54. Brú na Bóinne
54
brú NA BóINNE
There is no country on earth in which either education, or the desire to procure it, is so much reverenced as in Ireland.
— WILLIAM CARLETON, “THE POOR SCHOLAR”
“ W ell, it’s not Ogham. Not quite, anyway.”
Inside a canvas tent billowing in the middle of Brú na Bóinne —otherwise known as the Boyne Valley, approximately forty-five minutes northwest of Dublin—Rachel Cardy grinned at the three people surrounding her with the delight of an extrovert who thrives on attention.
If there was ever a truer siren, I couldn’t imagine it.
Outside, the rain beat on the sides of the tent like a ticking clock—a stubborn reminder that our time here was limited. Jonathan and Robbie both turned, eyes sparking with magic, to the piece of parchment scratched with a system of lines or maybe runes and held between two pieces of glass meant to preserve specimens. I drew my fisherman’s sweater tighter around my shoulders.
I had been surprised at first when Jonathan had insisted on the detour after the privately chartered Cessna from Galway had landed at a tiny airfield outside of Dublin. But Rachel, he insisted, would have some insight on the parchment retrieved from Gran’s box.
A call had revealed that she had been asked to advise an archaeological dig in the valley, and so a driver had taken us to the site instead of the college.
Twenty-four hours after Jonathan and I had managed to retrieve it from the old recipe box, I was already starting to hate this bit of ancient writing. Both Robbie and Jonathan insisted that it be kept in the box when we weren’t looking at it. Unfortunately, the protection spell reset every time it closed, which meant that each time someone wanted to see it, Jonathan and I had to dive back into a terrifying black hole of oblivion. It was like falling down the rabbit hole but with a lot more horror and much less fancy.
“We know,” Jonathan confirmed. “But it’s coded. Even Robbie can’t read it.”
It was true. On the drive from Galway, we had stopped at a remote pond, where I had waded waist-deep with Jonathan’s hands at my hips while I cupped the parchment in my hands, asking for its history. But not a single image from the parchment’s past appeared. Beyond a few murmurings, it had been wiped good and clean.
“That’s because it’s at least a thousand years older than the great big rocks inscribed with names and boundaries around Munster,” Rachel replied. “Think about how quickly Irish evolved, even in modern times. I’d wager this is much older than the primitive era, even. It certainly feels that way.”
Robbie nodded. “What do you think, then? A proto-Goidelic form?”
My spirit fell. If this was a mysterious Bronze-Age language, we’d get nowhere. Only a few had ever been decoded, and even those lexicons were incomplete.
Rachel, however, didn’t seem perturbed. “Hard to say. But if it is a form of ancient Ogham, it rather confirms James Carney’s theory, doesn’t it?” She turned to me, eyes gleaming.
I understood why. The arguments about when Ogham was invented were well cataloged. Some scholars thought that because its heyday took place between the fourth and sixth centuries AD, it was a translation of Latin into Irish forms for the transmission of Christian ideas. Others argued that it was developed before the influx of Christianity as a way for druids to communicate outside Roman purview. Still others believed it was an earlier version of Germanic runes, imported or developed during the first millennium BC, sometime after the arrival of the Celts, but no material evidence had ever been found for that theory. If this was even older, it would be a scholarly coup, no matter what it meant for the fae community.
I stared at the parchment as I went through all of these possibilities out loud.
“You’re forgetting one last theory,” Rachel pointed out.
Robbie snorted. “Rachel, come on with you. Macalister’s ideas have been thoroughly debunked. Ogham isn’t a finger system imported from Italy. It’s obviously transcribing ancient Celtic phonemes.”
“Indeed it is. On most of the stones that bear it,” Rachel agreed. “But have you ever seen it written like this?”
She used a stylus to point to a few of the more legible markings on the parchment. Every one of us shook our heads. Outside, the wind whistled.
“We don’t precisely know how Goedelic evolved from other proto-languages, do we, my polyglottic magicians?” she asked sweetly.
Jonathan and Robbie glanced at each other.
“We do not,” Jonathan said. “There are theories, but?—”
She turned back to me, her back serving as an interruption. I liked Rachel, but I was starting to see that her supernatural charisma was balanced by an equally mercurial disposition. “Do you know the words for seer in Old Irish, Cassandra?”
