The Witches of Slievenamon

So, when these eight pretty chicks checked me out, I maintained my pose at the bar as relaxed as I could, gripping my half-drunk pint in one hand, and I gave them my usual crooked smile and a 'John Wayne' two-fingered US-Cavalry salute from my forehead with the other hand.

Ella later soberly admitted that she thought I looked hot through her "beer goggles" and all the girls on her table had agreed with her.

I only had eyes for the girl with the red hair, her huge eyeglasses, emerald green eyes and her cute unblemished face, spotted with delightful freckles. If I believed in love at first sight, and now I guess I really do, that was the moment that Ella stole my heart and she must've filed it away in her pocket.

I was too shy to approach the table of course, I was a computer programming and systems nerd. I saw other guys kept buying them drinks and the redhead girl, I didn't know her as Ella at the time of course, got steadily more and more drunk.

When one of the booze-buyers tried to pull her out of her chair to separate her from the others in the cute girl herd and probably intending to take her outside, I stepped in.

I was tall and one-drink-only sober and had a determined look in my eye, so the young guy decided the girl wasn't worth the risk of expensive dental work.

All the girls at the table were totally wasted by then and Ella couldn't even tell me where she lived, so I took her back to my tiny one-person apartment; it wasn't far but I had to carry her for the last third of the walk.

She projectile vomited in my tiny bathroom as soon as we got home. I sat on the bathroom floor with her, keeping her lovely hair out of the toilet bowl until her stomach seemed empty. I propped her up in bed with pillows behind her to stop her rolling off onto her back and I slept on the lumpy old sofa that was at least two-feet too short for my sleeping comfort.

Ella was deeply embarrassed on Saturday morning when she woke up late and alone in my bed and realised she didn't know where she was or even know my name!

We quickly made introductions and she was grateful that I had not undressed and molested her. I explained that a belligerent youth had been trying to drag her off and none of her female friends were in a position to do anything about it. She was shocked, but admitted she hardly knew the girls, having only moved into the dorms in the previous six or seven days.

I plied her with lots of drinking water and aspirin and walked her safely home to the female dorms after a light lunch in a nearby cafe. I managed to get a date with her for a movie on Friday night. One date turned into a string of dates and we soon became inseparable even though we both kept up to date with our respective courses of study.

I married 21-year-old Ella Bernadette Walsh in 2006, in the Civil Registration Office in Cork.

I fell for her because for me it was love at first sight, a feeling only reinforced by every waking moment that I spent with her and getting to know the wonderful person that she was.

I think she only gradually fell in love with me because around me she felt safe, was more confident, funny and her bubbly personality was allowed to be released; she regarded me as her white knight and often called me by her pet name of 'Sir Richard'.

As a newly-married couple we rented my flat in Cork for a couple of years, after qualification and, after settling unto local jobs in Cork, her parents Bernie and Bill offered to match the amount of money I had managed to save and we used the lump sum as a deposit on a house.

We wanted to buy a house in a small town within a hour's commute by train from Cork, but El fell in love with one half of this pair of cottages on the edge of Thurles, which was between 1hr 17 to 1hr 24 minutes away by train and we were another 4.1km from the town station. She commuted by train to Cork every weekday, while I used our only car to call on customers, where I serviced computers and server systems mostly in the towns across the southernmost counties of Ireland.

We were delighted to find this old cottage and at such a low price that we were able to raise enough finance credit on the mortgage to extend and modernise it into a family house.

Then Ella fell pregnant, which, once confirmed, meant seven months of joyful anticipation and then my heart was broken beyond repair when El died giving birth to our daughter.

If it wasn't for our kind neighbour Katie Wisniewski's offer to babysit at all hours of the day and night for most of the last ten years, so that I could work and hold down a demanding job, I would never have pulled through and brought up my daughter Caoimhe.

Now I find out that our kind elderly neighbour, who was so helpful while I dealt with the tragedy of losing a wife, and took on the responsibility of a baby to look after, was a witch who had known all along that my lovely wife was going to die and she did nothing about it.

***

I feel I have lain in bed and grieved more than long enough for today and, looking at my cell phone I find I have been here dreaming of my wife and dozing on and off now for two and a half hours.

