The Oracle Said Wander!

Izzah Awan

 "It is likely that I will die next to a pile of things I was meaning to read"

                                                                                                -Lemony Snicket

*From a series of seven engraved stone tablets found buried underneath the southern ruins of Warka.

  Scroll found buried along with the tablets that states:

“If you have come to bury your own tablets, find your own spot.”

They say the most profound vice is pride, I have good reason to believe it is greed. Or perhaps it is, after all, the vainglory that convinced me I could successfully meddle with the transience of life. Anyways, where to begin. Since no odysseys shall be written, no ballads shall be sung in honor of my hapless quests, I have taken it upon myself to narrate a seriously unfortunate series of events.

The rain would not stop. The deafening static of that thunderstorm still comes to me sometimes on nights I cannot sleep. That man with the crooked smile had told me to knock at the front door by the respectable hour of three past midnight. And I had been rapping at the door with all my might for a while now. I am sure I had dented the metal. My only refuge from the cruel downpour was a hardback I had brought along. Finally, the hinges creaked. The door opened. Soaked, I entered while the man muttered his apologies. His smile really was distractingly crooked.

The room I was directed to was a ramshackle thing, yet the air inside had been thick with the most delicious aromas. In the middle of the chaos of sacks and weighing scales and manuscripts and shelves lined with bottles upon bottles of tinctures and powders glinting in the candlelight, sat an ancient man grinding something in a mortar and muttering to himself. His pestle paused mid-air when he sensed me. He looked up for a minute with a vexed regard at being interrupted, then motioned me to sit

“You must be the one who wanted to know about the Jindan[1].”

“To put it crudely”

The old man’s laugh rasped like a match on damp wood, “Crude lasts longer. Listen well, child.”

The road was long and the landscapes blurred as I passed them, existing now only foggily as watercolored recollections. Two days later I found myself in Fuzhao, entering the Banyan Shulin that old man had spoken about with such reverence. And standing beside the daunting trees, beneath the webbed canopy of titanic branches, I felt that reverence as well. I was to reach the heart of the forest with the help of a ‘dǎoháng’, a woodland compass given to me by the locals. It was a curious thing, carved from bone and faintly smelling of sap.

I moved gently, mindful of the mushrooms, heedful of the teeming birdlife. I must have stopped once to rest on an overgrown root and eat a pomegranate. How much time had passed, I cannot say. But at long last, I had reached. The core at which the seemingly infinite nexus of branches condensed. The life that hummed within that mighty trunk and all the ones around it became particularly tangible here. And after looking for a few minutes, there it was. The lowest hanging leaf that I plucked, it came away too easily. The veins glowed slightly as I held it with hands stained balaustine.

[1] A pill or elixir, sought by Chinese alchemists to confer immortality, with a strong tradition in Taoism.

---

The old man was a fraud. I had dried that leaf for two days and boiled it in honeyed water for quarter an hour. The tea had been an abomination of sweet and bitter. It had been all but the elixir of life. I do not care to elaborate on how I knew, but I did.

 For three days afterward, I wandered helplessly through the cramped bazaars of Fuzhao, watching people going about their oblivious lives conversing in languages I did not understand, and dining on herb-baked fish. I envied them their small certainties. Then on the fourth day, luck struck.

A woman with blazing red hair had gathered quite a crowd at the street-corner. As I crept closer, I saw about a dozen coins dancing at her fingertips, the metal becoming liquid on her slender fingers the way she was bending each edge of the coin at her will. She charmed rings and watches off the crowd with just slight touches to the wrists, the masses chirping in delight. An hour, I spent under the hypnosis of all her tricks. When she began packing up to leave, I stayed.

“How do you know all of this?”

She looked up, surprised to see me, then smiled. “A good performer does not say what is behind the curtain.”

“A good performer helps a fellow performer”

 She studied me for a long moment, before breathing out a laugh, “You would not believe me if I told you.”

“Tell me anyways.”

 She sat on a stone step, coins clicking softly in her palm, and a deep sigh later, began, “Metal is a stubborn element, even in something as small as a copper” Two copper coins materialized in her hands that weaved effortlessly between her knuckles. “I used to be a blacksmith’s apprentice, more interested in the world outside than the swelter of the furnace and the constant reverberations of hammer upon anvil. One day, a group of warriors came to the workshop. They boasted of their travels and left with their polished barongs and goloks. And I ran away with them.

