Human for a Day (9781101552391) (7 page)

 

 

 

T
he gnarled roots at the thick tree trunk's base atop the hillside burial mound looked normal enough, Jeanine thought. That was until the clouds finished passing over the harvest moon and she saw that the yellowed finger bones, with their dried cracked skin peeling away from them, were real, not a trick of her nervous eyes. She wished for a moment that the
Samhain
revelers were still there and not already long gone back to the Irish village down the hill in fear of the witching hour. All that remained of their presence were the half dozen straw men standing on makeshift posts around the edge of the very mound itself.

The long green earth that covered the top of the mound gave way as the hands flexed and closed, pulling themselves up out of the ground at a pace nothing like the speed in which movies always showed the dead digging themselves up from their graves. This process was much slower, the near skeletal arms working hard against the press of dirt, grass, and stone to free the figure below.

As Jeanine stood there clutching her overstuffed backpack like some sort of protection or talisman, the smell of death and rot was what caught her attention most. The the smell overpowered the more familiar smells of the surrounding forest and the lush Irish grass that ran along the hillside. Part of her wanted to run screaming off into the night, back down through the village until her legs gave out, but Jeanine stood her ground, watching and waiting. This
had
been what she wished for, hadn't it?

No,
she thought.
Not wished.
Worked
for.

By the time the gnarled, bent figure of an old woman had worked its way out of the burial mound, the moonlight revealed the bones beneath the torn gray rags it wore, the remaining skin a thin coat of flesh that matched the rags themselves. The blackened sockets of its empty eyes hid behind limp strands of tangled white hair clumped with wet earth. The broken flesh of its neck twisted as it craned its head back and forth, struggling to look around, but without eyes, it was a futile gesture.

With every passing second and movement, more and more of the dirt and debris sloughed off the figure. The hair continued growing, darkening to black, and the skull beneath it filled in with a wrinkled skin that formed down over the empty sockets until eyelids sat closed in their place. Seconds passed before the leathery lids fluttered open, revealing eyes beneath them, halos of bright green around pupils black as the grave itself. Cracked lips parted on the ancient face as if to let out a mighty screech, revealing brown-black teeth, but nothing came.
A hag
. Among the festive straw men that had been erected upon the burial mound, she was the only figure that moved outside of Jeanine herself.

The old woman closed her mouth, her eyes seeming to notice the young woman for the first time, and she pointed crooked fingers in Jeanine's direction. After a moment she opened her mouth again, the tongue inside it forming as Jeanine fought back the urge to vomit rising in the pit of her stomach. Sound came from the hag, a garbled ancient voice that spoke words Jeanine barely recognized despite the books she had studied, yet some connection in her mind filled in the missing parts and words in her mind's eye.

“I have risen,” the voice in Jeanine's head boomed, startling her. Goosebumps rose up and down her arms beneath the sleeves of her sweater and heavy fall coat, but she steeled herself.

“Yes, your majesty,” she said, laying her heavy backpack down at her feet.
Composure,
she reminded herself, and gave a polite if not awkward curtsey to the woman. The hag's face twisted into a manic smile, her eyes widening.

“I see you know your manners among your betters.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Jeanine said, pulling her wool coat closer around her, the chill radiating out from the hag almost unbearable.

The old woman shuffled toward her a few steps before stopping, surprise and confusion registering on her face. She looked down at her feet to a thin white line that ran around the top of the burial mound. “Salt,” she hissed through clenched teeth.

“Yes, ma'am,” Jeanine said, backing away even though she was well on the other side of the line. “Begging your pardon . . . I did not want any trouble with you.”

The hag's eyes looked at the line of salt, hoping, no doubt, for a break in it. When she found none, she turned back to Jeanine. “Do you know what they call me, young lady?”

