MANANNAN’S CHILDREN

RUSSELL BLACKFORD

 

 

RUSSELL BLACKFORD is a Melbourne-based writer, critic, and philosopher who teaches part-time in the School of Philosophy and Bioethics, Monash University. He is Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Evolution and Technology and a Fellow of the US-based Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. His publications include three novels for the Terminator franchise, collectively entitled The New John Connor Chronicles. His most recent book is Kong Reborn (2005), a sequel to the original King Kong movie.

 

Blackford is an internationally prominent critic and scholar of the science fiction and fantasy genres. With Van Ikin and Sean McMullen, he co-authored Strange Constellations: A History of Australian Science Fiction. He is one of the main contributors to The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy and also wrote the entry on science fiction for a major on-line reference work, The Literary Encyclopedia. His philosophical and related work frequently deals with issues involving the relationships between science and society, and with humanity’s future prospects. This work has appeared in a wide range of journals and magazines, including Meonjin, Quadrant, Australian Law Journal, Journal of Medical Ethics, and American Journal of Bioethics.

 

Blackford’s work in the field of science fiction and fantasy has won him a swag of awards, including the William Atheling Jr Award for Criticism or Review on three occasions, and both the Ditmar Award and the Aurealis Award for his 1996 short story, ‘The Sword of God’.

 

In ‘Manannan’s Children’, Blackford the philosopher examines the idea of immortality, while Blackford the storyteller sweeps us headlong into the living breathing palpable world of distant Irish myth and legend...

 

* * * *

 

 

They’d chased a deer, which had bolted in terror from the forest, then run to a round grassy hill and vanished over the top. At the top of the hill, Finn and Oisin pulled back on their horses’ reins and wrapped their heavy cloaks more tightly against the bitter cold wind from the sea. Down on the shore was a lady, also on horseback, with the lapping waves and the sinking red sun behind her.

 

Oisin’s breath caught and his heart seemed to melt like heated gold within his ribs. She was incomparable!

 

The lady rode a majestic, shimmering stallion, as black as adamant. She called out to the heroes, father and son, and they rode down to meet her, white-bearded Finn going ahead. Oisin couldn’t take his eyes from her.

 

Her horse had a jewelled bridle of fine leather, but she rode without a saddle. She wore a long white gown, embroidered in crimson, which she’d gathered around her thighs, leaving her legs bare and free. Sea water dripped from her pale feet. Her hair was long and yellow, woven with gaudy flowers, crimson, gold and purple. Her eyes were blue as mountain ice, her lips full and red. On a golden chain slung round her neck, she wore a silver horn, scarcely longer than a man’s hand.

 

She seemed to gaze into Oisin’s heart as she spoke. ‘You are sad, heroes.’

 

‘Do you know who we are?’ Finn said impatiently.

 

‘You are Finn and Oisin, rulers in this land of Erin. Yet, your hearts are sorrowful.’

 

‘We were hunting to forget our cares.’

 

‘So,’ she said, ‘does a victor of battles have cares?’

 

Finn seemed to swell up even larger in his saddle. ‘Our cares are those of men who fought on the field of Gabhra, where Fenian betrayed Fenian. They’re the cares of men who went into the hell of battle and returned, leaving behind kinsmen who’d become the food of ravens.’

 

‘Then perhaps you should rest from them,’ she said in a voice of infinite kindness.

 

For a long moment, Finn was silent. Then he said bluntly, ‘Who are you, lady? What are you?’

 

‘I am Niamh. I come from a country far away.’

 

Surely, Oisin thought, this creature was one of the Immortals — reckless Manannan’s children. She showed no fear of the heroes who confronted her — tall, strong-armed Oisin and his mighty father. Nothing mortal could have stood for long against the pair of them. Finn looked like a huge dolmen stone with an iron helmet planted on top of it.

 

‘My father rules there,’ Niamh said, ‘as you do in the shores and towns and forests of this kingdom. His name is Aengus.’

 

‘Then what brings you here?’ Oisin said, finally discovering words to speak, as if a spell had broken.

 

Her chin lifted slightly at that. ‘I have chosen a man. King of the Fenians.’ Her breast heaved beneath her gown, but she spoke to Finn in an unwavering voice. ‘Oisin will be mine.’

 

Within his own breast, Oisin’s heart pounded like a madman’s drum. Manannan’s children were creatures beyond mortal notions of life and time and death. This one had chosen him! That might be a blessing or a curse, but what did it matter? He had only to look at her, at the beauty shining out of her.

 

‘Why choose my son?’ Finn said gruffly.

 

‘That’s for him to know, milord, if I lead him to make sense of it. But it’s not something I’m going to shout about all over the wide world of mortals.’

 

‘Is my son not mortal, then?’

 

‘If he dwells in my country,’ Niamh said, ‘he will live no life such as mortals understand.’ She spoke to Oisin directly. ‘Speak now, prince of the Fenians, will you give yourself to me gladly, with your whole heart?’

 

Years seemed to pass as Oisin dismounted from his horse, stepped quietly to her, then knelt at her feet. He drew his long iron sword from its leather scabbard and held it out before him, point downward, resting it in the sand. His giant hands knotted on its hilt. ‘I am yours,’ he said. ‘Lady, I am yours only.’

 

‘Then ride in my arms.’

 

One last time, Oisin glanced at his father. Standing, he sheathed the sword and leapt onto the back of the black stallion, sitting in front of the wondrous lady. Niamh leant into him from behind, her soft breasts pressing into him through his cloak. He was a hero of many famous battles, but his body trembled.

 

Finn made no gesture or speech to dissuade him, perhaps as enchanted as his son; the old, Unconquered king, who had fought relentlessly against monstrous creatures and beaten the assembled might of the Fir Bolgs, was powerless to oppose Niamh’s will.

 

‘We go now,’ Niamh said. ‘We have very far to travel. Farther than you can imagine.’

 

* * * *

 

To Oisin’s uncomprehending senses, they appeared to ride across the sea itself, the green waves reaching up to their feet. ‘You are one of us,’ Niamh said.

