by Sergio ‘ente per ente’ Palumbo
It seemed to her that she had been on that shore for a very long time, even though the young woman wouldn’t be able to say since when exactly.
Lonely, doubtful, uncertain about what to do, a deep confusion was in her mind, and it had seized her thoughts for a long time, as far as she knew. It was the peculiar state of being bewildered or unclear about something, and certainly there were many things she was presently undecided or forgetful about.
Being short and slender, her face very pale, and wearing a clear, ground-length robe in yellow that perfectly blended with her waist-length chestnut hair, the woman sensed a deep loss of direction. She was unable to place herself correctly in the world by time, personal identity, or location. She only remembered her own name, which was Luighseach, meaning “Torch Bringer,” but not much more. A disordered consciousness filled her mind, along with a decided lack of memory and the ongoing inability to recall previous events from her past. All of this came with a great difficulty in trying to focus her attention, and that affected her cognition in the end. Her blue eyes looked around nervously, a bit embarrassed and confused.
Her confused condition was a symptom of something else, something she couldn’t figure out.
The inattention she displayed, and her continuous distractibility, led to the deep disorientation that had an undeniable hold on the woman. There was a loss of awareness about her surroundings, environment, and the place itself in which she was. Not knowing what time of day, day of week, month, season or year it really was, the girl simply was unable to decide where to head, or if she had to move elsewhere. So, she stayed in one place under that overcast sky that appeared so far and unreachable from the ground she stood on, just like her mind which was seemingly secluded from the whole world outside.
Only the waves of the endless expanse of gray water that lay ahead of her looked like something alive, while where she stood, and all that surrounded her, resembled a dream world; a fabled site that followed its own rules and ends, whatever they could be. There was nothing next to the young woman apart from that cloth on the sand with some colorful fruits on it. Somebody had probably put those there for her, but it hadn’t been for her alone, as she didn’t like fruits. This was something Luighseach remembered very well, even though all the rest of her memory looked much darker and more uncertain.
The powerful, ceaseless waves continuously cut into the shoreline. Sloping beaches like that were dynamic landforms altered by the gusts of the wind, the abrasive sand, and the motion of the strong tidal waves that proved to be particularly violent and extensive along those northern coasts. There was an ongoing process of creation and erosion where the longshore current played an important—though almost invisible—role. Of course, the girl didn’t know anything at all about the natural process of erosion that altered the shape of that low headland. She only limited herself to admiring and looking at the ground covered in warm, light sand that was interrupted occasionally by widely separated rocks bordering the expanse of water whose ever-changing layers flowed over and then withdrew in unending ebbs and floods. There were a few islets in the open sea, a few birds flying in the air, and some shellfish, but no other human being was there besides herself.
Then Luighseach heard a sound. It was like a voice, but it was in the distance and had difficulty getting to her clearly, as if coming from an invisible wall. Some hidden boundary that separated that shore from its unknown source. If she hadn’t known that such a thing was unrealistic, she might think it was something that someone was trying to say, maybe slowly speaking through a bulkhead or a barrier positioned somewhere, but the idea was totally incomprehensible.
Only a few words were capable of reaching her ears and those were meaningless, to say the least. “Here… come… now… here… we… are…”
As those were already unintelligible sentences, her current state of mind didn’t provide her with any assistance. Nor did it lead her to find a significant reason for all that. Not that a single thing could be understood. As the waves that hit the coastline and took some sand away, cancelling the features of the ground, the same could be said about the passing of time removing her memory from her and diverting her thoughts towards unexpected directions from where they never returned.
But, as that call resounded in Luighseach’s mind, returning to the surface of her thoughts again and again, she began feeling anxious. And worried.
It was just over there in the middle of that sea, where a lost land now submerged beneath the water was said to have once existed. A land where many legends came from. Many ghosts were reputed to live there, and many creatures—who were all that was left of that forgotten country—were continuously busy escaping the misty sandbars in search of comfort and peace, or simply looking for a place to hide. Or for some prey…
She knew very well those Breton legends, the ones that spoke about the fabled John of the Shore. It was said that such calls came from the lost, forgotten souls of those drowned at sea and whose bodies were never recovered. They had long been said to be heard along the shoreline at night crying, “Iou! Iou!”
