The Children of Lir Read online

  It was then that I heard the drumming of hooves, and hid.

  Through the many mirrored shards of the waterfall, I saw a shadow appear on the bank. I heard the horse stumble, stamping its consternation at the river blocking its path. Whispering a silent thank you to the spirits who had granted my wish, I stepped through the silver curtain, my black hair covering the mounds of my breasts like sealskin, the forgotten blood of the hare melting down my face.

  Aodh

  I knew something had happened before anyone else.

  Caílte and I spent most of the festival watching the wrestling and the combat pit. We saw a man beheaded. We actually saw his head split open by an axe and blood cover the grass. It was an accident. I don’t think he meant to die, but there were two couples sparring and he stepped back just as the warrior behind swung his weapon. He just didn’t see him.

  We didn’t feel much like watching the games after that. Caílte suggested we go watch the spear-throwing but on the way we saw a big crowd around Abcán the dwarf and decided to stay and listen. Abcán was only the height of my thigh, but everyone in Éire knew his name. He could sing you any kind of song you wanted. He could sing a ballad that made the hairs on your neck stand on end, and he could recite all the stories of the great chieftains from The Men of Dea, right back through the Fomorians and the Kings of Tara to the ancient times, when naught but mist and shadow covered this land. By the time we found him, he was gulping back cherry wine and telling a tale so lewd all of the women were blushing and the men holding their sides. I didn’t understand some of the words, but Caílte quickly set about broadening my comprehension.

  I laughed so hard I thought I was going to die.

  That night Fin came to call me. We’d all been summoned to Bodb’s great hall to eat of the mid-way feast. We were only half a moon away from the close of the games and I wished they could go on forever. I’d never had a friend like Caílte before and the thought of returning to the cold waters of the crannóg froze my blood. I drank mead, and laughed, and tried not to think on it.

  The meal was grand indeed. Goose and duck and fish, all laid out on bronze platters with soft, fine bread, berries and nuts. Almost a hundred guests were present, with Bodb and Queen Medb among us, dressed in rich green with golden trim. Medb’s hair was long and fair, a finely spun net through it like a spider’s web, catching the light against dewdrops of clear stone. I was never too sure of Medb, she had those translucent eyes that betray no emotion. You could never be sure of her thoughts. Though when she smiled, she lit up the room, her teeth as bright as quartz.

  I was sitting next to my sister. Caílte sat opposite, tearing into a loaf of bread. My father sat opposite too, with Bodb beside him, roaring in jollity and slapping my father’s back from time to time as crumbs collected in his beard.

  The feast had only just begun, the first dishes set before us, when Ailbhe and Aoife arrived. Those on my left moved down a little to make space for them. Their dresses were almost as impressive as Medb’s. Ailbhe wore cloth of buídhe mór, as yellow as the sun, her dark brown hair piled high on her head and her neck adorned with a slim crescent moon of silver that caught the firelight as she sat. Aoife wore red, as dark as dried blood, her skin white and her hair black. Everything about her was a contrast. As I pressed closer to my sister to make room for them, I happened to glance up and catch my father’s expression. I know now that look. Yet I was only a boy then. A boy who enjoyed wrestling, and hunting, and drunken dwarf poets. Even had I known then that an enchantment had been cast, I possessed no skill to break it.

  At first I thought he was looking at Ailbhe, as she reached forward for the pitcher of wine. Then I saw how his eyes followed Aoife as she came behind her sister to sit beside me. Her perfume caught my throat; something heady like the woods in summer. My father’s gaze seemed far away, as though he were having trouble focusing. I looked to Aoife, and when I looked back, my father was drinking from his goblet, eyes cast to the table.

  When I lifted my own cup to my lips there was the strangest smell of raw meat. It reminded me of Mother Moira, as scent can sometimes do, carrying your mind to a place and time you would rather forget.

