The
Enchanted Isles
“Sing me a song, Mother,” said the little boy, kneeling on the ground to lay his head upon Merwyn’s knee, letting his cheek sink into the soft folds of her dress. His amber eyes, circled in subtle red, fixed upon the sea. It looked askew in his view, misty and steel-blue, waves gathering in the distance to come rolling upon the sandy beach dotted with rocks. Far to their side, the castle of Bamburgh enthroned on a rocky hill arose from the surrounding plains like a monster he was not ready to face again. No. The boy wanted to look, instead, at the endless stretch of water before them; so many possibilities. “Will you sing me something about the sea?”
Seated on a mound of soft golden grass right where the stretch of sand began, the young woman caressed his dark auburn hair.
“Yes, Aidan. What would you like to hear tonight? Shall I sing of Empress Helene, setting sail to find the cross of Christ’s passion? Of Aeneas, caught in the storms unleashed by the fury of the goddess Juno, thrown by a whirlpool upon monstrous islands? Or of the voyage of Saint Brendan the Abbot towards the Island of Paradise?”
The boy pondered a few moments. “No. Sing me of the Lady of the Isle.”
A smile formed on Merwyn’s lips, and she began to sing, her deep voice in harmony with the murmuring waves.
There was an Isle, upon a time - an Earthly Paradise,
A green oasis in the sea,
Where dwelt a Lady in song wise.
A curse decreed that wherever she looked
She saw bare stone and stormy skies,
And all the riches of the isle unseen were to her eyes.
“I imagine the isle a lot like this place here,” the boy interrupted. “It looks barren, but there’s so much going on. The seagulls, the fish, the bugs in the grass. Just that we don’t always see them.”
“That’s good, dearest,” she rubbed his shoulder. The wind felt stronger there, in that open space, and the boy shivered slightly. “We only see what we look for, and often we forget to look deeper.”
“So? What happened then, Mother?” asked Aidan. He had heard the song so many times that he knew well every turn of the phrase. But nothing compared to hearing it sung by Merwyn and a stormy sea. It was as if the story came alive.
But one day a traveller arrived ashore
A Hero from a land up north.
He and the Lady fell in love,
Each other they adored.
Bliss they spent together in sinless paradise
Until the Hero had to leave.
Short did those days seem to them,
But decades passed outside.
It was Aidan’s favourite part of the song. The prospect of something unexpected and wonderful coming from afar, one day, and changing your life. Aidan knew it was Merwyn’s favourite part too, for there was always a surge of emotion in her voice as she sang it.
Alone again, she beheld the world.
But lo! the curse was gone!
The veil was lifted from her eyes,
The isle its wonders now unfurled.
The Lady wise is now standing on the shore.
Redeemed by beauty and by love,
No more a prisoner, she’s free
Her isle to leave, the world explore.
The boy lifted his head from Merwyn’s lap.
“Isn’t the Lady sad that the Nordic Hero isn’t by her side anymore?”
“Sometimes you lose something beautiful, but you gain something more valuable in return. It’s how God works, the shaper of destinies.”
“She is a fae, isn’t she?” he blurted and stood up, his amber eyes lighting up at the realisation. “She never grows old. She has an eternity to roam! Mother,” he pondered, “but if the Nordic Hero came to see the Lady again, and he was old and grey, would she still love him?”
“Love is timeless. And time itself, like you said, means nothing to her.”
Merwyn stood up and let the veil on her shoulders unfurl down her back. The wind began to blow stronger, the golden grass where they had been sitting now fluttering unsettled. The whole grassy coastline was rippling like waves of the sea, and, beyond it, a curtain of haze was drawing near. But Aidan knew it was not mist.
“It’s going to rain soon, Mother.”
“And do you want to go back to the castle?”
His eyes were bold and decisive when he looked up at her. “No. Can we go there on the rocks, where the waves break?”
The wistful smile on Merwyn’s face from moments before was now replaced by a lively, almost mischievous beam. She stretched out her hand to him:
“All right, dear. Let’s go.”
The sea that could be so calm that it seemed a mirrored world was now spirited, reflecting only the leaden gloom of the sky. Even the shallows in which Aidan had so often bathed, where he had learned to swim and dive, were now menacing, unwelcoming, each wave forceful enough to throw under the readiest of swimmers.
