THE CURSE
It would be so much easier to give in to the natural urges flowing through my veins, telling me to just kill and take their place. Three of my siblings already gave in to those urges and seem much happier than my brother and me, but I can’t forget the person I used to be — the person I wish I still was. I would be better off dead than living right now, if that’s what you want to call what I’m doing.
My mother made the mistake of going to the fae. That’s how we, siblings, were cursed with this life.
It was her fault all of this happened. Her love may have saved us from dying, but in the end my parents were the lucky ones and got to die.
It was Breigh, Ireland six hundred sixty four AD - now called Dublin - when life as I knew it, as I loved it, ultimately ended. My father had gone out of town for business, which wasn’t unusual for a traveling merchant, but that time he brought back something unwanted.
I was sixteen and desperately trying to not get married: an exhausting task since most girls were married off at the age of twelve in those days, and having a dowry like mine made it even harder to stay independent.
As a sixteen year old with a substantial dowry, I was an attractive prospect, regardless of the freckles that devoured my face or my personality. My three older brothers, however, were already immersed in their new lives, with their new families.
Gormman, Beccan and Ciaran were my three older brothers.
Gormman was twenty one, the oldest of us all, and had a wife and two children, a boy and a baby girl. He was six feet four inches with long ash black hair that touched his shoulders, a thick beard and a mustache to match. Working outside all day had given him bulging muscles, of which Gormman was exceptionally proud.
Beccan, the second-born, was nineteen and was previously married, but unfortunately Concessa contracted a sickness and didn’t make it. If we had the medical advancements we have now Concessa would’ve gotten better. But she didn’t have a chance getting sick during those harsh winter months.
I suppose Beccan used to look like me, we both had red hair, but mine had a mind of its own, deciding to curl every way the compass pointed. Whereas Beccan’s was dead straight and quite short. Unlike Gormman, Beccan was more restrained and didn’t like showing off, though perhaps that was just one of the ways he changed after Concessa’s death; I can’t really remember now.
The youngest of the three brothers is Ciaran. He was seventeen and, like Gormman, had the blackest of hair, only he preferred to keep it short. His attempts to grow facial hair...well, he gave up on it early.
He was married and had three children, two of which were twin girls and a baby boy. If he had the choice, there is no doubt Ciaran would spend all day doting on his wife and children.
At twelve Saerlaith was our youngest sibling, and it definitely showed. She was a mixture of all our looks. Her hair was an extremist when it came to curls (like mine) but raven black (like Gormman and Ciaran). What made her stand out was her bubbly personality. Unlike me, she couldn’t wait to get married.
Saerlaith always wore the best dresses and never left the house without her hair done up. Everyone she met doted on her, and our family was no different. Yeah, she was a handful, but we all loved her.
We used to live in a traditional round brick laid house, a moss turf roof, that could fit all our families together for dinner every Sunday. There was even space for a breathtaking hearth that everyone was envious of. At that time, our home was considered large, despite being only one room, and I loved it. After all these centuries, my memories of home have faded, but who can blame me.
Only blurry images remain of my old life now.
However, a certain day in late April is still as clear as ever: it was after all the beginning of my hell.
My father would go away for months at a time and we would never know when to expect his return. When you travel by ship, you don’t really have a say in the matter. However in all of the years he had been working he had never been gone as long as had this time; so we had all begun to worry.
So when Saelaith and I spot out father we were ecstatic, we didn’t notice his slower than usual walk, or that he wasn’t his usual cheerful self. My sister and I picked up our dresses-mine the color of pale sea foam and Searlaith’s the white of a dove’s wings- and ran as fast as our legs could take us.
It was when we got closer that I noticed something was clearly wrong with our father. His yellow skin was soaked, dripping with sweat right through his navy blue trousers. When we reached his side he bent over grabbing the closest stone wall as his body begun to reject everything that he had eaten that day; causing our reflexes to react as we jump out of the way, barely saving the fabric of our dresses.
Turning towards Saerlaith, I yelled roughly, “Go, run and get mathair!” As my sister took off to call our mother, I walk back to my father and started rubbing his back, hoping that this unexpected sickness will leave as quickly as it came.
The next few days flew by in a blur, and my hopes of health were left shattered. It turned out my father had caught something called ‘yellow fever’.
While the sickness, not positive if it’s deadly yet or not at the time, was not our biggest problem. Our villagers believed that the symptoms of the sickness were a sign of a curse. If the villagers discovered my father was sick, cursed, then no one in our family would be safe.
If we were lucky, the illness would remain a secret, but I always seemed to repel luck, and this time was no different.
When my mother no longer wanted people to come into the home, the villagers discovered that my father, our entire family, was cursed and decided we needed to be eliminated.
The men in the village guarded our home around the clock, making sure we could not escape and spread the so-called curse. My brothers could do nothing, only beg to be heard while my father was getting weaker by the day. I could only try and soothe Saerlaith as her tiny form was scared out of her mind, and look for ways to escape. But even if I found one, we would never be able to drag our ill father out of here.
I never realized how little time we had left until the men informed us we were to be killed in two days, May first as the villagers believed that the rare occurrence of the sun disappearing would eradicate the village of the curse.
Leaning against the southern wall, hugging Saerlaith is where I resided most of the time, trying to be strong; but ultimately failing. My limbs numb from staying in one position for too long, while my eyes stung from the lack of moisture my tear ducts had taken way from them with my salt filled tears now only streaks left on my freckled cheeks.
