Only the Stones Survive: A Novel (30 page)

We stared at each other. I don’t know what she saw, but her eyes grew very wide.

Her body was neatly made and high-breasted, with a lovely curve to the hips. Apart from that, there was nothing to captivate a man, yet I looked and looked and could not look away.

She could feel my eyes caressing her. Smiling, she said, “What do you want of me?”

Not smiling, I said, “Everything.”

Her name, she told me, was Alana. Her parents had died of an illness that the Dananns could have cured, but it baffled the Mílesians. She was left to raise two little brothers by herself on more land than she could ever work. One of her neighbors would take over the land whenever he liked. “Perhaps tomorrow,” she said sadly. “Or the next change of the moon, at the latest. I shall become his servant, and if I’m very lucky he might let me keep one of the cows so I can feed my brothers.”

When she asked my name, I was surprised to hear myself say the last thing the Dagda had said to me. “Elgolai.”

“What does that mean—Elgolai?” Alana tasted the unfamiliar word with her lips and tongue.

“It means ‘He goes out,’” I replied. “As in, ‘he goes out looking for a wife.’”

She looked at me from under her eyelashes. “And are you? Looking for a wife?”

“Not now,” I said. “I had to go out to find one, though.” As the Dagda had known I must.

The night was cold, and Alana insisted I bring my companions into the house. It consisted of one room built of timber and caulked with mud, with a fire pit in the middle of the earthen floor and a sleeping loft above.

My company of Dananns filled the little house to overflowing. Yet there was enough room for all of us.

I brought in some wood from a stack outside the house and helped Alana set it alight. The smoke could only escape from the open doorway; the Mílesians did not understand the necessity of a smoke hole in the ceiling.

But the fire was warm and merry, and Alana’s eyes were merry and warm.

Her little brothers watched from the loft while she fed us dark bread—not as good as Melitt’s—and golden honey sweeter than I had ever tasted.

When we left in the morning, we took Alana and her brothers with us.

I, who remember everything, do not recall asking her if she would come. Perhaps it was not necessary.

Hand to hand and heart to heart, we married in the way of my race. The Dananns witnessed our vows to each other. When they sang the song of wedding for us, it sounded like summer wind.

As we neared the western caves, I tried to prepare Alana for the life she would live with me. “My people are not like yours,” I began—but she laughed.

“I know it already, Elgolai. None of us have pointed ears.”

That distinction was the last thing I would have noticed.

The tribe waiting in the caves must have been astonished to see me arrive with a young woman and two little boys.

They were no more astonished than I was a few days later, when Shinann joined us bringing a very tall dark-haired man called Amergin, whom she introduced as the chief bard of the Mílesians. They were accompanied by a member of his tribe called Sive, a widow who expected to bear twins very soon. “In fact,” Shinann said laughingly, “I’m surprised we made it this far.”

Darkseason was over. The light had returned in full measure. Our tribe was growing.

On his first night with us, Amergin played the harp. The golden voice of Clarsah rang through the caves of crystal like music from the stars. We watched spellbound as the bard’s fingers caressed the brass strings of his instrument. How could I ever have thought the Mílesians were clumsy?

The following morning, Amergin began collecting the stories of our race. They would come back to us as poetry to be remembered for generations.

I began to understand why a bard of the Gael was the equal of a prince.

My Alana had something in common with the Dagda’s wife, Melitt. Not only did she bake bread—Melitt taught her to add fruit and other secret ingredients—but she also adjusted well to changed circumstances. Life in a cave with total strangers was not what Alana had expected when she and her family came to Ierne, but soon she was pointing out the advantages of cave living to me and teaching the Túatha Dé Danann the exuberant dances of Iberia.

Sive gave birth to healthy twins, a boy and a girl. The boy had black hair and almond-shaped eyes that she said were shaped like his father’s. The girl entered the world with a bright cap of red curls. There had been no twins born to the Túatha Dé Danann in living memory, but we were quick to claim this pair. In the caves above the deep valley, two very different races had come together like two rivers flowing into one lake.

Our children would belong to one tribe.

On the day our daughter Cara was born, Alana and I wept tears of joy. Her ears were only slightly pointed—you would not notice unless you were looking for it—but her eyes were enormous.