The boy stepped back from the way of briny sprays, but Merwyn took off her shoes and paced to the edge of the rock.
Her mahogany hair was unbraided under the white veil, falling in waves below her waist and rippling in the wind. The beach was the place where she whiled hours away, the place where her songs were born, out of harp and words. It was the place where she walked under daylight clad in blue like the summer sky, and under night clad in ghostly white that glimmered in moonlight.
Everybody knew of the eccentric Lady of Bamburgh, but Aidan was the only one who had a glimpse of the real Merwyn.
“Come closer, Aidan,” she said, “don’t be afraid. Still waters were but a mirrored world of our own; and if the sea were calm like a pool, no wind, no currents, we would see our own reality reflected inside. Imagine you're on a ship, cradled on the waves like in the arms of a giant - the wind is leading us away from this barren island, off and away into the marvellous unknown of the world!”
“But, Mother, don’t ships break in the storm? Your songs say that when the Nordic Hero came to the barren island, a storm broke out and his dragon-ship was crushed by the waves, and flesh-eating mermaids devoured his companions!”
“Yes, but think of it like this: because of the storm that wrecked him ashore, the Hero was found by the Lady of the Isle who healed his wounds. He recognized her as the woman who had appeared to him in a vision, beckoning him to embark on his voyage. He found his love and destiny there, and the Lady was healed of her curse. So, you see, the storm was good after all.”
The boy pondered a few moments. “But… if they were fated to be together, how come the Hero and the Lady did not live happily ever after?”
“Who knows,” she smiled mysteriously. “Ever after is a long long time.”
A bright flash kindled the sky far on the horizon.
“Look, the water has risen - it’s high tide!” the boy called out looking back at the beach. The cluster of rocks where they were standing were now the only place safe from the waves, like an island. “The moon is new tonight. What if the water will engulf this rock as well, like the disappearing islands of Saint Brendan? And how will we head back to the castle if the path we came is now flooded?”
Merwyn crouched beside him. “Did you not come to me earlier, crying out Let's run away and never return? Is it not why we’re here now?”
The boy nodded, his nose and eyes reddening again. But the cry bubbling inside was suppressed, even though it hurt; instead, he frowned:
“I did. Because I don’t want to see Father ever again! And he’s wearing that belt studded with gold, too...” He bit his lip, swallowing not with sadness, but with a growing rage. “When I’m quiet, I’m a freak; when I’m angry, I’m rabid and ungrateful. When I do the things he wants me to do - hunting, fighting - I’m a weakling and simply not made for it. When I read and paint and do the things I like to do, he says he’ll send me away to the monastery forever. When I lock myself in my room or run away, I’m mad, like your mother. Nothing I ever say or do is good enough for him.”
The woman fought back the sadness awakened by the boy’s words, willing her voice to be steady and resolute.
“Don’t be afraid of him, love, and never take to heart what he says. He doesn’t understand people like us,” she caressed his hair and cheek. “He’s just an angry little man with a simple mind and a shrivelled little soul. Stand up tall and look him in the eye, knowing that, in a few years you'll be able to strike back. Not with the fist or the sword, if you can avoid it, but by other means. He’ll be old and bitter and you’ll be proud and strong and wise, and he’ll know, deep down, that you are better than he ever was. Here,” she took off her long veil and wrapped it around the boy’s shoulders. “I promise we’ll be safe out here. Watch the storm and let the sea empower you, let your fears and anger and tears be washed away by these pristine waves. Unleash yourself along with it.”
Aidan breathed deep of the cool and briny air, taking in her words along with the smell of the storm.
He had seen storms at sea so often from a distance, but never had he been as close as he was now. So close that he could almost touch the waves, intimidating but intimate, like petting a monster that lets itself tamed under your hand. The sea breathed too along with him, alive and seething. Steady, yet unpredictable. Vaster than his troubles, stronger than the man he was running away from. Images of Father’s anger let loose, the hurt of his disdain, the feeling of being small and unworthy, residues of the desperation that gripped him at the injustice of it all, all melted away as he breathed in and out, replaced by the wondrous sight before him. Let the sea empower you.
Merwyn stepped closer to the edge again, lifting the long folds of her dress, coloured in clear blue and white like the summer sky, to pass over a little patch of water pooled into the flat surface of the rock. Now that her feet were bare, the boy noticed a chain glimmering around her right ankle.