 

‘I am yours now, Niamh, I belong to your father’s kingdom.’

 

Her arms wrapped around his chest; her breath was close to his ear. ‘No,’ she said. ‘That’s not what I told you just now, hero of the Fenians. Listen to me carefully, Oisin. You are one of us. One of Manannan’s children. You always were. Think about that.’

 

‘My love, I hear you, but I don’t understand.’

 

‘Then let me give you understanding. For all his mighty strength, your father is old and white-whiskered —but he sired you in the lust of his youth. How long ago was that, then? You have lain with many women and made warrior sons of your own. By now, your face should be wrinkled and your hair as silvery as a herring.’

 

‘You say I appear young for my age? That’s not so uncommon.’

 

‘But it is seldom so marked. Trust me on this, my lover. When it is seen, it leads to comment, to questions. The mortal folk are starting to notice. A few more years, and there would have been talk, foolish talk, then foolish action. You would have needed to take the blood of more Fenians with your sword and heavy arm — except that I came to you in time to put a stop to it.’

 

He thought of the battle of Gabhra, where Fenians had turned upon Fenians and almost destroyed each other. His eldest son, Osgar, had died in that battle.

 

‘Forget it for now,’ Niamh said — then she sang to him, songs of unending youth and joy. For days, they rode over the sea-swell, the sun rising and setting many times in a cloudless sky. One day, he heard the sound of a different music on the wind. The stallion’s ears pricked, and he galloped towards the sound. Grotesque trees with smooth bark and roots like stilts grew out of the water, first in ones and twos, then peculiar groves of them, then a whole forest marching out from the shoreline into the sea.

 

Brightly coloured birds and strange large insects flew around. One blue butterfly was as big as Oisin’s hand.

 

They rode to the shore and up the beach beyond the highest mark of the tide on the yellow sand. The air itself smelled sweet. Niamh released him from her embrace, then swung from the horse in an elegant motion, fluid as a sea wave. Oisin followed her, feeling clumsy beside her movements.

 

She tethered the horse to a tree, then faced her new lover, frankly looking him up and down in admiration. ‘As I told you,’ she said, ‘the blood of Manannan’s children must flow in your veins. Surely, it has dominated your mortal blood. Like me, you do not age. I claim you as one of our own.’

 

She took the flowers from her yellow hair, then gathered her hair in one hand as she raised the golden chain over her head. Gently, she laid it down at her bare feet, careful to get no sand inside the little silver horn. Then she smiled shyly, showing perfect white teeth. She crossed her arms: right hand on left shoulder, left on right. In another elegant motion, she peeled the gown down her body, then stepped out of it, her skin like alabaster. ‘I am yours, Oisin, and you are mine.’ She walked to him and began to undress him, starting with the cloak, which now seemed so out of place. Still it was like a dream. Then she added a single word, ‘Forever.’

 

They lay together in the sand, loving and sleeping and loving. Finally, the sky drew black, with the firefly lights of an ocean of stars overhead. Oisin slept dreamlessly, then awoke to a new day with the yellow sun already high above them. Niamh was running to him from the waves, but this was a different Niamh.

 

Her body was strangely altered — her skin had turned a golden brown. She was shorter and rounder, narrower across the chest, and her breasts were as flat as a young girl’s. Her neck had grown longer, and her arms and shoulders looked powerful. As she approached, she changed once more, becoming slimmer and taller, her chest-wall arching out and her breasts growing larger. She lay by his side — now restored to the form he already knew so well — laughing and wriggling against him.

 

A shapeshifter. So, what was she, really? Which was her true form? The Niamh who’d run to him from the sea just now was not an ugly creature, far from it, but that had not been his Niamh. She was truly inhuman. How could he make love to that?

 

But his body betrayed him. She took him deep into her, straddling him as she moved like the rolling waves. ‘Forever, my love,’ she said. ‘Forever.’

 

* * * *

 

Oisin gazed out at the sea. There was nothing but the clear blue water and the strange trees, the forest of them growing thinner toward the horizon. ‘Where is this place?’ he said.

 

Niamh cast a pink seashell into the small, lapping waves. ‘You will not find it on the maps of mortals,’ she said. She hugged him, pressing her naked body close to his. ‘Our country is called Tir na n-Og. We live on the islands of the sea — or under the water itself!’

 

‘Under the sea?’

 

‘So I said, my love.’

 

‘But how can you live under the sea and breathe the sea’s waters? It’s not possible.’ But even as he said the words, he felt their foolishness. What did possible and impossible mean when it came to the deeds of this strange, beautiful creature? He had already seen the impossible many times. What was one more impossibility, that it should trouble his waking thoughts?

 

‘We have certain powers,’ Niamh said. ‘I shall teach them to you. We can shape our own bodies as you have seen me do, but that is not all. We can also shape the world around us, at least as it appears to others.’

 

‘Illusions? Glamour?’

 

‘You can call it by such words, if you wish. One day, such things will seem like foolish tricks. They will seem like nothing at all to you.’

 

She stretched out beside him, head resting on her palm, her fine body balanced on elbow and hip. Even as he admired her beauty, she changed again, becoming the version of Niamh who had run to him from the waves the previous day: darker, more rounded, yet more muscled in the places where she needed strength for swimming.

 

‘Our control of our bodies is not entire,’ she said, ‘not total. There comes a certain point, if we seem to change, when it is what you call glamour. There are parts of us too fine to change — fine-grained, I mean, like timber. Flesh and hair and bone are made of very tiny stuff. The tiniest parts we can merely shift about.’

 

‘Shift about?’ he said, feeling stupid.

 

‘Yes, my love — like building blocks smaller than grains of sand.’

 

She returned to her long-limbed, more human form, taking only seconds to shift shape, then stood and shrugged into her gown. As Oisin tugged on his sturdy breeches, Niamh wandered down to the waves, lifting her hem and skipping in the shallows.