The girl was also aware of the fact that no person was supposed to send their plaintive call back to those voices in the distance. In her native village—strange that Luighseach was able to remind herself of this particular thing, this important warning—the old people had told her and all the young boys gathered around the fire: “If you reply once, John of The Shore leaps half the distance separating him from you in a single bound. If you reply a second time, he leaps half of the remaining distance. If you reply a third time, he breaks your neck.”
It was such a terrible, scary story, Luighseach had always been afraid of it since she was a very young child.
But there was something else. The tone of the voice she was listening to, even though it seemed to be far in the distance, seemed to be one that she was already accustomed to. The girl was incapable of recognizing it completely, but there was a peculiar tonality which didn’t appear to be completely unknown. Where had she heard it before?
Just after that voice spoke, a strong wind hit the sand, and the sensation of an incoming storm, a terrible event that was going to reach that place, made her deeply worried. The young woman felt a sort of danger coming up behind her, something evil and very ancient that, until that moment, had kept itself hidden in the forested area at the end of the shore. But that danger was becoming more and more eager, even upset in a way. Hungrier and hungrier, more arrogant and out of control. Luighseach was unable to figure out exactly what could happen. At present, she didn’t even know why she was in here and what kind of place this was. But she was afraid of her location, more scared of where she was than of the queer voice coming from the sea, whose tone she thought was milder and certainly more pleasant.
Only when the sense of oppression turned out to be too much for her, having become more and more unbearable, did she happen to notice a sort of shadowed figure. It looked like a black shade, whose offshoots seemed to come out of the trees of the forest in the background, approaching her, longing for her. At that moment, the golden necklace she wore—a classically simple, but very beautiful, ornament that resembled heart-shaped leaves with an adjustable chain—shone immediately, as if a sort of ray coming from the sun or the reflection of the daylight. But since it wasn’t sunny out, this fact greatly surprised the girl. The shadowed presence stopped approaching her at once, and a sort of warmth, though strange and only momentary, seemed to cast off the evil and then enveloped Luighseach, briefly illuminating the dim scenery of the shore.
Those few words floated to her ears again. “Here… come… now… here… we… are…” Now the young woman was sure she had to move away from that place, in a hurry. Luighseach still didn’t know why, but she knew she had to rush!
“Who are you?” the girl cried out. But there was no reply.
Then suddenly, those words came again to her mind: “If you reply once, John of The Shore leaps half the distance separating him from you in a single bound…” So Luighseach stopped herself abruptly.
But that sensation of a danger at her back made her aware that the evil force was growing again and again and proved to be even more upset at present. Being deeply afraid of it, Luighseach felt oppressed another time, and that sort of inexplicable shadowed figure appeared next to her, looking like something unearthly. Not of her world, for sure. Then, that presence turned into a female-like shape, a tall and thin one wearing a dark robe and with very pale skin adorned with several strange, terrifying symbols. The most striking features were the cruel eyes, surely not human at all, and a prominent forehead. The overall appearance would make anyone feel anxious.
The young woman stood up and ran to the border of the shore, facing the sea, and refused to dream of going back to the place where she had sat previously. She put both of her hands on the necklace, as if she was asking in her mind for the chain’s unknown protection, but even that wasn’t enough to make her feel better.
“Here… come… now… here… we… are…” The call resounded across the shore for the third time.
“If you reply a second time, he leaps half of the remaining distance.” The warning seized Luighseach and made her waver for a while. But the terror of that black shade that was approaching was much deeper now.
“Show … yourself… we’ll help … you.” It wasn’t just the words themselves that caused what happened next, but the familiarity with that tone—the sensation that Luighseach knew it—that finally motivated the girl, helping her to make up her mind.
She slowly but decisively put her feet in the water and went into the waves. Luighseach had always been a tomboy since she was very young, and she used to swim in the small lake next to their village, not far from the place where the stone remains of a prehistoric past stood. So, she proceeded onwards, continuing her efforts as she swam, stroke after stroke, desperately.
The young woman swam again and again, moving continuously away from the shore. Departing from the coastline, little by little, until the land in the distance looked like only a thin line she had left behind. But Luighseach didn’t stop there. She went on and on. Then, a long wooden shape appeared ahead of her in the open sea, and her confused, strange world changed completely.
