Free The Phantom Queen Awakes by Mark S. Deniz

green
skirt lay there, draped across the rocks, next to the babe’s
swaddling. Laoghaire...Maolán...Órlaith...Easnadh. She could see it
in her mind’s eye, those tiny bodies hacked and pierced by the
Northmen’s axes and swords.
    And her own.
    No! Let other old women prattle about omens.
Yes, I have seen her and I will die, but it does not have to be
today. She would not have spoken if there was no chance. I saw my
clothes in her hands, Laoghaire’s clothes...not those of the
others. She spoke of a choice. There might still be time to run
home, to fetch the babe ― to save him from the axes and swords of
the Northmen. I cannot save them all. The raiders are too close to
flee. But if I can save just one―
    She leapt to her feet and raced up the hill,
running towards home as fast as her legs could carry her, tears
streaming down her weathered, wrinkled features.
    She crested the top of the hill, feet pounding
along the beaten dirt path that led from the village down to the
stream. She could see the boats nearing the shore, less than a mile
away, where the ocean’s waves beat against the rocks. Her heart
slammed against the inside of her ribs like a blacksmith’s hammer
against an anvil, and her mouth had gone as dry as hanging herbs on
the last day of August. The bell in the church built by the priests
of Christ had not yet begun to ring; the men were out in the
fields, leaving the women and children undefended.
    Her lungs wheezed like a bellows in her thin
chest as she ran, the pounding of her heart like the beat of a
bodhran at a céilidh, and even as she neared the village, she had
time for a prayer of thanks, glad she had not taken the Christian
baptism, glad she had stuck to the ways of her gods, no matter how
Aoibheann glared or how her son pleaded. If I had...would the Great
Queen have come to bring me warning?
    She thought not, snatching a quick glance at
the shore as she moved around the rear of the family’s hut. The
first of the boats was being dragged onto the sand, but the shaggy,
filthy warriors had not yet charged toward the village. She could
see her people running, panicking, the women trying to gather their
children and lead them to safety, the few men not in the fields
racing toward their cabins to fetch their swords.
    Treasa ducked into the cabin and forced her
withered limbs to carry her back to where Laoghaire slept fitfully,
bundled into his cradle. She grabbed up a blanket, spare changing
rags, and then the babe himself before hurrying for the door. We
may die of starvation in the woods; my dugs have been dry of milk
for many a year now, and I dare not stop to try to leash and drag
one of the goats along. But a chance at life was better than none
at all. She paused only long enough to grab up a waterskin and a
half-full basket of oats before ducking out of the cabin and
dashing for the woods.
    Treasa tried not to cringe as she ran. Her
thin, papery skin was stretched taut across her shoulders,
expecting to feel the impact of an axe with every step. The air
burned in her lungs, the cold bit at her face, and as the branches
of the trees gathered her in to the safety of the forest’s shelter,
she stifled a sob of relief.
    Behind her, in the village, she could hear the
first screams begin.
     
     
    ****
     
     
    Afterword
     
    A lot is made of the martial aspects of the
Morrigan; her status as a goddess of war and death can hardly be
overlooked. I’ve read stories in the past about her appearing to
warriors and kings, and swooping over the field of battle as a
raven. But she is also a goddess of prophecy, and aside from the
passage in the Táin Bó Cúailnge where she appears before
Cuchulainn as an old woman, washing his garments in a stream on the
night before he dies in battle, I’ve never read any fiction
portraying that aspect of her. What better protagonist for such a
story than an old woman, already near death and seeking to find a
way to escape it? This was the side of the Morrigan I