The Witches of Slievenamon

Her voice is soft and charmingly sing-song, her smile seems to occupy her whole face, very sweet and endearing. I relax, she is sweet next-door-neighbor lovely, not at all as threatening as I thought, and return her smile.

"The pleasure is all mine," I reply as I gently squeeze her offered hand, "forgive me if I appear that I am a little stunned at your appearance but I was grossly misled to believe that you were the plainest of your sisters, while now I believe you could easily launch thousands of ships effortlessly without lifting a finger."

"One of the advantages of being a witch, Richard," Bebhinn smiles sweetly, "is that we learn how to fog minds early on in life." She chuckles, "Being told throughout your earliest memories by your mother and all her friends that you are the most beautiful baby that ever existed, and then be ousted in their affections by the arrival of baby Etain, not her fault, of course, and further replaced as second choice by the next baby Dubheasa, would shake the confidence of any child. Then, having the lessons of my mother having seven husbands of such short and sudden durations and departures, and Kaetlynn's first marriage ending in such tragedy, I decided that I wanted a simple life based on having no child of my own, but sweet sisterly affection and the loving care of my bees, I decided that being attractive to the male of my species was counter-productive in my life."

"So you would not object to me and Etain being together?"

"No, of course not!" Bebhinn squeezed my arm and kissed my cheek.

How do all these sisters calm me by the merest touch?

"No, Richard, I would delight in being able to call you my brother. Now you must listen carefully, as the time of meeting my father is nigh and there is much you must know. Firstly, the Tuatha Dé Danann are not human at all. They came to this world through the same sort of portals as this, because their own world destroyed itself and, powerful as they are, they could not save it."

"They are aliens?" I ask.

"Aye, just as we witches are."

"You witches aren't human, either?"

"To be honest, Richard, I haven't been able to find out exactly where we came from. The restriction on reading our own future applies equally to our past, but I early on noticed when treating people's ailments over many years, seeing the children and grandchildren inheriting the same genetic conditions made this a lifelong study. The discovery of DNA was great for me. I took a biological degree at Trinity while we lived in Dublin and set up a lab in my basement so I could extract, quantify, amplify and separate samples and analyse without risking outside observation."

"And what does DNA tell you?"

"That we three witches of Slievenamon, are clones, that we are, as far as human research into genetics goes, virgin births, with only tiny traces of influence by our previous genetic make-up on the genes of the three of us."

"Virgin births!" I explode. "But...,"

"Hush, Richard," she soothes me with a touch of her hand on my arm, reinforced with a brush of her lips on my cheek, "my father has admitted to me years ago that what I found out is true. The Tuatha Dé Danann are not of our world, they assumed their perfect beauty by analysing the humans they found here, and copying what they found here, probably the Neanderthals, and, through a breeding programme, similar to how horse breeders make their horses faster, they produced the first Homo sapiens and changed their own bodies to match the new breed of Man."

"Oh my god!"

"Yes, I have no memories of my father, he may even have left Mother before I was born, my father isn't how I remember Etain's father either, as he didn't tarry for long. No, I remember our family's last father and step-father, Elloth, a black man from North Africa, but all seven husbands were actually the very same person, whose settled appearance nowadays is as Afric's father Crédne. He admitted to me that he was obsessed with defying the Treaty and visiting here and he was all our seven sisters' 'fathers' but he has no human DNA within him to pass on, so he cannot mate with humans, but during their breeding programme over hundreds of thousands of years, they were able to produce a seminal fluid which acts as a catalyst so the hostess of the human egg can self fertilise their egg, rather like an hermaphrodite. Since moving to the Otherworld, I have checked the DNA of all my sisters except Etain, who as you know is never still long enough! The six of us are all clones each with subtle differences absorbed from the DNA Records."

Behind us the dance ends and Afric claps her hands to get my attention and gesticulates that I alone must follow her.

"So little time to explain so much, Richard," Bebhinn says breathlessly, "Crédne is ready for you now. Do not be afraid, he means you no harm, although the Tuatha Dé Danann are powerful, they are few in number and they can never replenish their numbers, the Otherworld is otherwise filled with people they have known and loved and invited here. It seems that many Tuath Dé are ensnared by Witches, there are many of us here. There is peace in the Otherworld and there can be no breaking of the Treaty, so you must go to him and he will tell you all you wish to know or all that he will wish to tell you.

