The mountain track has been steadily climbing but I am running easily and breathing lightly, despite a slight stitch in my right side. The day has been warm, being Samhradh and Iúil, the ninth month of the year, just seven days before the season of Fómhar, the harvest time. The clouds are thick and the air hot and humid, sapping the strength of females of any fuller figure than I trying to race up to the summit. 

There is no need of haste, though. We three sisters together have left the rest of the girls behind, breaking those who set out ahead of us by first allowing the desperate to burn themselves out on the mountain slopes before overhauling the rest by practised relentless pace.

Five and three steps behind my sisters was ideal placing for me with the final stretch of the race almost in view. Both sisters were older, Kaetlynn, one and twenty, and Bebhinn, ten and nine. The leather-shod feet of my two elder sisters crunch more heavily now on the ancient pebbles and stones that make up the well-trod pathway leading to the summit. My sisters are heavier and more sturdily built than I and, up front, Bebhinn’s head is rolling side to side and Kaetlynn thereupon takes up the leading place. Kaetlynn is no virgin like us, but a widow following a lightning raid by Icelanders longboatmen and has borne a child in sore need of a father. 

I seek a good man, too, though I care naught for wealth nor power, I am a strong woman and will make my own way in the world but I do so want children; daughters I desire mostly, for I have only had sisters, six in number, lo the eldest having left home these eight years since. 

To have a family of my own I need a strong man who will love my children and provide a good bride price for each daughter to marry well when of age. For I will need a true man, not a god nor one of the Tuatha dé Danann. My people are mortals and mortals do not fear death as it is our common destiny but we respect its finality. The immortals do not fear death, although they can be killed, and they do not respect the dignity and honour of death either, so how can they respect the dignity of life?

Today’s race has been called by the High King of Ireland, Cormac mac Airt, who declared that his hero, Fionn Mac Cumhaill, must marry since he lost his wife long ago and his child now full-grown and ready to lead the Fianna, but to prove herself worthy of being the wife of such a hero any girl must prove her mettle against all-comers in a running race from the base of Slievenamon Mount to the Peak.

Now, Fionn is said to be a good man, huge, brave and powerful, and comely too according to his frequent boasts and bolstered by common testimony. So today I have set my heart on him, if not yet set my eyes. As have my sisters and countless other wenches with legs, lungs and heart enough to win such a man.

I had studied the drawings of the hill path before setting out and know that the path will turn left at the next outcrop of rock and then the cairn on the summit will appear and we’d see our goal resplendent there, the giant man Fionn, the promised prize to be the husband of the winner of this race. 

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I will time my sprint as soon as I pass the outcrop.

Since I was about twelve bliain I have always been a runner for my King and any other sub-king prepared to pay me in coin or kind. Along with my sisters I was a messenger, as our mother had been before us, carrying messages from king to king, headman to merchant, merchant to warehouse, warehouse to port and back. 

Messengers carry the Wayleave Seal of the king, a coin struck in bronze that would give us safe passage, or sign our death warrant if the local chieftains held a grudge against the king or sub-king that issued the token. Some messages are painted in runes upon rolled and ribboned sheephide but most are verbal, tempered in versed stanzas for convenience of memory.

We turn the corner by the outcrop and there in front of us is the back of a running girl not before seen by us on the mountain

“Where in Brigit’s Forge did this bitch spring from?!” puffs Bebhinn in the lead.

“Feck knows! Kick on Bebh, my wind has gone,” Kaetlynn grinds to a halt, her heart broken with her chance of victory gone.

I kick on, I know I have the legs of Bebhinn, and in half a dozen strides I’m past my sister but the stranger is running strongly on what looks like fresh legs and, with my lungs bursting and cramping thighs, the girl beats me and leaps into Fionn’s awaiting arms.

“Feck! How did we lose?” Bebhinn says, “I expected to lose to you Etain, but knew as bride of a hero you’d look after Kaetlynn and her wean, but not to this wee sparrow.”

“We were cheated,” Kaetlynn says, walking up to Bebh and me, bent over winded in our disappointment. “I looked at the rocky outcrop as I walked past and there’s a wee rill by the side where a goat might hide and take flight as we crunched up the path, but no place for any runner to stop with the cairn in full view. Look at them, they are both in the game of cheating.”

We turn and look. The couple are all but devouring each other, Fionn’s hands running about the maiden unchecked.

“They are not strangers,” Bebhinn states with confidence.

“Nay strangers these be,” agrees Kaetlynn, “And I know who she is, she’s Gráinne, the youngest daughter of King Cormac, his favourite, and rumour has it that Fionn is besotted with her.”

I look and see the couple who are oblivious to company, we might as well be invisible. I look closely, she is small, barely ten-and-four hands tall and fair, maybe one and five bliain; while he is a giant, twenty or one-and-twenty hands tall and old and fat too. He is called Finn meaning white or light skinned but they must refer to his hair and beard, with more white than grey and his warring days are clearly over. As I look at them in disgust, they break their kiss and the girl smirks at me, relishing her prize, the bitch! They are both cheats and she is not and never was one of the fair women of the mountain.

She’s welcome to the prize, Fionn may be a legend, but that will be all she’ll be to him.

Which reminds me. “Sisters, are we not witches, daughters and granddaughters of witches with any number o’ geasa within our beck?”

“We have, sister,” Kaetlynn grins, “I’ve one that’s a daisy, she’ll see him appear twenty years older and then fall in love with the first man of Fionn’s close acquaintance. My foresight may be hazy because I’m all in bits, but I can see an elopement, fruitless pursuit and an eventual reckoning for them, but for us, we’ll be outcast and alone possibly forever.”

“Feck it,” I say, “cast your geas, I can live with the consequences.”

“Aye,” Bebhinn agrees, “together we can.”