Pronunciation List
Rí = ree = king
Rithe = rih - hih = kings (pl.)
Filí = feel - ee = poet
Mean Fomhair = Mee-an Fo-ur = September
Samhain = S - ow - in = November
Names
Dorcha = Door - ka
Loinnir = Lin - ear
Tailtiu = Tal - chew
Cuán = Coo - awn
Oisín = Ush - een
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The mountain tribes, those old relations of ours
Poured down from the hills, engulfing our primitive society
Our first stab at civility,
As maggots fester in the centre of a corpse.
They unlearned the brilliance of our ancestors and favoured the way of the wolf.
Replaced with a wild rabble unable to cultivate the land they conquered,
Famine raged, pestilence razed
the people of our prospering Clann, both struck down by nature and man.
Their gods had abandoned them, many were lost to criminal horrors,
Feeding on one another -- no really eating each other-- to cling to themselves.
Brother ate brother, mother ate child
And it was then each faction of Conn became wild.
Here comes the Dark King!
In his days the wolf did not hunt,
The wild dog, that great kid killer was unknown.
Bridegroom to the great Earth Sovereign, Tailtiu gave to his Clann and family Abundance,
Therein lies the Dark King's territories now won, cloaking ourselves in secrecy,
Separating our warring people from the rest of the island.
Connacta, Tarrachta and Naithí
Subjugated under one rí whose strength safe-guarded the Clann's vitality
Following the Dark King's example; our strength lay in our obscurity.
It was bone fire night.
She pulled her furs tighter, inching closer to the blaze, ignoring the poem of the filí. The great conflagration was three times her height, stocked full of flammable timbers, and the autumnal winds howled, spitting embers into the dark sky.
The filí was a decrepit man taken hostage from a lesser king, captured for his artful tongue. Poetry and lore-keeping were well-respected trades across the island, but a thousand years ago when Dorcha, the Dark King ascended and subdued the warring tribes of Conn, a satirical poem had landed his filí in the bog with weights tied to his ankles. At present, they took poets if and when needed, the druids fulfilled most of their role, so one kidnapped poet was all that was necessary.
Tara let her eyes follow the flames and ignored another recital of her Clann's great history, vision glowed white and hours could be wasted divining figures and shapes within. Bones were tossed with accompanying hoots from onlookers, she followed suit and chucked in small bones from a cloth purse.
The fire consumed the remains, she tilted her head up in silent prayer. Tears rolled freely down her cheeks as she reminisced on the life of their owner.
Brian had been a most faithful companion, a wild pup impossible to control or keep still for more than a moment. His streaked coat and intelligent eyes marked him as more impressive than the namesake 'Brian' afforded, which is why she had named him so.
Unfortunately, her beloved dog had escaped the stables one frigid morning and confronted wolves-- needless to say who was victorious in that encounter. Perhaps she wished Brian were tamer and more cautious of wolf packs, but if so would lose the very essence of everything she loved about him.
Breath ragged, Tara repeated the words to honour the dead in her mind; Be free and await me.
The druids tossed cattle heads into the flames, dampening the lively crackling with a dull thud of flesh on kindling. Her nostrils flared, steeling herself for a charred meat odour.
Bone fire nights were such a revelry, but the start was carved out for rituals and storytelling, a chore for the young rí. The Dark King allied with the druids at his ascension a thousand years before, and with the druids came pointless rituals.
Bone fire nights took place three nights a year across the seasons; Imbolc, Mean Fomhair and Samradh. She shivered in the late autumn bite and fixed a blank stare at the onslaught of sacrifices before the fires.
People bundled around the sages and clamoured at the spectacle. The synchronicity of the druids impressed her, though she hated to admit it. They moved with practised fluidity; slicing the victims' throats with knives, changing to axes, cleaving the head off, tossing it in the fire. Repeat.
She understood the allure. The grisly actions evoked an emotional response in those gathered, primal in its finality. By throwing the heads in the fire, the druids gave the ritual its close, a fitting end, resulting in cheers as the sacrifices' eyes melted out their sockets and cartilage stoked the flames. It was easy, accessible. Not too difficult to understand.
