The Witches of Slievenamon

I know, I know, my Dad's name doesn't sound Irish enough to have lived most of his life in the country I proudly call my own. He was actually born in America and he still has nephews, nieces and second cousins living over there that he keeps in contact with, even at a distance. When my US grandparents were still alive I used to visit them at least once every summer. They made interesting vacations especially as every other year (almost) we had to take new siblings of mine along to introduce to their Grammie and Pappy.

Etain popped out nine half-siblings, for me to remember all the birthdays and Christmases for, in all and says she could've kept going for eternity but Dad called a halt after nine saying that even extending the washing line across both cottages (now rejoined into one), they'd already run out of diaper space. And I do adore all my siblings and, like me, they were born mortal and are not immortal ... well, not yet. My half-siblings cannot hear me as all you can, but then they will all be present at the bedside awaiting my arrival. Dad will not start his passing until I'm there, he assures me.

After Etain departs I wake Pat up with a gentle shake of his shoulder.

"Wake up, Honey, it's time, I have to go."

"I wasn't asleep," he white-lies with his sweet slow smile of his that I love so dearly, "only resting my eyes so I was."

"Huh, and there I was thinking I was trapped in a busy sawmill with runaway machinery and no means of escape, I had to turn my hearing aid off cos you were wearing out my battery so you were."

"Get away with ya, and tell your Dad it's a fond fair play from us, will ya?"

"Aye, I will, you just sit on your hole, Hon, I've got this covered."

***

The cottage has a basement under about half the area covered by the upstairs building; it's basically underneath most of the original 18th century cottage, the part of the whole building that's closest to the road, the cottage extensions into what Dad still refers to as the 'backyard' is all 21st century with nothing under the new foundations but good solid Irish soil.

The basement was built as a cellar for storage, with low ceilings, so I have to stoop to avoid banging my head on the beams holding up the cottage floor. The space is divided into storage rooms with racks and shelves for jars of sweet or pickled preserves and storing fruit and winter veg until required. At the southern end of the cellar is a door that looks more like a cupboard door, but it is no ordinary door at all.

Any stranger snooping down here would find it locked but no keyhole can be seen. If a stranger smashed down the door all they would find behind it would be a brick wall with solid undisturbed Irish soil behind it.

The doorway is actually a portal to a room in the mythical Otherworld, the Tir na nÓg where the old rulers of the Emerald Isle departed in exile to under an ancient Treaty which long ago banished an entire people and brought peace to these precious shores, at least for a while.

I open the door with a touch, which swings open inwards freely under my hand; I have permission from the Tuatha Dé Danann to enter but I am not permitted to stay in the Otherworld long enough to sleep, eat or drink, otherwise I would not be permitted to return to my home other than for short visits to our Faerie Ring. The Treaty is quite precise and The Council ensures that it is enforced.

The room I enter through the door is a cosy traditional Irish parlour, with heavy curtains covering the windows, all dark timber furniture, flooring and exposed beams above and where I can now easily stand up straight. Beyond this parlour room is a bedroom that Crédne, Etain's father and my grandfather by marriage, opened up a few months ago for my father to sleep in, once he was ready to commit himself fully to the Otherworld instead of being an occasional visitor.

Yes, my father is now a permanent resident of the Otherworld, in these two rooms, a sort-of halfway house between two very similar yet vastly different worlds.

I step through into my father's bedroom and look around. My father, of course, is there, cheerfully sitting up in his double bed, returning my smile in greeting.

I glance around the bedroom, seeing first the three witches that approach me first with their warm embraces.

They are, in turn, my Aunt Bebhinn who is a beautiful brunette who you'd guess might be in her mid- to late-thirties; behind her my Aunt Kaetlynn, a red-haired, green-eyed woman of around 40 who is so beautiful that she could hold any man in thrall; and finally my step-mother Etain, who tucks my arm into hers.

Etain is in charge of today's proceedings, the wife of the man, my father who is about to pass away, and she is the mother to the man's other daughters who stand around the bedside, all wreathed in smiles.

And, on the other side of the bed are my three daughters and their daughters, here to say farewell to the head of the family who we will never see in our world again but hope we will still be able to visit here for many years to come.

