Bhaile Samhain

Her mother had told her not to approach the crossroads on Samhain night, when the Dullahan stopped his coach and waited. “They will burn you little one,” she had said, “as they burned my mother and my sister, as they burned your uncles who lived in the forests and plied their trade with the wild magic of the animals.” When she was older and she worked the gardens and the Faoladh boys and the Druid girls and the Sidhe who were both and neither courted her the elders of the village told her “do not approach the crossroads on Samhain night pretty one, for they will drive you to the underground, as they drove our people long ago, when the men came in the guise of shepherds and drove us away.” “They called us snakes pretty one and they banished us from our homes.” When she was a woman, and expected to marry soon or else commit herself to the Raven Lady they thought it no longer necessary to read her the warnings. The warnings were for the young, who knew no better or dreamed of adventure beyond.
Muirni waited until the night was dark and the garden had been tended. She left her mother’s herbs and roots on the table in the kitchen, ready for the next day’s potions, and she took her mantle of green and stole away from the house that her mother had built all those centuries ago when they shepherds drove them underground. She crossed the waters where flowed the magic of their kind and the woods where kindred souls, driven away by the shepherds of their own homes had come to Bhaile Samhain seeking refuge. She found the crossroads and waited.
The Dullahan came, his coach rumbling like the sky in a storm—the stallion bridled to the front looked at her with eyes like smoldering coals. The Dullahan did not look at her at all. It’s head rested on the seat beside it with its eyes shut. The lips parted like a gash.
“What do you seek little weaver?”
Muirni squared her shoulders. They were not impressive shoulders, not suited for gardening or weaving anything but the most delicate of enchantments.
“I wish to cross to upper lands.”
The horse snorted twin plumes of green flame.
“They will burn you little weaver. They will set stones in your pockets and toss you to waters. They will cleave your head from your shoulders and the lady of mound will weep for you and I will come for you with my eyes open.”
“Not if I am clever. Not if I am quick.” She let out a warm breath. “Not if I do not weave amongst them.”
“Very well little weaver. Board my coach and we shall see how I come for you at Samhain’s close.”
The door to the coach swung open and Muirni lifted the hem of her skirt and stepped inside. It closed behind her and, at a whistle from the Dullahan’s head, they jerked into motion. The back of the coach was sparse. The seats had no cushions but they were not uncomfortable. Muirni squirmed and her cloak tugged at her throat. She fought with the garment—paying no attention to the landscape moving past out the window.
It was good that she kept her eyes on her own affairs. The things that dwelt in the space between the Bhaile Samhain and the upper lands did not like to be watched. So few of them crossed over anymore. The ones who feared for their lives stayed in their homes on Samhain night. The ones who still crossed over were the ones that had nothing to fear.
It had not always been this way. In the old days Samhain had been a time of mixing. On the last night before winter the things that lived in between would visit the lands above and cause mischief. The weavers taught the mortals to avoid them. They taught them to carve talismans to frighten the vilest things that came to their doors. They helped them disguise themselves so that any passing redcap might not know friend from foe. The Faoladh of the forests stood guard over the homes of the mortals. They kept the unseelies at bay and healed the wounded. And for a time there was peace.
Muirni was very young when it changed. The men came from across the seas. There was fire. They came for the Faoladh and murdered all but a scant few. They were the first to seek refuge in the domain of the Raven Lady. They would be the founders of Bhaile Samhian. Then they came for the weavers with tinder and flintlock. Muirni’s mother, holding her in her arms, weaving with only her voice, had pushed the roundheads back as they retreated into Rathcroghan. The Faoladh helped them build their home at the edge of the forest and they stayed and watched each Samhain pass and everyone told Muirni of how terrible the wrath of mortals had been—everyone thought it would not be long before her memories of the fires faded and she would wonder about the world they had left behind.
Sometimes there were stories of those who crossed over on Samhain night. Everyone insisted they knew someone who had gone and nearly been killed by the mortals and who now stayed in a hutch and never spoke to anyone of their excursion—leaving it to gossipy neighbors to tell of the horrors the mortals had wrought. Muirni had always found that somewhat convenient. More believable were the stories of those who had crossed over in the Dullahan’s coach and never returned, whose homes sat as empty monuments to their foolishness. She knew those stories were true up to a point. She wondered what the Dullahan would say if she asked him.
Muirni rose from her seat and leaned forward, knuckles poised to rap against the front of the coach. She waited like that for several seconds before sitting back down. She could not say exactly what stopped her, except that on this night when she had crossed so many boundaries, there still seemed some worth preserving.
