Savage her reply, p.2
Savage her Reply, page 2
There was a little lip of stone behind the raised part of the central room of the sídh, where Bodhbh sat deciding things for people, or watching them eat and move with his bright gull’s eyes. When I was a girl, I could squeeze behind that lip and listen to everything that was said. There were other places too, underneath cloaks, beneath tables or behind wall-hangings. The larger I grew the more difficult it was, but I enjoyed a challenge. I became adept at reading shadows on the wall. There was a sense of anticipation and power when I was listening, unseen, to conversations others were not privy to. I was fascinated by private things and always curious to find out more about our parents, how they fared on the rough and beautiful island they called home. I rarely heard their names, as they were not as powerful as he, and their loyalty was secure as long as he possessed the three of us.
I remember the first time he caught me. Our eyes met and his mouth crooked with amusement, and he let me stay tucked behind that thick lip of stone, my heart racing, until everyone had left. And then he pulled me out with his big hands and brushed my hair from my face. I was so frightened, I burst in to tears, but he told me what a brave, bold girl I was. How useful sharp ears were to him at times. He asked me if I would let him know the things I heard when no-one knew I was there. Especially if the man Lir was mentioned.
That was the first time I heard that name.
COLL
Our attendants, Dechtaire and Smól, were warrior women, tall and strong, and Ailbhe adored the pair of them. The same way I would follow druids around, she followed them. But when she asked them questions, they gave answers. Sometimes curtly, but always with a kindness underneath.
They loved each other. When we were alone, they would always be touching. Fingers interlacing, hands kneading at shoulders. They taught me, all of us, to fight, from when we were very young. And though it never became second nature to me the way it did to Ailbhe, I wasn’t bad. I loved to get a slight nod of the head. A ‘well done’. They would tell me stories about power and the different ways it looked. About battlefield goddesses and great queens. And I would be repeating what they told me back to myself in my head so I could share it with others. Trying to get it right.
When I was nine, a visiting chieftain tried to put his hands on me and I broke three of his fingers. He came to them, complaining, and had to be carried from the room on a litter. We laughed at that. I felt protected by them. We all did. They were from home, and though neither my sisters nor myself could remember much about the place we came from, our father Oillill of Aran and our mother Éabha, Dechtaire and Smól could and did provide us with snippets, so often sought and shared that they became as vivid as memories, and certainly as valued. Our father quiet, more poet than king. His wife, our mother, talkative, and charming. Both well able to handle themselves in battle. My face was like his face, my hair like hers. Aébh had her smooth way of moving, and Ailbhe had her talent with a spear. Our parents had an affinity for water, and we shared that. But it was normal then. Magic flowed through the world more forcefully, and freely, and if you had a mind to reach your fingers out, you could train yourself to touch it, use it.
Our people were the Tuatha Dé Danann, the children of the goddess Danu, she of the sacred waters. And though the king was generally a man, sovereignty itself was feminine, mysterious. The land had to welcome the king. To want him to rule. Home was an agreement then, between the land and the people living on it. It wasn’t a matter of deciding something was your own and taking it, there had to be a thing that recognised you. And whether that was because you were wise and brave and powerful and all the traditional qualities we tell ourselves kings have, or because it liked the taste of blood, well, time would tell. The earth can be an angry thing as well. Can strike out at the lives that live upon it. And our lives were long, if we survived the different ways we hurt each other. Children were important to our people, and we had difficulty sometimes in the having and the keeping of them. To separate a parent from a child was no small thing.
The island we were born on still exists. I visit it sometimes, fly over the harsh rock and soft grass. I see the lash of water. How hard the people on it must have worked, how different a life would have been mine. And could I have been pleased with that? Would that small hand have rested or reached out across the ocean to something else entirely?
I was never satisfied with what I had.
I wanted more.
I wanted to be heard and to be loved.
I wanted to be favoured.
And I wasn’t.
All my life I have been second best.
Dechtaire and Smól were for each other above all. Bodhbh was for himself. My sisters loved me well enough, I suppose, but we could not remain together always, not after Lir.
Lir was hard to read.
But certainly, he was never mine. Not wholly.
A child’s want in a woman’s heart is dangerous.
But I have jumped ahead. I will return. To where I need to be. I think that I have been silent too long, swooping here and there, meeting no-one. My thoughts are scattered, not strung together.
Time passed, my legs got longer and my back straighter, my small teeth were replaced by bigger teeth. I learned to be silent, more invisible. Absorbing everything, to share with my sisters, and sometimes, if I thought it worth his while, with Bodhbh. Father was what we wanted him to be, and what we called him, but the taste of that inside my mouth changed somewhat over time. I had grown worshipful of him. Dying for his notice, his approval. That curt nod of the head that meant, This is useful, leave me.
When knowledge mattered he went straight to work.
We, the Tuatha Dé Danann, were at war then. The Invaders had come from across the waves, and they would not return there, though we did our best to send them back. Perhaps we had neglected to honour the land as deeply as we should have, the druids more concerned with power and influence, though perhaps not that. Maybe there’s a time for everything and this was theirs. There’s destiny again. The land, it seemed, was choosing something else, another people. Time and again we tried to push them back. I say we, because that is what it felt like then. We, as a people, as one, child to adult, trying to hold fast to what we had. And it was terrifying. Things that had been certain were not certain. Who were these invaders who could calm down storms? Who stood against us, time and time again, and did not fall. We were not used to it. We did not like it.
