Free The High Deeds of Finn MacCool by Rosemary Sutcliff

herself that if she could not get Finn Mac Cool for her own, (and she had begun to understand that she could not) here was a chance to make sure that her sister Ainé should not have him either. There would be some comfort in that, thought she. And she gathered together all those of her friends who were not also friends of her sister’s, and bade them come with her up to the little grey lough on the crest of Slieve Gallion. And there, forming a ring about the lough they loosed their hair and linked hands, and going round and about andagainst the wind and against the sun, they made a dancing magic that charged the water with a strong enchantment.
    And long after this, Bran and Skolawn started a hind near the Hill of Almu, and ran it northwards towards Slieve Gallion. Finn followed, desperate for a closer view of the hind, though something deep within him told him that it was not Saba. But on the high mountainside she vanished as through the dark rocks had opened and let her through. And though Finn searched and searched, refusing to listen to the thing within him that knew the hind was not Saba, he could find no more trace of her than if she had been the end of a fading rainbow.
    But in his searching he came upon the little lonely grey lough on the crest of the moutain. And there on the bank was a beautiful woman sitting with her head lowered on her knee, and weeping sore.
    He drew closer, and asked her what terrible thing had happened to cause her so much grief.
    â€˜I have lost the gold ring that I prize most in all the world, for it was set on my finger by my young hero before he died. Now it has slipped off into the cold cruel water, and I shall never see it again.’
    â€˜I will get it back for you,’ said Finn, and stripping off his hunting leathers he dived into the lough.
    The water was cold as the green mountain spate that comes down in spring from the melting snows, and he went down and down into the strange twilight world at the heart of the lough. Jagged rocks loomed faintly through the dimness, and long green weed floated out towards him as though to entangle him and draw him into itself, but nowhere could he see any gleam of goldbefore he had to come up for air. The woman cried out to him from the bank, ‘Try again! Oh, try again!’ and again he dived, but with no more success than he had had the first time. And when he broke surface empty-handed, the woman cried to him, ‘Try again! Oh, try again!’ A third time he dived, and this time, lodged in a cranny between two boulders, he saw the glint of a golden ring. He snatched it up, and with his heart almost bursting through his ribs, kicked upward and rose to the surface of the water.
    â€˜I have it,’ he shouted and struck out towards where the woman still sat on the bank.
    â€˜Give it to me!’ she cried, so eager that it seemed she could not even wait for him to land, but leaned foward to take the ring he held out to her before his feet touched the bottom. But the instant she had it in her hand, she gave a strange high laugh, and dived into the water, making no more splash than an otter makes, and was gone.
    Then Finn knew that some kind of magic was being worked against him, and the sooner he was out of the water and away from that place the better for him. He sprang ashore, but as he touched dry land, the clear mountain light dimmed as though a shadow had been drawn across his eyes, and his legs gave under him with a strange trembling weakness, and he ptiched forward on to his face. Slowly he contrived to prop himself up on his arms, and looked down with his strangely shadowed sight at his hands outspread on the turf among the little mountain flowers, and they were the knotted and thick-veined hands of an old, old man.
    Cold horror seized on Finn, and he struggled to cryout to Bran and Skolawn who were sniffing in a troubled way about the edge of the lough, but his voice came as a cracked whisper, and Skolawn only