But sacrificing so many animals seemed wasteful and Tara had yet to notice any positive effects for her Clann from druidic arts.
Expectant mothers wobbled to the druidess' hut to prepare for labour. Sick children, clinging weakly to their worried mothers were rushed to druids for a healing poultice, rank in colour and consistency. A grieving family sought wise druidesses for proper burial and bereavement practices. Injured warriors visited a druid's hut for wounds to be washed, dressed and sacrifice offered.
The druids poured animal grease on the fires, and everyone stepped back as the flames crawled higher. The cheers turned to shrieks of delight, signalling the end of the ritual and the start of the revelry.
Drumbeats brought the festival into full swing aided by an influx of cider, pipes joined the rhythmic slap of the bodhrán, augmented by foot-stomping celebrants. The druids skulked back to their huts, thankfully sworn off drinking and all forms of fun. Perhaps that was her gripe with them as a sect -- they were far too uptight.
Tara's eyes sought her confidante, Ethne, whose gaze found hers across the bone fire and glittered with knowing. Her friend briefly turned to her husband, a whispered exchange, before shoving through the throng, which was quickly descending into merriment.
"Another riveting bone fire night," She drily commented in greeting, dainty pale arm extending to grip Tara's tightly. "I could see your eyes glazed over from across the pyres."
She laughed at her transparency, falling into step with one another, following her attendants as they cleared a path for her retinue through the festivities. People glimpsed her approach and moved aside with deference, without realising they were moving out of her way so she could get to the rooftop and drink pints of cider with Ethne.
"I need to talk to you about the Rutting, I need more advice."
Ethne's knowing smile deepened, round cheeks creasing in a dimple. "I was wondering why you seemed so far away. You didn't mouth obscenities about druid Ernmas like usual."
"I've been overthinking about the night for weeks," She huffed, embarrassed. "Maybe months, tell me, what truly happens after the bloodletting ceremony? You said you were running through the woods that night, and you headed straight for Oisín, but how did you do that? In the cover of darkness in a forest...?"
She felt like her uncertainty over the whole event was necessary, seeing as every aspect of the Rutting ceremony was ostensibly odd. Ethne and everyone else around her acted like the rite was the pinnacle of normality, running around naked in the woods during a fat full moon. There were two other aspects to the rite she knew nothing about, hence her nervousness: the bloodletting, and the groom-finding.
"'Course, he says he found me, and it was through some gut instinct or wondrous skill," Her friend scoffed whilst they meandered away from the fires. "I, on the other hand, understand that we both had our part to play that night. The moon was ripe and full, and after the bloodletting ceremony I was high as a ... "
A druidess breezed past, steely eyes peering at the pair and thin lips drew into a fine line. Ethne smoothly changed the topic, masking their chatter with a discussion of Brian. The druidess glided past her host without incident, unbeknownst to her Ethne was giving the little rí information on a secret coming-of-age ritual.
Ethne's amber eyes met hers before they both stuck their tongue out at the sage. "I feel the full moon influenced me somehow that night, as it does all women during its cycles and during ours. In the moonlight a path to Oisín was obvious to me, I don't know why."
Ethne was several summers her senior and had received her monthly bleeding many years before the young queen. She was her confidante in all things feminine, a knowledgable guide counselling her on maturity, weaving and the inner workings of men.
Her friend gripped her arm lightly, leaning in for further details.
"The ceremony makes you wild, like having ten pints of your cousins' rank cider." She motioned to the Connacta brewers pouring a drink from crooked barrels. Their russet hair and freckled complexion clearly marked them as Connacta, but they were distant cousins to Tara. As distant as the subjugated Tarrachta and Naithí tribes, she liked to think.
Ethne carried on, "I ran and knew how to get past the brush and the trees, running at such a speed and nothing hurt, not the branches or the rough terrain on my bare feet," She slipped her skirts up to show off her dainty shoes. "How could these things not feel the pain of running across the forest floor? I don't know. All I do know is that the moon and those crazy druids with their concoction made me loopy."
