C. E. Murphy - No Dominion - A Garrison Report

Joanne, Caitríona thought, would know what to do. She’d dealt with ghosts before, though she said she couldn’t see them herself. Nor could Caitríona, but she felt the captured spirit within the glass regardless, as she’d never felt it before in all the times she’d visited the museum. The bog men had been spectacles then, a breathtaking glimpse at the horror of perfectly preserved death. Now she could hardly understand how she’d missed their cries.

Joanne would start with a power circle, that, at least, Cat knew, and so that was where she was to begin as well. The bog men display was strangely suited for it, with each mummy encapsulated down a winding ramp within a border of taller walkways. She couldn’t quite make a complete circle, at least not in one go, but then, there was more than one lost spirit to attend to, too.

Cat murmured, “Sorry, sorry,” as she stepped around visitors. Most moved easily, more fascinated by the mummies than a living girl, but a few glanced her way in surprise. The spear, she supposed, for there was nothing extraordinary about the rest of her, except perhaps the fire-engine-red hair straight from a bottle. Still, it would be the spear that caught their attention, though in the week and some she’d carried it not a soul had mentioned it as a spear , but as a walking stick. A very tall walking stick, to be sure, but not one of them seemed to see the black ironwood spearhead atop a white wood haft.

Just as well, for there’d be no explaining to the guarda why she was carrying a deadly weapon through the hills of Ireland and the streets of Dublin.

There were places between the circular displays where she could slip through, build a circle that way, though there was nothing elegant about creating a power circle by way of squashing herself. If she hadn’t grown two inches and gotten slimmer with it, she’d have never fit, but as it was she squeezed through, thinking resentfully of Joanne’s height and slender build and the deadly white leather coat that proclaimed her cousin as a hero not to mess with. Cat popped out the other side with a whoosh of breath and stumbled over a child trying to go the way she’d come. They stopped, sharing a guilty, wide-eyed look before Cat bowed to show the boy the way. He beamed and scampered through, and Caitríona wound her way around the displays.

I’ll set it on fire with me mind , she thought, and all but laughed at herself. A few months was no time to learn magic in, not without a teacher. She had no sense of what she ought to do to save captured spirits, but the first magery she had done had been simple: I’ll set it on fire with me mind, she’d said again and again, until she had .

I’ll free them, so , she said to herself again and again. I ’ll build a circle to keep them safe as they’re drawn free from their broken bodies, and then I’ll release it and them, so their spirits may go where they will . It had no skill to it, no shape or rhythm to make it a spell, but that was how the magic had been built on Croagh Padraig, and it was how she would make it today. Auntie Sheila would have had an elegance and a form to it, but that would come in time: she was young still, and had long years to learn in.

It wasn’t a circle and it wasn’t a shamrock that she walked. Her purse bumped her hip and the heel of the spear clacked against the ground with each step, a quiet rhythm that helped her trace a shape across the floor. It was something of an infinity loop, a never-ending figure 8. That would do, and more, the idea of it sparked delight in her heart, as if the circle wasn’t the best shape for her magery anyway. As fast as delight came, it slipped away again with a pang of wondering what Auntie Sheila might have taught her, had she lived. Both those things slipped into the circle, making it one of hope and regret, and that felt right to her, for what else was she weaving but a story of that? A story of death, which was always a story of regret even when it was a good death, and a story of hope that she might release the captured spirits of the dead. And stories were the lifeblood of her people, their pride and their joy. Their weaving ran deep in the blood, and that became what she wanted to do: to tell the stories that could only be told through magery.

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.