will. Where is she?”

  “She’s there now,” the girl replied. “Sent me here to tell you she’s very well, and not to worry. She says she’ll see you tonight at supper by the big fire up top of the hill. She says this is to be your home now and you can do with it what you will.”

  I stared, open mouthed, until she left.

  Despite Aobh’s love for him, I never did warm to Lir. Even when he wept upon the sand for her, even when he suffered in his grief, I could not help but think that if he had always had such kindness in him, why had he denied her his love those first three months when she needed it most? Why had he abandoned her to solitude and worry?

  How he would have given all his time left on earth to reclaim those three moons, and love her like a husband from the very first day. Still, the threads, once woven, cannot be unpicked. The patterns continue to repeat and the cloth grows finer for them.

  That day, seven years after the death of my beloved Aobh, we returned to Sidh-ar-Femhin. Oh, what a return! Fires lit the sky, dimming the very sun as it fell beneath the hills.

  I know not what was said between Fionnuala and her father, but I had not expected to set eyes on that place again before my death.

  Fionnuala

  The sound of drums, crwth, and the clear cry of the dog-headed carnyx drifted across the Plain of Cashel like a river. Caught in its current our tired horses lifted their hooves and frisked their tails, whilst the oxen pulling their loads seemed to renew their strength and pull harder.

  I sat up a little in my saddle, gripped by nerves. What had changed in those years since our last arrival? Who had lived and who had died through those winters? Would our names even be remembered in the court of the Great King?

  Fiachra and Conn shared none of my doubts, for they were too young to remember anything of Sidh-ar-Femhin or the man with a beard of flame whose belly shook with mirth. They had never known his graceful wife with the mischievous twinkle in her eye, or their aunts who doted upon us like lambs. They charged ahead on their ponies, hooves kicking up turf from the side of the path, eyes wide with wonder as the walls of the fort came into view.

  Even Aodh, who spoke little, managed to pull a smile from his sullen-set jaw as he rode alongside me.

  “Do you remember?” I whispered.

  “Like it were yesterday.”

  He kicked his horse on, joining our brothers in their race across open ground, revelling in the sudden freedom of a different land. For a second, I held out my heel, intent on joining them. Then I remembered my duty.

  “Father?” He rode at the front, between two bannermen. One moved aside to allow us to ride abreast. “Does the day please you? Are you glad we came?”

  He nodded, his lips tight and his knuckles tighter still about the rein.

  “Just think how pleased they will be to see us,” I coaxed. “You in your fine red cloak, and me with my braided combs. We look so grand. Do you think they will recognise us after all this time?”

  “I think they will,” was all he replied, turning to me with that heavy sadness that imbued every action. We rode on, the silence between us filled by the sharp salutation of flutes, carved from antlers and the bones of fallen birds.

  Soon, it was not only our ears that were filled, but our nostrils. To prepare a feast fit for the ages, you require more than a loaf of coarse bread or a bowl of stirabout. More than a hundred wild hogs and three-score swine had been placed at the spit. Ewe’s milk and honey flowed from earth-red jugs, as did the mead. Long wooden troughs had been set in the ground, topped with water and malted barley, flavoured with elderberries and ripe fruit. Baskets of hot rocks were lowered in to boil the water, the process started weeks ahead of the festival. The very air around Sidh-ar-Femhin smelt sweet and brothy.

  As we approached the foot of the fort, my grandfather’s guards stepped across our path.

  “Welcome to Bodb’s fort,” one spoke, dressed in tough leather, an iron-tipped spear by his side. “All who come in peace be welcome at the Feast of Age. Do you wish to enter?”

  “We do,” my father replied, with as little conviction as a man bound for the pyre.

  “Who might we announce has arrived?”

  For one dreadful moment, my father gazed at the nape of his horse as though his spirit had flown, leaving behind naught but a husk. I feared he had actually forgotten his own name.