 

‘One day we will understand more,’ she said, as he followed her to the edge of the water. ‘Perhaps we can leave the wide Earth itself and let mortals squabble over it. Meanwhile, many of us find life under the sea freer and richer than on dry land. My father has a great underwater city, hidden from mortal eyes. This island is a different part of our kingdom. It is the Island of Dancing.’

 

She walked back to the little horn, where she’d left it on the sand. She stooped to pick it up, then raised it to her red lips, blowing one long note.

 

From the woods above the sand, there came a note in answer.

 

Moments later, a band of young men and women filed out of the woods, two by two and hand-in-hand. They wore simple cloaks and gowns of a pale sea green, with crimson embroidery like Niamh’s. The leading couple stepped up to her and bowed. They led the way through the woods to a large clearing with huts, a well, and a sandy square. Here, a young man greeted them, almost a male version of Niamh, with the same red lips and blue eyes. ‘Joy fills the stars!’ he said.

 

Niamh kissed him on the cheek then stepped back, taking Oisin’s hand. ‘Joy fills our hearts,’ she replied calmly.

 

Some of these children of Manannan had silver instruments: horns, harps, and many bizarre devices that Oisin did not recognise. They played and danced, mocking the power of death and time, their dance winding through the woods to the yellow sands, down to the sea, then back once more. All day long they danced, then feasted in the evening on fruits and fish, talking and laughing and sometimes glancing upward at the clear sky and the glittering stars.

 

That night, Niamh led Oisin back to the beach, where they lay together in the warm sand. In the morning, they ran to shore, Niamh changing form and Oisin finding he could do the same when she commanded it. They plunged into water as warm as blood, letting it flow into their bodies through their open mouths — then out of them through fishy gills they had grown on their long necks. Soon, they swam out to deeper waters, past the stilt-like trees. They explored shelves of bright coral, and made love under water.

 

Afterwards, they walked on the shore in their human forms, not bothering to dress, and Niamh told him more stories of the land of Tir na n-Og.

 

They danced with Manannan’s children. Late that night, Oisin asked her about something that disturbed him. ‘You and all the dancers appear young, but all about the same age — between the years of twenty and thirty, I would think.’

 

‘And you appear the same,’ she said, ‘though you have seen fifty winters. We reach the time of our perfection, then age no more. Sometimes we go secretly in the lands of mortals, looking for those who belong to us.’

 

‘But where are your own children?’ Oisin said. ‘With all this merriment and lovemaking, why are there no children here on the Island of Dancing? Don’t you miss their pranks and laughter?’

 

Niamh sighed. ‘In Tir na n-Og, we choose not to have them,’ she said. ‘You know that we have power over our bodies. To conceive or not, at our own will, is easily within our powers.’

 

‘Then you are not barren?’

 

She laughed at that. ‘Is that what you thought, my love? Of course not!’

 

‘In my land,’ Oisin said slowly, choosing his words with care, ‘they say that the Immortals can have children only if their men lie with mortal women.’

 

‘That is a silly story invented out of jealousy,’ Niamh said. ‘We choose not to have children — but it was not always so. Centuries past, when the first of us were discovering each other, before Tir na n-Og was founded, things were different. We made love and gave birth to children just as mortals did. But when Manannan’s children lay with each other, sometimes they birthed a mortal child — imagine that, if you will, in a country where the parents live forever.’ For a fleeting moment, infinite sadness crossed her face. ‘We can’t prevent it happening. There is some ... some mechanism’ — she said the word distastefully, as if she despised it but could find no better one — ‘of our bodies, too fine-grained for us to understand and control. It is something deep within how we are. Until we have mastered that, our women choose never to have children at all.’

 

She was silent, and he realised that he pitied her. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, feeling the inadequacy of words.

 

‘No, my love,’ she said, ‘don’t misunderstand me. We have many, many consolations.’

 

‘But how can you find out more if you devote your lives to revelry?’

 

She gave an almost secret smile. ‘There’s so much to tell you. I brought you to the Island of Dancing because it is a paradise. Not every part of Tir na n-Og is like this. But stay with me here. I love you.’

 

* * * *

 

One hundred years passed on the Island of Dancing. Oisin swam in the sea, revelling in his new powers, fishing with bare hands among the coral. In the nights and mornings, he made love with his Niamh. They danced through the day, then feasted in the warm, sweet evenings, returning to the beach to sleep together in the starry night.

 

Then it changed. One day, they ran down to the water’s edge, shifting their bones and muscles as they changed to their watery forms. But something washed up on the beach at their feet. Oisin looked more closely and saw that it was a broken wooden lance. He held it up in the bright daylight. How far had it drifted? Across what seas? The shaft was ingrained with dirt from some warrior’s hands. The iron point was rusted, but dried blood remained on the shaft.

 

And he remembered.

 

He remembered battles, fighting side by side with Finn and Bran, and other great Fenian heroes. He recalled how the dead lay heaped on one another in that last mutual slaughter between Fenian and Fenian on the field at Gabhra, how the horses had seemed to wade in blood, how it had dripped from their legs and bellies at the end of the terrible battle. An emptiness stole into Oisin’s heart like winter, and suddenly he found himself weeping, weeping openly for Osgar and all the other Fenians who had died, or been hacked and mutilated — the ones who’d wished they were dead, who’d thought the dead were the lucky ones.

 

Niamh held him as he wept and sobbed on her shoulder, grief-stricken beyond any consolation.

 

When their bodies parted, he realised that they could not stay on the Island of Dancing. They dressed in silence — Oisin’s heavy winter clothes lay untouched and unharmed on the beach, as if mere days had passed, and not: a century — then found the black stallion where they’d left him that first day on the island. Like them, the horse was no older, and it was no worse for being tethered for all that time. Strange that Oisin had never seen him since they’d come ashore — but now, when they needed him, there he was. Silently, the two Immortals mounted the black stallion, then sped across the waves.