Wisdom is just things that people know. And all we had known was crumbling into something else entirely, and the shape of our lives was about to change, just as our bodies were changing and growing. We didn’t look like children any more. And there was a power and a threat in that. In the approach of adulthood.
Dechtaire and Smól left us and went to fight. On Bodhbh’s orders and their own desire. Their faces flushed, they polished their weapons. Ailbhe stared at them, wild with the want to follow them. To have her own fine swords and spears and knives and battle garments. And Aébh’s worry mirrored mine. They were strong and brave. They would fight well. They would protect each other. But there were other forces at work here, and I think we shared the sense that victory, if it came, would not be easy.
It wasn’t easy. And it didn’t come.
We spent months straining for pieces of news, hoping that the women who had reared us would survive unscathed. Ailbhe loved the notion of dying in battle. The glory of it. But all I could think of were cuts of meat. People into flesh. Into something to pull and tear apart. To be consumed by crows. I did not want that for Dechtaire and Smól. I wanted a future where they would be safe. There were many futures that I wanted, and the one I got would be the very last I would have picked.
A battle, at Tailtiú, sent them to the Otherworld. We received the news from one of Bodhbh’s men, and I remember telling myself they were just attendants, not my parents. That I should not care so much. That really, when I thought on it, it was time for them to be gone from us, and we on the verge of womanhood, ready to grasp what came with both hands. Some of this spilled out of me as we grieved, and Ailbhe slapped me hard across the face. Aébh just looked at me and said my name. Softly and like this:
‘Oh.
Aífe.’
She had a way of knowing, my eldest sister, the meat of what was in a person’s heart, without them telling her in words. She listened closely. But in a different way to me, that was not a shield or a spear, but an embrace. She cared because she cared. The best of us. And I remember promising myself, and my sisters, that we would all meet again when it came our turn to cross over. That it would be as though no time had passed. And we would all be there, and close together. Aébh and Ailbhe beside me in the night, as we keened grief into the skins we slept on.
I had my sisters then. What wealth that was!
Our guardians were far from the only people to perish at Tailtiú. It was a time of fear and confusion. Bodhbh, who had waited like a cat looking at a pigeon for so long, finally wiggled his arse and pounced right at the kingship. He was elected high king, to great fanfare. His wisdom, his calm demeanour, his warmth and diplomacy made our people feel more confident, and we took pride in this. In the great man our foster-father was.
But not everyone was pleased with the decision. Many had supported Lir of Sídh Finnachadh, not least Lir himself. His expression neutral as he turned his heel and left the assembly, riding off without a single word. I followed him in the shadows, noticing the twist of his brow and the impatience with which he attended to his horses. The hard set of his mouth. He was, I observed, not a patient man.
When the Invaders were in their boats, nine waves away from shore, the druids summoned a terrifying storm to make them leave. Their poet asked the land to help and she obeyed him. Tranquillity can be a sort of threat.
After the assembly many of the men with Bodhbh took umbrage. Urged him to follow swiftly and with force. My foster-father did not frown or smile, but stroked the two forks of his golden beard, the one after the other.
Bodhbh asked me about Lir, afterwards. What my keen eyes had seen. And I told him, not knowing what the telling him would mean. He nodded, his mouth a straight line in the centre of the forest of his beard. The furrows in his brow were different to those in Smól’s, I noticed. Hers were diagonal. His a straight, deep slash. I left him thinking how to handle this. It was a delicate matter, and later, when I had time and space to think on it, I realised how little I knew of its complexity.
We were a people at war. And it was important to present a united front. To find a way to keep ourselves together.
A creative person can always use their wits to find a way.
And very soon, poor Lir lost his wife, which gave my foster-father a fine new chance to exercise the wisdom and magnanimity that had earned him the kingship.
IDHO
There is a story of another Aífe. I used to like to hear it, as a child. This Aífe was a beauty, unlike me, and more than that, she was a merry soul. She loved to laugh. She took a lover, and his name was Iollan. Another woman also loved that man. And that woman, Ilbrach, looked at what Aífe had and she herself did not, and hate grew in her, so she made a plan. With smiles, she convinced Aífe to come swimming with her. When Ilbrach got her rival in the water, she took a wand and waved it in the air. She called the gods and land and railed against poor Aífe. She turned her from woman into crane. For two hundred years, until her death, Aífe lived with soft white feathers, long impressive legs and rounded wings. Her sad call filtering across the wetlands. But all was not lost, not fully, though it was a lonely life, and different. For Aífe’s lover had been the son of Manannán Mac Lir, the sea god, for whom the sea was a welcoming, nourishing place, a lush meadow, speckled with purple flowers. As the curse drove Aífe from lake to lonely lake, he reached out with his power through her turmoil and did what he could to give the poor crane peace. He, perhaps in loyalty to useless, handsome Iollan, of whom we hear no more in this story, took her under his protection. But the protection of a powerful person can be a sort of horror in itself. As well I know.