“Among them was also a warlock, who led most of their expeditions. When I joined them, they had been hunting for a specific kind of ‘lason’. Fermented Ophidian venom. They said it could put ear to your heart and grant whatever it desires of. It is a long story but in a moment of triumph, I had found the venom and I drank it. I have thought about that moment many times, all the things I could have wished for. But fool that I was, I asked for the obedience of metal,” the coins stilled, “I ran back to my workshop. To gloat, undoubtedly.” She paused, a sad smile on her face, “I cannot tell you what happened next, only that what I gained cost more than I can speak of. Thenceforth, I vowed to exhaust my abilities to these tricks that harm no one. And here I am. Let the people delight in what they see as sleights of hand. So,” The sunlight gave the illusion of her head being on fire, and her freckles seemed to be glowing, “Do you believe my sorry tale?”

I am sure my eyes must have been sparkling when I told her I believed her and I needed to know where to find this lason.

---

“Algaork!” the boy called out, “Welcome to the land of the Dam-al-Akhawain[2]!”

 The breeze was low when I set foot on the white sands of Suqutra. Afar were jagged peaks cast in the golden pour of dawn, and behind me was the unending azure of the ocean. The boy at the docks led me into the city, where I was welcomed with a hearty meal of flatbread and goat cheese.

“Will you take me to Hoq[3]? I will pay your fares.”

 A flicker of terror passed the boy’s eyes before he answered, “I could take you to Samha or Dagub, if you wish to see our caves.”

“Does Hoq frighten you?”

 A sting to his valor was all it took to reach the mouth of the cave by evening. Standing there, the vast ocean beneath in the distance looked like a dazzling blue void.

“Do you ever feel small when you look at it?” I had asked the boy.

 “Our Tah is bountiful,” he said “I have never felt taller than I have felt looking at it.” He looked at me a while before giving me his striped fouta, “Azure like the Tah”.

I searched the cave long beneath the trembling breath of my lantern, as it threw long shadows in every direction off the stalactites. They loomed above me as chandeliers set in stone. The air reeked of salt and rot, and my footsteps echoed after me. Which was until I heard the footsteps breathe. From one of the far stalagmites, something uncoiled. At first, I mistook it for some trick of shadows but then it had moved, soundlessly, except for the hiss of scale against rock.

The serpentine beast froze in place and I felt it watching me with a sort of ancient intelligence, untainted with the fear it had never needed to learn. With scales black as basalt, as it skittered, light caught on the one raisin-colored scale high upon its brow. This was where my knife had to strike true.

I shall spare the gruesome details of my wrestle and slaughter, but on the damning blow the echo of metal upon scale resounded like thunder in a sealed sky. The venom glowed faintly amber in the vial and I drank before I could think, trusting my heart to will athanasia. I had sat in all the ichor I spilt for I do not know how long, an acrid coat in my mouth.

Eternity never came, delirium did. Everything spun and the speleothems were daggers pointed at me wherever I looked. Through some miracle, in this feverish state I stumbled to the city. I awoke three days later to my first coherent thought; I should have fermented the venom first. It had been raining heavily and the ocean was furious in its unrest when I finally left Suqutra a week later.

[2] Dragon’s blood tree

[3] Hoq cave; the most dangerous and darkest cave on the island.

---

For a year then I curled up in a corner, sinking and rising from routine. I tended to plants, painted a few matryoshka dolls and thought about the end often. I turned all the spines on my shelves the other way around so the walls were white and yellow and I shuddered each time I looked at the ugliness of it all. But in the darkness of those days came light.

I had taken to visiting libraries the way mourners visit graveyards. Standing among the dead and whispering apologies, so that each spine looked to me a tombstone. So, it was then that I found myself in that crumbling library with the faded sign, flickering lamps and a low ceiling. The air inside smelled of something halfway between mildew and sleep.

  Somewhere beyond the map section, I heard the hum of conversation, or more accurately, a recitation; with the cadence of a sermon being delivered. I followed it past shelves that leaned like tired sentries and found a cramped room lit by a single projector. In the dim light I could make out a few bored faces on half-broken chairs, and at the front, a spectacled old man.