 

‘Don’t be sad, my love,’ Niamh said. ‘We shall never die till the day Manannan reaches out from the sea of stars, and the sun grows old and huge like your father, Finn, and consumes the Earth forever. Perhaps we can cheat that fate as well. Perhaps we need never die.’

 

‘But to what purpose?’ Oisin said. ‘We create no life, we accomplish nothing. We just go on like this forever.’

 

‘We will learn to understand life,’ she said as they rode along. ‘Mortal sages have tried to understand it, but we will outshine all their learning.’

 

‘Who has tried to understand it?’

 

‘The Hellenes and Romans — peoples you do not know — have teachings about life and the seeds of life. They tell how life begins in the woman’s womb, how it grows and changes, how the child resembles both father and mother, sometimes leaning to one, sometimes the other way. Have you never wondered at that? We strive to improve the teachings of mortals. If life can be understood at all, then the children of Manannan will find out how. Nothing is more important to us. And, after all, we have eternity.’

 

‘These Hellenes and Romans —’ Oisin said.

 

‘Yes?’

 

‘What do they say about life? What have they learned about it?’

 

‘That does not matter so much, my love. Our own philosophers have disproved their teachings.’

 

‘What?’

 

She told him how a philosopher of the Immortals had once asked Aengus to remove a dozen does from the bucks during the rutting season on an island of Tir na n-Og. ‘Our woodsmen secluded a dozen of the does after they all had mated,’ she said.

 

Later on, half the does had been killed and cut open. Strangely, no trace of male seed had been found within them. Later still, the does that had been kept alive were all found to be carrying fauns.

 

‘Do you see, my love?’ Niamh said. ‘All the slain does must have conceived as well, but where was the male seed?’

 

Oisin pondered it. He could neither dispute her reasoning nor see where it should lead him.

 

‘Among the Romans,’ she said, ‘they who rule the greater part of the mortal world, some say that a child grows from a mix of male and female fluids in the womb. Others say that the male seed shapes the female blood. But we have never observed such things. So much for the fancies of mortals about life and birth. They are entirely disproved.’

 

‘At least for deer,’ Oisin said, trying hard to understand.

 

‘If for deer, my love, why not for other such beasts? Why not for mortal humans? Why not for Manannan’s children as well?’

 

‘So, what does it mean?’

 

‘It all means nothing, I suppose.’ Her tone had a sour trace. ‘It shows how little is known, even by the wisest of the mortals, and even by Immortals like us. Yet — somehow — life must form from the mingling of male and female together. We believe that the male seed quickly leaks out, or is absorbed in the womb, but a small amount remains, so tiny that our eyes could never see it, however much we try to improve them with our shape shifting. We take our characters from living particles so fine that even we can scarcely imagine them. That is why we cannot control them. And so the women of my country choose not to bear children.’

 

She spoke no more as they crossed the sea, which grew cold and misty. Instead, she sang to him — heroic songs of old battles and heroes.

 

Oisin could not see in the mist to know how often the sun rose and fell, but many days must have passed as they journeyed. At last, they heard the sound of breakers crashing on rocks. Soon, all round them, the water was smashed into white foam, and a black tower rose abruptly from it, looming sheer from a base of dark, twisted rocks. The tower’s sides approached each other at an angle, as if it might be, in reality, a prodigiously stretched pyramid rising to a point far above. But its top was obscured from sight in the sea mist. For all Oisin could tell, the tower might have risen forever into the sky and the ocean of stars.

 

The black stallion strode over the breakers and spray, then onto the rocks. ‘Where are we now?’ Oisin said.

 

‘Hush, my love. You’ll see.’

 

They reached a huge, battered wooden door. It looked like great siege engines had pounded it, but never broken through. The stallion shivered, and Oisin could see no way forward — but then the door opened inwards like an invitation to the land of the dead. They entered the dark tower, and the door clanged shut behind.

 

Niamh dismounted, her bare feet silent on the hard floor. Oisin followed quickly. They were in a huge hall full of statues carved from the twisted rock, and he loosely tethered the horse to one of them. There were no windows or torches in here, but the hall was lit with a green phosphorescence that was everywhere and nowhere.

 

More huge doors led out of the hall in every direction, and they approached one on the right-hand side. It opened before them, then shut behind. They entered further halls, Oisin trying to memorise the pattern of doors that had opened for them, for when they needed to find their way back.

 

In the fifth hall, a dark-haired woman in a pale green gown was chained by her outstretched arms between another two statues. One of these was a laughing giant, the other a great dragon with teeth longer than daggers. It strode on two legs, like a bird of prey, with huge, scaly wings. The woman’s head was bowed, but she looked up as they approached. She was weeping softly, her face set in a sad smile even, as tears welled out of her ice-blue eyes and rolled down her pretty cheeks.

 

Niamh spoke quietly. ‘We will free you.’

 

Oisin drew his sword. ‘Who has chained you like this? Who must I slay?’

 

The woman shook her head. ‘Flee while you can.’

 

He swung the heavy sword and cleaved one of the chains where it fastened to a ring of iron set into the dragon statue. Now the woman could move, though she was surely sore and stiff. There was still an iron band on her wrist, dangling its length of rusted links. With a second powerful stroke, Oisin cleaved the other chain, and the woman was free. He sheathed his sword and looked carefully at the bands on both the woman’s wrists. The bands were not perfect, fused circles, but thick strips of metal bent round until their ends almost touched. Oisin gestured for her to be still, and he pulled at one of those metal strips with all the force in his immensely strong arms.

 

Slowly, he unbent the metal, then threw it clanking on the stone floor. He rested to get his breath, then opened up the other strip of iron — grunting with the effort — and slid the narrowest part of the woman’s wrist through the gap he’d made.

 

‘You’re doomed,’ the woman said. ‘You should have run.’

 

‘We’ll see about that,’ Oisin said. ‘Come with us if you wish.’

 

They approached the door to yet another hall. It opened before them, and they entered. This hall was the largest yet. Like the others, it was full of statues of dragon creatures and other ancient monstrosities.

 

‘Take that door,’ Niamh said, pointing.