I can't really blame Caoimhe for mentioning the fateful foretelling of my wife's timeline, her mother's death, so candidly. After all, she never knew her mother. She has lived all her life with just a father and monthly visits to or from her Irish grandparents in Killorglin, Co Kerry, and roughly annual visits to or from my parents in California, all in the days before Covid.

Of course she has fond memories of her "Aunt Katie" next door, while I am now filled with a loathing rage for the woman who knew when my wife would die and yet she kept me in ignorance.

Why hadn't Katie warned us that she had read Ella's future, that she would die in less than two years after we moved to this house? Could Katie have done something about it? If she advised us not to have children; we could've maybe adopted. Anything to save my dear sweet Ella. Could Katie at least have prepared me for this tragedy?

Still, nothing I can do about it now. And I cannot blame Etain for her sister's actions, she wasn't here ten or even twelve years ago when we first moved in, she's only the messenger, and she says that she can't read my future either, nor Caoimhe's. I've got questions and I need answers and won't get them lying in bed. Besides, I missed breakfast and it's getting on for lunchtime.

***

I am met with a girly "Whoop!", then a cry of "Daddy!", followed by a guided missile of pretty solid ten-year-old daughter who hits me head-on in the doorway between the foot of the stairs and the kitchen diner.

Caoimhe is a continually prodding reminder of Ella, being almost a clone of my dear dead wife. I am not always reminded of my late wife because Caoimhe is a girl with her own personality, but at times like now, when I having been thinking about Ella for most of my dreams and, being awake these past recent hours, seeing the top of her head as she buries her face in my chest, I feel awash with emotion, not all pain or sorrow, nor the regret which is always in the background, no, I am filled with an eternal love for both my girls without question.

For Caoimhe to even exist, the thought insinuates into my consciousness, then Ella was the sacrifice which made her possible.

I look up. Etain is in the kitchen, frozen, looking at father and daughter sharing a moment that she is not a part of.

Leaving one hand holding my daughter to me, I raise the other and stretch it out in silent invitation to our house guest, a guest who promises to be more in our lives than a mere presence. Our eyes lock and she drops whatever unseen cooking implements she holds and runs towards us.

I smile as she automatically rubs her hands down her apron as she runs, which makes her run like only a girl runs, all hips, the flap of the apron as her knees kick the material up which never has time to settle before the other knee kicks it up again. All seen in the periphery of my vision, our eyes never leaving go of each other's eyes until the last moment when her smiling face buries itself into my shoulder.

I clap these two angels to me, one a tiny titian pixie, the other a taller, slightly-built black-haired goddess, and feel two wet spots growing on my tee as the girls' emotions express themselves in tears and desperate clinging embraces.

I kiss Etain's head, then stretch my head down to kiss Caoimhe's fuzzy top of her head, the action moving Etain a little away from my shoulder.

Caoimhe looks up, her face wet with tears, "I'm sorry, Daddy, I didn't think that bringing up Mummy would upset you so.... Etain explained that knowing when someone is going to die when there is nothing that can be done about it is difficult to grasp. It's like discovering a cancer inside someone you care about that has already got too firm a grip to let go.

"That she was my Mum, that this thing happened to her because of me being born, means so much more to you, because she was your whole world. But for me she was simply someone that I never knew other than what you've told me. OK, I've seen the pictures, I have one on my nightstand. I love Mummy, sort of, have even dreamed of her, but she always has been and always will be only a stranger to me."

She allows a sob to escape before continuing, "You had a wife who you loved enough to have a baby with ... me. I've never known what it is like to have a mother, so to me her ... loss ... is not something I've ever really had to cope with, because you've been both Mummy and Daddy all rolled into one for me all my life. Now, hopefully, you will fall in love with Etain and I could have a real Mummy at last."

"It's a bit early for that, Sweetie," I say but, as Etain is also looking up at me without expression on her face, from where she presses her cheek into my shoulder, I kiss them both again, this time on the forehead of each and they smile back at me.