Tara's mind processed her comments, nervous at the thought of losing control. Something may be afoot at the Rutting and bloodletting ceremony, and she would have no say over who she would eventually marry because she'd be isolated and loopy on druid juice. The druids and their drugs could skew the whole thing towards her brothers' wishes, which meant young Tara would marry an old man, possibly a relative.
"But," Ethne ripped her from her pondering. "It brought me Oisín, as I knew it would. I am happy, what more could I want?"
"Possibly a man that smells less foul?"
Another snort, "Cleanliness is a luxury for warriors, you'll understand when you get your own."
Innocently, the young queen changed the conversation, fearing more revelations of the ceremony. Ethne had it easy, she was betrothed to Oisín before she was Tara's age, and Oisín was only ten summers her senior. Tara knew her brothers had been eyeing 'experienced and knowledgeable' men for their little sister. Her husband would gain immediate status as her groom-bride, and her brothers would not give that dominance to just anyone. She would gain nothing from a marriage, other than the bonds of life as a wife. For Tara, 'experienced and knowledgeable' was a subtle way of saying 'old and infirm'. Her palms became clammy under her furs, despite the night's frost.
"One more month!"
Ethne clutched her arm, grinning widely with girlish excitement at the prospect of Tara's Rutting, a rite of maturity. "The harvest moon has now passed with bone fire night," she pointed vaguely to the crowds gathered around their retinue, beginning to loosen up after ritualistic practices were over. "Which means the next full moon is the stag rutting moon, bringing in Samhain, and so..."
"And so... my brothers are gonna have me married off by the following month."
Ethne's glee turned sour, shooting her companion with a warning look, despite her station. "You'll want this too, believe me. Whomever the Dagda chooses for you, it will be a perfect match." Her delicate finger curled under Tara's sulking head and gently pulled her eyes to hers, the pair stopping en route.
All Tara's mind could think was panicked thoughts, that the all-mighty Dagda would not be choosing her husband, rather her sullen brothers would as if selling a prime mare for breeding.
"You are the goddess of abundance, rí Tara Connacta, the natural-born leader of our Blood Clann with the ability to control the weather and with that, this Clann's fortunes," She flung her hands in the air, always an admirer of pageantry. The silliness broke Tara's sulking.
"If you can do all that," Ethne remarked. "You can manage a husband."
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Tara enjoyed horrible weather, particularly when it was not her doing.
The dark and heavy clouds rumbled before tumbling across the sky, smattering the clear blue with plums and wine. She watched from underneath the hawthorn tree, near the edge of the cliff and looking beyond the sea stack and farther still to the encroaching tempest.
The storm rolled in from the north-west across the ocean, sent from a distant land.
"Maybe by someone who can do things like me," She hummed, smiling at the absurdity.
The clouds seemed a dark bubble at first, a blot on a lovely sunset. Its course unaltered and unwavering, the storm roared to life, embroiled in lightning. The waves beneath the storm swelled and rose to enormous heights, in harmony with the breaking skies above it.
The day was so clear, she could make out the rain, slanting into the water in sheets, yet confined to where the clouds roamed, leaving Tara's hair and skin still bone-dry.
The storm that raged so ferociously across the water wrought destruction upon the sea but left her unbothered.
"That can't be true," She muttered sullenly, pulling at the bouncy grass. "Every storm always comes right at me."
Tara knew there was nothing out there, only water for as far as the eye can see. Hundreds of crows returning to her home, as there was no land out beyond.
Tara also knew no one was around to hear her moan, her head as tumultuous as the tempest out there, rolling with negative thoughts and resistance to her surroundings. She wished to be out there, out in the unknown and finally free of her mundane existence.
She clutched at the grass, idly staring at the oncoming torrent, but she felt no chill. Tara's mind was strained by the familiar pressure of maintaining the weather above her land; the daily struggles of a seasonal goddess.
Her predecessor had likened it to a knife between his eyes, a constant pain in his skull that he could only subdue by keeping himself preoccupied. He had told her to throw herself into consolidating their territories, whilst he threw himself into the farm girls until he was taken by a fever two summers before.
