The Witches of Slievenamon

"Now that you are in the Tir na nÓg," Etain replies, "Trixopheron's curse has no effect here. You've already been told that by Crédne and that part of what you have been told is true. So, if your mortal body dies and dies here, away from our world, Aengus will no longer be locked into the curse of moving to a new mortal body, where he will be locked in for yet another human lifetime. No, now, he will be freed from the curse and able to take over your dead body and, after reconnecting with his original self, with all the energy of his distant star, he will replace all the worn-out cells of your body and assume what passes as life for a Tuath Dé. He will probably pretend to be you for a while and a little confusion of his mind passed off as normal, but you, Richard my Love, will be gone, dead, and Aengus will be able to team up with Crédne once more and become gods in our world."

"But that is not what is supposed to happen, is it?" Richard asks, some of his confidence in tonight's proceedings somewhat uncertain.

"Let Caoimhe explain," Etain says, "But we will have to cover our ears and turn away from both of so that our eyes do not see your lips move."

Etain got off the bed and walked over to the others who turned and faced the window looking out. As if one woman, they all covered their ears at the same time and turned to face out of the window onto the sunny day of Tir na nÓg and gently hummed in harmony to ensure not a word of my conversation with my father got through.

Richard shakes his head and turns to me, mouthing a silent 'Why?'

"It's all right, Daddy, Aengus cannot communicate with anyone and Crédne cannot hear us through my aunts' senses," I tell him, "our conversation is just between you, I and all my forebears, your thoughts and senses are all your own and cannot be tapped into, so we can speak freely, if a little softly."

"Go on then, Caoimhe, stand here before me and please explain." My father has that stubborn and determined look that I know so well is only a façade where his loved ones are concerned, but I am wary not to regard his love as being weakness.

"Ever since I reached puberty or even a few years before, Dad, I found myself thinking more of my mother, wondering who she was and what she sounded like, especially after Etain came into our lives and assumed the role of my mother so well." Caoimhe says, "And as time went by, I heard my mother calling to me and at last I replied."

"When was this, Sweetheart?" Richard asks his daughter.

"When I was about 11 or 12," Caoimhe replies, "My mother Ella told me that this ... communication ... happens to witches, that we can speak to and hear from all in the long line of my forbears. This ability exists between us and usually when a witch approaches adulthood, those connections open up and usually start with your nearest dead forbear, in my case the mother I never knew. Can you accept, Dad, that this is true, that I am not lying to you?"

"I can, Sweetheart, I believe you, if you tell me you can do this ... well, I believe you. Mind you, if you said this to me when you were a little girl and before I accepted the knowledge that witches, curses and other worlds exist, I might not have."

We smile together and my father reaches out a hand, which I gladly hold.

"Ella told me that she thought my meeting Etain and growing to accept her as my new mother and, being in a loving family, triggered this early reaching out by me to seek out my mother. And dancing with my aunts in the moonlight and talking with them, being recognised as a fellow witch, allowed my mind to open up to such latent possibilities and that allowed Ella in to reach me. The younger me couldn't have accepted such a connection."

"Oh my word, Caoimhe, Sweetheart," Richard says, tears forming in his eyes as he reaches out his left hand to hold both my hands. "I really do believe you. What a wonderful experience it must be for you."

"It was and is, she's with me all the time. Then my Grammy joined her even while she was alive and especially now that she is gone as far as the world we know is concerned, yet she's with me enjoying all the little moments that I share with my children and grandchildren. They support me with advice and healing tips mostly, helping me to be a better witch."

I feel a tear escapes my left eye and spills down my cheek. Richard releases one of his hands and wipes the moisture away with a tender swipe of his thumb.

"My mother told me this connection with her mother and mother's mother didn't happen to her until she met you, when she was about 19 or 20. As a teenager she had ignored all these faint dreams of past lives until she saw you in that pub that first evening. She thought she felt a unique and strong connection with you, that you weren't a stranger but something more."

"I felt that too. I couldn't take my eyes off of her, not only was your mother the most beautiful girl that I'd ever seen until but I felt that my heart ached for her from first sight."

