‘Nothing is working,’ said Nóra. She stood before Nance’s door, reluctantly holding the changeling on her hip. ‘You said you could banish it, Nance. Why won’t the Good People give me my grandson back? What have I done?’ She was near weeping. She could feel the bones of the changeling’s chest against her side, feel his bleating breath.
‘It takes time,’ Nance replied. She was standing within the dark mouth of her cabin, her white hair mussed, arms held out from her sides like a man preparing to fight. ‘There’s no forcing the sea.’
Nóra shook her head. ‘You talk to Them. They gave you the knowledge. Why don’t you ask Them where Micheál is? Ask Them to return him to me. Tell them to take back this.’ She thrust the boy out in front of her, her hands gripping the rounded staves of his ribcage. His toes buttoned inwards, bare to the cold.
‘I am working the cure for you,’ Nance said, eyeing Nóra warily.
‘You do nothing! All you’ve done is stuff it with herbs that make it shit and tremble. It was leaking with your herbs. The lips of it have split for all the water that passed through it.’ Nóra heaved the changeling back upon the ridge of her hip and lowered her voice to a hiss. ‘Please, Nance. What you’ve done with the herbs and the foxglove, ’tis not enough. All it’s been doing is crying the louder and dirtying itself. It was all quiet and shaking, but now ’tis just as it was before. I asked you to make Them take back their own, not have it grow weak and sick, and then strong and well again. Sure, if it was a burden before, the changeling’s a weight on me now.’
Nance closed her eyes, swaying a little on her feet. She did not reply.
There was a long silence.
‘You’re filthy with drink,’ Nóra finally spat.
Nance opened her eyes. ‘I’m not.’
‘Look at the state of you.’
Nance sighed and took an unsteady step forward, lurching for the doorframe. She gripped the wood and pulled herself out over the doorstep. ‘Nóra.’
‘What? Look at you.’
‘Sit down with me.’
‘Here? I’m not sitting in the mud.’
‘Sit with me there. On that log by there.’
Nóra reluctantly followed the stumbling woman to the rotting tree trunk that lay fleeced with moss on the border of the woods.
Nance eased herself down onto it. She took a deep breath and patted the space beside her. ‘Sit you down, Nóra Leahy. Put the fairy on the ground. By there, on the grass. Under the oak.’
Nóra hesitated, lip curled, but her arms ached from carrying the changeling. Placing the child on a clump of new grass, she grudgingly sat beside Nance.
The old woman peered up at the oak’s bare branches. ‘When the ash comes out before the oak, you’ll have a summer of dust and smoke.’
‘What?’
Nance sniffed. ‘An old rhyme. Sure, the trees do be knowing what will come, long before it passes.’
Nóra grunted.
‘Do you see that there?’ Nance asked, pointing out beyond her cabin.
‘The Piper’s Grave.’
‘That’s it. The oak. The rowan. The whitethorn. That’s where They be.’
‘’Tis no news to me, Nance Roche. We all know where the Good People make their home.’
‘I’ve seen Them. I’ve heard Them.’ Nance blinked slowly, letting her arm drop to her side. ‘My mother was a great favourite of Theirs. They would come for her. On the fairy wind. They gave her a steed of ragwort and she went with them to the beautiful places. My aunt too. Faith, that’s where they went. And they left me, but they left me with the knowledge.’
Nóra looked at the old woman. Her eyes were half shut and her hands scratched at the moss on the trunk. She looked deranged.
Nance suddenly opened her eyes and frowned. ‘I know what you’re thinking, Nóra Leahy. You think that the years have wormed into my mind and made tunnels of my sense. You think I am riddled with age.’ She leant into Nóra’s face, her breath hot. ‘You are wrong.’
There was silence. Both women looked to the woods.
‘I thought it might be enough to hear one such as yourself pronounce him fairy,’ Nóra said eventually. ‘Ever since my daughter passed, I’ve been thinking how it was that the boy was wasting. The thought that it might have been Johanna and Tadgh, the hunger . . .’ Her voice cracked. ‘I thought they might have caused it to their own son. Maybe they were neglecting him. Maybe my own girl was no mother at all to him. I was after asking, did I not teach her how to protect a child? When Martin died I was thinking to myself that there must have been something I did to bring all the bad luck upon myself. That the boy was not on Johanna’s soul but on mine.’
