The Witches of Slievenamon

Such a great dancer, 12-year-old Katie, named after her great aunt Kaetlynn but always called by the familiar diminutive, dances into my bedroom, without missing a beat, and up to the side of my bed. I smile at her and can see from my peripheral vision that many faces from the outer room press their faces into the doorway, with Crédne actually stooping his head to get his tall frame into the bedroom.

Now the folk tune changes to a chant, a repetitive chant of maybe 18 or 20 syllables, that has little musicality to it, but everyone in the bedroom and the room beyond chant with gusto at the same time. Even little Katie stops dancing immediately the chant starts and she joins in.

Crédne looks up, his eyes open in shock as the ancient tongue reverberates around the two rooms. Now, bare moments later, it looks like the life is being sucked out of him and he folds up like a leaky balloon and slips towards the floor.

At the same time bits of skin and hair are left suspended in the air momentarily, only to be sucked back to suddenly disappear, going back where those atoms must have come from.

I feel an odd burning in my chest, just for a second or two, and I shoot bolt upright in my bed, so high that I can see the floor where Crédne had stood in the doorway. The polished wooden floor is completely empty, as if he has disappeared by magic, witch's magic. The burning in my chest fades just as the chanting stops and I sink my head back into the pillow with a sigh.

"Are you all right?" Etain asks anxiously.

"I'm fine, sweetheart," I reply. "In fact, I feel energised enough to get up and get dressed. But are WE all right, are we safe?"

Etain smiles that beautiful smile that is never far from my conscious thoughts. "I think we're fine, not only safe but free, free for the first time in my long life." She squeezes my hand, "Crédne's gone, because I can hear my mother and grandmother calling me and hear my sisters all replying. I believe that Crédne's control and suppression of us is at an end and my sisters and daughters are true Witches again."

xXx

Many years later

The cottage in Slievenamon Road is buzzing. We have just laid the body of my eldest daughter, Caoimhe, to rest in Killinan cemetery, Thurles, buried next to her loving husband Pat who left us a few years ago and sorely missed, and we are back to hold the kind of cheerful wake that we in the family of witches can freely enjoy.

Caoimhe was a frail old lady when she passed, a mortal witch respected and loved in the world in which she lived all her life.

Caoimhe tells me now that she loves the beautiful flowers in the church and the hearse and, if she had eyes, she says that they'd be brimful of tears, and is especially happy that all the tribute flowers, in the form of bouquets, will find their way to the local hospital to be further enjoyed by those in need and not wasted.

That is the thing with witches, they enjoy a kind of immortality by living on within the minds and consciousness of their living offspring, and in my case, their immediate forebear.

I had not been aware of that until that night in Etain and my bedroom and together with my whole enlarged family that we confronted the evil Crédne and destroyed the hold this rogue Tuath Dé had held over my family for so long. Freed of his influence and, with Caoimhe's help, I have been able to communicate with my children and children's children, whether they reside in your world or mine.

Why was I able to attend Caoimhe's funeral in Thurles? Well, the High Council have the ears of the Witches of Slievenamon, as they never tire of hearing their story repeated over and over. The Council formally informed me that, because we had made them aware of the treachery of Aengus and Crédne, and that both consciousnesses were now safely contained for all time within my immortal body, I was granted leave to go between our two worlds at will.

Besides, the Council pointed out, the Treaty applied only to the Tuatha Dé Danann and, as an American born Irish descendant and that the Tuath Dé within me were completely undetectable by any known human process, my visits to your world did not contravene the Treaty that the Council still hold dear.

I could live in Ireland if I wanted, I do miss the gentle transition of seasons, but Etain and I mostly live in the forever sunny Otherworld and climb up from the cellar and visit with grandchildren as often as we can.

I cannot use either of my dual-nationality passports to visit Stateside to see my great nephews and niece, of course, my passport pictures are of an octogenarian, which I no longer resemble. I guess I'm in my 130s now but have the looks of a mid-forties' man.

Etain told me long ago that the immortality of the Otherworld would automatically adjust my appearance to my best years and my forties are when Etain and I had most of my second crop of offspring, and I was perhaps at my happiest.

Anywho, passports are unnecessary, there are portals everywhere and Etain and I enjoy Thanksgiving with my American relatives and Christmas with my Irish great grandchildren.

When we are out and about, with me cutting quote a dash as a sophisticated middle-aged man with a cute 19-year-old on my arm, no-one would ever guess Etain is a great-grandmother and approaching 1800 years old, but then for us life is good and therefore it follows that everlasting life is nothing short of grand.

The end