Only the Stones Survive: A Novel (21 page)

The riddle of time as experienced on Ierne continued to intrigue Amergin. The Gael, whose tribal ancestors were Celts from the cold forests of the north, had always been an energetic people. Eager and naturally impatient, they ran more than they walked. Their every movement was brisk, and their voices were often strident.

Yet something was happening to the Gaelic branch on Ierne. Perhaps only a druid would have noticed that Éremón’s people—Éremón’s new tribe—were almost languid as they went about their daily tasks, frequently stopping to talk to one another at great length about trivial matters. Éber Finn’s people—Éber Finn’s new tribe—slowed the rhythm of their speech and lowered their voices to a musical lilt. They too engaged in rambling conversations, as if the day would never end and they had nothing else to do.

Yet not so long ago these same men and women would have been bustling with energy as they contemplated their next adventure.

Not so long ago?
How long
ago?

When Taya strolled by, carrying a basket half filled with nuts she had gathered for Éremón, Amergin called out to her. She turned toward him with the brightest of smiles. “So the great bard remembers my name,” she teased. “I am flattered.”

He did not feel playful. “How long have we been here, Taya?”

“Since before the great battle. Why?”

“That isn’t what I meant. How long have we been on Ierne?”

She set the basket down on one of the wooden benches that Éremón had constructed so he could sit and watch his fort going up. Surreptitiously smoothing her gown, she said, “I don’t understand what you’re asking, Amergin. Is this another of your druid riddles?”

“I just want to know how long: how many days, how many changes of the moon?”

“I don’t count them. I don’t count anything but strands on a loom or eggs in a nest. Why should I? That’s all I need to know. The seasons here are very mild, and one is much like another, so I cannot tell how many have passed.”

“We need to be more precise than that, Taya. We shall be ploughing and planting grain, lambs and calves will be born, fruit will ripen and must be found and picked at the right time … We have to tend to everything in its own season.”

Exasperated, she said, “Is that what you want? To be in charge of the seasons? I never did understand you, Amergin.”

“No,” he replied sadly. “You never did.”

The day of Éber Finn’s departure arrived. His followers said good-bye to family and friends on Éremón’s side as if they never expected to see them again. They knew they would be separated by more than distance. A shadow that only a druid could see was standing in their way. Like splitting a mighty oak log, a wedge had been driven into the heart of the tribe and was pushing the two halves apart.

Colptha, Amergin thought bitterly. I should have stopped him sooner. But he was my brother.

The justification gave the bard no comfort. The solidity of time might be uncertain, but as far as he knew it only ran one way; there was no going back.

Events had their own momentum now.

TWENTY-ONE

O
NE MORNING
Mongan awoke with a smile on his face. Even in the permanent dusk of the bats’ cave, I could see it. My father had not smiled since the Day of Catastrophe, not even when little Drithla’s first tooth appeared. But when he spoke today, his voice was bright and cheerful. “I am going to the cairn today,” he announced, “and I’m not going to wait for sundown to do it. Would you like to accompany me, Joss?”

I need not ask which cairn; there was only one for my father. Yet since it was completed, he had never visited the burial mound of our clan. Neither of us did. Lerys was not there; she was dancing in the meadow with the butterflies.

When we told the Dagda where we were going, he urged us to change our minds. “Let her peace be undisturbed, Mongan, it was hard won.”

“Peace?!” my father burst out. “Do you think she is at peace now, when I need her so much—do you think my Lerys is lying in the dark with her eyes closed and her hands folded and a dimple in her chin? Then you know nothing about her, old man!”

His irreverence startled me. My father had never showed the Dagda anything but respect. Deeply embarrassed, I snatched up my cloak and followed my father as he left the cave. I could not imagine what I would say when we next faced the Dagda.

Mongan set out quickly, gathering speed with every stride. My legs had grown long enough to allow me to keep up with him, which was just as well, since he never looked around to see if I was there. The pace cannot have been easy for him; he had never fully recovered from the injuries he suffered on that fateful day. Yet he ran with the gliding gait that only the Túatha Dé Danann know … and I ran with him. Ran until distance ceased to matter. Ran until the cairn rose before us, looming through a silver mist.

