Works/Tale Unadorned

This is what I know.

On a fine day in spring - this would have been, oh, twenty years gone now - I sat beside Brigit of Fochoill and asked her for her hand. I was bold about it, sure, I don't say otherwise. I had to be.

Brigit had every son of the town after her, courting her by night and talking a storm, bringing posies and who knows what-all to lay at her door. Any that went so far as I did, she would tell them to ask her da. If they made to ask him, he'd chuckle that deep laugh of his - I still remember it - and say, "Oh, I believe Brigit knows her own mind." And that would be that.

I had an idea that Brigit might have paid me just a shade more heed, given me a few minutes more of her time than the rest of the Kinvara boys. So when I made up my mind to ask, it was after seeing what had gone before me, and with the thought that I might get a better reply.

No one remembers if the family ever had a right name. Fochoill - Foghill to you - is where they lived and died and Fochoill is what they were called. It was said - though never where they might hear it - that the Fochoill women especially had a touch of something strange about them. Now, Brigit, what Brigit did was make embroidery, but that's doing it a wrong to call it that. Tapestries, I suppose you might say. Big swaths of white fabric with figures - animals and trees and flowers, but never people. She wouldn't put humans on her cloth.

This stitchery - well, you never saw the like. She was partial to mythical beasts, and some said if you looked at one of her dragons for a bit, done up in green and red thread, it'd turn its head and look out at you from the cloth, and when you looked again it'd be there still, but flame would be seen coming from its mouth, orange and gold that was never there before.

I'm not forgetting where I was, don't worry. I mention the embroidery because that's what she was doing the day I asked her. Linen stretched over a square frame, like you'd stretch a canvas for a painting. She always said the hoops were too small. I remember how her needle flashed in and out. I don't remember what she was making, though.

I asked her to marry me, plain as that, and she didn't tell me to ask her da, but neither did she give me an answer. She sort of frowned, with just her forehead, like she was thinking hard. She was quiet so long that I got angry, or I wouldn't have done what I did next.

"Brigit," I said finally, "do you want to marry or don't you? If you don't want to marry, then for pity's sake tell me - tell everyone - and we'll leave you alone. But this business has got to stop. You've got every young man in the town waiting on you, you know that."

That's what I said, as well as I can remember now.

She sighed. "Ah, Kevin, you're right," she said. "I suppose I've been thinking of myself too much, expecting things I'm not going to get." She stuck her needle in the cloth and turned to me, still balancing the frame in her lap. "Here's my idea. You come back tomorrow and come sit in this chair - this chair I'm in now. You'll get your answer then." She leaned in and kissed my forehead. "Now go on with you."

I wasn't sure what to make of the business with the chair, but the kiss was a good sign. Oh, it was just a peck on the forehead, I know, but you have to understand - Brigit never let one of us boys so much as lay a finger on her, never a hand on her shoulder, an arm around the waist, none of that. And she never did any of that either. I had a rough time sleeping that night for my thoughts.

The next day I walked out to Fochoill once more. Fochoill came by its name properly. High ground in low country, the fog rolled around the base of the rise where their big stone house stood. You almost never could see the house until you were halfway up, then suddenly it appeared before you like magic. Usually gave you a fright too, even when you'd been up there a hundred times.

I was ready for anything, I suppose, but I wasn't ready for Brigit to be gone. Her da shrugged and pointed me to her workroom, but she wasn't in there either, as he must have known. Her latest piece, that I'd seen her stitching on the day before, sat on her easel unfinished, her chair in front of it as usual.

Well, I said to myself, there's nothing for it but to go and come back later, but then I thought, I might just sit in the chair, in case she asks me if I followed orders. Brigit was that way; she liked to test you a little. So I sat down on the cushion - and gave a shout and jumped right back up again. Something with a sharp point was sticking out of the cushion a bit and had gone right into my backside. I felt around a little and tugged on whatever it was. It was her needle - it came out into my hand. She had to have put it there, stuck into the cushion with the point up like it was.

That was that. I got no more words from her da, and when I went back to the house a few days later, they turned me away.

Two weeks or more went by - maybe a month, I forget how long - and no Brigit. Her da was seen in town as usual; I remember hearing from someone that he'd been asked about Brigit and had just made his usual deep laugh, like to say Brigit's business was no concern of his. As I say, people already thought Fochoill was more than a bit strange, so no one paid it much mind.