In a monotonous drawl he was speaking, “-which brings us here,” The room was plunged into dark for only a fraction of a second before the image changed on the screen “Masterful chiaroscuro in landscapes has few examples,” he continued, “and you all have the honor of looking at one of them. Dahl made the Yggdrasil in his last year of life. Ironic, since it is the Tree of Life he had so painstakingly and intricately painted."

Even through the glare of the screen I could see an ash tree rising against storm and sun, its roots coiling through rock and sea and the crown scattering light like spilled stars. Something in its stillness struck me, the way it came alive and breathing in my mind. The sight of it haunted me for days, etched behind my eyelids. It was what I saw when I went to sleep and when I awoke, and I knew then that I had to find the muse.

---

The ferry left me on the quiet docks of Halsnoya, and the air there had tasted faintly of salt and heather. The lowering sun was spilling softly over the pastures, gilding every stone and sheep-track on the island. I walked through meadows flecked with wild thyme and the occasional birch until the land opened into a wide field, caught gold in the sunset.  At its heart stood alone and colossal an ash tree with its roots bulging from beneath the soil.

Someone was already there. A woman, hair the dull gold of harvested rye, was stacking crates of apples beside a handcart. Their skins gleamed red-gold in the sunlight and the scent of them carried on the breeze. When she noticed me, she rested a hand on one of the crates and smiled, as though she had been expecting me all along.

“You’ve come far,” she said.

“I have and yet I don’t seem to remember for what.”

Her eyes were an unreadable hazel as she reached into a crate and brought out an apple, wrapped it in a rosemaled handkerchief and offered it to me. She spoke at length, “Iduna’s apple[4]. The Keeper of all that ripens and all that endures. It is not of the tree you seek, yet it remembers the same light.”

She turned to walk away then, her linen skirts catching the wind. As she went, she had softly whispered, “May your Paths be safe, your Floors unbroken."

 I saw her become a speck in the distance as I bit into the sweet flesh of the apple then, and for a moment everything in the field seemed to lean towards me, humming as though everything living had remembered its first spring. The leaves were rustling and whispering and the sun was setting behind the tree, and in that moment, I had been Dahl.

This too had been unsatisfactory.

I wish I had put an end to this calamitous tango I had gotten myself into then, instead I chose to meet in an underground congregation of cloaked individuals. It was mostly dark and I drifted off many times, I don't remember where this took place, I can only recall when two brothers approached me.

 “What would you say a bulbul is?" the first one asked.

 “Abulbul?”

 “Yes, a bulbul. The bulbul,” the second one replied.

I racked my brains for an answer. “A mechanical engine for winding clocks?”

 “No”

“A tumor, or the lather in a cow's mouth?” “Not that by a far chalk”

“A middle-eastern musical instrument?” 

“Not that but something next-door. A bulbul is a Persian nightingale, what do you think of that now?”

“It is seldom I am far out,” I replied dryly.

“I think you are a sempiternal person,” the second one said.

I might have paled at this, “Sepulchral?”

“No, sempiternal. Eternal”

This then amused me, “I am not yet, but I should like to be.”

They exchanged looks with each other as the second one asked, “Would you?”

I nodded solemnly.

 The first one was giddy when he immediately cried out, “Then hark! You must go to the lighthouse of Maracaibo and stand at the heart of the catumbo at the seventh second of the sixth hour.”

“Have you gone senile? We are talking about lengthening life not cutting it short,” the second one said while shooting the other an incredulous look “Don't mind him, I shall tell you something now. You must go to Mytikas on the Mount Belus and lie there for thirty days. Take lavender incense with you.”

Between Scylla and Charybdis then.

[4] Norse goddess of youth

---

I had gone to neither. Instead, I found myself descending the great steps of Machu Picchu. Would that a Frankenstein of my own had come then, to steer me away from this godforsaken quest. It had taken months to decipher a handful of feverish glyphs from a mould-bitten manuscript, and they had promised that the sun here knew the secret of unending breath. The air was crisp at that altitude and the stone structures the Inca had so carefully hewn, glinted under the Midas touch of the sunlight.

 I stayed there for hours, then days. The sun relentless and burning, healed over night and burnt again in the morning. In the haze of the heat, I sometimes imagined the stones whispering to each other about me, calling me a fool. Still, there was some comfort to be had in persistence, even when it blistered.