The coach came to a halt. A shrill whistle pierced the night. Muirni stood, stooped low to avoid the ceiling, and pushed the coach door open. Cold air hit her—frigid and biting. She had lived in the world above but briefly and the memory of the teeth on the wind had faded. She pulled her cloak tighter around her body as she stepped down from the coach.
“I shall return at the witching hour little weaver,” said the Dullahan’s head. “If you live that long.”
Muirni bowed to the Dullahan. She slipped a pristine bleached bone from the folds of her cloak and held it up in her open palm. She did not look as the Dullahan took it, but felt the moldy leather of his glove scrape her palm. There was a burst of heat and the earth shook and when next she looked up the coach was gone.
The crossroads was paved. That was new. Paving stones had not been so precise when she was small. To the east there was darkness, but to the west she heard laughter and music and saw lights twinkling. The music carried her, making her dance along the road towards the lights. These were the kinds of things that parents warned their children about—the lure of music and light. How many stories had she heard where unwitting Sidhe were trapped by mortal irons and forced to chimneys—and yet the songs were so very pretty and they pulled her along.
The lights were almost a haze in her eyes, merging and separating. Two broke off the from the larger ball of light and grew right in front of her. The ground shook as they filled her field of vision.
Muirni threw her hands up as the hulking metal carriage bore down on her. Incantations poured from her lips like water. The litany cascaded down her arms and across her hands. She stretched the words between her fingers and, quicker than she had ever woven before, the spell took shape. The carriage slowed at first, as though stuck in a mire. By the time it stopped the change was almost imperceptible—as though it had simply rolled to a natural stopping place about half an inch from Muirni’s nose.
She dropped her hands to her knees and breathed in sharply. The light still shone in her eyes, making spots dance in front of her. Steadying herself so she would not fall over, she lifted one hand and snapped her fingers. There was a sound of shattering glass and the lights went out. She stood up and pressed her hands to small of her back to straighten the spine that had nearly slid right out of her. Then she placed her hands on her hips and walked a slow circle around the coach. It easily dwarfed the Dullahan’s coach. The strongest of the Faoladh would have had trouble lifting it and little Muirni had stopped it cold—and the pity was having snuck out and violated every law her mother had ever insisted upon she would never be able to tell her of the single greatest weaving she had ever done.
As she completed her circle of the coach there was a loud noise from the front. Muirni rushed back around, stepping carefully over the shattered glass that had once been the lamps. A man had fallen from the front of the coach, clad in a dark unitard with the form of a skeleton sewn onto it. He scrambled away from his coach on all fours, cursing and sputtering into the darkness. Muirni knew the types of things that wandered just off the roads on Samhain night—things that loved to find a lone and scared traveler in the darkness.
“Sir,” she called out.
The man stopped scrambling away. He turned, looking a bit like a scared puppy, still on hands and knees. Bathed in shadow he might have been a living skeleton—a cousin to the Dullhan, but even in darkness and garbed as he was, he was obviously a man, small and scared and mortal.
“Oh my god.” A frantic breath clung to every word. “Oh good lord. Are you alright?”
It struck Muirni that this man, on his hands and knees, afraid for his life and looking as though he might be sick on the grass, was concerned for her safety.
“I am…I am unharmed.”
The man hung his head. “Thank god. I don’t…I lost control. I haven’t been drinking I swear.”
Muirni looked back at the truck. “No it’s…it’s my fault. I was not paying attention. I thought. I didn’t think anyone would be out on the roads, tonight of all nights.”
“Well, you know, deliveries still have to be made.” He tried to get to his feet but he limbs seemed to shake beneath him.
Muirni took an instinctive step forward. Back home if someone was in need, prone and helpless you lifted them up—but this was the world above, the world that had killed her father and driven her family into hiding by the embers of a torch. Still—there were rules governing the treatment of fellow travelers, and they were sacred. She took him gently by the arm and lifted him to his feet. She held him until the strength returned to his legs.
The man staggered back to his coach. “Oh, damn it. What happened to the lights? I don’t suppose…no look at you, look at me, even together we’d barely get this thing off the road. I wonder if Collin put any flairs in the emergency kit.” He went around to the back of the coach and opened the large double doors.
“Flares?” Muirni asked, throwing all the well learned qualities of her youth to the wind and approaching the coach freely.
“To mark where we are,” the coachman’s muffled voice replied. “Can’t very well finish my deliveries without headlamps.”
“No,” Muirni said, staring at the lights she had shattered. “I suppose you can’t.”
