Part I

The marriage of Leannán to Saoirse, a faery's maneuver on the chessboard of Ulster, was first discussed by mortals at a well-laden winter table at the Feast of the Snows. The banquet was called by Lord Uachtarán, who was then over the kingdom of Aduaine. Thundersnow had cracked on that day over Ulster's pillow'd hills, and her folk would later weave the feast into lore, telling of a concocted pair, joined not for love but for war.

The faery stayed hidden, but in visible attendance were all the members of the Clan Council: Uachtarán's cousin Láidreacht, Eònan of the West, and the six broad-armed chieftains from all about Aduaine, even the Ugly Mouth of Mealladh. At the back sat a rickety man from a shire near Faodail. He was known to everyone as Draíocht the Shortshanks, but the faeries knew him as Tewey.

Tewey waited to speak.

The Council's purpose had always been threefold: to eat boiled meats and argue threats and plan strikes. This violence of purpose spoke sweetly to the hearts of the larger men of Aduaine. Smaller men, with their fumbling and their doubts and their hurriedly locked doors, were rarely invited to speak to the Council.

But Tewey, however small a man, had something to say.

“Good men of Aduaine, you must be given the doleful news that there has been found a frog in Ireland.” A gasp went up, and everyone at table understood what this meant. “It was spotted in a grassy meadow and carried to court, alive, in Carrickfergus.”

The men contemplated this loudly. Someone asked if the frog were green, and when Draíocht confirmed that it was, the brave men clucked like nervous hens.

“Tell us more about this frog,” they implored him.

“Men!” Uachtarán had heard enough. “It surely traveled over on a frigate from Scotland.” To the frantic Council, this seemed unlikely.

“I've heard tell,” continued Draíocht, “that Duvenold, King of Ossory, found a frog near Waterford, and told those in his presence that the frog portended an invasion of the English.”

“Well, of course,” they agreed. These were fighting men, well acquainted with the signs of impending war.

“But Duvenold is an ally of King John!” Eònan objected. This was of no use, as the Council was no longer entertaining objections. A plan of strike was needed.

“We’re not ready for such an invasion,” cousin Láidreacht said.

“What we need,” spat the Ugly Mouth of Mealladh, “is some gallowglass.” The men cheered.

“Damned right!” Eònan agreed. “If the Scots can afford to part with their frogs, they can send over some fightin' men and all!” His conclusion, now consensus, was punctuated by the clanging of steins.

Talk turned to how a clan in Aduaine might gain a group of gallowglass. Draíocht spoke again, telling the men that they required a contract of lánamnas comthinchuir, a dowried marriage to a Scottish lass with big brothers. He knew of a family, MacMuir of Stane, who could offer forty-seven mercenaries, along with a small spouse.

“My lord Leannán will make the bond,” Draíocht assured the Council. “He can offer their daughter the castle at Faodair and his 200 sheep and 41 farm-men. That's more than any other laird can in Aduaine!”

Eyebrows raised and steins lowered. The men muttered at this suggestion, worried that the little man had gone mad. Their muttering was interrupted by Lord Uachtarán, often called upon to speak sense.

“But Draíocht,” he said, frowning, “Leannán is already married.”

Draíocht folded his arms. “That has never stopped a marriage for the strategy of clans.”

Láidreacht jumped in. “But Leannán is married to the niece of King Ostrom, himself! And I'm doubtin' the church will permit a divorce.” Láidreacht's son was a parish priest, and so his word was accepted on this second point.

“Nor a second wife – a lucky bastard, indeed!” This third point was well received by the Council men, and rewarded by nods and renewed drinking.

“There are no children,” Draíocht swung back. “Annulment’s all that's needed. She's the sixth niece, for tarry’s sake: four sons, two daughters, and a male cousin removed from the throne.” He paused, but felt urged by the faeries to continue. “And, Leannán has a secret. When I speak to him of this secret, he will agree to my request.”

By now, enough mead had been consumed that trifling details no longer mattered. The men went back to slicing and chewing, leaving the matter of marriage in Tewey’s runic hands and toasting the arrival of sharpened sparth in Aduaine.

“An angel and a faery walked into a bar,” the inn-keep winked. “Or so the old saying goes.”

“That saying doesn't exist yet.” Brighid shut her eyes. “Give me a nectar of tulip, please.”

Gavenleigh sat next to her at the bar, nursing a lemon and lavender. It was midnight, so he was technically off duty and perfectly within his rights to be sitting at bars, even with faeries and time travelers. But weren't they all, really? Time travelers? Time was only the first dimension, less complicated than widths or heights or even depths, measured along a simple line folded into minutes and months and millenia. Simple enough to navigate.

He sighed out troubled breath.

What bothered Gavenleigh tonight wasn't what time it was, but rather, what width and heighth and breadth it was. “Rumors of war are about, Brighid, hopping about.”

