We have another fantastic “From the Archives” post from issue 2 for you today! “Deirdre” is a great short story by Sadbh Kellett. Enjoy!
Deirdre
Sadbh Kellett
Red Blood.
White Snow.
Black Feather of the Raven.
My coats are still laden down with fur, but today, Áine is in good humour. She bathes the oak, rowan and hazel in her golden light. I spot signs of fresh buds on the stronger branches.
I fidget with the hem of my sleeve. Labharcaim, my old nan, slaps my hand away and her narrow eyes reproach.
“Deirdre, I merely suggested they try this wood… And why would they listen to me anyway? Come, it’s too cold to sit still.”
I shake my head. My legs are sore from standing, this is true, and I’ve no real knowledge of this young man beyond my premonition. But I had awoken with the knowledge that he was here, that our paths would cross today. Signs had littered the forest all week.
We will wait.
We wait until our bones are damp with late Winter’s final breath. Labharcaim would hide me forever if she could, but she cannot protect me from a king, not alone. What Concobhar wants, he gets.
Except me, he will not get me.
If that is what my parents desire, their first mistake was raising me among the wood. They thought that here, hidden in the thicket, I would grow dumb to their ploys. They forgot all the plants that I learned by name, all the skills sent down by the forest, the call of the wolves at harvest moon; my intuition was here exposed, neither covered up nor stifled by civilisation. They hoped for a doll, but what they forged instead was an untamed druid.
I hear deep, lilting accents. A man sings.
“That’s them, isn’t it?” My heart catches in my mouth.
The weathered lady looks at me. She nods, ever slightly. I’ve asked too much of her.
I catch sight of the brothers.
I know him straight away.
His hair falls down his back in black sheets, sleek as the rook’s feather. His brother speaks and he breaks into a warm smile. They are a triad of winter: black, chestnut, and the palest white.
“Deirdre, you have seen. Oh, for the love of Dagda, girl, turn your eyes towards home before I sign my head over to your father’s spear.”
I roll my eyes. Girl. Sometimes, she makes it so hard to forget she’s in my father’s employ.
“My father will never know, old woman. I just want to speak with him.”
A panic swells in my breast at the idea that I could allow them to pass. I close my eyes and the thick odour of moss fresh from the rains, the dampened air, and the sliver of Labharcaim’s perspiration beneath her old wolf-pelts cloy around my nostrils. The woman had worn the coat to death. Must I smell it longer? Must I bear its scent lingering about my life forever?
I wrench my hand out of Labharcaim’s protesting grip.
The woman relents, dejected. The strain between her brows is like a pockmark and as she collapses onto the root, hands splayed, I almost hesitate. Then those eyes blink in the darkness of my mind. Old eyes. King’s eyes. Eyes that leer and swallow me whole until I am nothing but a quenched-out smattering of embers. I have been running from those eyes my entire life.
I continue through the thicket, stalking the young men who remain blissfully unaware that they’re being watched. Ainle, if I recall Labharcaim’s description correctly, is the younger brother with hair the colour of polished conkers which leaves Ardan to be the brother of the white hair. They laugh, their voices bouncing and booming about the clearing. It seems to me that they have no intention of shooting anything, for they talk so excitedly – why bother to travel so far from Emain Macha?
I’ve never been so close to someone from the king’s own household, but Labharcaim would flit here and there and back again to speak with my father and the king. From this alone, I know it is some distance. Labharcaim tells me of Emain Macha and the stories of all the great men and the kings who fought and died for the goddess’ hearth. Emain Macha, the lake-isle crannóg of the forests and rolling hills of the greater Ard Mhacha. It shines bright as a beacon lit in the dark night of winter, seen from the furthest reaches of the kingdom. Now, a part of that forbidden world stands here in my world. What was I to do with it?
All Labharcaim had had to do was mention the woods to him, the solitude, the good hunting grounds. He had followed like a wolf who’d caught the scent of prey.
My heart paces quickly. What if Labharcaim is right and these men are as woeful as any other who has looked upon me? What if she is wrong?
But I am not who I once was; men would fear to hurt me now that I have bonded with gods. Macha protects me. My red cheeks warn of fiery blood, not innocence.
I lean on a stray branch, the heel of my boot crushing into the bark until it cracks. Their conversation stops. His lips press together and his eyes flit towards me. He blinks, his heavy lids slow as if he cannot quite fathom how he had missed my coming.
Ainle draws his scian from its sheathe at the crest of his hip. White-haired Ardan’s heavy coat shifts at the movement of his arm and a belt that runs with knives like a fresh set of fangs catches the sunlight. His hand lingers on a hilt – just a girl.
The sun flickers behind a stray cloud and disappears. Naoise stares at me in silence, they all do. I smile, and cross behind a thick trunk, then reappear, my hand resting on my own knife. I listen to the wind that sings its songs of tidings to all who care to listen. The sun appears again. It lights the clearing, gives up the midges’ game of secrecy.