Mongan stood still.

I halted beside him. He reached up and put his hand on my head just for a moment, ruffling my hair. “Remember, Joss?”

“I always do.”

“That’s good.” The lines and wrinkles that grief had carved in his face were fading away. My father looked young, almost boyish. “Stay here and watch,” he said, “so you will know.”

“Know what?”

Instead of answering, he began to climb up the jagged surface of the cairn. The stones had been skilfully placed to discourage anyone from attempting them, and I feared the effort was beyond his current capabilities. The slightest misstep would result in a nasty fall.

I prepared myself to go to his rescue.

The mist swirled around me. Touched my cheek. Bathed my eyes, blurred my vision. I could taste it on my lips; the taste of an ancient sea.

When my eyes cleared, I saw that Mongan had made it to the top unaided. The mound must have been higher than I thought; he looked very far away. He was standing as straight as a blade of grass in leaf-spring, fresh and young and new. Slowly, one step at a time, he began to turn, sweeping the land with his gaze.

When his eyes reached me, he lifted one hand in a cheerful wave, and …

 … was not there anymore.

I thought he had fallen down the other side. I ran all the way around the great cairn looking for him. Calling his name. Trying to calm the fierce pounding of my heart.

I never saw Mongan again.

Yet sometimes I still feel his hand resting on my head. Just for a moment. Ruffling my hair.

It was nightfall by the time I returned to the cave. Going in, I met the bats coming out and had to duck low to allow their passage. Exhaustive searching had failed to find my father or any trace of him, nor had I seen anyone else who might know what happened to him. I reported this to the Dagda and Melitt in a low voice; the children did not need to be alarmed just yet. I would leave it to the Dagda to explain to them in his own way and his own time, as teachers do.

He listened to me without comment, then turned to his wife. “So here we are,” he said.

Melitt took his gnarled old hand and pressed it against her cheek. “You expected…”

“Of course, though I doubt if Joss did. No child can be ready to see a parent go, and Mongan did not prepare him adequately. It’s understandable. His heart and mind were still with Lerys and…”

“To see a parent go
where
?” I interrupted. “Where has my father gone, and when will he come back? If you know, you must tell me!”

I thought my earnest pleading would force an answer, a straight answer. Now, so very much later, I can see that it did.

“Mongan won’t be coming back,” the Dagda told me. “They almost never do. And who can blame them?”

He went to stand in the entrance of the cave and gazed down at the river. The shape of his back and shoulders silhouetted against the light told me I would get no further answers from the Dagda.

Melitt pitied me, I think, but she knew this was something I had to face alone. She busied herself with a woman’s tasks, and I envied her their protection.

Thinking about myself again, at first I did not appreciate the difference Mongan’s loss would make to anyone else. When the Dananns learned he had gone and was not coming back, they were stunned.

Without a leader—a chieftain, a king, a trusted person whose authority all agreed upon—what remained of the tribe was cast adrift.

Their shock was followed by anger and a sense of betrayal. “How could he do this to us?” people asked one another. “How could Mongan leave the Túatha Dé Danann with no chieftain?” “What are we going to do now?”

I understood their feelings; they were the same as my own.

The obvious answer was for the Dagda to assume leadership again. He was a fixed star in our sky, a light that had never failed. The Dananns clamored for him to take up the fallen staff of authority. The survivors of disaster were eager for the words that would give them hope again.

The Dagda had no answer for them.

Or rather, he had an answer that no one recognized. Doing nothing can be an answer in itself.

Lacking any guidance, the Dananns fell back on the routine they had established. The food collected during the night was distributed, and the clans retired to their caves to eat and rest during the day. And to worry; people who had been strangers to worry. There was a lot of discussion about the future. If we had a future, which was questionable now. We had women and children and old people but very few men—how could that sustain a tribe?