By the afternoon of the third day, I realized the futility of my tasks; I sought perpetuity in a place even the indigenous had gone extinct. Something as distasteful as disease had swept away the beloved of this land, it could hardly bestow upon me immunity from the Orcus.

 A shepherd passed by then, inquiring what I was doing.

 “Soaking the sun,” I said.

He shook his head and walked away. An hour later he came back, handing me a small higuerilla bowl, “Yoghurt with freshly cut lucuma[5] inside.”

Oh, I understand all too well the redundancy of it all. It was eating away at me as well, this labyrinth of a fractal and the echoing hooves of the Minotaur on my heels always. The nonsense old notion of real courage being to know futility before you begin, and to begin still. So it goes.

The usual gathering was late that day, or perhaps I was too early. Euphrates moved slow and muscled, glittering lazily beneath the afternoon sun. The warm breeze carried the scent of silt on it. As I waited, I closed my eyes, drifting through the constant hum of cicadas that came from the reeds. Soon, dusk fell on the river, making it look like hammered brass, and the first of the majlis arrived, as they had every day the past month.

The brazier was lit, and an old man seated on a fraying masnad began, “Al-Furat remembers all, the woes of those who have walked beside it, and secrets it has kept through the ages. Today, as our beloved dwindles, let us remind it of those ancient days when it was young, and those who drank from it called it Buranuna.”

He shifted slightly and drew the gishgudi[6] to his knee. The river’s murmurs gentled, listening, as he plucked a single string. The sound unfurled slowly, resonant and deep enough to stir the dust motes. Eyes half closed, the man began to recite. The words rose like smoke, in a language that felt older than breath. Each syllable was heavy, drawn out from the chest. I could not understand them, yet in the shape of loss they carved, I felt their weight.

The small fire in the brazier flickered in rhythm. The gishgudi’s hum swelled and fell, breaking and mending in turns. Grief and grandeur both sculpted to the contours of Euphrates’ path. It gave one last trembling note, and the man’s voice faded, in its wake the silence felt immense as though the air itself mourned. There remained only the sound of the river brushing against its shore, whispering to say that it remembered.

One of the listeners, an old man with eyes the color of wet stone, then turned towards me, “You understand?” he asked.

“I think I used to.”

“Then you walk his road”

“Whose?”

He smiled faintly, eyes glinting in the dimness, “The one who sought to outpace the flood[7].”

“He was the one lamenting?”

“Indeed”

“Did he then? Outpace it?”

 “You should ask Al-Furat,” he said “It bore witness to him and his friend both, as it bears witness to you, now.”

The river did not answer, since I did not ask it. A bowl was passed to me, carved from some gnarled fruit, its rim rough beneath my fingers. The liquid inside was cool and tasted of earth and sweetness, it lingered like the last note of the gishgudi.

[5] Tropical fruit native to the Andean valleys.

[6] A type of ancient Sumerian lute.

[7] Alluding to the first story ever written, the epic of Gilgamesh.

---

The sun was swallowed in an eclipse by great, grave nimbus clouds, rolling and raging in a tempest. The gales howled and thunder could be heard in the distance, and all throughout there were the voices. Sickly cloying voices grating inside my skull, telling me I had come a long way, the Lia Fáil[8] grew impatient in waiting, burdened with all the blood spilt on it.

Stand upon it to claim what is rightful to you, Laoch, the bountiful Lia Fail beckons you.

 A stone stood proud in the heart of the mound, slick with rain, faintly luminescent. The slithering of the voices grew more violent as I neared it; it was damp yet the air enveloping it eerily still. Through the vertigo I climbed atop it. Then came a roar from within the stone alike nothing I had heard before, a bellow that split the marrow of the land.

The Fal makes no mistakes. 

The floodgates of the heavens opened, and a mighty downpour fell on the land as a sea of people erupted with chanting.

 Rí-Tíortha, Rí-Tíortha[9]

I spread my arms that were also not my arms wide out, this foreign body becoming one with the pulse of the chants. I jolted awake in cold sweat, and thunder could be heard in the distance.

Sibyl had walked herself to me narrating my fate, I would have been a fool to turn her away from my doorstep. So began my tedious journey of visiting a wearisome number of oneiromancers. Most of them were flukes, their incense heavy and eyes hollow, iterating that a storm was on its way.

The last of them I knocked upon was a raven-haired woman. Her voice when she spoke was velvety and deliberate.

