Chapter Six: THE CURSE
"You want my help with what?" I ask of this crazy young lady.
Etain is an attractive young woman in the full bloom of youth, with long black hair, clear skin mercifully clear of acne and the deepest blue eyes I’ve ever risked falling headlong into the depths of.
She looks at me shyly, which sets me back a little, as the information that had just flowed from her like a ruptured fire hydrant was delivered as if it needed to be relieved from the pressure on her chest. Now she appears a little deflated and rather hesitant and her eyes hooded as though she is reluctant to look me in the eye as she translates her request into words that I can understand more readily.
"I want you to make love to me, and make love with me, Richard," she whispers, so softly, it is only because a silence had settled between us that I can hear her at all. "You have been married before and you are a father. I was a maiden when cursed on Slievenamon, my life as I knew it ended and … I am a maiden still, Richard."
She looks up at me now and her doe eyes are without guile, as innocent and sweet as a child, or, it seems, more as a woman not yet seen in her own eyes as fully integrated into womanhood.
If she is honest and truthful about everything she has blurted out, confessed?; then maybe the other elements of her story are true too, however completely crazy they sound to my ears.
I am torn between wanting to believe her and not easily able to even take in what fantasy she has come out with and laid on me.
I feel like I am in one of those classic cartoon panels you see, featuring a man in the the midst of the horns of a dilemma, with an imaginary Angel sitting on one shoulder and the Devil perched on the other, each urging him this way or the other.
My instinct tells me to simply get up and run as far away from this girl as possible, but I can’t leave Caoimhe at this mad person’s mercy.
Oh Damn!
I need to calm this whole situation down, humor the poor girl and keep my wits about me. After all she’s only slightly built, I can take her if she attacks me. I have height, reach and weight advantage. Yeah, I could certainly take her out, even though I’m a complete nerd and not been in a fight with a girl since back in third grade. OK, I heavily lost that bout to a fat girl who stole my cotton candy at the county fair and I haven’t made a comeback to any kind of confrontation ring since.
Yeah, Etain is built like a blade of grass. I am in no danger.
Damn it though, she’s a blade of grass that says she’s a witch. What can witches do? Can she turn me into a toad or make me disappear in a puff of smoke?
"Will you hold my hand, Richard," she says, a faint smile returning to her lovely, innocent-looking face. "I have the healing hands and if we hold hands you could calm your heart beating so wildly and ease your breathing."
Yeah, I guess I must look bug-eyed and terrified.
She holds out both her hands and I respond by grasping them. I instantly feel calmer, my pulse rate slows and I can feel the swollen veins in my temples reduce. I take a deep breath in and breathe out. I wonder if she does have healing hands or that simply human contact with her is enough to soothe me.
I realise that, since Covid struck all those months ago, Caoimhe is really the only little bit of human skin to skin contact that I have had for about 18 months. Everyone else of my acquaintance has been socially distanced and contact reduced to forearm bumps.
"So, Etain, tell me more about this curse, er, Finn McCool, the legendary Irish giant, am I right?"
“Aye, Fionn himself. He was a big man, true, a legendary giant even in his own time, a hero and the King’s champion. He was probably six inches taller than ye, Richard, and almost double your width. He was too big to sit ahorse and used a chariot drawn by two huge horses to get around the place, so. He was the King’s Champion and King Cormac, the King of All Ireland, had it proclaimed around the realm that it was his royal wish that his Champion be married again to sire more giant champions. There were indeed that many requests by maidens and the many, many widows of Ireland, that the King decreed that the bride would be the winner of a race from the foot of Slievenamon Mountain to the peak at the very top, where the prize himself would be found seated to greet the winning maiden or widow.”
“Sounds interesting,” I am relaxed enough to chuckle, “was there a big turnout of athletic maidens?”
“Thousands, from wee girls all the way up to widows older than my Mam, who had herself been widowed seven times. They all turned up on the day of the race and were raring to go.”
“Losing seven husbands was bad luck for your Mom,” I say in sympathy.
“They were hard times, Richard, every tide brought a new invader who was fiercer, more determined and better armed that the wave before. This wee green jewel of an isle was the envy of the hungry everywhere, the whole country was an army at war on every front.”
“And what did you and your sisters do to be cursed forever to your mountain?” I ask, "Did you cheat in the race?"
“No!" Etain snaps, "We did not cheat, but there was cheating going on. I’ll just step back to how we, my two closest sisters and I, set out to take part in the race. You see, as well as being Witches and witches are one of those invaders of Ireland many hundreds of years before, we were also great runners. We worked for the King as messengers."
"Messengers? What, like couriers carrying letters?" I ask.