 

Oisin went alone this time, drawing out his sword once more, and pointing its naked blade ahead of him. The door swung open, and he found himself in the open air, on a grassy plain overlooking a cliff. He could hear the sound of waves crashing below. The sun was rising in a misty sky. Oisin scanned the plain, finding nothing but more statues: dragons, three-headed giants, grotesque creatures of every sort. Then there was a sound from somewhere nearby. It was almost like a dog’s barking, but somehow different, not like any dog Oisin had heard in mortal lands. Then it came again — louder this time. The evil sound put a shiver up his back. He turned slowly, waving his sword from side to side. One of the statues was coming to life.

 

It was a scaly creature, larger than any man, even the greatest heroes of the Fenians — larger than Finn himself, larger, indeed, than mighty Bran, who was too big to sit on a horse. The creature was obscenely naked and unarmoured, but it carried a sword in one hand and a battle-axe in the other. Its upper body moved and it made that barking sound once more. Its lower quarters were still immobile, but it gradually moved more and more of its parts, testing itself for life, as if it grew out of the stone. It uttered a different sound this time, a plaintive wolf howl, as if frustrated at the slowness of the change from statue to living thing.

 

Suddenly, it could twitch its legs. Its next sound was a bark of triumph. The creature gathered into itself, opening its slavering, toothy mouth. Its eyes — the same black as the rest of its body — turned white, then red. They fixed on Oisin, and the nameless creature barked sharply. It lifted its powerful arms with their bladed weapons, then jumped towards Oisin with the hopping motion of a gigantic sparrow.

 

As the sun made its long climb through the sky, Oisin exchanged blows with the creature. Sword rang on sword and battle-axe. Like Manannan’s children, the creature was a shapeshifter and a master of illusions. One moment, its body was a hideous writhing like a mass of eels, the sharp blades of sword and battle-axe whirling from the midst of it. Then it leant into Oisin in the form of a drowned sailor, water dripping from its body, swinging its blades at the last moment when Oisin hesitated. It appeared as a giant fir tree with bladed branches — this was a feat beyond any mere shape shifting. It became a clawed dragon, then took the graceful form of Niamh herself. Oisin ignored all these changes. As the red sun sank into night, he prevailed.

 

With a sudden lunge, he broke through the creature’s wall of ribs and his sword blade found its heart. The creature screamed and barked and fell. Oisin swung his sword this time, chopping the creature’s head from its body. With a backbreaking effort, he lifted his enemy’s huge body, which was even weightier than it looked. He carried it to the edge of the cliff, then hurled it into the sea-surge below.

 

Holding the severed head as a trophy of victory, he returned to Niamh and the other woman. They searched his body for wounds, rubbing them with lotions. The three of them feasted on stewed meat and roots from a black iron cauldron that the woman found in one dark corner, and drank red wine from a stone jar.

 

In the morning, the dark-haired woman was gone, taking up the freedom she’d been granted, whatever it meant to her. Niamh and Oisin found a rug of otter skins. There they made love with a joy enriched by victory. She wrapped her soft limbs around him, and shuddered and cried out as they joined together.

 

For three more days, they feasted, slept and loved. The cauldron and the jug never emptied. On the fourth morning, they walked together on the plain of statues and heard that barking sound. A shiver went up Oisin’s spine, and he turned to face the scaly creature. It was moving slowly, but then more quickly, its eyes turning to white, then red. With a grim joy in his heart, Oisin drew out his sword. Blade beat on blades once more, until the end of the day, when the Fenian prevailed and cast his enemy into the sea below.

 

For one hundred years, Oisin feasted and battled and loved his beautiful Niamh, his taste for victories never quenched. But then, as he cast his enemy into the sea one more time, he saw how the breakers tossed up a green beech bough on the rocks below.

 

And he remembered.

 

He remembered a time with Finn, his father, sheltering under a beech at Almhuin — and then memory grew from memory in a flood that overwhelmed him and brought him weeping to his knees. Niamh appeared and ran to him, cradling him in her white arms and comforting him, kissing his eyes and cheeks. But nothing could make the tears stop.

 

She left him, then returned with the black stallion. They mounted in silence, and the magical horse leapt over the edge of the cliff, then ran like a long-legged fly on the surface of the water.

 

* * * *

 

For days they rode. ‘We go to the Island of Forgetfulness,’ Niamh said, ‘for your memories defeat our happiness.’

 

Oisin shook his head. ‘I was happy for one hundred years, then for another hundred.’

 

‘But our lives go on forever,’ she said behind him. ‘One hundred years, or two hundred, is nothing to us. We have the great Forever to fill up.’

 

‘To dance or love or fight forever is vanity. There must be something more.’

 

‘Though we live for ten thousand years, or ten thousand times ten thousand, we can never see or know all that there is,’ she said, ‘for the universe can never be bounded.’

 

‘Not even by the gods?’

 

‘If Manannan truly exists, he is the god of a greater ocean than mortals imagine. I mean the ocean of infinite space, of the neverending islands of stars. But that is as it should he, for a greater universe means a greater god. A god who made the confined little universe that mortals believe in would not be worthy of our worship.’

 

‘Then we should stride out into Manannan’s universe. We have magical powers. Is it so difficult?’

 

‘No, my love, we cannot do that, at least not yet. We have certain powers, all of them natural to us, none of them magical. The stars must be infinite in number, and the universe an endless ocean of them, but they are not for us. Not now. We know of no way to travel on that vaster sea.’ She pressed more tightly into his back, as if she feared losing him. ‘We are bound to this Earth, and I fear we’ve already drunk its pleasures.’

 

‘But not the knowledge of it, Niamh.’

 

‘No,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘not the great knowledge it contains. As I told you, the very small eludes our attempts to understand it — as much as the infinitely great.’ She let him go, leaning away, just touching him lightly with her delicate hands. ‘Perhaps you would find the search for knowledge and wisdom less vain than years of dancing or victories.’

 

‘I am a warrior,’ he replied sadly. ‘That quest is not for me. Take me to the Island of Forgetfulness.’