The Celtic birlinn rolled among the foaming waves, its single mast displaying a huge light-gray sail while the fair east wind was blowing. Having a high fore and aft along with a shallow, open hull for oarsmen, the wooden ship displayed a rudder in the center. Very different from the steering board seacrafts that the northeastern peoples had on the starboard. Clearly showing a rich heritage of seafaring ancestors—a history that the ship builders had long been accustomed to—there were two men on each oar. So despite being a fairly small vessel, it was capable of transporting up to thirty people. There were also larger galleys used by the Gaelic tribes of Brittany at that time which could hold more than one hundred warriors designed for the purposes of war, but this was not the case here.
Standing upright on the prow, Corfec, the leader of the expedition, stared unceasingly at the gray sea. Wearing a green long-sleeved robe that stopped at the knees, white trousers underneath, and an iron helmet with a central reinforcement and two hinged wings on his blond, long-haired head, the tall young man of twenty-two had his right hand on the short copper scabbard suspended from a chain-link sword belt at his waist. But even though he looked calm and still, the continuous movements his fingers made on the showy hilt clearly revealed his worries and the anxiety he felt inside. As the journey kept going on and on, a sort of apprehension seemed to be impressed on all the crewmembers’ faces. They looked busy maneuvering the ropes and the oars, but they didn’t dare approach the man in the lead, as if they understood what he was feeling and didn’t want to upset him even more. Then suddenly, another seafarer moved forward and reached Corfec. He had a long, chestnut, curly head of hair that blended perfectly with his suntanned skin partly concealed under a large yellow shirt. His muscular hand shook Corfec’s shoulders. “You have to get some rest,” the man said in a soft tone.
“I can’t give in, Sklaer. You know that,” the other man replied without moving, his blue eyes locked on the watery expanse that stretched ahead of him. “It was my responsibility. She had been entrusted to me, and I simply had to bring her to the village of our promised allies and then back home. But I failed!”
The other man lowered his head, looking distractedly at his beautifully carved iron bracelet that ran along his right arm. Then he added, “Our chief couldn’t have chosen a better man than you for such a duty, I’m sure. Who other than her brother might have been deemed worthy enough to take her to the house of her future husband’s father, the leader of the Rhedones? And you did it accordingly, but you weren’t able to think…”
“To think that she could suddenly disappear while we were still sailing, without any explanation?” the young man exclaimed. Turning to his friend, he said, “How do you imagine I can go before Guethen, our chief, and tell him that I lost his youngest daughter, my twin sister?”
Sklaer didn’t reply but remained pensive for a while. “I don’t know, but we have searched this stretch of sea for the whole day, and we have found no traces of her whatsoever. Maybe she fell into the sea, or a wave hit her. Women shouldn’t go aboard such a birlinn. It’s not your fault, to be sure…”
“It was my responsibility, and mine alone!” Corfec cried out. For a moment, all the other crewmembers stopped their activity and stayed silent. Then all of them slowly went back to their duties. “I endangered our present alliance, too… When one of our women marries, she joins her husband’s clan, but she is always going to be a member of our own clan as well. No wife can ever escape that obligation and membership, even though her present husband’s clan takes precedence… Now, what am I going to tell the Rhedones? That we, the tribe of the Coriosolites, are unable to remain faithful to our promises of marriage and that we are even incapable of protecting our relatives on board one of our ships along the coast? If this is true, what value have I? What kind of chief could I ever become, Sklaer?”
“You’re a good leader” the other stated. “These are dangerous waters, and you have treated our crew and the birlinn well. We haven’t stumbled into the bands of insidious plunderers that roam this sea, and no one of us has been injured so far. Probably what happened was due to destiny or because of some…”
“Don’t call it sheer chance or the intervention of the damned go…”
“Don’t say blasphemous things, Corfec!” Sklaer stopped him. “Don’t curse the waves and our travel, please…”
“Our journey is already terrible, my friend. Just look what happened to Luighseach.”
“We can’t be sure she is dead yet. We must continue our search.”
“It’s just what I plan to do!”
“All the men are with you, you know.”
