Beyond a Darkened Shore(12)
Both Branna and Deirdre listened with wide eyes, so quiet I could hardly hear their breaths. “Why did they not throw themselves from its back?” Branna asked.
“Its skin becomes like the stickiest sap. There is no escape.”
“What happened to them?” Deirdre asked, her voice barely more than a whisper.
“The each-uisce took them back to his pond and dived to the very bottom. He trapped them under until they drowned, and then he ate everything but their hearts and livers. He came back for the girl, for an each-uisce has never had his fill, but she hid from him in a cave. She watched him change into the most beautiful man, with a voice like an angel, but still she did not leave the safety of the rock at her back. Morning came, and the each-uisce disappeared, along with the thunderstorm. In the light of day, the girl realized her keep was within sight and walked back home without her friends, but alive just the same.”
A hush fell over us, the crackling fire the only sound in the room. “That was a sad story,” Deirdre said finally.
“It is, so you must promise me you will remember it. It’s no secret there are monsters that roam all over the coast.” I leaned closer to them and whispered, “Especially at night,” and they both jumped and then laughed. “Truly, though, you should only ride the horses and ponies we have here.”
“Then you must also promise to keep teaching us in secret,” Branna said. “We’re tired of Brother Mac Máel keeping our ponies on leads.”
I smiled. “That all depends on Máthair. She’s the one who fears you will hurt yourselves.” Our mother had an unusual fear of horses, preferring to walk unless absolutely forced to ride. I had always wondered if perhaps she had encountered an each-uisce in her younger years, but as with many things, she would never say.
“Will you tell us another story?” Deirdre asked. She yawned so wide I could see every tooth.
I laughed quietly and gave her a hug. “You’re too tired to hear another, and I need a proper bath. I’m sure I’ve smelled better.”
To my surprise, no further argument was given. They burrowed under the furs, and after a few minutes of tossing and turning, they were quiet, and asleep.
After kissing each of their cheeks good night, I turned to my wide wooden tub in front of the fire.
Many viewed bathing as a luxury necessary only every cycle of the moon, but I had a different opinion on the matter, especially after a battle—I might no longer have been covered in blood and sweat, but I still felt unclean.
My handmaiden had painstakingly prepared a bath for me earlier in the evening—when I should have arrived home. I didn’t dare rouse her from her warm bed now to bring the bath back to a comfortable temperature. The scent of lavender and mint still perfumed the air invitingly, despite the cold.
The water in my tub was too cold to soak in, so I bathed quickly, scrubbing my skin until it was pink from abuse. Finished, I stood, and as my hands grasped both sides of the tub, I suddenly went blind. My heart pounded in my chest like the thundering hooves of a herd of horses. The water dripped from my body; I could hear it falling back into the tub with a drip, drip, drip. A cry for help clawed its way up my throat, but my lips would not part to release it. I could not move.
I sensed rather than saw the mist rise up around me, colder even than my bath had been. It snaked up my legs and blanketed my body until gooseflesh covered my skin. My breaths came in a panicked pant, and I willed my legs, my arms, to move, but not even my strength could force them to. As suddenly as it had disappeared, my vision returned, but I was still paralyzed. Then came a flash of blinding light, and in the midst of it, a crow appeared. Its eyes held mine, worlds of knowledge contained within.
Ciara, it said, and the blood in my veins seemed to turn to ice. It was the same voice I had always heard. Now that I heard it clearly, it was a hoarse, dangerous sort of voice. Do you know who I am?
Still in the hold of the same paralysis, I could only stare.
I am one of the Tuatha Dé Danann, the first men of éirinn who were once worshipped as gods. The Morrigan, Phantom Queen, and goddess of war and death. It tilted its head, and the feathers shifted, oily and black. In rapid succession, images poured into my mind, until I was sure I was in the grip of madness: a misty wood, the fog slowly taking shape until I could almost make out the figure of a woman; but then she turned, and her face was that of a crow’s, her hair made of feathers. But then, you have always known me.
The crow’s harsh caw-caw-caw blasted through the room. It flew so close to my face I feared it would tear out my eyes with its talons, but it only buffeted my cheeks with its greasy black feathers. In its eye, I saw my memories, all the times I had seen the crow before: the day I received my first blood as a woman; the day I had taken control of one of my fellow clansmen during training; on the battlefield at Fir Tulach, when Northman raiders had sailed all the way down the river to lay siege to the village there; and then earlier today, before the Northman prisoner had landed on our shore.
The crow’s eye seemed to shimmer and grow, until it soon blotted out everything else. I was trapped; the Morrigan’s voice was all I could hear.
For hundreds of years, the Tuatha Dé Danann have allowed the raiders from the north to rape and pillage our lands.
In my vision I saw Northman longships, with prows of gaping dragon heads, make landfall on the coast of éirinn. Cold nausea gripped me as I watched them slaughter every monk they encountered at the monasteries along the coast, their axes making quick work of men who had virtually no defenses. From there they moved on to the villages. Houses with thatched roofs went up in infernos, children ran screaming, men were cut down as women were taken as slaves. The raiders took everything of value, packing captured slaves and treasures until their longships hung low in the water from the sheer weight of it all.