I tipped my head. “There are a few.”
She gestured, a silent request to continue.
“Offhand, I’d guess the fáith as the prophet, maybe banfasa or bansagart for a wise woman or a telepath. A bard is a type of poet—I would guess filí or banfilí .”
Rachel nodded. “Good. And do you know what the word for poet is in Ogham? It’s very different from any of those terms.”
I frowned. “No, I don’t.” I hadn’t actually spent much time studying Ogham beyond a brief seminar.
“It’s velitas ,” Rachel informed me. “It literally means ‘one who sees.’ Which, I don’t have to tell you, sounds an awful lot like veritas —Latin for truth. But also like the Veleda , the Germanic seeress who helped her tribe throw off the Romans in the first century.”
I frowned. “Sounds like the anti-Roman connection Carney suggested is stronger than people think, then.”
“Perhaps. My point is that language is much more fluid than anyone wants to think.” She held a palm over the parchment and closed her eyes. “I’d have to do a radiometric analysis, but this feels similar to some of the early Iron Age artifacts we’ve found on this very dig, in fact.”
“That’s impossible,” I said. “Parchment as a technology didn’t develop until approximately the eighth century BC, and even then, it wasn’t widely used for another several centuries. It’s highly unlikely it would have made it all the way here.”
Rachel nodded. “Unlikely doesn’t eliminate the possibility. But it would make this shabby bit of skin some of the oldest parchment in the world if I’m right.”
All of us gawked at the worn, hand-sized artifact.
“The eighth century BC is a very important time in prehistoric Europe,” she continued. “Especially in the British Isles. Now, everyone wants to go on about the movement from bronze to iron. But consider this: Ancient Greek takes its first written form—that we know of—in the eighth century. Latin coalesces similarly, and we see the first written example within a hundred years. Who here knows what preceded Ancient Greek writing?” She grinned at all of us like she was teaching a class.
Jonathan rolled his eyes. “I assume you’re talking about Linear B.”
“Bingo!” She laughed, a delightful sound like the wind itself was singing to us. “Now look here. This Inscription looks a lot like velitas in Ogham. But look at that curled bit. And the square here. And this squiggly line. I have to wonder if the magic is playing tricks on me because that phrase looks more like Linear B than Ogham. While I’m not a proto-Greek scholar, my darlings, I believe that would translate to something in the realm of?—”
“ A-ne-mo ,” Jonathan spoke up. “‘Priestess.’”
The word seemed to hum through the air, like the noise after a gong had been rung.
“That’s right,” Rachel said. “A word often used for fae in that time.”
“Rachel,” Jonathan said. “How do you know? We can’t decipher this based on a hunch.”
The siren rolled her bright eyes. “You sorcerers’ disdain for any magic that appears less than empirical aside, it’s not a hunch, siren’s or otherwise. Just plain scholarship, I’m afraid. You spend twenty years pouring over ancient texts like this one and tell me if you don’t know the difference between Greek forms and Celtic signs.” Dr. Cardy hovered an elegant finger over one bit. “See that tail there? It’s been scratched out, but you never see that in Ogham. There’s another. Oneused to be there too, I suspect. And at the end, there are several drawings that look like converted glyphs. To a plain eye or an uneducated one, it might have passed as Ogham. But even a cursory review says otherwise.”
I sat back on a stool. “Linear B? Mixed with proto-Irish? This seems…impossible.”
Dr. Cardy took off her glasses and looked up at me warmly. “Does it?”
“Yes,” I said immediately. “Setting aside this rather brilliant impromptu textual analysis, this is parchment. As you said, animal skin wasn’t used as a writing tool until the eighth century at the very earliest, but Linear B was a Bronze Age language. It ended with the fall of Mycenae in 1200.” I shook my head. “There’s no reason anyone would be writing in Linear B five hundred years after its last known use—if this is even that old—if they wanted anyone to understand it.”
Jonathan chuffed.
I frowned. “What?”
“You may have just stumbled upon the solution to your quandary, my dear,” Rachel said gently.
We all looked back at the innocuous-looking scrap.
“You think it’s a code,” I said with new understanding. “Borrowed—or maybe evolved from—the last coded language? Linear B?”
Rachel grinned again and shrugged. “A mere hypothesis. But this parchment does provide a step in the evolutionary chain.”