 

Niamh wept for a time, but then she sang — sad songs of loss and old memories.

 

Again, they journeyed for days, through a mist that became thicker and colder as the time passed. At last, they found themselves wading through white foam along the edge of a desolate stony shore. Where a stream flowed into the ocean water, the black stallion began to walk up the shoreline and into a forest of immense, wrinkled trees, each of them wider than a house. Hanging from the boughs of these trees was a long, gourd-shaped fruit that smelled as sweet as honey. For hours, the stallion walked on dark tracks that became steeper the longer the journey went. Then he stopped, as they left the forest and found themselves at the top of a hill looking down on a valley floor — on a wide, grassy plain.

 

The horse whinnied and picked his way down.

 

Here were a thousand men and women, not unlike the folk of the Island of Dancing, but sleeping silently on the ground. Now and again, one moaned and woke for a moment, made some gesture or dumb action, then fell back into a slumber. On the ground beside the men were weapons of all kinds: swords and spears, arrows, battle-axes, war hammers and maces, shields and armour, battle conches and horns. Scattered across the valley, rising from the lush, tall grasses, were more of the gigantic honey trees, and the honey-sweet smell was all around, heavy as the taste of mead.

 

As the sky darkened and the stars came out, birds and animals moved fearlessly among the sleeping Immortals. One of the sleepers was vast in size, larger than any mortal — as large, perhaps, as the nameless creature that Oisin had slain so many times on the Island of Victories. This enormous sleeper was covered with gold jewellery. Niamh and Oisin stopped by his side and dismounted from the black horse. Niamh blew a single note on her horn, and the sleeper woke. He raised his hand as if in blessing, and Oisin felt all his memories of battles, victories, betrayals rise within him in a riot. With them came the memory of endless vain revels on the Island of Dancing, endless futile combat on the Island of Victories. All of it seemed to flash before him at once, then dissolve like a summer cloud. He felt purified.

 

‘Forget,’ the sleepy giant said. ‘Forget it all.’ He lay back in the grasses, returning to his slumbers.

 

Niamh and Oisin let the stallion go free to do as he would. They breathed the honeyed air and lay down in the grass, too sleepy even to make love. In his dreams, Oisin forgot everything of heroism, war, merriment, and sexual joy. His dreams were as peaceful as a blanket of snow or the slow-growing ivy on a wall.

 

At times, the brightness of the noon sun brought him awake, or the presence of some animal — then he breathed the sweet air and smiled on his Immortal lover, sleeping by his side. But after a hundred years, he and Niamh chanced to wake at the same time, disturbed by a raven eating a ripe honey fruit where it had fallen. The bird scuffled about busily, showing no sign of drowsiness. Then there was another such bird, and yet another. No more — only the three. But that was enough.

 

Oisin remembered.

 

The ravens were like those that had feasted on the endless dead when kinfolk fought with kin on the field of Gabhra. Oisin’s eyes met Niamh’s. ‘I can never forget,’ he said.

 

She nodded sadly, or so it appeared. But then she said, ‘It is just as well. I am glad of it. Come.’ The black stallion ran towards them, unchanged in another hundred years, and they mounted on its back.

 

‘Where do we go now?’ Oisin said.

 

‘You are ready to return to the land of mortals.’

 

‘No. I have forsaken it for you.’

 

‘There is something I must show you.’

 

Yet again, they rode for days, speaking earnestly of their future. This time, Niamh did not sing, but only talked and listened. But she gave him a warning. ‘Touch nothing, my love. If once you give way, then you will never return to the Islands of Dancing and Victories. Your soul will be weighed down with time.’

 

* * * *

 

They rode on waves the size of mountains, past innumerable islands, past sights stranger than mortals’ eyes had ever seen: many-limbed kraken, each of these monsters larger than a mortal village; even vaster leviathans that chewed on the kraken like crusts of bread.

 

One day, there was the sound of horses and geese. Niamh and Oisin had reached the lands of mortals. They crossed the country of Erin from west to east. All was changed as they rode through the countryside. The battle camps of the Fenians were gone. The great fortress of Dun Ailleann was a mound of broken stone. Villages paid worship to a strange god of death and rebirth, while hard-handed folk tilled the soil, skilled with ploughs, not shield and sword and spear. For all their toil, they were puny, considered beside the least of the heroes of old.

 

‘Three hundred years have passed,’ Niamh said, ‘and the Nazarene god has triumphed.’

 

Oisin shook his head, disconcerted. ‘What god is this? I know of no Nazarene god.’

 

These farmer folk with their insipid deity worked and loved and hoped; they were not entirely contemptible. For all that, Oisin wept. Three hundred years all gone ... The land was no longer fit for heroes.

 

In a field at Glenasmole, two men carried a heavy rock, staggering and sweating with its weight, trying to load it onto a wagon. Oisin did not hesitate, though he never knew whether he acted out of pity or contempt — or simply out of pride that a use could still be found for his heroic strength. Leaning from the horse, he seized the rock from them and flung it easily on to the wagon. Then he remembered Niamh’s warning.

 

He fell from the horse’s back and it flew westward across the mortal land, heading for Tir na n-Og, bearing Niamh with it.

 

* * * *

 

Heavy with the weight of three hundred years of memories, Oisin seemed to fall down a steep-sided abyss, as deep as the tower on the Island of Victories was tall — its bottom lost from sight. Down, down, into oblivion.

 

He swooned, then awoke, then swooned again. Yet once more he awoke, but was somehow less than himself, some of his faculties missing, though how could he tell such a thing if it were the case? Some power outside himself seemed to be assessing him and making its report.

 

Oisin gave in and slept.

 

* * * *

 

The next time he woke, he was alone on a grassy hillside in cold mist. Gradually the mist parted, and a figure came toward him. It was Niamh.

 

‘I thought I’d never see you again,’ he said.

 

‘I never said that, my only love. I said your soul would be weighed down with time. Did I not speak truly?’

