Hag of the Hills, page 11
Did I really meet the Cailleach? My dear Luceo – did I really meet a goddess? Did I see a goddess with my own eyes? Did I break bread and eat stew and then make a deal with a goddess? What sort of ill has the Morrigan for me – I have become unlucky.
‘What an omen!’ said Myrnna. ‘I don’t like this! Oh, good Danu!’
I yearned to turn and flee. I never wanted to see the hag again. Her stretched, mummy-like face, those red daggers for teeth, her sidhe guests which I refused to look at. But we could not turn back, the Hillmen were there. The Hillmen could have been where we were going, too, but we didn’t know that and it was our only chance to get to safety. Then we would find a boat and row to Dun Torrin or stay close to roadless lands and trek through the mountains and moors. But we had to pass the hag’s cairn.
I grabbed Myrnna by the wrist, and she put up a meek resistance, her soft white hand so cold and stiff, but she gave way and we started down the trackway again.
Come back… come back to the Slighan Hill!
Myrnna fell upon her knees. ‘Danu, oh Danu!’
Danu, our mother goddess. Where was she then, with her warm bosom for us to clutch? Where was she now, when the hag caused us to shiver so cold?
‘Cailleach… I heard it in my head – great Danu!’ Myrnna cried.
‘Ignore her! Ignore whatever she says to you!’
We pressed on, Myrnna behind me, as if walking against the wind bellowing a harsh gust. The figure had disappeared from the mound. There was nothing but wild moorland on either side of us, shadows of the red and black mountains off in the distance, the mound silent.
My meeting with the hag remained in my throat like a rogue piece of bread. I had a desire to tell Myrnna about it. She, too, heard the Cailleach’s voice, just as I have since I had reached nine Samhains. I spoke as we passed the cairn.
‘For ten years now, the hag has spoken to me, beckoning me to come to the Slighan hill,’ I revealed to Myrnna.
‘In desperation, of which I am not going to tell you,’ I continued, ‘I followed a wildcat that led me up into the Slighan Hills. There I found her, and her hut. I broke bread with her in there… I think she has something to do with the Hillmen.’
I gravely worried that I would be held accountable if I had told too many people the entire story. My people, as much as I love them, fear the sidhe, and the fact I had a voice in my head alone could get me killed. If I had told the common folk everything, they’d stake me to the bottom of a bog or nail me to a board and set it alight or simply toss me off a cliff and let me batter all the way down, and then piss on my body. I probably told her too much, but what would she say, and to whom? Myrnna had big, innocent eyes that allowed me to say all that I needed to say.
I wanted to tell her more. I wanted to tell her everything about my ordeal at the hut of the hag. She had almost been a druidess, and they discern some of the will of the gods, I thought, and she could have offered me some guidance.
I opened my mouth to speak but a cackle rattled in the air. It sounded like neither man nor woman, neither near nor far, but as if it were always there.
We turned to the cairn.
There the Cailleach, hag of the hills, danced madly. She had popped up like a phantom, red squirrel on her shoulder, red dog at her feet. Her cackle wrapped around my ears, a shrieking harridan’s caw. I tried to scream but nothing came out. Then Myrnna screamed.
The cackling hag stood among the haphazard spike of cairn stones, arms akimbo, clicking her heels, grinning. Around her, a ring of weefolk donned in red, long, pointed caps, all spun together in a circle.
I disentangled myself from the mad show, as one does from the snare of many briars, by stiffening my knees and locking my eyes in the darkness of the long trackway. I grabbed Myrnna by her arm and yelled at her.
‘Don’t look! Run!’
We ran down the trackway as the clouds obscured the moon. The moorland became nothing but a shadow, nondescript, just rolling plains of dark. I stormed down, plunging into its murky depths, Myrnna behind me, the cackle of the hag and the clicking of her heels growing fainter but still present.
‘The gods hate us,’ Myrnna said, between breaths.
As if in response, the cackling resounded, and it delved into an indiscernible chatter. Calli’s creaking voice over-ached it all.
