#eithne

The Isle did not sit on any traveler’s map. It appeared as its Queen wished, and vanished when she grew tired of eyes upon it.

Some seasons she opened her gates wide, letting mortals feast and dance until they swore oaths they did not understand. Other years she sealed the place in mist, and even seabirds forgot how to fly near it.

She was Erin of the Willow.

Her hair was as pale as moonlit water, and her hands were slender and restless, always weaving something, garlands, wreathes, and snares of words that tightened around those who listened

She loved easily, but it meant a different thing to Erin. She might keep a companion for a summer of bright fires and storm swept nights, only to send him away when the leaves turned or when the mood left her.

Her daughters were many, born in whispers and raised among finches and foxes. Erin taught them courtesy first, a sweet voice for bitter truths, and sorcery second.

But none were taught mercy. That lesson she did not know.

Then came a wandering man who sang his way into her chamber one autumn then vanished before winter set. The child he left behind kept the sound of him, though, defiance tuned like music, impossible to silence.

Of the last girl, the brown-haired one, Erin said little and thought too much. The girl was a mirror Erin could not bear to look into. She tried gentleness as one tries on a borrowed cloak, then returned to the habits of her blood. A twist of will, a change of fate, a curse disguised as teaching.

And as the willow in a storm may break, so did Erin’s patience. She stripped the girl of her gifts and sent her away where magic could not reach easily.

The girl tried to live quietly. She built a home, and though she swore never to love again, she adopted two girls who pulled laughter out of her like drawing water from a spring.

When the girls were gone, and something remained in their place. Grief drove Eithne back across the water to her mother’s hidden isle. She wanted only what was taken. Erin gave it back, but not in any way that healed.

For thirty-one years she ran with red hunger in the hedgerows

Then for thirty-two years she lived as a hare, startled by every sound, sleeping in fits.

Then thirty-three years as an otter, drowned in river. Cold. lonely. Unable to leave the shifting current. Time stretched thin and shapeless.

When at last the final curse fell away, she crawled naked from a lake that had known her too long.

The lake lay behind her like a wound, ringed in reeds and black alder. Dawn had not yet woken. The world was cold iron and gray silence. She lay curled in the frost, and for a long time she did not move, only breathed and remembered pain.

She pressed her forehead to the muddy earth and whispered for the first in a century.

“…no more…”

She rose, slow and shaking, and wrapped herself in fallen reeds and moss for modesty. That was when she felt it, a pull, faint but insistent, old magic. Older than the curses laid on her. Older than her mother’s pale towers.

She began to walk.

Through hollow forests, beside ruined ringforts, under branches heavy with sleeping crows. She walked until her legs would not carry her, and then crawled again, following the quiet thrum beneath the ground.

By dusk she reached a river.

Not wide, not mighty, but older than written speech, and shaped like a question across the land. Mist hovered over its surface, silver and unbroken, and something ancient whispered beneath the current.

She stepped into the water.

It embraced her. Cold, but not cruel.

She lay down in it, letting the current take her. She did not intend to dream. She intended to end.

Years passed. Then centuries. Roots grew over her resting place, and the stones changed with their slow patience. Kingdoms rose and fell.

Plagues came.

Wars came.

The river did not move faster for them.

She might have slept forever, if not for the woman with white hair like winter snow, who one night reached down through water and silence and pulled.

She gasped as air returned, as burning life seared through every nerve, ancient magic stitching itself into a shape she could control.

Her grandmother did not speak at first. Only wrapped her in a cloak of linen and guided her to halls unseen by mortal eyes. Green light, endless chambers, walls that hummed with forgotten hymns. She stayed there thirty years. Thirty years of recovering strength and memory and the bitter taste of her mother’s name.

When she left at last, she did not look back.

Her grandmother placed something in her hand before she stepped beyond the threshold, wrapped in embroidered cloth. It felt warm. When she touched it through the fabric, she thought she saw a faint glow.

She did not ask what it was. Some things were not meant to be spoken aloud.

She walked out into the mortal world in the year 1420, wearing a new name, and carrying only three things.

a borrowed cloak.

A half-returned power.