 

‘Where are we?’

 

‘In my father’s kingdom. Come with me.’ She stretched out her hand, and he took it, standing with her help, then finding he needed no help at all. He shook her hand away; he was assessing himself. He felt strong and light. All his powers seemed to be back. All of them? Could he still shift shape, as he’d learned on the Island of Dancing? He held out his right hand as an experiment, inspected its back, reacquainting himself with each nail, every freckle and hair, stretching out his fingers like a spider. Concentrating as he’d been taught, he made the fingers grow longer, joint by knuckled joint, then shaped his nails into retractile claws like a cat’s. Niamh watched patiently as he returned the hand to human shape.

 

‘How did we get here?’ Oisin said.

 

‘We rode for three hundred days over land and sea, using roads and bridges and ships. I assure you, my horse cannot fly over the waves as I made it seem, but what I told you is true. This kingdom is very far from the land of Erin. It is everything I said — a kingdom of islands and ocean.’

 

As the mist vanished, the day grew warmer and clearer. Supernaturally clear — he had never seen with such clarity, not in his days as a hero among mortals, not on the three enchanted islands.

 

At times since he’d met Niamh, he’d felt as though living in a dream. This was the opposite. Everything before this moment now seemed dreamlike.

 

‘I don’t understand,’ he said, thinking back through his adventures. ‘You’re leaving out the Island of Dancing, the Islands of Victories and Forgetfulness. It’s three hundred years or more since I first met you in my own land. You showed me what it has become.’

 

‘It has not changed,’ she said. ‘Not yet.’

 

‘But I saw it.’ Yet that, too, seemed like a dream.

 

Niamh shook her head and smiled sweetly. ‘I am sorry to have deceived you. I merely showed you its future.’

 

‘You can see the future?’ he said, incredulous.

 

‘Its possible future.’ Once more, she took his hand. He neither returned her reassuring grip nor broke away, letting his hand become a dead thing in her grasp while he thought about what she was saying. ‘We believe,’ Niamh said, ‘that the cult of the Nazarene god will triumph through all the great empire of the Romans. Then it will find its way to the Fenians’ land. I showed you what your home may look like in three hundred years. Mortals prefer such faiths to the wild gods of heroes. Eventually, one god will be universal, at least among the Romans and their neighbours.’

 

‘What about your god, Manannan?’

 

‘We are not so attached to our god, or to the idea of a god. We worship the endless sea of stars. If Manannan made them, well and good: in that case, he is a greater god than any other. But we don’t know the origin of the stars. We don’t even know our own origin, for all that we call ourselves Manannan’s children.’ She released his hand and walked away slowly, as if hoping he would follow.

 

But a bitterness entered his heart. So much vanity! Even the icy clarity of his senses might be some new kind of illusion.

 

Niamh stopped and turned back to him. Her breast rose and fell beneath the embroidered gown. ‘There is so much that we don’t know,’ she said. We are scarcely more advanced in our philosophy than the mortals. I told you how little we understand of conception, the inheritance of our natures, the growth and development of life.’

 

Her words were meaningless, like lumps of stone dropped in an icy lake. ‘The last three hundred years that I seemed to live were some kind of trick, weren’t they?’ he said. ‘That’s what you’re telling me. More of your glamour. None of it ever happened.’

 

‘It happened,’ Niamh said. ‘It was no dream. But little was exactly as it seemed to you. I told you on the beach of the Island of Dancing. Certain powers are natural to us and one of them is the ability to confuse the minds of mortals.’

 

‘But I am not a mortal, or so you told me.’

 

‘I spoke the truth. But you are untrained, my love. Besides, you were only partly confused. As I hoped, you broke the glamour on every occasion, smuggling in your spears and beech boughs and ravens. Oisin, will you come with me or not?’

 

‘To where, lady? Where would I go with you after all this?’ Words of the embittered heart.

 

‘To my father’s city,’ she said.

 

‘What if I don’t?’

 

‘You will live forever, all the same — but time will weigh even heavier on your shoulders. What is it that you want in life that can keep you occupied forever? Dancing? Battles? Perhaps forgetfulness? You have experienced them, or their semblance, and you know now that they alone cannot sustain an immortal life. So what then? Do you want a life among the mortals, changing your name and your home each decade to avoid suspicion? You can have any of those things, if you seek them out, but I’ve taught you that they’re not what you really want — they’re not enough. Am I wrong about that, my love?’

 

‘By now, I’m too confused to answer.’

 

‘If I’m wrong, they’re all yours for the finding and taking — but they’re not for me. Not them alone.’

 

She stepped toward him, but he gestured her away angrily. Now they were both like fish floating deep in an icy pool, each waiting for the other to come to life. ‘How do I know this is not another trick?’ he said. ‘Another illusion? More glamour? How can I be certain of anything from now on?’

 

‘You can’t, Oisin, you can never be sure of things, though I tell you truly that none of our conversations were tricks and you’re not currently moved by glamour. But you’ll have to find a life for yourself in a universe where such things can be. Is that too much to ask of a hero?’

 

‘Then what was it all about?’ Everything was so clear, at one level of his thoughts. Yet Oisin understood none of it. It tortured him.

 

‘You have been gifted with three hundred years of feeling and experience,’ Niamh said, ‘in preparation for eternity — all packed into just as many days. All of us are put through that preparation when first we’re called to Tir na n-Og. It helps us to find out what we really want in an immortal life. My love, you’re stronger than ordinary men. You can shift your shape and become even stronger, more versatile, more beautiful.’ She shrugged. ‘You need never die. But, if you choose to prey on the mortal world with all your strength and your powers, you’ll have to say farewell to me.’

 

‘You think that’s what I want?’

 

‘It’s not for me to know, but understand that I could not go with you in the mortal lands, for I know what I want and it’s not what the great world is offering. Stay with me in Tir na n-Og.’

 

‘Must I decide now? Just like that?’

 

‘No. You can walk with me a while. Or walk behind me, I don’t mind. I’m going to see my father, Aengus.’