"Let's take this one step at a time, my pair of sweethearts," I say, "I need a coffee immediately and then let's get lunch prepared and out of the way so we can sit down and clear up what is happening to our family and what we need to do about us going forward. OK?"

"Okey dokey, Da," Caoimhe grins.

"To be sure," Etain says before reaching forward and kissing me gently on the lips, her soft lips melt into mine, her hand ruffling the short hairs at the back of my head. It is only a kiss for a few seconds, but it feels nice and I feel relaxed as I felt once before when she kissed me.

"Are you working your magic on me?" I ask gently, without censure. Who could ever criticise such a gentle, loving kiss?

"A little, only a little," Etain admits, "Just to relax and soothe you, Richard. I, or certainly we, upset you earlier with our thoughtlessness and I sense you are still tense and concerned. I want to assure you that I desire only for you and Caoimhe to be happy. My own happiness is secondary to both yours. I think you know what I want from this ... whatever 'this' is ... and I know you have concerns about who I am, what I am, and also about the relationship you once had with my sister, a relationship that has been shaken somewhat by my revelations."

"I had thought that we were friends, your sister and I, friends who looked out for one another."

"You were friends, great friends. Kaetlynn loved you both, Richard, you and Ella, and Caoimhe once she arrived here." Etain says, "I know you have concerns that Kaetlynn used you, that she had designs for your future and therefore allowed Ella to die for reasons known only to herself and not divulged to you at the time. Some of your concerns hold a little truth but not the whole truth. Come, you are thirsty and hungry and Caoimhe and I have prepared a vegetable soup for our meal that will be easy to heat up for an early lunch and will lie light on our stomachs while we face a few facts about what has happened in the past and what fantastic possibilities lie in the future, in all our futures."

***

Lunch is as delicious and light as Etain promised, cooked on our electric stove, with Caoimhe having showed Etain how the electric oven and ceramic hobs work.

Caoimhe and I have often prepared simple meals in the kitchen together as I have played the "Mom" side of bringing up a lively and inquisitive girl on my own. She enjoys food prep more than I, which is a bonus for me and I often praise her for the great job she makes of learning to cook, even if I have to do most of the clean-up afterwards.

After lunch, we sit in the back yard as the day is warm with non-threatening fluffy white clouds in a light blue sky and the back of the house faces due west and therefore benefits from the afternoon sun.

Summer in Ireland is always wet, which is why the country is so green and lush, but today is one of those dry ones filled with the soft light much more reminiscent of the spring which has become my favourite time of the year in this part of the world.

"Kaetlynn did not see you and herself as a couple after Ella was gone, Richard," Etain says as we sit comfortably after lunch in the unfolded canvas chairs that I keep dry in the garden shed. Caoimhe perches perilously close to the edge of hers, swinging her legs while rapturously glued to every word that Etain and I exchange. "She tried to talk me into staying with her and meeting you and the baby, but after many years of spinsterhood, I couldn't do it at that time, I wasn't ready."

"Well, I wouldn't have been interested in romance, even after coping with my loss. Katie was an old woman, in her 80s at least," I guess, "or that's how she appeared, even if she was really, I dunno, about 1600 years old, you say?"

"She is actually just four years older than I am, Richard," she smiles at me with almost a smirk, "but, she was some twenty years or so behind me in ageing before she first visited the Otherworld."

"And that made a 60-year difference?"

"No, of course not," she smirks and stares at me intensely and she changed in front of my eyes!

I sit up in shock at the vision suddenly revealed to me, gripping the arms of my chair and almost rising to my feet until the moment passes.

"What the hell!?" I exclaim, shocked at what momentary change I had seen in Etain's facial appearance.

Just for a few seconds, Etain had turned into a white-haired old lady with multiple wrinkles and, just as instantaneously, turned back again into a youthful twenty-year-old brunette.

It was like a bolt of lightning to my visual senses and a total shock to my grip on reality.

Caoimhe reacts only to my reaction with, "What's wrong Dad?"

My daughter doesn't appear to have noticed any of that momentary change at all in Etain's appearance.

