Cradle in Weeds

A blanket of tiny buttercups swept from the hills for me to feed. Cover me sweet fragrance from the sores. The handprints of mud still lie on her stone, the plants indented never to grow where I laid curled up alone. A shell moved along to where the others lie, a great pit with a door. We feed the green grass and buttercup; the children come and play chasing the swans into the lake.



My older brother, Finbar always told me stories about how we were the four children. We would sit under the great oak, close to the shore of the lake.

"….and she changed them into swans," Finbar told with soft excited whispers.

He never got to the end of his story because Fiachra, his twin, and I would always end up going to look for the swans. Finbar always knew all the stories, he said he learned them from mom. I never knew my mother; I killed her.

Maybe this is why I lay here in the weeds; to see if I can’t find her, this is all I have left, the rest is gone.

I could barely walk when Da packed up and moved from the village I was born in, to escape the memories of my mother. Sometimes I wonder if Da would have died if we had never been born. His love for my mother was something he could not live without, but perhaps we remind him on why he should live.

Aodh, he is the oldest of us four, he would tell me of where I was born. He said the roads were filled with scones and the people made merry all the time. He would tell me of my mother, how her hair was raven dark, like mine, her skin was white has a swan’s feather, like Finbar, and her eyes jade like Fichra and mine. All I ever knew of my mother came from my older brothers, when Da wasn’t listening. When I was little I would make up stories about my real mother. I would say my mother was the Queen Fairy and that she had to leave us because she had to reign over the otherworld. She loved us dearly but changelings were not allowed in the other world. Da was a mortal and Mother a Fairy, we were both and didn’t really be long in this world or that. This is why my brothers and I loved the forest so much. Maybe we could get a glimpse of Mother singing amongst the oak.

I wear the cross Mother trusted Finbar to give to me when I was old enough. Old enough was at the age of five. I still have that cross with the circle woven through it. It’s all I have now it keeps the memories. I wish to forget the memories though.

Da remarried Abby. Though when she married she changed her name to Aoife. She just thought it meant beauty in our language, but I was only five and knew there was more to that name. My brother would laugh when they called their stepmother, never thinking that Aoife as in the story would bring their doom.

Aoife would chase after through the house trying to get me to wear shoes, I would run and find Aodh. He would hide me from her, giving me a boost up into the oak tree. I would disappear all day till Da got home from the field. Da would try to be stern with me and I would try to keep a straight face but I would start to giggle and then he would laugh. Aoife tried hard to break the bond between my brothers and me.

Aoife grew angry of the way Da would never discipline me. She tried hard to keep me from my brothers and under her rule only. She would say, "Good little girls stay in the house," I was out wandering near the lake. She also made me sleep on the floor because good little girls don’t share the bed with their brothers. That was hard to learn because before I could remember I always slept with Finbar on my right, Fiachra on my left, and Aodh would sleep at the foot of the bed. The floor is hard compared to a straw filled mattress. In the summer I would sneak outside and sleep in the blanket of buttercups, but when it got cold I would sleep with my brothers.

One summer Aoife was trying to brush out my hair but I couldn’t sit still, I wanted to be outside while it wasn’t raining. Besides, it hurts to brush out all those knots I had gain the day before.

"Niamh where did you get such an ugly cross?" Aoife asked as the brush yanked through my hair.

"Step mother I have never seen an ugly cross." At that remark she yanked harder on the brush. I suppose I should have known better but eight is still a young age.

"Niamh, my daughter I think you should wear this cross from now on and not that one."

She presented to me a cross that lay on top of an English letter. She was teaching me to write in English, although I didn’t know why because I can write perfect in Irish, Finbar says. It looked like a lower case E. I didn’t understand why she wanted me to wear such a thing. It felt smooth. My little cross had animals chasing their tales etch into the cross and circle, I didn’t see how anything could be more pretty than that. She tried to take my treasure away, my single gift from my mother.

"It is for your own good."