“What's this?” he pointed to the curious object. “Is it a bracelet?”
“It is,” a smile bloomed on her lips. “And it’s not just a trinket. See, the ornaments are made of walrus ivory and gemstones.”
Her foot angled to let the boy inspect it, and he crouched to touch the bracelet. It may have been a rosary, were it not for the figurines carved along the string. Some of the beads were bone-white, fashioned like animal heads, and others - polished gems the colour of the sea under sun rays. He had always enjoyed studying Merwyn, the way she walked and dressed and combed her hair, yet he had never seen this particular ornament before.
She lowered her voice, as if revealing a great secret:
“It belonged to a woman wise and skilled in magic. It gave her the power to weave spells.”
“What kind of magic?”
“Control of the elements and vision into other worlds.”
The child's eyes magnified in amazement. Lightning struck again on the horizon.
“So, if you’re wearing it, does it give you magical powers too, Mother?”
“I don’t know. Let’s find out.”
At that moment, as if nature itself had surmised to indulge the boy’s wonder, thunder followed the flash with its grave rumbling, the distant sound threading through the loud crashes of the waves at their feet.
“Listen,” Merwyn exclaimed, enlivened, “the wild rhythm that animates the witch’s dance! The drums that raise the spirits of the sea! Arise, I call ye, come!”
She lifted her arms above the water, moving them as if in an eerie dance, or rather, an incantation. The wind was now blowing harshly, making her dress and hair flutter in all directions, heaving waves of black ashen water and white foam. The waves moved under the woman's hands, smashing into the rocks as if pulled towards her by an unseen energy. They looked like monsters of the deep, curling snakes or whales with gaping mouths.
Aidan was watching, marvelling at the scene. And then, the sky was set aflame for a brief moment, and in its light the waves seemed more alive than ever.
“The water stirs with trampling of hooves, do you feel it? Ah, there!” Merwyn cried out. “There,” she lay a hand on his shoulder and pointed far away, “in the blaze! Look, can you see it?”
Aidan looked to the clouds, holding his breath in anticipation, ready to catch the faintest sign of the other-worldly. When lightning struck again - now the veins were clear, rending the sky in two - the clouds lit up under the fuse. Only a dark spot remained unlit, a great human-like form beyond the clouds.
The boy gasped. “Yes! There's a shape, a shadowy figure! I can see it!”
The dark form was gigantic - though far away, just above the horizon, it filled the sky in their view. Compared to it, the castle now seemed a trinket that the giant could easily crush if it so willed. It looked like the shape of a rider, mantle flowing behind as he galloped towards them. Not clear but ethereal, like a silhouette beyond a curtain of thin linen lit up from behind by a bonfire. Or, perhaps, like a god in his true shape.
Aidan took a step back behind and his eyes darted towards his mother, a mixture of wonder and alarm. But Merwyn threw her head back in laughter, then brought her hands together under her chin in blissful reverence, like one whose prayers have been answered.
“Yes! Here he comes! It is he, the Lord of the Seas - Manannán Mac Lir!”
Aidan’s heart leapt. He knew the name, he had heard stories of him from his mother. They were stories she had been told, in turn, during her childhood back in Edinburgh, and were now etched in her mind, woven with reality until the threshold between them blurred.
She shouted to cover the roar of the storm, and yet her words sounded melodious, almost like a song, like one of her ballads:
“His long hair is silver and he is wrapped in seaweed, his garments and hair always dripping wet. His cloak is called Forgetfulness, because all the pain this world has seared into your soul is forgotten once the Lord wraps you in his cloak. His white horse is embodied from the waves, swifter than the cold naked wind of spring, and it can tread on water like on a flowery plain. To the Lord and his chosen ones, the underwater world is simply an inverted picture of our own, with mountains and sun and plains of delight. His home lies upon an archipelago hidden from the eyes of mortals in a thick mist woven with magic - these are the Enchanted Isles of the Otherworld.”
Aidan gasped and, the more he stared into the clouds, the clearer he seemed to discern the silver-haired rider coming towards them. Like Brain, Cormaic, Ossian, Cuchulainn and all the Gaelic heroes, they were now standing before the great Manannán Mac Lir! thought the boy, wide-eyed. But while Aidan was stunned in the face of this revelation, humbled in the presence he had believed to be a simple legend, Merwyn looked as if she were greeting an old friend.