Corfec turned to the sea again, and grew even more depressed, definitely not taking heart from all that. His friend moved away in order to go back to his activities, when something happened unexpectedly.
At first, it was only a faint impression, a sort of a pink spot against the gray tonality of the waves under the overcast sky, then some yellow shades appeared next to it. It seemed to be a sort of long cloth floating on the water, maybe even a dress … a woman’s dress!
The find had hit Corfec’s mind with all of its strength and the man immediately awoke as if from a dream. It looked like her. It must be her! The leader cried out once, twice, then some agitated orders followed, and a great unrest filled the wooden deck as the birlinn changed its course and headed for the human figure that swam across the small waves off the coast. It didn’t take long before the ship got to the body that proved to be a girl, and much to everybody’s surprise, the features were exactly the ones of the young woman Corfec recognized as his sister.
After she was approached and slowly heaved up aboard, a deep sense of incredulity and stupor appeared on the faces of all the men that crowded the corner where she was lying.
Corfec and Sklaer were the first who reached Luighseach and tried to comfort her given the drenched dress and all the water that covered her slender body. “How are you, my dear?” her brother asked while holding her hands.
The girl was still stunned and had some difficulty figuring out where she was at the moment. A strange worry slipped into Corfec’s mind. “You fell overboard, don’t you remember?” the man young asked. “We dedicated ourselves to finding you. We have been calling your name continuously for the entire day. Some on the ship said we would only recover your dead body among the waves, but I insisted. I was sure you were alive. We had only to search for you a little longer.”
“And you were right, undoubtedly!” Sklaer stated. But the young woman still seemed to be doubtful and seemingly lost, her expression an obvious sign of all that.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Luighseach! You’re Luighseach, my sister.” Corfec cried out.
“Me… Luighseach?” the girl said, still a bit confused and cold because of the water that drenched her dress.
“We set sail from our native coast to get to the eastern shores. You are the first daughter of Guethen, the undisputed chief of the Coriosolites that rule over the coast which extends west to the far recesses of Brittany. You were promised as a spouse to the son of the chief of the powerful tribe of the Rhedones in order to form a long-lasting, strong alliance with them. Don’t you remember? You must have undergone some very difficult moments. I know you suffered much when you were alone. But we did not abandon you, we never lost hope! So, now you’re safe, finally you’re with us again!”
“I… I think I can remember a little… Maybe…”
“Yes! You are coming to your senses finally! Good Heavens, you’re not wounded or exhausted, it’s really extraordinary that you got to our birlinn in the open sea coming from….”
There were some moments of deep silence, then she completed the phrase of the man “…from the shore. I was just there, or so I think I remember.”
“You were on the shoreline? Why? Did you get there by taking a swim? Was it the waves that brought you there?” Corfec had to know, so he kept making inquiries about all that and insisted on knowing what had happened. But the girl still appeared to be a bit uncertain, doubtful, and ill at ease.
Then she replied, slowly and with a dreamy expression on her face. “Yes, I was there alone. There was a thick forest behind me, on the horizon…”
“What forest? There are no forested areas on the coastline around here, as far as we know.”
“I don’t know, but there was one. Anyway, it didn’t even seem as if I was there, but I was almost prisoner of that place. Although, I didn’t feel that way. Really, I simply wasn’t self-controlled. It seemed like my mind wasn’t mine anymore. I was lost… And there was that presence, an unearthly creature menacing to me!”
The other man fell silent for a while, then stated, “We were warned! A powerful, fabled Gerlen, a fairy, lives in the surroundings, and she is a fearful opponent.” There was a brief pause and many among the crewmembers exchanged a look. All of them knew that almost every ruin or forest in Brittany had a fairy who was said to live there. They were usually very pretty—but also insidious and unpredictable—changelings, so the legends went. Leading a traveler down the wrong path or stealing little valuables were considered harmless pranks by them.
However, some of them were also feared for more life-threatening behaviors. In several legends, a few liked to kidnap humans. “The chief of the Rhedones told us that his elder son was wanted by another person. Truth be told, he was said to be loved by a fairy, a mischievous and dangerous one. They feared that she wouldn’t let go of him and allow the boy to marry another wife. He revealed also that the creature would try anything in order to keep that man from having another relationship.”