  I swapped my cup for Fionnuala’s when she wasn’t looking, and set about devouring bread with lashings of dripping. That night, with a pocketful of sweet dough, Caílte took me up to the top of the bank where we could see right out across the valley. There was no wind that night and it wasn’t too cold. In the distance we could see a few dwellings, out where the farmers lived on the flatland. There were lamps in some of the windows, faint and far away, and the darkness made it hard to tell where the land ended and the sky began. The stars and the earth seemed bound together that night.

  “It was grim the way Annraoi’s head opened up like that, wasn’t it?” I nodded my agreement. “It didn’t upset you, did it?”

  “No, it was an accident,” I replied, watching the torchlight of a rider below as it floated along an unseen road.

  “Aye, but sometimes that’s worse. It’s got to be worse if you didn’t mean to die.”

  “He didn’t know it happened. It was so fast. He didn’t even scream.” We were silent for a moment, contemplating whether it was better to die in the full knowledge you were about to die, or whether it was better not to mean to die but to do so without knowing. “Desmumhnach must feel terrible.”

  “Hardly!” Caílte laughed. “He’s a drunk. I bet you he’ll drink so heavily tonight he won’t remember his own name for a week.”

  “I’m sure there’ll be plenty who will remind him.”

  “True enough. There won’t be many forgetting what happened today.” We were quiet a while longer, before he voiced the nagging doubt at the back of my own mind. “Looks like your father saw something today, an’ all.”

  “Aoife of Aran,” I sighed.

  “She’s your mother’s sister, isn’t she?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does she look like her?”

  I shook my head. “No, my mother was fair, like the Queen.”

  “Yeah, but do they look alike?”

  “I suppose,” I said, shrugging my shoulder. “My mother was softer though, more like Aunt Ailbhe, not so sharp at the jaw.”

  “What do you think happened between them?”

  “Who said anything happened?” I asked, defensively. “They didn’t talk all through the meal.”

  “Aye, that’s what I mean. They didn’t talk, but they kept looking at each other.”

  “Do you think Fin noticed?”

  “You should ask her.”

  I took a deep breath. It was too nice a night and too far from home to have to think on my father’s problems. I pulled a ball of dough from my pocket and shared it with Caílte. We sat there chewing, watching for signs of sunrise and rubbing our tired eyes.

  Fionnuala

  My cheeks glowed like embers. It was one of those evenings where every breath you took was filled with the dying scent of summer: the dried grass, the heather and the rich earth of the Cashel Plain.

  Simply to be in her presence made your skin flush, for she was by far the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. My own reflection seemed ordinary by comparison. Her neck was long and slender, her lips red as berries and her hair the colour of chestnuts, freshly polished from their casing. When she laughed, her subtle voice tickled your ear like a feather, causing you to laugh in turn.

  Caer Ibormeith was extraordinary. I don’t think I ever saw her equal for beauty or charm in all the years that followed. I had heard the stories, of course, yet the reality of the legend was far more enchanting.

  “Tell it, oh do tell it again,” cried Conn, his head resting against my lap as I stroked his hair in the cosy shadows of the hut we had removed ourselves to after the feast. My belly felt as round as an apple and all I wished to do was laze in the comfort of that place, listening to our new companions.

  “Ah,” Óengus replied, “I could tell it a thousand times and ne’r get bored
of it.” He squeezed his wife’s hand and Ibormeith squeezed back, her nails pink and tipped with frost, her rings sparkling against the dancing flames.

  “You promise it’s true?” Fiachra asked, raising himself on his elbow to look at them both.

  “Every word,” she replied.

  Óengus was the youngest brother of Bodb, sharing the great, wise Dagda as a father, yet some great blessing had touched him on his mother’s side, the river goddess Boann, for he was breathtakingly handsome. His jaw was sloping and full, his hair and his eyelashes as bright as sunrise, and his eyes so intense that when they rested upon you, you felt as though you were falling through the world. Yet from his father’s side he had inherited the Danann physique. His arms flexed like smooth boulders beneath his shirt and his legs, though slim, could carry him as fast as a horse.