"One last thing, Richard. I met your Ella when she first came to look at my house with a view to buy. Both Kaetlynn and I sensed her future and also detected that she was one of us, a Witch, very weakly part of her, watered down over many many centuries, but I confirmed her status by DNA testing; she was a Witch and so is Caoimhe."

"I think she would be delighted to hear that."

"I haven't told her yet, Richard, but I sampled Caoimhe's DNA on Wednesday and finished analysing it and comparing it to Ella's that I had kept on file only this evening."

I look puzzled, "Is anything wrong with her DNA?"

"No, it's as perfect as Etain's or mine, only...."

"Only ... what?"

"Richard, Caoimhe is a clone of her mother Ella...."

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Chapter 14: THE CHANGELING

"Wait, Caoimhe is not my daughter?" I say as Afric leads me away to the edge of the faerie ring.

"You raised her, Richard," Bebhinn calls to my departing back as I hurry to catch the Amazon urging me to leave the circle, "so she knows no other Father but you."

I am confused and concerned but almost immediately I leave the witches' circle I am pressed into the presence of the 'god' that was Crédne and all other conscious thoughts are overwhelmed by his presence.

He must be 6ft 4in tall, slim, clinically clean-shaven, long white hair and shiny golden skinned. His face is completely unlined and looks like he's about my age but his eyes look older than the rest of him and dark, as though his pupils completely cover his irises. He wears a long flowing floor-length robe in white, with a string of beads on a gold chain around his neck.

He holds out his hand for me to shake and asks in a deep and vibrant voice, "Can we walk and talk, brother Richard."

It was a statement, not a question and I nod silently in answer, more than a little in awe of him.

'Brother?' I wonder, 'He calls me brother, when I want to ask to be his son?'

I suppose on first sight he appears to dress much like a hippy of my parents' generation, so maybe he calls everyone 'brother' or 'sister' as appropriate?

I shake his hand briefly, our first touch, and I break hold first, feeling that he lets go reluctantly after me releasing my slight pressure. His hand is dry and warm to the touch, not unpleasant but I am nervous and therefore more than a little twitchy.

He turns to walk further away from the joyous dance which is continuing in the witches' circle. I do not look back but am sure that all the girls' eyes are on us as we slowly depart. Soon the rhythmic swishing sound of dancing skirts is muffled and then falls silent, until all I hear are our gentle funereal footfalls upon the soft grassy path.

I naturally fall in step with him walking at what at any other time would be an aimless strolling pace. But there are things on my mind I want to settle between us and Crédne had asked for this meeting on his ground, so I feel I should allow him to make the first sound. He doesn't appear to be in any hurry to speak.

Within a couple of steps I notice that the moon in the dark sky has changed position and in size from a three-quarter moon to a full moon and the air around us also differs, it seems warmer, with very little discernible breeze to ruffle Crédne's long white hair.

We are now completely into the Otherworld and I feel ... vulnerable. I'm a computer geek, a nerd, not a hero. Here, I am way out of my depth.

Even the air here in the Tir na nÓg or the Otherworld smells different, less dank and musty as the bramble patch in the dark wood was, but fresher, uplifting even, as if my senses are enlivened by more oxygen or something else my lungs were absorbing that I could not even attempt to identify.

I don't remember the air being so different from my previous two brief journeys into the Otherworld but I put that down to the rushing between two points as I was on those occasions, while tonight I am much more apprehensive and intimidated, which heightens my alertness in the presence of this powerful individual, the immortal father of the immortal girl I now want to have for my own for as long as I am able to live as a lowly mortal.

"I overheard your conversation earlier, Brother Richard," he says eventually, in a voice that doesn't seem to have any identifiable accent, maybe mid-Atlantic if I had to guess, "Afric is perfectly correct, of course, I am not a god as others before you might have thought; neither my people or I am in any sense the Creator of the universe, only like you we are another product of that creation. All the same, I am not human either. My apparently human appearance is a fabrication of very long standing, starting with an initial copy of the humans that inhabited this place many eons ago and that image has undergone continual maintenance and has adjusted its appearance in line with human development so as not to appear too unfamiliar and frighten those who we walk among. We have been here a very long time, my brother, and individually we have settled comfortably in the way we look. Now, I believe that you have a question for me?"