 

‘What happens then?’

 

She walked, and he followed, several steps behind. Over her shoulder, she said, ‘The world, the universe, is an infinite ocean of stars. I told you that before.’

 

‘So you did, lady.’

 

They walked for an hour. Silently. Then she turned and said, ‘I haven’t told you this, my love. The stars themselves are stranger than you think.’

 

A shudder went through him as he realised she must be right, that she spoke truthfully. He listened to her with care. Over the past hour, the anger had all gone out of him. Now he was merely numb. He needed to find some new feeling in himself.

 

And as she spoke, each new word seemed to find a place pre-set for it in his thoughts. Yes, it had to be like that, once you reckoned beyond the everyday appearances of things. ‘Oisin,’ she said, ‘there is a star that the Romans call Jupiter. On one of my father’s islands we have built an observatory — a place where we convene to study the sky.’ She walked backwards now, as she spoke to him, happier than he’d seen her since…when? Those first days on the Island of Dancing. ‘Do you know what, Oisin? There are starlets circling Jupiter, as the moon circles this Earth!’

 

He started to speak, but she gestured him to silence.

 

‘There’s even more. We can sharpen our own eyes, and add still more to their powers with lenses made of glass. When we observe the star called Saturn, it appears to have a moon flanking it, stationary, on either side as it faces us, though no one knows how that could be. One of our philosophers says that such starlets must always travel in circles. She says that there is a vast ring of innumerable tiny starlets all the way around Saturn. That might create the same kind of appearance. We see no motion, because there is no gap between starlet and starlet.’

 

Oisin caught up with her and took her arm, less gently than he might have, but not so roughly as he’d have done an hour before. ‘I told you I am a fighting man,’ he said. ‘Do you expect me to spend eternity gazing at the sky trying to understand the universe? It would be worse than the Island of Dancing.’

 

She winced in his grip, and he relaxed it, then let go entirely.

 

Niamh’s close-lipped smile was infinitely calm, infinitely joyous, infinitely sad. You could find anything and everything in her smile. ‘There is always something new, my love,’ she said. ‘Don’t you yet understand? Sometimes new stars appear in the sky. I have sharpened my own sight with shape shifting and glass instruments, and I’ve looked closely at the Earth’s moon. I’ve studied its surface like you’d survey a plain spread out below you from a hill.’

 

‘And seen what?’

 

‘I’ve seen great mountains and huge, round craters like strange dry seas! Perhaps the moon is a world like our own, one that died. No one knows among the Immortals. But we think that the Earth is itself a starlet dancing about the sun, which is only a star in the infinite ocean of stars that I told you of.’ Infinitely joyous, infinitely sad, her smile said, Come with me, Oisin. There’s so much to learn in a universe like this.

 

‘But I’m a warrior,’ he said. ‘I’ve been a warrior for all my years, since they trained me as a child. I can’t change now.’

 

She looked upward into his eyes, gesturing wildly, shaking her head. ‘Fifty years is nothing,’ she said. ‘It’s less than nothing.’ She grew taller — just slightly, the merest use of her powers. Then they were equally tall. ‘You can change and grow many times. You can lead many kinds of life, each more fascinating and intricate than you can think of. Would it really be so bad?’

 

He felt like his skin was hardening and cracking. Like a snake’s. Then he laughed. Another illusion. But it was painful to think about change.

 

‘The universe is large enough for heroes and for lovers to bloom in,’ Niamh said. ‘It’s mysterious enough that no hundred years need ever resemble the one before. And you need not be the self of a hundred years before.’ She laughed. ‘You can’t be a warrior all your life, my love, not with the length of life ahead of you. Eventually, you’ll have to grow up ... or else put an end to your immortal life. It’s not so bad to grow up. And to grow up is not to be any one thing. Not just a dancer and a lover, not just a warrior. Do you understand? One faraway day your wiser self will look at your present-day self like you now look back at your childhood. And later still — another day — that wiser self will seem like a child in its turn.’

 

He couldn’t accept her words, not just like that. It was all too strange, and there were three hundred years of illusions behind him. Besides, there would always be uses for a warrior — surely! Uses more varied, less futile, than on the Island of Victories. But he had never seen so clearly as he was beginning to today.

 

Niamh’s hair, her eyes and lips, were beautiful — so he kissed her. She was warm and lovely and strong. They broke apart again, but he gave her his hand.

 

Together they walked to the sea, shedding their clothes and weapons. Everything would be safe here in Tir na n-Og. The sun was high overhead when they changed their shapes. Absurdly, he realised that, in all his time on the Island of Dancing, a hundred years of experience, he’d never learned to talk beneath the waves. They’d communicated with gestures and actions. Now they’d need to speak, as well, or something similar. He’d learn. There were so many things to learn. But he’d already mastered the breathing. The skills she’d taught him were real enough. No, it had not been wholly a dream — whatever else it had been. A preparation, she’d said. A time of testing and learning.

 

They swam, deeper and deeper, their bodies changing, and changing yet again. They touched each other’s strange, webbed hands.

 

They swam to her father’s city.

 

* * * *

 

AFTERWORD

 

‘Manannan’s Children’ is based on the story of Oisin and Niamh from Irish mythology, perhaps best known via W.B. Yeats, who retold it in the magnificent verses of his great narrative poem, ‘The Wanderings of Oisin’. Much as I love Yeats, I’ve given the story an extra twist. I’ve taken its meditation on mortal and immortal lives, and re-examined its questions. For me, the poem asks, ‘What would make immortality bearable?’ or even, ‘What might make it good?’ At any rate, those questions haunt my characters; they’re a sub-text to all Oisin’s adventures with radiant, immortal Niamh. But I see no reason to give the usual rationalisations of death.

 

Can life go on forever? No, not forever, not even with the best science we could ever have ... but is it really so bad (as we’re often told) to wish that it could? We live in a wonderful universe, and it would take many lifetimes to tire of it all. In fact, the wonder need never end.

 

— Russell Blackford