Chapter 9
Chapter nine
NIALL
The first time that Niall met Aoife, she very nearly killed him – killed him to make a stew from his bones and a gown from his skin and a wreath from his hair – tasks which he was certain that she would have completed with considerable ease, had it not been for his sister.
He thought of that long-ago day now, as they rode along, the king and the witch, the shade from the overhanging trees leaving shadowy scars dappled along her skin, and sent up a silent prayer to whatever gods might still remain in their world that he had not made a mistake of unfathomable proportions.
Because he had brought that self-same witch right into the heart of his father’s castle – had entrusted her with the well-being of his entire realm as well as his own – and if he were wrong, unlike last time, Rory was not here to save him now.
It was nearly a year to the day since he had first visited the vale of Inagh before he was able to keep his promise to Rory and help her return home. Weeks of pleading with their father, until at last the king had relented, agreeing to a fortnight’s stay in the vale for the both of them.
Three days after they arrived, just as she had promised, Rory took him to see the witch.
“To kill her,” Niall said eagerly as he trotted behind her, stumbling over the roots and brambles entwining over the rocky mountain trail. “We’re going to kill her, aren’t we?”
“Sure now,” said Rory without glancing back. “You’re a hero just like Cúchulainn, are you not? What else is there to do? Befriend her and take tea at her table?”
Niall shivered in response to such an absurd suggestion. “I’ve read stories,” he said. “Stories about how awful they are, these witches.”
Rory hummed under her breath. “Your people say that I’m a witch.”
“Well, you’re not a witch. You’re my sister.”
“How would you know? I can be very scary, as witches are, when I want to be.”
“I’ve never been scared of you.” Niall walked face-first into the delicate strands of a spiderweb and stumbled backwards, sputtering and swatting at his face.
Molly descended in a worried rustle of feathers onto his shoulders, nipping at the tip of his ear with her beak.
“Ow, stop that, Molly, I’m fine.” He swiped at his face. “Ugh, it’s all over me.”
Rory turned around and rolled her eyes, then reached out to pluck the strands from his face. “You donkey,” she said, but Niall smiled anyway, because he could hear it in her voice, buried under the exasperation, something that sounded very akin to affection.
“See? You’ve saved me loads of times – from these cobwebs, from the river, and that time I got locked in the closet and couldn’t get out.”
“You got locked in the closet because you’re an utter muppet who thought no one would find you in there during a game of tig.”
“No one would have, either, if I hadn’t gotten frightened and screamed. Oh look, there’s a deer.”
Rory paused, standing up on her tiptoes to get a better view. “I wonder if she has a fawn nearby.”
Niall studied the graceful line of the doe’s neck, the leisurely way she dipped her head to nibble at the leafy underbrush. “Da stopped taking me on hunts some time back,” he said after a moment. “He thinks I’m weak, because I can’t bring myself to kill them – the deer.”
Rory glanced at him, brows furrowed. “Why can’t you kill them? They’re only deer. There’s plenty of them to be found, and they’re rather tasty.”
“I know, but I can’t help but think of Oisín when I look at them – Oisín, and his mamaí. It doesn’t sit well, killing them.”
“What do you mean, Oisín and his mother?”
“You know,” he said, pointing towards the doe whose head swiveled towards them at the movement, ears pricked. “How Oisín’s mother met Fionn mac Cumhaill and loved him, but then was turned into a deer by the dark druid.”
“I don’t really know much about Oisín,” she confessed, and he grinned.
“Well, I know everything about him, he’s my favorite of the heroes, even if he is from Leinster – ugh.
Here, I’ll teach you. His mother was once a maiden named Sadhbh.
The dark druid Fear Doirich loved her, but she refused him, so he transformed her into a doe out of spite.
One day Fionn mac Cumhaill was out hunting with his hounds, and they caught her scent, chasing her through the vales and over hills, until at last Fionn knew it was no ordinary deer they were chasing, tricky as this creature was.
He called out to the deer, saying, ‘Feoil fianna, I mean you no harm – only to look upon your true face.’ When the doe heard these words, she stopped her flight and turned to greet him, and before his eyes, transformed into a beautiful young girl. ”
Rory humphed underneath her breath. “Of course she was. Why must they always be beautiful, the girls in these stories with the terrible curses? Are plain girls never allowed to be hexed?”
“Maybe they weren’t that pretty, not really,” Niall offered cheerily.
