Scions of the Tuatha Dé

“What’s that thing in the lake?” Donal asked.

Dunfanaghy had come and gone. Their wagon followed Niall and Maeve past the city limit of Portnablagh. Now Finn squinted his eyes at an unnaturally circular mound in the middle of Sessaigh Lake.

“It’s a crannog,” Finn said. “Ancestors built homes on man-made islets or even on top of the water.”

“Why?”

“Protection. They were harder to attack. And it was easier to fish?”

“So they just hopped into a currach and rowed to shore before they did everything?”

“Sure look, it was worth the—”

“—You have no clue why they built these crannogs,” Donal said.

“I… do not,” Finn said.

“Can you at least tell me the name of the mountain above it?”

Finn rose his chin to the sky.

“Knocknafaugher,” he said.

“Siobhan?”

“He’s right this time, Donal,” she said. “It is Knocknafaugher.”

Finn jerked his head backward.

“Oi! I was right before about the crannog. I simply wasn’t around when they built it to know why.”

She patted him on the side of his shoulder.

“If you say so.”

She turned back to Donal and flashed a wink with the eye opposite from Finn, but it wasn’t subtle enough. He pointed at both of them.

“The last thing I need is you two—”

“Houl yer whisht!” Niall said. “Something’s happening up ahead.”

A crowd of dozen people huddled on the side of the road. Their clothing was drab and worn at the sleeves and bottoms.

As his group neared, Donal could see moth holes in many of their clothes. Their shirts weren’t brown, they were muddy. Their heads were speckled with bald spots. Worse yet, they suffered from a level of hunger he had never seen. Their skin was nothing but a leather covering for bone.

Finn raised his eyeline above the crowd.

“Is that another portal tomb?” he asked.

Donal traced the road behind the strangers. Two hundred yards beyond them stood two shapes: a church built out of stone and a partially collapsed heap of rock resembling the one he entered at Ards Beg.

Niall dismounted 40 feet from the strangers. He shifted his right hand toward his sword but upon further study of the shambling mob, he instead withdrew a knobby walking stick from Airgid’s saddle. He stepped in front of his horse and leaned on the stick as he awaited the inching crowd.

“Dia daoibh,” he said.

None of the strangers responded. Some of them raised their heads, their yellow eyes fixated on Niall.

“What’s the sickness that makes their eyes do that?” Donal whispered to Finn.

“Jaundice,” Finn said.

“I’m not so sure it’s that,” Siobhan said.

They were within fifteen feet of Niall. He slid his stick up his right hand and dropped the knobby end in his left.

“Come on, fellas. There’s no need to be rude.”

The closest stranger to Niall raised his arms and opened his mouth. At once all visible eyes glowed in a color of sickly wheat. Niall took the bottom of his stick in both hands and brought it back over his right shoulder.

“Maeve, if you would,” Niall said.

An arrow protruded from the stranger’s chest within the blink of an eye. Donal was so focused on the mob he didn’t see Maeve knock her arrow. She pulled another from the quiver that hung on Scáth’s shoulder.

“I think these are Fear Gorta,” Finn said. “They look similar to what I’ve read, but their behavior is all wrong.”

“Not sure the lesson is helping anyone, lad,” Niall yelled.

He struck another creature in the chest with his club.

“Then you’re going to hate this,” Finn said. “You can’t hit ‘em.”

Maeve lowered her bow and wrinkled her nose at Finn.

“Says you. What are we meant to do, then?”

Siobhan threw the reins in Finn’s lap, leapt out of the wagon and ran to Niall.

“Normally, you give them food,” Finn said. “Either way, striking them brings that person bad fortune.”

“A worse fortune than letting Niall get eaten by these things?” Maeve asked.

She raised her bow for another shot.

“Niall, get back on your horse,” Siobhan said. “Hold your bow, Maeve. Finn, be ready.”

She pulled her arms back and threw them forward.

“Gáeth nerto!”

The first row of creatures blew backwards into the rest, knocking all twelve to the ground. She jumped to the right of the group behind her.

“Go!” She yelled.

Maeve kicked her legs, driving her horse forward. Niall mounted Airgid and followed. Finn directed Gála to the left, giving Siobhan a wide berth. She ran forward, crowding the wagon as it caught up.

Donal dropped to his knees and found a hold along the side of the wagon with his left hand. He held out his right for Siobhan and jerked with both arms as Siobhan climbed into the cargo area.

“Is that more of them ahead?” Niall asked.

Donal looked up from Siobhan and saw a hazy outline of more people on the other side of the church and tomb.

“We need to get off this road,” Niall said.

“Up ahead! There’s a road on the left,” Maeve said.

“Doesn’t look like much,” Niall said. “Do we know if it cuts all the way through?”

“Better than getting surrounded by those things,” she said.

“Better for you two, perhaps,” Finn said. “I can’t weave this thing between trees. If the road stops, they will close in and catch us.”

“At the rate they’re walking?” Donal asked. “We could build a house by the time they do.”