“So what does it say?” Jonathan pressed. “Can you read it?”
Dr. Cardy gave him a look. “I’m a Celtic scholar, Jon. I’ve got Ancient Greek and Latin for my work, and, yes, some familiarity with Linear B. Perhaps with time, I could?—”
“We don’t have time,” Jonathan interrupted. “Cassandra has to appear before the Council tomorrow. And they are certainly going to ask about that. The question is if we really need to protect it.”
At that news, Rachel reared. “The Council? Are you joking? The girl hasn’t even manifested! They can’t possibly?—”
“She’s Penelope O’Brien’s heir,” Jonathan said quietly. “And they figured that out.”
At that, Dr. Cardy exhaled a large breath, like a deflating balloon. “My goddess. And the Order? What do they say?”
“Well, I’m here, aren’t I?” Jonathan said gruffly. “Robbie too. We’ll get her through it as best we can, but?—”
“Wait,” I said. “The Order. That keeps coming up. What is it?”
Dr. Cardy and Jonathan traded unreadable looks. “You might as well tell her,” she said. “You can’t keep secrets from an oracle. No one can.”
I blinked. “You knew?”
She turned her blinding smile on me. “Darling, I knew when we met. As will many others as your power grows.” She gave Jonathan a look. “You should have been far more discreet with her travel.”
Jonathan sighed, then turned to me. “I can’t tell you much—secrecy is the law. But there is another organization, one thatI am a part of, as are Robbie and Rachel, which is why I knew we could trust her. Like the Council of the Magi, we are also sheltered by an organizing institution. You may have heard of it—Accademia dei Lincei.”
I frowned. “The Lincean Academy? Isn’t that an Italian society for science?”
“Of knowledge,” Jonathan corrected me. “But the Order of the Lynx functions separately now, though with the similar goal of fostering the growth of knowledge and offering the protection of any fae who seeks it.”
“You sound like Caomhán,” I said.
Jonathan didn’t answer, just tipped his head.
“He’s in the Order too?”
“Just a very handsome ally, like most of his kin,” Rachel replied, earning a glower from Jonathan. “Don’t look at me like that, Jon. You’re mated to one of them, so obviously you know what I’m talking about.”
Robbie snorted, and I had to chuckle. There really wasn’t getting anything past her.
“Why is the Order necessary?” I asked. Something wasn’t adding up. “What’s wrong with the Council’s protection?”
There was another round of shared looks. Robbie heaved a heavy sigh.
“For you, it’s sort of like the difference between the ACLU and the Department of Justice,” Jonathan explained. “Both organizations seem to be interested in the same thing on the outside. But sometimes they fight each other. And one has become increasingly corrupt as it gained power.”
“And they are fighting about what?” I pressed. “This…parchment? Gran’s Secret?” I stared at the parchment like it might reveal the whole back story.
Jonathan worried his jaw for a moment. “Cassandra, when Penny contacted me to be the executor of her estate, she asked for the protection of the Order. Until then, she was a Council member. She believed secrecy was in the best interest of the fae world.”
“But…why would she come to you, then?”
“Something changed her mind.”
“You know your history, Cass,” Robbie said. “That classical witch hunting and the scientific revolution occurred during the same period was no coincidence. For plain folk, magic can’t be explained. Once, that was acceptable, in a world where good harvests were blessings from the gods and we lived, if not in harmony with plain people, then with understanding. But as the promise of knowledge became more and more universalized, so did the disdain and fear of the unknown.”
“Fae were always feared,” Rachel put in. “But we became something to hate too. Magic became a death sentence.”
“We fae entered the shadows for our own safety,” Robbie concurred. “We had to.”
A cold finger slid up my back, a forgotten memory that belonged to another time. It was the same feeling I had whenever I had read the old histories of witch burning and trials. The same chill was lodged in the chaos of the burial mounds on Inisheer.
“Caomhán wants to come out,” I said. “And you three agree with him, don’t you? And so did Gran.” I looked back at the parchment. “ That’s why she gave this to me. Because I can’t keep a secret—even though she asked me to. No oracle can.” Another question occurred to me. “But why now?”
“Because now we can prove it,” Jonathan said. “You remember what I told you about my research?”