While the coachman dug through his Cargo, Muirni did her best to sweep the glass shards into a neat pile with the tip of her boot. Once they were gathered, she spread her fingers and began to intone. The words were not so important as the intention. Intention was the thread from which enchantments were woven, the words just focused them. She felt the intentions on her fingers and began looping them one over the other, slowly at first, and then with great speed. Her hands flew, casting off sparks in the darkness. The glass on the road rumbled, shards clattering against each other. Rods of copper inside of the broken lamps sparked and jumped. The shards flew back to their housings and the light sputtered behind them and then coalesced into the two blinding beams that had nearly killed Muirni scant moments before.
The coachman came around holding a sparkling cylinder.
“I found a—” He blinked at the lights. “Oh…how did that…” He looked up at Muirni and for a moment she saw recognition form in his eyes and she imaged that sputtering flame in his hand as the torch that would light her pyre. Then it disappeared and he smiled at her. “I guess, the sudden stop just jarred them loose.” He said it like he did not fully believe it but he wanted to. He dropped the flare and stamped out the flame with his bootheel. “Well, seeing as I nearly ran you down, can I offer you a ride. It’s not good to be out in this dark, tonight of all nights.” He looked around and a shiver ran up his body. “Especially at a crossroads.” He looked her up and down again. “You’re not a Puca are you?”
Muirni’s heart skipped a beat, but from the look on his face he clearly thought it about as likely that she was a Puca as that she was a fish. It was joke.
“I’m not a Puca,” she said with a curving smile that was the talk of young folk all over Bhaile Samhain. “And I’d love a ride.”
“Class.” He went to the left side of the Coach and opened the door. “Climb aboard.”
“In the front, with you,” Murini’s cheeks turned red.
The coachman looked confused, but kept smiling.
“Well you could ride in the back with the pastries—which, I wouldn’t blame you, but it’s more comfortable in the seat.”
With the Coachman’s help up, Muirni climbed inside. It was nothing like the Dullahan’s Coach, it smelled of fresh bread and sugar. The seats were soft and worn with use and heat flared from portals in the walls, breathing life back into Muirni’s chilled limbs. The coachman climbed into the seat on the other side.
“The name’s Brendan by the way, or Ben if you prefer.”
“Muirni.”
“Nice to meet you Muirni,” Ben said.
The coach started forward and something rumbled under Muirni’s seat. She wondered how much time had passed in the world above that they had achieved wonders like this. Time was different in Bhaile Samhain. It moved in fits and starts and less for some than for others. They had learned to think of the passage of time differently. It must have been a very long time though, because this was magic in some form. They had harnessed lightning without storms and heat without fire. The coach moved without the aid of horses and music—quite lovely music—played in the coach without any hint of a band.
“That’s a nice costume by the way,” Ben said as the trundled along. “What are you supposed to be?”
“I’m a weaver,” Muirni said without thinking.
“Ah, so you made it yourself?”
“My mother helped,” Muirni said, shrugging. She realized he thought she was guised—that explained his own skeletal adornments. The mortals still guised themselves on Samhain night. “I’m a…a witch.” The word felt dirty in her mouth. There was nothing wrong with the word itself, but the way the shepherds had used it when they set their fires still rang in Muirni’s ears. Witch and burn went hand in hand.
“Oh class,” Ben said. “Like a sort of Hammer Horror look. It’s very fetching…not to be creepy…I just…I’m a skeleton.” His cheeks had turned a deep shade of crimson. Muirni found she rather liked how it looked. “It was cheap at the shops. I was on my way to a party at the pub after I finished making these deliveries…and I’ve just realized I never asked you where you were heading.”
It was a question that Muirni had not even asked herself. The sum total of her plan had been to sneak away to the world above for Samhain, just for a few hours, and beyond that there was nothing.
“I was looking for a party too.”
“Well, you’re welcome to come with me if you don’t mind seeing through these deliveries first.”
The air in the truck was sweet and the more Muirni looked, the more she liked this mortal.
“I don’t mind at all.”
The coach swayed and jumped as they made their way through the darkened roads, but inside it was light and fun. They talked the whole way, and Muirni felt, for the first time in what she quickly found out to be centuries, that she could talk to this man without the burden of the Raven Lady, nor her mother’s expectations, nor the mantle of her family name and all it carried with it. Ben talked with her about art and nature and food—he knew so very much about food, and Muirni found herself forgetting, if only for seconds at a time, that she was the daughter Ailbhe Mac Mathghamhna and that the Dullahan would be coming for her at the Witching Hour one way or another.
“Do you dress up every Samhain?’
“You mean…Halloween? I do. I know I’m a bit old for it but it’s just good fun. Besides, it’s our holiday. Can’t let the yanks have all the fun.”
Muirni had no idea what he was talking about but thought it wise not to tip her hand so she just smiled politely and nodded.