“Maybe it just made for a better story that way, that they be beautiful. Maybe they had snaggle-teeth or big noses, but it wouldn’t sound as good in the story, so the bárds lie and say they were beautiful.
” Rory glanced at him wryly, and Niall shrugged.
“Anyway, pretty or not, Fionn takes her as his lover and – well. You know.” Niall flushed. “Gets her with child.”
Rory’s expression flickered. “I see. Like your father did to my mother.”
“Our father,” Niall corrected without thinking, then winced. “I only meant –”
“I know what you meant.”
Niall thought about the dark-haired woman with the low, soothing voice and gentle smile who had greeted him without the faintest trace of resentment when he’d arrived in the vale, her stolen daughter by his side. “Ror –”
“Turn right at the fork ahead.” She poked his shoulder, a little more sharply than necessary, and Molly nipped at her finger indignantly in response. “Stop that, Molly. The cailleach’s house is that way.”
“Right.” He hesitated, clambering up the steep path, grabbing at overhanging branches to steady him. “Do you – do you want to hear the rest of the story?”
“Of course,” she said. “Whatever shall become of the pretty pregnant girl? I do hope she lives happily ever after.”
“You don’t have to be cruel about it.”
“Just tell the story, donkey. What happens after Fionn gets her in a family way?”
“Well, Fionn marries her, and vows to give up his warlike ways, but then he wakes up one morning to find her gone, no sign of her at all. He has his hounds search high and low, but they can’t find her.
The druid, you see, discovered that she’d married Fionn, and in a rage, he hunted her down and changed her back into a doe – forever, this time. ”
“And the baby?”
“Right, well years later, Fionn goes riding along Binn Ghulbain and finds a boy in the nip. So he picked him up and recognized himself in the child’s face.
‘Sadhbh’s son,’ he said. ‘I shall call you Oisín – the little deer, for the honor of your mother.’ He took him home and raised him as his heir, and Oisín grew into a great warrior.
He mastered all but one of the seven trials of the Fianna with remarkable ease – the trials which Fionn himself had devised, after tasting the wisdom of the salmon of knowledge from the tip of his thumb. ”
“So Oisín,” Niall continued, panting as they climbed the steep mountainside path, “became a bárd of wondrous skill to boot, a fierce and fighting chief of the Fianna, who sang of beauty to his friends and of ruin to his foes, and all the land murmured of his might – an equal, they said, even to his father. Until one morning, Oisín was walking alongside of Loch Léin, when a strange mist settled all around him, a sweet-scented fragrance arose from the trees and the birds burst into song. He looked up, and saw a woman came towards him, sitting astride a great white mare. She had wheat-golden hair and –”
“Wait, wait. Let me guess. Was she the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen?”
Niall shoved her shoulder with the palm of his hand.
“Yes,” he said. “But – there was a reason this time! She told Oisín that she was Niamh, the fairy-queen of Magh Meall herself, and that she had heard the stories of his prowess and his might, of the beauty of his songs, and she wished to claim him as her own – as her lover. She told him that the land beyond the star-studded sea was a land of unending peace, free from sorrows and griefs, a land freed from the constraints and laws of time, so that he would never age or grow feeble, but remain a hero, strong and young, forever. Oisín leapt upon the back of the great white horse, his arms around her waist, and away they rode, across the land and over the star-studded sea.”
Rory halted on the pathway, hands on her hips. “He left?” She asked, incredulous. “As easy as that, he left his father, his kin, all his friends, on the eve of battle, for the sake of some girl?”
“The fairy-queen of Magh Meall,” said Niall with great indignation. “Hardly ‘some girl.’”
“He made a promise,” Rory said. “If you make a promise, you should keep it – no matter how pretty the person is trying to make you break it.”
“But she told him he could be a hero! Forever! Of course he left. I would have too.”
“If you make a promise,” she said again, flicking his ear, and he yowled in protest. “You should keep it, donkey. And he could’ve been a hero forever even if he’d stayed.
He was a bárd, wasn’t he? Wasn’t that their task?
To sing of the great deeds of the men and women of éire, to give voice and life to their greatness, so that they may never die? ”
“Yes, but, you know, metaphorically. They would still grow old and weak and then – you know. They’re not immortal; they can’t truly live forever. Of course Oisín left! I’d leave too, just like that, quick as you please, if it meant I never had to get old. I never want to be old. It sounds awful.”