The Witches of Slievenamon

"I'm her father, you shouldn't hold secrets from me."

"I know, but," Etain chews her lower lip. "You wouldn't have wanted her to miss a chance of dancing with a group of loving sister witches in her very own Faerie Ring under the light of the silvery moon, now, wouldja?"

"No, of course not," I say, "I am sorry I missed seeing the spectacle myself but ... it was just dancing and singing, yes? ... nothing happened that I would be unhappy about a 10-year-old attending and taking part in?"

'Nay, of course not!" Etain snorts, in a fit of giggles. "Did ya think we were sacrificing chickens or slurping wine or poteen by the pint?"

"No," I relax with relief, "so, she had a fun time dancing?"

"Aye, she did have a grand time, she was perfectly safe with me and all my sisters present, there was safety in numbers and she felt perfectly at home."

"Well, I'm pleased she had fun, but it's a school day today and if she's tired...."

"We were hoping you would let her stay away from school today, so she can learn more at home."

"And what would she learn about, exactly?" I ask dubiously.

"About who she is in relation to the world about her and ... about the Otherworld beneath. I thought we would visit the Otherworld during the day, when the Faerie Ring would appear less gloomy and frightening. You could come too, in fact I think you should."

"I have work to do today. I've a twelve noon appointment to install and commission a new server in Cork."

"Perfect. I know a couple of convenient portals in Cork we could use even in daylight. How heavy is the ... er, 'server?' you need to install?"

"The server has already been delivered. I just need to be there for three to four hours to connect it up and commission it. Then leave it running for a night and day, monitoring performance from home and go back on Wednesday morning for a final check and sign it off."

"So you could get by with a bag of tools?"

"Yeah," I smile, "something like that. I've got a small bag I take with me with multimeter, spare connectors and cables."

"Great. So, are you coming to the Otherworld with me tomorrow?"

"And I can't eat, drink, or sleep there?"

"No, you cannot, otherwise you could never return to this world, not without help and even then you would never belong here again."

"I can hold on for a few hours then. Would I be welcome there, do I have to sneak in and out like you?"

"I don't 'sneak in' any more, Richard," she laughs. "I can come and go as I like, but I never sleep and always fast while there. I am not ready to belong to the Otherworld yet."

"But you are accepted, why?"

"Because, although I am a witch of this world, my father was a Faerie from the Otherworld and through him I have free passage. Although I sneaked in that very first time all those years ago, to the annoyance of the Faerie who I raced past, I recently found out that my father had foreseen my visit and had an eye on me the whole time I visited and, whenever I returned he was ready for me and observed me from afar. I only found this out from my sister Dubheasa two months ago."

"I've not heard of Dubheasa before. What's her story?"

Etain smiles, one of remembering pleasurable memories I guess.

"Dubheasa was my only younger sister. I'm the second youngest of the brood. When she was born, I was still a partly-nursing wean about two years old and for a short while we each shared Mother's breasts. We shared a cot and later a bed together and we were always very close. She was a sweet child and I loved her so, more so than my other sisters who were still at home. I loved my stepfather too, being only father I ever knew."

"Who was your stepfather?"

"Elloth. He was a tall, lean man, dark-skinned with glossy black hair which he wore long and braided. He treated Dubheasa and me as if we were both his children. Kaetlynn and Bebhinn were loved, certainly, but it never seemed as much as we youngest weans."

"What happened to Elloth and Dubheasa?"

"They died of the fever, I was told. My mother Sabhadama took us other sisters away inland to get away from the pestilence, she said. But I only found out a couple of months ago that that was a lie by my mother."

"What really happened?"

"Elloth was not of this world. He was from the Otherworld, a member of the Tuatha Dé Danann, and he was forced to return by those in the Otherworld that enforce the laws."

"So these Otherworld dwellers can't come and go as they please?"

Etain smiles, "They can please themselves coming and going, it is when they stay and overstay their welcome that they can get into trouble. You see, way back in time the Tuatha Dé Danann ruled the whole of the island of Eire but then they were invaded and fought a series of three monumental battles with the present Irish people, who wanted to settle here, a Celtish tribe from Iberia. There were terrible battles, Richard. There were damaging losses on both sides, with no quarter given. Something had to give or both sides would've been finished, and these islands open to fresh invaders who would've come in unopposed. So they agreed to divide the island into two domains."

