It Read Like a Fairy Tale
The Life and Love of Cu Danaan
Or, if not a fairy tale, one of those Irish ballads we’re so famous for. Stories full of loves, sex, and body count. But it’s no story at all without some history. My ancestress was Doireann, a granddaughter, so they say of Finn MacCool and a fierce red wolf and warrior. They say that no Irishman could tame her, wolf or otherwise. My family lived in Ulster then, before the damn English. At that time, we were dealing primarily with the Scots. They were big. They smelled funny, and they had no idea how to enjoy a good drink. On the upside, they hated the English almost as much as we do.
It was these giant skirt-wearing men who landed and tried to take over Ulster. My ancestor among them, a man they called Dubgall McGregor. He was savage, even by Scottish standards and tall enough maybe to have looked Finn in the eyes. As he landed, he took an Irish wife. However, before he could bed her, my ancestress stepped in. She was smaller, but stronger thanks to the wolf blood so she beat the Scottish man black and purple. However, in the battle between the two, that some say lasted three nights, they ended up making love instead. She conceived that night, and assured by the Druids her child would breed true, she tamed the McGregor and even did him the honor of taking his name. (This is of course, an annotated version of the story. My great great grandmother, a Galliard of some considerable fame wrote a 47 verse Ballad of the love of Doireann and Dubgall. I could sing it for you at some point of you want.)
That’s of course ancient history, and only loosely has much to do with me. I was born in Belfast during a Loyalist retaliatory attack on the Catholic section I was born in. Three weeks earlier, the IRA had blown up a garage with parliament cars parked in it. So, any way, the bomb that went off next door shook the foundation of our home and knocked mortar from the wall. My father was killed trying to deliver me and who would have been my twin sister if she hadn’t been killed also. It was then my mother choose to make her decision and joined the Fianna camp tied to the IRA. I was raised holding a machine gun. By the time I went through my first change I could build a bomb and I had already killed my first Loyalist. Cheery, isn’t it?
The long and short of it was, though I’d a Galliards heart, all I could do was fight. By the time I was 16 I had committed as many crimes as I had avenged and was truly a part of the vicious cycle all of Northern Ireland is. I was also miserable as shit.
It was around my next birthday that my older brother, a kinfolk died protecting his protestants lover from a Loyalist formorian. If they hadn’t both died, I would have been an aunt. (There’s that body count I was telling you about.) Hearing about this, and helping to dig out their bodies, I hit what the poets call a melancholy. My pack leader worried I was falling into Harano, sent me off to the Republic to spend some time some place wild. He told me to go to Slievenamon, in Munster. He told me, in fact, to head to the mountain there said to be the home of Chief of the Fianna, my ancestor Finn MacCool. (If the legends are true, of course.) I ran as a wolf for a few weeks untill I found my way to the caern and bawn there. I found the place empty of our kind, as if they all knew I was coming and vanished like fae into the night. I sniffed around for a while, and decided there was nothing for it but to stay the night. Out of preference I changed back to my human form and fished through a bag I had around my neck for some clothing.
It was then I heard his singing. The simple ancient melody swept over me like fog. Its gentle beautifully tragic strains cararessed my skin and I forgot, for a while, what I was doing. At the time, I didn’t speak Gaelic, so I didn’t understand the words. I knew what they meant though. It was the “Colloquy of the Ancients” a story of Ireland before Christianity.
When I turned to find the singers source, I was shocked again. The beauty of the song paled and crumbled to dust in the face of this figure. The clouds parted in that moment to allow a shaft of moonlight to fall and alit him. He was tall as me, his hair a glistening silver that reflected like mirrors. I could have stepped sideways in his eyes. I stepped forward almost without realizing I was going too and stood bare and somehow unembarrassed before him. There was no shame in it, as the pain he wore on his beautiful face made him easily as exposed and more how more vulnerable than I was.
“My name is Caolte.” Even his spoken voice was a song that made me want to cry.
“I’m, uh, my name is Diana.” My mother had liked the name, even if it wasn’t particularly Irish.
“No it’s not.” He hopped down without noise from the rock on which he sat. “You’ve not been given your true name by your tribe. That’s alright, it will come.” And though he stood then directly in front of me, I couldn’t hear him. It was as if he didn’t exist within that sense. He could, I learned then, be felt. He reached out a thin almost delicate hand and brushed my jaw. The sensation that of spider webs across my skin. “Stay with me tonight?”
