fiction by caitriona murphy

Cailleach

The locals don’t trust me. It’s not just the general mistrust that comes from being a woman. It’s not the same mistrust that the islanders have for the tourists. I am a walking superstition. I am everything they have been warned to avoid. 

“Cailleach,” they whisper as I walk past. The Irish word for witch, or hag. The majority of islanders are native Irish speakers. A harsh, unforgiving dialect with many nuances. English comes to me with ease, taught lovingly by my parents. Being fluently bilingual is another cause of suspicion. I was born on this island. I am of this island. But the islanders have long memories, and dark, mean hearts. They remember my father and continue to ignore my mother. We have stopped caring. 

The island I call home doesn’t resemble a home that anyone would want. The tourists love it. They see the best of it, they see the façade we put on for them. Fascinated and slightly in awe of the tiny island that is owned by the sea. The tourists come every summer. There is a bus that collects them from the boat and deposits them to us. Busloads of Americans and the occasional Spanish tourist, feet aching in their brand-new hiking boots. They are treated with a mix of derision and reverence. We smile as we take their money and look for ways to amuse them. The land usually takes care of it for us; the steep, rocky cliffs will provide them with numerous photo opportunities. The one pub in the village will feed them dark, frothy pints of Guinness in a slightly smudged pint glass. There is no live music or dancing, but there is plenty of whisky. If they hear the word “amadan” mentioned a lot, they don’t realize it’s Irish for fool. The tourists, here to stay for two nights at most, find the lack of English speakers refreshing and quaint. But by the time their bus is ready to collect them, there is a palatable sense of relief. Yes, the pub was cute but the men with their cruel eyes and their long stares would set you slightly on edge. Absolutely, the women looked charming in their old fashioned and well-worn knitted jumpers, but didn’t their eyes look sad? Back on the bus they would go and by the time they arrived back to joyful Killarney or eclectic Galway, they had shaken off their disquiet. 

Every evening, I walk the short path from my home to the sea. As always, I approach her with a sense of reverence and trepidation, as one would an aging but important relative. I never know how I will find her. It all depends on the season, on the tides, and on the phase of the moon. On a summer’s evening she can be particularly malicious. That was when she took my father, or when he gave himself to her. Dead men don’t give up their secrets easily, so we can’t be sure. He was the only one I didn’t get a vision of, beforehand. Perhaps I did, but my brain wouldn’t process it properly. Every evening I approach the sea and listen to what she tells me. 

The sea, our sea, my sea, the sea that owns our island, is like no other sea I have ever read about or seen pictures of. It seems impossible to me that certain warm, bright-blue seas, that bring with them a myriad of delights, have anything in common with mine. The suggestion of the sea, anywhere else, conjures warm sun, glistening sand, and laughing families. You might think of a darling seaside town, the air scented deliciously with candy floss and frying food. You might even think of freedom. Our sea rules us with fear. She is cold and unforgiving. On more than one occasion she has spat an unlucky fisherman back out. There isn’t much sand, rather, there are many sharp, cruel stones that love to slice into the tender flesh of feet. You could try and cross her. There are boats, on occasion, on a schedule, that appear a couple of times a week. I have been to the mainland with my parents several times. The first time, there was a coffin on board with us, making a trip to the undertakers on the edge of the mainland. I thought that I could smell decay as I sat as near the coffin as I dared. It held the body of an elderly woman, and I was certain that I could smell her age and her death on the air.

 We try to make our living from our sea where we can, but she isn’t generous with her bounty. In the winter she is icy and threatening. In the summer, she is deceptive. She is many things, but she is never welcoming. She is never kind. 

I was almost eighteen the first time I saw it. I had known something was happening, changing inside of me. I kept seeing vague, dark shadows out of the corners of my eye. I would walk into a room and smell smoke, as if a fire had just been extinguished. And then one day, in the early evening, with my mother’s words of caution ringing in my ears, I ran into the waves anyway. The spray was more intense than I had anticipated, the water colder. Something that I hoped was seaweed slithered around my ankles. As I broke the surface and opened my eyes, I saw him. Peadar, an old islander that was mostly left alone. Had Peadar lived anywhere else in Ireland, he would have been in jail instead of being treated like a nuisance with a predilection for inappropriate touch. He could be seen walking slowly up to Mass every Sunday, eager to get a seat in the front pew. Long before I was born there had been a secret consensus that every female on the island should be advised to stay out of his way. They didn’t want to get themselves into trouble with Peadar. There was still talk about the teenager who’d had to head for the mainland after a run in with him; she was held up as an example of what happened if you stayed out late, or if you were hanging around the pub. The Peadar I saw in my vision was more grotesque than the live version. Lips, blue and bruised, were curved into a hideous smile. Blood streamed down one side of his head, trickling into the hole where one of his eyes had been. I saw him, at the bottom of the stairs, silent in a way that’s only possible when all life has fled. Screaming, I ran from the water and into the arms of my mother, who held me whilst I sobbed. She assured me it was nothing but a trick of my imagination. Two days later, the Priest announced Peadar’s death from the pulpit. Whispers we heard suggested a fall down the stairs after too much poitin. If anyone suspected different, well, there was no proof to support it. 

