Breda's Island by Jessie Ann Foley

Author:Jessie Ann Foley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-04-05T00:00:00+00:00

23.

“MANY THOUSANDS OF YEARS AGO,” HE began, “when our people were fisher-gatherers living in wattled houses along the coasts, subsisting on seaweed, salmon, and these hazelnuts here, before Ireland was Ireland, it was called Eire, an island of clans named for the mother goddess. In this time and place, there lived a band of warriors called the Fianna. They were the bravest, smartest, and strongest soldiers in the land. Joining the Fianna was every young child’s dream, but as you might imagine, it was very difficult to achieve.

“In order to even begin training, you must pass a series of very difficult tests: First, you had to fight ten men carrying spears, while you yourself were armed with nothing but a stick. Next, you had to run through a forest in absolute silence, without so much as snapping a twig or rustling a leaf. And lastly, you had to know, by heart, all the poetry of all the clans—because soldiers in the time of Eire were not simply brute warriors, but learned men and women who understood that strength without wisdom is both useless and dangerous. They understood that you must be both poet and warrior, cat and wolf, fox and badger.”

Breda leaned back on the blanket and closed her eyes, letting the dappled sun warm her face. She relaxed her body, slipping into Granda’s tale like a stone being pulled into the ocean by the tide.

“During this time, there lived a young boy by the name of Fionn Mac Cumhaill. Fionn’s father, Cumhall, had been one of the greatest Fianna warriors ever to live. But Fionn never knew his father, who’d been killed in a battle while Fionn was still growing in his mother’s belly. Even so, his greatest dream was to follow in Cumhall’s footsteps. The problem was, Fionn was his mother’s whole world, her only child, and she did not want to send him away, even for an honor as great as that. But she also knew, as the saying goes, that a child’s got to do his own growing, no matter how tall his father.

“And so on the day Fionn reached about the same age as your own, his mother sent him away to live with the great teacher Finnegas and study the ways of the Fianna. Finnegas lived on the banks of a river, just like the one you see before you.” Granda swept his hand over the land, and Breda felt a shiver zipping up her spine. It was as if the soft cadence of his voice had the power to collapse thousands of years like an accordion, and the rough wool of the blanket fell away beneath her as the rooks cackled in the hazelnut trees, calling her away to the ancient place and time of the story.

“Twas here on the riverbank that Finnegas taught Fionn nearly everything he knew. How to hunt and fish and trap, how to gather wild honey and elderberries from the forest, how to dive for crab and mussels.

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