"So, instead of a north/south or similar separation, one group went underground?"

"Aye, the Tuath Dé took the Otherworld. Both sides were satisfied, the Celts thought they had received the best of it, the fertile green we know today, but the Tir na nÓg was the land of the young, of milk and honey, so the Tuath Dé thought they had the best of worlds."

"Yet you visit the Otherworld and have all your family there but you constantly return to the over world. Why?"

"Because here is where I was born, spiritually and legally belong. Though for most of my life so far I haven't really felt settled anywhere but I did feel an uncomfortable outsider in the Otherworld." She looks at me over the small table and lays both hands on mine. "I have always felt that my destiny lies here, Richard, my future. I have unfulfilled dreams to live here before committing myself to the Otherworld."

"As you must inevitably?"

"I know not. A witch is privileged to see the future of others but barred from seeing her own. All I have are my dreams, and neither this world or the other world has yet promised to deliver me those dreams."

"If your stepfather, who took your favourite sister away, had taken you to the Otherworld, you would've been happy to have gone?"

"Aye, I would have gone in an instance but then I was a child and I knew only one world so I would have followed him anywhere. He took only Dubheasa with him and my mother wouldn't allow him to take the other sisters. He told Dubheasa that he wanted to take all of us, because he was all our fathers. He could never stay long here, so he always returned to the Otherworld but was always drawn back to this world by his love for our mother Sabhadama."

"And you believe that your stepfather somehow 'fogged' your mother's mind every time he returned to this world and was actually all your sisters' fathers?"

"We want to believe that. Dubheasa says that when he last returned to the Otherworld for good that he was in doubt about some of the girls' parentage and was unable to convince Sabhadama that he was in truth her only husband. He had stayed here too long, that last time, almost ten years, and the fear from the Tuatha Dé was that the Treaty between the two worlds would be broken and that a new terrible war between the two peoples would ultimately destroy both worlds."

"Your father is therefore banished from this world?"

"Apparently so," she smiles as she stifles a yawn. "Sorry, I'm tired. Curses are not restricted to this world, Richard and I must endure mine in this world until the end of time, or until I am able to realise my dreams and go to that paradise, hopefully as a fulfilled woman and mother."

"You are tired, my dancing witch," I say, my own mind racing so much that I am too exhausted to think of consequences, "let's talk on this more once we are refreshed and rested. Perhaps I can send off some DNA tests for you and your sisters."

"DNA tests?"

"Yes, they can tell your relationships, if you all have the same mother and father."

"Aye, Richard, that sounds a great idea! I'll explain DNA to them. So, we can consider visiting the Otherworld in the daylight, when the Faerie Ring is not so overwhelming, and then you can meet all my lovely sisters."

"Now I definitely won't sleep a wink!"

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Chapter 10: CONSIDERING THE OTHERWORLD

Caoimhe is full of beans and breathless in describing her dancing with the witches under the light of the full moon. I haven't seen her so enthusiastic about anything for years and is acting more like a child again instead of her usual 'serious widower's housekeeper', a mantle which she had seemed to adopt in recent years.

"I held hands with Dubheasa, then Alannah spun me around until I was giddy and then I danced with Auntie Katie and even though she was a beautiful young woman now if I closed my eyes she seemed just the same kind and loving old woman that I had know ever since I was born." Pauses for breath. "You should have seen her, Dad, she was amazing!"

She turns to Etain, "Now, please tell me again who is who? I get so mixed up, and they are all so beautiful in all their lovely dresses. Who's the really blond girl?"

Etain smiles indulgently at my eager little girl. "Caoilfhoinn. She was always very fair and very beautiful, she would sing all the time and accompanied herself on the harp. I was about four years old when I was told by my mother that she had been snatched by pirates, but really, her father had returned from Tir na nÓg for her and took her away to learn the ways of the Faeries."

"So tell me all about your sisters, please, please?" She pleads.