My mind flew back to our first meetings. Jonathan’s description of his work at the Large Hadron Collider. His attempts to isolate the particles or sub-particles that were potentially the magic.
It had seemed so fanciful at the time.
He took my hand, and a vision of him in his lab popped up, alongside the joy of a new discovery that only academics really know.
“You found them,” I said when he’d released my hand.
“We’re close,” he replied. “So very close.”
“Oracles are vessels for truth, are they not?” Rachel asked. “Our world hasn’t known one since the early modern period. Since the last was put to death in Scotland. I know, because I’ve looked. Your grandmother likely knew it too. But unlike us, Penelope O’Brien wasn’t looking for evidence that the time was right.”
“That’s because Penny didn’t believe in science.”
We all turned to where Robbie rubbed his chin meditatively.
“What do you mean, she didn’t believe in science?” I demanded.
“There’s a famous prophecy,” he said. “You’ll likely know of it. From the Morrigan.”
“At the end of the Battle of Mag Tuired, ” I confirmed. “Yes, I’ve read it. Had to translate it three times, actually.”
Rachel had already pulled out her phone, and without being asked, started reading.
I shall not see a world Which will be dear to me: Summer without blossoms, Cattle will be without milk, Women without modesty, Men without valour. Conquests without a king.
Woods without mast. Sea without produce.
False judgements of old men. False precedents of lawyers, Every man a betrayer. Every son a reaver. The son will go to the bed of his father, The father will go to the bed of his son. Each his brother’s brother-in-law. He will not seek any woman outside his house
An evil time, Son will deceive his father, Daughter will deceive…
She set the phone down on the table and turned back to us as if the answers were obvious in the passage.
“Yes, her famous second prophecy,” I said, already knowing that particular translation well. “It’s rather gruesome.”
“It’s also incomplete,” Robbie said.
“Well, yeah,” I said. “The remaining fragments weren’t finished. Still, she’s describing the end of the world, right?”
“It looks that way,” Rachel said. “Unless you’ve seen the complete version.”
She took up her phone again and pulled up a file—this one containing the original Middle Irish and a whole lot more.
I had to stop myself from pressing my face into the glass. “Where—where did you get that?”
It was a scanned image of what was obviously an original piece of parchment, nearly as worn as the one on the desk.
“The Order has kept the complete version a secret,” Jonathan said.
“Along with the fact that the original translation was wrong,” Rachel added. “Another version of the Irish exists, and the word for ‘prophesied.’ Plain folk added that. Listen:
Until the bowl be found and filled
Emptiness will reign, shadows will rule
For she who Sees and drinks of water, earth, sun, and wind may light the world and give life to all.
She looked again at the piece of parchment. Hovered her fingers over its fraying edges. “There is another story. A Greek Story of how tragedy and hardship arrived in the world. And also a prophecy of how it may be reclaimed.”
I looked at Jonathan. “Pandora’s box.”
Everyone nodded.
I looked back at the parchment. “You think this is part of Pandora’s box.”
“I think it may lead us to it or something like it, whether or not it’s an actual jar or box that was ever given to a person named Pandora,” Jonathan admitted. “And there are members of the Council—my father included—who believe the same thing. And they want to find it more than anything.”
“What exactly does he think he’ll find?” I asked. “And if you say hope, I’ll strangle you.”
Like it always did, the memory of Caleb Lynch’s ghost-like countenance froze me from head to toe.
“Caleb Lynch is dying,” Robbie said. “As is every fae who’s ever given in to the animal urges that drive us all and created a new generation because of it. Most of us can accept the consequences as the natural order of things. But there are some who think mortality was settled on the fae as part of a curse. And that Elpis —the hope Pandora left inside—may offer a way to rescind it.”
“My father wants his immortality back,” Jonathan said. “He wants to live forever. And he mustn’t. No one should.”
I gulped. Long life was one thing, but the idea of someone like Caleb Lynch or anyone of his sort living forever was trulyterrifying.
“So…what?” I asked. “Penny wanted the Secret out there? Then what? I’m supposed to find Pandora’s Box, open it and let out all the horrors into the world?”
“I think they’re already here, Cassandra,” he replied quietly.
“Exactly,” Robbie agreed.
But Rachel was more circumspect. “You’re supposed to let out the light. You’re supposed to let out Hope so no one else can capture her. You’re supposed to set her free.”