The Greener Shore (30 page)

M
Y SENIOR WIFE NOTICED THE SPECULATIVE LOOKS I WAS SLANTING
in her direction. “What is it, Ainvar?”

“Nothing.”

“I know you too well; you’re absolutely unable to think of nothing. Some can, but not you. Tell me what you’re thinking about.”

“You might not like it.”

“All the more reason to tell me, then.” She put her little fists on her hips and stood waiting. She would stand like that until I answered, no matter how long it took.

“I was just wondering. Both Dara and Gobnat have revealed unexpected gifts since we came to Hibernia. If we had been able to stay in Gaul, would you have become the wise woman you are today?”

“I always was a wise woman.”

“I’m glad to hear you say so.”

She was instantly suspicious. “Are you still trying to persuade me to join the Order of the Wise?”

I could reply in all honesty, “There is no Order of the Wise in Hibernia.”

On the previous day I had discussed this very subject with Sulis, Keryth, and Dian Cet. We had decided to replace “the Order of the Wise” with a Gaelic term. After much discussion we chose
filídh,
meaning “poets”: repositories of wisdom.

By admitting to being a wise woman—in other words, a repository of wisdom—Briga unwittingly became one of the filídh. Out of consideration for her feelings I might never tell her, but the rightness of it pleased me. As did my own cleverness.

“Why are you smiling, Ainvar?”

“I, ah…you were right, as usual.”

“Of course I was,” she happily agreed. “What about?”

“The resentments we’ve incurred. I have to repair the damage if I can.”

“How?”

“I’ll begin with Fíachu. We can’t afford to lose his support.”

“What makes you think we have?”

“A lot of little things, Briga, but mostly druid intuition. Like me, Fíachu tends to trace a situation backward, step by step, to its beginning. He’s concluded that the loss of his nephew can be traced to my arrival here.”

“That’s ridiculous. It’s not your fault that Bal Derg attacked Onuava.”

“No, but the murders were the last link in a chain of circumstance that does lead back to me. If I had never brought my people here, Fíachu reasons that his nephew would still be alive.”

“Bal Derg would have gone mad anyway, Ainvar. His head was unhealthy.”

“At least Fíachu could not blame me.”

“Why would he want to?”

“Because chieftains take credit for themselves and apportion blame to others. It’s one of the ways they hold on to power.”

“Power.” Briga looked through me and past me. “The only real power comes from the Source.”

Recently there had been times when I felt I was losing her. She shared her body with me, but her spirit was moving into a different realm. Had it begun when she brought me back from the Otherworld? Or even earlier, when she rescued Labraid from the sea?

She laid a gentle hand on my arm. “Stop brooding about Bal Derg, Ainvar, you’ll make yourself ill again. You can’t change the past.”

Wives are quick to tell a man what he cannot do.

“No, but perhaps I can change the future if I give Fíachu what he desires.”

“Another son? Keryth claims he will have no more sons.”

“Onuava had more than one son,” I said.

“Not sired by Fíachu.”

I had spent most of the night preparing the proposition I was about to put to Briga. “If a man lies with a woman, is there not a connection between him and the children of her body? They’ve shared the same intimate passageway.”

Her nose crinkled with laughter. “Now you’re the one who’s being ridiculous.”

“I don’t think so. Fíachu will accept any line of reasoning that gives him what he wants most. The king of the Laigin is an old man who’s expected to die soon, and there’s little doubt that Fíachu will be chosen as the new king. Remember what he said about appointing his successor as chief of the tribe? That will be doubly important to him once he’s the king. If Bal Derg were still alive the honor would go to him, but—”

Briga clapped her hands in delight. “You propose to suggest Cairbre! Or Senta. Onuava would be so pleased.”

“Neither of them carries the blood of a chieftain,” I reminded her. “The tribes would never accept a man of lesser rank as king.”

Her eyes widened. “You’re talking about Labraid!”

“He fullfils the requirements.”

“But he’s dead.”

“No,” I said, hoping I spoke the truth. “I don’t believe he is.”