It is the least likely example of the passing of the head of a family that it is even possible to imagine.

As Etain pulls me round with her arm, I see all my half-siblings, all of them in their late fifties or sixties now, then my other beautiful aunts, all bar one of whom are older sisters of Etain and, towering above them all, both in stature and in the power that he holds over us all, is Etain's father Crédne, who is therefore my grandfather by marriage while also my uncle if you can grasp that my father is also Crédne's brother.

Yes, my children and my forebears listening in to my otherwise silent commentary, we are a complicated family! And tonight it will be complicated even further.

Of course, my aunts all give me a squeeze in welcome, we've known each other ever since I was a little girl of 10 and they discovered that I was a witch a lot like them, descended from a long line of witches that I was only aware of gradually from about that age, but more about that later.

I am also squeezed in a hug by Crédne my father-in-law. He is something else.

Just being in his arms you can feel the power eminating from him, not surprising really as being this close to him is like being a skin's thickness from the power of a billion suns. No wonder people in the distant past in our island thought of him as a god.

My opinion is a little tarnished though by what I know of him. As for you, my children and grandchildren here and now, you know what is going on and a glance at you is all I need to know that we are all here as one.

***

Crédne is the reason why we are here. He is also the reason why Irish witches differ from my aunts. He is not of this world, or even of the Otherworld. He is actually a ball of pure fire that lives inside a huge sun, a star if you like, in a galaxy far from here. He is able to project his personality into the perfect shell of a man that he built for himself in a copy of the men he found here when he arrived. And over the passage of the hundreds of thousands of years he has been here, he replenishes the cells of his body from the very air around us, so he never ages. His power and energy comes from the star in which he lives. Thus he cannot die by ageing, to all intents and purposes he is immortal.

In Ireland's turbulent distant past, Crédne and his brothers (who also were from stars scattered across the universe) were involved in battles and their bodies could be cut and damaged, but they could be repaired given time. However, too much damage and the portal link between the body and mind might break and they would physically be gone forever, locked into their distant stars. Heavily outnumbered and losing too many brothers, the High Council of the Tuatha Dé Danann signed a Treaty with the invaders to leave these shores forever and they departed to the Otherworld, a similar world to ours, but for them it was just a portal doorway away.

However, one of the Tuath Dé missed this world and would revisit, defying the Treaty, cause a little mischief and the Elders of the High Council of Tuatha Dé Danann clamped down on the serious offenders, the worst of them being my father, know known as Richard Kloss, but in the distant past went by the name of Aengus.

You've all heard the story of the god-like Aengus and the witch Trixopheron, we've discussed it long and hard for half a century and now we have come to face the day that has been foretold but its outcome unknown.

***

"Caoimhe," my father says softly, patting the side of his bed where he is propped up on pillows. "Come sit by me. We must have a talk."

He looks up around the room. "Could you leave me with my eldest daughter for five minutes or so?"

And, our family starts to shuffle away, including Crédne, who squeezes my shoulder in passing, to move back into the parlour. Both the bedroom and parlour are in Tir na nÓg, the old cellar beyond is in Ireland, my home.

As they file past I notice the windows to the outside show a sunny day in the Otherworld, where it is always sunny, while in my world it was a dark early winter evening. I have been in this bedroom once before, and like tonight, it was so crowded that I couldn't see through the windows until now. When the door closes behind Etain, the very last to leave, I train my eyes onto my father, who smiles at me.

"Tonight is the night, Caoimhe," he smiles, "I have lived in this mortal body overlong. I'm tired and Etain tells me that at the grand old age of 108, I'm the fifth oldest person in Ireland and the second oldest Irish male, if I hang on here any longer then my continued existence and even my eventual demise might be newsworthy on your side of the portal and I want to avoid all that publicity."

"Aye, Dad, I can understand that. Do you feel ready to go?"

"Yes. I know what I have to look forward to now, all my long memories have returned to me while here in the Otherworld, where the witch's curse can't reach me but I was hoping to have a final plea for my eldest daughter to join me here. So, please move here, Caoimhe?"