“I was wondering when you would appear, Naoise O’ hUisneach. You’re not very good at hunting, are you? You’ve stumbled over so many tracks unchecked I’m beginning to believe the truth is that you have no interest in the sport. I must admit, I am glad you’re not.”
If the young man is startled by my knowing him, he shows it not. Instead, the left side of his full mouth curls upwards and he cocks a brow, “Why not?”
“The wolves are to the north always at this time of year. You would find an easy catch, and by Macha’s grace, all of the king’s men would descend upon this forest. I would have to leave.”
“And why would you linger anyway? What are you? A hermit?” Ainle asks, not fully meeting my eye. Instead, he lowers his brow and scuffs the earth, scowling at his brothers.
“More akin to Macha herself, would you not think, Ainle?” Naoise says, his smirk still bared. He does not take his eyes from me. “But I know who you are. I knew Labharcaim when I was a boy. I remember why she left us, why she comes to and from the king’s stead in secrecy.”
“Naoise, this is a síd, she only wants you to see what you want her to see,” Ainle hisses.
Ardan lowers his knife at the mention of the old nurse. He shares a furrowed look with Naoise who just works his mouth and looks to me again in a more serious light. “They tell stories of you sometimes.”
“What do they say in these stories?” I have lived on stories my whole life. The whispers of a wider tapestry Labharcaim brings home to me of the world of men have been my steadfast companions.
I don’t want to know how I feature in their stories.
I pick up my skirts, thickly hemmed with winter mud, and make my way down the unstable slope with a sauntering ease. This is my world, my wood.
“They say you are so beautiful that Aengus mistook you for Caer Ibormeith. They also say that your footprints are marks of blood, that kings will war over you. That is why you were sent away; I remember your going. I must have been eight, but there was great commotion at the disappearance of Feidhlimid’s young daughter.”
“Your king wanted to marry a child, you see.” I bite, too harshly perhaps, for Ainle takes offence; they are King Concobhar’s nephews. “I suppose that is a relation of pride.”
My heart urges me to halt such bitter speech. I can hear Labharcaim’s nagging – You speak not like a lady. Naoise of Uisneach will not take kindly to my insulting his family. “Do you too bear the curse of Macha? I have heard it hurts all the men of Ulster.”
“It is not something to jest about,” Ainle sulks.
“Maybe I am Macha, would I then not have every right to laugh?” I jump forward and he flinches. Smirking, I slide my attention back to the beautiful warrior in the centre of their pack. Maybe I am naïve, maybe my opinions are too roughly formed; what am I to know of the art of the body when I myself have been exposed to so little of it? And yet he holds my heart, my mind, mine eye.
Naoise remains unmoved, the smirk still plastered to his face. I think he will remain that way, when he steps out from his triumvirate and circles me slowly, like he has finally found something worth hunting. I hitch my breath then regather myself, watching him watching me. He circles, closer and closer until, at last, he stops before me, close enough now that if he believes I will put him under a geas, I could.
“You know my name,” he whispers, his voice a low question brimming with curiosity.
“Come see me again, son of Uisneach, and I will tell you of how I came to know it.”
It is a terrible challenge to say such words, for they finish a conversation I want to continue here forever. I am brimming with crackles of lightning. It courses through my fingertips, between my thighs, my toes. Everywhere. I produce two stones from the pocket in my skirts, each one curved and carved in runes. Reaching out, I offer them up.
The moment remains so still for far too long, to the point I almost betray my composition and drop the runes through sweaty fingertips.
Naoise reaches out. His long fingers are scarred from arrow fletching and ash shafts. I wince at their warmth. Slowly, he curls his hands around the stones, his fingers lingering on my skin, touching, melding, feeling, knowing. His pores graze against mine, his pulse to my pulse. His eyes are a storm of pale greys and blues like the troubled sky.
I can sense the disapproval of the brothers behind him.
Naoise just stares at me dumbfounded. The smile is long gone from his face. His lips are parted as if he is trying to muster up a string of words. I turn and climb the slope before he can have the final word. My boots squelch through the mud and, somehow, I keep my footing. Out of sight, I lift my palm to my nose in hope of catching hints of Naoise of Uisneach, but it was all too sudden a meeting and all too quick a parting.
I wait for the sound of stones hitting earth, but it never comes. He holds them still.
He will come back to me.
I spot Labharcaim, pale-faced behind a sceach. She opens her mouth to protest but I walk beyond her. I am floating. Do I still hear my boots or does my heart pound that loudly?
He will find me. He is mine.
I think of the stories they tell of me.
Footprints of blood. Blood of kings.
Naoise is no king.
Find your copy of issue 2 here.