Come back… come back to the Slighan Hill…
The Myrnna screamed again, her shrill scream like daggers in my ears. I felt faint, and yearned to turn back, and return to my house, curl up in a ball in my blanket and cry for Auneé to console me and then explain to me why the Hag of the Hills, the queen of winter, Cailleach, goddess of cold and geese and butter has haunted me, and what price I must pay to her.
The hag’s voice itself silenced my pining.
You will return. I want you to return, dears…
Dance, dance with me...
We ran as fast as we could down the endarkened path, until Myrnna ran out of breath. She slumped up against a log on the trackway, knees to her chest. She was muddy now and looked not like the daughter of a druid, but a common peasant girl soiled from their daily toiling.
We caught our breath, and then I decided that I had owed her more of an explanation. ‘I should have known. She introduced herself as Calli. How foolish am I?’
‘Cailleach, queen of winter,’ said Myrnna, ‘doesn’t your kind assemble an effigy of her, and toss it from farm to farm, and whoever harvests last gets stuck with her, and thus ill luck for the season? Then you all burn it in spring – when Bride, the spring queen returns?’
‘My kind is of the warrior. We just farm due to happenstance.’
Myrnna said nothing. For her, it must matter little what kind I was, we were all warriors up on Dun Ashaig, and now our clan was gone. Yet I still owned land, and a sword, and my kind would always be of the warrior.
‘I can’t believe you actually met her! And now we can see her! Do you know how many druids claim they meet the Gods? I never believed any of them, and now I am not so sure.’
‘I wish I never had,’ I said, and now I sounded whiny, I think now, for all men ought to accept what the Morrigan spins for them. ‘I was wandering on the Slighan Hill, and I was so thirsty. I sat and drank from a spring and she was then behind me. She invited me into her cottage. She fed me and then I could see the sidhe! Little men, like what we saw on the mound. A beautiful woman, a man much like a goat, and a cat with a man’s grin, from ear to ear…’
‘I was told never to speak to anyone about this, but I suppose it doesn’t matter at all now,’ Myrnna said. ‘I also have the sight.’
The sight. It was often the subject of gossip among the clans. If someone had what they called the sight – they could see the sidhe, and often were able to retrieve knowledge from them. Weaving, healing, smithing – all skills supposed to have come to us by means of the sidhe. People with the sight – usually women but not always – were respected and feared. It was both a gift and a curse, really, for both good and bad could come from those who possessed it.
Gift or curse…
I must have the sight now. I don’t know if I have always had it and Cailleach had blossomed it within me like a flower in spring, or if I had it fostered upon me, like an orphaned child. I did not know, and I wanted to know more.
‘Tell me about it.’
‘I’ve just seen them in glimpses – nothing like tonight – with the hag and her dancing weemen – it was terrifying! I’ve seen a white horse not quite right, not quite walking on the ground… the grass it grazes not quite disappearing. I’ve seen a handsome lad in the loch, a squirrel that looked too red, little men with big red eyes in the moors that frightened me so, but nothing ever like tonight, never… never a goddess! What did the hag say to you in her hut?’
I hesitated. I did not want to tell her everything. I did not want to tell her that my deal with the Cailleach may have cost her everything. We had to get to Dun Torrin, run by that scoundrel Fenn Beg Corm, himself a half unfriendly, moody outlander, and if he still lived and still had his fort then we could only hope his reaction would be half-way pleasant when we turned up there, poor and at his complete mercy. He’d probably demand the poor girl’s maidenhood just for some food and shelter. He never liked our clan or Ambicatos but from what I had heard of him, he was very generous. This was, of course, if the Hillmen had not already overrun his dun. Then where shall we go? Hibernia? Alba? Gaul? Perhaps the Hillmen had already overrun all these places, and the entire world was overrun with them and we were doomed, and I had doomed all by accepting the hag’s price?
Myrnna kept eying me, probably wondering why I said nothing, but then I looked beyond her and in the distant foothills, the shadows moved.
