Authors: Bernard Evslin
No sooner had he spoken than the sky darkened. Black clouds roiled up out of nowhere. Lightning stitched the sky. Thunder growled. The winds pounced from all directions at once, spinning the skiff crazily. Finn flailed with his paddle on both sides, struggling to keep the little boat from overturning.
Then the last of the sunlight was snuffed like a candle. A howling darkness fell. The skiff bucked like a wild horse Finn felt himself going over. There was no way he could stop it. The coracle was turning turtle. He took a deep breath before going underwater.
The water was cold … cold. … He swam to the surface. He immediately flung himself in the direction he guessed the boat to be. He grasped its slippery side, hugged it tight with such force he thought its wooden ribs would crack, but he didn’t dare ease his grip. The wind was trying to pull him off. Struggling with all his might, he succeeded in inching his way up on the overturned skiff, and sat astride it, gripping with his knees, clenching the keelson with his hands.
He had not lost his sword though, nor did he have to hold onto it. It seemed to press its length against his leg like something alive. Its metal seemed to glow warmly there with some sleeping fire from its comet birth. And it shone dimly, casting a small light so that he wasn’t in utter darkness. When he grasped its hilt it was almost like grasping the hand of a friend. And, somehow, the dimly glowing, softly warming moon-metal sword kept him alive during that terrible night.
Dawn found him still clinging to the overturned skiff. Three-quarters drowned, punished by the wind, almost frozen—but still alive. It was a ghastly dawn. The sun stood on the horizon like a battered tin dish, and the sea was lead-colored. Then Finn saw the worst sight you can see upon the face of the waters—the long sleek bodies of sharks turning all around his boat, showing their white bellies and their triple row of teeth. They seemed in no hurry. They were trailing him, as if knowing there was no place he could go. But they came closer. There were seven of them, he saw, each one bigger than the next, and the smallest of them longer than his coracle.
“Looks like this is it all right,” said Finn to himself. “But I wish I knew what’s up with Lyr. He’s acting as if I were his worst enemy instead of the one who traveled so many freezing miles to unlock his domain from the grip of Vilemurk. If he takes notice of me at all, it’s not a friendly notice. For the sharks are subject to him, as are all the creatures of the deep. And, sure, they mean me no good at all … and they’re getting closer and closer. Well, I won’t make it easy for them.”
The sword leaped into his hand. As one shark turned within arm’s reach just under the surface of the water, Finn struck him with a slashing downward blow—and cut off the final length of him, as a fishmonger slices the tail off a bluefish before he wraps it in paper to give to a housewife. Blood dyed the water. Finn saw the wounded shark disappear under the snout-faced rush of the other sharks who converged on him, buried him under their threshing bodies, and in the space of half a minute had eaten him away to the bone.
“Wish I could say there was one less,” said Finn to himself. “But there’s a total of two more, because three new ones came to the feast.”
He held his sword poised, but did not know which way to strike, for the sharks, with great intelligence, were now ringing the overturned skiff, and coming in from all sides, so that if he struck in one direction, the rest would be upon him before he could strike the other way.
“You’re a lucky man, Goll McMorna!” shouted Finn. “The sharks are doing your job for you. And I will never face you now, sword in hand, to wrest the chieftainship of the Fianna from you. Farewell, Goll, farewell, enemy! Farewell, lovely little Murtha who lives in my memory. Farewell, Kathleen, most curious girl. Farewell, Fish-hag and Drabne of Dole, I’ll trouble you no more. Farewell, Lyr, treacherous god. Farewell, Vilemurk. And now, a sharp farewell to you, my finny friends!”
Whirling the sword about his head, making himself a chaplet of blue fire for his final moments, Finn waited for the sharks to come.
Suddenly they were gone. He heard an odd gobbling, clucking sound, turned, and saw three enormous swans sailing across the water toward him. Huge birds, bigger than eagles they seemed, floating there. One swan rose to its knuckled claws and stretched its neck and beat its wings—and, far away, Finn saw the last of the sharks slicing through the water. The sun was still tin-colored, and the sea lead-colored, but where each swan floated was a pool of radiant blueness as if the birds carried their own light.
“There’s some magic at work,” thought Finn.