  “Tell my grandfather,” Aodh announced, bringing his horse along-side my father’s bannerman so as to stretch out the flag that hung from his pike, “that his beloved grandchildren have returned. This is King Lir of Sidhe Fionnachaidh, and we are the children of Lir.”

  My heart swelled with pride that we had been given back our name. Aodh grinned at me as the guards looked between one another, humbled by such an honoured guest before them.

  The blue flag rippled like a wave, held aloft in my brother’s fist.

  Ailbhe

  I could scarce believe my eyes. To see those blue banners held aloft as though the sea were rolling in. I thought perhaps the ale was stronger than last year, yet, rubbing my eyes, they were still there. I raised myself from the fire and began to make my way through the crowd.

  “Lir!” I called. “Lir, Fionnuala, Aodh!”

  My sister’s husband had changed mightily in the years since last he made the journey to our homestead. He had always been a broad-shouldered, imposing man, his long black hair knotted atop his head. His ancestors had supped from the same cup of youth as our own, yet now his lips seemed to droop and his brow furrow. That dark hair of his was shot with silver and his broad, straight shoulders sank in on themselves as he sagged in his saddle. Dressed in red and trimmed in gold he wore the expression of an absent-minded elder, his eyes cast about him without truly appearing to see.

  “Aunt Ailbhe!” Fionnuala cried, swinging down from her horse and running to embrace me. She threw her arms about my neck and kissed my cheek, hardly leaving breath in my body.

  “Oh, fair Fionnuala! What a long time it has been. Why did you not send word of your coming?”

  “Because I was not sure we would, and I did not wish to disappoint you,” she whispered, so quietly only she and I heard.

  “Ailbhe,” Aodh nodded, coming to stand beside his sister.

  He was up to her shoulder now, still slight for his age but handsome, his cheeks dimpled, his lips upward-curled at the edges and a shock of blond hair that shaded the brilliant blue of his eyes.

  “And who are these two?” I asked, full knowing.

  “Don’t tease,” Fionnuala laughed. “These are the twins, Fiachra and Conn.”

  “I remember you,” I said as they approached, each a miniature clay casting of their elder brother, “yet I doubt you remember me.”

  They looked between one another in their secret language, searching for a glimmer of recognition which would not ignite.

  “This is your Aunt Ailbhe,” Fionnuala explained. “Our mother’s sister.”

  The twins, who were rumoured to drown out the dawn chorus and howl even the wolves into submission, remained quiet. At first, I thought it was shyness. They had lived all their young lives surrounded by people they knew. Sidh-ar-Femhin must have come as quite a shock to them, suddenly encircled by so many strange faces, all of whom knew them, yet they knew none.

  Then I saw they were not abashed, but wary. Their eyes searched mine, and in searching I found what they were afraid of. “You are very welcome here, little ones,” I smiled. “Your grandfather’s home is your home.”

  It had never onc
e crossed my mind that my sister’s children were at fault for her death. I could think of no one who would utter such a thought. Yet somehow their young minds suspected it of me, I could tell.

  That night, once my kin had washed and changed from their riding clothes, we gathered by the fire where my father, Bodb the Red, roared with unbridled delight.

  “Lir! Finally, old man. We thought you’d slipped into the sea.” He strode forward to embrace his uncle, whose own figure bent as willow in his arms, straining towards the Great King’s light as though kept in shadow these past years.

  Bodb turned to his grandchildren next, his mead-flushed cheeks apple-red against the firelight, waiting for each to take a bite of his abundant love. The twins, having cast aside all uncertainty, leapt like wildcats, hanging from his strong arms and his neck, wrestling him as though he were a giant, ginger bear. Fionnuala came next, planting a soft kiss upon his brow and pressing her forehead to his.

  “Grandfather,” she smiled.

  “Fionnuala fair,” he replied, his eyes bright with tears. “You are the sheer image of your mother.”

  Aodh was the only one to hold back, awkward in that age between boyhood and man.

  “Ah, young warrior.” His grandfather grinned, coming to punch him good-naturedly on the shoulder. “My, how you’ve grown!”