“You are being summoned by Teamhair it seems,” she said, an amused quirk playing at her mouth “It is the ground that cradles the Fal, coronation stone of the ancients. If you have wandered long in search of something, it is possible that a crowning awaits you on that hill.”

The candlelight trembled across her face; her eyes caught the flame unevenly, and I saw then that the left one was clouded, pale as milk.

“Must I climb atop the stone as I did in the dream?”

Her right eye searched my face for a while, before answering “What is it you are in pursuit of?”

[8] ‘The Stone of Destiny’ on the hill of Tara.

[9] Gaelic for ‘King of the Lands’

---

It was Bealtaine[10] time when I reached Teamhair, the Hawthorn trees in the hill’s periphery in full bloom. And there it was, just as in my dream, the two ringforts and the stone with the exception of rain and a roaring crowd. The Lia Fáil that was brought to the land by the primeval Tuatha de Danan[11] had become lost to age and was no longer the one that stood there in the ringfort; it was a false stone raised for sentiment’s sake, and the keeping of tradition.

That did not stop me from climbing atop it just in case a miracle was due. No roar came, the land did not tremble. Still, I closed my eyes and spread my arms, my own arms, wide out for a moment, the sun was warm and a soft breeze was blowing.

I laid my frugal offerings at the heart of the other ringfort; a jar of fresh cream and a tarnished gold ring. If the oneiromancer was to be believed, I was standing within a faerie ring. I sat there a long while then, pleading with the Daoine Sídhe[12]. It grew darker and the wind picked up yet still I lit a candle and kept on pleading. I did not know how else to convince the unhearing folk of the mounds of my worth.

There was another higher mound at the far edge of the hill, it had a particularly low entrance illuminated with torches; one had to crouch to enter it. The walls inside were carved with Neolithic spirals dating back centuries, were these the desperate etchings of one held in darkness, trying to immortalize existence, uncertain of the fate that awaited? Or the careless scrawls of one making their mark on the gravesite?

I curled up as near the entrance as I could, a small distance away from where the light did not reach and inky shadows licked the threshold. That night I dreamt I was on the mound and huge vultures flew above, their wings flapped in echoes and I mumbled something incoherent to ward them off but they wouldn’t leave. Morning come I was sore from violently shivering all night.

The grass glistened with dew under the sun and there was a certain stillness to the air as I stepped foot in the ringfort again. It was not as I had left it. The jar was broken, a thick dark syrup spilling out from it, staining the grass and the ring was nowhere to be seen. I knelt and the sharp and sweet scent stung me. The syrup clung to my fingers like resin when I touched it. I tasted it cautiously, and it burnt like bittersweet honey. I looked around then, in search of something I couldn’t place, before obeying something older than sense and gathering a handful of this syrup in my palms, swallowed it. Nausea had quickly climbed up my throat.

[10] Gaelic May Day festival, marking the beginning of summer.

[11] An ancient race of otherworldly creatures possessing various magical abilities, that migrated to Ireland.

[12] Called ‘People of the Mounds’, a race of Fae folk residing in fairy mounds.

---

Maybe I should pack it all up and get a wagon; my very own Parnassus on wheels. I wouldn’t get a Pegasus though, a beautiful mare instead and I’d name her Nyx, I told the grass blade.

It was many hours later now; my hand itched from the remains of the viscid nectar despite my efforts to wipe it on the grass. At some distance lay the crumbling remains of the Rath of the Synods[13]; where men once came with their shovels and dug through dirt in search of holiness, dug out a trench and never filled it back the right way. Ancient structures defiled by the perpetual and all too familiar greed of man, that drives him to touch divinity just once, to hold it in the palm of his hands. Always seeking tangible miracles.

Everything was as tranquil and uninterrupted as it had been when I first came. A low hum that is so characteristic to sacred vast ground and the gentle giants of the clouds rolling low. There was no sweet halo of victory above my head, no crowning.

 I’ll be judge I’ll be jury said cunning old Fury I’ll try the whole cause and condemn you to death, the grass blade recited back to me.

My motives, time, and space, the past and the uncertainty of the future began to blur. Where did one begin and the other end? The scales for the merits and the penalties lay broken. The one thing I tirelessly sought after that I believed would salvage me from the mouth of the chasm, had pushed me into the chasm. That night I spent again crouched by the entrance of the mound, writhing and burning despite the cold of the night, asking the cocooning darkness what for? What is it all for?