  They were a formidable couple. Just like his sister Ainge, whose feet bloomed wildflowers through the woods, it was said of Óengus that wherever he walked with Ibormeith, love would flow like a lake, drowning all in a deep passion to belong; to love and be loved. It was said that should they grace a couple’s wedding, that couple would have a thousand sons and never fall out of love. It was said they would even die upon the same day so that Manannán could ferry them safely to Tír na nÓg together, united even in death.

  Part of me wished he had graced my father’s wedding to my mother, but I pushed that thought away. To be in their presence brought only grace and goodness, and I could not have chilled the mood even had I wished to.

  “I loved her even before I met her,” Óengus spoke. “She came to me in a dream, you see. Night after night I saw her eyes, her beautiful face – felt her breath on my lips.” He stroked Ibormeith’s jaw, brushing his finger across her lips. “I knew that I could never rest until I found her.”

  “His mother searched all of Éire for me.”

  “Yes, but you were nowhere to be found.”

  “Then your father searched.”

  He nuzzled her with his nose, “And still you were not revealed.”

  “And then Bodb discovered me,” she turned from him to smile at me.

  “My wily old brother, with a snout like a fox. Out by the Dragon's Mouth he found her, chained there with more than seven-score maidens, each naked and beautiful, but I recognised her among them instantly. Look at her.” He curled a strand of her hair around his finger. “Who could ever forget such a face?”

  “Who had chained you there?” Fiachra asked, wide-eyed and attentive, as though having forgotten the first telling entirely.

  “Oh, it was a game.” Óengus smiled, though in his smile I saw something uncertain, a cold current beneath the warm waters of his face. “As I took the first step towards my beloved, all of the women turned into swans.”

  “And that was how we remained,” Ibormeith continued. “For a year and a day we would turn into swans, and a year and a day be human again.”

  “When she was human, I would never let her from my sight. I lived in fear of Samhain approaching, when I would lose her again.”

  “But you knew her even as a swan,” Conn murmured, his eyes shut as he battled against sleep for the end of the story.

  “Not at first. You can’t begin to imagine how hard it was. One hundred and fifty maidens, all with white wings and black eyes, every remnant of their humanity stripped. Even their voices were alike, singing sweet laments. It was impossible to tell them apart.”

  “But you were clever,” Fiachra grinned. Unlike his brother he grew more awake with every word.

  “Indeed, it was my fair mistress who was clever.”

  “On the third transformation, when I possessed fingers instead of feathers, I formed a dance,” Ibormeith told. “I raised my left arm and then my right. I craned my neck back and to the side, I nested it beneath my left arm and then my right.”

  “I watched her dance for me in the moonlight the month before the spell took hold. On the shore of the Dragon's Mouth, where the waves broke against the inlet, I scoured the birds with my eyes, straining so hard to find her that I imagined even the rocks danced. Then, there she was.”

  “There I was,” she smiled.

  “Dancing.”

  They kissed.

  “What happened to the other hundred and forty-nine maidens?” Conn asked, from somewhere beyond the realms of wakefulness.

  “They returned to humans,” Ibormeith said.

  “But you did not!” shouted Fiachra. “You remained a swan.”

  “Yes, and I became a swan too,” said Óengus. “I had guessed correctly and was granted my bride. Whatever form she took, I was bound to from that day forth. We flew to my mother’s home, the Fortress of Boyne at Drogheda. We were so happy, so very, very happy that we sang for three days and three nights, without thinking to eat or rest. We sang the whole of the land to sleep until we regained our human form and our people woke refreshed.”

  We were silent for a while, Óengus and Ibormeith gazing into one another’s eyes, Conn snoring lightly on my lap, and Fiachra, head on hand, gazing into the fire.

  With a yawn, I whispered my need to retire.

  “The twins must rest,” I explained, and for once Fiachra did not have the energy to argue.

  “Of course,” said Ibormeith. “It was so lovely to meet you.”

  She stood and walked me to the door of the hut.

  I turned to her there, Conn over my shoulder and Fiachra a few feet ahead.

  “Tell me,” I said, lowering my voice. “You never did say, who was it that turned you to swans?”