I ran out of the house my cross tangled in my hand. My brothers were doing their chores. Aoife still chased me. I slipped the cross into Finbar’s back pocket. Aoife stared me down with her pale blue eyes but I stood my ground a little behind Finbar. I gave her back stare for stare. She gave each one of my brothers a look, then stormed back into the house.

Ten is when I knew I was no longer a child. I watched the land, as its womb became sterile, black stillborn is all it could reap. Aoife try to hide this from me, but I’m not a fool. Aodh no longer smiled, Fiachra was angry all the time, and Finbar became quiet. I could read my brothers’ faces. I watched Da in the field as he looked for something for us to eat, some potatoes left untouched from the black filth. The men who talk like Aoife hung around like vultures now. They taunt Aoife, I almost felt sorry for her, but no longer can I have a feeling for her. She is the reason I am alone, now. Waiting here for the vultures.

I watched them burn down my house. I think Aoife was the most angered by this. My brothers took me up into the hills, the said I couldn’t watch, but the smoke followed me. It stung my nose and made my lungs cough. I knew though nobody told me. They didn’t have to tell me.

We lived up in the hills for awhile, taking shelter in the caves that were close to the ocean. Its lullaby gave me sleep, without dreams. We became like dogs scrounging for food. The ocean just seemed to be insulting us. The waves taunted us with their close rhythm beating in our ears and yet they won’t let us fish. They took our land; what more did they want? We live in damp sea caves to shelter us from wind and cold. How much longer will we survive? They even took my father, but they sent her to do the dirty work. In turn she took my brothers.

"Niamh! Niamh, where are you?" Aoife yelled.

I wouldn’t answer her. I will never answer her. I blinked away tears. I couldn’t close my eyes; if I did I know I would see him. Why did she take Da from me? I knew my brothers knew where I was. My brothers knew better than to come and try to talk to me. They knew I had to weep out the poison before they try to help such a wound. So they waited while she called and called. The winds bit into me and joined my cry. She had collected her poison from the sands of the beach. She had made the stew of seaweed to make his death as painful as possible. Weeping blisters covered his twisted body as my brothers carried my Da to the Catholic graveyard. I watched as they laid his body in a wooden box and shut the lid. The pungent stench of death and tar I will never forget. I watched in horror as they reopened the lid for nothing to be there and the next twisted body was thrown into a scar in the earth.

"Niamh, it will be okay. We will go away from here, away from her. We will go home, surely there is food there," Fiachra said in a husk voice as his hand rested upon my shoulder.

"Aoife will be weighed in the end. The wheel turns Niamh," Finbar said looking off into the far off distance.

I heard his unspoken words though. Such words only a priest might say. I could hear him say we should thank her for our lives. In her selfishness she fed only herself and her husband. But how could I thank somebody for my own life when she killed Da?

I looked at Aodh. He stood in the shadows, his jaw was pinched and his hands were held in fist of rage. I could feel his anger rise in waves of heat.

"She has eaten the weed of the sea, now she must reap her own wounds alone," Aodh growled at the sky.

Don’t think of my brother cruel. He took Da’s death harder than the rest of us. I have never seen Aodh so angry; this death changed him, sometimes he just looked like a wraith in the body of Aodh. In the end, we took Aoife and left her with her own people. We are not heartless, just full of sorrow. She was covered in weeping blisters. She won’t bother them long.

The four of us had nothing to keep us here. We took the little we had and fled, as the swans fly, to the home of our births. To our deaths.

We were hungry; everywhere we went there was hunger. We walked along the road where horses used to trot, though I don’t think anybody except perhaps one of Aoife’s people would own such a creature anymore. What horse would travel on this road without bucking? The smell of rotting flesh had become part of the land.

Finbar would try to tell a tale as we walked each one of us adding our own details. We tried to keep our minds off the fact that corpses littered both sides of the road. Skeletons with green foam at the mouth from eating too much grass. Compared to some of these people Da didn’t have such a bad death.

