Connla and the Last Departure

Before departing, Connla witnessed his mother’s tears for the first time. He thought them beautiful, silver veins pulsing quietly beneath emerald jewels, falling into creased valleys formed by a loving smile. No belligerence. The great Queen Aífe of Alba then bestowed upon her son the ring of his father. It was a simple band of gold, with spiralling red tinctures shaped by the blood of the fallen, those fool enough to raise sword and spear against Cú Chulainn, son of Lugh.

“Even in youth, you are his image,” she said.

Though it bore truth, Connla’s hair was that of his mother’s, a deep red touched by the fires of scorn, forsaking the renowned obsidian mane of his father.

Connla felt a hollow pride in the comparison, having only heard of his father’s exploits and victories through others. “Will my father recognise me?”

“He will think himself standing before his own reflection,” she said, poking her son in the stomach.

He laughed. “You land a hit on your own son!?”

She bent low and kissed his forehead. “Only those bearing love for you may ever do so. Are you ready?”

“I am.”

“Repeat to me the three geasa put upon you.”

“Once I embark, I cannot turn back. I must never refuse a challenge, and I must not speak my name.”

“Good. Wisdom’s bell does not ring endlessly. Now go.”

Connla did not understand why his father imposed such things upon him, but felt no desire to disobey one so powerful, with or without the protection of kinship.

He offered his mother a brief nod before turning to his boat. Though only a child, he was endowed with the strength of the Tuatha dé Danann. What would take four grown warriors proved little encumbrance for him. With one push he drove his vessel far from the shore and leapt a great distance in pursuit of it. Seals broke the water’s surface as he rowed away, eyeing him with mild curiosity. 

Rain cast a shroud against the green hills of his home, veiling the great stone fortress of his birth. His last visage of those calm shores were of his mother, a shadowed figure dwarfed by a great wall of white. A murder of crows cried out above her, and then all succumbed to the mist.

It bothered him not that the weather had stolen his distant farewell, for his thoughts now lay on the legendary Kingdom of Ulster. The sights awaiting him throughout his kingship would belittle any he knew, here. From the white shores of the distant east to the vast deserts of the south, Connla of Alba would obtain the world. 

His rowing speed was unmatched. Well before the day’s end, he found himself approaching the Small Isles of the south. Between them and the last peninsula of his own island he would go, where stood Dún Scáith, the Fortress of Shadows, home to the vile mystic known as Scáthach. His mother had spoken little of her enemy to the south, and reproached Connla each time he suggested a swift eradication. Now, his mother’s anguish in reach, a temptation to bathe those shadowed halls in his own light emerged.

He stopped at the sight of a spear-wielding group along the peninsula’s edge, clad in fine leathers, their beaten cowls whipping furiously in the wind. One of them handed their spear and cowl to another, unveiling hair as black as the night, the wind giving the impression of a shadow flame. The warrior leapt from the cliff and into the water, approaching him in earnest. 

Connla feared none, looking to the visitor with no more than idle interest. His sword he kept sheathed and his shield wrapped.

The warrior’s hands clasped the boat’s hull with intense strength, tilting the vessel a great deal as they leapt aboard. It was a woman whose age seemed close to his mother’s, her grey eyes as biting as the northern winds. Connla took her stature to mean she had fought many battles within many wars, and knew no fear of death. A worthy opponent.

“Who are you to board my boat unannounced?” he asked.

“Scáthach,” she said simply.

“What luck!” he replied. “I was weighing the convenience of killing you against postponing my journey.”

Scáthach parted both hands and shrugged. “You may try.”

Connla burst forward, a blur to any mortal. He reached for her neck, intending to break it quickly. Scáthach seemed to flicker, sitting one moment, and then beside him the next. She took his momentum for herself, swinging and launching Connla over one-hundred paces from the boat.

He hung idle in the vastness of the ocean, affronted by the ease of his dispatch. Embarrassment manifested, a feeling he had no previous experience with. In its wake came anger. Connla vowed to bring Scáthach’s head to his father as a gift, but found the warrior absent from his vessel as he resurfaced. A hand gripped his ankle, pulling him under.

Scáthach’s hair was a blooming mass of shadow before him, from which an impossible reign of blows were suffered, faster than any he could commit on land. For every one he attempted to thwart, several had already come and gone. 

Eventually he was beaten, rattled to near unconsciousness. He could do naught but accept his eventual drowning, his only regret that he had never embraced his father. 

But Scáthach did not drown him. She pulled him back to the surface of the water and placed him in his vessel, wringing her hair while towering above him.

“I know your face, son of Cú Chulainn.”

Connla studied her, the hard glare she met him with replaced by tempered amusement. He thought it condescending.

“Begone, shadow weaver,” he said, still pained by the beating. “I have no interest. You hinder a great purpose.”

“You speak gallantly for one so small,” she said. “Your father lacked such eloquence.”

“What do you know of my father?” he asked.