"Sorry Dad, no can do."

"I can include Pat. I'm not yet completely conversant with the High Council Elders here, I won't be until I shrug off this mortal body, but Crédne has pleaded for my family on my behalf and tells me he was successful. You are family, Caoimhe and you and your children are the only ones of my nearest family who are holding out."

"Are all my siblings abandoning me and moving to the Otherworld, then?" I ask, already assuming they probably would. "Although I am not genetically linked with them—"

"—other than through me, of course!"

"Of course, but are all my siblings and their offspring joining you in committing to the Otherworld tonight?"

"No, only Etain,who is already immortal, is joining me and her sisters here in the Otherworld. We have discussed it individually and in family groups with our children and they all agree that they want to live most of their lives in your world and come move here when they feel the time appropriate to them. I guess people can't just disappear without concerning the authorities."

"And you say this has already been sanctioned with the High Council, through your brother Crédne?"

"Of course."

"The same High Council that, although they all share their thoughts collectively with the Tuatha Dé Danann, you cannot converse with them directly yourself?"

"Yes, Crédne says that once my human shell has died I will be one of the Tuatha Dé Danaan again."

"And you trust your brother Crédne in this regard, implicitly?"

"Of course, he is my brother."

"Is he your brother, or is he the brother of the spirit that lives in the human shell that is Richard Kloss, my father."

"He is my brother because it is the same thing. Since moving here out of the control of the witch's curse, I have day by day been regaining the memories of my previous lives—"

"All their memories, entirely, or only up to the point when each of them died, in other words up to when their human consciousness ended."

"Er, well," he thinks, and I can imagine him re-examining those memories again. "I guess they are only from while they were living."

"And you cannot converse with them as if they were still alive?"

"No, of course not, they are just memories, like recordings of when they were alive."

"Memories of dead people," I point out and ask, "What about the Tuath Dé inside you, what does he have to say about all these children of Richard Kloss coming into the Tir na nÓg? Is he or is he not in favour of all your family joining us here?"

"Well, as I am Richard Kloss, I want them with me, it is a great opportunity for them. And I want you and your offspring to come too, I've tried to encourage your children but they tell me ... with your objections —"

"I have no objections if individuals want to move here, it is just not for me, but I don't think moving here really works for my children or my grandchildren."

"But why object? My children with Etain are descendants of witches, your Irish aunts are all witches and, they assure me that you are descended from witches too. You witches as a group are different to ordinary people and I'm sure that you would be accepted here, like all your aunts have been."

"True, all your other children are witch descendants of Etain, who is descended from her father Crédne, while I am a witch descended from a different line of witches including my mother and, ever since I was about 10, I have been able to speak in my head to my mother, and over time to my children and my grandchildren, and all my female forebears. in fact I am speaking to them now and they are seeing and hearing our conversation."

"What, you're using a cell phone to record all this?" Dad asks, "Do they still work on this side, because there are no towers—"

"No, Dad," I say, "You have no reason to know this but most Irish witches have a sort of immortality that the descendents of Crédne appear to have lost."

"What do you mean by lost immortality?"

"Well, Crédne is not human, he has openly admitted that, so in order to impregnate a woman the Tuath Dé ejaculates a fluid containing a catalyst which stimulates a form of fertilisation by cloning, which appears in Bebhinn's opinion to damage the clone's genes," I say, "Shall I get Mum, Kaetlynn and Bebhinn in here so we can speak with you, to explain?"

"What, all the Three Witches of Slievenamon?" my Dad asks.

"Aye, the very same."

"Have the four of you been plotting something behind my back?"

"Not exactly, Dad, this is something that Bebhinn has been working on and we have been building towards this point for some months, ever since you decided you were old and frail enough to move permanently to Tir na nÓg, with Crédne's active encouragement."

"Well, I was old and frail and have felt it particularly recently in what is your world, but in the last month here in this place I've been feeling much better, stronger, with less aches and pains than before," he says, "so, what are you girls plotting for me?"

"Hardly plotting, we are only concerned for you, we've planned this ... talk, only for your benefit, Dad. They are waiting outside for my call, shall I get them in?"

