The Witches of Slievenamon

PROLOGUE

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, to my ten and seven bliain. 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 bliain 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 therefore they do not respect the dignity and honour of death either, so how can they possibly 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 be now full-grown and ready to lead the Fianna, but to prove herself worthy of being the wife of such a great 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 in size, brave and powerful in battle, and comely in face too according to his frequent boasts and bolstered by common testimony. So today I have set my heart upon him, if not yet set my eyes. As have my sisters and countless other wenches with legs, lungs and heart enough to succeed and 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.

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, the very same Cormac, 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 again.

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 that 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 the three of 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 puffs, "I expected to lose to you Etain, but knew as bride of a hero you'd look after Kaetlynn and her wean, but not thought to lose to this wee sparrow."

"We were cheated," Kaetlynn says, walking up to Bebh and me, all of us 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 our way up the scree-strewn path, but tis no place for any runner to stop with the finishing 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 lips to lips, 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 be clearly over.

As I look at the pair of 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 she's a cheating whore and 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, "and I've one that's a daisy, she'll see him in her mind's eye appear twenty years older and then she'll 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, a 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, Bebh and I will repeat it. I can live with the consequences."

"Aye," Bebhinn agrees, "together we can."

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Chapter One

TAKING IN A STRAY

I know I am running a little late, driving along in the pouring rain to collect my daughter Caoimhe from school. The potential client who I had lunched with in a Cashel pub for over three interminable hours just droned on and on about his damned family.

It was all, 'the wife does this' and 'then the wife does the other thing, do'yer believe that?', which made the lunch even more tortuous than business lunches usually are.

I'm a computer engineer, I like fiddling with hardware and software, and I love being left alone to get on with installations, upgrading or repairing, but my job also entails that I have to drum up sales in the form of new custom, too, part of being a one-man band of a huge international company tucked away in a quiet out of the way outpost.

Every great job has its downsides.

Anyway, discussions about other families just get to me more than they really should.

Yeah, thanks Mac, when the client casually asks me if I believe it, when he really doesn't care if I believe it or not, I do believe it.

Yeah, been there, done that once but not recently and never again, probably.

There are some fading memories that never quite fade out to nothing, like those old computer monitors used to. I know it's off and will never be switched on again but that little glow lingers on in perpetual torment. That's my life.

So, yeah, sometimes I am only hanging on in the present with more than a foot and half a leg into the past. It's not that the past was so good for very long but the future just takes me where I really would have no wish to go at all if it wasn't for Caoimhe being my whole world now.

So, you're wondering, just who is this grumpy dude you're reading the sorry thoughts and miscellaneous musings of?

Yeah me.

I'm Richard (never Dick or Rick or Rich) Kloss and I am also running late because of the Irish weather as well as the overlong lunch.

Heavy was the rain until just a minute ago, and the spray from the road thrown up by all the Friday trucks, trying to get the shops supplied for the weekend, is absolutely crazy.

I can't see much of the road in front of me, the rear view is a total white-out blur and I have to go slow for safety. Better that Caoimhe wait a few minutes in the sheltered entrance outside the school than forever wait for some loved one who will never come.

Yeah, I know exactly how that feels too.

At the moment I am driving Northwards between Cashel and Thurles on Turtulla Road that becomes the Slievenamon Road, otherwise known as the N62, which is on the south side of Thurles, County Tipperary.

OK, I know what you're thinking, 'Richard Kloss' doesn't sound very Irish, in fact I'm not Irish at all, not even with an Anglo surname that is still common in the area. So, you might ask, what am I, an American, a single, well-preserved 39 years of age computer engineer from Santa Monica, in Sunny California, doing here in the rain in the rural centre of Ireland?

Well, I'm of Irish extraction mixed with German (one side of my family moved to the States from Ireland in 1846 and the other side from the Palatine region of Bavaria in 1848, according to the immigration records, then they moved across country by the 1920s to become a middle class white family in Pico District, where my great-grandpa started working in the aircraft building industry).