Siobhan scrambled to the front.

“You worry about making the turn safely, Finn,” she said. “I’ll slow them down once we leave the road.”

She twitched her head to the side.

“If they can go any slower, that is.”

Niall followed Maeve down the covered side road. Finn pulled on the rein to slow the wagon.

“Don’t stop,” Siobhan said.

“I’m worried about tipping,” Finn said. “Take the reins, then.”

“Not yet.”

Finn pulled Gála to the left and winced as the wheels left the road. The wagon bounced between the edges of the worn trail.

“As steady as you can,” Siobhan said to Finn.

She turned to the rear and moved her arms in a circle.

“Forása fúalascach!”

A rustling sound emerged behind him. The ground wrinkled and cracked. Roots climbed out of the cracks. Within seconds branches extended from the roots and began to bud. Leaves filled the gaps between the branches until they formed a hedge four feet in height. Donal no longer saw the main road.

“I’m too far away to do anymore,” she said.

She took the reins from Finn with a nod and a smile.

“Oh, is that all?” Donal asked. “I was hoping to get some fruit out of the deal.”

“You can always go back and check,” she said over her shoulder. “I might have outdone myself this time.”

“That you have, Shiv,” Donal said.

“Excuse me?”

“Sorry, Siobhan,” Donal said.

“Does anybody in this wagon care where we are or where this road leads?” Finn asked.

“Are we going to a different place than the two horses immediately in front of us?” Donal asked.

Finn shrugged.

The road remained level but the terrain around them sloped to the left. The gaps between the larger trees widened and Donal was grateful that the wagon was in Siobhan’s control. The group followed a bend to the right and passed a clearing that surrounded an old ringfort.

“Here?” Maeve asked.

“Keep going,” Niall yelled ahead. “I don’t want to stop unless I know it has water, and I’d also like to put more distance between us and those things.”

Niall and Maeve slowed their pace once their path descended and the dirt road transitioned into a wider swath of grass. They checked with Siobhan several times to make sure the hill grade was shallow enough to prevent the wagon from overtaking Gála. Light glinted off a river through the thinning coverage of trees on the left until the group had exited the forest and the path leveled with the riverbank.

The river flowed in tight bends but its current showed no urgency in following the meandering course. Birch trees rose on either side of it, their slender, leafless forms resembling a makeshift fence of large white sticks driven into the soil.

Niall spotted a ford in the river and called for Finn and Donal to hop down from the wagon on the chance it needed extra encouragement, but Siobhan and Gála crossed without incident. They traveled another quarter mile along the driest part of the marsh until they entered a meadow at the edge of a forest darker than the one they had left.

“We’ll rest here while we get our bearings,” Niall said.

“For how long?” Donal asked.

“We’d been riding for many miles before our encounter,” he said. “We pushed the horses hard up and down that forest behind us. They need rest and water and we all could do with some food. It might be evening by the time they’re ready, and I’m not thrilled to navigate an unknown forest I don’t know at night.

“We just left the main road,” said Finn. “That behind us is likely the Carrowmanaddy River. We’re not lost, are we?”

Maeve gestured to the forest ahead with an upturned palm.

“Lead the way, then,” she said.

“I’m saying that this path will either take us back to the main road, or it will cross a road that does,” Finn said.

Niall looked around the meadow and sighed.

“I think we should ask ourselves if we want to use the main road and take the chance that nothing else is waiting for us on it.”

“It will take a bit longer, but we can get where we’re going traveling paths like this,” Maeve said. “Still, there will be times where we won’t have a choice.”

“Better than nothing,” Niall said. “Maeve, scout the road ahead as far as you think best. Siobhan, feed and water the other horses then check the wagon for wear and tear. Finn, we’re going to need wood. Donal, you and I will assemble the shelter. Assuming Maeve doesn’t find any problems with our path, we’ll leave right at dawn to make up for the time we lost today. Crack on.”

****

“Go back to sleep,” Maeve said. “You’re not keeping watch tonight.”

Donal wiped the sweat from his brow and looked over at her. She stared into the campfire, a wool covering drawn over her shoulders. Niall’s snores sounded from one of the two triangular-framed tents he and Donal built. He marveled at Finn’s and Siobhan’s ability to sleep in Niall’s general townland, much less the same campsite.

That wasn’t the reason Donal had moved his hide blanket to the back of the wagon on a cool night.

“Bad dream?” Maeve asked.

Donal fought the urge to react as if that was another slight on his age. Still, he wasn’t eager to lower his guard in front of her. He caught himself straightening his spine and pulling back his shoulders.

“It’s alright,” she said. “Murrough’s mentioned to us that they plague you.”

“He did?”

“It wasn’t some grand speech or anything,” she said. “How bad are they?”

“I’d rather not say,” he said. “They’re sort of shameful.”

“That’s what nightmares are, though. They’re not wishes. I reckon they’re meant to shame you for some reason I’ll never understand.”