Fog was cast upon most of the landscape when I awoke. The fever had not worn off. By the end of the hill stood a Hawthorn tree, all its branches adorned with ribbons and scraps of fabric. Beneath the tree lay more votives; fruit rotting and stubs of what once were candles, gold coins and origami birds, scrolls and picture frames. I tore some fabric of my own and knotted upon one of the branches. It was considered good luck.

[13] Ruins comprising of a round enclosure with four rings of ditches and banks, incorporating burial mounds as well. Vandalized in the early 20^th century by a certain group of excavators that believed the land hid the holy artifact of the Ark of the Covenant.

---

Palpable anticipation and pollen hung in the air for the night’s revelry in Navan, the town I had wound up in. The adverts plastered everywhere boasted of colored candles that burnt all day long and dried petals that became fragrant upon being submerged in water. I sat down near a group of girls weaving flower crowns. They were fighting over the pattern of the wildflowers.

“Girls, who’s coming to the old Merlyn tonight?”

“They’d shut him down”

“They had, but its Bealtaine, everyone’s out and about so they’re going to get their money in, open the old man, for a last run”

“Let’s go say our farewells then”

“It’s going to be money wasted, I’m telling you, Merlie never had anything worthwhile to say to me”

“It’s augur talk he does, take it as it comes everybody’s always said.”

The amaranthus porridge had gone cold as I continued to stare at it, the midday sun pouring through the two windows that illuminated the tavern. There were only a few other patrons besides me.

The green-eyed woman beside me had spent the past hour talking about a Belarusian Myatselitsa performance she had seen the week before. She turned to me then, and asked, “You come here for Bealtaine?”

“For Tara”

“I can take you.”

“I have already spent the night there,” I said, not meeting her eyes.

“In the mound of the hostages?”

 “Yes, it got cold.”

 “You know I spend the night before Imbolc[14] there every year, the sunrise fills up the chamber. Makes you feel like a child again wrapped in that molten gold.”

We sat in silence for a while before she spoke again. “You should come to the hill tonight again. My second cousin’s the one lighting the first Bealtaine fire this time. They’re doing things the olden way this year, some druid will light up the first one at Uisneach and Tara will follow with lighting up its own. Not much point to it, I guess people just like tradition.”

The tavern-keeper, a man with a silver beard, came out from the room near the stairs. “Alright lads, come test this out for me,” he said, gesturing at us.

 The room was cramped and one had to crouch to enter it, a small section of one wall was covered by velvet curtains. There, in a glass case framed with magenta metal, sat a figure. Long flowing white hair framed a face wrinkled with age, his mouth disappearing into an untamed beard. He wore a white linen robe and an ocean blue scarf, his thin hands adorned with turquoise bracelets clasped atop a copper staff. Beneath the bushy eyebrows, however, were piercing, depthless blue eyes fixed on me. They did not move.

 “You should take a go at it; I’ve already seen Merlyn in his glory days,” the woman said, handing me a coin.

I slid it into a slot in the metal frame. It clinked, and I held my breath. Nothing happened. The Keeper sighed, and struck the enclosure twice before it began to whir. Merlyn lifted the staff slightly, then brought it down with a clang. In that moment, cast in that blue glow, he looked alive. Entranced by his eyes, I could have sworn I saw them twinkling.

In a stuttering, lilting, mechanical voice that echoed, he spoke without moving his mouth, “Hark! Kkk- Har-kkk! Rea-Reap what tu sow-so! Sow!” 

The filament bulb in the room flickered for a moment, and after some sputtering and more whirring, something fell out with a clink from the slot at the bottom of the case. It choked and garbled some more before two more identical clinks were sounded. The Keeper picked them up and placed into my palm three smooth black stones with symbols inscribed on each of them in white[15].

“Retrace do steps, seek do answers. Do world is wide thus travel far. Sow! And Rea-”

And with a screech that followed, Merlyn’s eyes turned stony, silence accompanying the three of us once again.

 “That was old lad merlie for you. Good man has been through every birth and death in this town would you believe that?” The Keeper said as he looked over to the undead man behind the glass with a wistful fondness.

“He’s only joking,” the woman whispered to me.

Taking the stones from me again, the Keeper inspected them close to his eye, turning them over and over again.