"Sure, if we are going to have a showdown, let's get it over with, just bear in mind, Caoimhe, that I can never go back to your world, having slept and consumed food and water here, I belong here and the Treaty as I understand it forbids that I return."

"I know. That is why we do need to have this talk and it has to be now."

***

It takes just a crack of opening the door before the three Witches of Slievenamon squeeze past me and close and lock the bedroom door behind them.

In the brief time that the door is open, the strains of a Ceili band striking up some high tempo music and my relatives creating a distracting racket of clapping in time is shut off by the acoustic insulation of the door and the thick walls.

Bebhinn approaches my father first of the three witches, "Richard, I just want to say that just before Crédne first met you, my father and I had long argued about your DNA and Crédne imposed a spell on me that I was not to tell you the truth about your relationship with Caoimhe, do you remember?"

"Yes, you said that she was a clone of Ella, and that as I raised her I was still considered her only father, something that always puzzled me," Richard replied.

Bebhinn smiles, "I know. I was an expert in DNA, having been involved in the research ever since its discovery, so I knew perfectly well the DNA of Ella, you and Caoimhe, and aware that whoever the father is, however much stronger the male genes, true witches only have daughters. So I knew the truth of the relationship but I was ordered, no, compelled by a spell, not to tell you the truth about your relationship to your daughter. So I lied instead."

"You mean I am her father—"

"Yes." Bebhinn turns and stands next to Kaetlynn.

Etain moves to the side of the bed and is about to sit on the bed next to my father.

My father, sitting upright in bed, holds up his hands in the classic 'stop' signal.

"Hold on, all of you, including you, Etain. I don't know why you four are ganging up on me, but I was hoping that this evening would be a final opportunity to get Caoimhe, Pat and all my grandchildren on her side of my family to promise to join me here, not necessarily right this very minute, but in the future as convenient to each of their mortal lives. Instead of that, I've got you lot wanting me to do, well, I don't quite know what. Etain, you are my wife, please tell me what is going on."

"Can I sit next to you, Richard, Honey?" Etain says, biting the thumbnail of her left hand, "Please?"

Richard waves his hand palm upwards and Etain sits.

"You know I never deny you anything, Etain my love, but I will not be browbeaten into doing something that I do not want to do."

"And we, my love," says Etain soothingly, "are not here to browbeat you either, but we must make you aware of what we think is really happening here and we agreed among us that it should be me the one to tell you. And, as for the timing of this 'talk', this was the very best opportunity to include The Council, Crédne and Aengus in this next step and save you, save your life."

"Who's Aengus?" my father asks, his brow furrowed.

"Aengus was the Tuath Dé who was the lover of my ancestor Trixopheron," I butt in to say, "and Aengus is also the Changeling."

"But that's me, I'm the Changeling," my father insists, "er, aren't I?"

"You, my love," Etain says holding his hand in both of hers, "are the human shell of the Changeling, Aengus. He is the creature who lies within you that was cursed into suppression by Trixopheron when she discovered who he was and what he had planned, along with Crédne—"

"And what was he planning that brought on this curse?" my father interjects.

"They wanted, still want we believe," Etain continues, "to take over our world once again in defiance of the Treaty that the High Council still feel honour bound to uphold even after all these years. Aengus and Crédne never agreed with the Treaty that the Council agreed on and somehow Aengus found a way of disguising his thoughts and plans, hiding them from the collective consciousness that the Tuatha Dé Danann have always had. Once Trixopheron discovered Aengus's plans to defy the Council and take over her world, the only thing she felt she could do was break up the partnership with Crédne, a Tuath Dé who she had never met, by cursing Aengus to be forever imprisoned within a mortal and his immortal soul, for want of a better term, would, upon the death of the mortal, automatically seek a fresh baby to occupy time after time after time until the end of eternity."

"Wow! That is a fantastic theory," my father says, blowing out his cheeks. "But this is all ancient history to me. I am the Changeling, I moved from body to body and now that I am here, I cannot die I will not have to move to a new body and live my life here, with my family around me. What has now changed to put that wish and my life in danger?"