"My mother Sabhadama was married seven times to who she thought were seven different men and she had seven daughters but most of them left home while they were about your age or even younger. And we last three were taken from her and banished by the High King."

"So who was the first of the seven daughters?" Caoimhe asks.

"Afric was the eldest, whose father Crédne worked as a carpenter who built grand longhouses and he left his wife and child for several months to built a palace for the High King, but he never returned. Afric moved away herself when she was 12 (when I was only a wee babe in my cot, so I never knew her at all). As you saw last night she is dark-haired and brown eyed and she is simply brimming over and full of fun. I recently found out on first meeting her that Afric also worked as a messenger for the King, we sisters were all keen and efficient runners. She was captured and imprisoned, kept chained up for months for not giving up her message to her captors."

"And she was only about my age?"

"Aye, we didn't really count the days, only the seasons, so birthdays never amounted to anything. I think she was maybe a year or two older than you, but boys and girls worked at very young ages back then. So she was a very young girl anyway to be locked up in a dungeon. She told me she was very afraid, but resolved never to tell her captors her secret message, hoping that, if no word was heard from her, the King would assume the message was intercepted so would have changed his plans accordingly, and with her messages losing value, that she would be released."

"Was she released? "

"No, well not by those that held her. But, one moonlit night a band of silent Faeries made the prison walls disappear just like that," Etain loudly clicks her fingers, "and they took Afric to the Otherworld where she has lived happily ever since. As the daughter of a Tuath Dé she was entitled by right of birth to enter the portals and stay within the Otherworld for eternity. She rarely ventures out of Tir na nÓg nowadays but she answered my invitation to our dance gladly, if only to meet you, Caoimhe."

"She was so sweet and kind," Caoimbhe recalls, "and so light on her feet, too. Who was the next sister in line?"

"Aah. The blond Caoilfhoinn was next. Mother remarried a merchant when it was clear that Crédne had abandoned her and Afric. A woman on her own with a baby would find it difficult, with only the income from potions coming in. Caoilfhoinn was born about three years behind Afric and she was very fair skinned and strawberry-blond headed, she was taken by pirates when she was ten and, to be honest, I barely remember her from my childhood. But when we were first banished to Slievenamon our mother admitted to us that Caoilfhoinn's father was a Tuath Dé, and that they were not of this world and do not belong here so therefore they cannot stay for long because of the old laws that were signed more than three thousand years ago and those laws cannot lightly be broken. The Tuatha Dé Danann are powerful god-like people who tend to come and go between this World and the Otherworld as they please. They are able to use real magic and much more powerful than whatever we witches can do. When her merchant husband left to return from whence he came, he took his daughter Caoilfhoinn with him. The pirate story was simply a story our mother told to Afric and she in her turn told the younger babies as they came along."

"So who was that new merchant husband?" I ask.

Etain smiles. "Crédne returned himself but he fogged Mother's mind so that she didn't recognise that he was her first husband returned, but he did tell her half the truth, that he was from the Otherworld and that he couldn't stay long."

'And she fell for him all over again?"

"Aye, the Tuatha Dé Danann live under fewer constraints than us witches. We cannot use our magic to make someone fall in love with us, but the Tuath Dé can, and they do so effortlessly because, to us they appear to be perfect and god-like—"

"Ha!" I interject, "even though they lie and trick you with disguises and run away when the Otherworld police show up with an arrest warrant?"

"True, they are beautiful and irresistible and they are also selfishly shallow and care little about the mayhem they cause, but love them we do, and Sabhadama was a witch who fell in love with the same suitor every time but she was also determined that she could never to go to the Otherworld. Her first husband Crédne never invited her, but, according to my other sisters in the Otherworld, he had asked her every other time and she never went with him."

"So where is your mother?"

"She lies under one of the four cairns on Slievenamon mount. She was brought to us on a donkey cart to spend her last days with us. She was old and frail, her hair as white as whale bone, but Bebhinn's honey potions and Kaetlynn's healing hands made her last two days and nights in this world having a happy time with her remaining daughters. She had no regrets, knowing that by then we three sisters had already become immortal in this world due to our birthright and having stayed for sufficient time in the Otherworld for our bodies to change enough without permanently committing ourselves to the Otherworld. And when her time came to an end we laid her to rest on the highest but one spot on the Mount, a place where the setting sun would rest to warm the stones before sinking into the ocean and we three sisters piled up the cairn stone by stone and issued a curse on any man who ever disturbed her rest."