He was surer still of it when he felt himself being lifted gently in the air and the skiff righting itself beneath him, and himself dropping back into the seat of the coracle. The swan who had stood on its claws swam up to the boat. Its feathers flamed with such snowy brightness that Finn’s eyes were dazzled, and he could not see. When his vision cleared, there was Kathleen seated in the skiff facing him. She wore a long lacy white dress that seemed to be spun of foam, and on her head she wore a crown of coral and pearl.
“We meet again,” she said.
“Kathleen …,” whispered Finn. “You’re more beautiful than ever. …”
“Easy now,” said Kathleen. “Be very careful what you say. You’re floating on Lyr’s own sea, and there are things swimming all about underneath us who can hear every word, and are very ready to tattle.”
“What are you talking about?” said Finn. “Lovely Kathleen, I’m so glad to see you. And you make less sense than ever. But thank you for chasing the sharks—for it was you, I know. And why are you sometimes a swan now? Tell me all.”
“Be still then, and listen,” said Kathleen. “Be doubly still so that you can hear me out and understand how our story ends. And also because that way you won’t be uttering any dangerous words. I left you riding the dragon, and him spouting flame and melting all the icebergs. I never expected to see you again. But I did what you told me. I took your sword and crossed the melting ice and entered the mouth of the cave, and went down, down through the dark passageway, down the center of the mountain, attended by the tomcat who fought off the foul little trolls who attend Vilemurk down there. Down, down I went to where Lyr was chained to a great granite pillar.
“I lifted your sword and struck off the manacles. Just then the dragon must have passed directly overhead, and his flaming breath hit our ice mountain. All melted away in a cascading sheet of water. And Lyr, free again, floating on his own flood tide, with the ice melting all about him, the sea rising higher and higher—Lyr was king again, free and regal, trident in his hand, spearing the mist-crones and the frost legions and all his enemies—calling great blue whales from the deep who broached the surface of the sea, and fell with their tons of weight upon Vilemurk’s allies.
“The battle didn’t last long. Lyr rode the rising tide to victory. The ice was melted, and the seas were free again, and Lyr was king. I was swimming alongside him. Then I was riding his shoulder, clinging to his green beard. And … well … he was in a happy mood and full of power and joy—and grateful to me, I suppose, for striking off his chains. Anyway, he took me to his castle at the bottom of the sea, and made me his wife. One of them, that is. But his favorite, I guess. Unless … he’s busier than even a god should be.
“So, in a kind of strange wet way I was a queen. Me. Kathleen ni Houlihan, daughter of my father who was lodged in his dung heap stinking up the east wind as it blew across Leinster. Well … I had never forgotten my father. Indeed, he’s an unforgettable sort of man. So I craved a boon of Lyr. He sent a finger of the sea curling inland, and its cleansing tide swept away my father’s midden. And a green salt magic turned my father into the cleanest creature in the whole world of living things—a swan. There he is now, that swan. See how white his feathers are. You would never know that he was once the dirtiest widower in the history of grief, would you? And that he had built up a muck heap of regret around him that was the shame of the four counties? No, he’s a swan now. A big beautiful king swan. But he still has his angry red face. See?”
“And who’s the other swan?” said Finn.
“Why, bless you,” said Kathleen. “That’s my mother. For Lyr did me that favor, too. He called her back from the dead. Gods can do that, but they don’t like to. Without that boon, however, the first one wouldn’t have been any good—because my father would have refused to live as man or swan without his wife. There she is. Look at her. Isn’t she beautiful? And this cleanliness now is no contradiction. For she was the cleanest little body anyone ever saw. So she comes rightfully by her feathers, and is very happy as a swan.
“Mother!” called Kathleen.
The smaller swan sailed over to the boat.
“I want you to meet my friend, Finn. It’s him we owe everything to. He saved my life, you know—many times. And it was through him that I met Lyr. Greet him, Mother.”
The swan spoke in a low throbbing voice, very much like Kathleen’s, but gentler.
“Greetings to you, Finn McCool,” she said. “Thank you for all you have done for my daughter and my husband and me.”
She folded her white wings around his neck and pecked him softly on the lips.
“Thank you, madame,” said Finn, “for the sweetest kiss ever bestowed upon a shipwrecked man.”
“No sweeter than you deserve, Finn, who has rescued me from the dead, and my husband from the filth of despair, and made my girl a queen.”
