Roar and Whisper

Parents shouldn't have favorites amongst their children, but nonetheless, they often do. Such is the case for our Mother, the ocean, as she seems to hold her island-dwelling offspring closest to her heart. While "human advancement" shifts our collective focus to the banal and prosaic, moving us, over centuries, farther and farther from the wonderment of creation, our Mother maintains on islands places of the greatest beauty, the greatest magic. One of these blessed places is Ireland, and this story begins there.

Long ago, in the time before time was measured and kept, there was a girl, born from a line of beautiful and powerful beings known as the Tuatha de Danann. These beings had a connection with the natural world so strong that they could bend and shape the very elements to their liking. The girl, called Cliodhna (KLEE-nah), was lovely beyond compare and warm as the morning sun. It was said that she was followed at all times by three birds in rainbow hues, which sang her awake in the morning and cooed her to sleep at night. She had an apple orchard which produced fruit of such exceptional quality that they drew beings of all types to her doorstep, including mortal men. One of those men was named Ciabhan (KYE-vahn).

Ciabhan was handsome, but not that handsome. He was clever, but not the cleverest. He was often funny and almost always kind, but nothing about him made him seem like a match for a girl who was basically a goddess. And yet, love is strange, for beings both mortal and magical, and Cliodhna and Ciabhan fell deeply in love with each other.

They lived for a time in a low stone cottage near Cliodhna's orchards, delighting in the seasons as they changed, seeing the world anew through each other's eyes. In the spring, they'd wake with the dawn to watch Cliodhna's birds whirl through the pastel skies, and Ciabhan wove wildflowers into crowns for his beloved. In the fullness of summer, they danced together in the evenings to the songs of the crickets and owls and the warm summer breeze. With autumn's rich harvests, they feasted, and when the chill of winter descended, they kept each other very warm.

But when spring came again, Ciabhan found himself restless. He was a fisher by trade, and he longed for the sea. So the lovers set out to find a place so that they could split their time between the orchards and the ocean.

Before long, a second low, stone cottage was built and blessed, in a grassy glade near the seaside village where Ciabhan had been born, and the lovers continued to delight in the world and in each other. Though they sometimes squabbled, as couples do, there was never any tiff so bad it couldn't be solved by walking hand in hand along the shore, which they loved to do. In these days, while the deeper seas may be wild and stormy at times, wherever the waves met the land, they were gentle, and the sounds at the seashore were a mother's lullaby. Ciabhan and Cliodhna would walk along the shore, laughing and chatting as the waves whispered and shushed around them, and our shared mother Ocean was glad to see them.

If only life could stay the same when we are happy. If only life could pause when there is ease, and joy, and love. But life, like the waves on the shore, is always shifting, always changing. And so, for our lovers, change had to come.

One day, Ciabhan was fishing along the shoreline, while Cliodhna dozed on the sand nearby. Over the murmuring of the waves, Ciabhan began to hear the strains of rollicking music, a joyous tune that would set any toe to tapping and cheer the most sullen of folk. As it happened, Manannan, the Tuatha de Danann's lord of the seas and Otherworld, was passing nearby, ferrying the souls of the recently departed to their rest in the beautiful land beyond. The music was never meant for living mortal ears to hear, and yet Ciabhan heard it. How could he help but be drawn to it? How could he resist the song of the world beyond? And so, without even realizing what he was doing, he followed.

First along the sandy shore, he walked as though in a dream. Then, out into the shallows, where dark tendrils of seaweed curled around his ankles and the waves shushed and sighed. Before long, he was among the rocks, jagged and treacherous, the water rising deep and dark around him, and still he followed.

On the sandy shore, Cliodhna awoke to the frantic cries of her rainbow hued bird companions. Groggy and confused, she looked to where Ciabhan had been fishing, casting his line into the water of their favorite cove. He was nowhere to be seen. She called for him to no avail, voice echoing over the quiet waves, and then she heard the music. She knew of the ecstatic power of Manannan's songs; they were kinfolk, after all. With icy terror in her heart, Cliodhna looked toward the sea, and saw her beloved for an instant before he disappeared into the dark sea.

With the speed and sureness of stride that her preternatural heritage provided, Cliodhna raced towards Ciabhan, lovely as a shooting star, savage as a storm. In mere moments, she was with him, the rolling water casting them both back into the craggy cliffside as he fought his way deeper to sea. As they both gasped for air, she pleaded for him to see her, to return with her to safety, but his mind was lost to his quest. Manannan's ship was drawing nearer, a fogbank on a sunny day, a wall of magic and most, and the wake of his ship churned towards them. In desperation, Cliodhna grabbed hold of Ciabhan, kissed him fiercely, and used every ounce of strength to push him back into their cove, back into safety. Ciabhan was quickly washed ashore, while Cliodhna was pulled into the wake of Manannan's ship and deep, deep under the sea.

You might think that, with Cliodhna's great power and strength, she would be able to free herself from the pull of Manannan's wake as she has done for Ciabhan. But she has crossed beyond the veil between the world of the living and the world beyond, and that is a journey which cannot be reversed.

And so Ciabhan found himself on the sand, his last kiss with Cliodhna still warm on his lips, but his love lost to him for the rest of his days. And Cliodhna, from the depths, cried out for him, reaching towards him with all her might, only to pull back when she realized that he may only join her in death. And our mother, the great ocean, saw their pain and felt it deeply, though there was nothing to be done to fix it, for even mothers who deeply love their children cannot protect them from all loss, from all pain, or from death.

So it was that, from that day on, the waves which reached the shore were not quiet. They rushed upon the sand with the roar of want, of loss, of love, and then hissed back into the depths, sounding like a sharp breath, of regret, or perhaps impatience. This is the way the ocean tells the story of Cliodhna and Ciabhan, and the stories of all the lovers who came after who were parted as they were: reaching out with a roar, pulling back with a hiss.

But what of the days where the sea is quiet? Ah, well those are the days when parted lovers are joined again, but that is a story for another time.