I walked on but my gaze fell upon a small body. The skin barely covered the ribs and the stomach was bloated. The child’s flesh, what was left, was covered in blisters. It seems as if I walked in a dream, unreal. Finbar broke my gaze and made me move on. But that was only a little child that lay without breath in rags curled up next to her mother.

"One foot in front of the other, Niamh," I heard Aodh say. He didn’t listen to himself though. I’m not sure the reason he died, if it was still the shock of Da’s death, the hunger, or the site of twisted bodies we passed. All I remember is one minute he tells me to walk on and the next he lies on the road. The bright flame of his hair went dull and his stomach was bloated like the rest. I wanted to stay by my oldest brother forever but Fiachra said, "Move on." It took all three of us to move this great man off the road. The grass was his bed, we didn’t have the strength to place rocks on his cold body. I made Brigit’s cross out of reed and placed in between his hands that crossed his chest. We walked on, it was so hard not to look back.

My stomach should be used to no food by now, I wish it would stop reminding me with such shouts. I would give almost anything to have food in my stomach, just a little bit of Indian corn would be just right to take the edge off. I didn’t know such a wish would come at such a high cost.

I watched Fiachra passed on. He joined mother, Aodh, and Da. I wonder if Aoife knew when she married my Da she would bring such pain to my people. I wove a cross for my brother. It was hard to weave with tears blinding my eyes, but I knew the motion, and wove the little cross out of the dried grass. I left it with his body on the side of the road. He was always the strong one, I never would have thought I would see him die. Why, oh why can’t I forget my memories?

Finbar and me. We were all that was left. This didn’t last long. We had to be getting close to the town of our birth. The land was scarred with stones for fences. The houses were closer together. My hopes were raised that we might make it to a sanctuary.

Finbar and I both looked up from our thoughts to the sound of an animal grazing. This was the first life we have seen in days. A girl no more than eight was grazing the grass as if a sheep. I hear my stomach call once again. She looked up at me, wild and wide eyed. The juice of the grass that cows think sweet dribbled down her chin. She smells just as bad as the dead back the road a little ways. Her black hair was a knotted mess and she was so thin she looked like a wraith. Could she be a ghost? Finbar and I cross ourselves at the same time. I am hungry but not enough for grass. Finbar spoke to the child, "How much farther to Ardara?"

She stared at us as if we were indeed two of the children of Lir, then she blinked as if the thoughts were slow with the lack of food. She pointed in the direction we had been walking and grunted with green teeth and a mouth full to the brim with weed, "Not much farther," she replied. Not much farther is what I told my blistered feet.

I held Finbar, yelling at him, "It’s not much farther, it’s not much farther." His eyes staring open far into the future never blinking, never wavering. I could feel his breath no more. I couldn’t even drag him off the road, I had to just leave him. I didn’t want to leave him but I knew if I didn’t he would be angry with me. I wove my cross; it took a long time my whole body was numb and my mind hurt. I dragged myself up from my work placing the cross on the twisted body that I once called my brother. One foot in front of the other.

I walked on, tears streaming from my eyes. I held tight to the cross around my neck. I don’t know how much more I walked but when I wiped away the tears I saw a huge church like a gray streak across the sky.

The graveyard behind this solemn church one, would know it was there even though it couldn’t be seen. The reek of the graveyard distressed my nose. Will I ever forget that smell? I walk as fast as I could into this graveyard, my eyes watered and nose burned. I staggered to my mother’s grave, as if something called to me and I knew where to walk.

It was only a little ways up on the hill behind the church. I looked at the letters etched into the stone. I touched each one with my fingers. I was no longer bothered by the smell, by my hunger. The grave cradled me in the weeds.

I repeated Finbar’s story in my head, my mother’s story, "…and there were four children…" I breathed in the velvety blackness and peace over took my body. I found the ending that Finbar never told. Da, Aohb, Fiachra, Finbar… Mommy is that you?