Sklaer whispered, “I was with you before the chief at that time, I remember this, but…”
“But we didn’t believe him, of course. Such words seemed incredible and just a fable or lie, so we simply forgot about it. We thought that the Rhedones were just making fun of us. Nothing would stop our alliance, so I acted according to the orders I received from my father. Then you, Luighseach, disappeared during the night during the route back to our village, and we were desperate because we didn’t know anything about where you were or the reason why you had gone away. We even thought you might have died, but now I see how things really happened, and it’s truly terrible.”
There was a long silence on board.
“A common warning is not to eat the fairy food if they kidnap you. It could keep you with the fairies forever.” Sklaer added, remembering that old saying and breaking the stillness quickly.
“You didn’t eat anything offered by the Gerlen, did you?” Corfec asked, clearly worried.
“No, I didn’t. There was some fruit and vegetables on a cloth along the shore, but I didn’t eat those as I don’t like eating fruit,” Luighseach responded.
“Your hatred for those probably saved you. You didn’t fall into the fairy’s power because of that,” Corfec said.
“Why didn’t she kill her?” Sklaer asked.
“I think she was unable to do it. Look at her golden necklace.” Corfec replied. His friend stared at the classically simple, but wondrously fine, golden design of the ornament that surrounded her pale neck. It resembled some perfect, heart-shaped leaves with an adjustable chain. “It protected her. That object has been in our family for more than fifty years so far.”
“Yes, it must be so!” Sklaer responded.
“Why did you get into the sea? Did it force you to swim?” Corfec asked Luighseach.
“I heard a voice calling for me, as if it was coming from the sea. I was afraid of it at first, but I couldn’t be at ease in that place. I wanted to move away from the shore. I didn’t know why, so I answered that call in the end.”
“We’ve been calling out your name all day long. Maybe you just replied to one of us. Maybe you recognized my voice and awoke from the enchantment of that fairy.” Corfec said. As a matter of fact, he had always sensed a special link, some sort of connection with his twin sister.
“We’d better row away from here as soon as possible,” another long-haired, middle-aged seafarer said, looking askance at the leader. “I see some very severe rain clouds heading for us. I don’t like the looks of those.”
“We couldn’t weather a storm.” Sklaer said, staring at him in return. He was well aware the man was an old salt, so he nodded with a knowing look.
At that time, people thought they might actually run into fairies. It was generally accepted that these dark fairies were something to stay away from in order to be safe. Tangling a sleeping man’s hair, stealing little items, or leading a traveler down the wrong path were considered some harmless pranks accomplished by those creatures. In several legends, those mythical beings were even said to like to kidnap humans at times. Which was what had happened to the poor young woman.
Most believed that the fairies lived in an Otherworld. It had been described as being underground, or in hidden hills, or in some ancient burial places, or even across the Western Sea. Nobody really knew where the Otherworld actually was. But maybe Luighseach had been in that secluded, strange place while being kidnapped from their ship.
What an incredible experience it turned out to be in the end, the young brother thought. Having proved to be able to overpower it, to resist such strong flatteries and illusions, along with those evil trickery, she had certainly displayed a far better, more efficacious conviction and presence of mind. Surely more considerable than the men of their crew or the most famous warriors in their village back home, anyway…
Today, Brittany is one of the twenty-seven regions of France, occupying a large area in the northwest of the country between the English Channel to the north and a great bay to the south. The Brythonic culture was part of the Celtic world that once spread over a vast area of Europe and the British Isles, whose tribal territories existed long before Roman rule. But many of its ancient, now-lost legends are still in the air, flowing in the rivers and permeating the terrain itself. At times, if you just dare to listen to their whispers and give ear to the things that the gusts of winds mutter around, you could even notice it. You might perceive the sound that comes from the calling sea, something that an evil fairy attempted to avert with all her tries but finally in vain.
Those words of hope and resistance against the power of evil and the deceptions of the unearthly creatures that always try to divert humans and lead them to the wrong path still fly across that stretch of sea nowadays, like pieces scattered everywhere. Glimpses of a significant, though brief, struggle that took place over the course of the continuous fight between the world of Mankind and the enchanted lands of the mischievous and dangerous beings who kept themselves well hidden in the darkness. Most of the time…