"Ah, yes, I do, indeed, Sir," I say. Now we are getting somewhere.

Clearly Crédne doesn't mess about when dealing with mere mortals, he gets right to the point.

"I would like to ask you for the hand of your daughter, Sir. She says that she loves me and, though we have not known each other for very long, a few days only, I have realised that I too love her and I sincerely feel that I cannot live without her. I realise that there are problems with a mere mortal like me marrying an immortal, and a very beautiful one at that, and I do accept that I will grow old and die while she forever remains constantly unchanging so I naturally fear that she may even tire of me and what I have become well before my time expires, but that is the price I am prepared, no, more than willing to pay. I believe that your daughter and I would be happy together all the while I live and I promise that I will always be devoted to her, nor will I ever consider holding her back and deny her any part of her full potential."

Crédne stops walking and laughs out loud, bending over with both hands on his knees.

I stop too and turn to look at him, no doubt a worried frown on my face.

'Oh dear,' I think, 'this doesn't bode well. He is amused by my daring to even ask for his daughter's hand, like it was a joke of monumental proportion to him, or that he thinks that I am a joke to even ask the question. We will both be disappointed by his disapproval but I'm sure, well, maybe sure, that we can just continue to live together.'

"Which of my daughters to be sure do you desire?" he asks as his laughter subsides, "I do have seven delightfully beautiful daughters, as you know, most of whom are unattached."

"Oh. Er, Etain, of course."

"Of course, I knew which one you had chosen even as you asked but you surprised me with your first choice of question so I thought I'd better check, Brother Richard." He was still laughing lightly but now stood upright again. "Etain has been waiting for you, without realising who she was actually looking for, for many years. It was a burden that I imposed on her when she first entered this Otherworld. Yes, my Brother, you do have my blessing to marry her and I hope that the union is fruitful, although I hope you accept that there is a strong possibility that you may only have girl babies."

"Girls? Yes, of course, especially if they look like Etain, then girls will be fine, more than fine. My daughter Caoimhe would probably love to have any number of sisters, she doesn't like boys much at the moment, though I'm sure that will change in the next couple of years."

"Indeed Caoimhe will love all her sisters, she is a witch after all."

"So Bebhinn tells, Sir, it was a bit of a shock if I'm honest," I say, "Er, will that mean we need to have six girls, to make up a set for dancing in the faerie ring?"

Crédne laughs even louder than before, which I didn't think was possible.

Fortunately, we are standing alone in the grassland, with no sign in sight or sound of the dancing witches, only the slightly worn path in the grass to show me the way back to where I'd come from.

But then I think, if Crédne abandons me here as part of an immortal's mighty joke on the poor sap who thinks he can take away from him one of his precious daughters, would I be able to gain access to the portal to return to my world, even if all the girls are only just over on the other side?

He slaps me on the back, once, then a couple of times more, not violently, more like he is enjoying the craic, and he's still laughing at me. I feel as low as a worm right now.

"Brother Richard, your life henceforth will never be the same again, and I speak as a father of those same seven sweet and occasionally infuriating girls of mine. But I will never regret the begetting or the rearing ..." he pauses, his smile fading, "my only regret is that their mother chose her own path and not the preferred one of my choosing ... otherwise you could have met her here. But Etain will always be true to you, witches are universally renown for their steadfastness as well as the stubbornness that accompanies their every action. However, your first question to me was not the one I was expecting, brother."

"And that is...?" I ask.

And he replies to my enquiry with his anticipated question, "Why do I constantly call you 'Brother', brother?" His laughter is stifled but he still smiles with thick white eyebrows raised as he awaits my response.