They hit another crossroads and Ben stopped the coach and peered left and right, straining his eyes against the darkness. Muirni wondered why mortals squinted at the dark. Anything that really wanted to hide from them could hide from a squint just as well as open eyes. She muttered an incantation and wove the words over her eyes. The darkness turned to shades of violet and blue and the shadows waiting for them went into stark relief. Figures loped along the side of the rode to the left, taking long strides with limbs like ropes and teeth like horses. Muirni clutched at her chest and took in a sharp breath.
Ben looked at her win concern. “Are you okay?”
Muirni blinked and shook her head out. “Fine. Just…thought I saw something. We should get moving.”
“Yeah, we should,” Ben said. He started forward and the slowly turned down the left road.
Muirni clutched at the side of the door. The creatures in the darkness watched them with eyes like coals, grinning with those grotesque teeth. She wondered how well guised Ben really was. In the old days a suit like that may get a mortal pity from a sympathetic puca, but these were not sympathetic creatures. The sympathetic ones had all fled to Bhaile Samhain. These were out for blood.
Their coach made a noise like an exploding musket and they careened to the right. Ben fought with the wheel and forced them to the side of the road. Muirni could see the creatures waiting there. How could Ben not see them. They were gathered in a semicircle around the coach like highwaymen. They would take him on their shoulders and ride him into the nearest lake and he would float up the next day blue and bloated.
As he went to open the door Muirni grabbed his wrist. He looked at her, confused at first and then just concerned. She must have looked a fright. She must have been pale and shaky and this kind, gentle mortal would assume it was fear. He would not know what she was doing, weaving without words, pulling raw power from the air as storm clouds draw lightning.
“Are you—”
“Don’t go out there,” Muirni said through gritted teeth.
“Unless you want to spend the night in here I need to check the engine. Just keep the lights on we’ll be fine.” Something about the way he looked at her had changed. He saw her not as an equal, but as a scared and irrational thing. How long had it taken for the mortals to forget—to lose the feat that had driven them to survive?
The creatures outside stirred, agitated by the gathering energy. Muirni had no plan, no enchantment to direct at them. They were puca, redcaps, unseelie Sidhe and they would tear them limb from limb as a jest. She had never fought them—she had never fought anyone. Mortals with muskets might have been one thing but not them.
“Do you know what comes to your world on Samhain night?”
“Those are ghost stories,” Ben said, now trying to wrestle out of her grip. “The engine trouble on the other hand is very real.” He pulled away from her and cracked the door.
The creatures smelled blood in the water. They surged like a wave taking the shoreline, tearing the door the rest of the way open, taking it off its hinges and flinging it away into the darkness. Ropey limbs and fingers like spider’s legs took Ben’s arm. They pulled him out of the coach so fast that he might have simply vanished. But with the enchantment over her eyes, Muirni could see him being dragged across the grass—a creature on each limb tearing him in four directions. The air crackled and Muirni stepped out of the coach.
Her boots crunched the dirt. The headlamps exploded again, sending glass everywhere. It was a still, windless night and Muirni’s cloak fluttered around her ankles like a gale was blowing. The creature’s stopped and Murini saw the pain and confusion on poor Ben’s face. It had all happened so fast she wondered how much of it he had even registered. How quickly had his kind been able to understand what was happening? Would it catch up soon and the screaming would start?
“Puca, Redcap, Unseelie Sidhe, servants of Crom Cruach who dwell in the spaces between. Mischievous things. Hunters Predators. Dwellers in the darkness.” Her voice carried like the wind through the leaves, like the crowing of birds a hundred strong, wings beating against the sky. “I am Muirni Mac Mathghamhna and this man is under my protection. Leave him and give us safe passage or be destroyed.”
One of the creatures released Ben’s arm and loped towards her, half hunched and grinning at her with yellowed teeth too big for its head.
“Little weaver, this is not your world to conquer. You fled from their weapons. This is Samhain night and we will have our fun.”
“You were warned.”
Lightning struck on a cloudless night and turned the creature standing before her to ash. The shock of thunder tossed the others back in all directions. Muirni watched Ben go flying through the air like a straw doll. She flung out her hand and felt her muscles tense and she pulled back the magic she had unleashed, tamed it at its wildest point and forced the winds to blow at her command, slowing his fall and bringing him gently to her.
He landed on the grass—not gently—but not lethally, and she ran to him, dropping to her knees by his side and cradling his head. Her cloak spread out around them, covering his bruised legs. They had torn his clothes and one eye was swollen shut. Muirni felt an incandescent rage bubble up. One of the creatures, undeterred by what happened to its comrade, ran at them, pointed teeth gnashing. Muirni twisted her fingers, drawing the energy to her yet again and flinging it at the beast. It hit without form—no lightning, nor wind, just raw force punching a very moveable object. It’s boots stayed put but the rest of it splattered across the field.
