was growing in me. I know that feeling now, and it no longer frightens me, but I will never welcome it.
Whistling, searching the trees, I called for Fin. Please don’t have flown off, I thought. I need you. I thought of him, I suppose, as a kitten you could cuddle for comfort after scraping your knee. That’s another thing I know now: Fintan is no kitten.
He burst out of the leaves in an untidy flapping jumble, landing on a branch behind and above Deirdriu’s head. Making me see, he was.
She was backlit in the afternoon sun, her hair a golden halo around her. But her face—it was all darkness, a fractured black emptiness. The cold fingers clenched, and I saw blood spatter in the darkness, and I heard my own stricken cry.
“Lady! What is it that cloaks you in blackness?”
Her voice, floating out of the shadow, was calm and dreamy. “Conchobor says he will give me to the man who killed my Naoiseif he does not get my welcome on his return. But Eoghan will never lie with me. This I have sworn.”
I turned tail and ran, ran from the black clutch of the icy fingers and the desolation that swept over me.
C HAPTER 7
C AUGHT B ETWEEN W ORLDS
The men of Ulster returned to Emain victorious, but my father returned with barely a thread of breath connecting him to his life.
Have you ever been in a crowd cheering home an army? I stood pressed against my mother, submerged in the high voices of the women, and I heard like a bad string in a sweet harp the edge of anxiety shrilling through them all. We cheered for victory, but there was not one among us whose eyes did not search for a husband, a son, a father, a lover, even when all we could yet see were the bright banners above a dark moving mass of faceless men.
The king, riding at the head of his proud host, had hardly come into clear view when my mother gave a great cry. I peered up at her, smelling the wave of sour sweat that came on the heels of her fear, but I saw only her back. She was leaving me, thrusting her way through the noisy crowd back toward the gates. I called out to her, tried to push past the thronged bodies to follow and ran finally into the dimpled arms of Miach, Sencha’s wife. Her gray braids hung like old ropes in front of my face as she bent to hold me.
“Stay here, little one. Your ma will be riding out to meet the army, and you cannot follow.”
“Why is she going?” I demanded, and Miach’s kind blue eyes slid away from my own.
“Cuchulainn is the champion of Ulster,” she said. “He should have been riding by the king’s side.”
The poets say now that my father had “not the place the point of a needle but had some hurt on it,” and that is near to the truth. I thought he was dead when they carried him into Emain Macha, for how could a man survive such butchery? The sight of his mangled body froze my limbs with fear, so that they all—the men carrying him and my mother hurrying at their side—swept past me while I stood rooted to the ground. But Miach saw me and brought me to my father’s side, explaining that he still lived.
It was Laeg told us how it had been, while my father lay silent and suffering with his wounds. Cuchulainn had not wasted his few men in head-on battle, but had harried the edges of Maeve’s army day and night.
“He has such an arm on him, that throws farther than any other man and never misses, that with only his sling he caused such destruction that every man on the outer fringe feared constantly for his life,” said Laeg. He gave that grin, the wolf grin, which had frightened me back in Muirthemne. “And then,” he said, “betimes we would hitch up the chariot and cut through them in a great swathe, leaving the dead thick on the ground behind us, and none had speed to follow us.”
At night Cuchulainn’s hero-cry tore through the darkness, and by the light of morning so many lay dead on the ground that Maeve’s army seemed to be melting away.
Day by day, Maeve’s men became more nervous and
Whistling, searching the trees, I called for Fin. Please don’t have flown off, I thought. I need you. I thought of him, I suppose, as a kitten you could cuddle for comfort after scraping your knee. That’s another thing I know now: Fintan is no kitten.
He burst out of the leaves in an untidy flapping jumble, landing on a branch behind and above Deirdriu’s head. Making me see, he was.
She was backlit in the afternoon sun, her hair a golden halo around her. But her face—it was all darkness, a fractured black emptiness. The cold fingers clenched, and I saw blood spatter in the darkness, and I heard my own stricken cry.
“Lady! What is it that cloaks you in blackness?”
Her voice, floating out of the shadow, was calm and dreamy. “Conchobor says he will give me to the man who killed my Naoiseif he does not get my welcome on his return. But Eoghan will never lie with me. This I have sworn.”
I turned tail and ran, ran from the black clutch of the icy fingers and the desolation that swept over me.
C HAPTER 7
C AUGHT B ETWEEN W ORLDS
The men of Ulster returned to Emain victorious, but my father returned with barely a thread of breath connecting him to his life.
Have you ever been in a crowd cheering home an army? I stood pressed against my mother, submerged in the high voices of the women, and I heard like a bad string in a sweet harp the edge of anxiety shrilling through them all. We cheered for victory, but there was not one among us whose eyes did not search for a husband, a son, a father, a lover, even when all we could yet see were the bright banners above a dark moving mass of faceless men.
The king, riding at the head of his proud host, had hardly come into clear view when my mother gave a great cry. I peered up at her, smelling the wave of sour sweat that came on the heels of her fear, but I saw only her back. She was leaving me, thrusting her way through the noisy crowd back toward the gates. I called out to her, tried to push past the thronged bodies to follow and ran finally into the dimpled arms of Miach, Sencha’s wife. Her gray braids hung like old ropes in front of my face as she bent to hold me.
“Stay here, little one. Your ma will be riding out to meet the army, and you cannot follow.”
“Why is she going?” I demanded, and Miach’s kind blue eyes slid away from my own.
“Cuchulainn is the champion of Ulster,” she said. “He should have been riding by the king’s side.”
The poets say now that my father had “not the place the point of a needle but had some hurt on it,” and that is near to the truth. I thought he was dead when they carried him into Emain Macha, for how could a man survive such butchery? The sight of his mangled body froze my limbs with fear, so that they all—the men carrying him and my mother hurrying at their side—swept past me while I stood rooted to the ground. But Miach saw me and brought me to my father’s side, explaining that he still lived.
It was Laeg told us how it had been, while my father lay silent and suffering with his wounds. Cuchulainn had not wasted his few men in head-on battle, but had harried the edges of Maeve’s army day and night.
“He has such an arm on him, that throws farther than any other man and never misses, that with only his sling he caused such destruction that every man on the outer fringe feared constantly for his life,” said Laeg. He gave that grin, the wolf grin, which had frightened me back in Muirthemne. “And then,” he said, “betimes we would hitch up the chariot and cut through them in a great swathe, leaving the dead thick on the ground behind us, and none had speed to follow us.”
At night Cuchulainn’s hero-cry tore through the darkness, and by the light of morning so many lay dead on the ground that Maeve’s army seemed to be melting away.
Day by day, Maeve’s men became more nervous and
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