"Well, we didn’t really have much of a written language in Ireland then, there were runes but few could read them, and Latin from missionaries or Roman traders. No, it was oral messages for us messengers and, in order to remember a message, that might take three days or a week to get to who it was meant to be going to, we had to commit it to memory as rhymes. We were well used to that as witches, as spells and remedies, the ingredients and quantities had to be remembered, so many of the recipes for our potions were remembered as wee poems."
"So what were the messages that the King needed to send out?"
"Orders for men needed for an army, orders for goods, schedules for manor courts, requests for collection of taxes, court rulings on breitheamh law—"
"What law?"
"Brehon law was the law in Ireland of the Celtish and Saxon people, which was the common law throughout the island until the Norman king Henry II introduced the Anglo Norman laws about 850 years ago. As a royal messenger my payment was two cows and one heifer a year. Kaetlynn was four years older than me and married with a child so she was paid five cows."
"Was that good money or pay in kind?"
"Well, in order to take a message I would have to turn it onto verse so that I could remember it and then when I recited the verse I had to interpret it for the recovery of the core of the message, so between two and five cows wasn’t much when you consider the King’s poet and his harp player were paid 21 cows each."
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"Not so good then."
"No, and life was more dangerous for messengers than poets. We carried a bronze token from our master to guarantee our safety, but enemies of our master might trap us, torture us to get the message or kill us."
"I hadn’t thought about that," I admit, "so what was the outcome of this bride’s race?"
"As we were the best runners in the race, we three sisters were out of sight of the others, but as we neared the summit, a girl who was waiting for us, dashed out from cover as fresh as a daisy and ran to Fionn and jumped into his waiting arms.
"We walked up to the couple, knowing that we had been cheated, and by then some of the other runners came up behind us. They recognised the girl as Gráinne, the favourite daughter of King Cormac and another runner told us that Fionn was long sweet on the girl. We looked at the couple, the Princess, no older than I, looking so smug that she had stolen the prize from under our noses, while the giant hero Fionn was old, old enough to be my Mam’s Da or Grandpa, with a fat red face, white hair, white beard and a gut so big on him that his chariot would need six oxen to pull him along."
"So, not much of a prize, then?"
"No, not a prize at all. But Bebh and I were single, so not too bothered by the prize, but Kaetlynn was a widow and in sore need of a husband. It was Kaetlynn who was better at the spells than either Bebh or I, but we put our heads together and recited a spell which would make Gráinne fall in love with the first of Fionn’s warriors she met on their wedding morn and elope with him. Immediately we three sisters could see her future, happy with her husband and five children. Meanwhile Fionn was heartbroken and spent years trying to find them, but when he did, he forgave them. But there was no forgiveness handed out for we three witch messengers."
"No?"
"No, King Cormac learned of the elopement and some of the runners who knew we were witches and had heard our curse, so we were tried in King Cormac’s court. We were accused and convicted of using witchcraft to ruin the happiness of one of Ireland’s greatest heroes, our defensive arguments about Fionn and Gráinne’s blatant cheating with King Cormac’s connivance, only succeeded in annoying the judge and we were convicted. King Cormac got his wizard to curse us to remain on Slievenamon for ever more. We could leave but we could only rest our heads and sleep on our return to Slievenamon, if we fell asleep anywhere else we would never wake up again and die."
"But you were able to move away? You slept here last night, didn’t you?"
"Aye," she smiles, "and only because we live in Slievenamon Road. We stayed every night on that mountain for many years. Family brought us food and drink and we slept on the mountain and danced as the curse said we ‘could never sleep anywhere except Slievenamon’. As witches we were always few in number and oft feared and shunned throughout the land, yet we were also needed by every community. For we were expert in preparing protective salves and love potions and poultices, medicines, fortune-telling and midwifery. We could travel to nearby markets, sell our medicines, our potions, Bebh her honey and Kaetlynn her nursing and midwifery skills, but always we had to return to the mountain at night to sleep. Being the swiftest runner, I went much further afield, even stayed out several nights without sleep, using potent herbal draughts to keep sleep at bay, but we were tied firmly to the mountain."
"So Slievenamon was like an open prison."
"Aye, it seemed to us to be," Etain says, "but the mountain was also a magical place, all Irish mountains are and there were two cairns on the mountain quite near the top, I wasn’t sure, but I sensed that one of them was a portal to another place, like faerie rings are, but I could not open it. I loved to run and I ran everywhere, kept fit and sharp. But I was young and shy and would avoid people, never engaging, always returning to the mountain where I explored everywhere. I observed the ancient cairns, one of the two in particular I sensed looked like a doorway, a portal into the Otherworld. Then, one night during that first winter on the mountain I found I couldn’t sleep and I ran over and around the mountain under the moonlight to get warm and tired enough to sleep. I came upon one of the cairns being used by a faerie that night to enter the Otherworld. I ran so fast that I entered the portal before the faerie could close the door behind him and I easily avoided capture. I sneaked around the place for a few days before sneaking out again, finally driven away by thirst more than tiredness, for ‘tis said that if you sleep, eat or drink in the Otherworld you can never leave."