The other fellows gave up on Brigit then, I think, but I couldn't seem to work the trick. I supposed the needle had to have been a message - didn't she say she'd give me her answer? - but I was damned if I knew what it meant.

I suppose that would be the end of my story, except that one day I was cutting trees to haul back to town. Now, you have to go a ways from Kinvara to get to any decent sort of forest; Kinvara's a bog, just about. I was miles upcountry, halfway to Donegal Bay it felt like. I hated hauling timber, but that was the work I was given, and you didn't argue with my da, not if you wanted your ears to stay attached to your head.

I was taking my time over my dinner, resting on one of the logs I'd cut, and I saw a man coming through the trees. I thought maybe he'd had one drink too many - he was sort of leaning from one side to the other as he walked. He had nothing on that wasn't colored green, and what he was wearing was in sad shape. His chin hadn't seen a razor since he was old enough to need one. In fact it was hard to say how old he was, with his hair and beard that long. All you could really make out were his eyes, and those were green as well.

"Kevin," he said to me, and sure I paid attention then, because I'd never seen this fellow before. "Kevin, you young idjit, are you going to ever go after her? D'you think she'll wait all year?"

"Not much good to go after when I don't have a notion where to go," I said, once I'd managed to swallow my bread and not choke on it.

"You are a fool, then, and no doubt," the green man said. "Give me a pull on that, would you, I'm perishing of thirst." I handed him my bottle and he drained most of it, then gave it back to me and said, "Now see here, my lad, she put a needle in your underside and the underside is where you need to go. If you want that Brigit then it's below the earth for you."

"Well enough to say," I replied - I still hadn't pulled my head together from all this, you understand - "but am I supposed to take a spade and start digging?"

"Arrah!" he said. "Do you know nothing at all?" He sighed and sat on the log beside me, tore off a piece of my bread and started to chew it. With his mouth full he said, "What do they teach these days, in the schools? No, never mind. It's no good, whatever it is. Look here. North-northwest of here are the cliffs where Crom Dubh used to roam. Ever hear of him?"

I shook my head.

"Oh, he was a nasty one. He had a big fire built on a cliff by the sea. He'd come around and collect money from one and all - he called it his standing-rent - and those who wouldn't pay, he'd haul them on up the cliff and toss them into the fire." The green man reached over for another bit of bread. "Well, Saint Patrick came around, you know, and he chased Crom Dubh and his dogs back to that cliff one day. Crom Dubh stood by the fire, ready to toss Saint Patrick into it. But Saint Patrick made a cross on a stone and threw that stone into the fire, and the fire sank below the earth, and there is a hole in the earth at that spot to this day. Poll na Sean-tuine it is - the Hole of Old Fire."

"And this is where you are telling me to go," I said.

He finished off my bottle and stood up. "I'm telling you nothing. You only tell yourself things." He chuckled to himself, like he'd made a fine joke. "You only tell yourself," he repeated, as he walked off into the trees and was gone.

So I gave it some thinking, and by the time I'd gotten the logs back to Kinvara I'd made up my mind. I took what money I had and a few things and I set off for the coast. There didn't seem to be anything I wanted in Kinvara any more anyway.

Now, "north-northwest" is not much of a map, but it turned out that there were others who knew the story, and by asking here and there I ended up standing by a deep pit one day, looking down into it. The sea was not a quarter mile away, and when the waves came in it made a noise like thunder down below, in the hole. Just a hole in a cliff by the sea, I thought. It's only a story, and I'm a fool.

But supposing it wasn't?

I went back to the nearest thing to a town, although it wasn't really even a village - a shop and three cottages at a crossroads. The shop was one of these that has everything anyone for miles around might want, because it's the only place to get it. The shopkeeper sold me his longest coil of rope and a spike to tie it to, and a lantern to see by, and if he gave me some strange looks I didn't much care.

So I let myself down a rope into the Hole of Old Fire, looking for Brigit. And it was a funny thing; I went down for quite a ways, but I didn't seem to be anywhere near running out of rope. And when I got to the bottom, with the sound of the sea around me so loud I had to hold my ears, it was dry. A dry cave with a level floor and a big crack in one wall. I couldn't see much but I could see that beyond the crack the way sloped down. In for a penny, in for a pound, I thought, and began to feel my way along the narrow passage, down into the earth.