"I did wonder at that, but immediately dismissed it as just a mode of speech, as I am not aware of your cultural conventions here in the Otherworld. Other than the sister witches, you are the only Otherworlder of my acquaintance. I was brought up by my parents to regard older men respectfully as 'Sir', and all adult women as 'Ma'am', and I sort of expected you to call me 'Young Man' or 'Son', even though I hadn't yet asked your permission to marry your daughter and, by implication, become your son-in-law."

"Ah, yes, well, in that case, I welcome you gladly as a new son. But you are still my brother, although you yet have no knowledge of that fact."

'How can you call me 'brother', I was not even born in Ireland, I know my father and mother, they are both American and are still at their home in Florida, I speak to them every couple of weeks, and I'm sure I've never seen you among my uncles or my parents' friends."

"Well, despite the apparent conviction you have of the circumstances of your birth, I still call you brother, Richard, because I recognise that you are indeed a Changeling, in fact The Changeling of legend and history. As such you could have been born anywhere on this world, especially as the world has gotten smaller recently and the mortals among who you live travelled further in more recent centuries. Your body was chosen as host partly by random and partly by relative proximity. Your previous body probably died close to where you were born or were living as a normal very young child. According to the legends that I have collected, most often the phenomenon of Changeling occurred between birth and two years old."

"My father's family are German but my grandmother on my mother's side was from Irish stock who moved to California about a hundred years ago. I was born in Santa Monica in 1981."

"I see. Now that I am close to you I find that I strongly sense my brother's presence but we cannot communicate, which I was expecting. When Kaetlynn first told me of your existence and her concerns for you when she joined us here a few months ago, I discounted the possibility of who you were completely at first. I did recognise that your daughter was a witch and therefore the daughter of a witch after I saw her dance from the edge of the circle a few days ago. Then, when I heard that you do not dream and insisted that you never had, I was intrigued and determined that I wanted to meet you in person at the earliest opportunity."

"So you and your brothers and sisters do not dream?"

"No, brother Richard, we, the Tuatha Dé Danaan, never sleep, we have no need to sleep, so how or why would we dream? Now do I have sisters? We immortals have no need to procreate a new generation so in our true form we have no gender. But that is a discussion we must have later. Now that I see you close to, and we have touched hands, I strongly sense my brother is here with us, within you, he actually is you. Your body is human and therefore it is necessary for your well-being and continual existence that your body has to sleep but the inner you, my brother, is always awake even if disconnected from the network of his brotherhood. I have searched for you for nigh on 2000 years but even though I have lived for eternity, it feels I have missed you, my brother, forever."

"So your brother is inside me? Who is he? How can you get him out?"

"Ah, there's the crux of our dilemma," he smiles in a way that is disconcertingly unhumorous.

"So, does that mean there is no simple solution to extract your brother and leave me ... er whole?"

He laughs again, only briefly and again without any humor, "Yes, Brother Richard, unfortunately, your body is mortal and would not survive any bodily extraction although we could duplicate your body exactly from the remnants with the addition of water and replace those volatile gases that would have escaped during the destruction of your body."

"Ah! That sounds ... painful," I suggest.

"You would definitely feel everything up to the point where you didn't of course," he shrugs. "At least here in the Tir na nÓg you are free of the witch's curse that you have endured for so long."

"Oh, God Damn!" I swear, "I am surrounded by curses! They'll literally be the death of me."

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Chapter 15: THE CHANGELING'S ROLE

"You do seem to have an unfortunate propensity to attract them, Brother Richard. This curse, once it runs its course, will mean the end of this human body but, in this Ptherworld, your true self will no longer be a Changeling suddenly bereft, urged by the witch's curse to randomly seek a body to inhabit at every inevitable failure of your human shell."

"Is your brother a sort of symbiotic infestation or is he something more sinister?" I ask.

"No, my Brother, you are in complete occupation of your human form, it happened for this body as a baby or young child and your memory-wiped consciousness was a blank canvas from which your present personality has evolved, completely shaped by your upbringing. There is nothing of your body's original consciousness left ... I'm afraid your parents' child has gone. This is why you are called "the Changeling", over the years, perhaps sixty, seventy or even a hundred times, you have died in one body and been resurrected in another, with no surface knowledge of your real self. It is a perpetual process of the witch's curse that has kept you from your own people for so many years."