"Wow!" I breathe out slowly, my mind imagining the scene, hearing them sing that curse in their ancient tongue as they gathered and carefully placed each cursed stone. I can't envisage the words of their incantation but I can 'hear' the keening and feel the love and see it manifest even now as a single tear rolls down Etain's lovely face.

I gently embrace her across the table and Caoimhe rises from her chair and joins us in a group hug of empathy.

"Sit, sit," Etain enjoins, "please, so I can get the rest of my family on the table for you so that when you meet them, Richard, you will have some idea of who they are and their history."

I release her and Caoimhe seats herself at the table. Etain wipes her eyes, sets her shoulders and continues.

"Alannah was 2 years behind Caoilfhoinn and we were told she had died during her infancy, before I was born, apparently she was fair skinned with dark red hair and green eyed, and so I was able to pick her out when we first reunited a couple of months ago. Again, it appears that my mother Sabhadama was like cat-nip to Faeries and another Tuatha Dé Danann courted and wed her, but now we know it was another of Crédne's deceptions. Again he spirited her away while still a wean to his own world when it came time to return.

"Kaetlynn, your 'Aunt Katie', Caoimhe, was two years behind Alannah. Her father I was told was Dagda, a river fisherman who could catch all the salmon they could eat without even a net, the fish were so charmed that they would jump into his arms. Kaetlynn was always proud of her father and even though he has confessed to having seven aliases, she still calls him Dagda in our conversations. Green eyed and red-blonde haired, not the white hair you both remember, Kaetlynn was always fiery of temper and very passionate, which is why we got into trouble over Fionn Mac Cuill!"

"If she hadn't got you banished, we would never have known either of you," I can't help myself saying.

I am already thinking that my life has changed forever and cannot imagine it without the life force that is Etain in it. I cannot help a feeling of disloyalty to the memory of Ella dig as the nerves running up my spine to my brain but I shake it off; I live in the now and have only been going through the motions emotionally for a whole decade.

"I don't know about that, Richard," Etain smiles, "Fate is a force beyond human reason and I believe that Fate would have found a way. Anyway, Kaetlynn married young and had three children quite close together but lost her husband and two youngest in tragic circumstances. Because we three sisters were cursed over the Fionn Mac Cuill incident, she could never go back to live with her surviving child again. Her son Aodhan regularly came to the mountain to visit but she sadly had to watch him grow old and die. He lies under another cairn on the Mount close to the grandmother who had cared for him in the absence of his mother."

"That is so sad," Caoimhe says, "Couldn't he have gone to the Otherworld and lived forever?"

"Aye, as her son, Aodhan was entitled but by the time he died Kaetlynn and I didn't know what rights we could have evoked. Besides, he loved his wife Brigit, a sweet girl, so much that he wouldn't go unless she could too. So, now we reach Bebhinn, who was two years behind Kaetlynn, and once upon a time she lived in your house before you. She is a brunette with big hazel eyes like a deer but a plain face. She has always been a quiet, studious girl and woman. She so loved mixing potions, was oft cheated on and her sweet nature taken advantage of by traders, although we sisters tried to protect her when we could. She is so open, honest and very trusting. She has always remained a virgin. Her father worked as a blacksmith, and we were all told by Mother that his heart simply gave out one day while working at the forge. In truth, he was chased back to the Otherworld and this time he was unable to take any of the children with him."

"Your father ..." I'm lost for words that would give vent to what I feel. I'm only a father to one, not seven but this man, god, wizard, whatever he was, was very bad news.

"I know, Richard, but these beings are not us, they are not of our world where witches and man reside and in the main have thrived. But in time, as your knowledge of the Tuatha Dé Danann grows, you will, I assure you, have a greater understanding, perhaps enlightened even more than I have been. However, in the line of sisters, we have come to me, Etain. I was born two years behind Bebhinn, and I am also a virgin."