‘’Tis no sin on you, Nóra.’
‘But I felt somehow that ’twas. And people were talking! I was so ashamed of him. A cripple like that. When Peter and John brought Martin to me, my own man’s body on their shoulders, the only thing I could think of was to get the boy out the house. The shame to have folk inside and peering at his crooked legs and wondering why ’twas so. Thinking on what sin brought the sense out of him when I saw him well and thriving not two years ago. Thinking ill of me. Blaming me.’
‘Nóra, listen now. That boy is not Johanna’s son. ’Tis not your grandson. ’Tis fairy. You know that! The look of him, the wasting on him. I tell you now that the cratur is nothing more than an old, withered fairy, changed for Micheál. And why did they take away your daughter’s boy?’ Nance placed her hand over Nóra’s. ‘Because he was the dearest lad they could find.’
Nóra smiled, eyes watering. ‘I saw Micheál once, before he was changed. He was beautiful. A bud.’ She looked down at the changeling. ‘Not like this false child.’
‘We will return him to the Good People, Nóra. I knew a woman who was swept and returned.’
‘You did?’
‘I knew two women swept. One was not returned, but the other . . .’ Nance frowned. ‘They brought her back to herself through a reddened poker. They lay the hot iron in her face and that was enough to banish the fairy forever and for her to be restored.’
Nóra paused, thoughtful. ‘Fire returned her?’
‘’Twas my own aunt, and ’tis how I know it to be true,’ Nance said. ‘I saw the mark of it on her face with my own eyes. The scar. Like a brand.’
‘And it worked?’
Nance rubbed her eyes, swaying on the log. ‘Aye. It worked.’
Nóra sat up sharply. ‘Then we must try a reddened poker.’
‘No.’ Nance’s voice was firm. ‘No, we mustn’t be doing that.’
‘But it worked, so you say yourself!’
‘My aunt told me she’d never have it done to another. “Never on my life,” so said she, and I’ve a mind to heed her.’ Nance paused.
Nóra’s mouth twisted. ‘It needn’t be a scalding or a branding. It might be enough to threaten the cratur with the flames. To frighten the fairy back to its own kind.’ She pointed to the spade which lay against the outer wall of Nance’s bothán, next to the waste heap. ‘To sit the cratur on that and make as if to shovel it into the fire.’
‘’Twould not be enough to threaten it.’
Nóra’s lip trembled. ‘Then we burn it. Just a wee burn. On the face.’
Nance stared at her. ‘We’ll not be doing that.’
‘I want it gone.’
There was silence.
‘Nóra, think of Áine. Did you not hear the screaming of her? The skin was clean burnt off her legs. To the bone. Blistered.’ Nance folded her mouth into a grim line. ‘Not through fire . . . I know you want to be rid of the cratur, but we can’t be burning him.’
‘Áine’s no fairy.’
‘I can’t be going against the word of my aunt.’
‘You say we cannot burn it, but what else would you have me do? Tell me! You are the one with the kno
wledge!’
Nance grew very still. Nóra saw that her eyes were closed again. Her sparse, pale lashes flat against her cheek. She is old, Nóra realised. There was a weariness that clung to her. A vulnerability. Nóra noticed the slow rise and fall of her chest, the tiny rounds of her shoulders. The woman wore so many layers that Nóra had never thought of Nance as frail before. But sitting this close to her, in daylight, she saw that the bean feasa was thin. She was weak.
Nance’s eyes opened, muted, fog-soaked. ‘There is another way. We can take the changeling to where the fairies do be and banish it there.’
‘The Piper’s Grave?’
Nance shook her head. ‘Where the water greets itself. A place of power. Boundary water.’
‘The river.’