  I caught Fionnuala’s eye and we smiled, knowing Bodb’s trick for seeing each person’s weakness and overcoming it, filling them with his own strong current of confidence. Indeed, Aodh appeared to grow a foot taller in his presence.

  “What have you been feeding them, Lir? Pigfruit?” There was a moment between them, where they simply gazed into one another’s eyes, taking the measure of the years that had passed. “Ah,” Bodb said eventually. “Such a very long time. What kept you away?”

  “Time is a wild horse,” Lir replied. “It runs away with us all.”

  Another silence fell.

  “Come, this is a festival. Let us dance,” I said, reaching for Lir. He drew back and lowered his eyes, rejecting my approach.

  “I intend to dance until dawn,” Fionnuala said, taking my hand in hers.

  That night was ablaze with bonfires. Mead sloshed from carved drinking horns and the druids and soothsayers topped them up with soma from the scarlet quicken tree, that people might better speak with the spirits. Their eyes grew large and glossy, their arms loose and their movements elaborate. Some hunched upon the ground, communing with the wild animals, whilst others spread their wings and span like falling seeds.

  Throughout, the seanchaidhthe, those sacred keepers of our history, whispered and sang the stories of our people into each ear, causing the visions to flow thick and vast, reaching through the blood that unites us all.

  By morning, all dreamers would wake with a dewy-eyed yawn and gladness in their hearts.

  Fionnuala and I held up our skirts and stamped our feet to the drums, sinking to our ankles in the churned earth, much as Lugh’s mother Tailtiu had done all those many long years as she tended the land.

  We stuffed our mouths with hog until the juices ran down our chins, and began to dance again as applewood smoke rose, scenting our skin and our clothes. We danced until our feet were sore and we could dance no more.

  Aoife

  Lir had arrived. Sidh-ar-Femhin was awash with the fact.

  “Did you see his son holding their banner high? He could barely announce himself,” one drunk slurred through a mouthful of mead.

  “There’s nothing of him to announce,” another joined in. “His clothes hang from him and his hair looks moon-stained. I reckon he was summoned, for he did not look glad to be here.”

  My head was swimming with soma, the sparks of the fire spoke to me in riddles and rhyme.

  “He’s come,” they whispered, their voices crackling like burnt twigs. “He’s here, he’s come.”

  I swept them away with one hand and reclined, losing myself in the soft strings of the cláirseach. I did not wish to think on Lir, for his face held many reflections of my past. In his children I saw my sister’s face, and in their voices I heard her sing. It reminded me how alone I was. How alone I had always been. As the youngest of Oilell’s daughters, my heart had been left behind upon the shores of Aran. Aobh and Ailbhe were strong, but I was not. I cowered every day of our early years. A shadow in the glowing flame of Bodb’s constant light. Every time Queen Medb touched me it felt like ice and I shivered. My sisters tell me I was too young to remember our mother, but some senses transcend memory: her touch, her kisses, her scent.

  Sometimes she would come to me in dreams, or in the visions of the dark juice which quenched my thirst for escape. I lived for the rituals and the holy days when we emptied the blood of animals upon the land and sucked down the sacred potions which allowed us to leave our bodies, to race with the hares and the wild horses, to sink beneath the sea with the selkies, the merrows and the slow-moving monsters of the deep.

  So, Lir had returned to Bodb’s caiseal. This fort which scarred the landscape like a pebble in a lake of green. Where it hit the water sat a huge structure of stone, ripples of earth flowing from it, forming fortifications that Balor himself could never burn down. All the wealth of Éire pooled here, its inhabitants dripping with gold and silver torcs, rattling with beads of malachite and amber, feasting on their own success.

  I rolled to one side, pressing my face into a woven pillow, its bright threads dancing before my eyes.

  With my ear against the ground, I could hear all conversations at once. A group of druids a half-mile away, chanting their songs to the spirits of the air. A gaggle of breastfeeding mothers, talking of their hopes for the children not yet able to walk.

