Chapter 10: CONSIDERING THE OTHERWORLD
Caoimhe is full of beans and breathless in describing her dancing with the witches under the light of the moon. I haven’t seen her so enthusiastic about anything for years and is acting more like a child again instead of her usual ‘serious widower’s housekeeper’, a mantle which she had seemed to adopt in recent years.
“I held hands with Dubheasa, then Alannah spun me around until I was giddy and then I danced with Auntie Katie and even though she was a beautiful young woman now if I closed my eyes she seemed just the same kind and loving old woman that I had know ever since I was born.” Pauses for breath. “You should have seen her, Dad, she was amazing!”
She turns to Etain, “Now, please tell me again who is who? I get so mixed up, and they are all so beautiful in all their lovely dresses. Who’s the really blond girl?”
Etain smiles indulgently at my eager little girl. “Caoilfhoinn. She was always very fair and very beautiful, she would sing all the time and accompanied herself on the harp. I was about four years old when I was told by my mother that she had been snatched by pirates, but really, her father had returned from Tir na nÓg for her and took her away to learn the ways of the Faeries.”
“So tell me all about your sisters, please, please?” She pleads.
“My mother Sabhadama was married seven times to who she thought were seven different men and she had seven daughters but most of them left home while they were about your age or even younger. And we last three were taken from her and banished by the High King.”
“So who was the first of the seven daughters?” Caoimhe asks.
“Afric was the eldest, whose father Crédne worked as a carpenter who built grand longhouses and he left his wife and child for several months to built a palace for the High King, but he never returned. Afric moved away herself when she was 12 (when I was only a wee babe in my cot, so I never knew her at all). As you saw last night she is dark-haired and brown eyed and she is simply brimming over and full of fun. I recently found out on first meeting her that Afric also worked as a messenger for the King, we sisters were all keen and efficient runners. She was captured and imprisoned, kept chained up for months for not giving up her message to her captors."
"And she was only about my age?"
"Aye, we didn’t really count the days, only the seasons, so birthdays never amounted to anything. I think she was maybe a year or two older than you, but boys and girls worked at very young ages back then. So she was a very young girl anyway to be locked up in a dungeon. She told me she was very afraid, but resolved never to tell her captors her secret message, hoping that, if no word was heard from her, the King would assume the message was intercepted so would have changed his plans accordingly, and with her messages losing value, that she would be released.”
“Was she released? ”
“No, well not by those that held her. But, one moonlit night a band of silent Faeries made the prison walls disappear just like that," Etain loudly clicks her fingers, "and they took Afric to the Otherworld where she has lived happily ever since. As the daughter of a Tuath Dé Danann she was entitled by right of birth to enter the portals and stay within the Otherworld for eternity. She rarely ventures out of Tir na nÓg nowadays but she answered my invitation to our dance gladly, if only to meet you, Caoimhe.”
“She was so sweet and kind,” Caoimbhe recalls, “and so light on her feet, too. Who was the next sister in line?”
“Aah. The blond Caoilfhoinn was next. Mother remarried a merchant when it was clear that Crédne had abandoned her and Afric. A woman on her own with a baby would find it difficult, with only the income from potions coming in. Caoilfhoinn was born about three years behind Afric and she was very fair skinned and strawberry-blond headed, she was taken by pirates when she was ten and, to be honest, I barely remember her from my childhood. But when we were first banished to Slievenamon our mother admitted to us that Caoilfhoinn’s father was a Tuath Dé Danann, and that they were not of this world and do not belong here so therefore they cannot stay for long because of the old laws that were signed more than three thousand years ago and those laws cannot lightly be broken. The Tuatha Dé Danann are powerful god-like people who tend to come and go between this World and the Otherworld as they please. They are able to use real magic and much more powerful than whatever we witches can do. When her merchant husband left to return from whence he came, he took his daughter Caoilfhoinn with him. The pirate story was simply a story our mother told to Afric and she in her turn told the younger babies as they came."