“You sure you want to hear ‘em?”

“Nevermind,” she said. “I’m just going to stare at this fire with nothin’ to do or no one to talk to for the next hour.”

Donal stiffened. It seemed an hour before she smirked.

“Alright, remember that you asked,” he said.

“The first one was standard fare. I was hiding behind a wagon like a coward while a dullahan struck you all down. Then there was the one where Finn was captured by another dullahan—or maybe the same one—and all I could do was watch and listen as they rode into the distance to his cries of pain. The worst one was this last one. Finn and I were back at the cliffs near Horn Head. He told me that I couldn’t come with you all on this journey. We started to argue and poke at each other until I got mad and shoved him over.”

“They were all so vivid,” he said.

Maeve lifted her eyebrows and nodded at the fire.

Every second lasted ten. Every muscle twitch in her face was a flooded river in spring: a slow, inevitable portent of doom.

This is what you get when you tell others, Shadow told Donal. You’ll never have anything but polite small talk with her again.

She turned her head to Donal and met his eyes.

Here it comes.

The left side of her mouth pulled up into a strained grin.

“That would keep me awake at night,” she said.

Donal fought every urge to move or even smile. Her dark eyes scanned his face from hair to chin. Donal felt like prey on the other side of her bow, just as he did during dinner at Niall’s. She wrinkled her eyebrows.

“That’s not all, is it?” she asked.

You got lucky once, Shadow told him. You haven’t told Murrough yet, and Finn treated you like a wounded lamb when you let it slip to him. Don’t do it. Don’t tell her.

“I hear things,” he said. “I think about things I don’t want in my head. Once in a while I even see things.”

Maeve slowly dipped her head and brought it back up.

“Things like…?”

You fool. You can’t take a statement like that back, so might as well tell her. Just remember: you brought this upon yourself.

“It’s like a voice inside my head that’s not mine or my parents,” Donal said. “Always pickin’ at me and tearing me down. It says worse things to me than anyone’s ever said. Sometimes I get flashes of things that should be in a nightmare, but they’d be as plain as sitting next to you in the campfire.”

“And these thoughts you spoke of,” Maeve said. “Are they telling you things like, ‘push your eejit brother off a cliff?’”

Her delivery pried a chuckle out of Donal, despite its subject matter. He drew his mouth back down as penance.

“Nothing on that level, but they can get awful from time to time.”

“How long has this been happening? Your whole life?”

“I don’t think so,” he said. “I remember things were easier when I was a boy—oi!”

He caught Maeve’s grin.

“You know what I mean. Things were easy, things were fun. I got sick when I was ten years old, and that’s when this whole mess in my head got started. Sometimes it feels like a stranger moved in.”

“These things, these nightmares, are they things you want?” she asked. “You wouldn’t be the first person who didn’t like your family.”

“It’s not that, I—”

He paused and stared at the tent, listening for the slightest rustle.

“I love the tool. Can’t ever say it to him, though.”

“Because that’s not what lads do?”

“You’d think,” he said with a laugh, “but every time I say it, I wind up thinking about the awful things I’ve done to him.”

“And he’s never mistreated you?”

“Not in the same way I mistreat him.”

“So what I’m hearing is these things are awful and you aren’t able to block them out, but they’re not a real part of you and that you know how you really feel.”

She pointed her thumb to her chest.

“In here, that is. Do I have that right?”

Donal wrinkled his forehead and looked at the ground below the wagon. Maeve boiled something that has tormented him for years down to its essence in two sentences.

“I suppose so,” he said. “Sure look, it sounds like you got the answers, you wouldn’t happen to have the fix?”

“It doesn’t sound to me like something that can be fixed,” she said. “But maybe with enough time it could be mended. But that’s an easy thing for anyone to say when they don’t have to do the work for you.”

He glanced away. It was his turn to raise his eyebrows and nod at the fire.

“Can I ask you a question, Maeve?”

She narrowed her eyes.

“You can, but I might refuse an answer.”

“You don't seem the sharing type but you’ve been grand listening to me go on about myself. None of it seemed to shake you. Where’d you learn to dole out advice like that?”

She shrugged her shoulders and shook her head. She pointed to the forest ahead of them.

“I’ve spent a lot of time alone running, hiding, and hunting in woods like these. I suppose a person has to make peace with their own mind along the way or they won’t last long doing it.”

“Thanks for it,” Donal said.

“You’re welcome. You should really try to sleep, though. It’s likely Niall will push us hard tomorrow.”

Donal smiled and raised his eyebrows.

“Are you sure you don’t need the company?”

Maeve threw her head back and laughed. The smile she showed Donal would have beamed even without the campfire that reflected off her face.

“I’ll grant that you aren’t a boy, but I won’t feed any notions you might be carrying. Oíche mhaith, young man. Off with ya.”

“Good night, Maeve,” Donal said.

He laid back and closed his eyes. For the first time in weeks, he liked his chances of a peaceful rest—for however long Niall would allow.