They became close, and in some tellings he is called her husband. That detail isn’t fixed, but one thing is: when eventually Aífe died, Manannán got his knife and flayed her corpse. Her skin he turned into the treasure bag of the Tuatha Dé Danann. And this, when people tell it, was an honour. I always wondered if she could pass easily into the Otherworld so mutilated. If it felt like an honour, when she knew. When she saw what had been done to her, after all that had been done already. Men kept their treasures in her skin for centuries, Lugh Lámhfhada and Fionn Mac Cumhaill among them.
The stories that we hear when we are children shape us, don’t they? Some more than most. I hope that Ilbrach got to have her lover. I hope that it was worth it in the end. I leave it with more questions than I enter. I worry for the both of them.
And I wonder.
What she did. Was it worse or better than what I did?
What does it mean that no-one knows what happened to her next?
What did they do with what remained of Aífe? The bloody remnants of a noble creature. Did they bury her with proper honour? There is not a soul left in the world who will take the care to bury me in the style that sends me to my people when I go. They wouldn’t even know what words to say.
Everyone who knew me back then is dead.
Two hundred years seemed such a long time when I was a girl, and now it’s just a busy flash. I have lived so long that years are days. And things have changed, but some things haven’t changed. Marriage then could be like marriage now. Love did exist, as did its companion, yearning. Divorce was easier. It had to be. We lived long lives, my people. Not always though. We felt death sharply when it came for one of our own, in battle or out of it. And, at this time, more and more of us were learning what loss did to you. What it was like to lose someone you loved. The hungry sort of hurt it left behind.
My sisters and I, in our grief, were not really prepared for what was coming. But we had been trained to obey and so we did. It became apparent that one of us was to be matched with Lir, to keep him loyal to Bodbh. It did make sense. We were now of child-bearing age, and Lir was the finest warrior we had, at a time of war. A great chieftain with a sídh famed for its beauty. His wife would have a comfortable life, and power. Status. She would be respected, even feared. His beard was greying even then and we were in the flower of our youth. That didn’t matter, save that it would please him. He was an important man, and liked his women fresh.
Aébh was the eldest of us, though not by much, wide-hipped and pleasing of form. Flawless skin, dark eyes, a slender neck, just a shade too long. She accepted people as they were, while I interrogated what they could be. She was generally of a gentler disposition than I was. She almost never threw things, raised her voice. It was inevitable that Lir would choose her. She also wanted to be chosen. To be a wife, a mother. To have her own sídh. I often thought of a swan when I saw her in the company of others. The sleek, smooth way she moved and interacted. People liked to look at Aébh. But swans work hard. Underneath the surface of the water, their legs work fiercely and, if needs be, they can be as warlike as geese. They’ll fight to keep their patch, or to protect their young.
Lir looked at Ailbhe, stocky and defiant in clothing that confined her. Her bare arms were covered in bruises, and her eyebrows fierce. She was short, a quality our people did not prize, and came up to the bottom of his chest. But every inch was muscle, and hard earned at that. Her beauty was not the sort a king appreciates.
He moved on, and looked me up and down. My breasts, my face. I was wearing green, my hair was flowing down my back, and there were thick gold ropes around my wrists and neck. I was the daughter of a king and the foster-daughter of a high king. And I put every bit of pride I had into meeting his eyes. And something passed between us, a sense of recognition.
And revulsion. I felt an eel coil within my stomach, pulsing in me. Weighing me down. Lir reached out his fingers, thick with rings, and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. His breath upon my neck and I was frightened. He was gentle. Lir was always gentle. But still, he let me know. Who he was and that I could be had.
And that he didn’t want me. A little click of tongue against his teeth, and Lir moved on.
And once he noticed Aébh, her fate was sealed. But as I looked at her, her face was flushed, her eyes bright. She looked over at our foster-father smiling. And Lir smiled too, and Bodhbh. He took her hand and said she was the fairest, noblest one and would be his. Sometimes destiny is no great hardship.
They were wed that night, and the next morning, my sister was gone, to live in Sídh Finnachadh. She embraced me before she left, and I watched the two of them, their chariot flanked by nine warriors, their backs straight and their cloaks bright. Two proud swans, swimming towards the future. Away from me.
And I felt sick.
Some of it relief.
I didn’t want him.
Some of it was fear.
But a good portion of it was shame.
And jealousy, perhaps. I loved my sister deeply. Ailbhe I adored, but there was a self-sufficiency about her, a ferocity. I had the sense that one day we would wake and she would just be gone. Become a warrior outside the tribe, accomplishing feats myself and Aébh would hear about in songs. And it would take some time to get to that, it would. But it was coming. I could see it in the air murmuring through the leaves, the run of the water and the slop of blood. I had been asking questions of the old ones. I had the good sense, even then, to fear for the future.
I would be more alone without my Aébh. And at the same time, her new life, the future that she wanted, had begun. She would be a good wife, would have babies. And she had been held above myself and Ailbhe. Before my king, our foster-father, and his retinue. The whole tuath would surely know by now.