And where would new leadership come from? A tribe without a head was no tribe at all.

Since Before the Before the chieftains of the Túatha Dé Danann had been strong, wise, and experienced. Men mostly, although the Dagda had told me of several royal women in the ancient days who had accepted the mantle of leadership and acquitted themselves nobly.

Now our royal line was extinguished like a torch in the wind. Mongan had been the last surviving prince. Among the refugees in the bat caves, there was no one able or willing to lead us.

The Dananns continued to press the Dagda to be our chieftain. While he was asleep one morning, a group of women made an urgent pilgrimage to our cave to insist that he comply. Melitt tried to stop them, but they pushed past her.

“Cornering an old man in his lair,” she complained to me out of the side of her mouth, “is like attacking a wolf with no teeth.”

Slowly, painfully, the Dagda got to his feet to face them.

“It is your duty to lead your tribe,” they insisted.

“It is my duty to keep you from making a mistake,” he replied. “You need someone young and strong; I am old and weary.”

They shouted him down: “Not old, never old!”

An emotion akin to anger flashed in his eyes. “There is nothing wrong with being old. Reaching a great age is the reward for a life well lived, and you will not take it from me. I have my thoughts and memories and the sweet temptation of sleep waits in my bones. Someone else must supply what you need.”

“But there is no one else!”

“Then lie down and die,” the Dagda advised.

That was more than they wanted to do.

The Túatha Dé Danann formed into tiny clusters of conspiracy, buzzing with importance while they tried to force into being a person who did not exist. Tradition demanded that a chieftain be of royal blood. The few children of royal rank who were still alive were too young.

The only alternative was a chieftain who had not been bred to lead. No one liked that idea. “You might as well suggest that a man give birth,” one woman said scornfully.

As for me, I wandered from cave to cave, sat and listened and thought, shared food and water and worry, but did not contribute to the conversations. I felt as lost and abandoned as the rest of them. On my fingers I counted off the names being mentioned as possible leaders: Droma, who could no longer stand upright, thanks to the point of an iron spear lodged in his spine; Agnonis, blinded by a blow to the head; Saball, who had only one arm, and that without a hand at the end; and Tamal, once the most courageous of warriors, who now flinched at shadows and wet his blanket like an infant.

This wreckage was what remained of the Children of Light.

However, it was not all that remained. In almost every clan there were children. One, three, seven little Dananns with spun silk hair and sapphire eyes that would see a world yet unborn. Mongan was gone and the Dagda wanted to sleep, but when I met those trusting eyes, I could not look away.

With renewed purpose I sought to engage the Dagda in meaningful conversation. “Is it possible the tribe might continue satisfactorily without a leader?”

“Even ants,” he intoned in his best teaching voice, “have a queen whose existence gives their lives purpose and a single direction.”

“We are not ants. We can think for ourselves.”

Stroking his beard, he looked down his nose at me. “How do you know ants can’t think, Joss?”

I had no answer to that. Shortly before dusk, I went outside and searched until I found a nest of ants. After scraping away the surrounding detritus of dead leaves and dry twigs, I stretched myself full length on the ground with my head close to the entrance and listened to the sounds coming from within the nest. Dry chitinous sounds, rough scraping sounds, hissing and rustling and …

“What do you think you’re doing, Joss?” Shinann’s voice inquired above me.

Embarrassed to be discovered in such a childish position, I jumped to my feet. “I was trying to hear the thoughts of the ants.”

Her unique laugh sounded like water rippling over stones. “Do you understand the language they think in? It must be very different from ours.”

“You believe they do think?”

“Whatever lives thinks in its own way,” said Shinann. “Remember when you put your hands on the ash tree? You felt what the tree felt. If you had stayed there for long enough, you might have thought what the tree was thinking.”

When I returned to the cave, I repeated her words to the Dagda. “I told you Shinann’s generation was remarkable,” he commented. “Between them, they brought an exceptional amount of knowledge into thislife.”

“Into this life? They brought it from somewhere else? Are you saying they lived before?”