A Perilous Quiescence

Nobody knew her name.

They only knew of the Blood Huntress Cailleach.

The wise woman who listened to chants basking in the darkness and gave them purpose. The veiled one who knew not only the shadow of every living thing in the woods, but also their secrets. The crone who convened with creatures that did not belong with what was blessed and good.

The witch who bathed in the blood of the things she hunted, wearing their skins and hides.

Eoghan Conroy only knew what he was told, what rushed and frightened whispers told him in secrecy, as his steps led him to a maddening path. A path whose purpose seemed to be to corrode the last sense of reason, the thin thread of sanity he was desperately grasping with shaking hands.

As the witch herself approached him, she only uttered one word. A word spoken with a hush, yet one that carried a knowing. One so certain, it made the wails around him whimper and grow louder for a brief second.

“Come.”

His steps followed her footprints, his mind trying to register everything he was seeing—all the new trees and rocks and bushes he crossed paths with. Creating and memorizing those patterns, so that he would never lose them once a new day began.

Yet when Eoghan entered the witch’s lair at last, something changed. The whispers, the wails—stopped. Silenced. And although the state of quiescence was something he had, once, been craving for, in that moment, it brought nothing but unsettledness.

The undeniable sense of a “wrongness” in the world—in his world. Something that should not be.

And Eoghan Conroy feared the future that could sprout from that wrongness.

He stood by the wooden door, every muscle and bone in his body too uncertain to move a single inch. His eyes too curious to stay still.

On the walls, there were dried herbs and animals’ limbs, like a raven’s wing or a hare’s leg. On top of the round table, he saw horns of different sizes and shapes. On the shelves, there were countless dark colored jars, some he could almost dare to guess their contents while others he would rather not.

The sound of a blade falling and cutting startled him—made his heart flinch and his mind recall many ‘days’ passed. With the woman with her back to him, he was only able to catch a glimpse of the blooded butcher knife as it separated head from body.

“Tú. Ye man.”

Even when she spoke again, the voice clear and assertive, Eoghan’s feet did not dare to move. He did not dare to breathe.

The wails, they were still quiet.

Still waiting.

“Something laid their eyes on ye.” Her accent was thick. In a way that he heard little difference from when she spoke in her mother tongue. “Sen mór olc. Something foul. Something old. ”

A shiver. Passing through his spine without missing a single bone, as if to warn him. As if to let him know the silence was not real.

Only wrong.

“…yes…Yes.”

The first word he spoke barely contained any sound or strength, losing itself amidst the silence of the wails. Yet even when he spoke it a second time, the fear drenched his voice still.

“Tá a greim fort, is a lorg láidir. Ye have yer soul touched, a strong mark—creill bháis. The mark of Death.”

Eoghan’s eyes burned with tears, yet fall they did not. Those tears, they lacked courage, they lacked hope. So all Conroy did was to make sure his voice would not tremble as much, that his fright would not permeate his words.

“C-can you aid me? Is there a way for me to be free from this…this…evil?”

She raised the knife once more, the blade sinking deep into the counter before the witch started skinning the hare.

“Níl aon slí, chuir sí mallacht ort—the curse was put on ye. Can’t hide. Can’t escape. Iarraidh trócaire, sin an t-aon rud amháin atá tú in ann a dhéanamh. Beg and plead for mercy, that all ye can do sure.”

Although it was silent, although Eoghan himself was still, he felt his world begin to shake. Crumble. Break. Unbecome whatever it had come to be from all the previous ‘day’ he had lived and died—all the wistful hopes and dreams of finally freeing himself from Death.

For Eoghan Conroy did not deserve to be punished like so.

He was a good man, with a pure soul—a good heart.

Then why? Why he was being punished—tortured—in such a vile way? What had he done in this life to be entitled to such a malignant fate?

Why?

What?

Was there even an answer?

“…could you speak with them on my behalf?” For a split second, the witch stopped moving. However, a reply…she gave not. So Eoghan continued. “Yo-you know how to, do you not? How to contact the old beings, the Unseelies and sing to their tune.”