‘You, me and the girl. Three women at the place where three running rivers meet, for three mornings in a row. We will all of us fast. We take the changeling before sunrise to the Flesk. Three times before sunrise for three mornings, and when you return home on the last morning, the changeling will be gone. And perhaps you will find Micheál restored to you. Maybe it is that the Good People will have returned him to you. The fairy will be gone.’
‘We’ll be going to the water?’
‘Boundary water. We’ll duck the fairy in water with the power in it. A mighty power.’
Nóra stared at Nance, gaping. Then, as if deciding, she pressed her lips together and nodded hurriedly. ‘When will we begin?’
Nance hesitated. ‘’Tis only now March; the water will be cold,’ she muttered, as if to herself. ‘The water will be cold and the current will be strong.’ She looked at Nóra, her expression unreadable. ‘’Twould be better if it were closer to the approach of May Day. That is when the Good People will be changing abode. They will be restless. They will turn their eyes to us.’
‘May Day? But that is a good while away.’
‘’Tis only that it will be cold.’
‘But the days are warmer than they were. Sure, they say it will be a fine month. Nance, I can’t be waiting until May Day.’
Nance paused, before nodding. ‘Tomorrow morning, then. Before sunrise, in a state of hunger. Don’t be eating a thing from sundown, nor let the girl take any. Not Mary, not yourself and don’t be letting the change-child near water nor a bite of food. And I will be fasting too.’ Nance looked down the slope to where the river ran. ‘Meet me here. I will be waiting.’
It had rained during the night and the ground was soft and forgiving, relenting under Mary’s bare feet. It was dark, and she walked awkwardly along the overgrown path, unable to push away the ferns and low branches with the boy in her arms. She carried him on her hipbone, his unmoving legs shifting loose against her thighs as she walked, eyes fixed on the dark blur of Nóra in front of her. Nance was leading them to the river, the white of her uncovered hair bobbing in the gloom like an apparition.
Mary felt light-bodied and hollowed with hunger. Her arms ached. ‘Is it much further?’ she whispered. Neither of the women answered. Her stomach dipped in trepidation.
The widow had returned from Nance’s the evening before in a state of high excitement. She had burst through the cabin door and pushed the child roughly into Mary’s arms, breathing hard, eyes shining. ‘Tomorrow,’ she had gasped. ‘We’re to be taking him to the water, to the river. Boundary water, says Nance. There’s more power in that than the herbs. Boundaries where the fairies do be. They can’t cross running water, she says. They gather there, but can’t be crossing.’
Micheál had started crying. Mary laid a gentle hand on his soft hair and guided his head to her shoulder.
Nóra had paced the cabin floor. ‘You’re not to eat anything,’ she said, pointing at Mary. ‘And don’t be feeding it. Fasting, there’s a need for fasting.’
‘What are we going to do by the river?’
The widow had sat down by the fire and then almost immediately rose to her feet again. She went to the open door and peered down the valley. ‘We’ll bathe it. In the river where the three waters meet.’
Mary had stroked Micheál’s hair, felt his hot breath and tears against her neck. ‘’Twill be freezing.’
Nóra had seemed not to hear. She took a deep breath of the evening air and closed the door, latching it tight. ‘Three mornings. Three women.’
‘Are we to fast for three days?’
‘Don’t you eat a thing. Not a crumb.’
‘We’ll be starving for it.’
‘I think, Mary, that I will soon have my daughter’s child with me. And you –’ she had pointed a long finger at the child in Mary’s arms ‘– you will be gone.’
There was no morning breeze and the trees were still. The woods held their breath in the hours before daybreak, and there was a hush of waiting, the ringing silence of unsinging birds. Mary felt the air grow damp as they approached the river, in the darker shadows cast by elm trees. Then, suddenly, she heard the burble of water and the canopy opened up, revealing a paling sky. The moon and a few lingering stars glowered above them.
‘Through here,’ Nance said. She stopped to make sure that Mary and Nóra were still following her before continuing. The women pushed past long grass and the sound of the water changed, became softer. Here was deep-running water, Mary thought. Nance had told them there was a pool of the three boundaries, where the Flesk met its sisters and the water threaded in dark trinity. The ferns and undergrowth thinned and Mary paused to cast her eyes down at the river. The early-morning sky was held in its trembling skin.