The Túatha Dé Danann had been defeated in battle and almost obliterated, but the infusion of Mílesian blood would make a substantial difference to our race. The sons of the Míl were fighters; the spark of life they carried was very strong. They would always seek the far horizon.

We had thought the western caves would be the last refuge of our tribe, but we were mistaken. Within a generation, the Dananns were spreading across Ierne again. They became a vivid but unseen presence in lonely glens and on the tops of mountains. Or in the fragrant countryside, where their music drifted over the nearest settlement and haunted the dreams of the Gael.

Or they went into the sea and shapechanged into the most magical of Manannan’s creatures, the seals.

Amergin composed poetry about them too.

More Dananns took mates among the Gael. Instead of producing just one child, or two at the most, the marriage of the two races resulted in larger families. Their offspring rarely inherited the long life spans of the Túatha Dé Danann, but other valuable gifts came to them through blood and bone, so a balance was struck. These children of the new generation were never ordinary. They carried dreams in their eyes.

They loved music and loved words that made music. A glimpse of beauty could stop them in their tracks. Intrigued by overgrown pathways and unsolved mysteries, they walked in the rain and talked to the trees and stared at the stars. The hard-and-fast parameters of time could not hold them; they adapted time to their requirements and made it flexible. If the truth was unpalatable, they embroidered it to shape a better reality.

Gradually, they repopulated the sacred island.

Even today, you might meet some of them in Ierne. Or anywhere else in the world.

You may be one yourself.

The Túatha Dé Danann called me their chieftain, and I did my best to supply the leadership they needed, but I was not a chieftain; I was a teacher. It is the nobler title.

I instructed my people in the art of shapechanging so they would be able to camouflage themselves if necessary. As I had anticipated, some learned more readily than others. A few found it addictive. Little Piriome gave herself to a willow tree so totally she never came back.

After that, I was more careful.

I dispensed knowledge bit by bit, as the Dagda had taught me, beginning with simple things that were easy to understand. A mind must be stretched before it can accommodate complexity.

And the history of the Túatha Dé Danann is complicated.

The information I imparted was, and is, regrettably fragmentary. Great gaps exist where those who knew a part of our history never passed it on. I have always urged my people to try to fill in the missing pieces if they could. Gifts are passed in the blood, and so is memory. A sudden recollection may supply another part of the puzzle.

Who am I?

Why am I?

Where am I going?

Even I cannot answer those questions to my own satisfaction. But I keep trying.

Of this much I am certain:

With the passage of time, truth can become myth.

Objects that appear to be solid are in fact permeable. Otherwise, shapes could not change.

The condition called death, meaning the end of existence, does not exist.

There is no material barrier between lastworld, thisworld, and nextworld.

When an infant is born, the spirit that animates its body is not new. The undying spark existed Before the Before and may occupy many forms during the long reach of Eternity.

And this I cannot explain:

After you have gone, I may still be here. Time swirls and spirals and reconnects itself in this enchanted place among the stars.

At night, I stand alone beneath the boundless curve and gaze upward. Calling silently, not expecting an answer yet knowing you are there. All of you, who are one. As I am part of the same one.

You can call me Elgolai na Starbird. Elgolai means He Who Goes Out and is the name given to me. Starbird is the name I gave myself.

Not only the stones survive.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

E
VERYTHING BEGINS
with an idea. You did. So did I. So did the universe. This book is the result of an idea that interested my late mother, Henri Llywelyn Price. From my earliest childhood, she read serious books to me and encouraged me to ask difficult questions.

Many years ago, my mother gave me a copy of
Until The Sun Dies
so we could discuss it together. In this book, Robert Jastrow explored two great mysteries: the riddle of life and the riddle of creation. The conversations this inspired between my mother and me eventually led me to the wide variety of books listed in the select bibliography.

Most of the questions—and some of the answers—behind
Only the Stones Survive
are to be found within those pages.

To all of the scholarly, questing, and/or imaginative minds who researched and produced this diverse totality of work, I can only say thank you. There are too many individuals to name, but, like the stars in the sky, you shed magical light.

Morgan Llywelyn
 
Winter Solstice, Ireland, 2014

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———.
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