Tara felt it more like a dull ache at the back of her head, only noticeable whenever she focused intently on what she was doing, then it would escape her. No, she must maintain her calm and through this internal stasis, she was capable of manipulating the stillness around her. That is how she would describe using her gift, never as intense as a knife between the eyes, as Rí Lorcan said.
After all, what did the rí say that was ever true?
Nothing. At least, not a thing that could be applied to Tara.
She absentmindedly poked her fingers into the sodden earth, bouncy and porous by its seaside proximity. In a couple decades, the water would eat up the precarious ground Tara sat on, legs dangling.
The bubbling grass was marred with blowholes. Tara sat near some little ones, but the impressive ones she and her brothers would jump over as children were further along by the boglands, and too eroded now for them to make the leap even as adults.
Waves battered the exposed rock beneath her and slowly eroded the land she equally cherished and loathed.
Tara turned her head away from the storm, to where she used to play with her brothers, a jagged sea cliff a great distance from the castle and curious eyes.
Aching to be a child again, she sank back amongst the mossy soil and squeezed her eyes shut, envisioning her playful past. Her breath deepened, the familiar salty air fully immersed her in nostalgia.
Younger Tara was fumbling over her own feet trying to reach her brothers, who bounded ahead to build up speed for their daring leaps. She was always breathless back then, from laughing and running around trying to catch up. They never waited, even when she begged -- especially when she begged, they always laughed at her whining and moaning.
She was always so eager to follow them, throwing herself into whatever thrilling activity they had decided to embark on for the day: bog hopping, wheelbarrow mudding, racing the seas. Free to do as desired, when she was with her brothers.
Tara did not feel the pain of using her mind to hold up the sky, but she felt a crushing weight on her chest, a new constant. It clamped around her neck and choked her with responsibility. Robbed her of the ability to be a child, frolicking with her brothers over perilous blowholes.
A much easier activity than marriage.
Even now, as she stole those brief moments to herself, to witness a beautiful storm eclipse the cloud-streaked sky, Tara was shirking newfound responsibilities, such as discussions of marriage arrangements happening at that instant, in counsel, her marriage arrangements, sped up by the simple fact she was a girl. Well, a woman, and so in need of a man and very soon — and importantly — a son, to place ease in the itching hearts of men poised to usurp her because their sacred rí was a girl.
Woman, she chided.
She knew those men vying for her title did not include her brothers, one elder by three summers and one younger by two. They had understood with admirable grace when Tara, at thirteen, began showing marks of her affinity, that she was destined for the torques.
She was this generation's season deity who '... would harness nature and commune with our ancestors to provide bountiful harvests and the land's prosperity.'
Her power to control the pealing thunder and make it all dissipate to scorch the earth in the unfiltered sun, could and would ensure the food stores remained full throughout the years. This gave the people good soil to till and full bellies to produce wondrous songs and dance each evening at firelight.
Yet, more important still, Tara's power secured the pacification of all hostile neighbours upon her ascension.
Unfortunately, Tara's gender jeopardised her right to rule. Wily neighbouring kings heard of her ascension and dared to conquer, only to be rebuked by lightning and fire. The druids said a woman had never governed the Connacta, had never possessed the power to saddle the winds with a thought and control the air's warmth.
Tara didn't much like the druids, cantankerous old people paled from neglect of daylight, and smelling fouler than most — which was a feat, with the people Tara lived with. She didn't pay much attention to the advice of people who weren't like her, at least not when it came to what she could and couldn't do. She had learned by now the power she possessed besides controlling the weather — her ambition.
Anything Tara wanted to do, she did. Any skill she wanted to master, she had. By the simple logic of passion and practice no matter what the new hobby was. Of course, her curiosity and obsessiveness to devour all new forms of entertainment — dice games, strange instruments from the Continent, a new stitch — led to her abandoning many projects halfway through and a sense she had great difficulty in finishing things. Even still, it was her ambition Tara admired about herself and decided to focus on.
Meanwhile, in her nostalgic wander through memory's doors, Tara failed to scrutinise the unrelenting storm on the horizon, and the speck of a ship floundering within it.
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