It occurred to me that two things were true. It was probably a very very very bad idea to stay with him, and in all probability, I would anyway.
“First, what are you?” The red wolf in my blood was kind enough to grow defensive since I surely couldn’t while under his spell.
His smile was wan and fleeting. “We we’re once the second settlers of Ireland. We we’re once the kings and queens of man kind. We we’re once the Shinning Ones. Now, we are faded dreams.”
“You look real enough to me.” I said, despite myself, I reached out to touch him. His skin was warm and soft and at that moment, I wanted to touch more of it.
“Perhaps I am a part of your dream. Perhaps you are a part of mine. Do you know the story of Cu Chulainn?”
“I, I think so. That’s the guy who protected a cow or something.”
He sighed slowly and nodded. “He was one of the great warriors of Ireland. He was one of your kind, we do believe. A werewolf. He was trained in the arts of final combat by my great mistress Scathatch.”
I nodded, it sounded right, in some strange way. It sounded true though I didn’t think I’d ever heard it before.
“So, therefore, I am here to teach you as your lost brothers and sisters cannont. Come, stay the night, in the morrow, you will understand.”
Against my better judgment, and quite in line with my libido, we made love there at the foot of the mountain of Finn for what seemed like hours. I had never before known pleasure like that, and my body weeps as I tell you now, I doubt I’ll ever know such pleasure again. But then, as my Pack Leader at the time always said, ‘Better to have fucked and lost, than to die a virgin because that’s just embarrassing.’
I woke on the Umbra. I don’t remember having crossed over. Perhaps I had in fact slipped sideways because of his perfect-mirrored eyes. It took me a moment to adjust to my surroundings and realize that Caolte was nowhere to be seen. Of course, that made sense, I didn’t know much about fairies, but I didn’t think they spent much time on the umbra. I heard a song again. This one different than the first, even older and without words. I tried to follow it to its source, but as is often the case on the umbra that proved impossible. Still soulfully warmed by the lovemaking, rather than grow frustrated, I went and sat underneath a willow tree and listened to the tune.
“What are you doing red wolf?” I turned slowly opening my eyes to see who spoke. Now, I’m no Theurge, and Spirits aren’t necessarily my thing, but I instantly knew I was in the presence of a very powerful spirit. I bowed my head without looking at her face and fixed my eyes instead on the hem of her linen dress. Gold and silver threads embroidered along her hem to form complicated knot work. I could have lost my self following and tracing the lines of the knots. Red hair the color of burning fire spilled into the umbral grass at her feet.
“I was listening to the music.”
I could feel the warmth of her smile though I could not see her face. “And why do you avert your eyes?”
As she spoke, I realized that I could match her voice to the song I heard now. “Out of respect, lady. You are a powerful spirit.”
Her laughter rang like fairy bells. “Oh really? What manner of spirit do you think I am?”
“I don’t know.” I shifted uncomfortably in her presence. “Maybe, maybe you are a great Incarna?”
She laughed again. “And what Incarna do you think I am? Your people have told you the story of Stag, surely I am not he. Nor could I be Herne nor Pegasus, nor Unicorn.”
I shook my head. “No my Lady, you are unknown to me, though I am but a simple Galliard. Oh, shit, I was supposed to ask you something… Wasn’t I?”
“Were you?”
My Theurge was going to kill me later for this, I was sure. “Yes! Know I remember. I am supposed to ask you your name, and if there’s anything I can do to help you.” I blinked a few times and fidgeted. “That is, what is you name, Lady, and is there anything I can do to help you?”
She laughed again, a gentle enough sound that she seemed without anger. Actually, as she spoke I could feel she was without anger entirely. As if she wasn’t capable of it. “The second question first, perhaps. I would ask you to know me, as so many of my children have forgotten me. My name is lost even to you Fianna who once worshiped me. I am the bridge that would heal, my song would remind your people of the errors of their past. More than this, I charge you to sing my songs of the old ways, to lead the Garou back to the magic and beauty you have seen tonight as you spent time with that darling changeling. Go now, reborn Cu Danaan, sing my songs as I am Dana.”