“Come, Manannán,” she intoned, “from your Under-Wave home! Come, like a wheel of fire spinning across the skies! Come, from lighting and mist and water!
”
As much as she believed in God, as much as she loved Jesus Christ, the sea was always the realm of Manannán in Merwyn’s mind. Not a god but nature itself personified. Still waters, wells, cairns and misty fields, all were potential gateways into Otherworlds: wherever there is mist and water, there is an entrance into the realm of Manannán. This is how she had been taught to see the world.
To Aidan, these had been stories like those of Aeneas and the old Roman heroes, but to Merwyn they were more. How was Jesus more real than the Lord of the Seas when she knew stories of them both, when she had felt the presence of them both?
When her sister Eadlin had drowned in the lake outside their home under Merwyn’s own helpless eyes, twenty years ago, she had seen weed-like hands dragging her under. Her only consolation had been that the faes wanted to keep Eadlin in the Under-Wave land, that she was happy and fulfilled among the Fair Folk she now belonged to.
“Is Eadlin with you, great Manannán?” she raised her voice. “Is she waiting for me in the Land of Promise, the Land of the Young?” Then her voice dropped and Aidan could hardly discern the words, tremulous but resolute: “Is my love with you, Lord? Are you bringing me a message from him? Or…” she whispered, the boy now straining himself to hear, “are you the one to take me to them? The Hero and the Lady, forever together, forever young, forever in love. That is ever after…”
But, as she drew in the stormy evening air, Merwyn’s words broke into coughs.
“What do you mean?”
the boy frowned, confused eyes travelling between her and the heavy clouds that seemed to widen as they drew closer. From legends, he knew that Manannán Mac Lir only came into the realm of men either to aid his chosen ones, to bring a message, or to carry them off with him to the Enchanted Isles.
“I…” she began.
But the more she inhaled the cold and damp air, the more toilsome it was to speak. She faltered again into a coughing fit. Her knees buckled and she crouched upon the dark stone, too weak to stand.
“Mother?” Aidan panicked. “Mother, are you all right?”
He touched her shuddering shoulder gently, his attention now entirely upon her, forgetting about the shadow beyond the sea. Rain was now pouring thick, stinging their faces with droplets carried by the less vicious wind. He unwrapped the veil from his back - Merwyn’s veil that she had removed to shield the boy against the wind - and placed it around her shoulders and damp hair:
“Mother, you’re ill, you shouldn't be out in the rain.”
But she shook her head with vehemence and covered her mouth with her sleeve in an attempt to block the cold air and regain control. Her hand gave his own a firm, reassuring squeeze.
“Only Manannán... only the sea… can make me... whole again…”
“What are you talking about?” He was not convinced. “You said you were better but you aren’t. Come, we have to go back!”
So he cupped her hand in both of his in an attempt to draw her to a stand. But as he did so, his eyes were drawn to spatters of red sprayed upon the sky-blue of her sleeve.
“Mother...!” Dread gripped him: “No, I won’t let him take you! I won’t let you go!”
He dragged her by both hands across the damp rock, her shoes tucked under his arm, leading her over the little stretch of water just as the lapping waves retreated in their turmoil.
When he put enough distance between them and the sea, he turned around to the shadow that had drifted across the skies, now looming above them. It seemed not a rider but an eagle with spread wings. Bracing himself with arms wide open to shield Merwyn with his body against wind, rain, and any approaching danger, the boy cried out to the horizon:
“Don’t take her, you hear me? Go back where you came! Go back!”
But he was answered by silence.
Only then he noticed that the thunder and the lighting had stopped, for a while now, perhaps. The shape in the clouds hovered past them, dispersing in the four winds until it was nothing more than wisps of clouds.
The warmth of Merwyn’s hands made him turn away from the sea. She was now standing, in control of herself again, tears in her eyes mingling with the rain as she drew him into a tight embrace:
“Oh, my dear, it’s all right! No one’s going to take me!” The boy breathed out in relief and clasped his arms around Merwyn’s waist. “I’m better now, see?”
“I was so scared,” whispered the boy into the silk of her dress. “I thought you’d leave me.”
“No, my love, I’m not going anywhere. I’m here with you.”
“But you were ill and it’s my fault, you came here because of me...”