"I know, I can not only converse with my forebears but I can feel everything they feel and they can feel everything that I experience. Ella fell in love with you at first sight, Daddy. Trixopheron within her recognised you, instantly knew that you were her Aengus reborn. Trixopheron hadn't had any connection with Aengus since she cast the curse, almost two thousand years ago, and she was mightily glad that Aengus was still contained within you and not unleashed onto our world. It was Trixopheron that thought it might be amusing to spend time with you, but it was Ella that fell in love with you. We think that you were attracted to Ella because subconsciously Aengus within you, while dormant and powerless, was drawn to Trixopheron through her."

"No, I don't think it was the Tuath Dé inside me that was drawn to Ella. It was because she was the most beautiful person I had met until then," Richard insists, "Only you and Etain have come close in beauty. And you say you can talk to Ella?"

"I can, do you want me to allow Ella to speak to you?"

"You can do that?"

"I am told that I need to sit, or I might fall down, Ella hasn't controlled a body since before I was born," Caoimhe smiles, "And, if you will permit it, Trixopheron also wants to speak to you but she will have to do it though Ella because, although she has tried to keep up with changes in accents and language, she has only tried to learn English in the years since I was born and 'old dogs' don't learn such new tricks easily."

I suddenly jerk forward a touch and laugh at the little slap I felt. "Trixopheron has just slapped my shoulder, Dad. It's really odd, like being slapped from the inside, very funny feeling, but I can feel her smiling, too, which is nice because this is otherwise a serious moment. So, will you allow Trixopheron to speak to you through Ella and answer any questions you might have?"

"If it is important to the decision I made a few years ago about my future in this place, that was made on the advice of my wife's father and seemed to be approved at the time by Etain, then I need to know everything, absolutely everything so I can make an informed choice. Are Etain and her sisters in league with what you and your mother want me to agree to?"

"They are but they cannot think about it or even read or write about it. We have discussed this but always in code,"

"Code?"

"Every third word in our conversation about this night is the message we exchange with each other. We cannot allow others who are descendants of Crédne to hear what we say because he is tuned into whatever any one of them say, see, hear or think."

"So he can understand what they think?" Richard asks.

"Yes," I remind him, "the Tuatha Dé Danann are a hive species that are pure energy. They have no working parts, they are a collective consciousness and they are as old as the universe. Being a single consciousness means that they share every bit of knowledge learned, and feel every experience. They can project that consciousness to wherever there is an existing Tuath Dé and can replicate a form around themselves to fit into their surroundings, but that copy is only a simple reflection using what materials are available. They can build bone and muscle and nerves etc, but it is only a basic unnatural copy, which is why they do not need to breath or eat and drink to survive and, as cells decay, they are replaced with materials from that distance star that sucks in any elements that are nearby."

"All right, Caoimhe, let me hear what Ella has to say, but this is going to be so freaky speaking to my late wife."

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Chapter 17: NEW CURSE FOR OLD

"Hello, Richard, my love," I hear the South West Irish intonation in Ella's voice, once so familiar to me that I recognise her even after over seventy years since I last heard her. The thought flashes into my head that I guess Ella and Caoimhe as mother and daughter must have very similar vocal chords, I have always thought that my daughter favoured her mother's looks on the outside and, apparently, that similarity runs deeper.

"Hi, right back at you, honey," I croak back, my own vocal chords affected by emotion and the realisation that what was happening wasn't fantasy, otherwise, how could Caoimhe possibly know exactly what her mother sounded like? I had no audio or video recordings of Ella, her death was so unexpected by me. As far as I was concerned, we had made no plans to preserve anything of her other than a few grainy snaps as her pregnancy grew; we had more ultrasound images of the baby than we did of the mother. "I guess I'm barely recognisable to you from our married days, hey El?"

"Oh, I've seen you mature through Caoimhe's eyes, ever since she opened up her perception of me, since she was about 10 or 11, before I was even really fully linked with her. You are very familiar to me, like an old—"

"Glove?"