 He hummed thoughtfully, “You’ve got the ivy, birch and yew. We used to have a Reader to decipher these but she landed in the nick for whatever”

 “He means incarcerated”

 “-So now you have to figure it out yourself if you really want to find out what the oracle said.”

“You could tell me… you just read the symbols,” I said.

 “And that’s all I can do. Symbols stick when you get them beaten into you when you’re a wean. Mammy was a witch you see. Memorize this quick- Yew on the biggest stone, Birch on the smaller and Ivy on the smallest.” With that he took the stones and refilled them somewhere behind the case.

Out on the streets, groups of floral or antler headpiece wearing people were beginning their walk to Tara. The peach-colored sky was mostly clear.

“Mamo is a reader; she can help you. Though I’d have to warn you about her fraying memory.” I gave a sidelong look to the woman; she had been walking beside me for a while. Both of us carrying unlit torches, joined the procession to the hill I had left behind.

[14] Gaelic festival marking the beginning of spring.

[15] Ogham stones.

---

The sacred grounds I had walked just that morning had gone through a metamorphosis, laughter and singsong ringing over the mounds. On the lower grounds two large piles of firewood were built. Twilight gleamed on the horizon, a few stars glittering in the sky. I could only draw out Sirius and Polaris, but the woman pointed out Deneb and Altair to me.

 “A Mhamó, a stór!” my companion shouted in glee as we made our way to an older woman hunched in a chair.

 After whispered conversing she turned to me, “Tell her what Fedha you got.”

 “What?”

“The symbols, from the smallest,” she explained. I did.

“Gort, Beith and Idho in that order,” the older woman spoke carefully and thought for a short while.

Illuminated now only by the light of dusk, her wrinkles were softer, smoothed out by the draping dark. People began to move to the lower grounds.

“They made me May Queen once did you know, mo réalta?”

“I know,” the other woman had said softly as she held her grandmother’s hand.

“Now I am the Cailleach[16] of Navan! I’ll tell you, I think I like this better.”

She hummed then, “Do you hear that?”

Very slowly, she sung lightly, “Sing cuccu nu, sing cuccu. Lhude sing cuccu, lhude sing cuccu.”[17]

The green-eyed woman looked at me then, and gave me a sad smile, I don’t remember if I returned it. I remember wondering if the older woman also had green eyes.

She spoke again, clearer than before, “Oh they are about to start.”

She looked at me then, “I’ll have to cut short my reading for you, Fánaí[18]. You are afraid I can see that, but you must understand that the time given to you is not for you to decide. What you do with that time is. What you think you may not have acquired, might already be yours. Keep seeking with different eyes.”

With that, both women went away to where the firewood was, and I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding in.

The first bodhran sounded hollow in the dark and was made haunting by the rest of the procession joining in, beating away in rhythm. I sat on the hill, watching from afar as the chanting grew louder and a horn was blown and both the balefires finally lighted, the flames licking away at the inky night sky. From the inferno torches were lit, the fire jugglers from that distance looked to possess magic as they bent the fire to their whims. Two cows were walked a few times between both balefires.

“Caudle and Bannock,” a child held a steaming cup and some wrapped bread towards me; they were welcome warmth in the slight chill of the night.

“Throw some Bannock over your shoulder before eating if you have any cows and goats.” I did not, but I threw some anyway.

It was deep into the night then; the crowd had gone tame and the air was scented sweet with the smoke and steadily brewing pots of caudle. Faintly in the distance, the slow silver notes of a harp came drifting to me. Both lullaby and lament as it softly carried on the mist. I let it lull me to sleep beneath the stars. That night I dreamt of great battles between luminous beings, dancing and scorching and the melancholy quietness that follows when all has been said and done[19].

It has been long years yet and if I am immortal, I do not know of it. Time keeps moving, and so do I; never crossing the same river twice. My tale has been sung alas,

And still, I walk — afoot and light-hearted, taking to the open road,

healthy, free, the world before me,

the long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

[16] A complex supernatural figure of an old woman in Gaelic mythology.

[17] From one of the oldest songs ever written, the ‘Cuckoo Song’ or the ‘Summer Canon’

[18] Translation: ‘Wanderer’

[19] The traditional folk tune alluded to here is ‘Si Bheag, Si Mhor’; translating to ‘Small fairy mound, Big fairy mound’

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