"The Otherworld?"
"When the old peoples of Erin clashed with the new invaders, they fought to a standstill, with neither side winning the day but neither wanting to give way. So they held a truce out of which came a signed treaty, where the new people took the Overground, which meant that the old tribes took to the Otherworld, which could be accessed through holes in the ground, or faerie rings, even some tree trunks etc."
"But wasn’t it dark without moonlight in there?"
"Naw, within each portal is a short tunnel, but you come out into the open air with wind, rain, sunshine, it is not an Under World at all but Another World, where Kaetlynn and Bebhinn are perfectly happy, now they can eat, drink and sleep wherever in the Otherworld they want."
"Ah, so it wasn’t a Care Home as such and that is why we can’t go visit Katie?"
"You can visit, if you want," she grins at me coyly, and laughs, "tell me, Richard, how quick are you on your feet?"
***
We are both tired, Etain with the long breathless telling of her story and me trying to take it all in without blowing my mind. We agree to sleep on it and to renew the conversation over breakfast, which Etain agrees to prepare in the morning.
I cannot sleep, trying to rationalise what a young woman, appearing to be half my age and double the age of my daughter, is telling me about her past history.
It make me recall something Ella once said when we were in a pub in Cork, with lots of other students enjoying the craic, when the group were discussing Irish folklore and the question was asked of us all round the table, ‘Do you believe in faeries?’
And I had said ‘Of course not!’ And Ella in her turn said, ‘I don’t believe in faeries either, but they’re there just the same,’ and everyone, modern young folk all, nodded and murmured their agreement.
I stuck by my original answer, back then. Now I’m not so sure.
Sunlight streams through the window and I wake. I smell the bacon, so I get up and go downstairs, after dressing simply in a tee and shorts.
"Good morning," Etain is cheerful and looking cute in some of the clothing we bought for her on Friday, a lemon tee and white shorts, her bare feet tucked into comfortable slip-ons on the flagstone kitchen floor.
Sitting on the wooden cutting board is one of the hot black cauldrons from next door, a little bacon-flavoured steam coming out in wisps about the cast iron lid.
"Is breakfast nearly ready?" I ask, selfishly thinking that I could easily get used to this.
"Aye, just slices of yesterday’s bread yet to toast. Ye have no toasting forks here so I brought some over, there’s plenty to go around between the two homes. And I brought a jar of Bebhinn’s honey and raspberry jam for the toast, there’s a whole stock of it in the cellar."
"You’ve a cellar?" Caoimhe calls from the doorway, stood there in her pink unicorn-printed PJs rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
"Aye, it runs under both parts of the original cottage, but there’s only one entrance. There’s a load of stuff down there, including a still, I think Piotr Wisniewski made Polish vodka similar to our poitín."
"Ouuu," Caoimhe begs, "I love attics and cellars, can we explore after breakfast?"
"Aye of course," Etain laughs, "and ye Da can come too."
"Not if there’re spiders as big as rats, I won’t," I say, "I’m a fully paid-up nervous nerd when it comes to attics and cellars."
"Aw, get away with ye, there’s nothing to be afeared of."
"Is that where you keep your broomsticks?" I say trying to add a little humor.
"Broomsticks?" Etain queries.
"Broomsticks," Caoimhe says, coming into the kitchen and picking up a toasting fork and a slice of soda bread, "they are associated with witches, and he thinks witches use them to fly on."
"Really?" Etain, "I’ve never heard of that before."
"So, Caoimhe," I say, "you know the conversation that Etain and I were having last night."
"Well, Dad," she replies, "Etain and me discussed it yesterday. Isn’t it amazing that neither Aunt Katie nor Etain can see our future yet they see everyone elses? That’s got to mean something, if she hadn’t read Mom’s future and found she couldn’t read yours we’d never have ended up living here in this house."
"You mean that Katie foresaw that Ella would die in childbirth?"
"Duh, of course, that’s why she dropped the price so you could afford it as well as your plans to make it a family house, so Aunt Katie spent a lot of time with Mom during her pregnancy and was always willing to babysit, because she discovered that she couldn’t read me either and knew that we would be family one day. Only it took her a long time to persuade Etain that she was the one for you."
I am devastated, not only have I just realised that Etain wants to seduce me, not because I am a desirable hot single man but because she can’t ‘read’ me, and that she believes I am destined to be her paramour; and secondly that Katie knew beforehand that Ella would die in childbirth before we even moved to Thurles. If Katie had mentioned this to us at the time, maybe we could have changed our destiny by deciding to be childless or took the adoption route and Ella would still be with us?
“Sorry, you two, but I must go lie down and be left alone to think,” I say as I get up and leave the room before the tears become too noticeable to hide.