I rose to my feet and watched, hand crawling to the leather grip of my sword. Nothing came, though I knew that in the total darkness, even deer rove like monstrosities until they come into clear view. But in the now full moonlight, I witnessed shadows morphing, shadows going from one shadow into another, shadows taking shape. My sweaty fingers clenched the grip of my sword.
The shadows spurted forth a black blob. It bounded across the moorland, fast-paced, and the thud of its footsteps hit my chest.
Then I saw its size. It stood thrice as tall as any man. We flew down the trackway as fast as a quarried deer. I then turned and I regretted it, for I saw a shadow as tall as an oak and as wide as five bounding across the moonlit heathery hills right toward us.
The ground quaked underneath us. The shadow-giant pounded the ground with each of its long bounds. A ghastly grey thing with great girth, clad in nought but a loincloth, came hither, and he wielded a log as a club. I could not see above its naval, but its naval was at the end of a fat hanging belly. It stopped and we ran forward a few paces, and I turned again to see its face obscured by black shaggy hair, and it outstretched its arms and chased after us like a toddler in play.
‘Badb – Macha – Fea!’ I cried out, but instead of the three darkly faced ladies, Camulus lit me afire. We could not outrun this thing – its legs were too long. I stopped and pivoted, sword drawn, and faced the giant. It was my duty to defend Myrnna. Again, I will swear, my dear Luceo, whatever Brennus was, he was no coward.
Myrnna stood there overawed and she fell into the mud, and looked up, gawking.
Each thundering footfall beat against my chest. Camulus then numbed my pain.
‘A giant!’ Myrnna screamed. For a brief, odd moment, I recalled our clan stories about giants in the olden days who dwelled in our lands before our ancestors had vanquished them.
The giant stopped in front of me. The misshapen thing stood at least three times my height. I saw first his toenails, yellow-brown and curled in great tusks. He had thin legs, too thin for his flabby frame, the latter dominated by a bloated grey gut that hung over its tattered loincloth. I could barely see above its dirt-black kneecaps, and his bellybutton resembled a knot of worms. He looked down at me, and I was reminded of when I had been a small boy. He had a gaping maw of teeth, chipped and yellow, atop a weak chin. A stench permeated the air, emitting from the fungus-plagued, hairy flesh of the giant. He had large, red-pupiled keen eyes. His great belly hammered out when he let out a hideous laugh.
‘Greetings, travellers!’ said the giant, grinning like a father catching his son up to no good, ‘I’m Ciuthach, and the queen has ordered me to take the two of you to her!’
I found no words.
‘Got nothing to say? Put your sword down! That bitty little sword can’t hurt me,’ he said, and laughed again.
I did not sheath my sword.
There had been giants in the days of yore. They had hoisted up the big stones on the island, and in other stories big stones were said to have been giants cursed by the gods. They lived in our land until our ancestors came and drove them out to make room for us, for they were too stupid and savage and deserving of slaughter. Still, some giants lived in the mountains, some of the more superstitious said, or in distant lands, but we never saw them. Just as we never saw the hag or the sidhe or any of the other things of the night that haunt this trackway. It stood before me, gazing down with red eyes.
‘What are you?’ I asked in a hushed tone, dumbstruck by it all.
‘A giant, what do you think I am?’
I had seen giants before, in the Slighan Hills, when the four figures carried the house of the hag. Those litter-bearers seemed unreal, different from this word, unlike this one.
‘As I said, the queen wants you and the girl to come with me to her,’ he said and giggled.
I said nothing, my fingers weak on the hilt of my sword. How could I ever protect her against this giant? I smelled piss, and did not know if it were I or Myrnna or the giant.
‘And what a pretty little girl she is,’ Ciuthach said, and laughed.
Myrnna scuttled away like a crab, scrambled to her feet, and raced down the trackway.
‘You can run all you want, girl! But you will never outrun the hand of your queen!’
Myrnna ran off into the gloom. The giant did not pursue her, and I thought perhaps it was because I stood in his way, but it could have simply stepped over me. I knew I had to bind it here to me, to allow Myrnna ample time to run and hide.
I stood at the feet of the giant, barely above its knees, armed with a sword athwart a giant that had spawned from the shadows of the moors. Badb clawed Camulus away from my blood now.
