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Here, the moonlight shone against the clear-cut stone of the holloway, the rain having exposed the undergrowth it seated upon for the first time in 200 million years. This was only but a short time for Aisling, who did not dwell in the realm of humans for very long.
There were a few times in her life where she communed with humans, but even though those times seemed to have been no more than a thousand years past, it felt to her as if it had been a long time. The humans that lived in the land of Éire before the monks, like Brendan, came and built their monasteries, were so different it felt to her like they were another species entirely. The Tuatha De’ Dannan, People of the Goddess Danu, felt to Aisling more like cousins than the ones who had come now, and Aisling sometimes felt quite lonely in their absence. When the first invaders had come, before even the vikings and more ruthless than even the Romans– tribes of dark magicians with nothing but the desire for destruction. Evading recorded history, these barbarians had killed and desecrated so much of the people of Eire, that the faeries that lived with them helped them to escape into another realm before the last of them were wiped out.
Aisling remembers this story being told to her from her mother before she too disappeared. She thought it was only a matter of time before no more of her kind were to be seen anywhere. Even her.
Nil sa saol seo ach ceo
Is ni bheimid beo
Ach seal beag gearr
There is nothing in this life but mist,
and we will only be alive
for a short time.
The song that has stayed with her for the longest time came to her as if from a distant memory; a life before this one that knew of the fleeting nature of existence. Thinking of a land that was once so loved, only to have the people within it exterminated, and being taken over by the most anti-christic of beings who continued to disrespect the land for thousands of years… It is a part of who Aisling is, because she is of the land. If the Forest dies, she dies with it. There is no life for her outside of this.
Aisling finds out after meeting Brendan that the monks of the monastery came to Éire to escape persecution. It makes her have a bit of sympathy after having faced so much tragedy, with the childlike hope of a faery who wants to believe that these people can do good. That they will not reawaken Crom, who the faeries have tried to subdue for as long as the Barbarians were around, sacrificing each other to please Crom’s insatiable thirst for blood.
When Brendan comes back to the Forest and the monastery when he is older and much taller than her, she tells him of the story of when she met a sailor from the East who had become stranded on the Green Island.
“He was on the brink of death.” She starts. Pangur Bán’s ears perk up in interest as he sits between them. “My momma had told me before she disappeared that something tethered me to this world, and that I had to find out what it was by observing the people I found here. I had never seen any humans before, so I wondered if I would ever meet one, but then this man shows up. She had also warned me not to recklessly approach one without good reason, but he was so tired and weary that I ended up breathing life back into him. Then, I hid. I only watched him for a short while before he ventured into the Woods and made a home there. I didn’t have the courage to approach him anymore than the first time, though. He didn’t live very long afterwards.”
She told Brendan of many such stories; lost souls, running from wars across the sea, making it into the Island, but not living long enough to form communities and eventually dying out. None of them ever could properly connect with the land, Aisling told him. It was a shame. She never found someone special until she met him.
“I don’t know if I did find out exactly why I am still here, but I think part of it had to do with helping you create and keep The Book of Kells safe.”
Brendan smiles, his face now quite different from when he first met Aisling all those years ago. She remained the same still, curiously. He doesn’t think he will ever get used to her being a faery. It’s like something out of the most miraculous of stories in The Bible. Sometimes it did make him a little sad though, because no one else would believe him. They might even call him crazy, or a heretic. Perhaps if he used the word “Holy Ghost” instead of “faery”, the monks at the monastery would understand.
“When I’m no longer here,” Brendan says. “Will you make sure the book doesn’t get into the wrong hands?”
“Of course!” Aisling replies. “And when I’m no longer here, the descendants of the monastery will do the job, so long as you make sure to leave them the task. They’ll remember, and it will be carried for long after we’re both one with the mist.”
“What is the mist?” Brendan asks. “I hear you sing about it sometimes. It carries itself into my dreams.”
“I like to visit you in your dreams.” She says. “It is where I can make myself more real, now that you’re older and less wise.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, usually children that are able to see the unseen lose that ability as they get older, the belief, but I think I had enough of an impact on you that you retained your faith in me even as you are now.”
“Of course I did, I could never forget you.”
Now, Aisling smiles. The forest is quiet today, and only the soft purring of Pangur Bán can be heard. He has grown older now too, and prefers to lounge about more than climbing trees. Brendan picks at the last bits of berries up on the trees, no longer having to climb them like he used to when he was younger. Aisling still does, and always will, he thinks, until the end of her time.
His brows begin to draw together in a frown.
“Sometimes I think, ‘the book is safe, but at what cost?’, because the Northmen came and almost killed us all, and ripped it apart. It’s a miracle we were able to retrieve it and put it back together. We could have lost everything then.”
Aisling looks down at him from her tree branch, glowy and wispy as always. Brendan doesn’t notice it anymore. She looks just like a normal person to him.
“It wasn’t the book’s fault.”
“No.” He affirms. “But it doesn’t take away the pain we endured trying to keep it safe from harm. It reminds us of those raids, our people being killed, and yet it’s beautiful. It shows nothing of the hardship we have faced.”
“Is that what you wanted?”
He is silent for a moment, and then sighs. It’s posed as a question, but he knows she isn’t really asking. She’s getting at something, as usual, and she’s right. Brendan doesn’t think he will ever meet a wiser being.
“Yes.” He affirms again. “I doubt sometimes, just like how my faith waivers, but I believed in miracles before I met you, a real faery! Maybe that’s why I did. Would I have seen you at all if I didn’t?”
“We have nothing if not belief.” Aisling says. She looks pretty much the same, and yet Brendan feels that she has grown too.
“Promise me that your descendants will do greater things yet.”
Brendan looks up at her in mild shock. It’s not usual for her to demand anything, much less promises.
“Why do you ask?”
“Promise me.”
He knows Aisling can be cryptic sometimes, in that faery way of hers. There are just things that are between faeries and the divine mysteries. Some things are never to be understood by humans. It is in their nature.
Brendan decides that he has nothing to lose, even if he knows that making promises with the unseen can have consequences far beyond the reaches of his lifetime. He believes in the strength of the ones that have yet to come. He believes that there will be brighter days ahead, when the people of Éire will prosper together without fear of any enemy coming to wipe them out. He believes there will be even greater things than The Book of Kells, even if for now, it is the greatest thing he knows.
“I promise.”