"So who was that new merchant husband?" I ask.
Etain smiles. "Crédne returned himself but he fogged Mother’s mind so that she didn’t recognise that he was her first husband returned, but he did tell her half the truth, that he was from the Otherworld and that he couldn’t stay long."
‘And she fell for him all over again?"
"Aye, the Tuath Dé live under fewer constraints than us witches. We cannot use our magic to make someone fall in love with us, but the Tuatha Dé can, and they do so effortlessly because, to us they are perfect and god-like—”
"Ha!" I interject, "even though they lie and trick you with disguises and run away when the Otherworld police show up with an arrest warrant?"
"True, they are beautiful and irresistible and they are also selfishly shallow and care little about the mayhem they cause, but love them we do, and Sabhadama was a witch who fell in love with the same suitor every time but she was also determined that she could never to go to the Otherworld. Her first husband Crédne never invited her, but, according to my other sisters in the Otherworld, he had asked her every other time and she never went with him."
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"So where is your mother?"
"She lies under one of the four cairns on Slievenamon mount. She was brought to us on a donkey cart to spend her last days with us. She was old and frail, her hair as white as whale bone, but Bebhinn’s honey potions and Kaetlynn’s healing hands made her last two days and nights in this world a happy time. She had no regrets, knowing that by then we three sisters had already become immortal in this world due to our birthright and having stayed for sufficient time in the Otherworld for our bodies to change enough without permanently committing ourselves to the Otherworld. And when her time came to an end we laid her to rest on the highest but one spot on the Mount, a place where the setting sun would rest to warm the stones before sinking into the ocean and we three sisters piled up the cairn stone by stone and issued a curse on any man who disturbed her rest."
"Wow!" I breathe out slowly, my mind imagining the scene, hearing them sing that curse in their ancient tongue as they gathered and carefully placed each stone. I can’t envisage the words of their incantation but I can ‘hear’ the keening and feel the love and see it manifest even now as a single tear rolls down Etain’s face.
I gently embrace her across the table and Caoimhe rises from her chair and joins us in a group hug of empathy.
“Sit, sit,” Etain enjoins, “please, so I can get the rest of my family on the table for you so that when you meet them, Richard, you will have some idea of who they are and their history.”
I release her and Caoimhe seats herself at the table. Etain wipes her eyes, sets her shoulders and continues.
“Alannah was 2 years behind Caoilfhoinn and we were told she had died during her infancy, before I was born, apparently she was fair skinned with dark red hair and green eyed, and so I was able to pick her out when we first reunited a couple of months ago. Again, it appears that my mother Sabhadama was like cat-nip to Faeries and another Tuath Dé Danann courted and wed her, but now we know it was another of Crédne’s deceptions. Again he spirited her away while still a wean to his own world when it came time to return.
“Kaetlynn, your ‘Aunt Katie’, Caoimhe, was two years behind Alannah. Her father I was told was Dagda, a river fisherman who could catch all the salmon they could eat without even a net, the fish were so charmed that they would jump into his arms. Kaetlynn was always proud of her father and even though he has confessed to having seven aliases, she still calls him Dagda in our conversations. Green eyed and red-blonde haired, not the white hair you both remember, Kaetlynn was always fiery of temper and very passionate, which is why we got into trouble over Fionn Mac Cuill!”
“If she hadn’t got you banished, we would never have known either of you,” I can’t help myself saying. I am already thinking that my life has changed forever and cannot imagine it without the life force that is Etain in it. I cannot help a feeling of disloyalty dig as the nerves running up my spine to my brain but I shake it of; I live in the now and have been going through the motions emotionally for a decade.
“I don’t know about that, Richard,” Etain smiles, “Fate is a force beyond human reason and I believe that Fate would have found a way. Anyway, Kaetlynn married young and had three children quite close together but lost her husband and two youngest in tragic circumstances. Because we three sisters were cursed over the Fionn Mac Cuill incident, she could never go back to live with her surviving child again. Her son Aodhan regularly came to the mountain to visit but she sadly had to watch him grow old and die. He lies under another cairn on the Mount close to the grandmother who had cared for him in the absence of his mother.”