As far as I know I'm the only one of my family who has returned to Ireland to live permanently. I and we like it here, 'we' being my daughter and I. My daughter loves it here.

It's all Caoimhe has known anyway, other than the odd Thanksgiving trip 'home', and even that concept of 'home' for me has changed in her lifetime. My parents moved to Culver City while I was in college for a while and finally retired to Florida five years ago, so Ireland, Thurles in particular, is definitely the permanent home for my little family of two.

I moved to Cork from California about twelve years ago as a post-grad at University College Cork doing my Masters Degree in Computer Science. I met an adorable local girl, redhead Ella Bernadette Walsh, we married, we had a kid, only my wife El died while giving birth and my baby and I have stayed on in the cottage that my wife and I bought in Thurles. When I say in, I mean a couple of kilometres south of the town centre, on the very road we are travelling on, as it happens.

I'm playing Leonard Cohen on Bluetooth, that's the kinda mood I'm usually in when I'm on my own, so bite me, why don't ya?

When I pick Caoimhe up from school in a few minutes then of course I'll be willingly forced to play song after song of Olivia Rodrigo, a singer that she is so into right now. Well, she is 10 going on 20, my girl.

The windscreen wipers are wiping on max and barely coping with the wet even though I suspect the rain has slowed or even stopped. There is so much spray, though, it's like driving through a thick cloud. I'm doing barely 60km/hr on the N62, the visibility is that poor. Especially as there's a big silver truck ahead of me with no wheel flaps, that's sending up a wall of spray so my view of the road is rivalling one from the Maid of the Mist at Niagra Falls. I can't see enough of what's coming towards me from beyond the truck to risk overtaking, so I drop back a few more feet to improve my view of the road.

Now my view is a little bit clearer and I see the big truck go through a huge puddle spreading halfway across our side of the road, sending a huge tsunami wave right across the sidewalk and the high hedgerow behind.

I slow down as I know there will be a huge back wash in whatever casual water lies on the road that could drag my lighter auto off the road.

And now I see there in the middle of the sidewalk, after the wave hits the ground, stands a single person absolutely drenched from top to toe.

"Damn!" I exclaim and automatically press harder on the brakes.

Well, what would you do? Drive by and toot? No of course not, we're all perfect gentlemen at heart, aren't we?

It was the truck driver's fault, maybe he was deliberate splashing the pedestrian or simply couldn't see the person in the rain and drove by unaware of what they've done? It must be another 5 or 6km to Thurles. A long way to walk when you've stepped out of a dirty cold shower in the clothes you're dressed in. Can't just abandon them, someone has to stop, I mean we regular motorists are the modern-day knights of the road, yeah?

So I check the mirror. I can't see anything at all in the misty cloud coming up behind me, yup, cautious and careful's my middle name when I'm driving in Ireland, even after 12 years it still feels like I'm driving on the wrong side of the road.

Yeah, I know, the locals would call me an eejit, but here I am stopping for some stranger on a lonely road on a miserable day.

Not all hitchikers are Texas chain saw handlers, I tell myself. And this is not Texas.

Well, I have picked up the odd one here, hitchhikers, not chainsawmen, much more readily than I ever would Stateside and have never met a murderer yet.

As for safety in stopping, I've got my fogs on front and rear, so I should be seen even if I stop for a minute or so on what passes as a fast single lane each way road in Ireland.

I indicate left and switch on my hazards, and slow to a stop next to who I can now see is a woman, well, a girl really, very slim build, 5 foot 5 or 5 foot 6 maybe, I guess, probably a student who can't afford to use the bus up from the Horse & Jockey bar on the main road.

She's just lowering one hand after no doubt delivering a suitable sign language message to the driver. It could have been a middle finger but I've noticed that the two-finger reverse 'Victory' sign seems to find most favour around these parts when signalling displeasure.

The girl is wearing running gear, a T and shorts, trainers without socks and carrying a large purse over her shoulder, sorry a handbag — El was always correcting me on that. Her dark hair is plastered flat against her head. Everything she has on and about her is streaming dirty water.