A memory came to me. My father and I, in my seventh spring, were on the mainland to visit some cousins of ours. On the track, a bear plagued by mange lunged out of the brush. The bear came for us, it had just one eye and that eye was filled with rage that it unleashed on us with slavering jaws. My father had drawn a javelin and chucked it into the one good eye of the bear. The bear was then completely blind. We watched the bear lumber around aimlessly, wheezing.
For me, as just a boy, my father was godlike, and even now I always come across stories of him and his feats that I had never known before, and I still look upon him in wonder. I remember looking up at my father. He stood so silent, his mouth wrung, his eyes focused. He had eliminated the threat and now he pitied it. I had then asked him how he stayed so calm. When he answered, his voice rang through my years:
Nothing is unconquerable. Even our gods can die.
Those words were my courage. My brows furrowed and I gripped my sword tight and I thought myself a match for whatever the shadows spat out. The giant was no more undefeatable than the bear.
But this queen, who is this queen?
‘Tell me, Ciuthach – who are you, and who is your queen?’
‘The queen is the queen and I’m her servant,’ he said. A tight-lipped response, but I sensed a slither of stupidity within his droll voice. I would trick him, but first I should learn about this queen.
‘Tell me then, Ciuthach, for I am at your mercy – where did you come from?’
‘Funny thing for you to ask me,’ he said, and he patted me on the head. ‘My ancestors were here long before yours. You killed them off and now we’re back. Any complaints?’ he asked.
‘I won’t complain, but just ask,’ I said, ‘I do not know what you are, but I know you had not existed until you showed yourself to me. Tell me, why can I see you now?’
‘Why can you see me now?’ he asked, grinning wide. ‘Didn’t Myrnna tell you? You have the sight! And now you can see us, and we can see you, and all those around you can see us, too, if you let them.’
At the feet of the giant, I had not been able to surmount all of what he said at that time. His words were like water pooling on soil, eventually seeping in after some time and reaching the roots. He was right – we had slain the giants in the olden days, according to our lore, and I did possess the sight.
‘I see you because I have the sight, and that allows others to see you. If I had not the sight, then would you not exist?’
‘I would exist. We, the sidhe, all exist, just you can’t see us most of the time,’ he said.
Good. Now I will trick him, perhaps to let me go. I had no plan, but thought to Lugus, the god of craftiness, to inspire me with his silvery tongue.
‘Who is your queen?’ I asked again.
‘The queen is the queen,’ he said, grinning.
‘The queen is the queen, but not all are queens,’ I said. Truth be told, Luceo, I had not known where this path would lead, and I feared a dead end, but I trudged on.
‘Silly human,’ he said, and his grotesque long hand shuffled my beeswaxed hair, ‘what else is a queen?’
‘The queen of bees,’ I said.
Ciuthach laughed, a hearty, jolly laugh, and he looked down at me again, his bright big eyes amused. ‘The queen is no bee.’
‘Your queen is the queen bee!’
The giant furrowed his thick brows, his mood shifted like the winds, and his jowls flapped and he shot a gust from his flared nostrils.
‘A dragon is no bee!’
A dragon?
‘A dragon is a bee if it is your queen!’
‘My queen is the mother of giants.’
I interrupted him.
‘The queen of giant bees!’
‘No!’ Ciuthach tossed his club. It woofed through the air and I failed to see where it landed.
‘The queen of giants is Slighan!!’
Queen of giants.
Slighan.
Come back to the Slighan Hill…
‘You said she was a dragon!’ I had to keep it up. He was flustered.
Ciuthach’s eyes bulged as he laughed down at me so hard that my hair would have winded back had it not been moulded in beeswax.
I found the courage to look into his eyes, big white puddles, irises like red henges.
My father couldn’t kill the bear easily. Bears have thick fur and blubber, and all one stab from a spear does is enrage the bear further. This giant, too, had thick blubber, and I imagined my sword would be nothing but a bee sting to him. But the giant has eyes, and like blinding the bear, I could blind him, if I could just get to his eyes.