The lantern didn't do much for me, I recall. I moved slowly, shuffling my feet to keep from tripping over anything, and holding an arm out to watch for anything that might want to knock my head off my shoulders. After a bit, I reached a point where I saw light, and then it was easier.

What happened next was that whatever crack in the earth I'd been walking opened into a corridor - a cut hallway, carved square out of rock and earth, braced in places like a mine. The place I'd come through was a wide split in the wall that didn't look like it belonged there. I'd found another place altogether. What it was, I couldn't say.

I wandered along the halls for a time. I was part scared I wouldn't run across anything alive, and more scared that I would. Then I met three tall creatures, coming toward them from behind. When I got near, they all turned around. They were women - girls really, but they were six feet tall and thin as birch saplings. Only their faces looked their age. Well, that, and after they all gasped at me, they giggled and ran off together down the hall.

After that the shock was gone, so I followed them, figuring they'd lead me someplace I wanted to be. By and by I came to a big room, with a ceiling so high I wondered that they didn't have clouds in there. As I was having a long look, a person put a hand on my shoulder. I turned around to see another of these tall folk. Then I guessed I might have been wrong about the three ladies - I thought he was young too at first, but his eyes were older than his face, if you see what I mean.

"Come along," he said.

"And do what, then?"

"You're a visitor. Visitors have to see the king. That's the rule."

So I followed. To my thinking, I might as well be on the good side of the king if he had one.

The big room was full of these skinny folk, sitting around, drinking - and not water it looked like - laughing, chattering away. A lot of them stopped what they were doing to watch me as I went along, then made even more talk after I'd passed.

The man led me to a smaller room set into the side of the big one. I hadn't been able to see it from where I was before. It had two big chairs made of stone, but they didn't look cut - they looked like the rock had just grown itself that way, right in the middle of the room. Not a square corner or hard edge on either of them.

One of the chairs was empty. The other had a long man sitting sideways in it, resting across both its arms, his feet in the seat of the empty chair. This man - well - he had to have been seven feet if he was an inch. He was thin as could be, but he didn't look underfed either, if you take my meaning - you couldn't see his bones. His hair was long and wild and pale white. His eyes were black, blacker than the dark crack I'd found my way through, blacker than a coal seam with no lanterns.

He sat up in his chair and looked me up and down slowly, like he was learning me by inches. I held still, barely. That done, he closed his eyes and leaned back. "Treal, take this gentleman to see the other human," he said. He reached down where there was a cup by the chair - not opening his eyes - and took a long sip from it.

"But, m'lord ... the other is in m'lady's -"

"I'm aware of that, Treal," he said. "If it bothers you that much, then get someone else to take him the rest of the way at that point. Now go."

Treal gave me a mean look and led me back out. Through the big room, through some other rooms with more of the same, down halls - I was trying hard to remember my way out - then we stopped at a bend in the hall where a female of these tall folk stood.

"M'lord says that this one is to see the other human," said Treal to her.

"Oh, is he?" She sized me up and then shrugged. "Well. I suppose it's better than nothing." She said to me, "Come, then," and walked down the hall without waiting to see if I was behind her. I turned around to thank Treal and he had already gone. So I ran after the woman.

Around and about - these were a smaller set of rooms, and all the tall folk in them were female. "Here she is," my guide said, and through the next doorway - and there was Brigit, in a room full of her embroideries. I had never seen the like, even from her. Some of them were so brilliant with thread that it hurt my eyes to look. The things on them were shimmering and moving; it was hard to keep straight what you were seeing. Had she done all this in just the time she'd been down here, I wondered?

"Kevin!" she said, pausing for a moment in her needlework. "I had started to think you wouldn't figure it out."

You might just have told me, I thought to myself, but instead I said, "Here I am, yes. No idea where I am, though ... and I still don't have an answer for whether you'll marry me, you know."

She frowned. "I can't very well marry anyone while I'm down here, now can I?"

"Come back up with me then," I said.

"It isn't that simple." She went back to her stitching.

"Well, what do I have to do?"

She kept stitching, not saying a word. "She's not allowed to say," said a voice from behind me. I turned and there was the tallest of the tall women I'd seen, maybe as tall as the king himself, with the same dark eyes and hair to match.

"So I'm to figure this out myself?"

She smiled a thin smile.