She did not reply.

The man bit his lip, blood dripping from the torn flesh and running down his chin as his feet finally dared to move. Take a couple of steps forward—toward the witch and her blooded knife.

“Whatever you wish in return, I will give it to you! Anything you wish, name it and it will be yours.” Eoghan did not care if the price to be paid was in coins or blood—all he wanted was for that ‘day’ to end.

For the wails to finally, actually, stop.

Yet the Blood Huntress Cailleach remained silent.

The man gritted his teeth, raging blood pulsating in his veins as his hand grabbed the wooden table and turned it over. Threw it against the wall.

“Countless times did Death stare me in the eye as I searched for you…again and again, I took my final breath while searching for the great Blood Huntress Cailleach who lived in these forsaken woods! After everything I went through, I demand you to help me, you woeful hag!”

Eoghan Conroy could not recognize his own voice as it burst out of his lungs, devoid of everything but rage and despair. The emotions carrying things far too vicious and heavy for him to acknowledge and name them.

And when the witch gave no reply once again, Eoghan felt a shiver again. One that, this time, echoed with lost whispers and despondent wails—an echo so faint it was almost muted.

Yet one the man heard, nonetheless.

His tears finally escaped from his eyes, running down his face as if succumbing to their near demise. To all the promises that ‘day’ would carry over. To all the blood that would soon be shed.

Eoghan grabbed something from the floor with steady hands, eyes unblinking.

“Tell me something then…a final mercy given to a pitiful, dying man.”

She tilted her head toward him, ever so slightly.

“No matter if it’s a way to kill or a way to entrap, just tell me how. Their weakness. Tell me how I can win against Mórbh—”

Before he could utter the name, there was a hiss. One that was sharper than the knife pointed at his neck, piercing his ears like a painful shriek. And as the witch closed their distance, for the first time, he saw what was hidden beneath the soiled veil, her breath so rotten it made him nauseous.

The large scar that covered her left eye was atrocious, unsightly. It could be either from a burn or a ravenous creature—perhaps both. Yet it was not the sight of the scar and its deformed eye that grabbed his attention.

But how the other one had its pupil expanding and covering the entire eye.

“Briseadh agus léan ort! Fear amaideach—foolish man. Ye don’t utter that name, ye never utter that name, droch chrích ort.”

A shiver.

A crackling laughter, echoing within the wails.

Eoghan Conroy’s hand strengthened its grip. “Will you tell me their weakness or not?”

The Cailleach’s blade felt distant and cold.

“Níl aon cheann ann,” she replied through gritted teeth. “There’s none.”

The laughter did not stop. It only grew louder.

“I see.”

Eoghan did not blink. He did not flinch. Instead, he sank the horn even deeper on the witch’s stomach, twisting the thing again and again. The witch resisted at first, trying to sink her knife into him the same way she had done to the hare.

He grabbed her arm and twisted it, forcing her to drop the blade.

Eoghan pulled the horn and pierced it deep into her flesh again—her right eye that time.

She screamed.

The sound reverberated and echoed throughout the confined space, reaching Conroy’s bones.

He pulled out the horn and struck the witch again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

Until the screams got so loud, it made his ears ring. Until there was so much blood, it warmed his skin. Until the stench of Death was so pungent, it rivaled his own.

When Eoghan Conroy left the Blood Huntress Cailleach, there was no more silence. No more quietude.

Only wails.

From every direction, from every pattern, from within and outside his head. Wails and whispers that kept growing louder and louder.

Eoghan Conroy took four steps away from the door. Then, he sat down.

Waiting.

Somehow, even though the sky was not yet dark, it came for him.

Death.

The sight of the Dullahan still frightened him. Yet somehow, that ‘day’ he did not cry. He did not beg. Without letting go of the horn in his hand, Eoghan Conroy simply opened his arms.

“Come.”

For the first time, on that ‘day’, Eoghan Conroy faced his deplorable fate with open arms. Fear still filled up his heart, and tears still wetted his face. Yet he did not cower while facing Death.

He embraced It.