Perhaps if I hadn’t have been wallowing in self dread and gotten myself together, I would still be human. My mother out of desperation at seeing all of her distraught children, left to find the fae and ask for their help.
Finding the fae was a tricky task: unless you knew what you were looking for. Their have been individuals searching for decades and never finding them. For in the fae stories they live by ponds, spending their days floating around angelic water lilies, or sitting on coarse toadstools. But those are just fable tales told to little girls and boys as bedtime stories.
It was much later, too late, that I learned where I could actually find the fae.
You have to look for a rare luminescent blue toadstool, one that glows softly like a firefly, nourished by the fae’s essence. Although like most things, that is not the only way to find a fae…they love the dramatics, looking for strange twisting, and arching trees and plants is also a good sign that they’re close.
True to the stories is they do love to have some kind of pond or body of water around, who knows why?
The night of the eclipse, my mother claimed she could find the fae…that they were the only ones that could help us. Our nerves were all strained by our impending death, so our family had no reservations.
Looking back, I wish I had chosen the noose.
That night our family rioted to help my mother sneak out. She was wearing a black cloak and hood, over a dark green dress. My brothers were the distraction as they attacked the men guarding our home, while Searlaith and I spared no effort in adding to the insanity by tossing rocks, and whatever else was in our reach.
My mother returned much later that night with five thick bands of plain silver, she instructed us to slip them on our wrists: that we would be safe if we did.
Sliding them over our hands at once, as soon as they past the scaphoid bone they immediately shrunk, fusing themselves to our wrists; unable to be removed, or even moved a centimeter.
That night not one of us got a wink of sleep. My grief mixed with anger was getting harder to control; I had never had this feeling before and I didn’t know what to do about it.
The next morning I woke to screams. The villagers dragged my mother and father out of the house and knowing they were coming for us next, my siblings and I scrambled to protect ourselves. It was then we noticed the note my mother had wrote with ash from the hearth on the wall.
My mother’s last words to us were simply, ‘Your bracelets will keep you safe, the fae promised it to be so. Don’t try to save your athair and I. Get away while you can and always remember we love you dearly!’. I will never forget those last words, or what happened afterwords.
Before my tears had their chance at falling once more, I felt an unimaginable searing pain pass all over my body, my vision going black as I fell to my knees. The skin on my face felt as if it was being seared off of my bones.
I could hear my brothers pounding against the floor and walls as a distraction from the agonizing pain.
It was only when the pain was starting to subside that I noticed the changes in my sister’s face. Her skin was melting like wax and replaced with indigo and sapphire blue skin, hints of amethyst shining through. The sight was grotesquely horrifying, like a mutated mix between human and monster, but at that moment my mind was blank.
What was happening to us?
It was amongst the screaming when something inside me clicked: I knew what I had to do. I guess my sister and brothers had the same realization as the sound of their screaming became deaf on my ears, as it stopped in an instant. I stood up and started to head towards town square with my little sister on my tail following me out of our former home, my siblings eventually joining my side.
My legs carried me forward as if magneted to the other patroness. Compelling me to look in the direction of a villager, a girl my age until I felt a stinging all over my mutated being. My bones were shifting, rearranging themselves to match the face and body of the person in front of my eyes.
As the pain disappeared, so did our appearances. Our identities were forever gone.
I was no longer Orlaith, but a stranger whose name I was not familiar.
Strangely I could still recognize my brothers and sister, as if they were still the people I grew up with; not the strangers standing before me. We each had our own unique aura, a thumbprint of sorts; no being has the same one.
We then ran to town square but were too late and were forced to watch as the villagers dragged our parents to the gallows. We tried to force our way to the stage through the many people as our eyes observed them wrap the rope around their necks, before they dropped the bag of grain.
We knew it was too late when our parents eyes rolled to the back of their heads. A sight I’ll never get out of my nightmares.
Stopping in our tracks I instantly turn and cling onto my little sister as she sobbed into my dress, soaking it with her salty tears, as I tried to hold myself together for her the way I couldn’t before; as I’m the only mother figure she has now.
It was then that we remembered (it seemed at the same time) that our brother’s families hadn’t changed like we had.
Every one of us took off pushing back through the crowd, putting our parents death at the back of our minds as we pushed our new muscles to the limit heading towards our house. When we entered the home, we were not welcomed by warm arms, like every other time, instead our loved ones begun to attack us as we had forgotten that we were strangers to them now.
Gormman’s family was the first ones the villagers went after. It was heartbreaking to watch as hard as Gormman tried with his new body not as strong as his original, he couldn’t fight the villagers from taking his family. We never stopped, fighting till the very end.
That day we might’ve been changed, but we were not the only monsters, for only a monster could hang two innocent children.
Cirians’ family had luck on their side and during all of the commotion, they snuck out and ran like hell. We lost track of them after that. Cirian scoured everywhere looking for his loved ones, only coming up empty handed. Although he was saddened by it, he had a comfort that they were living a better life then the previous one; and that keeps him going.
So now I’m here 1,357 years later, in 2021 another freakin’ pandemic just trying to make a living in Manhattan, New York. Yeah it’s completely different than Ireland but after all of the fae disappeared, believed to be extinct, my hopes of changing back dying with them. I couldn’t stay in Ireland and I haven’t been back since.