She pecked him again on the lips. Finn heard a strangled gobbling and looked up. He saw the largest swan rising onto his knuckled claws in the water, and beating his wings and shaking his red wattles furiously, and stretching his neck, and hissing.
“You there,” gargled the swan who was Houlihan. “You there in the boat! What’s that you’re doin’ with my wife. What’s all this billin’ and cooin’? What’s the lout up to, darlin’? Is he trying to make free with you? I’ll sink him so deep even the sharks won’t find him.”
He fluffed up his feathers so that he seemed to double in size, and swam slowly toward the skiff.
“Shut up, Dad,” said Kathleen. “He’s a friend of mine. And the best friend this family ever had. If it wasn’t for him you’d still be on your dung heap, and I’d be long eaten by the dragon.”
“Apologize to him, dear,” said the mother swan. “Thank him for all he’s done.”
Houlihan clucked something unintelligible, and ducked his head underwater, pretending to fish.
“You’re welcome, sir,” said Finn.
The mother swan swam to her husband’s side, and they both swam a distance away, and floated there, waiting for Kathleen. Finn said to her:
“What happened to Carth, who was your husband? Did you forget about him?”
“Oh, no,” said Kathleen. “I worked a small magic there, too. He was too downy and gentle for a man—beaten too soft by his mother, unfit to be a husband. So I changed him into an aspect of his true nature. He’s a downy duckling now, and my pet. He swims about with me sometimes, and I caress him, and feed him small fish, and he is very happy.”
“And his mother?” said Finn.
“I changed her according to her nature, too. She’s a pelican now. It made little change in her appearance, actually. I just pulled out her jaw a bit, and bent her nose a bit to meet it. And provided her with wings not unlike the sleeves of her dress. Her voice is the same. And she flies about croaking raucously, diving for fish. What’s more, just to prove I have a kind heart, I gave her a final gift. An egg that will never hatch—really a stone, you know, from the bottom of the sea, but shaped and colored like a pelican’s egg. She can sit on it in her nest, and sit, and sit, and it will never hatch, and never grow up—never fly away from its mother.”
“Truly, you have a kind heart,” said Finn. “And imagination to go along with it. I’m jealous of Lyr, Kathleen. I’ve never met a girl I fancied more.”
“Hush now!” whispered Kathleen. “You fool! That’s just the point.
He’s
jealous of
you.
He knows our story. I told him the whole adventure, not realizing that his caprice is like the sea itself. And he’s changeable as the sea, and as violent in his tantrums. He’s conceived such an envy of you as to make your life unsafe whenever you venture near the water. I pray you, Finn, when I get you back to shore, try to stay there. Dry land’s the place for you, lad … because the sea god is not fond of you.”
“The next time the gods fight, I’ll stay neutral,” said Finn. “You help one of them against the other, and they both become your enemies.”
And that’s the end of this story. Kathleen changed back into a swan, and the three swans escorted the little coracle back to the shores of Meath, and Lyr did not strike again. But after that time Finn was very very careful whenever he found himself at sea. In fact, all his great victories were on land. He was never one for sea battles, because he was afraid he would lose.
Since that time, too, Kathleen ni Houlihan has figured in many legends. Sometimes she is said to be swan-born; sometimes she is known as the bride of the sea. Now we know why.
Since that time, also, dragons breathe fire.
T
HROUGH THE YEARS, AS
Goll McMorna had gone from success to success in Tara’s court, he had made certain secret connections, who, for a fee, could be counted on for accurate prophecy, malicious counsel, and timely crime. Among these the most useful for the work at hand were none other than those dire sisters, Drabne of Dole and the Fish-hag. Goll did not know that they were acquainted with Finn, but they lost no time telling him.
It was a dark night when they met. He leaned against the bole of a cypress tree; they hung from a branch upside down, like bats, clutching the bough with their naked feet. Their full sleeves hung like bat wings, and their tangled gray hair hung. Their white eyes burned holes in the darkness. And they tittered like bats—teehee, teehee, teehee—for they considered it a joke to be summoned upon a midnight and paid for doing what they were most pleased to do—hunting young Finn.
“Teehee,” tittered Drabne of Dole. “We know him well, my sister and I. He has played scurvy tricks on us both, yes indeed. Killed one of my slithery snakes and bribed the other. Snatched my crunchable little slave, the Thrig of Tone, from dearest vengeance mine. I remember. I remember.”