Jeanine nodded, lowering her eyes to her backpack. She reached down into it and pulled out a five foot length of rope. “
Mongfhionn
,” she said, tying a knot in it as she said the name, sounding it out slowly.
Monk fin.
She repeated the name seven times, tying a new knot each time until she had seven of them as well. The sound of the nonsensical words only conjured up strange images in Jeanine's head, but given the circumstance, the humor of it was quick to die there on the hillside.

The hag gave a throaty laugh. “
Mongfhionn
? Once, perhaps. But I am her no longer. Your kind calls me a
bean sidhe
now.”

“
Bean sidhe
?” Jeanine let the words run though her mind while she fished a red velvet binding bag out of her backpack and slipped the knotted rope into it. The words felt familiar, something she had studied, but recognition refused to come to her in any sort of intelligible thought.

“A
banshee
,” the hag reminded her. “A harbinger of impending death. This is my penance for my crimes, to wander, to haunt, although I see by your circle here that you have denied me even that.”

“I know enough to protect myself, ma'am,” Jeanine said. “That much I know.”

“Undo this circle, girl,” the hag said, almost growling through clenched teeth. “I have not the time to tarry with you.”

“Why not?” Jeanine asked. The hint of a smile took to the corner of her mouth.

The hag shut hers in response, wary. “Suffice it to say that I do not wish to bandy words with you,” she said. “You would not understand.”

“Understand what? That your time is precious to you, my lady? That perhaps
this
doesn't happen all that often? Only, say, every hundred years or so . . . ?”

The hag stopped and stared at Jeanine, narrowing her eyes until they bore into the young woman, causing the young woman to squirm in discomfort.

“You know my name and my legend too, I see,” Mongfhionn said. “What kind of witch
are
you?”

Jeanine shook her head. “I am nothing of the sort,” she said, her voice shrinking. “Just a girl concerned with her own future . . .”

“Then you know that my time in the flesh is short, from moon to moon,” the hag said. The risen woman's features were still transforming, the hair growing, untangling, and coming in thicker, her body becoming less and less bony as the flesh flowed and stretched out over her form, becoming fuller and fuller. “A time I have, in fact, come to cherish more and more with the passing centuries.”

“Do you cherish it more than those people you killed?” Jeanine asked, reaching down into her backpack once more. She pulled out another cloth bag and stepped to the edge of the circle. The hag's face went dark.

“Yes, I know you, ‘fair mane,' ” Jeanine said, opening it. She pulled out a broken shard of mirror and laid it in front of the hag. “Mongfhionn, wife of the Irish High King
Mugmedón
and . . . mother, yes?”

At the word “mother, ” the hag doubled over like a knife had been thrust into her gut, one made of grief. “Aye,” she said, lifting her head as her eyes lit up in remembrance. “
Ailill, Brion,
and
Fiachrae
. . . All fine boys; all deserving, loving sons.”

“Deserving of what, ma'am?” Jeanine asked. She moved around the outside of the circle, placing one shard after another every few feet as she went. “The crown? So much so that you murdered your own brother?”

A low growl arose from the hag as she turned away from the young woman.

“The King of Munster,” Jeanine said from the far side of the thick trunked tree at the top of the mound. She came back into sight on the other side, laying down pieces until she completed the circle. “
Crimthann mac Fidaig
. He would have been the next High King of Ireland, wouldn't he? But
you
thought your own sons more worthy of the position, yes?”

“They were born for greatness,” she hissed, pacing along the edge of the circle like a great beast of a cat. “I was trying to ensure their future! Yes, it is true I put the king's second wife
Cairenn
though hard work while she was pregnant hoping her to miscarry. Then I demanded
Eochaid
put all our children through several contests to prove mine worthy of the throne. To that end, he trapped them in a burning forge, ordering them to save what they could, but ruled his own son
Niall
victor for rescuing the heavy anvil while they foolishly chose wood, swords . . . even a bucket of beer. I would not accept his judgment.”