Mam and I discussed what I’d seen. Mam had been born on the island but left briefly to train as a nurse. She’d brought my father back with her. A newly bilingual, educated woman and her Dublin born husband, with no tongue for the local dialect, were never going to be welcomed warmly. It didn’t stop our fellow islanders coming to my mother for advice, for home made poultices and balms. The advice and care she warmly gave was never reciprocated. 

Mam suggested that maybe I possessed the sight, a gift that my great grandmother had been rumoured to have. For all of her practicality, she was a woman who knew there were thin veils and other worlds that some might be gifted to glimpse. It was, Mam reasoned, the sight or else a huge coincidence. 

Two months later, when I saw Aine in the crashing waves, I had my answer. Aine, pretty in a quiet way, worked in the local shop. From the occasional nod she’d give me, and even rarer smile, I’d always felt we could have been friends, were it not for her notoriously domineering mother. I saw Aine, eyes closed as if she was dreaming, almost peaceful. Very nearly peaceful, had it not been for the rivers of blood down both wrists. A self-inflicted stigmata. I didn’t waste any time. Running to the shop, wet hair tangled, I burst in the door. I was met by Aine’s mother. Taking in my dishevelled state, she refused to entertain me. No, Aine wasn’t available to talk. No, I couldn’t leave her a note. Distraught, frantic, I blurted out my fears. I didn’t mention the vision, instead I said I had a bad feeling something awful might happen to Aine. I was pushed out of the shop, and the door slammed in my face. A week later, when we heard that Aine had been found on the beach, the islanders tried to make it sound like an accident. Any suggestion of intention was banished quickly, should the Catholic priest dare suggest her soul was in a state of sin. 

After that, we went from being generally disliked to outcasts. Aines’ mother and friends called to our house, shouting at me and demanding to know what I’d said or done to Aine. There was no room for a trial, from then on I was deemed unlucky. The superstitions of the old sailors were proof. My red hair. My foreign tongue. The bad news I brought with me. Even my ability to swim. Fishermen on our island aren’t taught to swim. It is considered unlucky. Should a fisherman fall overboard, better for him to drown quickly than to struggle on. 

Over the years I have seen vision after vision. Some have been more monstrous than others. Skin, peeling from the bone. Limbs savaged and infested. The realization of what happened to the neighbor whose boat didn’t return. Sunken skulls and broken bodies. Putrid wounds. The horror of what flame can do to a body.  Some I haven’t understood. The tiniest of bodies, flashing before me, gone just as their mothers’ realized they were there. Some have been beautiful, a suggestion of sleep, with eyes closed and a dreamy smile. 

Over the years, I have, despite knowing better, tried to raise an alarm. I have hinted, suggested and in some cases, outright told a fellow islander to be careful. As my mother rightly predicted, I am now seen as a sign of bad luck. The lone magpie. An unhappy omen. The badness surrounds me, like the mist from the sea. I am tainted with it. Once upon a time, I thought the sight might be a great gift. I see it now for the curse that it is. I cannot stop the deaths. I have no power. I am no goddess. 

Nobody asks my Mam for help anymore. One of the helpful island elders sent the parish priest to “have a word with me.” The old priest was clearly terrified of me. Tea, fresh brown bread, cake and even whisky was offered by my mother, so grateful was she for a visitor. The good father declined all hopeful offers. Eventually, he threw a bottle of Holy Water on the table and fled, muttering something about God helping us. 

There is just me and the sea I am bound to. The sea that took the last breath from my father. The sea that has cursed me consistently. Every evening, when there is nobody around, and it is just me and the expanse of my cruel sea, I realize that she is my one true power. 

Mam and I talk on occasion of leaving the island. We dream of leaving the casual cruelty our people mete out to us. We dream of friends, and opportunities, and a world that isn’t at the whim of a powerful, malicious force of nature. 

Yet we find ourselves bound to this land, returned and washed up, time and again, with the tide.