At twilight I found Keryth in the forest. Throughout the day a chill wind had been blowing from the north, and the seer was swathed in a heavy fur cloak. In unguarded moments her posture revealed her true age. Stooped shoulders and a shuffling gait were reminders that every mortal life must come to an end. The old making way for the new.

“Keryth?”

She made a conscious effort to straighten her back before turning in my direction. “Were you looking for me, Ainvar? Or did you come here to be alone?”

“I need something from you. Can you call Labraid and Cormiac Ru back to us?”

“I’m a seer, Ainvar, but I can’t affect what I see, nor can I be heard. My role is strictly that of observer. Besides, I don’t even know if Labraid is alive. I didn’t see him.”

“He has to be,” I said through gritted teeth. “I need him.”

She squinted at me in the dusk. “More than the Red Wolf? I thought he was the object of your concern.”

“Things have changed. I still want Cormiac to come back, but it’s imperative that he bring Labraid with him. Are you sure you can’t contact them?”

“You of all people should know the limitations of the various branches of the Order, Ainvar.” She sounded slightly exasperated. “The only way to reach Labraid or Cormiac would be through the Otherworld, and for that we require a sacrificer. We have none.”

Through the Otherworld! I had been overlooking the obvious. Had the passage of time changed me so much, then? Must we inevitably lose part of ourselves to gain something else?

Druid speculations. For which I had no time.

I gave Keryth an apologetic smile. “I would like to be alone, if you don’t mind. Alone with the trees.”

“As you wish.” Keryth gathered her cloak more snugly about her body and walked away. With every step she took her shoulders drooped more. Dear Keryth. A human life is like a summer day; we do not fully appreciate it until the chill winds of winter begin to blow.

I waited until the invisible turbulence created by another person’s presence ceased. Then I waited some more. The wind died with the sun. As night closed in the cold intensified. Nearby, a stand of birch saplings still glimmered with the pale promise of youth. The oaks, invisible in the darkness, sighed with the burden of their longevity. Some of those oaks were growing here when the first ships carrying the Milesians arrived. What had they not seen during their long reign as chieftains of the forest?

As I was tucking my hands into my armpits to keep them warm, a faint stirring in the air caught my attention.

“Eriu?” I said tentatively.

The trees were very quiet. Watching.

“Eriu.”

Silence. Waiting.

With the massive effort of gathering myself into myself, I called for a third time, “Eriu!”

My ears heard no answer yet it came. The atmosphere enveloping me was as articulate as a voice. Eriu was there. Always. There for me.

With that knowledge I experienced the rarest of all sensations: the blessed inner silence that eludes humans throughout their lives. In that silence I slowly raised my hands, palm upward, until they were as high as my shoulders.

Power flowed outward from my body. Power that came of being totally one with the natural world and able to bend its components to my will.

The sound rose from the ground, following my hands. A muted roar like the distant ocean.

Saplings began to sway without any wind. The night air shimmered with a strange luminosity.

“I am here,” said a voice.

All that lives is connected. Eriu was alive. I could feel her as surely as I could feel Briga when she lay beside me in our bed.

“We remember you,” I said in a voice thick with awe. “Our young bard tells your story again and again.”

“Does he say we were beautiful?”

“He does not know what you looked like.”

“We were small and slender and as pale as the moon. We did not walk, we danced. No willow was more graceful. No flower more fair. We danced and sang and laughed. Oh, how we laughed!”

Her words were the chime of distant bells.

The bells faded away.

The shimmer in the air faded away.

In a tone as flat as dried blood, Eriu said, “We were different so they killed us. We were small and they were tall so they killed us. We were gentle and they were aggressive so they killed us.”

She laughed a laugh that was not human. The coldest north wind was warmer than that laugh. “Now they are afraid of us,” said Eriu.

At that moment, so was I. “Do you ever harm them?”

“There is no need. They harm themselves.”

“They believe you control the weather.”

“Is that what you believe?”

“I believe you are able to do things beyond mortal ability.”

“That much is true, Ainvar of the Carnutes.”

“Ainvar of the Gaels,” I corrected.

“Oh yes. I forgot.”

She had not forgotten. It was a test of my honesty, my honor. I was beginning to know Eriu. What a remarkable woman she must have been in Thisworld.