"Old friend, an old friend who I have dearly loved all my life and all my afterlife through Caoimhe and all her daughters and daughters' daughters. I can only hope that our spell works today and that you can continue to endure, dear man, and we can still have these conversations from time to time," Ella says through Caoimhe, "otherwise the alternative is untenable."

"And what do you fear as the alternative?" I ask.

"My fear is that when we join forces between the might of my ancestor Trixopheron and our combined delivery of a curse that we have formulated and rehearsed, along with the necessary delivery of that curse through the three Witches of Slievenamon, that we will not be powerful enough. And if that is the case I am sure that Crédne will wreak a terrible revenge."

"How?" I ask.

"As soon as the Witches turn to face us and Trixopheron, through Caoimhe, starts to recite the curse through the old Celtic tongue and the Witches repeat it word for word, that Crédne could call upon the billions of minds in his hive to drown us out before the curse is completed. We have pared the curse down to as sparse as we can get it in the old tongue and still have only one clear interpretation; we have rehearsed it over and over for the last lifetime ready for this day. We have fed it through to the Witches through Caoimhe's third word code over the past twenty years or so but of course, there can be no full rehearsal, nor could the Witches even think about the sequence of the curse. If Crédne has had any inkling of what we plan, he has not revealed it yet. We know that the Grand Council of the Tuatha Dé Danann are unaware of Crédne and Aengus's deception in hiding their thoughts and deeds from the hive, but we have no direct way of communicating to them. So we could easily be thwarted and everything lost."

"So, Ella, you've had years to think this through and I'm only just coming to this, what could happen if you fail and Crédne succeeds in repelling your curse?"

"He could kill you, my love," Ella says, "that would render everything that we are trying to do to save you to an end. That would release Aengus's consciousness and he could bring your body shell back to life, repair any damage that caused your death and your body would act in cooperation with the rebel pair of Tuatha Dé Danann to persuade the High Council that you are still who you always were and discredit anything the Witches or any of their sisters said. The hive would never be able to accept that two of their number could hide their thoughts from the hive, they believe that is impossible. Then we think Crédne could still block all his descendants from testimony, we believe he could hold that power over them, and the Council would never believe any testimony from the rest of us who are unrelated to you. He could kill Caoimhe and blame it on old age or a heart attack and the Witches would be prevented from saying anything."

"So there's a lot more at stake that just my life?" I ask.

"Aye, my love, our whole world is at stake. Aengus is the power behind the whole scheme that Trixopheron's curse put a hold on. He owned up to Trixopheron in a boast how upset he was with the Treaty that banned any Tuath Dé from their playground. They planned to defy the Council and their Treaty, conquering our people and lording it over mankind like gods, hidden from the hive and, with no other Tuath Dé interested in our world, they could do this as well as benefit from being part of the hive. They would have had no compunction to destroy anyone who stood in their way. Trixopheron wants me to tell you her story."

"OK," I agree, what other choice do I have? I am in this up to my scrawny neck. I could die in a few minutes, snuffed out by virtual Gods and only an hour ago I was looking forward to immortality and sharing in the enjoyment of having my family around me.

Ella, speaking from within my daughter Caoimhe's body, nods and closes her eyes, presumably as she connects with her ancestor, the witch Trixopheron, the one who delivered the curse that ended up with her lover Aengus occupying my body when I was a baby. I confess, I cannot understand how I am able to contain such a powerful creature, but I had long been convinced that I was the immortal living in a mortal shell, but I am now certain that Ella is right, that my mortal life is now in danger.

Ella's eyes open. "Trixopheron's English is poor, she understands more than she can speak but the conscious link we have is similar to how the brain gathers signals from different nerves, thoughts are not necessarily in a spoken language and understanding transcends that, so I can use my words to explain to you, OK?"

"Yeah, OK."

"Trixopheron was the most powerful witch in Ireland which was much more of a matriarchal society than now. Sure, the kings and warriors appeared to be in charge, but it was the women who were really calling the tunes, and Trixopheron was picked out by this lone tall and handsome warrior who appeared in the village one day. He courted Trixopheron, who was a chieftain's daughter and the daughter of a powerful witch who, like me, had died in childbirth. Aengus, he called himself and he was a powerful warrior who defended the village against pirates and was soon regarded as the new chieftain. He took Trixopheron as his bride and she took him to husband gladly."

