The power wove faster and faster, until it began to spin tales of men she had never known: the story of a tall, handsome man with soft hands, a rich man whose bog-bound body had only two scars, little more than paper cuts on his hands. He had studied magic once himself, perhaps, feeling it deep in his blood, but none of his people had trusted him, seeing him as a giant, as a danger, as Fir Bolg, with his black hair and brown eyes and quick and tempting smile. The Fir Bolg had to die, and die badly, to keep the tribe safe from deviltry, and so holes were punctured through his arms so ropes could bind him, and pain inflicted upon his body while he screamed no!
And no indeed, the story whispered, no, not the Fir Bolg, not the dark and dire monsters of Irish folklore, but their opposites, their elfin bretheren, the aos sí. They had been tall, so tall, and Caitríona knew that in her bones as much as the dead man had felt magic in his, for she had met Maeve of Connacht, Queen Maebh, the Ulster Queen, and she had been born of aos sí blood too, and tall with it. That was the crime this man had died for: for the magic born to him as a man not of mankind, but a last and lingering soul from a dying race.
Until it wove the story of the Clonycavan Man with his gelled pompadour, and there told of a man, petty and vain, afraid his small stature made him unimportant in the eyes of his people, and so he spent what coin he had on the gel and on other bodily improvements to make himself grander than he was to catch the eye of beauty, the only thing he felt he deserved. But a woman who was not beautiful fell in love with him, and he with her. Ashamed, he began to change his ways, but her brother whom he had wronged so long ago objected, and the finely gelled head was split into pieces and his body thrown into a bog. His spirit should be bitter, but its greatest sorrow was in knowing that the woman would have thought him the small and petty creature he had once been, and that she would have died believing he had left her because he did not love her.
They wound themselves around Caitríona, these stories and others, four or five in all, until she knew them in her bones. I’ll keep them safe as they’re drawn free from their broken bodies, and then I’ll release it and them. A simple spell indeed, and the first part had worked a treat. The second, though: now that she knew them, how was she to free what she’d taken into her soul?
In light, as she’d seen Aunt Sheila’s spirit released. A goddess had helped then, though, and Caitríona had nothing of that power in her.
No: she did have that power inside her. It was Aoife’s kiss that had awakened her magery. She was nothing so grand as a goddess herself, but nor were these captured spirits so badly bound as Aunt Sheila had been. Aoife’s magic had burned Sheila away. Surely Caitríona needed only lift these broken souls up beyond the confines of their glass coffins to free them. Like sunshine on the water, a burst of light that rose into the sky. Now that was more poetic, sure, and Caitríona held that thought close, to make magic of it, too.
It took time, minutes or more, but a soft white light filled the museum hall, growing brighter with each moment until it erupted from each encircled body. The boy Cat had played with gave a bold happy shout and was hushed by his ma, but Cat felt the same shout rising in her. She had no great skill yet, but her ugly spells were working, and the beauty would come in time.
Faces came alive in the light, all the discoloration and distortion of mummification fading away. They might have been men of Dublin, walking the city that very day: broad faces, fair skin and light eyes. Bad teeth and thinning hair on some, but handsome cleanliness on others. Recognition and gratitude gleamed in those faces as clearly as they would on any modern man, and together they began to speak. They were thousands of years of age, and couldn’t speak a word she knew. But then, neither could Maeve of Connacht, and that hadn’t stopped them from speaking Irish and English both to one another. Cat bowed her head and listened, and the words came clear:
We died to feed an ancient power, bleak and cruel. Our spirits were meant for him, the Devourer, the Master, the End of All Time, and yet the bog took our souls as well as our skins. We were bound to this earth in a way that spirits are not meant to be, never to leave it without someone to grant us release.
Men of learning released our bodies from the soiclass="underline" a brightness in our dark destiny. We have cried here for so little time compared to the years we lay beneath the bog, and now you have come to free our broken hearts. We are free, and in our freedom we may choose. We have been granted release, but we will not yet leave.
Call to us, Caitríona O’Reilly, Irish Mage, in your fateful hour, and we will come.
The light, the faces, the magic, faded as quickly as it had come. Cat’s knees went wobbly and she leaned her weight on the spear, suddenly knackered. The museum visitors were full of shouts and gasps and questions, their voices echoing off the walls like a band of hooligans determined to make all the noise in the world. She felt her circles unraveling beneath their feet, swift sparks of power zipping toward her as the unwinding touched them, as if each touch lent her half a breath of strength. Her shields, the daft Star Trek shields that Joanne had taught her to protect herself with, felt stronger as the last circle came undone, until she was herself again among the bog men and the tourists.
The mummies looked no different than before, but their cries were silenced. Their pain was gone, the suffering ended, though a sense of their presence remained. There to come to her when she called at her fateful hour, which sounded dangerous enough indeed.
A yowl broke through the thought and the boy she’d seen before appeared, a splinter embedded under his fingernail. “I wasn’t supposed to touch it!” he wailed. “Mommy’s going to k-ki-kiiiillll me!”
Caitríona laughed and crouched. “Let’s see it, lad. Ootch, that looks like it hurts. It’s American you are?”
“Y-ye-yeees. How’d you k-k-knoooow?”
“Ah, you’re no Irishman, not with that fine Yankee accent. Here, now, let’s see what I can do. I’ve a plaster in my bag, if you want it.”
Tears spilled over the lad’s cheeks, but only because he crushed his eyes into an uncertain squint. “A plaster?”
“A Band-Aid, you’d call it. Here now.” Cat leaned the spear against a wall and pushed around in her purse until she found the plaster. She held it up, then grabbed his fingertip, squeezing it hard. The boy yelped again as his fingertip turned dark red, so startled he hardly even noticed when she yanked the splinter out. Blood welled up and his eyes got rounder. She nodded and wrapped the plaster around his finger, then gave it a kiss. “There, my lad, all fixed.” All she needed was the spell that Auntie Sheila had known, the one to heal the hurt. Then realization struck her and she gave his fingertip a last squeeze before setting the magic she’d known all her life: “Now it’s a magic plaster, so it is, my boy. Don’t take it off for three days, and the wound will be healed when you do.”
His eyes widened and he nodded eagerly, then ran away again, crowing to his ma about the plaster. That was it, then, she thought: this was the life of a mage. Band-Aids and bog-men.