Etain turns to her and explains, "I can fog the minds of people, sweetheart, and only fog the minds of people I want to influence. Just for a moment, your Daddy saw me as Kaetlynn allowed you and your father to see her in recent years, looking like an old woman. Whenever I visited here, and that was never once during the twelve years while your father and Ella or you and your father were living here, I would have seen your 'Aunt Katie' as she really was, a beautiful woman in her prime, apparently looking like a forty-year-old who had taken good care of herself. Her sweet husband, Piotr Wisniewski, would have enjoyed seeing her as (and making love to) the beautiful young woman she really is all his life, until he died aged in his nineties, but to everyone else, say the clerk in the post office, or the shop keeper when she collected her messages, would have seen her fogged image, ageing gracefully from her forties through to her eighties during the most recent years that she lived here.

"That is how she lived anywhere without question over the last 1600 years. She lived in Dublin and in Cashel before that, changing her appearance back to a young woman every fifty years or so as she pretended to be her aunt's or grandmother's heir moving into the property she'd owned for centuries. It is how she was able to get away with living here and in other places on and off for the 200 years since she had this pair of cottages built for her and Bebhinn."

"Is this 'fogging' a magic trick?" I ask.

"If 'magic' is defined as anything that witches can do that you cannot explain by your knowledge of science and matter, then, yes, you can call it 'magical', but for us witches, influencing what people see is perfectly natural, it is what we do. Remember, Witches throughout history are famed for making potions and fortune telling and sometimes we use a little misdirection so that the expectations of our customers are realised. They expect us to look into crystal balls, deal cards or examine tea leaves in cups but we really don't need to do any of that. Look at that bee over there by the daisies; I can 'see' her future if I want to, just by her closeness; I know where she was flying to today, what flowers she will visit and exactly when she will return to the hive; if I allow myself to delve deeper into her future I can see when she will die ... yes, there it is, I can see the sun is shining and she is nestling into an almost ripe sunflower yielding its last grains of pollen, so it is late summer and she is overcome by exhaustion and she dies there, happy and contented, pleased to have lived a good and productive life. I cannot tell when exactly that will be, I can only 'feel' when it will be. Kaetlynn was able to see your Ella die as she gave birth to her daughter Caoimhe here, it was a clearly identifiable moment in time. Kaetlynn told me that she could see Ella as a young woman, exhausted, in pain but happy that she learned she had a daughter before she passed and was also content that you, Richard, would not be left alone. She loved you and gave you the greatest gift that she could possibly leave you."

"Oh, my God," I murmur.

Etain and Caoimhe hold my hands.

"She knew, Richard," Etain says, "Yes, she knew that she would die in childbirth, Kaetlynn had spoken at length with her, to confirm a feeling Ella already herself felt, and she still went ahead with planning for your baby and bearing your child, because she loved you both that much."

"She knew?" My tears start flowing unchecked, my chest heaves with unbidden sobs. I stand up, seeking some unknown place where I can hide my emotions or run far enough away that the pain in my heart would fade, and the two girls embrace me, hold me there.

I am powerless and let them hold me as in my mind I relive that dark night in the maternity department of the Clonmel General Hospital, where my soulmate died, and the baby we created lived to try and fill the unfillable void that still exists in my heart.

Now I have to live with the thought that Ella knew what would happen to her all along and realise that she had prepared me for this eventuality by insisting that I attend every pre-natal clinic during her one and only pregnancy she was destined to bear.

It is almost too much for my poor heart to bear, but I am strangely grateful that with Caoimhe and Etain here with me I'm not facing this agony alone and somehow I also feel that maybe Ella is still watching over me and caring for me as I still care for her.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Chapter Eight: TALK OF THE OTHERWORLD

"Tell me about Kaetlynn?" I ask of Etain.

Once we are sitting back in the canvas garden chairs and wiped the tears from our eyes, I am interested to find out more about my former neighbour and what influence she had on my late wife and why she appeared to desire some future relationship between Etain and me.

"Kaetlynn was frustrated by the King's curse which banished we three sisters to that bleak mountain all those years ago. She was the only one of us that was widowed, had lost two children and a husband, and left with a young child to raise on her own. She wanted a new father for her son and desired yet more children to follow."