“So a hunt was arranged, and a hag as hideous as I am now met them at a well in the woods. Water would be exchanged for a simple kiss, and all refused—”

“Except
Niall
,” Jeanine said, cutting her off. “Transforming her into an attractive young maiden, once again ensuring the kingship for himself and several generations after.”

The hag's face fell again. “Darkness and death followed me those days. Why else would the pagan Irish choose to worship me at the onset of winter's embrace? I died too, for all the good it did me. My brother insisted that I drink from the same cup as he to prove I had not poisoned him, and . . .” The old woman gave a dark smile, the teeth white now. “Well, here we are now, aren't we? They called me kinslayer.”

“Your misguided mother's love murdered your brother, the king,” Jeanine said, wonder in her words as she spoke them. “Poisoned him, all in an attempt to let one of your sons assume the throne instead.”

The old woman lunged at the edge of the circle, still unable to cross it, but the hag terrified Jeanine nonetheless. “I will not be judged by you,” she snarled. “History has judged me already, and there are those among your people who worship me as a sorceress queen to this very day. Why, look at the straw men who cover this very barrow! People pay me homage.
Samhain
is my singular time, a time of great power for me.
Féile Moingfhinne
.”

Jeanine shook her head. “I meant no judgment or disrespect, ma'am,” she said. “Only this time, this rising, is not a time of great power for you now, is it?”

The woman cocked her head to the side like a bird. “How do you mean?”

“You walk among us, us mortals,
as
one of us,” Jeanine said. She reached down into the backpack at her feet and pulled out a thick binder, flipping it open. “I have done my research on the legend,
your
legend. I did not randomly pick this tumulus by chance, hoping to catch a passing spirit during
Samhain
, when the veil between both worlds is thinnest. I came seeking you, Mongfhionn.”

The woman eyed her with caution. “To what end?”

Jeanine's face went red and her voice went quiet again. “I come to ask a boon,” she said. “My husband Joseph and I . . . aren't able to conceive a child by natural means. Lord knows we have tried, but we have had little hope or luck. We even turned to medicine, but it seems I am unable to bear a child. I do so want to have one of my own so badly . . . please, you must help me, your majesty.”

A look of impatience grew on the woman's face, which was no longer that of the hag she had been moments before. A simple, plain woman in her fifties stood there, the same bright green eyes with long black hair with wild Irish curls now. “Is this not a matter for the
Beltaine?
” she said, her voice younger sounding. “Why do you trouble me this time of year, this time of harvest and death? Why not bother a spirit such as the
Morrigan
instead?”

“I thought you of all the
spiorads
might understand my plight, and I thought you might be able to help,” Jeanine said, looking down at her feet, “by . . . supernatural means. As you say, you are a revered goddess of sorcery, and a mother on top of that. One who was willing to kill for the success of her children.”

She threw her head back and gave a dark, bitter laugh. “But I did not succeed, did I? My drinking of the same poison as my brother condemned me to his ill fate as well. I failed at my task, condemning me to this form for eternity.”

Jeanine's eyes filled with desperation. “But surely you have the power to help . . .”

“Why in the name of the gods would I help one such as you?” the woman asked. “Being allowed to be in the flesh is supposed to remind me of the very humanity I so quickly dispatched of in life, the same humanity that worships me now. Yet every 100 years, I am allowed to taste the dark bitter sweetness of that form, and you deny it to me with this circle. You ask my help yet you imprison me, make demands of me . . . .”

The angered woman tensed, her eyes catching Jeanine's, refusing to let them go.

“Would that I were in my usual form right now I would tear your flesh from your frame with my very voice,” Mongfhionn said, viciousness filling her. “So you knew of my legend and my demise, but do you truly understand what I am capable of now as a
banshee ?
My voice alone can bring humans to their knees in terror.”

Jeanine nodded. “I have heard of the
bean chaointe
, the keening washerwoman whose voice can shatter glass from its pane. I have also heard it sounds like two slabs of wood slapped together in the dead of night, piercing one's ears.”