In a blinding light I closed my eyes and when I opened them again, the spirit was gone and I sat in the wet grass next to Caolte. He smiled and touched my cheek. The light of day did nothing to wash away his beauty.
“You alright?” He asked me as he stroked my cheek.
“Yeah, though I have this sinking suspicion I was set up.”
Caolte shrugged and stood, giving me an opportunity to admire his naked shape. “Maybe. I’m going to take you to meet some people.”
“I hope your going to put your pants on first.”
He looked at me, and shrugged noncommittal. “If you insist.”
Caolte took me to the center of the Caern, where I met the Tuatha De Finn, a camp of Fianna whose ties were as close to the Fae as possible. I spent time with them learning all the old stories and all the old songs. I learned more about myself from those strangers than I had from my own pack in my whole life.
During that time (what I like to call my ‘enchanted life’) Caolte was my constant companion. I treasured every moment with him as the greatest moments in my life. This time, of course, could not last forever.
My peace was shattered one evening in late December. I sat curled in Caolte’s arms before a fire at his place. (Most of the time it was a little stone shack, sometimes it was a lovely stone castle mostly depending on his mood. Sometimes people would come by and call him “Sir” this and “Milord” that.)
It was there, warm and comfortable the door to the building shattered open and I saw Ailin, our pack ragabash rip through in Crinos form. I stood, shifting immediately just in case he was there for a fight. In my more sensitive form, I could smell silver.
“Di… It was terrible. The whole of them. Their dead… The whole pack.” He staggered, fell to his knees and spilled his hearts blood out onto floor.
I turned to Caolte. “We have to go.”
He nodded, lifting a sword from the wall he put on his hip. “I know a faster way to Belfast than four feet.”
“Fine.” I watched him put his sword on. “Tell the way, you’ll stay here where it’s safe.”
He shook his head and moved past me, taking my clawed hand. “I can’t. You can’t go yourself, and your going to have to be blindfolded. You have to promise me no matter what you here or smell you won’t try to see and you won’t let go of my hand. If you do either of those things, I could lose you forever.”
“If it will get me to Belfast, lets go.”
I cannot recall much of the trip, only of holding desperately to his hand and brilliant lights and colors just barely registered beyond the blindfold I wore.
I wish in my soul that I couldn’t recall what on my arrival. I am not given that luxury. The house where my pack crashed most of the time was a tiny little war zone. A fight, apparently, had broken out in the street outside and had apparently collapsed into the building. I lead Caolte in and looked around quickly for survivors. The floor was slick with blood and I could hear my gentle fae lover gag behind me.
“What is that smell?” He asked, his hand over his mouth and nose.
“Wyrm toxin. It was probably a Pentex strike force working through UVF, or maybe the UFF. Sneaky bastards.” It wasn’t uncommon for Pentex to use the Troubles as means to attack Garou on either side of the fight. As it was, since wyrm toxin was present, that meant so too was the Wyrm.
Ailin had been right. Every last pack member was dead. “This is the punishment for useless war Caolte. Dying without honor in a shit hole ghetto at the hands of assassins. This is our punishment for perpetuating the cycle.”
I could feel his hand on my shoulder. “But you were spared.”
I shook my head. “It only seems that way. My punishment is worse. A wolf is nothing without a pack.”
“There will be other packs.”
“Not like this one. None that will trust me like these boys did. Our bonds were forged with blood.”
He sighed and put his arms around my waste. “Perhaps the next will be bonded with something better.”
I spent the next two years working mostly independently to preach to both sides of the wolves how stupid the war was. Politically I worked with the SDLP and the Alliance Party to help end the suffering of my homeland. On the Garou side of things, having renounced my former camp, and public connected to the Tuatha, I did little more than make myself a pariah. Both sides saw me as a traitor, a murder, or worse, a coward. Dana’s words rang in my head though, and I found peace.
Three months ago I was driven from Ireland rather violently by order of the DUP. So I had two choices, exile, or arrest.
I never got to say good-bye to Caolte.
I miss him even now. Though I doubt he would know me even if I were to see him again. Fae are fickle like that. What was possibly the greatest love of my life may well have been but a passing if passionate fling to him.
The Garou of America are, strange, at best. However, as long as my exile lasts, I plan on learning as many songs as I can, and sooner or later by Dana’s blessing, I will return to Erin with them.
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By Me, Philomena 2002
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