Magdalen Rising Read Online Free Page A

the breadth of sky. Then he and my mother became the earth and the moon and the others, the circling constellations.
    Only Grainne made no contribution to the vast store of conceptual lore. At the time I took this omission for granted. She’d had the glory of being my womb mother; let the others be the mythmakers. Not until much later did I have cause to consider that her silence might have had another meaning.
    Did I miss having a mortal father? Did I long for my immortal one to appear and stake some claim, whisk me away from the world of my mothers to some great adventure? In one sense, I did not miss him at all. As I’ve said, he surrounded me and any male animal potentially housed him. In another sense, I did not know what I was missing until much later. I had never seen a human male, much less sat in a male lap, breathing the scent of musky sweat or rubbing my cheek against stubble or beard.
    Yet perhaps I intuited something. My mothers told a story of my father’s magical bag made from the skin of a sacred crane. This bag contained odd wonders: the shears of the king of Caledonia; the King of Lochlainn’s helmet; the bones of Assail’s swine; Goibne’s smithhook; Manannán’s own shirt; and a strip from a great whale’s back. When I was a little girl, I longed to see these treasures, and more than once I slipped out at night to wait for Manannán Mac Lir on the Western bluffs. (I was sure he would come from the West.) I have vague memories of being carried home half asleep in some mother’s arms.
    On the whole, I lived happily in the female hive and lacked for little, certainly not for attention. No one ever said to me: Get lost, kid. If I wore out the patience of one mother, there was always another to take up the slack. They all had something to teach me: herb lore, weaving, animal husbandry, bareback riding, elementary—and yes, elemental—magic. They all had the knack of making work indistinguishable from play. I roamed within reason, usually with some mother following in my wake to make sure I didn’t fall into a bog or jump off a cliff. You see, I had ambitions to fly. I’d seen the birds plunge into the air. Why couldn’t I?

    (I’m going to leave that an open question. You may think the answer is obvious, but you haven’t heard my whole story yet.)
    Year by year, my mothers extended my circle of freedom, as a tree grows, in widening rings. They enforced these boundaries with binding spells—the original invisible fencing. By the time I was twelve, with fresh, green hormones beginning to rise like sap, I’d developed a positive ambition to get lost. Who knows? Maybe my know-it-all witch mothers had it all figured out ahead of time. They must have known that if they made one thing forbidden, that would be the one thing I’d want. So there was one place I was not allowed to go. “Until the right time comes,” they said with maddening maternal vagueness. “Then we will take you there ourselves.” I had very early learned the knack of getting one mother to say yes, after another had already said no. The united front was not their strong suit. But on this prohibition, they were each and all immovable.
    The forbidden place was the valley between Bride’s Breasts, two mountains on the northern side of the island. As my own breasts began to rise from the once flat plain of my chest, I became obsessed with finding that hidden valley. On my own.
    One Spring morning I woke early and went outside to the trench to relieve myself. I enjoyed the contrast of my steaming pee and the chilly dawn air. (Life is full of small, unmentionable pleasures.) As I squatted, I gazed toward the mountains. Milky light dripped down their eastern curves. Mist ringed one nipple. Far away, and so tiny I could barely see it, a bird floated down into the forbidden valley. My new breasts ached. I slipped a hand inside my tunic to cup one of the soft