  I listened harder, allowing the plants and the fruits of the forest to guide me through the crowd to the place where my sister Ailbhe danced with Fionnuala, their naked feet striking the earth, drumming out time with their toes.

  “Aoife,” spoke a soft voice, calling me back to myself. “Aoife, wake up.” Youghal of the Black River knelt beside me, his strong arms turning me roughly towards him. “Come back from the spirits and dance with me.”

  “Leave me be, Youghal,” I whispered. “My dreams are pleasant.”

  “Your dreams, and your arms,” he said, raising my left and kissing it softly, “and your neck and your lips...” He planted kisses there too. “There will be time for dreaming later, warm in my bed.”

  I sighed and allowed him to pull me skyward. I had been unable to refuse him since he was a boy and I a girl. His chestnut eyes and his barleycorn curls. That brow which could rise in innocence and furrow in mischief.

  He took my hand as we ran at the fire and leaped it. The dark juice slowing time so that I floated across the flames like a dandelion seed. Looking down, I saw the eye of Balor open to observe me. The mighty King of the Fomori, awakening at this festival within the heartland of his enemies. I smiled back, the blood of the old ones running thick through my veins.

  Youghal plied me with wine and pulled me before him on his bay mare. Through wooden arches we rode, past my foster father’s guards, their beards dripping with mead, their spears at half-slant. Out across the plain to the wildwoods, where he lifted me down and lit a torch to guide our way.

  There was a pool in the wildwoods, fed by a waterfall where the spirits of silence lived. It was said to bring bad luck to raise your voice beside those waters. If you went there to drink or to swim, you did so without a word.

  Beneath the waterfall was a rock, smoothed by the years to form a perfect seat. I lifted up my skirts and pressed my buttocks against its cool, damp surface. As he thrust the torch into a crag, I parted my legs to entice him. He fell to his knees and kissed me there, teasing with his lips. My head fell back and the glossy cascade of my hair grew slick with mist.

  This was our game, you see. We tempted bad luck. There on that seat of a thousand years, we caressed one another until neither could resist any longer. He would enter me and we would rut like beasts, sinking
our teeth into one another’s skin when the desire to cry out overwhelmed. For we could not moan in our delight, we could not even whisper our names. We had to steal our pleasures from beneath the noses of those silent spirits, and in so doing our pleasures grew.

  That night, as I returned to the great roundhouse at the centre of our fort, I saw torchlight from the main chamber. Pressing myself flat against its walls I edged closer to the cloth that fluttered in the draft. Within I could hear the sound of men’s voices, the low rumble of thunder beneath the earth.

  “For seven years you have been absent from our fireside, Lir. In part I must take blame, for we have not visited Sidhe Fionnachaidh as often as we should. This kingdom of ours grows in people and need from day to day, and my beard grows long as I forget my duties.”

  “Your duties are many, and we the least of them,” I heard Lir reply.

  “Still,” Bodb continued, “put my thoughts at ease and assure me that your absence has simply been a time of healing?”

  “What other explanation could there be?”

  “Ah, come now. We speak as old friends. We are kin, you and I. Our tribes are one people. It cannot be that you blame yourself? Women die, that’s what they do. No greater sacrifice is ever known than that of a mother for her child, and Aobh bore you four of them, each as strong and healthy as the Fianna. She would wish you to celebrate them in life, not mourn her in death.”

  I heard the sound of drinks being poured and edged closer, that I might peer through the gap in the cloth. Bodb sat with his back to me, his shoulders swathed in fine, warm fur. Lir sat opposite, reaching for his goblet. My breath caught in my throat, for in the light from the torches he looked as youthful as the last time I had seen him. Yet there was a heaviness about him that I had never seen before. His shoulders sagged and his eyes wilted like crops in winter. His hair hung long and straight about his shoulders as though weighing him down. In spite of that, it was still my sister’s husband. The only warrior with the stones to challenge the Great King of Éire.