“Oh, my sweet child, don’t say that! Don’t ever say that!” she squeezed his shoulders tighter, kissing his forehead. “I came here because the sea calls to me. It has always beckoned me, like it beckons the saints and heroes of ballads in their visions.”
She was all right now. The fit of coughing was gone, and only the beads of red that marred her dress stood witness that it had not been a figment of Aidan’s imagination.
“Are you going to be ill again?”
“I don’t know. It’s nothing you or I can fix or control. It’s not in the hands of us, mortals.”
He took a deep breath, but his voice came out small and hesitant. “Are you going to die, Mother? Please, tell me the truth.”
The woman paused for a moment, caressing his hair. The rain had stopped.
“No one lives forever, Aidan. Not in this world. I don’t know when it will happen, but yes, it may be soon.”
“What am I going to do without you?”
“Do you remember what Father Wigstan told you about the heavenly bodies? That the moon and stars are still in the sky during the day, but we can't see them because the sun shines brighter? And the sun, in its motion around the earth, is still in the sky at night but it is obscured in the earth’s shadow?”
The boy nodded. Astronomy was his favourite subject to learn, and natural sciences had always fascinated him. But he did not understand the connection.
“You can’t see them,” she explained, “and yet you know they are there. So, when I’m gone, Aidan, you’ll know that I’m here, watching over you. Like the moon during the day, like the sun at night. Always with you, until we meet again.”
The child looked at her. While his chest was so heavy that he felt he might cry, the woman seemed strangely serene.
“But... aren’t you sad to go?”
“I’ll be sad to leave you. There’s nothing I want more than to stay with you forever, but, well... the rest of the world I’m not terribly fond of. So if the long voyage calls for me, I’ll go.” She beamed and her eyes glimmered, enlivened: “It’ll be an adventure.”
Something in that shimmer from her brown eyes lit the darkness in his tight chest, but it took a while to pinpoint it, like the realization one gets that something long sought-after has, in fact, always been there. And, suddenly, it all made sense.
“Mother, are you the Lady of the Isle?”
Merwyn’s entire figure bloomed in a smile, and she looked just like Aidan had always imagined the fae lady.
“A part of me is. The part that felt trapped in this world. The part that felt lonely before you were born. The part that was healed of the sadness after I had you. The part that loves magic and the mystery of far off places.”
“Then…” the boy wondered. “What about the Nordic Hero?”
At Aidan’s question, Merwyn turned her gaze to the horizon. The clouds were clearing away, leaving a strip of dusk in their wake, beyond the sea.
“I knew someone like him a long time ago. But, like it happens in every other story ever told, fact blends with imagination until it becomes impossible to tell them apart, even for the one who made the story. I’m not even sure I ever truly knew him, or that he ever truly knew me. I suppose this is what we do with people around us: we try to get to know them, then we fill the inevitable gaps with our most beautiful - or most dreadful - fantasies.”
There was a smile playing on her lips, the kind Aidan had never noticed before in her expression, seeming to hide a thousand secrets.
“So, yes, I knew a nordic hero once. But that man exists now only in my memory.”
Aidan pondered a while, mouth slightly parted. Eventually, he pressed his lips together, still unconvinced:
“Will you tell me how you two met?”
“You already know how. It’s all in the stories.”
“But you said fact blends with imagination...”
“So?” she shrugged, playfully. “That doesn’t make it unreal. What you want to know is still there. Now it’s up to you to tell what is true and what isn’t.”
“Like a riddle?”
“Very much like a riddle.”
Aidan accepted the challenge, trying his wit at telling apart fact from fiction, the game soon turning into jokes and laughter. As they chatted, they sunk his bare feet into the sand, now dotted with brown seaweed brought ashore by the storm, letting them lapped by the steady waves. With the clouds worn thin and chased to the west by the weak wind, dusk was now freed to claim the sky.
“Look, there’s the high tide moon. It’s almost like the storm never was!”
“If you think about it… The sky is never truly filled with storms. You can't see firmament because of the clouds, and yet, the astral bodies are still behind them, shining bright like they do on any evening! And someone, somewhere, is watching this same sky that we’re watching now, beholding the stars, not even knowing that here, our sky was filled with storm.”
And when the sky remained utterly clear, they walked back to the castle along the shore, under the orbits of planets and stars and a vivid full-bodied moon.