"He must've cut quite a dash, if he looked like Crédne," I remark.

"Aye, he did," Ella smiled, "they tried to have children for many years and Trixopheron eventually had two miscarriages, one almost going halfway through and the creature aborted was a monster which they hastily buried. The miscarriages upset Aengus greatly and he was a cruel man when driven to lose his temper. Then a stranger who we now know as Crédne came to the village, as you said, they were like twins in appearance. Trixopheron heard them speaking one night over the fireplace. She heard them say that they had to talk while they closed their minds off from the Council and all their fellows. They spoke in the native tongue because they usually communicated without language, so they had no tongue of their own."

"Curious," I comment, "I never thought of that."

"Indeed, but that was part of their disguising their purpose in defiance of the Treaty, something the Council were sworn to uphold. They laughed about the success of their deception and then the stranger held up a vial, saying he had worked on the serum and thought he had perfected it. Aengus drank the contents of the vial and they laughed about how the next child would be a male who would be a powerful hybrid of Tuath Dé and human, would only share thoughts with the two of them and they would build an army that would take over the world. As far as Aengus was concerned this was his world, he had discovered it and encouraged others to join him but they had become disillusioned by the wars and violence and were drifting away, had preferred to inhabit the Otherworld to this one."

"So what did Trixopheron do?" I ask.

"She refused him sex for a few days, saying her period was in, and thought about what she could do about the position she was in. Her forebears were consulted, obviously, all of them horrified that she would give birth to a son, as true witches only ever have daughters."

"Really?" I ask, "I know that all my children and grandchildren are girls but I'm sure Etain said that Kaetlynn once had a son."

"Aye, that is the problem with the serum that Crédne claimed to have perfected, all his children that survived the womb were all daughters, and all the males conceived were miscarriages. Kaetlynn did have a son by her first husband but he was never a strong man and his children were never true witches. It looks like Crédne abandoned the idea of raising an army of sons and is only awaiting the awakening of Aengus to embark on his conquering of our world together. I think he believes that Aengus is cruel and despotic enough to rule on his own with Crédne as his willing lieutenant."

"Well, Ella, I am convinced. So what is my role in all this? Do I just close my eyes and think of Ireland, or do I have to be more active? I'm not as young as I used to be in your day, you know."

Caoimhe smiles, her smile so much like my Ella, but I know it is Ella that speaks, "You just sit quietly my love, Caoimhe will take the lead as she has all the way through this."

Ella blinks and I instantly know that my daughter Caoimhe is back. She smiles, squeezes my hand and turns to the three witches who have their backs to the bed and their hands over their ears; they are still humming an old Irish folk tune I seemed to remember Etain singing while working her magic in the kitchen.

She touches Etain on the shoulder, and still humming, the three sisters turn as one to face me and smile. If anything the humming grew in volume, before they started singing the words to a folk song in Gaeilge, a language I'm afraid to say, I never learned because everyone I knew speaks English and translates anything in the Irish native tongue for me. Whatever the meaning of the words, the sound they make is beautiful music to my ears and, by opening their lips to sing after the humming, their smiles are even more beautiful.

Caoimhe moves to the door leading to the parlour. As soon as the door cracks open I can hear the same song being sung in exact timing in the other room and, as the door swung open fully, I can hear the taps of a single dancer, a girl, her back to me, her hands jammed close to her side, her upper torso bobbing up and down, otherwise not moving, while her legs beat out the tune that I could hear everyone one of my family singing along to.

Crédne stands impassively smiling at the girl dancing but his lips are not moving to reflect the glorious sounds that surrounds us.

The dancing girl turns, smiles in the pleasure of her dance and moves through the open doorway towards me.

She's Katie, one of Caoimhe's granddaughters. I am surprised and very pleased, because I didn't realise that any of my great granddaughters from my eldest daughter's side of the family were going to attend my "passing".