How thankful I was for the immortality of the spirit.

Eriu said, “You want something of me.”

“I do.”

“Is there any reason why I should give it to you?”

“None at all.”

The forest was quiet again. Anyone would have thought I was alone. I was not. I was less lonely than I had ever been in my life. She was in me and through me and all around me, an intense, aching sweetness.

“Tell me what you want, Ainvar of the Gaels.”

“First I must ask a question. Are there boundaries in the Otherworld, or can you go where you will?”

“Movement is limited only by the strength of one’s spirit.”

I had no doubts as to the strength of Eriu’s spirit. “The first time you spoke to me,” I said, “I was in a mountain pass with two young men.”

“I was aware of them.”

“Are you aware of them now?”

“Do you want me to be?”

My heart began to pound uncontrollably. “Can you?”

“Of course.”

“They left this island more than a year ago, in the late autumn.”

“Time means nothing here.” To my alarm her voice began to fade, drifting away like smoke across the hills.

“Please, Eriu!” I beseeched before she was gone entirely. “Please find them and bring them home!”

When she spoke again it sounded as if her lips were beside my ear. I could feel her breath on my cheek. “Home to
me
?”

“Yes!” I cried.

In an eyeblink she was gone.

But I was warm.

Afterward—and why is it that we think of such things when it is too late?—I realized that if Eriu could find Labraid and Cormiac Ru, she could find Maia. Yet I had not asked. I had buried Maia in my heart long ago. When I ceased to believe my daughter was alive, had something vital been irretrievably destroyed?

Menua, I thought to myself, would have handled this better. Within the capacious head of my teacher and mentor had been more knowledge than I ever attempted to mine. It is always so. We do not want to follow in our elders’ footprints but insist on breaking new trails—often to our cost.

I did not tell anyone of my encounter in the forest. What transpired between Eriu and me was too precious to be shared.

“Eriu,” I whispered to the wind from time to time. “Eriu.”

And the wheel of the seasons turned.

With one eye on Aislinn, my oldest son began composing poems of love and singing them to his harp. Aislinn had Labraid in both her eyes and never noticed Dara.

I longed to be able to tell the girl that Labraid would come home again. How hard it is to keep good news to oneself. I silently nurtured it within my bosom as a bird nurtures her egg, knowing that magic must ripen in its own time.

At the change of the moon I had an unpleasant encounter with Duach Dalta. He found me skinning a hare behind my lodge. Grannus spurned such small game, but my wives had a taste for the meat and my son Ongus was adept at setting snares.

“How appropriate,” sneered a voice behind me, “to find Ainvar up to his wrists in blood.”

I whirled around to meet Duach Dalta’s flinty-eyed gaze. “Why are you creeping up on me?” I asked as I got to my feet.

“In the territory of the Slea Leathan I can go anywhere I want.”

I endeavored to remain polite. “This holding belongs to my clan, and we did not invite you here today.”

“Have your pompous judge explain the Gaelic laws concerning land to you, Ainvar. Tribeland belongs to all of the tribe in common. A holding is an allotment, not sole ownership. You’re only here on sufferance and we want you to leave. Leave the Plain of Broad Spears for good!” Taking a step toward me, Duach Dalta shook his fist in the air.

He thought to intimidate me with his fiery outburst, but water can extinguish fire. I concentrated on water; calm and cool. I became water. A spring, a river, a whole sea of water that no fire could harm.

Allowing the chief druid to simmer, I crouched down and thoroughly wiped the blade of my skinning knife on the grass. Deliberately ripped up more grass to clean the blood from my arms. Carefully spread the hare’s skin over the meat to keep it from drying out.

Then I stood up. “Fíachu hasn’t said anything to me about our leaving, Duach Dalta.”

“He feels as I do.”

“Let him tell me himself.”

“Don’t you believe me? I’m the chief druid!”

I waited for three heartbeats before replying, “I’ve been a chief druid for most of my adult life. Would you care to pit your magic against mine?”

“Magic.” There were no snakes in Hibernia, yet Duach Dalta invested that single word with enough venom to kill a score of men. “Your foreign magic has no power here.”