“You should be happy,” she said. “What kind of mercenary questions the fray? Business is finally picking up.”

“What do you know about it, little poet? Are you planning to en-verse the Battle of Ainghníomh?”

“Who do you think's been scattering all those frogs?”

Gavenleigh turned to face her. “You? I’m surprised you’d touch a slimy frog.” He turned back to his drink. “So why are you starting wars?”

“They start themselves, Gavenleigh.”

“Wars require funding, whether in walls of a home or the borders of a country.”

“Don’t blame me. War’s already been struck by De Courcy's die and hammer. Blame his coins. Render to John what is John's.”

“Your job, Brighid, is to coin phrases, not conflicts.”

The inn-keep wiped his mugs, watching his patrons for pauses in conversation. “Another?”

Gavenleigh sipped his lavender, shaking his head. “Aduaine is full of men. Human men are getting a lot of things wrong, especially now.”

The inn-keep looked up.

“They've always gotten things wrong,” Brighid corrected him.

“The enemy of their enemy is their friend. If they oppose the English crown, they'll support De Courcy. They forget he's one of them. They forget so easily.”

She nodded. “Binary thinking. Well, show them a third way, Gavenleigh. Surely an angel of the Trinity could manage that.”

“I'm not as eloquent as you are.”

“When words fail,” she took a sip, “try frogs. Or songs. Or an emblem. Words don't always work, Gavenleigh. Sometimes your best message is a silent one.”

“It's not the sound of words that concerns me. That's your area, little poet. It's the definitions I care about. Take the word ally, for instance, or loyalty...”

Brighid opened her purse to pay. “A pulchritudinous parlance can propel a people, Gavenleigh, no one knows that better than I do.” She slapped a coin on the bar. “But you can't wave words on a flagpole.”

On the kalends of June, the Scottish bride arrived in Aduaine. Lord Uachtarán met her carriage and her retinue just after their crossing of the River Foinse, and led them back to his Castle Bawn Guelph on horseback.

Waiting just inside the castle doors was Lord Uachtarán's wife, Lady Aoibhneas, with a spread of drink and herbed broth, as well as many colors of roasted starches pried from the earth. A pig was slowly spun over flames by a servant better dressed than the guest of honor.

“Wife, this be young Saoirse MacMuir of Stane.” Aoibhneas held out her hand and Saoirse took it with timid fingers.

After many swallows of sacke and forks of flesh, the shire folk had fallen away. The war-minded men had retired to the lodge, and Aoibhneas and Saoirse had begun the circling dance of two women determining their station.

Aoibhneas led her guest to a third-floor bedchamber. “This mattress was stuffed plump with the hairs of llamas kept by the quiet monks in Enniskillen.” She waited for a reaction, and getting none, continued. “It was stitched together in County Fermanagh by it oldest shoe cobbler.” The mattress held a nagging, ragged smell, but was likely the most expensive piece of furniture Saoirse had ever seen. She smiled.

Aoibhneas tried again. “Tell me about your home.” But Saoirse had been instructed, and knew better than to answer this.

“Your beautiful homeland, your Aduaine,” she said, “that is my home now.”

Aoibhneas finally left her to study the flickering room. Its stone walls trembled in the candlelight. A wooden cross hung by the window, floating still, while its thin shadow bobbed and danced behind it.

She sighed out troubled breath.

A breeze nudged the woolen drapes, and they seemed to sigh back at her. This worried the Scot and she sat up, wondering if a tree sprite or an imp of the loam might have snuck into the room. Perhaps it listened to her thoughts, privately breathed out. Saoirse determined to keep her emotional airs quite silent.

The tubers she had eaten that evening, grown (no doubt) in the imp-infested soil of Aduaine, pulsed their way through Saoirse's body as she slept. Purpled potatoes were the specialty of the Tuatha Dé Danann, a clan of tiny people who lived hidden in mounds of Irish earth. The Danaan were small in stature making their voices but whispers and the human folk of Aduaine suffered from an oppressive faery fear. They believed that the Main Hall of the Danann was located beneath Nathair’s Field, and his harvests were urgently recommended, so as not to offend the earth.

Lady Aoibhneas was always quite particular about obtaining her potatoes from the field of Nathair. But his crop contained a bit more sweetness than Saoirse had known back in Stane, and she woke in the night at that bewitching hour when spirits and digestions tend to plague mankind.

Saoirse laid open-eyed on the bed of hair and listened to the castle draftings. She kept her breathing soft and silent, then quietly called on Almighty God to protect her from any goblins who might be scampering about on castle floors. The air in the room settled, and after a time, she began to imagine what sorts of sounds she might hear in her own castle at Faodair. She cradled that thought, not realizing it had arrived on an air of its own, and she was soon asleep again, dreaming and digesting her potatoes.

Thanks to everyone in the MSP Fiction Workshop for their help, red ink, and encouragement!