Hound
Words by Caoimhín de Paor
It is cruel for a game this close, this hard fought, to be decided by the final play. But after a ruthless contest the teams are all tied up, with time enough for one more puck out. Nobody wants to lose like this. Nobody is willing to back down. The boy stills his breathing, listening to the wind in the trees. Their leaves rippling and swaying to the east. It's subtle, but he notices. The keeper stoops and switches to a larger hurl, and with an almighty swing he sends the sliotar out again, easily clearing half the pitch. The boy’s eyes follow the trajectory of the ball across the sky, catching the slight wind and swaying towards the wing. Two players leap for it and contest it well. The ball falls unclaimed between them and they both pull on it. Their hurls clash together with such force the impact wobbles through them. The ball skitters away towards the sideline, but the boy has timed his run perfectly, launching himself after it and getting there to scoop it up right before it goes out of play. His first opponent is upon him fast but he turns them away with a pirouette, his blonde curls dancing about his face, and he’s off, head down, ball balanced on the end of the hurl, too swift for anyone to keep up, so light he might become airborne. There’s a couple of defenders drawing out to cut him off. He’s younger than the other boys by a few years, shorter too, but he’s not afraid of them, and he squares right up to them, passing feline-like through a narrow opening between their bodies. He’s got a low centre of gravity and he uses it to his advantage, meeting his opponents at awkward angles, standing at times almost too close to them, not giving them the space to maneuver their hurls. He’s gone before they’ve even turned to meet him. The distance to the goal closes fast, and he finds himself in plenty of space to swing now and send one over to steal the game. He’s about to pull when he feels someone charging up on him, looking to hook and block. He opts instead to duck? aside and let his opponent pass him, and they almost collide. Their shoulders brush together, with almost enough force to put him down. The boy catches his adversary's eye as they whip around. It's Ferdia -
- In the darkness it sleeps, curled in upon the safety of itself, listening to the world beyond the stone of its pen. An ear twitches. It hears something else now. The hound lifts its head stares through a narrow gap between the timber boards of its pen, where the last light of the evening squeezes through and lights up its eyes. They are a piercing amber. It whimpers softly -
- It seems to take him an age to get going again, his concentration lapsed, his squat legs stuck to the ground for a moment. He has only a few seconds with this space. Everything’s in slow motion. The sweat streaming down his temple. The other players closing in around him. He throws up the sliotar and it spins a little before him, and his muscles ripple as he takes a powerful swing at it, bending it into the east wind. It arcs across the sky like a shooting star and soars over the bar, measured perfectly. Match point. He allows himself a small smile as the rest of his team and the crowd cheer. Before he can react there's a flurry of bodies upon him, claps on the back so hard they are winding, and an impromptu circle of teammates around, chanting a tribal chorus, knocking their hurls together, finding a rhythm, stomp, stomp, stomp, clatter. When they finally disperse, the boy is dazed, holding his knees, catching his breath. There’s a hand offered before him. He squints up into Ferdia’s face, haloed by the light. The boy clasps the palm and shakes it.
“Well played.” Ferdia says.
The boy is awkward all of a sudden. Withdrawn. Almost unrecognisable to the fearless player he was moments ago. “Yeah. You too.”
Ferdia nods past him, indicating towards the sidelines. “The King is here,” he says. Sure enough, Conor is there, with a large host of his men. They’ve all dismounted and fanned about on the hill, soaking in the last of the evening sun and the spectacle of the match. The boy locks eyes with his uncle, a mountain of a man, who raises a massive paw and waves him over. The boy waves back. He’s about to go to them, when something stops him. A woodland path in the blue night, a stone fort, with torches burning inside its slit turret windows. A shadow emerging from the trees, emerging endlessly, a huge darkness in his way, giving a guttural snarl that peels its lips away to reveal rows of bone yellowed fangs -
“He’s going to ask me to a feast,” the boy says.