“More than most. I trained him to be the fighter he is, today, at a time when your mother and I were enemies. By the confusion on your face, I’ll wager your mother told you none of this.”

Connla remained silent.

“She made an attempt on my life, and was thwarted by your father. Rather than kill her, he mended our hatred and offered her his love, graciously accepted,” she said, gesturing to him. “But his heart belonged to Princess Emer, and to the legacy of his kingdom. Your mother took his newfound marriage as a betrayal, and in her despair closed her borders. For years she has kept no company but sorrow and spite.”

“And myself,” Connla asserted.

“Precisely. How painful it must have been all these years, to look upon you and see the man who abandoned her.”

The insinuation gave him strength to stand. “My mother has nothing but love for me.”

“Perhaps. Why then did she not send you to me, to push her prince through the same trials as the great Cú Chulainn, so that he may behold his son as an equal?”

Connla shook his head. “You seek answers to a fantasy.”

“It may be so. I cannot attest to your mother’s intent, but her secrecy does not inspire confidence.” She took a moment in silence. “Train with me,” she said. “Delay your journey for a year. I will put a spear in your hands and teach you to puncture the stars.”

There was of course some temptation to agree, to investigate the validity of her offer, but he would not keep his father waiting.

“I thank you for offering your wisdom and hearth, but I cannot. Goodbye now, Scáthach.”

With a solemn smile and nod, she replied, “I would have your name, son of Cú Chulainn, that I may bid thee proper farewell with.”

Connla hesitated. “I am forbidden.”

A knowing sadness dawned on Scáthach’s face. “Goodbye, young warrior.”

She dove from the boat and made her way to shore.

Her parting glance troubled him. It spoke of misfortune, but there was no time to dwell. The closer he drew to the Kingdom of Ulster, the greater the buffeting of winds against his vessel. His boat leapt from the peaks of towering waves as he fought, spurned by destiny. But he would not be denied, and eventually crashed against the pebbled shores of his father’s kingdom.

Night fell as he cut through a series of glens, arriving at the base of a mountain, home to a moss laden tomb of unmarked royalty from an age long past. This he climbed over, accessing the mountain’s peak to discover a castle — a collection of stone towers and halls pockmarked by the flame of torches. Onwards he went.

He arrived by morning, standing amidst a flooded field of yarrow and ragwort, and was suspiciously received by a disgruntled guard ill-fitted for his exposure to the elements.

“Announce yourself, stranger!”

“I seek Cú Chulainn,” said Connla.

“And I a bottomless tankard of mead,” said the guard, smiling to himself. “Be off!”

“Not till I’ve exchanged words with Cú Chulainn.”

The guard lost patience and shot a warning arrow at Connla, landing between his feet. Connla equipped his slingshot in response.

The guard laughed. “Go on, so!”

And there his first challenge. Connla picked a stone and shot it with deadly velocity, cracking the guard’s skull between the eyes. Down he fell, and three more appeared in his stead, baffled by the stature of the child. 

“Try that again!” they goaded, bows raised.

And he did, levelling two of the three in seconds. The third fled, calling for more guards.

The gates of the kingdom finally opened, and the son of Cú Chulainn was met not by the loving arms of his father, but by a dozen Knights of the Red Branch. They asked for a name, and when he gave none they attacked.

Neither sword, mace, or fist touched him. Each he avoided or countered, delivering death with nothing but bare fists. And so each fell, until there was but one standing, a man who had evidently received quite a few hits from the young demigod. His helmet of stag horns obscured his face. Above him, beyond the roof of the portcullis, stood a woman with hair of gold.

The man asked who he was. Connla did not answer.

They fought, the concussive force of each strike causing ripples to bloom in the water around them. Connla’s stamina won out, presenting a gap in the man’s defence. He struck the stag helmet and it flew away. Now Connla was hindered, awed by the facial similarities of his opponent.

“Father.”

The enraged Cú Chulainn did not hear, and launched the enchanted spear gae bolga, a roped weapon kept between the toes.

It found Connla’s stomach and opened him wide. He fell into the water and hovered for a time, bleeding in sorrow. 

His father knelt down and took him in, brushing the hair from his face. And then his eyes fell to the ring on Connla’s thumb, the one he had left behind.

“It could not have been anyone else,” he said, eyes brimming with tears. “My son!”

Cú Chulainn embraced his dying child.

The son of Lugh whispered prayers to his father, invoking a rapture of all things that might spare his first born. They fell to none but Connla. He answered by taking his father’s hand and pressing it to his chest, forsaking the bladed death rite of a warrior.

“Had I the strength,” Connla whispered, “I would have carried the banners of Ulster to the gates of Rome and beyond. Blessed would be the morning winds that kept them high…and all who beheld them.”

As darkness set in, his father gifted him the same jewelled tears as his mother, each tapping lightly the folds of his tunic. Their weight could afford the young warrior passage to any kingdom within the Otherworld. And so he set sail once again.