“That is so sad,” Caoimhe says, “Couldn’t he have gone to the Otherworld and lived forever?”
“Aye, as her son, Aodhan was entitled but by the time he died Kaetlynn and I didn’t know what rights we could have evoked. Besides, he loved his wife Brigit, a sweet girl, so much that he wouldn’t go unless she could too. So, now we reach Bebhinn, who was two years behind Kaetlynn, and once upon a time she lived in your house before you. She is a brunette with big hazel eyes like a deer but a plain face. She has always been a quiet, studious girl and woman. She so loved mixing potions, was oft cheated on and her sweet nature taken advantage of by traders, although we sisters tried to protect her when we could. She is so open, honest and very trusting. She has always remained a virgin. Her father worked as a blacksmith, and we were all told by Mother that his heart simply gave out one day while working at the forge. In truth, he was chased back to the Otherworld and this time he was unable to take any of the children with him.”
“Your father …” I’m lost for words that would give vent to what I feel. I’m only a father to one, not seven but this man, god, wizard, whatever he was, was bad news.
“I know, Richard, but these beings are not us, they are not of our world where witches and man reside and in the main have thrived. But in time, as your knowledge of the Tuatha Dé Danann grows, you will, I assure you, have a greater understanding, perhaps enlightened even more than I have been. However, in the line of sisters, we have come to me, Etain. I was born two years behind Bebhinn, and I am also a virgin.”
“TMI, Etain, much too much TMI,” Caoimhe cringes but then smiles as she looks at me with raised eyebrows, reminding me that I should be having ‘that word’ with her sooner than I had imagined.
“Now, my father was gone before I was even born. I only knew his name was Ogma, but in truth he was the same father as my sisters. The family had moved to the seaside very near the port of Cork by then although it was not much of a port in those days, though many ships came and went it was such a good harbour; my dear sweet sister Dubheasa was another two years behind me, She was dark skinned and brown eyed, her father Elloth was a trader in spices and was also dark, I always thought he was from Africa because of the colour of his skin and that he traded in fruits, fruits I had never seen before. Again, he fogged everyone’s mind, so even Mother never cottoned on to him being the seventh version of the same Tuatha Dé. Elloth stayed with us for about eight years, which was his longest ever stay, although he made many long sailing trips so in truth he probably returned regularly enough to the Otherworld to satisfy the requirements of the Treaty and used the portals to bring back fresh fruit for the market. And we all thought he must’ve been the quickest sailor in the world! Elloth and my sister Dubheasa died of a fever when I was 10, that’s what we were told at the time. And that was the last time my mother married. I was very close to my step-father, Elloth, he was the closest person to a father figure in my life, although Kaetlynn’s last husband Piotr Wisniewski was a darling who Kaetlynn felt she could never replace and that determined her to leave this world once she saw that Caoimhe didn’t need her any more.”
“Oh, Etain, I did need her. I really miss her so much,” Caoimhe wails.
“I know you do need someone, so that is one of the reasons I allowed Kaetlynn to persuade me to come here. The next few years can be tough on a girl with only one parent, I know that from experience, but it must be even harder than I had it without a mother or older sisters who have endured the stages of change from childhood to adulthood. I think Bebhinn also felt that Kaetlynn’s time here was running short and opted to move to the Otherworld first. Kaetlynn met your mother Ella as she was trying to sell both these houses and after meeting her decided to take hers off the market and stay for a while.”
“So you are staying here instead?” Caoimhe asks hopefully.
“Aye, and will stay here for as long as I am needed.”
“Thank you, Etain,” Caoimhe reaches across the table with both hands, which Etain takes in both hers.
Caoimhe squeezes her hands and releases the nearest one to hold onto one of mine. So I reach across and hold Etain’s hand and we all smile at each other. I feel like we are becoming a family, the first that Caoimhe’s known.