‘This is the place,’ Nance whispered. She turned to Mary and reached for the boy. ‘Give him to me now. You’ll be going first. You’ll be bathing him.’
Mary’s stomach lurched. She looked at Nóra. The woman was staring at the water, her face drawn.
Nance beckoned her. ‘Quickly now. We need to bathe him before the sun comes up.’
‘Sure, won’t the water be too cold for him?’
‘’Twill be quick enough. You can wrap him again after you’ve dipped him.’
Mary handed Micheál to Nance. He was waspish, groaning.
‘That’s it, that’s a good girl.’
‘Are the Good People here?’ Nóra whispered. Her shoulders were tense, her neck arched like an unbroken horse, eyes darting the length of the swift-moving river.
Nance nodded. ‘Oh, you’ll know when They’re here. You’ll know when They’ve come to retrieve their own.’ She pointed at the unflowering iris that grew low to the river’s edge. ‘Yellow flaggers in bloom are a sure sign that a changeling has been banished into the water. You’ll see. He’ll be turning into yellow flaggers the third morning, when he’s back with his own kind.’ She turned to Mary. ‘You’ll need to take your shawl off now.’
Mary’s arms were weak from carrying the boy such a long way, and they shook as she unwrapped her shawl from her shoulders. She thought, briefly, of her family in Annamore, what they would say if they could see her now, about to bathe in the darkness of a March morning with a stricken child. Piseógs, they would call it. Mary folded her shawl and placed it on a mossed stone. She started to tremble.
‘Do I have to be the one to do it?’
Nance was firm. ‘We’ll all have a turn with the bathing. One morning each.’
‘It won’t harm him?’
‘’Tis a fairy,’ Nóra whispered. ‘Mary, get in the water. Come on now with you, before the sun rises.’
Gripping a low-hanging branch for balance, Mary stepped down the bank to the water’s edge, using the exposed roots of trees as steps.
‘Not yet,’ Nance called. She beckoned Mary back. ‘You’ve to take off your outer things.’
Mary stood there in the gloom, her knuckles white around the branch and its green fur of moss. Her teeth chattered uncontrollably. ‘Can I not go in with my clothes?’
‘You need to be bare.’
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Mary thought she would cry. ‘I don’t want to,’ she whispered, but she climbed back up the bank and took off her skirt and blouse until she stood naked in the pre-dawn light, hunched in modesty and shivering. Mary watched as Nance undressed Micheál from his wrappings, then carefully leant out to take him. She gripped him fast to her ribs, his bare skin clammy against her own, and inched her way carefully down to the river.
How she wished she was back home. She thought of the girls she had seen that May morning, crawling naked through the briars.
God forgive me, she thought.
The river was deep cold, black with tannin. Its touch brought a peal of shock from her lips, and she looked up and saw both women staring at her. Nóra’s fingers gripped the cloth of her apron. ‘It won’t take long,’ Mary heard her say, as if to herself. ‘It won’t take long.’
Gasping in the shock of the bitter water, Mary could see the white of her skin mirrored on the surface. She held the child aloft, his legs dangling. ‘What do I do?’ She had to raise her voice over the rush of the current. It pushed against her hips, and she inched her toes into the mud of the riverbed to steady herself.
‘Put him in the water three times,’ Nance called. ‘Put his head under. His whole body.’
Mary looked at the boy’s face. His eyes canted in his head, sloping sideways as one arm fought the air.
He is full of fairy, she thought, and she lowered him into the river.
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
Yellow iris
Dawn broke as Nóra and Mary trudged their way back up the slope to the cabin after their trip to the river. Mary’s skin under her clothes felt numb with cold, and she worried that Micheál, too, was freezing. The boy was quiet in her grip, his face scrunched into her neck, his breathing slow.
‘He’s frightful chilled,’ Mary muttered.
Nóra looked back at her, panting as she took long strides up the path. ‘Quickly now. We don’t want anyone to be seeing us. Wondering what we’re after doing away from home at this early hour.’
‘He’s not moving at all. He’s caught the cold.’