I step out of the car without thinking and step straight into the feckin' puddle up right up over my ankles, the very puddle I knew was there but had forgotten already.

And these are my best court shoes that I only ever wear to meet clients or potential clients. Usually, like the soaked girl here, I favour trainers for everyday wear. Hey look, I do jog ... not every day, no, but two or three times a week before work, although to be honest only once or twice some weeks.

"Hey, there," I call across the roof of the car. "Do you need a lift, ma'am? I'm heading towards Thurles?"

The woman is wet through and dripping, no, make that streaming. But she smiles, quite sweetly, considering her circumstances, saying, "No thanks soir, I's fine."

Hey, I'm too much of a gentleman to simply leave her, even on her say-so. The Irish are just so damn polite, that's why I love 'em so much. She is absolutely soaked through and that puddle weren't no Lemon Evian. I guess she's probably afraid to step into a stranger's car, more that she would soil my seats than any danger from a dweeb like me. OK, I get that.

"Look ma'am, at least get in and out of the rain and warm up for a few minutes. You just get your phone out, dial 112 and get ready to send if I start any funny business. I assure you I have no such intention. I have clean towels in the trunk that I put on the seat; I've a daughter of 10 who never misses a puddle, ever, what can I say?"

"Ah," she says, looking at me with her head at an oblique angle, "you're a visitor here, calling this drizzle 'rain' when all it is is a soft day with a wee bit o' spit. So, 'tis a daughter that you have now, is it?"

I notice that she has a soft, rural musical voice, pleasant to the ear, like her native tongue was Gaeilge and English words were naturally turned into a melody of her own making.

"Yeah, and I need to pick her up from school and, well now," I say as I look at my watch. "I'm running a little bit late, so she'll be looking at biting off my head, rather like you were wishing on that trucker that drenched you."

"Well, I was actually wishing his innards would be biting his arse so I did, because I draw the line at biting off heads just for a simple soaking." She smiles very faintly, but standing there with her head held high and proud, I thought she looked damned cute, far too young for an 'ould fella' like me, though, as Caoimhe would put it, but cute all the same.

"But whatever, although I am in a hurry, I saw you get soaked and I didn't want to abandon you, it's miles to the next town, and I'd feel guilty all day and probably guilty every day I pass this spot in the rain. And that means I'll feel guilty pretty well forever, so you'd be doing me a favor."

"Ha!" she laughs. "You don't seem so bad a person, then, for a fella."

She sounds bitter at the end there and I wonder what her last fella did to upset her. She continues.

"Then I'll come with you in your ... carriage."

"It's an SUV, electric," I say, quite proud of the car. It was too bloody expensive in the first place, but it is economical to run, easy to drive, and I felt good that I was doing some small thing for the planet. I had to do something to offset my total love of juicy rare steaks from miscellaneous methane belchers.

"I know no-one at all where I'm going but I, well, I'm more comfortable talking to girls than fellas ... I'm in no hurry to get there so I'd like to meet her, it'll be be nice to talk to your daughter and maybe her mother too."

"Unfortunately Caoimhe's mother is ... well, she's no longer with us."

"Sorry to hear that, was her departure recent?"

"My wife died while giving birth to Caoimhe, ten years ago," I say for probably the thousandth time. It never got any easier nor did it ever sound fairer than it did before, however many times I say it.

"Caoimhe means 'noble', I believe," the girl says as I splash my way around the automobile to open and hold the door for her.

"Okay, get in. Wait! I'll spread some towels for you to sit on first."

"Is she a princess, your daughter, if you know what I mean?"

"Oh yeah, she's a diva alright, the original," I say, can't help smiling when I talk or even think about my daughter, except those times when I wish she wasn't my daughter, which was becoming increasingly more common as she becomes more independent.

I splash my way back to the trunk, opening it up for some of the neatly folded towels I mentioned to her earlier. They're handy for packing round computer servers, supermarket shopping, as well as wet girls, and I wash them regularly enough because I like things clean and neat, minimalistic. I hate clutter.