I made a noise I don't care to repeat and walked off and got myself well and truly lost, but I didn't stop until I found the king again. He was sitting on his throne, looking out into the big room - where a few of his people were doing something lively on the floor, on top of a pile of their clothes. I'd never seen anything like it, much less in public view, but the king looked like he'd seen it a thousand times and it hadn't done a lot for him in the first place.

"So you and your queen don't get along, is that it?"

He sighed. "Not that it's any of your business. Aren't you done here? Do you need someone to show you back to the fissure? I should close that. If it weren't for the halfbreeds ..."

"Well, your queen is holding onto the person I came to find, and seeing as how you and the queen aren't seeing eye to eye, I was hoping to talk you into getting her to release Brigit -"

He started laughing at me. Loud. The people in the room stopped what they were doing and watched.

"Are you implying that Brigit's a captive?" he said, when he caught his breath. "Did she tell you that? No, she wouldn't. You must have come up with that one on your own. Aren't you clever? No wonder you're the only one who showed up."

"I know she came down here on her own," I said. "Now she tells me that she can't leave unless I manage to get her free somehow."

He sat up and wiped his eyes. Then all at once he looked dead serious and I knew I was for it. "First," he said, "we couldn't hold one of your kind down here even if we wanted to. In case you don't know - and you obviously don't - we're not what we used to be. Second, Brigit is a relation of ours. We have blood in common. The queen wouldn't harm a hair on her head. Third, I have nothing to do with anything she might be scheming up. I only know that some young gentlemen - and I use the term loosely - such as yourself might come calling for her. Fourth, although I can't throw you out as such, I dislike your presence intensely." He chuckled again. "But I suppose I owe you something for the laugh."

"And what am I supposed to do about Brigit, then?"

He smiled in a nasty way. "She knows her own mind, that one. Why not ask her?"

"Or you could be giving the lie about all of this," I said.

"Hm. I don't know whether that's exceptionally stupid of you or exceptionally bright. Oh, well -" and the next I knew, there was the queen and Brigit too, both standing beside his chair, both looking more than a bit surprised.

"Brigit," the king said, "what tales have you been telling?"

"I - oh, dear," she said. "Of course he'd come back to you. I'm sorry about that, Uncle."

"Shouldn't call me that in public, lass."

"M'lord," she said, and she made a little bow. "My apologies. What I told him was that he would have to find the way to get me back above. I never meant to make him think you were the one to ask."

"Especially not since I wanted him to ask me," the queen said.

"Well, he'd hardly ask you, my dear, not if you were being your usual charming self," the king said.

"Did you summon me for any other reason than to insult me?" she shouted. Other tall folk were starting to gather around the opening to the throne room. As the royals started having it out, I pushed past the crowds and left.

I wandered back to the crack in the hall, feeling like my feet weighed five stone each. As I got there, I heard someone shouting my name, away down the hall. I went on my way. The rope was still where it was supposed to be, and it didn't break on the way up.

I wandered the cliffs for a while, and gradually made my way on down the coast, and one day I just settled down and stopped wandering and opened this place so I could tell drunkards like you stories like this, that you won't believe in the morning even when you remember them.

No. No, I never took a wife. Didn't see a point in it.

Well, truth be told, that's not the end of the story, you're right. It should be the end, if there were any mercy in Heaven, but it isn't.

A while ago - before the new road, so let's see, that'd be at least four years back - a stranger came in. Now we didn't get the same sort of trade then, you understand - only locals then. And you know, he was missing the beard and the hair, but I'd have been willing to swear he was my man in green that got the better part of my lunch that day. And he didn't drink. He didn't say a word. He came in, handed me a letter, and went on out. If I'd had my wits I'd have followed him, to see where he went. But I opened the letter instead.

It had no greeting, no name, and no signature.

"I know I made a terrible mess of it, and I'm surely sorry they made you feel like a fool. But you know, all you Kinvara boys and your practical upbringing! Your parents teaching you marry for the farm, not for the love of it. Did you see me as a farmer's wife, honestly? I don't believe you were that much of a fool.

"All I wanted you to do was say you loved me. That was what you almost had me thinking I had no call to expect. Well, I don't expect it now. But I don't care to marry now either.

"Here's hoping this finds you well, and that you keep that way."

And that truly is the end of the story, you see.

The letter? Ah, I burned that. Some things it's better not to keep.

Copyright © September 1999. Do not distribute or reproduce.