Ferdia looks at him, puzzled. “How do you know?”
Art by Amy Louise.
The boy thinks. All of a sudden, it feels as though the earth is opening up before him, and the road ahead has a fork, with one path laid for him, and another, separate, rapidly forming, like rocks exposed by a receding tide. He does not know where this one leads, but neither does his mother, his uncle, the druids or the gods. For once, it seems, he has a choice. A prophecy of his own. But he must act fast before it disappears.
“I see things, Ferdia,” he says, choosing his words carefully. “They come to me unbidden, as a dream, but while I am awake and able.” He looks at Ferdia, expecting ridicule, but his friend is listening intently. “I see distant lands with snow covered mountains. I see familiar places, but warped and twisted by years of battles and bloodshed. I see armies of men with no end, and myself in the middle of them, fighting like a man possessed. Sometimes, I am possessed. I’m not myself. I’m a monster.” Ferdia’s face gives nothing away, quiet. He’s seen this monster before, the boy remembers. The first time they met. Here, on this same pitch.
“Everything will change, if I go.” The boy says. He’s painfully aware of the time growing short and the inescapable truth that soon these visions will become his reality. Their reality.
Ferdia squints, watching the King and his host. They’re mounting up again, waiting for the boy.
“And is that what you want, Setanta?” he asks.
The boy is taken aback, as he is every time, hearing his name spoken with such grace and care. Its lyricism in the lips of Ferdia like music -
- The last few notes of a ceilidh squeeze outside, bouncing across the yard and resonating high into the evening air, as the last of the entourage rides into Cullain’s court and the great heavy doors are closed. The feast is in full swing now. A guard approaches the pen, crunching pebbles in the dirt. He arrives at the door, torch held aloft, and lifts a heavy plank away. The door comes aside slowly. An invitation to be free. The beast rises, and rises, and rises, and stands tall as the guard, taller, taller still. No ordinary dog. A hound the size of a horse, emerging from the confines, its thick matted hair brushing softly against the stone doorframe as it leaves. It embraces the cool air on its skin, meandering about the court, seemingly becoming bigger as it stretches out its limbs, before finally poising itself at the entrance. Ready to maul any intruder. It stares down the length of the woodland path -
- The sky is a spectrum of twilight colours, pink, peach and darkest midnight. They’re the last two left on the pitch and they puck the sliotar about for a bit, circling each other as they wander, absent-mindedly batting the ball back and forth into each other's grasp. They talk. And they talk. They talk about how close the game was, different tactics they employ, and eventually, how much they admire each other. And then they talk about purpose and prophecy and the weight of it all seems to come off the boy’s shoulders. He finds himself speaking freely about things, things he’s never told anyone, not even his mother. And eventually, they run out of things to say, but it’s not awkward for him anymore. The sunset bleeds away and they lie out on the grass, lit solely by the glow of the moon, watching the stars emerge. There will be long days, yet. A kind summer is around the corner, its warmth warranted, its solas needed. Like the birdsong before the rain, like the soft words that cushion bad news. There will be war. That much is certain now. There will be death, far reaching, unrooting the young from their homes and burying them as one together in the otherworld. There will be blood spilled in the soil and nothing will grow there again. But there will be heroes too, and he will be one of them. Everyone who has known him could tell this. And he will go by a different name then, a more fitting name, a name chosen for him by the men of the court, bestowed upon him, if he is to lead them. But for now, for one more night at the very least, he is still Setanta.
They walk the woodland path back to Emain Macha, hurls resting on their shoulders, and when the fingers of their swinging arms brush, they take each other's hand.
Away off in the distance, a wolfhound howls at the moon.
Caoimhín is a writer from Cork, based in Edinburgh with his partner Cathy and a freeloader/kitten named Beamish. A geology graduate, the natural world usually trickles into his work in some way. He loves to write short stories and flash fiction incorporating Irish myth and folklore. He can be found online @ kevinjuly.
