Chapter 16: New Curse for Old

“Hello, Richard, my love,” I hear the South West Irish intonation in Ella’s voice, once so familiar to me that I recognise her even after over seventy years since I last heard her. The thought flashes into my head that I guess Ella and Caoimhe as mother and daughter must have very similar vocal chords, I have always thought that my daughter favoured her mother’s looks on the outside and, apparently, that similarity runs deeper.

“Hi, right back at you, honey,” I croak back, my own vocal chords affected by emotion and the realisation that what was happening wasn’t fantasy, otherwise, how could Caoimhe possibly know exactly what her mother sounded like? I had no audio or video recordings of Ella, her death was so unexpected by me. As far as I was concerned, we had made no plans to preserve anything of her other than a few grainy snaps as her pregnancy grew; we had more ultrasound images of the baby than we did of the mother. “I guess I’m barely recognisable to you from our married days, hey El?”

“Oh, I’ve seen you mature through Caoimhe’s eyes, ever since she opened up her perception of me, since she was about 10 or 11, before I was even really fully linked with her. You are very familiar to me, like an old—”

“Glove?”

“Old friend, an old friend who I have dearly loved all my life and all my afterlife through Caoimhe and all her daughters and daughters’ daughters. I can only hope that our spell works today and that you can continue to endure, dear man, and we can still have these conversations from time to time,” Ella says through Caoimhe, “otherwise the alternative is untenable.”

“And what do you fear as the alternative?” I ask.

“My fear is that when we join forces between the might of my ancestor Trixopheron and our combined delivery of a curse that we have formulated and rehearsed, along with the necessary delivery of that curse through the three Witches of Slievenamon, that we will not be powerful enough. And if that is the case I am sure that Crédne will wreak a terrible revenge.”

“How?” I ask.

“As soon as the Witches turn to face us and Trixopheron, through Caoimhe, starts to recite the curse through the old Celtic tongue and the Witches repeat it word for word, that Crédne could call upon the billions of minds in his hive to drown us out before the curse is completed. We have pared the curse down to as sparse as we can get it in the old tongue and still have only one clear interpretation; we have rehearsed it over and over for the last lifetime ready for this day. We have fed it through to the Witches through Caoimhe’s third word code over the past twenty years or so but of course, there can be no full rehearsal, nor could the Witches even think about the sequence of the curse. If Crédne has had any inkling of what we plan, he has not revealed it yet. We know that the Grand Council of the Tuatha Dé Danann are unaware of Crédne and Aengus’s deception in hiding their thoughts and deeds from the hive, but we have no direct way of communicating to them. So we could easily be thwarted and everything lost.”

“So, Ella, you’ve had years to think this through and I’m only just coming to this, what could happen if you fail and Crédne succeeds in repelling your curse?”

“He could kill you, my love,” Ella says, “that would render everything that we are trying to do to save you to an end. That would release Aengus’s consciousness and he could bring your body shell back to life, repair any damage that caused your death and your body would act in cooperation with the rebel pair of Tuatha Dé Danann to persuade the High Council that you are still who you always were and discredit anything the Witches or any of their sisters said. The hive would never be able to accept that two of their number could hide their thoughts from the hive, they believe that is impossible. Then we think Crédne could still block all his descendants from testimony, we believe he could hold that power over them, and the Council would never believe any testimony from the rest of us who are unrelated to you. He could kill Caoimhe and blame it on old age or a heart attack and the Witches would be prevented from saying anything.”

“So there’s a lot more at stake that just my life?” I ask.

“Aye, my love, our whole world is at stake. Aengus is the power behind the whole scheme that Trixopheron’s curse put a hold on. He owned up to Trixopheron in a boast how upset he was with the Treaty that banned any Tuath Dé from their playground. They planned to defy the Council and their Treaty, conquering our people and lording it over mankind like gods, hidden from the hive and, with no other Tuath Dé interested in our world, they could do this as well as benefit from being part of the hive. They would have had no compunction to destroy anyone who stood in their way. Trixopheron wants me to tell you her story.”

“OK,” I agree, what other choice do I have? I am in this up to my scrawny neck. I could die in a few minutes, snuffed out by virtual Gods and only an hour ago I was looking forward to immortality and sharing in the enjoyment of having my family around me.

Ella, speaking from within my daughter Caoimhe’s body, nods and closes her eyes, presumably as she connects with her ancestor, the witch Trixopheron, the one who delivered the curse that ended up with her lover Aengus occupying my body when I was a baby. I confess, I cannot understand how I am able to contain such a powerful creature, but I had long been convinced that I was the immortal living in a mortal shell, but I am now certain that Ella is right, that my mortal life is now in danger.

Ella’s eyes open. “Trixopheron’s English is poor, she understands more than she can speak but the conscious link we have is similar to how the brain gathers signals from different nerves, thoughts are not necessarily in a spoken language and understanding transcends that, so I can use my words to explain to you, OK?”

“Yeah, OK.”

“Trixopheron was the most powerful witch in Ireland which was much more of a matriarchal society than now. Sure, the kings and warriors appeared to be in charge, but it was the women who were really in charge, and Trixopheron was picked out by this lone tall and handsome warrior who appeared in the village one day. He courted Trixopheron, who was a chieftain’s daughter and the daughter of a powerful witch who, like me, had died in childbirth. Aengus, he called himself and he was a powerful warrior who defended the village against pirates and was soon regarded as the new chieftain. He took Trixopheron as his bride and she took him to husband gladly.”

“He must’ve cut quite a dash, if he looked like Crédne,” I remark.

“Aye, he did,” Ella smiled, “they tried to have children for many years and Trixopheron eventually had two miscarriages, one almost going halfway through and the creature aborted was a monster which they hastily buried. The miscarriages upset Aengus greatly and he was a cruel man when driven to lose his temper. Then a stranger who we now know as Crédne came to the village, as you said, they were like twins in appearance. Trixopheron heard them speaking one night over the fireplace. She heard them say that they had to talk while they closed their minds off from the Council and all their fellows. They spoke in the native tongue because they usually communicated without language, so they had no tongue of their own.”

“Curious,” I comment, “I never thought of that.”

“Indeed, but that was part of their disguising their purpose in defiance of the Treaty, something the Council were sworn to uphold. They laughed about the success of their deception and then the stranger held up a vial, saying he had worked on the serum and thought he had perfected it. Aengus drank the contents of the vial and they laughed about how the next child would be a male who would be a powerful hybrid of Tuath Dé and human, would only share thoughts with the two of them and they would build an army that would take over the world. As far as Aengus was concerned this was his world, he had discovered it and encouraged others to join him but they had become disillusioned by the wars and violence and were drifting away, had preferred to inhabit the Otherworld to this one.”