  Ibormeith raised her head slightly as though about to laugh off my question, only her eyes held enough weight to bring them back to mine.

  “Someone whose name should never be spoken.”

  Aoife

  The traders from the North believe that our fate is woven long before we are born. They say we are only threads, weighted by loomstones, our lives bent into the patterns that the Nornir decide for us.

  I do not believe that. I live here, wild and free in the open air, my fate has not been spun for me by giantesses far beneath the earth. I am the spinner of my own story, I dye my own destiny. Yet still that cloth is subject to that which I do not control: the whispered words of the gods, that irresistible natural force which draws the bee to a flower and pushes fresh shoots through the frozen earth in spring.

  “That is a fine horse,” Lir said, approaching as I brushed Arrow’s flank with a buckskin mitten. He stamped his foot, straining at his halter as my lord approached, jealous, always, of another’s affection for me.

  “Don’t worry,” I whispered in his ear. “He has only half the hooves you have, thus half the man.”

  Arrow snorted and nodded as though agreeing.

  “Is that your father’s horse?”

  “No, mine,” I replied. It should have been obvious to anyone, for his coat matched the colour of my hair. I continued to brush him, pretending that I did not feel Lir’s eyes upon me. “Can I help you, my lord?” I asked, after too long a silence.

  “I was wondering...” he began.

  “Yes?”

  “I was wondering whether you might accompany me today, on a ride?” I let the question linger and he filled the empty air with more words. “My children have gone with your sister and Sorcha to watch the swimming trials at the coast. I find myself alone, without companion.”

  “Perhaps you should join them.”

  “I have little interest in swimming,” he replied, and I knew he truly meant he had little interest in the sea. I knew the rumours, those dark tales that fuelled the fires at night and spoke of his past love and his other son, the one who appeared in the mist and ferried the dead to the land of the Forever Young. I wondered what he had told my sister Aobh of those times, and whether he still whispered to her across the waves. “I thought perhaps the woods?”

  I smiled, but did not let him see.

  “You wish me to ride to the woods with you?”

  “If it pleases
you.”

  “Very well, but I warn you, you will not keep up.”

  And he could not. We rode down from the fort and out across the open plain. I was a clear length ahead as we raced towards the trees, my red cloak billowing behind like a banner. We finally steadied to a gentle trot and he drew alongside me. At first I thought it was the blood rushing through my ears, and then I realised he was laughing. Holding his head back, teeth white against red lips.

  “My lord,” I smiled. “You enjoy being beaten?”

  He pressed his fingers to his eyes for a moment, collecting himself before looking back at me.

  “Aoife, you are quite some rider.”

  “I am half horse,” I teased.

  He laughed a little more, the silver in his hair returning to black and the lines by his eyes smoothed away. I knew in that moment that I was the focus of his attention, and that I had achieved what none of his kin had managed since the death of his wife. He had finally forgotten for one, brief moment.

  Nothing happened that first day, nor the day after. We simply rode through the woods, trying to spot the songbirds that hid in the canopy, feeling our mounts’ hooves sink softly in the moss, and observing how the shadows of the trees moved from west to east as the day drew on.

  By the third day I had my maid wrap a selection of breads, cheeses and meats to take with us. We took the trail to the Black Stones. They were a circle of nine stones, each as squat and weathered as old women. It was whispered that the site belonged to the Ancient Ones, the Aos Sí, dark spirits of the earth who retreated into shadow long before the Fomori. Their magic was the dangerous sort that caused the earth to tremble and the mountains to throw forth flame. I had come many times with my maids to cut the throats of goats and fowl, and to offer milk and sweet treats that they may remain at rest. I felt an affinity with those places, a stillness within that the gods of Dea rarely afforded. In their festivals, the druids blazed so brightly it was hard to hear the quiet.

  We rested there, against those rocks, Lir with his back pressed to their pockmarked shoulder, whilst I spread our food before us. I offered bread to the four quarters, to the sky and the earth, the animals and plants, and finally to the dead, before breathing on it and taking a bite. I threw the torn remains into the centre.