“Who else,” she bellowed. “How many more will die!”
Her body shook. Magic was not meant to be harnessed like this. It was meant to be gathered and used, and then allowed to disperse back into the world, to be harnessed again later. It was like a wave building out at sea and crashing against the shore—one moment of immense power before it was swept back to gather up again. But Muirni had held it at the point of impact, at the moment of greatest strength, and pushed it again and again. Flashes of ball lightning popped and fizzled around her—illuminating the faces of the creatures.
Faces that never registered anything more than sadistic glee or hunger—but tonight in the flashes of light they looked afraid. They had preyed on this mortal, expecting their tithe—one man among many to disappear on Samhain, not worth enough thought for the mortals to break out the torches and iron. Now the very fabric of the world split around them—and they turned and ran like jackrabbits. Smarter than they looked.
It felt like every iota of Muirni’s being was ready to burst—she shook on a microscopic level, as though her individual parts were about to explode, blasting away from each other and dissipating her. She held the power at its zenith for too long. Far away she heard a cry—a cry she had not heard since her father was taken by the shepherds. She looked down at Ben again and saw the last ragged breaths leave his body as mist in the cool night and she imagined the eyes of the Dullahan snapping open as its horse thundered towards them.
Muirni placed her palm on Ben’s chest and raised the other hand to the sky. Another column of lightning erupted from her palm, meeting its mate descending from the sky, forming a bridge between the heavens and Muirni Mac Mathghamhna. She dispelled the gathered energy back into the ether—all except the smallest trace that she poured into Ben—closing his wounds, fading his bruises.
For miles around people in towns and villages stopped what they were doing and watched the last strike of lighting on a cloudless Halloween—a sight mortal eyes had not gazed on for over three centuries—not since Ailbhe Mac Mathghamhna led her people through the caves at Rathcroghan.
Then Muirni’s eyes rolled back and she collapsed into the grass.
When she woke up she saw moldy leather boots standing beside her head. She blinked slowly and wondered offhand if this was the Redcap coming back to finish the job. She looked up along the body and thought how ridiculous it was to be relieved not to see a head.
“Going my way?” She said, her throat stung with each word.
“Count yourself lucky I am not,” said the voice from the rotting head under the Dullahan’s arm.
She turned her head and saw Ben laying in the grass—still looking beaten to hell even with the magic she had poured into him.
“Not him?”
“I was drawn here for him. The Bean Sidhe wailed for him and then…stopped.”
“So he’s…?”
“Alive, for now. I do not think the Bean Sidhe will cry for him for some time yet.” The Dullahan held down a gloved hand.
Muirni took it, almost gagging when she realized that it felt more like rotted flesh than leather.
“I can’t just leave him.”
“He will awaken soon, and he will drive himself to safety and be tended to by his own kind. And if you are very lucky he will remember none of this.”
Muirni stared at Ben as she got to her feet. He looked peaceful, happy, disheveled and beaten, but happy.
“I could stay with him. I could tend to him. If I go back now my mother will never let me return.”
“You nearly tore this island asunder last night and cut off the cry of a Bean Sidhe in her throat. If you wish to see him again, you will—but tonight return home. You have been in the world above for less than three hours and have nearly blown yourself up. I do not wish to face the wrath of Ailbhe Mac Mathghamhna…I will leave that to you.”
“Was that a joke?”
The Dullahan said nothing. He walked back to his coach, climbed aboard, and waited. Muirni took Ben under the shoulders and dragged him as gently as she could back to his own coach. She laid him down across the seat and crossed his arms over his chest. Then she decided that looked too funerary left them at his sides. She smiled at him one last time and then walked away, back towards the Dullahan’s coach, weaving as she went, leaving a protection around Ben to see him through the night. Then she climbed inside the Dullahan’s coach and they headed back to Bhaile Samhain—all the while thinking about the world that existed beyond it, and how she would very much like to see more of it, and how she would sneak back next Samhain night after her mother inevitably locked her up to prevent this from happening again. And the thought made her smile.

***

Liam Espinoza-Zemlicka is a writer, teacher, and anthropologist from Southern California. He has been published in academic journals on the nature of race in fan spaces and the use of graphic novels as teaching tools. As an anthropologist, he has taught classes on language, religion, magic, and witchcraft. As he has only ever written bios for academic work he hopes the reader excuses this rundown of his academic credentials--it's all he knows, the poor thing.